Francis Scott Key
American lawyer and poet who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner (1779-1843)
Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouthis a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012.
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About the Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouthis a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. 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.
Williams’s primacy was marked by speculation that the Anglican Communionwas on the verge of fragmentation over disagreements on contemporary issues such as homosexuality and the ordination of women. Williams worked to keep all sides in dialogue. Notable events during his time as Archbishop of Canterbury include the rejection by a majority of dioceses of his proposed Anglican Covenant and, in the final general synod of his tenure, his unsuccessful attempt to secure a sufficient majority for a measure to allow the appointment of women as bishops in the Church of England.
Having spent much of his earlier career as an academic at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford successively, Williams speaks three languages and reads at least nine. After standing down as archbishop, Williams took up the position of chancellor of the University of South Wales in 2014 and served as master of Magdalene College, Cambridge between 2013 and 2020. He also delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 2013.
Williams retired as Archbishop of Canterbury on 31 December 2012, succeeded by Justin Welby. On 26 December 2012, 10 Downing Street announced Williams’s elevation to the peerage as a life peer, so that he could continue to speak in the House of Lords. Following the creation of his title on 8 January and its gazetting on 11 January 2013, he was introduced to the temporal benches of the House of Lords as Baron Williams of Oystermouth on 15 January 2013, sitting as a crossbencher. Oystermouth is a district of Swansea. He retired from the House on 31 August 2020 and from Magdalene College that Autumn, returning to Abergavenny, in his former diocese (Monmouthshire).
14 Quotes by Rowan Williams
- 1.
Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can’t do, fear or even disgust at growing old.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 2.
My visit this autumn is an opportunity to continue that rich tradition of visits between Canterbury and Rome.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 3.
Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn’t resolve the question of whether it’s true or not. I can see the temptation of simply thinking, ‘Well, there’s a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it’. And that really won’t do.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 4.
I value unity because I believe we learn truth from each other in this process.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 5.
We shall not find life by refusing to let go of our precious, protected selves.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 6.
Violence is not to be undertaken by private persons. If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interest.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 7.
I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we’ve got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 8.
Even when I was Archbishop of Wales and working with new bishops, I used to say, not realising quite how true it was, ‘One of the things you will do as a bishop is disappoint people’.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 9.
What can we say about a marketing culture that so openly feeds and colludes with obsession? The Disney empire has developed this to an unprecedented degree of professionalism.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 10.
We are called to show utter commitment to the God who is revealed in Jesus and to all those to whom His invitation is addressed.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 11.
I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God’s name whatever I can discern of God’s perspective on the world around – something which involves both challenge and comfort.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 12.
A healthy human environment is one in which we try to make sense of our limits, of the accidents that can always befall us and the passage of time which inexorably changes us.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 13.
I am pleased that Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles have decided to take this important step.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)
- 14.
In spite of the haze of speculation, it is still something of a shock to find myself here, coming to terms with an enormous trust placed in my hands and with the inevitable sense of inadequacy that goes with that.
Rowan WilliamsArchbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012)