Rowan Williams and “Another Gospel”

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

July 5, 2025

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury is never far from the news cycle. He is willing to expound on everything from urging cathedrals to ditch banks funding fossil fuels; climate change; gay marriage; including trans people in a ban on conversion therapy, and much more. In June he appeared at the Vatican where he greeted Pope Leo XIV at the end of a general audience gathering. He received a small gift from the Pope. There were smiles all around, a grand public relations moment for Williams. (There was no sign of former Archbishop Justin Welby in the queue to meet the new Pope.)

Clearly Williams has no interest in fading to black even though he is no longer the occupant of Lambeth Palace. He is not out of mind and he won’t be forgotten.

His words and thinking must still be scrutinized even if the doors of Lambeth Palace are closed to him.  He remains under ecclesiastical surveillance and scrutiny; a bit like former U.S. presidents who still get protection even though they are out of office.

One person who recently took on the former 104^th Archbishop was Catholic writer John Mac Ghlionn who headlined a story; Rowan Williams wants a softer Christianity – but the Gospel isn’t a metaphor.

Writing for the Catholic Herald, Mac Ghlionn said Williams wants to make Christianity safe for modern ears. “That’s the real story behind his long, meandering interviews, such as the recent extensive interview he did with the New York Times, and poetic turns of phrase.”

Mac Ghlionn tore into the former archbishop. “He tells us that suffering doesn’t need an answer. That faith is elusive, mysterious, like a cloud of incense swirling around a flame we’ll never quite touch. But in trying to make Christianity palatable to doubters, Williams strips it of its essence. In place of the Gospel, we’re left with a mood.”

“He’s good at riddles and metaphors. But Christianity is not a metaphor. It’s not a feeling or a sensibility or a literary style. It’s a faith rooted in the Incarnation – God made flesh. Not God as fog. Not God as idea. But a man who walked, bled, died and rose again. Jesus Christ not as a metaphor for love, but as love with a pulse and a name.”

Should Williams be feeling the pain of such a blast? I suppose if you are some sort of mystic, you can pass it off as a fundamentalist retort. But Mac Ghlionn doesn’t let Williams off the hook. He accuses him of a faux humility before the New Atheists who aim directly at the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Williams says the New Atheists attack a God he doesn’t believe in either. But that’s a dodge – a clever one, dressed in academic humility. Because the New Atheists aren’t swinging at vague deities or cartoonish caricatures. They’re aiming directly at the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the one who split seas, raised the dead, and etched moral law into stone.

“[This is] the God who commands, convicts, forgives and reigns. Not a therapist in the sky. A sovereign. A judge. Christianity doesn’t need to soften that truth. It needs to speak it – clearly, unapologetically and without flinching.”

He also accuses Williams’ picture of suffering as “theologically thin.” He leans heavily on Dostoyevsky, letting his character Ivan Karamazov set the emotional tone, but shrinks back from the full power of the Cross. He invites us to sit with the sorrow, to feel the weight of existence and the silence of God. And that’s real – but it’s not the whole story. Christianity doesn’t leave you staring into the abyss. It doesn’t end in Ivan’s tortured syllogisms or spiritual stalemates. It ends with an empty tomb, a pierced side and a rolled-away stone.

The pain for Williams now gets real.

 “Christianity doesn’t run from suffering – it confronts it. Yes, we ask why children are born with illnesses no doctor can cure. The question isn’t new, and the ache doesn’t go away. But the Church never pretended to have neat answers. It never tried to talk the agony away. Instead, it pointed to a God who didn’t stay above it all. Who didn’t send down advice or distant comfort, but came in person – right into the mess. Beaten, mocked and nailed to a cross. Not as a symbol, but as a sacrifice. Not to explain the pain – but to carry it. Every last drop.”

Mac Ghlionn accuses Williams of circling truth. “He performs reverence without clarity. His God is oceanic, not authoritative. He’s generous but not jealous. He’s present but never personal enough to interfere. That may sound spiritual. It may even feel humane. But it isn’t Christian.”

There you have it.

“The God of Christianity is not a gentle whisper lost in the static of doubt. He is the Lion of Judah. The Alpha and the Omega. He speaks in commandments and covenants. He calls sinners to repent. He casts out demons. He separates light from darkness and truth from lies.”

Williams doesn’t like that kind of God, any more than the late Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold couldn’t stand the movie The Passion of the Christ because it was not the gentler Christ of Francis of Assisi.  He could not deal with the blood and gore of the cross it offended his sensibilities. Williams’ too, wants a God of unknowability, a distant cloudlike figure, not the God who wrestles with Jacob.

“Christianity is not about being endlessly “open to something”. It’s about being reshaped, rewritten, remade by Someone. It’s not about keeping your options open. It’s about commitment. Williams offers a gentle Christianity, but not a true Christianity,” said Mac Ghlionn.

A book on Williams by Charles F. Raven, aptly titled Shadow Gospel; Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion Crisis, accuses Williams of perpetrating “another gospel” as St. Paul states in Gal. 1:7 and Raven calls a “shadow Gospel;” a theological project which can speak the language of orthodox faith, yet subverts the supremacy of Scripture and the essential nature of Christian truth itself.”

He accuses Williams of laying the groundwork for gay Christian activists, an issue that finally tore (forever) the fabric of the Anglican Communion. As archbishop he drew a distinction between his personal views on homosexuality, which he has not renounced, and the teaching of the Communion.

Can you imagine the Apostle Paul speaking in his role as an apostle with full apostolic authority, obtaining his words from God himself, announcing that while he upheld Genesis and Jesus on human sexuality, he personally digressed because he knew a number of committed gay couples who exemplified stability and faithfulness and they could not be summarily consigned into outer darkness.

Raven accuses William’s theology of collapsing into a form of pragmatic liberalism with a Catholic tinge, conditioned by circumstances rather than having the resources to change circumstances.

Raven cites Dr. Garry Williams’ conclusion that the theology of Rowan Williams puts souls at risk of perishing.

In chapter after chapter, Raven accuses Williams of “eclipsing Scripture,” of playing “language games”, of standing in “Hegel’s shade”; of “taking sides”, of “the wages of synthesis” and much more.

Mac Ghlionn concluded of Williams; “The early martyrs didn’t die for a perspective that “enlarges”. They died for Christ the King, for the Logos who became flesh, for the Judge who will come again in glory. That’s the faith that endures. That’s the faith the world still needs.”

It is not the faith of Rowan Williams.

END