Rob Blackhurst

Interview with Rowan Williams at Lambeth Palace - 23rd October 2009

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Q: Did you feel that you hadn't been kept informed about the Pope's announcement?

I did have very short notice about it. I think that was a pity. It would have been good to discuss it a bit more. I don't think it's a deadly blow by any means. There are people we knew were very likely to become Roman Catholics if the Church moved ahead with ordaining women here as bishops here. Those people would have gone anyway. The question is under what conditions. This scheme offers them some conditions. Whether they are quite what people are looking for I don't know – that's really for them to say. I can't really comment on the scheme itself: it's a highly technical bit of Roman Catholic Canonical provision. What sort of take up there will be – it's very, very hard to guess. As I've tried to say once or twice this week, - there are people in the Church of England who are opposed to the ordination of women – particularly women bishops - but who would not still see it as automatically the right thing to do to become a Roman Catholic. There are quite a few of them. And they won't walk out as if this is a simple safety net for them. So it's not going to be a sword to cut the Gordian knot.

Will it make Anglican Communion easier?

"I don't think it will solve our problems in that sense – precisely because when people aren't Roman Catholics they usually aren't Roman Catholics for reason. The fact that the Pope says "we can make it easier for you" doesn't necessarily follow".

Q: Will whole flocks go?

"Well, I wonder. We didn't see that when we ordained women priests. I think a lot will depend on the provision that is made in the Church of England – and how people cope with that. And the 400, 000 we have been hearing about is a doubly fishy figure. For one thing, it includes members of the so-called "Traditional Anglican Communion" which isn't anyway part of the Anglican Communion. For another thing, there are no reliable statistics.

Q: What do you think the future will hold for the Anglican Communion?

"The Lambeth Conference did a great deal to build relationships and to restore some trust around the place. I think the decisions of the American conventions this summer did rock that quite a bit. Whatever it was that the Americans meant – it was the way it was taken. It rather put things out of kilter again so I think there is more work to do again in the trust building and what has come out of the Lambeth Conference has been some of the strengthening of the network around Development and Education and so forth. A lot of the bread and butter trust building goes on in those things. At the level of the international instruments of communion, I can't say that it's getting any easier but equally it's not meltdown.

Q: Do you think it is an issue that time may solve?

"Well, it may. But above all restore trust and confidence in our processes – and our structures – which has been a bit dented in the last six or seven years?

Is there a whole generation who don't have the mental furniture of Christianity?

"It makes the more difficult. It can also make the church's role more positively challenging because I've talked once or twice before about telling a bible story to children who have never heard it - telling the Parables of Jesus to a class in North London or South Wales who have never heard the story of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. And they respond. They recognize it as a good story opens doors. Now, if we can manage to keep sufficient presence to be able to tell stories in that way – well and good, I think. Because if we lose that, we really lose – apart from the spiritual question – we lose a mental map and imaginative map. We lose our capacity to understand the language we speak, the literature we inherit, the music we sing, and the buildings we live in. We just lose literacy and although that is not as serious matter as losing contact with God – it is pretty serious because it means that something in the soul is dry"

"Christmas is what is says on the tin. It is a commemoration of an event that Christians have held sacred. Because Christians have held it sacred it's been a hugely important part of the Culture – so losing that is losing part of the mental map. Again and again – it can't be said too often. The problem is not people of other faiths protesting about this: it is people who have no general religious literacy and cannot understand. So I'm speaking about the day I had yesterday in Leicester. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews – say we don't want a sanitized, neutralized mid-winter festival. Hey, this is Britain. You have Christmas here because you have a Christian legacy. What's the problem?

Is there a danger that with dwindling populations some churches will cease to be functional?

It is a double problem. There is certainly the coverage of rural areas. There is the coverage of really deprived rural areas – which will never generate enough income by themselves. The Church of England has consistently said – well if we really do claim to be the national church – then a presence in each community, however many people are there, is essential – you keep the door open there. A lot of investment goes into supporting ministry in deprived urban areas. And increasingly we are looking at supporting it in rural areas too. Now there are some very imaginative schemes around, but if you went to a deeply rural diocese – say Carlisle or Norwich – you would see huge investment in building up new lay ministries – new forms of clerical teams –and of course new uses of church buildings – like the Churches used as post offices in Norfolk.

Q: Have we lost Christian values in a wider sense – thoughtfulness and serenity etc?

