by Peter Selby

It will not surprise Witness readers that the appointment of an Archbishop of Canterbury has a different "feel" this side of the Atlantic. Although his role in the Anglican Communion is going to be important – I remember Bishop Edmond Browning saying to a gathering of English bishops about a previous Archbishop, "He’s our Archbishop too" — Episcopalians are bound to feel a certain ambivalence: The fact that the "primate among primates" has to be the bishop of a diocese in England is not an altogether welcome piece of history; the fact that he is by virtue of the conventions of the Church of England a senior member of the English establishment and an ex officio member of the UK legislature; the fact that his appointment was by a process that has evolved historically but in its involvement of the head of the UK government is not that easy to defend; the fact that he has, under current English canon law, to be a man – all these things put a question against any suggestion that Witness readers should regard Rowan Williams as "our" Archbishop.

Of course that does not necessarily say all that Witness readers might feel: This Archbishop is a radical thinker – "conservative in doctrine, liberal in social matters" is an only partially true one-liner that has been used to describe him – with a strong commitment to public engagement. He has, as it happens, many close associations with the Episcopal Church, and of course was famously only two blocks away from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; but that understanding is at the same time a critical one, as those who have read his comments on the Western responses to those attacks and to the prospect of war with Iraq will know well. At the same time, he has already said things that make clear that he feels a responsibility to the Anglican Communion as a whole, which means that even on issues where he would personally differ from the majority view he will work within that view – and not all Witness readers will want an Archbishop of Canterbury who does that.

My concern in this short article, however, is to speak without apology from an English perspective. There is no doubt that something very unusual has been happening since Rowan Williams’ appointment. The press coverage has been massive, in a nation that does not produce nearly as many churchgoers as the U.S. More than that, there has been a fascination with his ideas: The Times described his Dimbleby lecture as the most intellectually challenging statement by an Archbishop of Canterbury in 30 years, and the "liberal" press has produced pages of opinion and published some of his poetry. That has not happened in far longer than 30 years! I have spoken to people of many different opinions and at varying distances from the life of the Church, and their testimony is eloquent. They feel led into the world of the spirit in a new way, and find their and others’ horizons expanded as a result. On the day on which his appointment was announced, Rowan Williams expressed a longing that our culture be once again intrigued by the Christian message, a statement that stands to give evangelism a wider and deeper set of echoes than has been the case.

And although there has been a very rough period of attack from the theological right wing, something that will have been very distressing for the Archbishop and indeed for the rest of us, the fact is that the attempts to destabilize his position before he had even begun have run up against the undoubted fact that his appointment, his style and the range of his commitments are such as to reveal such attacks as the driven and narrow outpourings of voices that are loud in volume and small in number. And it has to be good that those attacks and the person at whom they were aimed have combined to generate a lively and welcome – some would say overdue – debate among evangelical Christians, many of whom are not prepared to let their more stridently reactionary elements have it all their own way.

The religious scene in Britain is and remains notably different from that in the U.S. But there are signs in the response to the appointment of this Archbishop that there lurks below the surface of our consciousness here a genuine desire for a spirituality that is deep in its roots and engaged with the issues of the day with the same depth. This will not bear the quick results of a religious revival, nor be as accessible, perhaps, as some of the products of the spirituality industry. But depth can produce a hundredfold harvest, and it is for that kind of harvest that, like Rowan Williams, many of us long.