The Archbishop of Canterbury discusses issues that have come to the fore.
One of the most significant visits to India by a major religious leader
in recent decades is the ongoing 16-day visit by the 104th Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.
In an hour-long interview given
to The Hindu in Chennai on October 18, 2010, he answered a range of
questions, on issues facing the Anglican Communion of Churches that he
leads, the state of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, engagement with
Islam and Hinduism, market capitalism and consumerism, social radicalism
and doctrinal orthodoxy.
The Archbishop also responded to questions on
his stand and actions on the Iraq War, continuity and discontinuity in
the office of the senior bishop of the Communion, the issue of
immigration and attitudes towards it, engaging with the ‘intelligent
unbeliever,’ poetry and pastoring, secularism – and who he really is.
Detailed excerpts from the interview have been published in two parts in
the print edition of The Hindu on October 20 and 21.
Here is the full transcript:
You became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2003 at a particularly
difficult time in relations among the different churches that comprise
the Anglican Communion. There was even talk of the Communion being on
the verge of fragmentation. Yet your attempts to keep all sides talking
to one another have been notable. Could you tell us how it has been
going, and what you see ahead of you?
Thank you. I think that after the Lambeth Conference of 2008 many people
felt that we found ways of talking to one another, and perhaps
exercising some restraint and tact towards one another. And it was very
significant that at the next meeting of the Anglican primates, which was
in the early part of 2009, all major Churches of the Communion were
represented.
Unfortunately, the situation does not remain there. The decision of the
American Church to go forward, as it has, with the ordination of a
lesbian bishop has, I think, set us back. At the moment I’m not certain
how we will approach the next primates’ meeting, but regrettably some of
the progress that I believe we had made has not remained steady.
Alongside that, and I think this is important, while the institutions of
the Communion struggle, in many ways the mutual life of the Communion,
the life of exchange and cooperation between different parts of our
Anglican family, is quite strong and perhaps getting stronger. It’s a
paradox. We are working more closely together on issues of development
than we did before. We have the emergence of an Anglican health network
across the globe, bringing together various health care institutions. We
have also had quite a successful programme on the standards and
criteria for theological education across the Communion. So a very mixed
picture.
Across Africa, across Asia…that’s what you mean?
Yes. All of these new initiatives about development and so forth, these
have included people from all continents, all shades of opinion.
Women bishops & gay priests
In your February 2010 address to the General Synod, you warned that
infighting over women bishops and gay priests could split the Communion.
You even conceded that, unless Anglicans find a way to live with their
differences, the Church would change shape and become a multi-tier
Communion of different levels – a schism in all but name. Which way are
things heading on these two fronts?
I think I’ll be able to be clearer about that after the next primates’
meeting. But at the moment I couldn’t say I felt completely optimistic
about that. I feel that we may yet have to face the possibility of
deeper divisions. I don’t at all like, or want to encourage, the idea of
a multi-tier organisation. But that would, in my mind, be preferable to
complete chaos and fragmentation. It’s about agreeing what we could do
together.
On both these fronts – the ordination of women priests and then Bishops, and also the ordination of gay and lesbian bishops?
I think that the importance of the ordination of women question is much
greater in England than in most other parts of the Communion at the
moment. Far more difficult for the Communion as a whole because of the
deep theological and cultural issues involved is the question of gay
clergy. I know because in the last two Lambeth Conferences women Bishops
have been present. Nobody has stayed away because of women bishops. So
it’s not quite the same kind of issue.
May I point out that the first woman priest was ordained 21 years ago in this part of India.
I’ve met a number already in North and South India, yes. Which is why I
say: as there are women clergy in Africa too, it’s not that huge a
question.
After years of debate and threatened schism in the Communion, the
Church has taken a decisive and progressive step towards appointing
women as bishops, with a final Synod vote due in 2012. How do you see
the way forward?
I think it’s well-known that in the Church of England there is a very
significant minority of people who believe that the Church of England
and the Anglican Churches generally should not take a large step like
ordaining women bishops without more consultation with, or sensitivity
to, the other great Churches – the Roman Catholic Church and the
Orthodox Church. That group does not wish to stop the process towards
women bishops. I think they know there’s a majority, it will happen.
What they are concerned about is to find fair and secure provision for
their point of view within the Church of England. That’s been the most
difficult question: not whether or not we have women bishops but what
will be the provisions made for the minority. Now this last summer the
Synod declined to accept the suggestions made by the Archbishops, and I
understand their reasons. But it’s left us with quite a lot of work to
try and do our best for that group as well as honouring the calling of
women to the Episcopate.
