Archbishop interviewed

The Guardian has an interview with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. In it, we hear some very good things. First, Williams criticises the teaching of Creationism and Intelligent Design as alternatives to evolution.

Guardian: Are you comfortable with teaching creationism?
Williams: Ahh, not very. Not very. I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories…for most of the history of Christianity…there’s been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time…So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there’s – there’s just been a jar of categories, it’s not what it’s about.
Guardian: So it shouldn’t be taught?
Williams: I don’t think it should, actually. No, no. And that’s different from saying – different from discussing, teaching about what creation means.

Thereafter, there are various other topics – Peter Akinola, division in the church, Islam. It’s all good stuff, and good to hear him speaking out on some of these issues.

Williams criticises Peter Akinola (a bit too gently, perhaps), Archbishop of Nigeria, for his recent inflammatory remarks.

Guardian: And what about Akinola and his troubling statements about Muslims (not being allowed to bear arms) which was followed by 80 people being macheted to death?
Williams: ...I think he meant to issue a warning, which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation. Others in the Nigerian church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured.

He also has this to say on the divisions facing the Anglican Communion over various issues.

Guardian: can you hold all this together realistically? And is there a point where it is better to admit you can’t?
Williams: I can only say that I think I’ve got to try. We have now such a level of mutual mistrust between different bits of the communion, certainly accentuated by – well, by the sort of heightened rhetoric that’s encouraged generally these days, and certainly happens a lot on the net, such a culture of mistrust that, for us to break apart in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual misunderstanding, is really not going to be in anybody’s good in the long run. So I’d rather try and see what can be done to recreate or reinforce trust…the Anglican communion as a multicultural, an international body, is, I dare to say, more important, more significant than an Anglican communion fracturing along the cultural lines which is unable to relate to, work with, even in different sorts of contexts…
I’m very struck by what Bonhoeffer writes in the middle-30s about the division of the church over the Aryan laws in Nazi Germany, where he says both that it’s extremely important not to try and work out in advance every circumstance in which it would be necessary for the church to break. Equally, it’s important to have the freedom and the clarity to know when the moment comes, and there just isn’t a formula for that, I think.

Guardian: I’ll ask one big question about Islam. What is the problem with Islam?
Williams: There are lots of Islams for one thing, just as there are lots of Christianities. One of the stories that comforts us at the moment is that there is one big thing out there called Islam, which is getting at us. If you brought together a Sudanese Sufi, a Shi’ite from Iran, an Indonesian, a Tunisian, a Bosnian, a Jordanian, never mind immigrants from all these communities elsewhere, you would not have one agenda. Part of our problem with Islam is that we, because of a history cultural ignorance and alienation, we tend just to see the bit that comes at us…So in terms of Christian/Muslim engagement which, as I said earlier, is a big part of the agenda now, I would see the priorities as recognising and engaging with the range of Islams that are there, trying to help give voice to and listen and converse with those bits that not simply locked into opposition.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 11:48am on 21 March 2006
Category: Faith, Politics, Struggling