It's an interesting way of putting it. Those aren't exclusively Christian values by any means. But without Christian bedrock somewhere then there can be a gap. It is something to do with what it is in religious tradition we inherit that helps us educate our emotions – not just reacting blinding and selfishly to one another, examining our feelings, learning one another's ways and to respect everything else that comes from that. That does require a spiritual discipline of some kind: now Christianity isn't the only thing that offers that but Christianity is something that anchors that - above all in the fundamental Christian sense that you don't have to scrabble for achievement you are affirmed by God as soon as you want to be.

Q: Do you see a spiritual desert when you look across the UK?

I see a very untidy, rather uncared for landscape. It's not like there is a desert of secularity covered by Soviet style temples to Atheism. It's not a bombsite either. It's a neglected spiritual territory - people not quite knowing how to educate their emotions and feeling they need to. But what makes it not secular in quite the straightforward sense is a surprising number of people still do turn to the church at crucial moments – a phrase I've often used is: "the church is somewhere they put the emotions that won't go anywhere else". At moments of transition or moments of crisis, it is still extraordinary how people will use the church. Now that doesn't mean that they are signed up to the Nicene Creed – but it's not secular in the sense that everyone is absolutely confident that they can go on their own"

Q: Do you ever feel that the Church is being used when people who would not turn up for a Sunday Service use it as a convenient venue for their rites of passage?

"We've all been there. One thing most Clergymen have experienced is singing solos in crematoriums because nobody knows how to sing hymns. Someone will say can we have Morning has Broken but nobody wants to sing it – so the priest gets up and does a rather embarrassed solo. Should we mind? A lot of me simply says, "what if it's a bit humiliating to be used. So what? Something is being offered that is intrinsically valuable. People make of it what they will. You try and do it the best way you can. But it's there to be given – not to be hoarded. OK, it's embarrassing at times – but you've been given something precious – you want to share it. Even if they don't want to receive it. There it is"

Q: Do you worry about Churches adopting practices that ape secularism?

"I have my misgivings. In a nutshell -if the Church goes into competition with the entertainment industry, it's going to lose because the entertainment industry has rather a lot more in the way of resources to do it well. You may think at times that people are going to church looking for entertainment. Actually, I don't think that's true and when I was in Taizee this summer in France in community there - five thousand youngsters a week going through. What they do when they go to church in that community is to spend long periods in silence - they sing psalms and chants and there's absolutely nothing trendy or entertaining about it. But it holds people. Anchorage, depth, these things matter. Maybe we need to focus on those more than we sometimes do.

In acts of worship – we can sometimes give the impression – we've got to keep the show on the road, keep the noise coming. It's odd. If you look at the legacy of the charismatic movement of the church – it's quite mixed. One the one hand it has generated a sort of worship song bouncing around/waving your arms spirit –which some fastidious people get a bit fussed about. On the other hand some of the deepest silence I've known has been charismatic events. It's not just caricature - happy clappy –awful term- it's much more that people are being taken out of their comfort zones both at the noisy and quiet ends.

"It is becoming a bit more unbuttoned in terms of worship. That can be good and is good in a lot of contexts just so long as we know what we're doing and we're not just trying to keep the noise going. If you can tap into the other side of the charismatic renewal – that is the real sense of repose and silence – a lot of charismatics would be that too"

Q: Is it hard nowadays for an Archbishop of Canterbury to be heard?

"It's not difficult to be heard. It was a surprise coming into this office that the Archbishop has – almost as a right – a position in preaching at the big national events – the Iraq Service or the commemoration of 7/7 and Royal Wedding anniversaries or the anniversary of the passing of the first-world-war generation. And there's an absolute take-it-for-granted element that you are there – and what you say I think is listened to. I think also Robert Runcie was a bit pessimistic about this in his own day – I'm not sure that it is moved quite the way he thought. I think he thought that ten years down the line maybe we couldn't guarantee that an Archbishop will be able to the talk to the Cabinet about particular issues. I don't think that's happened: I think conversations still go on across the river.