Archbishop, you have often described a Bishop’s role as one that
involves holding together diversity. How far have you been able to do
this on these two questions?
Well, to the extent that the Communion has not fractured beyond repair
and the Church of England is still engaged in shared discussion of these
things, I don’t think I have yet failed completely. But time will tell.
Relations with Catholic Church
Your tenure has seen fraught relations with the Roman Catholic
Church. It has seen the all-but-unilateral Apostolic Constitution that
the Pope issued last year, creating a new Anglican rite within the Roman
Catholic Church that was aimed at Anglicans who were uncomfortable with
the ordination of women and gay clergy. What are your comments on this
situation? There was the newspaper headline that spoke of the papal
tanks on the lawns of Lambeth Palace.
Yes, I know. I said at that time that was a nonsensical version of the
story. I was very taken aback that this large step was put before us
without any real consultation. And it did seem to me, in some
inexplicable way, that some bits of the Vatican didn’t communicate with
other bits. Overall it seemed to me a pastoral provision for certain
people who couldn’t accept where the Church of England was going, a
pastoral provision which didn’t in itself affect the relations between
the two Churches, between mainstream Churches. But it caused some
ripples because I think there was widespread feeling that it would have
been better to consult. There were questions that could have been asked
and answered and dealt with together. And as this is now being
implemented, we are trying to make sure that there is a joint group
which will keep an eye on how it’s going to happen. In England, the
relations between the Church of England and Roman Catholic Bishops are
very warm and very close. I think we are able to work together on this
and not find it a difficulty.
A joint system? Has the Vatican indicated that it would be amenable to that?
Yes, yes. There won’t be problems with that. As it is, the Church of
England and the Roman Catholic Bishops meet together usually once every
two years for a day of recollection and prayer and discussion. Locally
there are many joint projects; there are even some shared churches and
shared schools. Nationally the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church
has, certainly for the last decade, worked quite closely with ourselves,
at Lambeth Palace. And on a number of big public issues we have issued
joint statements — euthanasia, on the war, questions about race,
questions about justice. We work together regularly.
While the divergences remain?
Oh, the divergences remain. But in a society where there’is quite a lot
of overt hostility to Christianity, we cannot afford to spent too much
of our energy on the divergences. We have to find common witness.
Over the past weekend you’ve had this development where the Kent
congregation decided to accept the Vatican’s offer. I read in The
Guardian today that the departing suffragan bishop of Fulham has used
particularly harsh words to label the Anglican Church.
Yes, I gathered. I haven’t seen all the details about the parish in Kent
as yet and my assistant bishop in Dover will be handling this. I think I
can only say it’s a decision which I respect as much as I regret.
People’s consciences have to be followed. But of course the breaking of a
relation is a tragedy. I’m sorry that the Bishop of Fulham has seen fit
to speak in the way he has. I think we are still trying to find a fair
accommodation for people of his conviction. And that story is not over
yet.
But he didn’t sound quite amenable to coming around.
He clearly thinks that our proposals are not adequate. And that is his privilege.
Do you have any comments on the Vatican’s announcement last week of
the creation of a Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation, to
re-evangelise Europe and other traditionally Christian regions where the
faith is falling by the wayside? And does the Anglican Church feel the
need for a similar initiative at this point in time?
I am very interested by the Vatican initiative and I think it reflects
very clearly some of the personal priorities of Pope Benedict. He has, I
know, a deep anxiety about the erosion of faith in Europe, and a deep
anxiety to remind Europe of its origins in Christian faith and culture.
So I shall be intrigued to see how this develops. As for the Anglican
Church, one of the initiatives which I launched early on in my time as
Archbishop was a movement, or rather a network, designed to support
experiments in evangelisation, work with young people with new styles of
congregational life. We raised money from voluntary sources, not the
Church’s mainstream budget, to support a small staff who would help with
training people in the planting of new congregations, skills of
engaging in different cultural contexts. We persuaded the Church itself
to recognise what are called `pioneer ministries,’ people who are
ordained with a special role to go and spread the gospel and communion,
especially among young people. So this has been part of our own agenda.
These initiatives have been confined to the U.K.?
