Rowan Williams was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012.
77 Facts About Rowan Williams
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Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
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Rowan Williams's primacy was marked by speculation that the Anglican Communion was on the verge of fragmentation over disagreements on contemporary issues such as homosexuality and the ordination of women.
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Rowan Williams worked to keep all sides talking to one another.
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Rowan Williams delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 2013.
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Rowan Williams retired from the House on 31 August 2020 and from Magdalene College that Autumn, returning to Abergavenny, in his former diocese.
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Rowan Williams was born on 14 June 1950 in Swansea, Wales, into a Welsh-speaking family.
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Rowan Williams was educated at the state sector Dynevor School, Swansea, before reading theology at Christ's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated with starred first-class honours.
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Rowan Williams lectured and trained for ordination at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, for two years.
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On 4 July 1981, Rowan Williams married Jane Paul, a writer and lecturer in theology.
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Rowan Williams did not have a formal curacy until 1980, when he served at St George's, Chesterton, Cambridge, until 1983, after having been appointed a university lecturer in divinity at Cambridge.
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On 5 December 1991, Rowan Williams was elected Bishop of Monmouth in the Church in Wales: he was consecrated a bishop on 1 May 1992 at St Asaph Cathedral and enthroned at Newport Cathedral on 14 May He continued to serve as Bishop of Monmouth after he was elected to be the Archbishop of Wales in December 1999, in which capacity he was enthroned again at Newport Cathedral on 26 February 2000.
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Rowan Williams was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on 27 February 2003 as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Rowan Williams speaks or reads eleven languages: English, Welsh, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, and both Ancient and Modern Greek.
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Rowan Williams learnt Russian in order to be able to read the works of Dostoevsky in the original.
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Rowan Williams has since described his spoken German as a "disaster area" and said that he is "a very clumsy reader and writer of Russian".
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Rowan Williams was criticised in the press for allegedly supporting a "pagan organisation", the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards, which promotes Welsh language and literature and uses druidic ceremonial but is actually not religious in nature.
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Rowan Williams officiated at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on 29 April 2011.
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On 16 November 2011, Rowan Williams attended a special service at Westminster Abbey celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Prince Charles, Patron of the King James Bible Trust.
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On 9 February 2010, in an address to the General Synod of the Church of England, Rowan Williams warned that damaging infighting over the ordination of women as bishops and gay priests could lead to a permanent split in the Anglican Communion.
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Rowan Williams stressed that he did not "want nor relish" the prospect of division and called on the Church of England and Anglicans worldwide to step back from a "betrayal" of God's mission and to put the work of Christ before schism.
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Rowan Williams used his keynote address to issue a profound apology for the way that he had spoken about "exemplary and sacrificial" gay Anglican priests in the past.
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On 17 January 2013, Rowan Williams was admitted as the 35th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and served until September 2020.
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Rowan Williams was made an honorary Professor of Contemporary Christian Thought by the University of Cambridge in 2017.
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In 2015, it was reported that Rowan Williams had written a play called Shakeshafte, about a meeting between William Shakespeare and Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest and martyr.
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Rowan Williams is patron of the Canterbury Open Centre run by Catching Lives, a local charity supporting the destitute.
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Rowan Williams has been patron of the Peace Mala Youth Project For World Peace since 2002, one of his last engagements as Archbishop of Wales being to lead the charity's launch ceremony.
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Rowan Williams was patron of the Birmingham-based charity The Feast, from 2010 until his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Rowan Williams has been a patron of the Cogwheel Trust, a local Cambridgeshire charity providing affordable counselling, since 2015 and is active in his support.
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Together with Grey Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie, and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, Rowan Williams is a patron of the Wilfred Owen Association, formed in 1989 to commemorate the life and work of the World War I poet Wilfred Owen.
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Rowan Williams is the visitor of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, a dispersed Anglican religious community of male priests and lay brothers.
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Rowan Williams is a patron of the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius which promotes ecumenical relationships between the Anglican and Orthodox churches.
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John Shelby Spong once accused Rowan Williams of being a "neo-medievalist", preaching orthodoxy to the people in the pew but knowing in private that it is not true.
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Rowan Williams was in New York at the time of September 2001 attacks, only yards from Ground Zero delivering a lecture; he subsequently wrote a short book, Writing in the Dust, offering reflections on the event.
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Rowan Williams stated that the followers of the will of God should not be led into ways of violence.
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Rowan Williams contributed to the debate prior to the 2005 general election criticising assertions that immigration was a cause of crime.
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Rowan Williams has argued that the partial adoption of Islamic sharia law in the United Kingdom is "unavoidable" as a method of arbitration in such affairs as marriage, and should not be resisted.
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On 15 November 2008 Rowan Williams visited the Balaji Temple in Tividale, West Midlands, on a goodwill mission to represent the friendship between Christianity and Hinduism.