And there isn't a problem of access. Not at all. That'd quite striking. If anything, I suspect there's a tiny bit more sensitivity about that simply because religion has not faded away quietly in the last ten years. So people do want to invest a little bit in that relationship. I mention this simply because it landed on my desk this morning: A Cambridge review of Primary Education just out – and I was rather taken aback to see that it opened with a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury. And the covering letter – said that what you had said set the agenda and we'd like to talk about it a bit more. I say that not to crow, though it's good to have good news once in a while - but to record the sometimes quite puzzling fact that there is still an audience"

"I'm not sure that's guaranteeably true for the present generation and the next. Actually, one of the problems we face is not so much dealing at the level of politics and politicians but the level of administrators – who really don't have a background and things have to be explained. So a mixed picture there. If the question is – will the next generation change all that – a lot depends on how credibly we can now have the conversations we're still about to have. There is a recognition that in some areas we do bring certain things to the table. The recent turnaround in DFID about engagement with faith groups is an interesting straw in the wind. They have been very reluctant. We have been arguing quietly for a few years – that if you want to deliver certain goals in the African context you are best to do it through the local churches. They have the coverage of the ground. The question is whether you can build the capacity a bit. Don't go and reinvent the wheel –without secular NGOs marching in with the flag because that won't land. That is the message that the department has heard.

"People think vicars are silly, ineffectual figures who bumble around the edges of situation comedies. Well leadership, on my definition, is actually enabling change to happen. Christian leadership is enabling God directed change to happen. That's it. Sometimes that involves high profile things, and a lot of the time it doesn't. But because we have a dangerous blurring of the leader and the celebrity in our global culture – celebrities are people who constantly there; on the front page. People don't always think that leadership is being exercised unless noise is being made – and I think they're wrong. I think the question is always what change needs to be delivered? And how?

Q: How do you live with being accused of vacillation and weakness?

I just live with that perception because it's the kind of culture we live in – I'm not looking for compromise necessarily. I'm trying to make sure that as the church moves it moves in mutual trust. And love. Yes love"

And your voice shouldn't be prioritized simply because you are archbishop?

"It's trying to animate and coordinate what is happening – not directing or simply setting policy. Obviously in some things where the Archbishop has a strategic role. In the Church of England, there are questions about finance, about ministry or education – the archbishop has a significant role of course. I'm not trying to deny that. But even there the axiom I come back to constantly is that if it takes longer to make a decision, that the decision is probably made when you've made it – it's worth making, it's worth waiting for".

Gene Robinson has said there is always a tension between doing the right and just thing and being as pastorally sensitive to everyone as possible?

Gene is very clear about what the just and right thing is. The church, broadly speaking, is not as clear as he is about that. I see my role as trying to help the church generally discern what the just and right thing is – respecting the activists on both sides – to say, well how we together move forward. I think what he means that you can use the pastoral as an alibi for doing nothing. Of course, that's a risk. I hope that's not what I do. It's not what I intend to do.

Do you think we will have an established church in fifty or a hundred years?

"I don't think we'll have an established church in the same way because the colouring changes. I'd be very sorry if disestablishment came because of a dogmatic secular approach to society. That's why I want to hang on and say: not on those grounds. That image which I know you've heard me use of keeping a "foot in the door" is important here. So I will defend it on those grounds – and hope it survives because it shows its usefulness on those grounds.

Q: Is it important for you to try and reach secular people?

"I don't think I'm Polly Toynbee's pin-up. It is important to try and keep the conversations going on the margin. Very often when I speak in public about some issue –it's difficult to calibrate how much theology I put in – because people have to know where I'm coming from – and how much I depend on the last monograph I've read, or the last article in the Economist or the New Statesman I've read. That's the sort of balance. To try and keep the church as a credible partner in the conversation – that to me is crucial. It's not just about me – it's all about the ways in which the church tries to equip itself to be credible. I think our public affairs unit over at Church House has done some remarkable work on some subjects – such as penal policy and the whole environmental thing that the church has picked up. We do have some real professionalism there"

Q: Did you take any lessons from the Sharia law furore?

"I don't want to censor the things I can talk about because I don't particularly want to be bullied into silence about this. I think - hindsight is easy isn't it? But probably the calculation I didn't make was to do with the fact that again something I've often said you are always talking to everyone in this job and a lecture that is designed for professional lawyers and legal theorists which on the whole didn't shake them rigid as far as I can see is translated into other terms. So, yes, reality check.

Do you remember anything of having childhood meningitis?

"Bits. Not very pleasantly. Terrible medical procedures. Pain, discomfort, losing hearing in one ear was the only effect really. But it meant several years of being very fragile. I was alone quite a bit which may have something to do with this and that"

Q: Did you have a moment of spiritual awakening?