The organisation works primarily in England, but interestingly it’s been
very much in demand in other parts of the world. In America, Canada,
and Australia already our staff have been invited to go and assist. And
some non-Anglican churches, including the Church of Norway and some
churches in Germany, have also asked for assistance. So we are following
a similar track.
Last year you touched on this question in an address given in Rome.
Isn’t it somewhat inexplicable that the ordination of women by Anglican
Churches became a deal-breaker in the Catholic-Anglican dialogue, in
spite of the fact that the two religions have reached agreement on far
more complex theological questions in the years since the Protestant
Reformation?
Yes, what I was trying to say in Rome last year was that, actually, we
had within the last 30 or 40 years achieved an extraordinary level of
agreement about how we understood the ordained ministry and the
sacraments. And I was still rather puzzled by the fact that this one
question – who can be a priest? – suddenly emerged as the only one that
mattered, as it were. Whereas, in fact, I think I said the glass is
half-full, not half-empty. We have, in fact, dealt with a great deal of
substance there and I suppose I really then wanted to remind both my own
Church and our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters that we had
established a common language for talking about priesthood and about the
sacraments. And we shouldn’t suppose that our disagreement about the
status of women simply invalidated all of the rest of that!
You attended Pope John Paul II’s funeral, the first Archbishop of
Canterbury to attend a Pope’s funeral since Henry VIII’s time. You
attended the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI. You were there again
last year. The Pope visited the U.K. recently. Arriving in Kolkata you
went to Mother Teresa’s Home and in Chennai the first thing you did this
time was to visit the shrine on St. Thomas Mount, which is a Catholic
shrine. You speak in a pronounced tone of reconciliation. Have these
gestures been helping to bring the two Churches any closer?
I’m not sure, but they may at least help the Churches not to fall
further apart. Incidentally, I’m told I was not the first Archbishop to
attend a papal funeral. Somebody told me that Archbishop [of Canterbury]
Donald Coggan attended one. Just for the record.
I think that I’d want to say here is that visiting the Mother House in
Kolkata, the shrine here [in Chennai], going on pilgrimage to Lourdes a
couple of years ago, all these are a recognition that the treasures of
the Roman Catholic Church in spiritual wisdom are not just the property
of the Roman Catholic Church. And where we are invited to share in them,
I’m very grateful.
This is, in a sense, the Mother Church of the Church
of England. The first mission came to the Anglo-Saxons from Rome. That
we now disagree so sharply over authority does not mean that we can’t
celebrate the enormously enriching heritage together.
You sound so conciliatory, Archbishop.
[Laughs.]
Your comments on the instances of child sex abuse involving Catholic clergy in Ireland led to some strong reactions.
What I meant to say about that was that the severity of the crisis in
Ireland had really deeply damaged all the Churches in Ireland. And I saw
that as a tragedy. I wasn’t trying to make a point or pretend that we
could stand at a distance and point a finger, just to recognise that as a
matter of fact this had really wounded the Church and its health. And
the trust people have in the Church. It’s absolutely true that the
Church in Ireland and elsewhere has worked very hard to recover that
trust. And as I said in that same interview, all the Churches have to
learn these lessons. Because 20 years ago, all the Churches, like all
public institutions, were very ignorant of the nature and extent of
child abuse. It’s not as if the Churches alone are culpable here, though
people rightly expect better things from the Churches. But educational
institutions and public life in general, we were not aware of this. And
it’s shameful looking back but at least we are beginning to catch up. It
was only within the last 20 years that the Churches, like other
institutions, began to draw up careful codes of practice and
disciplinary procedures around these questions and I am very glad we
did.
What are your views on the roles of the Christian Church in a plural —
in religious terms — context such as we have in India? You made a
significant comment in a speech in Chennai on the need to “listen to the
voices of other faiths,” but without letting go of the Church’s
convictions, you said. What will such an approach involve?
For me it involves above all the willingness to build relationships
through common study and sometimes through common silence. We can’t pray
publicly together, for many reasons. Prayer follows conviction. But we
can sometimes keep silence together. We can certainly look together at
the sacred texts of one or another tradition. We can watch how other
people handle their sacred texts and their rituals and learn from that.
And in that process we become able to recognise some kind of integrity
and some kind of depth in one another. It doesn’t mean I say, ‘Oh well,
you must be right.’ But I can at least say, ‘I know you’re serious.’ And
that’s dialogue for me – the recognition of the serious. And therefore
if we find we can do things together after all in servicing, witnessing,
peace-making, then it will come out of depths, not shallows.
