The Jerry Garcia of Canterbury

Rowan Williams, the bumbling archbishop beloved by the press
by Mark Tooley
03/03/2009

The March issue of the Atlantic features a lengthy and largely glowing review of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, comparing his nuclear freeze activism of the 1980s to his campaign for conciliation over homosexuality among the world's 80 million Anglicans.

"As it was for the arms race in the age of Reagan and Thatcher, so it has been for the standoff over gay bishops in our own day," approvingly surmised Paul Elie in his Atlantic piece. "As 650 bishops converged on Canterbury [last Summer for their once a decade meeting] and two hundred or more [conservative, mostly African bishops stayed away], Williams's goal was a truce of God."

Elie waxes on for over 7,000 words in tribute to Williams's wisdom, erudition, patience, and longsuffering against the contentiousness and bigotries of conservative Episcopalians in America and even more conservative (and numerous) Anglicans in Africa. Only Rowan's reticence about his supposed sympathy for homosexual priests, so as to maintain the cohesion of the global Anglican communion, is cited as a potential character flaw. the rest