"Not quite. I could point to a couple of events in my teens when something seemed to open up dramatically and decisively for various reasons. But I wouldn't say there was a conversion moment. And I just feel that I was immensely fortunate in being nurtured in a kind of Christian environment. It always felt like an opening up and not a closing in. Ministers and Priests who were wonderful to be around"

"I was faintly counter-cultural at the same time. I loved and love some of the popular music of the time. One of the joys of my son is now keen on the popular music of the sixties now. I can say, rather boringly, you should have heard them at the time. I was aware of it all. Aware I think, positively, of the international perspective. One of the big moments I remember in my teens is going with three other sixth-formers from Swansea to a Conference about World issues at the United Nations Association – we were all about seventeen and we went to an Adult Education College in Wales and we had about 10 days of really intensive lectures about discussion about poverty and development and violence and that really crystallized some of those issues for me.

Q: You once joked "I am a really hairy lefty"?

"Never tell jokes to journalists. That's absolutely right. My political instincts have always been on the Left – though it was very much to do with the tradition attached to William Morris and George Orwell. In student politics – not that I was very active – I used to get very impatient with the Trotskyite side of all that because it didn't seem to have anything to do with making differences. There was a great deal of noise, a great deal of "leadership" going on – and not very much else.

Q: There is a rumour that you played God in a student production.

"I'm afraid to tell you that yes, I did. It comes with having a deep voice.

"A lot of writing has to be done reactively – people saying come give us a talk on so and so. If it looks as though that is something that will be significant engagement with a particular group – the Howard League for Penal Reform or whatever – you say - ok. Then there's the writing I do more obviously for the sake of the subject. Dostoevsky – it's not a book without theology. Over the last few years three or four books that have been more obviously theological – a little book called Tokens of Trust that were the lectures I gave at Canterbury as well as the theological lectures. The Clark lectures from Cambridge about grace and necessity. So, there's been quite a bit of theology in there – but it of course it doesn't break the surface very much in terms of other people's perception because the theological public is not an enormous one. I think the distorting effect is "Oh, here is the Archbishop banging on climate change or economic justice again. Why doesn't he talk about God? Apart from the fact that God has quite a bit to do with those subjects – probably ninety per cent of my talking is done in Parish Churches on Sundays in a context like that where of course I talk about God and quite a lot of writing and drafting - I don't write full scripts for these things – which to me is the heart of it"

Q: What will you do after being Archbishop?

"Catch up on sleep. I'd like to write at my own pace. I really don't know. The family fantasy is to go and breed goats in West Wales"

Q: What's it like living in Lambeth?

"It's very strange living in Lambeth Palace. The House in Canterbury feels a lot more like a home because this is of course very much a workplace. What saves it for me is that it is a prayer place as well. And if there were ever any attempt to drastically simplify the archbishop's establishment I think the one thing that really ought to stay is the Chapel and the sense that we really have to be a praying community first and foremost. It's very touching when people send in random requests for prayer. People say, "My Auntie has gone in for an operation. Can you pray for her?" It's an important bit of the job – I try to deal with those personally. Sometimes you never know what happens. A year on you might get a card that says: "you'll be glad to know that the baby is out of hospital or something like that"

Q: Is Britain an increasingly unhappy place?

"It doesn't strike me as a society that is very much at home with itself. There is something itchy and what the Americans would call antsy. There is a tension about it. It's a tension driven by people's expectations not being fulfilled and some people not knowing what their expectations are and ought to be – not knowing certainly how we relate to the young generation. It's not as if we're all going round suicidally gloomy. That's not the point. There's not peace and serenity – there's not that kind of settled feeling. One of the things I like about going back to Wales from time to time is slotting in something a little bit more at ease with itself. What was very striking when I went back after more than twenty years I suppose was that I was putting my slippers on a bit. Not in a sense of not having much work to do -but a sense that the rhythm, the idiom; the idiom of speech even; the shared jokes – there is something left of the Valley environment.

It's very helpful from time to time to remember that the Established Church is slightly absurd. Everybody should be aware that at some point that what they do is slightly absurd. The Financial Times perhaps. Maybe that helps a bit to keep it into perspective."

It was when I was quite a young priest taking part in a wedding in a Cathedral – very, very solemn, and I dressed up very splendidly. We were processing in and I turned a corner and there was a group of tourists gawping. And I thought, "Goodness me, we must look peculiar". It doesn't mean that you don't do it. But it does perhaps mean that perhaps you are protected from being too pleased with yourself. You must remember, "Well, this is a bit odd".