Rowan Williams In "The Atlantic"

Paul Elie contributed a long article on Rowan Williams to the March issue of The Atlantic It's lengthy, four long pages, but although the author draws different conclusions than I on the puzzling (to me) words and actions of Rowan Williams, the entire piece is worth a read.

I've selected a few quotes from the article, in which Elie seems to think that the ABC, despite the criticism that's leveled at him, may be getting it just right, a conclusion which I cannot share.

It's difficult to be reminded of the ABC's change of mind regarding the appointment of his good friend Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. To me, it was his first serious misstep, one from which, in my humble opinion, he has never recovered. According to Giles Fraser, the vicar of Saint Mary’s, Putney:

...Jeffrey John is a Welshman and an old friend of Williams’s. He is gay and lives with another priest, Grant Holmes, to whom he was joined in a commitment ceremony, yet he is pledged to celibacy—which, his supporters say, makes him technically no different from a straight and unmarried priest. “At one point, when Rowan was bishop [of Monmouth],” Fraser told me, Williams and John “went to the archbishop of Canterbury about homosexuality, and Rowan apparently said to Carey, ‘Who pays the price for the gay policy? Gay people do.’ And he and Jeffrey lobbied Carey to make a change.”

But Carey made no change, and on top of that, he vetoed the nomination of Williams for the job of bishop of Southwark, near the Tate Modern in newly trendy south London, because of Williams’s obvious commitment to progress on gay issues. When Williams became archbishop of Canterbury, he sought to turn the tables. John was proposed for a post as the bishop of Reading, a half hour by rail from London, and Williams signed off on the appointment.

Then the campaign against the gay bishop began, with traditionalists on four continents forming a patchwork alliance. Fraser says those in America and England cared nothing about the views of the bishops of Africa until they saw the chance for an alliance against the progressives. They took up the ordination of gay bishops as a wedge issue, and made a show of unity; they claimed that a pro-gay agenda was a new form of imperialism against the global South. “They drafted the Church of Nigeria, with its numerical strength, as a way of raising a ruckus over it. They got the white man’s guilt going. The Internet sped it along.” And it worked. “Rowan backpedaled,” Fraser said. “He asked Jeffrey John to resign.”

There's an amusing bit in the article on the meeting of the "neo-traditional" bishops in Wheaton, Illinois:

The founding of a neo-traditional Anglican movement in Wheaton, Illinois, in early December actually confirmed the point. The event made the front page of The New York Times, but the facts belied the claims about its impact. The announcement took place not in Jerusalem, but in a borrowed church in a midwestern suburb, and none of the African bishops was present. Although the breakaway bishops claimed the support of 100,000 people, the 800-seat church was half-empty, and already those bishops faced conflicts among themselves—about the status of women priests, for example. It is the threat of schism, and the dramatic Reformation history that the word calls to mind, that gives the dissident bishops their power. Should they actually secede, they would soon be reduced from headlines to footnotes.

In the final paragraphs of the article, the ABC answers Elie's question about gay bishops in the Church of England:

In the Anglican Communion, I said to him, all the changes that the traditionalists have resisted—married priests, women priests, openly gay priests—have eventually come to pass. Did he think there would be openly gay bishops in the Church of England in 10 years? Was it just a matter of time?

“I highly doubt it,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll have progressed that far in our discernment process.”

It was not a no, just a not yet. Even as he declined to endorse the ordination of gay bishops, with that roundabout phrase about progress he left the possibility open—the possibility that it would come to pass eventually, and that he would think it a good thing, too.

The ABC is probably correct that a gay bishop in the Church of England is not likely within 10 years. I can hear him saying to himself, "Not on my watch!" How long do archbishops of Canterbury usually hold their positions? Will the ABC preside over another Lambeth?