| PERHAPS because I have been away for three weeks, I entirely failed to notice how confusing the Lambeth Conference has been for those who tried to make sense of it at the time. It wasn’t at all confusing afterwards: it was an unmistakeable disaster. If no one walked out from the Conference, this was only because those minded to do so had boycotted it to save time.
On the ecumenical front, a Cardinal dropped by from Rome to imply that the Anglican Communion was senile and suffering from Parkinson’s disease (a metaphor not to be taken lightly when it comes from someone who lived through the last years of Pope John Paul II). The budget ran a million pounds over, and it’s not absolutely clear to me why the Americans might want to pick up the tab. The meeting made no decisions, and at the end of it everyone was still saying what they had said beforehand.
This was especially embarrassing for Dr Williams, whose correspondence on the subject of gay priests made the splash in The Times. For him, there is simply no escape from the fact that what he believed and practised as Archbishop of Wales he has renounced and anathematised as Archbishop of Canterbury, without explaining or even admitting that he has done this.
There is always a slot in the British public imagination for the bishop who doesn’t believe a word of it, and that slot is now occupied by Dr Williams. It really does not matter that he is still held in quite justified affection by many people, and regarded as a profound thinker by almost everyone who disagrees with him. He looks weak and hypocritical. After the Jeffrey John affair, the question for him to answer was “Why should we care what you believe when we know you won’t act on it?” After the release of these letters, and the reaction to them, the question is: “Why should we care what you say when you don’t believe it yourself?”
To this, there is no answer that the Archbishop or his spin doctors can give. He will not concede that his beliefs were wrong, and yet he does not believe that he or any other bishop should act on them. On the contrary, he is prepared to make it a mark of orthodoxy that bishops deny and reject his own sincerely held beliefs (if, in this context, “sincerity” means anything at all).
The Times story seemed to me entirely fair in its lead: “Rowan Williams believes that gay sexual relationships can ‘reflect the love of God’ in a way that is comparable to marriage, The Times has learnt. Gay partnerships pose the same ethical questions as those between men and women, and the key issue for Christians is that they are faithful and lifelong, he believes.”
He went on to admit, with admirable openness, that his position as (then) Archbishop of Wales was equivocal: “I find myself personally in a difficult position, between the pressures of a clear majority view in my church, my own theological convictions in this matter (as someone who has no desire at all to overthrow the authority of scripture here but wants to ask if it has been rightly read on this matter) and the complex needs of individuals for pastoral counsel and support. I don’t see myself as a campaigner for a new morality but if I’m asked for my views, as a theologian rather than a church leader, I have to be honest and admit that they are as I’ve just said.”
This seems to me exactly the blend of honesty and humility for which he was elected, and which his current position makes it impossible for him to practise.
If anything could make matters worse, it was the fantastically patronising letter from 19 bishops in the next day’s paper. They took issue with the headlines on the story: “Second, Dr Williams did not say ‘gay sex is good as marriage’ (your front-page headline) or ‘equivalent to marriage’ (your inside headline). In his first letter, he concluded that a same-sex relationship ‘might . . . reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage’.”
But — given that these are headlines in The Times, and thus obliged to have “sex” in them — they do not seem to me particularly unjust. The central point is that Dr Williams believed and argued that some gay sexual activity was part of God’s plan. That is the view that his opponents refuse to accept as orthodox. So far as we know, he still does, although he believes in some other sense that it is wrong to do so.
Under these circumstances, it is grotesque to conclude, as the Bishops’ letter does, that “He has our full and unqualified support in his magnificent leadership both of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion as we seek to obey God’s call to take the gospel to the whole world.” It sounds like the directors of a football club giving their manager a vote of confidence.
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