Anglican-Hindu dialogue
In 2008, you visited the Balaji Temple in Tividale, West Midlands, on
a goodwill mission to represent the friendship between Christianity and
Hinduism. We learn that you agreed to be part of an Anglican-Hindu
dialogue in Bangalore later this week. Have you been following up on
this relationship?
To some extent, yes. For many reasons in the U.K., it’s tended to be the
Christian-Muslim dialogue that has filled the horizon. It’s politically
the more pressing in some ways. But I’m very conscious of the way in
which a number of Hindus in the U.K. say, ‘Nobody ever talks to us,
everyone’s interested in Muslims.’ So of course we try to pursue a
dialogue as best we can. I made two or three visits to Hindu centres and
welcome the opportunity of hearing from well-placed Hindus during this
visits. The dialogue with Hindus in this country has of course been
going on for a long time. When I was first in India in 1981, I spent a
great deal of time in the Jesuit library, Vidyajyoti in Delhi, reading
up on some of the background of the dialogue as it had developed then.
Oppression and justice
While in India during the past few days, you have come across several
issues of justice, marginalisation, even oppression within the church
being raised in different fora. The voices that have highlighted the
so-called high caste-low caste issues, the Dalit question, have been
quite striking. Are you going to continue to engage with these
questions?
I hope so, yes – the questions that have already been presented in the
U.K. from time to time. I suppose my main concern here is that India
constitutionally does not recognise caste, except by its provision for
scheduled communities. It certainly doesn’t recognise any discrimination
based on caste or any privilege based on caste. It’s part of the great
Indian political project, in a sense, of equal access to the law for
everyone. And I would hope that the pursuit of that project ought not to
be offensive to people’s religious convictions. However, I know it is
not as simple as that and I think the situation of some communities is a
matter of real concern. I have heard a little bit, not only on this
visit but from previous contacts, about the condition of manual
scavengers, for example, in this part of India as well as elsewhere.
That gives me great concern and I shall want to pursue some of these
issues.
You were in New York on September 11, 2001, metres from Ground Zero.
You were delivering a lecture there, and subsequently wrote the book,
Writing in the Dust, offering reflections on the event. What are your
views on the controversy on the erection of a mosque there?
In an ideal world, the erection of a mosque on the site would be a
powerful positive symbol of what Islam was at its best. In the real
world, not everyone is going to see it that way. And I think I would be
more encouraging of some real cooperation between the faiths around that
site. To make some kind of holy space that everyone could recognise –
Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and others. Because suffering and
death are not the preserve of any one community and the response, the
godly response, is not the preserve of one community. I would love to
see a real cooperation on that site.
You famously made a reference to Al-Qaeda, saying that terrorists
“can have serious moral goals” and that “bombast about evil individuals
doesn’t help in understanding anything.” May we have your views on
terror and the “war” against it?
Yes, what I was saying on that occasion was that the appalling
wickedness and violence of terrorist methods shouldn’t blind us to the
fact that sometimes, not always, but sometimes, terrorists are working
for something which we might think was good, that is the real inclusion
of an oppressed community. The methods are utterly indefensible, and as I
say, they are evil. But if we simply say, ‘all terrorists are
individuals who are completely evil,’ that means I have no
responsibility to understand them, I have no responsibility of
recognising in myself some of the things that just might push me towards
violence or anything, and I don’t think that helps us.
So the ‘war on terror’ phrase has always been to me a bit doubtful.
Because a war is usually something, an event where we engage with a
clear enemy, with a clear goal in view. We know when we’ve won. The ‘war
on terror’ isn’t like that. And the struggle against all the conditions
that produce terrorism is greater than a war. It’s a struggle against
the material conditions that drive people to despair, it’s a struggle
against the mental and spiritual environment which, in more than one
religious tradition, creates extremist positions and hatred about this.
That’s a struggle worth engaging with, it really is. Because, as I said,
I think, last week, bad religion is not the preserve of any one
tradition – but bad religion is best driven out by good religion.
The Sharia question
You’ve argued that the partial adoption of Sharia in the U.K. is
“unavoidable” as a method of arbitration in such affairs as marriage,
and should not be resisted. Did your Sharia lecture have embedded in it a
belief, and dismay, that religion has been driven out of public life
into the private realm of individual choice?
