Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out, a slim, thoughtful introduction to Christianity. But that’s not quite why I went to Cardiff to visit him. I went because, although I admire the superstar culture warriors of the right, there’s something Williams is witness to which they lack.
Like many readers, I think Rowan Williams pretty loopy on most subjects – Brexit, Islam, immigration, the dreaded trans debate – but Rod Liddle always says that Rowan is a holy man, and Rod is right.
We sit opposite each other drinking tea in his book-lined living room. The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury is looking amiable but confused. ‘The Spectator has been fairly ripe on some of my views in the past,’ he says. Williams’s new book is a gentle invitation to believe in the love of God, but it’s also, if I’m reading it right, a reprimand to those of us who are full of anxious fear about cultural change.
In the book, he describes a famous 16th-century woodcut which shows a human figure pushing its head through the firmament of heaven to find that they’re suddenly looking up into a sky that they’ve never seen before, packed with strange stars. ‘I want to say that it ought to be an image of authentic faith, of a real understanding of what the tradition of religious practice does for you, pushing you through the smooth-painted surface, out towards a sky you’ve never seen.’
Does he think Spectator readers should be pushing our heads through the firmament?
Williams blinks politely. He has the tail end of a sinus infection and a headache, and the look of a man who’d rather not be arguing with a journalist. ‘Fear becomes the driver of war at worst, of deep prejudice at least, and that is, I think, part of what I’m worried about there,’ he says. ‘We are so prone to letting our fears set the pace of things for us.’
But what if we’re right to be frightened? Radical Islam, for instance, is a real danger. ‘It is disentangling what I call reasoned anxieties – OK, here’s a problem, what do we do about it? – from the determination to run to the corner of the room and say, what I’m certain of is my fear, I don’t want any other facts.’
But there are people in this county who have been painted as racists just for having these ‘reasoned anxieties’ – I’m thinking of poor Lucy Connolly banged up, unable to see her sick husband and child, just because of a tweet. Williams looks uncomfortable. ‘Having been a bishop in south-east Wales for nearly 11 years back in the day, with the valley communities at a time of colossal change, I think I know what the fears are like,’ he says. ‘People feel a sense of impotence, and alienation. They think, “What I do doesn’t make any difference so why bother doing anything?”’
But they’re right! And this is why we need people like Jordan Peterson, isn’t it? We need clear, charismatic leaders.
Williams’s face clouds over. ‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man, isn’t he? That worries me a bit. I don’t particularly want my world view to be shaped too much by that. I don’t know if he believes in God.’ I think he’d call himself a ‘cultural Christian’.What does he make of cultural Christianity? ‘Well, I’m not panicked by it, though I sometimes feel a bit patronised. At the end of the day, the cultural Christian thing misses out on the excitement of Christianity – the life. You are not called on to admire Christianity, you are called on to love God, and there is all the difference in the world between those things.’
‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man, isn’t he? I don’t know if he believes in God’
I agree, but how do you bring the excitement of Christianity into the places that need it most? When I ask Williams this, what follows is a ten-minute diversion into deadly Church of England bureaucratese. Restoring agency. Empowering. A listening exercise. Something about the need for the Welsh government to create and maintain ‘consultative structures’ and ‘conversational patterns of interaction between elected representatives and communities’.
I look at Williams’s decent face, luminous with the empathy so many ‘cultural Christians’ lack. He looks like a man in touch with truth, so why does truth give him ideas like this? A commitment to maintaining consultative structures is just no answer to 21st-century nihilism.
It’s not that Williams doesn’t believe in evil (‘There are random malign energies that are around in the universe that I do believe are diabolical and I have had some experience of what we call the ministry of deliverance in the Church’). It’s that he doesn’t seem to see it around him. On trans culture, for instance, he doesn’t see the twisting of reality, the abusive manipulation of children, just an unnecessary fuss.
‘Do you know Rachel Mann by any chance? She’s an archdeacon in the diocese of Manchester, a first-rate poet, a really genuinely good poet and novelist and spiritual writer. She is trans, she’s written a bit about it: “OK, get used to it, now let’s talk about something else.” I think of somebody like her and I don’t recognise the sort of demonising that goes on in some quarters.’
Perhaps Williams doesn’t see darkness because he’s never lacked faith. He had no brothers and sisters – ‘It concentrates the mind’ – and he spent much of his childhood in bed reading the Bible. ‘I was quite ill as a child and I don’t know if that drove me inwards in some ways. I was actually fascinated by the Bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress… I liked reading about history too, but it seems to me that two of the things that clicked – one I guess is before I was ten or thereabouts – was quite simply the sense that the Bible stories were about a very deep kind of welcome, a sort of homecoming. I can recall when I was about 13 or 14, coming back from church one Sunday morning with a sense of “That’s where it all sits, that’s where it all belongs”… I think it slightly bothered my parents that I took it more seriously than they thought I should.’
Has he never had a moment where he has suddenly thought: well, the world is so catastrophic that there can’t possibly be a God? ‘Well, disappointingly, no.’ Williams looks almost embarrassed. ‘I’ve never had a moment in life where I thought it was all rubbish. There have been moments where I have thought I can’t put it all together, I can’t make sense of this, but I don’t want to dissolve the problem by saying “OK, the simple answer is that God doesn’t exist”.’
How does he think other people can come by the faith that’s natural to him? What about children who spend their childhoods looking at violent porn rather than reading the Bible? ‘That is not something that you can resolve overnight,’ he says. ‘You can’t say “OK, I’m going to get up tomorrow morning and I’ll believe” any more than anyone can say to me you can get up tomorrow morning and say “I’m going to stop believing”. It’s an induction, it’s a habituation, which means you have to hang around with people who do it and who think it and who pray it. It’s such a lot to do with the people you trust and the people who shape your imagination. When people say “How do I get faith?”, I say go and hang around with people who’ve got it and see how it feels and see if there’s a breakthrough.’
Who did he hang around? Williams’s face lights up: ‘Eddie Hughes was the vicar of his parish in Swansea I think for 26 years, and I have often talked about him as somebody who just set me the standard because he was a teacher, he was an example, a man of honesty and warmth, utter dependability. He’d pass on books, he’d take us all seriously, and he preached with his eyes on Christ. It seems strange at my advanced age that pretty well every idea I’ve had goes back to having a good vicar when I was a teenager, but a lot of it does, feeling – as with a lot of other people I’ve been privileged to know – there’s a life well-lived, there’s a life pointing in the direction that looks life-giving, and whether or not I can make a theory of it, I’ll have a try – but whether or not I can, there’s a life I would quite like to be associated with.’
I leave Williams’s quiet street in Cardiff with my questions for the most part unresolved, but lighthearted about that. I can’t begin to make a theory of it, but Rowan William’s is a life well-lived, one that points in the direction that looks life-giving. For all the nonsense about ‘consultative structures’, it’s one I’d quite like to be associated with.
Rowan Williams’s Discovering Christianity: A Guide for the Curious is out now.
Comments