Last Monday saw the final of a series ofconversations conducted at Holland House, our retreat centre in Cropthorne, betweenBishop Robert Paterson, former Bishop of Sodor and Man now living in Evesham,and some of his episcopal colleagues. The last 'in conversation' was with Archbishop Rowan Williams.
Vicar of Evesham, Andrew Spurr, tells us about the evening:
DrRowan Williams is the previous Archbishop of Canterbury and is now Master ofMagdalene College, Cambridge. He andBishop Robert have known one another for many years. Rowan Williams is widely acknowledged to beone of the churchs finest minds and has been published widely in works rangingfrom scholarly examinations of figures of history, the Christian scriptures,modern religious thought, politics, poetry and other literature.
Inan informal exchange, Dr Williams was asked about his life, and his formativeexperiences. These ranged fromexperience of the time when, as children, he and Bishop Robert had attended thesame Presbyterian church and Sunday school. Its minister had ignited their passion for truth: in Williams words, a minister who preached with enormousfervour and intelligence I thought, this is exciting yes, theres realityhere. Moving to Swansea as a teenager, he found a new spiritual home inAnglicanism and was impressed with the Vicars integrity and courtesy,prayerfulness and willingness to be self-critical. One particular occasion when he was a stroppyyouth, he remembers the priest apologising to him, a lesson in integrity to theyoung man. Bishop Robert was curate ofthe adjoining parish and remembers remarks about Rowan being Canterburymaterial but theyd never have aWelshman! During his teenage yearshe began to act and to write poetry and is today known as a significant poetin both English and Welsh languages.
Aftergraduation and a doctorate in a Russian theologian, he taught at the College ofthe Resurrection, Mirfield, where he participated in the monastic communitylife as a way of testing a vocation to monastic life; then he returned to Cambridgeand ordination before being appointed Lady Margaret Professor in Oxford.In studying theology, he reflected that it isimpossible to do so at a distance. Youhave to have some personal engagement with God, and what you study has to matterto you. Theology is a place where Gods challenges are heard.
Thatwas followed by twelve years back in Wales as Bishop of Monmouth including twoas Archbishop; during this period Bishop Robert and he once more began to worktogether. This collaboration continuedin the Theological Education for the Anglican Communion Working Group andwhen Bishop Robert joined the English House of Bishops. Dr Williams noted that a bishop is not appointedto decide for the Church but to guarantee all that the Churchdecides. Perhapsfor that reason some campaigners felt let down.
When he wasappointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams had observed, It is a curiousexperience to have your future discussed, your personality, childhood influencesand facial hair solemnly examined in the media, and opinions you didnt knowyou held expounded on your behalf. Both bishops agreed that Beinga bishop is potentially bad for the soul.
In the course of the evening, Dr Williams gave voice to the moral incisivenesswhich so characterise his public pronouncements. Of his infamous lecture on Sharia Law hesaid that we hadnt risen to the challenge of how the role and rule of lawin a plural society of overlapping identities might work. Speaking of current concerns about migration,he challenged the use of the judgemental term economic migrant used bypeople who have forgotten the two enormous movements of people in Europe in thetwentieth century alone. He also spokeof the dangers of sucking talent from other nations.
With respect to what he believed to be one of the biggest imperativesof our own day, climate change, he felt that the root cause of our indifferenceto the crisis was that we had lost the sense that creation does not belong tous. We are set in a web of life in whichwe are symbiotic and interdependent. Weneed to recover a sense of our place in the balance of life and liberateourselves from simply quarrying the planets resources for our own short-termends. For the Christian, he noted thatChrist, the incarnate, creative Word of God, is at the heart of ourunderstanding of creation.
It was when Dr Williams came to reflect on the characteristics of the Churchthat he was at his most essential. Church boiled down to being the place where the Word of God is heard andbread is broken: action before doctrine. Its elements are the celebration of the experience of God and the giftof life, of being able to comprehend something of what we would never be ableto understand fully in this life; a reflective critique of what we believe andwhat difference it makes to us and others. He was worried that the anxieties of the Church in our own day (principallyabout sustainability) were in danger of eclipsing the very thing the Churchexists to be and do. By nature he hadntbeen keen on the dominance of strategic thinking; the Church, in the end is inthe hands of God.We have to be carefulthat evangelism - the passion to share something which we believe to be ofbenefit to others - could, through our anxiety about the future, becomedistorted into simply trying to recruit others for the sake of our own survival.
Inall it was a gentle, informal and very candid evening, followed by some interestingquestions from the floor, including one about the Establishment, to which DrWilliams cited an example of how three bishops in the House of Lords hadchanged the results of a crucial debate. The evening concluding with Night Prayer.
Andrew Spurr, Vicar of Evesham