Yes, that was one of the concerns of the lecture, that a mature and
healthy society ought to be capable of some degree of flexibility about
the legal provisions it recognises in the community’s make-up in
society. Let me illustrate the point in a more specific way, though.
After I’d given the lecture, a Muslim lawyer in the U.K. came up to me
at the reception and said, ‘The reason I agree with some of what you say
is that there are already Sharia codes operating in Britain but they
are uncontrolled, they’re not accountable, they’re often administered by
people with very limited legal skills.
I would like to see a real
professional engagement between the state and the Muslim community to
set standards for some areas where Sharia might operate.’ And the
comparison, in my mind, is with the way the state and religious bodies
work together in education. If I as a religious person say, ‘I will ask
the state to cooperate in a religious school,’ I’m saying ‘I expect the
state to hold me accountable to certain standards. I have to look very
hard at my own practices and the syllabus and methods.’ I think that’s
very good. The state agrees to cooperate but the state can quite rightly
ask about the standards we set. Now, in the context of religious
schools, I think that’s a good development. There might be areas of the
law – and I say might – where that could be done. We haven’t really
begun to have that argument properly. I think the reaction to the Sharia
lecture slightly showed how hard it was to have that discussion but we
have moved forward.
Archbishop, you voiced your objection to the French law proposing a
ban on the wearing of the hijab in French schools and stated that the
hijab and any other religious symbols should not be outlawed.
Yes, because I think when the state tries to determine what is
unacceptable expression of religious faith, a door is opened into a
rather dangerous territory. The human rights legislation speaks of
freedom to express one’s faith. I think that needs to be thought through
carefully and honoured, and I think, as I said the other day in Nagpur,
the state perhaps has better things to do than legislating about what
women wear!
You are seen, among other things, as something of a social radical.
You wrote in The Spectator that placing too much trust in the market had
become a kind of “idolatry.” You have highlighted the need to have an
ethical economy. How do you see the Church’s role and mission for the
poor and the disadvantaged across the world who have been growingly
squeezed by the effects of the global economic downturn of the recent
years, coming as it did in the time of globalisation, the primacy of
market capitalism?
This is a point you also made in your MDG sermon at
Kolkata Cathedral last week http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/3010
Church, market capitalism, and the poor
The Churches can do two things, I think. One is of course what they
always do in the circumstances and try to rally around in practical ways
to assist those who are most vulnerable. And that may be through
working community regeneration, may be through education, it may be
through microfinance, which is a great interest of mine. Always might
you give power and capacity to poor communities. The Church does a great
deal, it will probably have to do a great deal more. The second way in
which the Church has to act, I would say, is in keeping before the
people the question what is wealth for, what is the nature of real
prosperity. And does prosperity demand an endless spiral of material
economic growth? In Britain there was recently published a report called
‘Prosperity Without Growth?’ I referred to it a few times. And that
seems one of the questions we have to keep asking.
Yet people often wonder how your social radicalism could co-exist with your reputation for doctrinal orthodoxy.
(Laughs) Well, I’m glad to know I have a reputation for doctrinal
orthodoxy. I think I’m orthodox but not everyone does! The answer, I
think, is that for me the doctrines of the Christian creed state that
God is transcendent; God is not simply an aspect of how the world works.
The doctrines of the creed state that God acts so as to create a
community in the world, the Church, through the life and death and
resurrection of Jesus. And this community exists to reflect not the
nature of the world around but the nature of God. So for me the creed
says the Church ought not just to be another aspect of how society
works. The Church will always be asking awkward questions. And the
Church, because it is based on the idea that we live with and for and
from each other, the Church is bound to have a radical element in it. It
may not express that always in the same way but there will always be
that question.
The Iraq War and threats against Iran
Your opposition to America’s and Britain’s war against Iraq has been
well- documented. You have also spoken out strongly against any move to
attack Iran, in terms as strong as “criminal, ignorant and potentially
murderous.” Yet do you believe you have done enough within your power to
oppose the war during these seven years that you have been Archbishop?
When war was declared in the Iraqi context, I decided that there was no
point in going on speaking about the war once the decision had been
made. And my emphasis moved to questions of what was going to be done on
the far side of the war, what would we be doing to plan for the future,
and for a sustainable future. I agreed very much with one British
politician who said we could win the war in six weeks – and lose it in
six months. And, well, I don’t think we are entirely out of the wood
there, as we say. So I made a decision not to go on talking about the
war itself but to try and move people forward towards a vision for the
future.
