Comments on: Evaluating Archbishop Rowan Williams

By: jaqueline

jaqueline — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:23:43 +0000

“…in a later interview with Time magazine in June 2007…. In answer to the question “You yourself once thought it possible that same-sex relationships might be legitimate in God’s eyes” he responded: “Yes, I argued that in 1987. I still think that the points I made there and the questions I raised were worth making as part of the ongoing discussion. I’m not recanting. But those were ideas put forward as part of a theological discussion. I’m now in a position where I’m bound to say the teaching of the Church is this, the consensus is this. We have not changed our minds corporately. It’s not for me to exploit my position to push a change.”

“When he became Archbishop of Canterbury, questions of whether and
how Williams would apply his views, specifically with regard to homosexual relationships among the clergy, were put squarely in the spotlight, through the issue of the proposed consecration of gay priest Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. Following protest from a number of bishops from various parts of the Anglican Communion, Williams asked John to withdraw his candidacy, but then arranged his appointment as Dean of St Albans, one of the oldest Christian sites in England, in a move that was widely seen as a moderate compromise to maintain the latitudinarian unity of the Anglican Communion.”

These are both from a decent little article about him in Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_theology_of_Rowan_Williams

By: David T. Brown

David T. Brown — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:25:16 +0000

Riazat Butt says ” Rowan Williams’s strength and weakness was his attempt to be fair to everyone ”
I just completely fail to see in what way he was fair to a huge part of the Anglican community ie: The LGBT. There is no fairness in exclusion. I really believe that had he taken the opposite view on that matter, there would have been a huge split in world-wide Anglicanism , but no more so than there is now.

By: jaqueline

jaqueline — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:19:15 +0000

“The world is surely impoverished by the shattering of an organization that once held the promise of offering an expression of human community that had the power to transcend narrow cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences in the interests of a greater good.”
‘
‘….transcend narrow cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences’ has the Anglican Church ever really stood for that? Really?
Hasn’t it been more the pattern that to be Anglican is to be absorbed into something decidedly western? What New Guinea Priest can dress in his traditional manner, can decide to express his Christianity in culturally relevant ways?
When has the Anglican church stood for acceptance of cultural difference?
That it may have GROWN to be so according to the Anglican people’s willingness to part fo their culture and time could be argued but
I mean, my goodness, in Sydney alone, forget the gay question, women are still not allowed to be ordained!