Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out, a slim, thoughtful introduction to Christianity. But that’s not quite why I went to Cardiff to visit him. I went because, although I admire the superstar culture warriors of the right, there’s something Williams is witness to which they lack.
Like many readers, I think Rowan Williams pretty loopy on most subjects – Brexit, Islam, immigration, the dreaded trans debate – but Rod Liddle always says that Rowan is a holy man, and Rod is right.
We sit opposite each other drinking tea in his book-lined living room. The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury is looking amiable but confused. ‘The Spectator has been fairly ripe on some of my views in the past,’ he says. Williams’s new book is a gentle invitation to believe in the love of God, but it’s also, if I’m reading it right, a reprimand to those of us who are full of anxious fear about cultural change.
In the book, he describes a famous 16th-century woodcut which shows a human figure pushing its head through the firmament of heaven to find that they’re suddenly looking up into a sky that they’ve never seen before, packed with strange stars. ‘I want to say that it ought to be an image of authentic faith, of a real understanding of what the tradition of religious practice does for you, pushing you through the smooth-painted surface, out towards a sky you’ve never seen.’
Does he think Spectator readers should be pushing our heads through the firmament?
Williams blinks politely. He has the tail end of a sinus infection and a headache, and the look of a man who’d rather not be arguing with a journalist.
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