Being Christian
Peter Hancock reflects on the words of Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams, in his book Being Christian, has some thought processes and ways of articulating his religion that are alien to someone with my scientific background. I found it, however, a fascinating and sometimes amusing work that contains a clever juggling with ideas.
In my teens I was a born-again Christian in the Baptist church. So, I understand the ‘myths and axioms’. I hope I can deconstruct Rowan Williams’ unique theological take on the Christian story. He seems quite fundamentalist and not as Anglican as I might have expected.
In this book Rowan Williams, in my opinion, is using his authority to reassure those of the Anglican faithful not in holy orders that the irrational basis of their beliefs as born-again Christians is sound. He does this, in my view, by using slightly high-flown language. His use of words often creates the effect of an incantation – rather like Latin must have had on peasant congregations in the Middle and Dark Ages.
I found myself comparing Rowan Williams’ writing to that of Evelyn Underhill in her excellent book for the layman The Complete Christian Mystic. She writes in her preface: ‘I have merely attempted to put the view of the universe and man’s place in it which is common to all mystics in plain and untechnical language, and to suggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons may participate in their experience.’
Rowan Williams seems to be attempting the same sort of thing for ‘ordinary persons’ in respect of Christian religious practice. To be fair, I should add that behind the advocacy of archaic Christian theology, he is also hinting at a form of mysticism that not all Quakers would be uncomfortable with. But he is asking us to take an awful lot on trust, as priests have always done. Throughout his book there is a basic theme. T his implies that, indeed, God the paternal Creator speaks to us, but only through the words of the Bible. He then, with a Jesuitical-conjuring trick, explains away all the (seeming) contradictions and paradoxes of the Bible by persuading us that if we only paid proper attention, we would see the deep wisdom behind all those contradictions. Hmm!
So, in the Bible, God writes in a style remarkably similar to that of the patrician archbishop himself. It is an amazing trick to pull off on the part of them both!
Evelyn Underhill, in The Complete Christian Mystic, and Rowan Williams, in Being Christian, both invite us to move away from ordinary, everyday, blinkered perceptions of the ephemeral, empirical, phenomenal world and to enjoy the more enlightened and sublime view afforded by contemplative devotion and mystical experience. Evelyn Underhill uses a wide-angle and universal lens. Rowan Williams uses a telephoto and Protestant lens. Both produce astonishing pictures. Both repay careful perusal.
For my own part, I enjoyed reading Being Christian, even though I am uncomfortable with most of the underlying theology. The author comes across as very amiable, reassuring and avuncular. He would, I am sure, be a lovely person to sit down with by a blazing log fire on a stormy winter’s night and debate these things over a glass or two of decent claret; from a bottle chosen by him with the same meticulous care as he selects his words!
I would say we vegetarians could benefit from reading the words of these two anthropophagous theologians. Both Evelyn Underhill and Rowan Williams eat the body and blood of Christ: Evelyn Underhill as an Anglo-Catholic probably more literally than Rowan Williams. Ah, the Mysteries…!
Being Christian by Rowan Williams, SPCK Publishing. ISBN: 9780281071715
Comments
How odd!
I haven’t read this Rowan Williams book. However, I do know his ‘Where God Happens’ (about the desert monks and nuns and us), ‘Meeting God in Mark’, ‘The Edge of Words’ and ‘A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton’.
I do not find any of these comforting. Nor do I find him ‘reassuring and avuncular’. Rather he points past himself towards the sort of direct experience of God, and the challenges and pain and self-discovery and self-surrender on the way, that the earliest Friends faced - and held each other through - in their experiences of conversion.
By JohnN on 2nd July 2015 - 15:49
I would have to agree fully with JohnN on this
By Richard on 6th July 2015 - 9:27
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