“Nothing of interest happens in the Church without the intervention of Jesus”

Rowan Williams, Primate of the Anglican Communion, speaks about what attracts people to the Christian faith today: “ … to see the eyes of someone who looks to the Lord …the initial gratitude and recognition for the simple fact of Jesus”. Interview

by Gianni Valente

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

When he was not yet two years old, Rowan Williams contracted meningitis and was on the point of death. The doctors said that that frail child should lead as tranquil a life as possible in order to survive. Nothing to do with the difficult task destiny dealt him, from when he was elected the hundred and fourth archbishop of Canterbury in 2002 and primate of an Anglican Communion riven as never before with doctrinal dissents and signs of decline. And yet the 54 year-old Welshman, whom 30Days interviewed during the convention on Thomas Merton organized by the Community of Bose from 8 to 10 October, does not have the air of an anguished person about him. Today when many ecclesiastics also become agitated about reaffirming and defending the weight and space of religious values in post-modern society, he clearly keeps in mind that walking with Jesus “is to risk having nothing to say that power can hear, to risk becoming a cipher in someone else’s scheme of things”. And he quotes the first Christians, who knew well that “belonging with the God of Jesus is something other than being a citizen, someone with clear publicly agreed rights and status”.

You have been Archbishop of Canterbury for nearly two years, and they have been turbulent years within the Anglican Communion. Your studies of fourth-century Christianity and the Arian crisis are known. Did they help you evaluate the present condition of Christianity in the world?
WILLIAMS: Sometimes perhaps we have constructed too beautified an image of past epochs, as if everything went well in the life of the Church. If you study history, however, you become aware that at times the Church was deeply divided for entire decades. But this does not mean that in those periods also there were not truths to discover. The study of the fourth century that I was engaged in for many years helped me to see that people can also remain holy in the midst of the vortex of events in troubled times. And that you cannot think of deducing where the truth stands by counting heads. Because in that crisis Saint Athanasius remained almost alone in guarding the true faith against Arianism. In some situations it’s necessary to wait with patience. Athanasius was very close to the monastic life of his times. And this for me is an indication that those who entrust their own lives to the monastic vocation often have greater foresight.

Canterbury Cathedral

You have also exalted the virtue of patience of the first bishops in Britain …
WILLIAMS: The bishop of London Restitutus participated in the Council of Arles in 314. He must have been confident about the future of the Church in those past years, because things seemed to be going well. The persecution was finished, the emperor was friendly. If he had lived a hundred years, he would have seen the end of that initial Christian civilization, when the barbarian pirates swept everything away. When Mellitus arrived, sent by Gregory the Great, it doesn’t seem that there were traces of a Christian presence anymore. He had to remain for a long time in France waiting for better times which would allow a new start. Because of this I said that the bishops of London have always needed to be both tough and patient …
Ours appears to be a time of trial for Christianity. And yet it seems to be a religious and spiritual time. How do you explain this paradox?
WILLIAMS: One of the salient traits of our culture is that we are individualists with a consumer attitude in relation to things. In religion also what is true, what is real, is not sought after, but what offers me wellbeing, what can be used to feel alright. A spiritual feeling that tranquilizes the rest of one’s life. Not an announcement which breaks into life as something new, changing things. Further, in large areas of the West people reject belonging to collective organizations. If the Church has a crisis in its own membership, the political parties are even worse off …

The study of the fourth century that I was engaged in for many years helped me to see that people can also remain holy in the midst of the vortex of events in troubled times. And that you cannot think to deduce where the truth stands by counting heads. Because in that crisis Saint Athanasius remained almost alone in guarding the true faith against Arianism.

