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Over the course of a turbulent year the Archbishop of Canterbury had a series of meetings with James Macintyre during which he spoke about sharia law, capitalism, the disestablishment of the Church, and his love of The West Wing On a bleak afternoon in November, a delegation of senior religious leaders from Britain filed out of an exhibit room at Ausch witz in Poland. One man stopped, and stayed staring intently through the glass. Before him was a mass of human hair from those killed in the gas chambers. This man was Dr Rowan Williams and he was praying, silently....

Dr Rowan Williams warned that the shooting dead of the unarmed al-Qaeda leader meant justice was not "seen to be done". The differing accounts of the American special forces' operation which have emerged from the White House since Monday "have not helped", he said. At a press conference at Lambeth Palace, The Daily Telegraph asked Dr Williams whether he thought the US had been right to kill bin Laden. After declining to respond initially, he later replied: “I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling, because it doesn’t look as if...

February 10, 2010 Church May Split Over Women Bishops and Gay Priests, Warns Rowan Williams Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent Members of the General Synod listen to Dr Williams?s address yesterday The Archbishop of Canterbury warned yesterday that damaging infighting over women bishops and gay priests could result in a permanent split in the Anglican Communion. Dr Rowan Williams stressed that he did not “want or relish” the prospect of division. He called on the Church of England and Anglicans worldwide to step back from a “betrayal” of God’s mission and to put the work of Christ before schism. But he...

The Archbishop of Canterbury has rounded on rebel Anglicans seeking to bypass his authority over issues such as homosexuality and women priests. Dr Rowan Williams adopted unusually forthright language to accuse the hardline traditionalists of lacking legitimacy One of his staff even suggested the rebels were becoming a "Protestant sect". The Archbishop's comments follow the creation at the weekend of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), a global network for millions of Anglicans unhappy at the ordination of the openly homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson. Dr Williams called for patience from those who want to create an...

From behind the Times’s paywall, the sound of an Archbishop of Canterbury digging a hole for himself so deep that it will soon swallow him up. Dr Rowan Williams has given a disastrous interview to the paper today that leads his interviewer, Ginny Dougary, to describe his position on homosexuality as “both confusing and rather revolting”. Well, she’s certainly right on the first count. Here’s my paraphrase of the Archbishop’s current position: Does he still think it’s OK for gay couples to have sex, as he wrote years ago? “That’s what I wrote as a theologian, you know, putting forward...

Two contrasting events of the last quarter of 2006 provide a pathway to this 2007 Holocaust Memorial Day. In different ways each highlighted very clearly why we shall continue to need an annual national Holocaust Memorial Day for the foreseeable future and why all British citizens should mark it. The first was the award by Her Majesty of an honorary knighthood to Professor Elie Wiesel. I was privileged to attend the reception given in his honour by the Yad Vashem Foundation UK at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Listening to him speak and seeing him surrounded by his family, brought...

There is a "lasting sense" that the most prosperous in society have yet to shoulder their load in the economic downturn, the archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday. In a rebuke to the rich in Britain, Rowan Williams used his Christmas Day sermon to stress the importance of people working together to rebuild confidence and trust. "That confidence isn't in huge supply at the moment, given the massive crises of trust that have shaken us all in the last couple of years and the lasting sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load." Williams also warned of hardship...

February 9, 2010 Rowan Williams Issues 'Profound Apology' To Gay Christians Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent The Archbishop of Canterbury issued a “profound apology” to the lesbian and gay Christian community today. In a powerful address to the General Synod, Dr Rowan Williams warned that any schism within the Church would represent a betrayal of God’s mission. But he made clear that he regretted recent rhetoric in which he has sought to mollify the fears of the traditionalist wing of the church. The Archbishop is from the Church’s liberal wing and a man who once espoused equal rights for gays within...

When someone claims to have been “offended” by someone else’s remarks, he is usually grandstanding. Believe me: I’ve been on the receiving end of synthetic outrage more often than most. It’s one of the reasons I feel a certain kinship with Rowan Williams. ... It’s a similar story with the fabricated row about Chris Grayling’s belief that religious B&B owners should not be forced by law to let rooms to gay couples. Such hoteliers are guilty of bad business as well as bad manners: they are harming their profits for no good reason. But you don’t have to be anti-gay...

Rowan Williams Condemns 'Frightening' Coalition Dr Rowan Williams will launch a sustained attack on the Coalition in the most outspoken political intervention by an Archbishop of Canterbury for a generation. The comments represent Dr Williams's most direct intervention in politics since he became Archbishop of Canterbury By Tim Ross 08 Jun 2011 He warns that the public is gripped by “fear” over the Government’s reforms to education, the NHS and the benefits system and accuses David Cameron and Nick Clegg of forcing through “radical policies for which no one voted”. Openly questioning the democratic legitimacy of the Coalition, the Archbishop...

