Archbishop Williams Insists He's No Pagan - Canterbury Top Pick To Be Honorary Druid

Religion News Service ^ | July 20, 2002

[Shermy]

LONDON -- The theologian expected to become the next archbishop of Canterbury will don a long white cloak and be inducted as an honorary druid next month in a 200-year-old ceremony in his native Wales, which has raised some eyebrows in the Church of England.

[Shermy]

Ping.

[dennisw]

Neighbours from hell SB Index
Rowan Williams
Church Times
12 April 2002


MAJOR CRISES in the world have a habit of bringing to light faults that
run deep in every contemporary human situation, not just whatever local
tragedies have triggered the catastrophe. So it is with the nightmare
deadlock in the Holy Land.

The aim of Israeli military action is, naturally, security: an end to
the terrible random violence of the suicide bombers. They seem to assume
that this means turning Israel into a fortress, with the capacity for
swift and uncompromising action against anyone who violates their
boundaries.

This is where they are most clearly a symbol of the kind of world we
inhabit. Cities throughout the world are seeing the growth of "fortress
housing": estates of new properties for the wealthy surrounded by
refined electronic surveillance equipment.

The global economy advances by reinforcing not just the prosperity but
the security of the rich nations. Outside the enclave there may be
poverty and, increasingly, anarchy - countries reduced to political
chaos by the vicious cycles of poverty, debt and corruption; but
economic protectionism and military sophistication will keep us safe.

Before we point the finger at Israel, then, it is as well to recognise
that we are not talking about security at all.

The one thing that does not feature in this bleak picture is the one
thing that could actually change the situation - that is, the imagining
of a future in which the welfare of insiders and outsiders is seen as
being, in principle, convergent.

That vision of a common future is the secular shadow of what Easter
promises and realises for Christians: the world converging on the risen
Jesus. To abandon that is apostasy for Christians; to abandon even its
shadow in the wider world is to refuse a hope that has been
authoritatively given by God.

So, in a situation like that of the Holy Land today, we have to be as
clear as we can be about what frustrates this.

We do not have to look far. Israel has endured decades of pressure from
neighbours who, until very recently, have insisted that it has no right
at all to exist, whose aim has been to turn the clock back to conditions
that have irrecoverably vanished.

One of the most outspoken critics of Israeli policy from within the
Jewish community, Marc Ellis, has said lately that we must not delude
ourselves that the map can be completely redrawn.

But the rhetoric of Israel's Arab neighbours has implied just this: this
is a portion of history that must be airbrushed away.

From the other side, there is an equal level of illusion: that there
were never really long-term settlements in the Holy Land before 1948; no
one left except by their own free will; Jordan is the true Palestinian
state; and, if need be (this is being said very clearly on the Israeli
Right), the remaining populations in the territories can be moved on.

Israel can survive as an independent and open democracy once the dream
of an autonomous Palestine has been finally crushed.

James Fenton, in a haunting poem about Jerusalem, wrote of the "warrior
archaeologists" who dominate the conflict, who follow "the Law of No
Return".

History is set aside as much by the Israeli fanatics who destroy Muslim
or Byzantine sites as by the Palestinians who question any occupation of
the Temple Mount before the first century of our era, and ignore the
continuing Jewish history in the land since then.

No common past means no common future. There is no possibility of peace
without a rediscovery of history, not as a weapon but as a discovery of
involvement with the other.

Facing illusions is painful. Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, have to
confront the facts of Arab anti-Jewishness over the centuries of Muslim
rule, not often as murderous in those days as in Europe, but real
enough, up to the 20th century. It is not quite accurate to say that
before 1948 there was peaceful pluralism.

More recently, notably since the last war, Arab publicists have
reproduced the most slanderous and ignorant European myths about
Judaism. It was only this year that the story surfaced again of Jews
making unleavened bread with the blood of Gentiles.

For Israel, too, the illusions are not only about the past. The massive
subsidies, economic and military, from the USA that guarantee the
continuance of Israel must prompt some self-examination as to what would
be a truly viable scale for Israel's growth and standard of living.

The territorial claims of successive administrations imply that, for
this one nation in the world, it is possible to define boundaries
unilaterally, without reference to international law. This is an
unsustainable position, on any showing.

And the open secret of Israel's nuclear capacity has to be brought into
public discussion if there is ever to be any remote chance of an honest
policy about regional security.

What the UN or the USA, or anyone else outside the situation, can do is
limited; we need to be realistic about that, too. But perhaps they can
ask some questions about the past as well as the future.

Imagine, for a moment, a situation in which there has been a military
withdrawal and ceasefire in the Holy Land; Israel (a new Israeli
government? Not, I think Sharon's administration) has given a clear
commitment against new settlements, perhaps even dismantling one or two
recent ones.

Arafat has handed over negotiating powers to a small group augmented by
representatives from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt (and Syria?), on the
understanding that all the countries involved openly repudiate the
suicide bombings. (It is a harder matter actually to stop them; as has
been said, the "infrastructure of terror" in this context is almost
entirely informal and invisible.)

The USA, with UN support, initiate first, not direct negotiations about
land, but something like the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation,
working towards a set of statements on the recent past that will try to
say what has been unsayable about the history of both parties.