Christianity appears as a past that doesn’t have to do with life, or indeed as a weight. The Churches react by trying to reaffirm their own importance in society. And public discussions multiply. On every argument.
WILLIAMS: When I hear questions like this, I immediately feel under accusation. As archbishop everyone expects that you speak publicly about many things. It’s something that I now have to do and it’s not easy. When it happens that I meet young people, one sees clearly that what may attract them to the Church is certainly not the pronouncements of Church leaders. When I was bishop in Wales I occupied myself a great deal with the young people of the diocese, and for many years we had an excellent pastoral ministry addressed to them, which consisted principally in entertaining them and helping them enjoy themselves. Then a new chaplain arrived, he immediately organized a prayer retreat for the youth of the diocese for Holy Week. And on that occasion a young man who came as an agnostic asked to be baptized in the end. From that simple fact I intuited that seeing the eyes of others who look to the Lord is the only thing that makes the Church be taken seriously. If the Church at times has useful things to say about culture and politics, well, it can do so, and that’s fine. But the story doesn’t finish there …
What’s the Church for you?
WILIAMS: I recently wrote about early Christianity, and that which according to me describes the Church in the early centuries is that it was a community that lived by following another King. Thinking about it carefully, in modern times we give a lot of weight to the theoretical convictions of people, to what they have in their heads, but we don’t ever think of the real belonging to Christ, within a community. The Church does not exist because of my decision or that of whatever number of people, but through the action of God. We, our opinions, our perspectives, do not lay down the law about what the Church is at present. The experience of such absence of control is salutary in itself. Whereas at times the Churches seem anxious specifically about this, about the uncontrollability of Jesus Christ, of the fact that He is not a prisoner of our thoughts. There is need now of this recognition, more than at other moments, the recognition that we are in the Church in as much as we are invited, because we were called. Otherwise the Church would just be a quarrelsome human society.

The Archbishop during the liturgy of the washing of the feet in Canterbury Cathedral, 17 April 2003

And the quarrels are certainly not lacking.
WILLIAMS: The fact is that the Church is not the community of people who agree with us and who share the same ideas. They are people we do not choose, who perhaps we do not even like. But they are chosen and changed by Jesus Himself. Nothing of interest happens in the Church without His intervention, Who can redeem our human disasters. Who promised to remain with His own every day, even until the world’s end. And who said to look for and ask help of children, the poor, the forgotten.
A phrase in a talk of yours struck me, in which you said that “orthodoxy flows, surges from gratitude, and not the other way around”. What did you mean to say?
WILLIAMS. The thought of the first Christians, also at the level of doctrinal theology, arose from the fact that they saw themselves to be led by Jesus into a new life. The first words of Christianity were those used to render glory to God. Theological doctrine arose through reflecting on this. If this initial gratitude and recognition for the simple fact of Jesus is missing, our problems are certainly not resolved just by insisting on better discipline …
On the other hand, theologies also circulate in which the Incarnation of Christ would guarantee salvation a priori to the whole human race and the whole world, in an automatic manner. Do you agree with this thesis?
WILLIAMS: The disagreement I feel with certain currents of American theology of creation is that everything is already decided, they do not leave space even for the possibility that man can say no. I don’t know the hearts of others, but I know my own, and I know that I am capable of causing disasters. My professor at University always repeated to me that no theology could last without taking into account the possibility of failure.

The Church does not exist because of my decision or that of whatever number of people, but through the action of God. We, our opinions, our perspectives, do not lay down the law about what the Church is at present. The experience of that absence of control is salutary in itself. Whereas at times the Churches seem anxious specifically about this, about the uncontrollability of Jesus Christ, of the fact that He is not a prisoner of our thoughts. There is need now of this recognition, more than at other moments

