Jordan Hylden: Rowan's Rule

First Things
Thursday, January 8, 2009

Rowan Williams is without doubt one of the most significant and learned theologians in the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, during his tenure at Canterbury, it has at times seemed that he has managed to get nearly everyone in that world angry at him, liberals and conservatives alike. As Rupert Shortt shows in his excellent new biography, Rowan’s Rule, this is to some extent the archbishop’s fault—Williams, although superlatively brilliant and profound as a theologian, and justly beloved as a pastor and spiritual guide, does not to the same extent possess the spiritual gifts of administration and political savvy. But many of the criticisms sent Williams’s way, Shortt argues, are unjust, often due to misunderstanding, projection, and a lack of perspective. In Rowan’s Rule, Shortt sets out to provide Rowan’s critics with a true measure of the man, attempting to relate both the substance of his thought and the story of his life. Shortt is that rarest of breeds—a religion journalist who knows what he is talking about—and he succeeds brilliantly in his project, showing both that Williams is well worth listening to and that many of his critics may not have listened to him closely enough.

From the right, Williams has come under heavy fire for his supposed theological liberalism and typically Anglican wishy-washiness. To a certain extent, such criticisms are unavoidable. Williams is in fact in favor of women’s ordination, his revisionist position on same-sex relations is on record, and his understanding of Scripture has drawn objections from many, not only evangelicals. If that were the end of the story, Williams would seem to be no more than a conventional liberal, along the lines of the average Episcopal bishop. But as Shortt shows, nothing could be further from the truth. the rest