In the whole region of the Middle East, whether I’ve done or said
enough, I can’t say. But I’m engaged fairly regularly with issues around
the Holy Land, with the political questions around Syria and Lebanon.
We have a lot of contacts there. And one of my concerns, I suppose,
there is that we, I mean the international community, find a way of
avoiding Iranian dominance of the region without creating yet another
war – which will unleash chaos for decades. So all this is a matter of
ongoing, and sometimes quite intense, discussion. Next year I’m
convening what I hope will be quite a high-level meeting at Lambeth
Palace to discuss the situation of Christians in the region, which I
hope our government and others will help support. It will be primarily
focussed on the Christians in the Holy Land but of course involving
people from other faiths…
Where is organised religion going? How do you see the direction that
organised religion as a whole is moving globally in terms of practising
numbers, rigour, and faith? Including in India?
Modernity in general brings with it a strong strand of individualism.
And consumerism. And consumerism fits very badly with traditional
religion. People look for what makes them feel better and they don’t
particularly like to think of long-term belonging. I think that’s one of
the major issues we have in the U.K. about younger people and religion;
and I think with the more educated and sophisticated in India it’s
probably much the same, actually. Now this isn’t overcome overnight; it
has to be addressed through a constant appeal from religious bodies to,
as I sometimes like to say, to the imagination. And appeal to people to
discover an extra depth to their life, which is not just their
possession but which involves them in this mutual relation with others –
this sense of being involved in and affected by the sufferings of
others.
The trouble is that the reaction that seems easiest is what we call
fundamentalism in general. That is a reaction towards an imagined past, a
certain absolutely watertight answer to everything, and a real
bitterness and venom towards outsiders. The great danger that faces
every religious tradition, and I mean every religious tradition here, is
that it can seem a quick way out. Christians do it. Muslims do it.
Hindus do it. Buddhists do it. For all I know, Jains and Zoroastrians do
it and Sikhs too. But we do see this strange attempt to outbid another
religion. ‘I feel threatened by the extremism of another religious
tradition. All right, so I will create my own extremism!’ And so we go
on piling up. That’s the danger. And that’s where it matters enormously
for trust and respect and patience to be generated among religious
leaders and teachers and communities. And that’s work which deserves
every ounce of effort and goodwill we can give it.
Playing many roles
You are an academic who has 11 languages, a theologian, a thinker, a
poet, and also a perceptive translator of poetry. Mainly from Welsh, is
it?
Welsh, and also from German and Russian.
Do these different facets and roles intersect as you go about the difficult task of being primate, pastor, and poet?
Well, it may seem to be some distance from the work of translating Welsh
poetry to the work of chairing a board of finance! But I don’t think
there’s a gap, because what you bring to the office of a primate or a
bishop is who you are. The skills, the interests you have, and an
interest in different languages and cultures can sometimes be very
instructive as you sit around the table. An awareness of the
extraordinary possibilities and varieties of language can perhaps
sometimes make you listen a bit harder to how other people are talking.
And maybe that feeds into the ministry. Essentially it is about who you
are.
Issues of continuity and change
Your choice as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury was a considerable
departure, many people have said this, from your predecessor and his
views. Would you like to comment on issues of continuity and change
here, going back perhaps to at least the time of Archbishop Robert
Runcie? At the end of his tenure, he actually spoke of the pain of
having to lead a Church which at times did not want to find a united way
forward. How would you see your own tenure in relation to the tenures
of your immediate predecessors?
I think it’s possible to exaggerate the discontinuity. A great many of
the projects that have been most central and valuable for me have been
things that my predecessor initiated. And I have to acknowledge a
grateful debt to that. But of course the style of each Archbishop is
going to be different. Every Archbishop, I think, since the beginning of
the 20th century has faced the challenge of a diverse Church. I read
the life of Archbishop [Randall Thomas] Davidson who had a long tenure
as the Archbishop at the beginning of the 20th century, and I smile
occasionally to see him saying some of the things I might want to say
about the difficulty of the job. And it’s difficult because the
Archbishop is not a chief executive, he is not someone who makes all the
decisions that matter.