It is known that you take a great interest in the lives of the saints. Which are your favorite saints?
WILLIAMS. I particularly love Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross. I have always had a fondness for Carmelite spirituality. I read Teresa at fifteen. I didn’t understand her but I felt that I liked her. Then I also read Edith Stein. With regard to the Eastern Churches I came to like Saint Seraphin of Sarov. Last year in Russia I was able to visit his tomb.
You also quote Saint Augustine frequently.
WILLIAMS: Augustine created the discipline of self-analysis, of self-understanding, showing how we are modeled by our memory. Today, in the post-modern era, we are led to pass from sensation to sensation, we burn experience after experience, and there is no more history. Whereas he makes us see that it is history that makes the person. Also in the relationship with civil reality, Augustine taught us that we must seek the good of the city where we live, of the place where we are, by working for justice, without ever identifying the success of that society with the Kingdom of God. Involvement, and at the same time detachment. As I said before, we are of another King. In short, I say at times that Augustine can also be considered the founder of psychoanalysis and of modern politics …
Your passion for the liturgy is also known.
WILLIAMS: The liturgy reminds us always that we go towards justice. That our lives are set within a new context, where we enter as guests. A liturgy that was only the projection of my ideas would be something ephemeral. What I like about the liturgy that is celebrated in the Community of Bose, for example, is that it is not hurried, the time that is needed is taken, it is full of Biblical references, and it is simple.
In all sincerity, how do you judge the Petrine primacy?
WILLIAMS: It is clear to me that from the very beginning there was a special charisma, a special service exercised by the bishop of Rome for the whole Church. But from the moment that this became something legal and rigidly defined from the theological point of view, as it results in the definitions of Vatican Council I, I find it difficult not to have reservations. For example, with regard to infallibility as an individual spiritual charisma. As Austin Farrer wrote, infallibility should not be seen as «a license to print facts». Since this Pope in the encyclical Ut unum sint invited discussion of this subject, all of us, Anglicans, Catholics and others, have a good occasion to evaluate critically, each one, their own particular history. We Anglicans experience how difficult it can be to live in a Church without a clear center of authority. I don’t want to be a Pope. But I am aware of the problem. I know how important it is in the Church to have a true responsibility of one towards the other. In the Western Church this demand for a central authority is focused on the Papacy …

Rowan Williams in the Vatican Grottos in front of the relief model that reproduces the tomb of Peter, 4 October 2003

But does it only have to do with an historical construction? Does the role of the Church of Rome not arise from the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul?
WILLIAMS: When my wife and I came to Rome, going down to the tomb of Peter, we were truly moved. The apostolic testimony of Peter, reported in all of the Gospel, was completed there, in his martyrdom. And when the Petrine ministry is spoken of, this is what is spoken of, I think it is this. Hans Urs von Balthasar, a theologian I like, wrote about the Petrine ministry at the time of Paul VI, when Paul VI was criticized and attacked on every side. And he wrote: there, now I see well what the Petrine ministry really is.
In the present convulsions, alarms in the West grow in relation to Islam, which is alleged to be carrying out a systematic attack on Western civilization and its Christian roots. How do you judge these interpretations of the actual historic moment?
WILLIAMS: One of the commitments I undertook as archbishop was that of continuing Islamic-Christian dialogue at the high level already initiated by my predecessor. Some weeks ago I went to Egypt, and in the Islamic University Al-Azhar I spoke about the doctrine of the Trinity. In that country, for example, there is close collaboration between our communities and Islamic communities. I do not see the clash of civilizations as an obligatory prospect. Christian civilization owes something to the Islamic world, just as Islamic civilization owes much to Christianity. Jews, Christians and Muslims have a long common history. The more we recognize this history of cohabitation, the better it is for the future. It is not even true that all of the Middle East is Islamic. The ancient Eastern Churches have been there since the time of the preaching of the apostles. Before the war in Iraq I gave public talks and I also spoke privately to members of our government to indicate the danger that would occur for Christians in the Middle East because of a war, who will end by paying for the increasing resentment towards the Western world.
It is often the children who pay for the spiral of violence that envelops the world. You have frequently spoken of this …
WILLIAMS: I maintain that one of the worst new evils of the last two decades, truly satanic, is the attack on children. Those of Beslan, of Iraq, of Egypt. Palestinian and Israeli children. Or the innocent child soldiers in Africa. It is a difficult connection to make, but we also take the decision about abortion so lightly … There is no longer hope or trust in the future of children, and in these events you see this as in a mirror …