But so much else has been happening!
I am not going to say anything about K-2012 - although I have spent a lot of time reading about it this week. I have a view, but I think it isn't simple. Anyway I don't think I could add to everything that has already been said.
But I thought of saying something about the resignation of Rowan Williams, because, as some of you know, he was one of my tutors at university back in 1985. I had one-to-one tutorials with him in my first year, on Early Church History. When I knew him, he looked like this:
I wasn't actually at his wedding, but this was taken in 1981 and I was his student in 1985. So he looked more like this than how he looks now...
He was my very favourite lecturer and tutor. He was so friendly, gentle, and easy-going. I was a brand new Theology student, and he was far kinder to me as a very green, young theologian than most of his colleagues, one of whom underlined all my essays in red and kept telling me "You're not in Sunday School any longer..." (That was one of the few evangelical tutors!)
I used to go to Rowan William's rooms in Clare College and read through the comments on my essay while he made me tea... The tutors didn't have fridges in their rooms so they all kept boxes of milk on the outside windowsills of their leaded windowpanes - and his milk was always sour! ... Not very nice cups of tea!
He also invited me along with a group of students to lunch in his Cambridge cottage - his wife Jane was very pretty, a bit hippyish, wore Laura Ashley and made a veggie lunch. I loved them.
Of course Rowan Williams himself had just been arrested for joining a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) demo at a nearby RAF base, protesting against the storing of American trident missiles there. He famously referred to himself as a "hairy lefty" once.
It has been interesting reading all the reactions to his resignation. He is going early - he could have stayed in office until 2020. I am not surprised he is stepping down now after ten years that must feel very long. He is returning to the academic life, to be Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and to writing and teaching I gather. No doubt to his great relief.
He has clearly not been everyone's favourite Archbishop. I think any other man in his position in the last ten years would have overseen the Anglican Church splitting. I predict that the next one will. He was probably the only person who could hold it together, but he did it by keeping the discussion going, round and round... Everyone was frustrated with him at various points - the evangelicals because he kept bringing the TEC leaders back into the discussion, the liberals because although they thought he sided with them on the issue of ordination of homosexuals, he never led the church definitely in that direction. Woolly, maybe, but I think his desperate aim was to keep things together, to keep people talking. Like the hostage negotiator who can't actually bring the operation to closure. I understand that. Whether he was right to take that approach is another question.
He has also been described as the best archbishop the church has had for a century, and certainly the most intelligent. From what I have seen, everyone who knows him loves him. I think he has been an enigma: approachable and loveable, and yet often impossible to understand. Willing to dress up with druids, to contemplate shariah law in the UK, and yet upholding Scripture and Tradition in a very orthodox way. Apparently he has been loved in the parish churches and schools wherever he has visited. People in Africa who have met him also love him. He was highly praised after his visit to Zimbabwe where he confronted Mugabe himself. I know people who love him and who hate him. And some who feel he has lost his way. For myself, as I said, I liked him very much when I knew him, a lovely, Godly person, and I think he has done what he thought was best for the Church. But I think he has drawn out the time of impossible cohesion too long. I think most people wished he would have taken clear leadership in one direction or the other, but if he had, it would have led to certain schism. He said of his successor: "I hope he has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros." Yes, he'll need it.
We ought to get an evangelical next, as the Church of England usually alternates between a Liberal and an Evangelical. So what will happen then?! We may get the Ugandan Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, although, true to form, he says he doesn't want it. But he is a frontrunner and would be a very popular choice here in England. Could be a very interesting few years ahead...
Thanks for this; helps me know you and him more!
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