Rowan’s Rule: The biography of the Archbishop
Rupert Shortt
THIS biography is timely and, for those genuinely wishing to take the Archbishop and his ideas and goals seriously, welcome. Rupert Shortt is well qualified by previous research and publication to tackle his demanding subject; and we can be grateful for a work that is strong on empathy, but also balanced and fair in its judgements. The style is eminently readable, without ever being trite or descending to ecclesiastical triviality.
THIS biography is timely and, for those genuinely wishing to take the Archbishop and his ideas and goals seriously, welcome. Rupert Shortt is well qualified by previous research and publication to tackle his demanding subject; and we can be grateful for a work that is strong on empathy, but also balanced and fair in its judgements. The style is eminently readable, without ever being trite or descending to ecclesiastical triviality.
This is not one of those full-scale academic biographies that record for posterity every cup of tea and the grocery from which it came. (The author describes it as a traditionally structured “Life”.) Nor does it attempt to fill in every twist and turn of church politics, though there is enough salient detail to enable the non-church reader to grasp what is going on, and to explain any unavoidable technical references.
Even so, some may ask, is there really a need for a life of the Archbishop at this stage of his life and primacy? The story here set down is quite simply its own justification. The book ends, remarkably, with a fairly short but perceptive chapter on the Lambeth Conference of this year, which makes amply clear that one important phase in the saga of the Anglican Communion has come to an end, and that a new journey is to begin in 2009.
That we have reached this point in as reasonable a shape as we have is very largely due to the Archbishop and his unique gifts and spirituality; and if we are to approach the next phase with understanding, it can only help if we understand him, where he comes from, and where he would hope to help us to go.
Except for the sections on Rowan’s thought, the book follows a fairly straightforward chronological path; but the need for background to significant episodes means a certain amount of dodging about, so that the reader is sometimes unsure which year we are in. The great gain is that virtually everything discussed is important. In this respect, the reader will be unwise to skip the introduction, which gives the narrative its essential relevance.
The story begins some way before Dr Williams’s birth, with a fairly complex account of his Welsh roots and their religious affiliations. It was the Prayer Book Catholicism of the Church in Wales parish of Oystermouth which attracted him away from the Presbyterianism of his family, who generously accepted his decision. It was in the Catholic tradition that he found the inspiration for an intense prayer life that has been firm and lasting, though enriched over the years from many sources; but from the very beginning that life has been a matter not just of particular forms of devotion, much though these mean to him, but of the reality of God.
It became obvious from his schooldays onward that Rowan Williams had been endowed with massive powers of mind, which showed themselves not only in academic performance but also in the great range of his interests and skills. Languages were one area of expertise, music was another. Light verse and serious poetry came alike to him, as did acting.
A university career by way of both Oxford and Cambridge issued in a doctorate, teaching at Mirfield and Westcott House, a Cambridge University lectureship, and the post of Dean of Clare College, before his appointment in 1986 as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. A steadily increasing tally of published work on a wide variety of subjects consolidated his reputation, while life had been given a whole new dimension of joy and love by his marriage to Jane, daughter of that saintly and deeply theological bishop, Geoffrey Paul.
Shortt has two most illuminating chapters on Dr Williams’s theological, social, and political thinking, subjects on which he is a recognised authority. What emerges is that, in the view of established experts, including those who are sympathetic or personal friends, Dr Williams is considerably less sure-footed in the social or political fields than in theology and spirituality — which could be said of many church leaders. (One could think, for instance, of Michael Ramsey and Rhodesia.) Some subjects, too, are more full of pitfalls than others; and as someone who has shared Dr Williams’s involvement in two in particular — nuclear weapons and sexual morality — he has my sympathy.
But what can be relatively harmless when confined to academia can be dynamite in the public domain, and crucifixion for those at the head of major institutions; and Dr Williams was about to put himself in precisely those situations. In 1992, he accepted election to the diocese of Monmouth in the Church in Wales.
The diocese, like much of the Welsh Church in general, had been in decline for some years, and was in serious financial difficulties. The Bishop could afford, for example, only one part-time secretary. Life as a diocesan can also spring some nasty traps for the unwary; and, delighted as Dr Williams was to be back in Wales and in a pastoral and teaching role in the day-to-day life of the Church, he discovered that that could not be the whole story. His manifest commitment to the heart of the matter, however, weighed so decidedly with everyone that in 1999 he was elected Primate.
It was those personal qualities, and his towering intellectual calibre that in 2002 brought him the invitation to Canterbury, where the pinpricks of Monmouth were to become the nails of the presidency of the Anglican Communion. No Anglican ought to be able to read Shortt’s careful and moderately expressed account of what Rowan and Jane have had to endure over the past six years without shame. Shortt does gently put his finger on a number of places where Rowan can fairly be said to have got it wrong; but he also tells of other places, unknown to most of us because unreported, where he has got it splendidly right.
And of these surely Lambeth 2008 has been the greatest. True, those who probably would have been most deaf to views other than their own did not come; but there were still many with fears and misgivings. Rowan’s insistence on the opening retreat, and putting all in an ambit of prayer and dialogue, with minimal resolutions, was triumphant, and it was triumphant because it was of the Holy Spirit.
The vital lesson to be drawn from this biography is not that Rowan Williams is a man torn between liberal and conservative impulses, as some would have it, but that he is all the time trying to keep the focus where it should be, not on human plans, but on God.
While reading this book, I have been teased by the title: Rowan’s Rule. What inspired it? I don’t think we are told. But to me it rings a bell: two lines from Charles Williams’s “Taliesin” poems:
All lies in a passion of patience,
my lord’s rule.
“A passion of patience” — not a bad description of Dr Williams’s costly gift to the Church he loves.
Dr John Austin Baker is a former Bishop of Salisbury.