By George!
He's at it again. George Carey has been haunting Rowan Williams, his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, since he left the job in 2002. Now, a speech he made recently to the students of the Virginia Theological School has been -- apparently against the wishes of Lord Carey -- in which he essentially says the Anglican Communion has been falling apart since Rowan Williams took over.
All this on the eve of the of the Episcopal Church (USA), meeting tomorrow in Columbus, Ohio, which will be debating its response to serious criticisms made in the . The outcome of that gathering could determine whether ECUSA's future lies inside or outside the Anglican Communion.
Rowan Williams must now be getting used to this sort of thing, but it must still infuriate him. I suppose we should also look at this from Dr Carey's point of view: being a former Archbishop of Canterbury is a difficult role to play. He receives hundreds of invitations to make speeches and give lectures each year, and is constantly approached for comment on key issues facing his own church denomination. Carey is an intelligent and articulate man who has every right to participate in the continuing theological conversation about the future of Anglicanism. Nowhere in the job description of Archbishop will you find a clause commiting an incumbant to retire to a monastery in silence.
I'm sure Lord Eames of the Windsor Report (ok, more accurately, Lord Eames of Armagh) will be taking note of these little archiepiscopal spats and pondering them in his heart as he decides how not to haunt his own successor next December.
Comments
From Rowan Williams' point of view I can see it being less a case of 'By George!', and more a case of, 'Bye, George!'
Carey is right. Williams has been an absolute disaster. His lack of leadership has lost him the confidence of liberals and evangelicals alike. He completely lost my respect when he folded under sundamentalist pressure and forced the resignation of Jeffrey John as bishop-designate of Reading. That was a moment of shame for Rowan Williams. Now John has been made a Dean. Could someone explain why his lifestyle is acceptable as a dean but not as a bishop? Typically ludicrous reasoning by the church of england!
I have recently read an interview with Frank Griswold, the Bishop who until recently presided over the Epsiscopal Church of the United States, which has over two million members. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he is a sophisticated individual who reads the Bible in context--historical, cultural, religious. But he lives in an America which has very large numbers of evangelically minded individuals, a significant proportion of whom read it more strictly and literally or believe that flexible interpretations of it have gone too far. These are therefore difficult times. Bishop Robinson has said that he has felt considerable pressure within himself. The difference is between those who believe that God's purposes have been clearly revealed once and for all and those who think that they are unfolded gradually. In the 19th century, Hegel more or less identified God with the onward sweep of History.
The speech was not leaked. It was published on Lord Carey's own website.
Whether it says what the Telegraph claimed it said is another issue, but readers can determine that for themselves by reading the full text.
Simon - george carey's sppech was SUBSEQUENTLY published on his own website. He is reported to have been very angry that the speech was made public. I can understand why he would then put the speech online, so that any misinterpretation could be challenged; but he did not intend his criticisms of Rowan Williams to be made public across the world.