When I meet Rowan Williams at the Southbank Centre in late October, there is much going on. The Church of England, of which he was once Archbishop of Canterbury, stands accused of trying to close churches to save cash; a famous bishop has converted to Rome; and Williams is waiting for his daughter to give birth (the boy, his first grandchild, will arrive a few days later).<\/p>\n
Although he\u2019s been lampooned for being wishy-washy, I find Williams\u2019s language to be economical and exact, and though he is thoroughly loyal to his successors in the clerical hierarchy, buried beneath his metaphors is a cutting critique of where we\u2019re at. \u201cThere was a loss of nerve in the 1960s,\u201d he says of Anglicanism. \u201cLike St Peter walking on the water\u201d, the Church seemed to \u201clook down at the wrong moment\u201d and lose its footing.<\/p>\n
Now, Williams believes, we are seeing the legacy of that \u201cpervasive and paralysing anxiety about the role of the Church in society\u201d. Amid \u201ca general cultural tide flowing away\u201d from Christianity, we have to ask: what if the Church \u201cis no longer a given….\u201d?<\/p>\n
Information has become abundant, he says, yet \u201cthe process of acquiring that information\u201d \u2013 ie scrolling through one\u2019s phone \u2013 \u201chas disabled us intellectually… We are increasingly forgetting how to learn. We assume that knowledge can be distilled and communicated and transferred just like that\u2026 a tick box approach which is found in clergy training.\u201d What knowledge we inherit, we take for granted, yet \u201cthe absolutism of some modern social morality\u201d \u2013 the idea that right and wrong are obvious \u2013 \u201cdid not drop from heaven. We learnt to see things this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a> (subscription).<\/p>\n Rowan Williams believes we are seeing the legacy of that \u201cpervasive and paralysing anxiety about the role of the Church in society\u201d<\/p>\n Read the full interview 👇 https:\/\/t.co\/eVhfPuzq0u<\/a><\/p>\n — The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 28, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n