{"id":143981,"date":"2026-03-18T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=143981"},"modified":"2026-03-18T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:22:09","slug":"telegraph-rowan-williams-i-dont-know-whether-the-anglican-communion-will-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=143981","title":{"rendered":"(Telegraph) Rowan Williams: \u2018I don\u2019t know whether the Anglican Communion will survive\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is, Rowan Williams assures me, a coincidence that his new book will be published three days after the installation of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury<\/a>. \u201cI will not be attending,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be Marley\u2019s ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, fittingly \u2013 since that book takes solidarity as its theme \u2013 this priest, poet and critic is keen to empathise with Mullally, the first female Archbishop, in the weight of challenges she faces<\/a>. \u201cEvery archbishop starts, like every president or prime minister: with expectations being thrown at them,\u201d he recalls of his time at Lambeth Palace from 2002 to 2012. \u201cRealising you\u2019re not going to be able to meet them is part of the job. It is no walk in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Williams, who now lives in Cardiff with his theologian wife Jane, comes across as gentler, kinder and more self-deprecating than I remember him from his episcopal tenure. He used to make regular headlines, his every utterance and act picked apart. His 2011 dismissal of David Cameron<\/a>\u2019s \u201cBig Society\u201d initiative as \u201cpainfully stale\u201d had the Conservative benches in uproar. Today, as we sit talking in a book-lined reception room at his publisher\u2019s London office, he stands out from the colourful backdrop in his black clerical shirt and trousers, with a simple cross hanging round his neck. Those monkish eyebrows remain as untamed as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two biggest issues in Mullally\u2019s in-tray, Williams tells me, are the same ones he tried but failed to settle during his turbulent decade in post: women\u2019s ordination and what he refers to as \u201cthe same-sex question<\/a>\u201d. With the first, he feels, at least in England, \u201csome of the bitterness has gone out of it\u201d. Not, though, in much of the 85-million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion, over which the Archbishop of Canterbury also presides, with some provinces muttering about schism. \u201cI honestly don\u2019t know whether the Communion will survive<\/a>,\u201d he says bluntly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>

"Is he saying that British public life has lost its moral centre? \u201cYes,\u201d he replies, boldly and without any caveat. \u201cIncreasingly, we permit and collude with dishonourable forms of behaviour, and we don\u2019t seem very concerned about that.\u201d" Rowan Williams: \u2018I don\u2019t know whether the\u2026<\/p>— Mark Lambert (@sitsio) March 17, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>