Dr. Rowan Williams. Photo: Church of Wales
“It is sometimes the crises and the pains that open up the holy in a way that success doesn’t. When you face failures and difficult questions you have to ask, "If I’m not the answer then who or what is?”

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Wales is to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. His many supporters describe him as ‘intellectual, radical and holy’. Before he was announced, Rowan Williams took part in an open question and answer session with Festival goers at Greenbelt 2000. The edited interview material below appears with the Festival’s permission.

Rowan Williams on…
The Church and State at present
The State link as it exists at the moment is not good for the Church. I think it encourages a level of self-deception in the Church about how important it is, which in the long run may raise some sort of issue about credibility and integrity. It made sense once, when you could take for granted that the State was a religious entity. If you don’t believe that then it is a bit odd to still have this relic. I also think that the notion of the Monarch as supreme Governor has outlived it’s usefulness.

Rowan Williams on…
Church and State in the future
I think that what will happen is disestablishment by a thousand cuts – partly because Establishment isn’t one thing but a whole bundle of legal conventions which you can’t abolish by a single act of Parliament. They tried it with Wales in 1920, and it was a mess, actually. But I think that at least within the next 15 years the Church of England will look a lot more like the Church of Scotland.

Rowan Williams on…
The Simpsons
Here is a show that knows what it’s doing, using cultural icons and subverting them and turning them on their heads. It’s unsentimental most of the time and doesn’t go for easy answers. At the same time it is profoundly affirmative of failure, forgiveness, not taking yourself seriously, challenging mythologies and clichés, knowing where you are culturally yet not being imprisoned by it. It’s very good on the subject of religion: Reverend Lovejoy is one of my favourite characters and I think Ned Flanders must have done more for atheism than any fictional character in the contemporary world! But it’s that awareness of the idiocy and the failure of religious cliché that I like about it. I also like it because it’s funny, never mind the theology!

Rowan Williams on…
Personal spiritual development
The most important spiritual inspirations for me have come from St. John of the Cross, because of that sense of what you don’t see in the process of your growth. It’s a very dark passage. Occasionally, he says, you get a glimpse like a spark flaring up from a deeply buried fire. Just for a second you think ‘this actually might be real’, and then it’s back to normal and a lot of brick walls, a sense of treading water and the only thing that gives you any sense that it’s real is that you are still doing it somehow. Why do I pray? Well because I did it yesterday and somehow that helped me to be here today; but I don’t know how.

Rowan Williams on…
Peace
For a very long time I’ve seen the peace imperative as fundamental. I just don’t see how we can be easy with a situation where we are prepared to plan cold-bloodedly for the obliteration of others in whom the image of God is alive. That’s my bottom line on peace. The Church’s involvement in the arms-trade is an agonizing situation. There is so much on that subject that is brushed under the carpet, socially and ecclesiastically, in a way that I find heart-breaking.

Rowan Williams on…
Failure
Shortly after becoming a Bishop somebody asked what the biggest difference was. I said that I’ve really discovered you need to believe in God! It is sometimes the crises and the pains that open up the holy in a way that success somehow doesn’t Because when you face failures and difficult questions you have to ask ‘if I’m not the answer then who or what is?’ And the hope and the confidence goes, not inwards, but towards God. Time and again you realize you are not what you thought you were, not as good at these things and not necessarily the answer to somebody else’s problem. You know then (or hope you do) just to say sorry to the people involved and to God and then you open yourself up to whatever God has to give you. So I try to tell myself that it’s all right to fail, and that God is God.

Rowan Williams on…
Evangelism
I can’t see any way of being a Christian that doesn’t involve you at some point saying that it is in relation to Christ that human beings become as human as they are meant to be. So I don’t see any way of being a relativist about Jesus Christ. In practice though, the Jesus Christ we may be trying to share with someone of another faith or of no faith is inevitably the Jesus Christ of our own imagination and understanding. So when people say no to that (or I don’t understand) is it Christ or is it us they are saying no to? We have to be very cautious there.
We need to communicate the mystery, the invitation and the excitement of Jesus as best we can, in word and action and worship and more than we have done before; then say ‘OK you’ve got some time to let these things sink in on your own terms’. There doesn’t need to be a simple decision in the next thirty seconds; because this is a new world that takes some time to feel your way into. When Evangelism does happen, people will find their way in, bringing with them all sorts of very different bits of their world, which we may find quite uncomfortable. So there is a need for an enormous amount of patience in seeing where these different parts – whether brought from youth culture or from a Buddhist tradition – fit in.