The Right Man for a New World

In late February the Church of England, the mother church of Anglicanism, will install a new leader. He is an interesting man and, in my opinion, the best of all possible choices to head the third largest group of Christians in the world. His name is Rowan Williams.

In many ways it was a daring appointment, and in this choice the entire Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church in the United States is a part, has decided to join the modern world. It represented a specific decision to reverse the dreadful and misguided reign of his predecessor, George Carey. Carey had positioned Anglicanism in the right-wing evangelical camp of Bible quoters.

Rowan Williams is only 52 and could serve in this position for almost two decades, giving him time to put his stamp upon the Church. He is a product of England's middle-class who has developed his intellectual skills at both Oxford and Cambridge. He was a theology professor at Oxford prior to being elected a bishop in Wales only a few years ago. Shortly thereafter his fellow bishops in Wales chose him to head the entire Anglican Church in Wales.

Williams has the academic skills to engage changing ideas in our culture. One hopes he will use these gifts to hammer out a Christianity that is both relevant and believable. Christianity desperately needs to escape the language of antiquity that has portrayed sacrifice and shed blood as signs of salvation.

The Jesus who "died for our sins" has simply got to go in our post-Darwinian world. Christianity must move beyond a rescuing Jesus, who overcame a fall that never happened, even metaphorically, to restore human life to a status it has never had, even mythologically. Williams' task is nothing less than to articulate a new Christianity for a new world.

This appointment should also help to bring to speedy conclusions the battles over issues of human sexuality that have raged inside most churches for decades. Williams is a forceful advocate of the full equality for women in every aspect of ecclesiastical life. One should expect, very shortly, the nomination of a woman to be a bishop in the Church of England. This step will finally bring that Church into harmony with the Anglican Churches in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and it will push Anglicanism in Australia, South Africa, Scotland, Wales and other national branches of this church in the Third World in the right direction.

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