The Archbishop presides over a global family with rapid communication
and what goes with rapid communication very often is limited mutual
understanding! That’s got a lot more marked in the last two or three
decades. So it’s not surprising that there is a continuity of challenge
there at least. I think everybody who comes into the office sooner or
later does find this is the heart of it: can you hold people together in
relationship? It’s the job of every bishop. It’s the job of an
Archbishop of Canterbury in a special way – and there’s continuity
there. Holding together diversity, not in order to have an easy life or a
quiet life, but because of this conviction that we need each other. And
when somebody walks away from the table, everyone is the poorer.
Engaging with intelligent unbelievers
Archbishop, it was interesting to hear you being described (this was
mentioned yesterday at a public reception in Chennai) as a figure who
could ‘make Christianity credible to the intelligent unbeliever.’
Believing that you took that as a compliment [the Archbishop laughs]…is
this a role that you have considered an important one for the leader of
the third largest denomination of Christians in the world? Do you
believe you have succeeded in this sense?
Well, apart from a growing sense of incredulity as I listened to what
was being said about me yesterday, I think the answer is ‘Yes, I do
think it’s important.’ Every Christian leader and teacher these days has
to be, in some degree, an apologist, has to be able to have enough
understanding of the language of the non-believer to find ways of moving
across the frontier. Now some people do this very effectively as
Christians witnessing in the world of science. I’m not a scientist, and I
make no claims there. I know a bit about the world of the arts, and
sometimes I really engage in conversation about the world of the
imagination. The world of poetry or fiction can open doors for a deeper
understanding. I believe it’s worth working at that.
Dealing with immigration
You contributed to the debate prior to the 2005 U.K. elections,
criticising assertions that immigration was a ‘cause of crime.’ This is a
very sensitive issue in the U.K., isn’t it?
It is. It’s troubling to me that we still seem in the U.K. to have a
kind of memory of the language that was around in the 1960s – ‘Oh, you
know we’re being swamped by the immigrants from other cultures.’ The
fact is, at the moment, that migrants in the U.K. come from a very wide
variety of backgrounds, including Europe, not just the old Commonwealth.
The fact is also that they contribute economically to the country;
without their services a great many things would collapse. And often
they will do jobs which British people won’t do. And I believe that
culturally they help to keep Britain the lively and varied society that
it is. So I am distressed that that suspicion and resentment is still
around.
We as a Church have taken a fairly consistent stand on this. We are very
concerned too about the status of asylum-seekers and refugees. I try to
make it a point to visit detention centres for asylum-seekers whenever I
can and to deal with refugee camps in Great Britain – to make sure that
people remember that a great many migrants are definitely not in
Britain simply from their choice, but because of nightmare situations
they’re escaping from. When you sat across the table from a woman who
has been multiply raped in an African country in time of war, who has
seen a family destroyed, who has with great difficulty found her way to a
safe place, then it’s quite hard to listen to others saying, talking
about ‘bogus asylum seekers’ and ‘parasites’! I think Britain ought to
do better than that. There’s more nobility in the British tradition than
that.
Who really is he?
Archbishop, it is often said that you are hard to label: orthodox or
liberal, diplomat or dissident. It has also been said that you consider
yourself to be a ‘radical traditionalist.’ What are you, really?
(Laughs) Really I’m Rowan Williams, a child of God, I hope. I don’t like
party labels, I really don’t. And I don’t see any contradiction in
saying that I owe everything to the tradition of the Church in a very
old-fashioned way. That all that shaped me in my prayer and in my
thinking has been the great mainstream tradition of the Bible and the
early Church. And that, as I said earlier, that gives me a sense of why
it’s important sometimes to be a critic or a questioner – and doesn’t
incline me to think that blanket conservatism was the answer to
everything. But essentially, as I say, you bring to the office who you
are, under God.
You would have noticed the different senses of the word secularism here and there.
Absolutely.
It signifies equal respect for all religions and a certain neutrality
in religious terms here while in England it signifies the principle of
separation of matters of Church and state. Is there a point there that’s
worth elucidating?
Yes, what I’ve suggested in a couple of interventions over the last few
years is that we in England need to be much more careful distinguishing
between what I sometimes call Procedural Secularism, which is, the state
steps back but allows debate to go on and the state itself stays
neutral, and Programmatic Secularism, where the state drives an agenda
to push religion out of the public sphere. India is a very good example
of Procedural Secularism. That was the burden of my lecture in Delhi
[the Archbishop’s Chevening Lecture at the British Council, New Delhi,
October 15, 2010, that can be accessed at [http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/3014], and I hope to take that back into the British discussion.
SIC: TH/INDIA