There’s a brilliant headline in one of the tabloids today suggesting that the archbishops are “at war”. If you actually look at the comment from Archbishop Vincent Nichols relating to Rowan Williams’ article, however, it’s not particularly bellicose. “I was struck by a poll at our conference on April 6 when those present were asked if the Big Society was a cover for cuts,” he said. “The overwhelming majority said no.” Hardly a sign that they’re at war, yet there appears to be some strategic manoeuvring going on in the way that the Catholic archbishop appears to be aligning himself...

Really? Didn’t Jesus have a job?Blessed are they who took out $150,000 in student loans to get a degree in Marxist Semiotics. In a British magazine, the leader of the world’s 78 million Anglicans worldwide insisted that Jesus would be “there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.”…In his article written for the Christmas edition of the Radio Times magazine, the archbishop said Jesus was “constantly asking awkward questions” in the Bible.In the St. Paul’s encampment, Williams added, Jesus would be “steadily changing the entire atmosphere by the questions that he asked of everybody involved — rich and poor, capitalist...

The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will resign his position next year almost a decade before he is due to retire in order to return to academic life, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Williams, 61, who has worked hard to prevent the worldwide Anglican community from splitting over the ordination of women and gay bishops, may take up a senior post at Cambridge University, the Sunday Telegraph said. ...Williams has regularly come under fire for his outspoken comments, most recently making headlines in June with an attack on the British government’s deficit-cutting austerity programme....

THE Archbishop of Canterbury will resign next year, almost a decade before he is due to step down, British media report. Dr Rowan Williams, 61, has been the head of the Church of England for about 10 years and although he is eligible to remain in the position until the age of 70, he is considering quitting, according to sources. Friends of the archbishop say that having overseen a period of turbulence in the church, he is considering a life of academia, British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph reports.

The spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion admitted on Thursday that he felt “very uncomfortable” with the killing of Osama bin Laden when he was unarmed. Contrary to initial reports that bin Laden had engaged in a 40-minute gun fight with U.S. Navy Seals, it emerged on Wednesday that the al-Qaida leader had been unarmed when he was shot dead in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. Answering a question about the killing at a press briefing, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams also criticized conflicting reports coming from the White House about the events surrounding bin Laden’s death....

Journalist and author Fareed Zakaria has made some grave accusations against those who oppose the building of the Islamic center near Ground Zero, and has predicated his own approval of the project on the moderateness of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Zakaria wrote that Abdul Rauf “has said one or two things about American foreign policy that strike me as overly critical — but it’s stuff you could read on The Huffington Post any day.” Yes, indeed — you are likely to read similar “stuff” on the Huffington Post, since Rauf has written there. But how can that possibly constitute a...

The Archbishop of Canterbury today issued a "profound apology" to the lesbian and gay Christian community. In a powerful address to General Synod Dr Rowan Williams warned that any schism within the church would represent of a "betrayal" of God's mission. But he made clear that he regretted recent rhetoric in which he has sought to mollify the fears of the traditionalist wing of the church. The Archbishop is from the Church's liberal Catholic wing and a man who once espoused equal rights for gays within the Church. More recently he has adopted a conservative line for the sake of...

AnalysisMany balk at this element of the Nativity story, but historical and astronomical evidence tends to corroborate it. By Michael J. MillerDuring a 2007 BBC radio interview, the archbishop of Canterbury deconstructed elements of the Nativity story. “Stars simply don’t behave like that,” Rowan Williams said. Asked about the existence of three wise men, he replied, “It works quite well as legend.”But years ago Father Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, published an essay applying the historical-critical method to the question of the Nativity story. (The essay is reprinted without cumbersome footnotes in Light and Shadows: Church...

The worldwide Anglican Church has been plunged into a fresh crisis after a lesbian was chosen as its second gay bishop. In a move that will dismay the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Canon Mary Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop for the diocese of Los Angeles. The Rev Rod Thomas, the leader of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a member of the General Synod, said: ‘I feel deeply ashamed that this is happening in the Anglican Church. ‘I think a schism is absolutely inevitable.’

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, mounted a direct attack on the Government over the invasion and occupation of Iraq when he used a national memorial service commemorating the servicemen killed in the conflict to accuse Tony Blair and his ministers of failing to “measure the price” of military action. Delivering his address in St Paul's Cathedral before a congregation including the Queen, Gordon Brown and Mr Blair himself, the spiritual head of the Church of England accused the former prime minister of indulging in rhetoric before the 2003 invasion, while leaving ordinary servicemen and women to pick up the...