The signatories of the Alexandria Declaration are invited to review the
status of Jerusalem.

What would all this make possible? We can't know, and it is a fairly
remote dream. But we do need to think a bit laterally, to get ourselves
out of the iron grooves of violence and simple territorial battling. We
need to think what mechanisms could bring about anything like this.

And for Christians, it is, as I've suggested, a question of how the
Easter promise becomes concrete.

We have been given a common future in the wake of the common admission
of the destructive, compulsive past from which we emerge (sin), the
admission made possible by the tangible presence of God's absolution.
Again and again, we must ask how this becomes political, human
possibility.

Otherwise, the only epitaph is the dreadful simplicity of the end of
James Fenton's poem:

"I have destroyed your home. You have destroyed my home."


Dr Williams is Archbishop of the Church in Wales.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE: DOES IT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS

[dennisw]

That's Stonehenge next to the crop circle.

[Shermy]

An intereting article here:

Rowan Williams: Intellect and humility – and very much his own man

"...In other areas, however, Rowan Williams will be more forthright. He still has strong views about the politics and social exclusion, the arms trade, sanctions on Iraq, and war in general even if he is not the unilateralist he was in the days when, describing himself as a "hairy lefty", he became involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was arrested in 1985 for singing psalms on a US airbase in Cambridgeshire. He denounced the bombing of Afghanistan as "morally tainted" and the blast will be stronger still if Bush and Blair attack Iraq..."

Definitely eclectic views, some I could support. But admitting he doesn't have time to pray every morning - doesn't sound too Archbishop-ish to me.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

No time to prune those eyebrows either.

[Litany]

This is VERY DANGEROUS. He MUST NOT do this....it opens the door to the evil one...the great deceiver. We must pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to guide him against it.

[Litany]

Contact information for Archbishop Rowan Williams

Archbishop's Chaplain:
The Revd Gregory Cameron,
St Thomas' House, St Thomas' Square, Monmouth, Monmouthshire. Wales
Telephone: 01633: 263510

Archbishop's Secretary:
Mrs. Hazel Paling,
Bishopstow, Newport.Wales
Tel: 01633: 263510 Fax: 01633 259946

The Archbishop can be contacted via e.mail at this address:
Archbishop@churchinwales.org.uk

PLEASE contact him, urging him NOT to become an honorary Druid.
I have a very, very bad feeling about this whole thing.

[RnMomof7]

This is VERY DANGEROUS. He MUST NOT do this....it opens the door to the evil one...the great deceiver. We must pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to guide him against it.

Litany I think it is too late...

Bump to those that hold the name of Christ

[nicmarlo]

Ours is a very respectable society

Satan -- the great deceiver.

[RnMomof7]

Yep...we need to ask respected by whom

[rwfromkansas]

The Church of England became a den of apostates a long time ago. If anyone complains about American churches, look at how evil English churches already are.....

[Orual]

In a ceremony "in the face of the sun, in the eye of the light," Welsh National Eisteddfod at the city of St. David's, Archbishop of Wales Rowan Williams will become a member of the white druidic order of the Gorsedd of Bards, the Welsh body of poets, musicians, writers and artists.

Procession of Bards to the ceremony

Ours is a very respectable society -- there is no serious paganism about it at all."

And ain't our robes cute? Since there is a group of Church of England clergy who don't believe in God, why should this surprise us?

[anniegetyourgun]

Yep - too late. So many these days are searching out forms of godliness.....rather than God. Easy pickins for the evil one.

[dighton]

Ugh, him again.

Archbishop attacks Iraq invasion plan

[P-Marlowe]

We must pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to guide him against it.

Whether he goes through with it or not is irrelevant. The mere fact that he is willing to involve himself with this ritual is clear evidence that he is personally headed to hell. The fact that he is in line to be the Archbishop of Canterbury is clear evidence that the whole Church of England is headed for hell.

He needs prayers for his salvation, and not merely that he avoid dabbling in paganism. He is not a "born again" Christian, but he is an earth worshiping pagan (this is evident from his politics as well as his religion). We need to pray for him and the entire Church of England, that they repent of their apostacy and return to Jesus.

[aculeus]

Who cares what he believes? As long as he hates America he's our man.

(/sarcasm)

[George W. Bush]

Well, the Archbishop becoming a dirt-worshipper is quite possibly a sign of greater spirituality than that which is displayed by most of the Anglican hierarchy. How sad that this should occur in Wales, the ancient stronghold of British Christians against the Roman power and its state religion and the hordes of Saxons who destroyed their Britain and persecuted them mercilessly, first on their own and then with Rome's direction.

All a part of the great history of British Christianity, a saga that reaches directly back to the apostles themselves.

Oh, and those early British Christians, like so many who came later through the centuries, absolutely rejected infant baptism and other Romish sacraments. They testified to their faith and strict Biblical obedience in their blood and the Romish stake and fire.

[Uri’el-2012]

Bump to those that hold the name of Christ

9 posted on 7/21/02 7:06 AM Mountain by RnMomof7

Hebrews 6:4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened,
who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,
Hebrews 6:5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the
powers of the coming age,
Hebrews 6:6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because
[Or repentance while] to their loss they are crucifying the Son
of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

Grace and Peace to all

Chuck <truth@YeshuaHaMashiach>