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On 6 May 2010 Rowan Williams met Indian Islamic leader, Mohammed Burhanuddin, at Huseini Mosque in Northolt, London, to discuss the need for interfaith co-operation; and planted a "tree of faith" in the mosque's grounds to signify the many commonalities between the two religions.
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In 2002, Rowan Williams delivered the Richard Dimbleby lecture and chose to talk about the problematic nature of the nation-state but of its successors.
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Rowan Williams cited the "market state" as offering an inadequate vision of the way a state should operate, partly because it was liable to short-term and narrowed concerns and partly because a public arena which had become value-free was liable to disappear amidst the multitude of competing private interests.
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Rowan Williams has supported the Robin Hood tax campaign since March 2010, re-affirming his support in a November 2011 article he published in the Financial Times.
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Rowan Williams is a vocal opponent of tax avoidance and a proponent of corporate social responsibility, arguing that "economic growth and prosperity are about serving the human good, not about serving private ends".
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Rowan Williams was to repeat his opposition to American action in October 2002 when he signed a petition against the Iraq War as being against United Nations ethics and Christian teaching, and "lowering the threshold of war unacceptably".
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On 5 October 2007, Rowan Williams visited Iraqi refugees in Syria.
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Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury at a particularly difficult time in the relations of the churches of the Anglican Communion.
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In 2003, in an attempt to encourage dialogue, Rowan Williams appointed Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, as chairman of the Lambeth Commission on Communion, to examine the challenges to the unity of the Anglican Communion, stemming from the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, and the blessing of same-sex unions in the Diocese of New Westminster.
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Rowan Williams expressed his reservations about this to the General Synod of the Church of England.
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Rowan Williams later established a working party to examine what a "covenant" between the provinces of the Anglican Communion would mean in line with the Windsor Report.
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Rowan Williams objected to a proposed French law banning the wearing of the hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf for women, in French schools.
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Rowan Williams said that the hijab and any other religious symbols should not be outlawed.
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Rowan Williams spoke up against the scapegoating of Muslims in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings on underground trains and a bus, which killed 52 and wounded about 700.
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Rowan Williams strongly condemned the terrorist attacks and stated that they could not be justified.
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Rowan Williams responded to a controversy regarding creationism being taught in privately sponsored academies saying that it should not be presented in schools as an alternative to evolution.
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Rowan Williams has maintained traditional support amongst Anglicans and their leaders for the teaching of evolution as fully compatible with Christianity.
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In November 2007, Rowan Williams gave an interview for Emel magazine, a British Muslim magazine.
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Rowan Williams condemned the United States and certain Christian groups for their role in the Middle East, while his criticism of some trends within Islam went largely unreported.
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Rowan Williams claimed "the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday".
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Rowan Williams compared Muslims in Britain to the Good Samaritans, praised Muslim salat ritual of five prayers a day, but said in Muslim nations, the "present political solutions aren't always very impressive".
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Rowan Williams was the subject of a media and press furore in February 2008 following a lecture he gave to the Temple Foundation at the Royal Courts of Justice on the subject of "Islam and English Law".
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Rowan Williams raised the question of conflicting loyalties which communities might have, cultural, religious and civic.
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Rowan Williams spoke of "supplementary jurisdictions" to that of the civil law.
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Rowan Williams made comparisons with Orthodox Jewish practice and with the recognition of the exercise of conscience of Christians.
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Rowan Williams's words were critically interpreted as proposing a parallel jurisdiction to the civil law for Muslims and were the subject of demands from elements of the press and media for his resignation.
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Rowan Williams attracted criticism from elements of the Anglican Communion.
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Rowan Williams's position received more support from the legal community, following a speech given on 4 July 2008 by Nicholas Phillips, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
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Rowan Williams supported the idea that sharia could be reasonably employed as a basis for "mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution".
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On 8 June 2011, Rowan Williams said that the British government was committing Britain to "radical, long-term policies for which no-one voted".
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Rowan Williams said there was "indignation" due to a lack of "proper public argument".
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Rowan Williams expressed concern about the "quiet resurgence of the seductive language of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor" and the steady pressure to increase "what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system".
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In March 2022, following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rowan Williams urged senior leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and the re-opening of diplomatic engagement.
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On 12 April 2022 Rowan Williams called for an Easter ceasefire in Ukraine.
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Rowan Williams gave his remarks in Chernivtsi, at the "Faith in Ukraine" event, organised by the Elijah Interfaith Institute and the Peace Department.
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Rowan Williams did his doctoral work on the mid-20th-century Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky.
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Rowan Williams is currently patron of the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, an ecumenical forum for Orthodox and Western Christians.
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Rowan Williams has expressed his continuing sympathies with Orthodoxy in lectures and writings since that time.
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Rowan Williams has written on the Spanish Catholic mystic Teresa of Avila.