In his last major interview before stepping down later his year, he acknowledged that he had struggled to balance the growing demands of the job at home and abroad. He also admitted he had "disappointed" both liberals and conservatives.

VOL: Job sharing. Lord Carey never said it was needed when he was ABC and neither has any archbishop in history suggested it was needed. Does Dr. Williams really think that this would resolve the problems of the office of ABC when most of the Global South, who make up the vast majority of the Anglican Communion, said the real problem was HIM.

Hark back to the words of Nigerian Primate the Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh when Williams announced he was stepping down. "Dr. Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 when it was a happy family. Unfortunately, he is leaving behind a Communion in tatters: highly polarized, bitterly factionalized, with issues of revisionist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and human sexuality as stumbling blocks to oneness, evangelism and mission all around the Anglican world.

"The lowest ebb of this degeneration came in 2008, when there were, so to say, two "Lambeth" Conferences one in the UK, and an alternative one, GAFCON in Jerusalem. The trend continued recently when many Global South Primates decided not to attend the last Primates' meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

"Since Dr. Rowan Williams did not resign in 2008, over the split Lambeth Conference, one would have expected him to stay on in office, and work assiduously to 'mend the net' or repair the breach, before bowing out of office. The only attempt, the covenant proposal, was doomed to fail from the start, as "two cannot walk together unless they have agreed".

Now Williams can write off the remarks of Archbishop Okoh as the ramblings of a "fundamentalist" or a Neanderthal on homosexuality. The truth is that Williams waffled so badly on the issue that both sides of the fence, including his former friend Dean Jeffrey John and Colin Coward of Changing Attitude, regularly and publicly beat up the archbishop for his failure to go the whole way to endorsing pansexuality. His flip flop on the subject only infuriated them.

Things would have been different if the ABC had stood up and said that homosexual behavior is incompatible with Christian morality and teaching, and therefore, the church cannot endorse it, but homosexuals were of course welcome in the church as all sinners are. But he didn't, because in his very soul he does not believe that. Witness his lecture The Body's Grace which had the opposite effect and gave hope and comfort to non-celibate homosexuals in the CofE and around the world sparking an ecclesiastical conflagration that ultimately led to the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and GAFCON...and to his departure nine years early.

He also said that the Church had been "wrong" in its treatment of homosexuals in the past, but reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage.

VOL: What treatment is he talking about? To declare homosexual practice as incompatible with the Church's received teaching for 2000 years is suddenly wrong? When Resolution 1:10 was passed at Lambeth 1998, VOL reported that it was orthodox African bishops who were accosted by gays in the West and severely beaten up, not the other way round. No one is or was running around with machetes hacking homosexuals to death as happened to ordinary citizens in Rwanda and Darfur. Now we are seeing how the well-funded homosexual lobby in the US is screaming "hate" and "homophobia" at anybody who vaguely upholds marriage between a man and a woman. Look at the vilification of the President of Chick-fil-A. Look at what is happening to free speech in the West as a result. Look at what is happening in the Episcopal Church where a veritable panoply of sexualities has popped out of the Pandora's Box of bizarre sexual behaviors in the nomenclature of LGBTQI (is there more to come)? TEC's pansexual lobby will not rest until they have totally conquered the sexual waterfront, demanding full inclusion, full baptism, full marriage rites, and rights for all sexual behaviors (except perhaps bestiality and pedophilia) and then run up the flag when the last orthodox bishop is strangled with the guts of the last sodomite priest.

PANSEXUALITY

We are thrilled to know the ABC is against same-sex marriage, but does he understand that gays and lesbians will stop at nothing until they have achieved their objective - the full and total acceptance of their behavior to all levels of the church including marriage? Does the ABC not remember how fascists behave? Has he forgotten that his friend the gay dean Jeffrey John is prepared to sue the church if he is not given a miter? Has he forgotten what Colin Coward and others have said about him over the years?

Look what happened to women's ordination in the Episcopal Church. Once upon a time it was None must... All may... Some should... - now it is all MUST or you are out the church door. Just ask Bishop Jack Iker and the multi-million dollar legal imbroglio he is embroiled in just to rescue his churches from the clutches of Katharine Jefferts Schori who makes no bones about where she stands as a revisionist bishop and has hated Williams for his prevarication on a number of issues. No wonder he never turned up at the last TEC General Convention. She will move heaven and hell to make sure that whoever follows Williams will be even farther to the left than he is.

Does Williams really understand what his Hegelian synthesis of truth and his complicated intellectual ramblings has done to the church and how much he is really despised for caving into a handful of weak, self-absorbed narcissistic homosexuals whose ONLY concern is brokering in their behavior and who are not in the least concerned with the gospel of redemption and grace that could save them? The oft-repeated mantra that "God loves absolutely everybody" makes a mockery of the deeper truth that God's love does not pre-empt the need for change. God's deepest expression of His love sent His Son to the cross. That didn't happen so men could embrace one another while naked in a gay bathhouse. The gospel DEMANDS that we change and conform to Christ's will or we conform to our own will, there are no other alternatives.

SHARIAH LAW

The Daily Telegraphreported that Dr. Williams also acknowledged that his handling of the controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in Britain had caused "confusion", but he also said he stood by his central views.

The truth is British Common Law could never ever allow any aspect of Shariah Law to be enshrined in it. When he made his statement, Williams faced demands to quit with Lord Carey, the former ABC, saying that accepting the Islamic code would be a disaster for Britain. English law is rooted in the Judea-Christian tradition. It would be impossible to introduce a tradition like Shariah without fundamentally affecting its integrity said the former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir Ali.

As things now stand, there are whole pockets of Muslims in major UK cities where no Englishman dare to go nor do the Police, as they are already Islamic strongholds. Is it any wonder that people call England's capital Londonstan.

Williams also voiced concern that politicians with little or no connection to religion were coming under the influence of secular campaigners and called for more Christians to go into politics.

VOL: What sort of Christians would he like to see? Evangelicals?...one doubts it.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND & ROYALTY

Williams hinted at a possible change in the relationship between the monarch and the established Church when the Prince of Wales becomes king, remarking that Charles is "more quizzical" than his mother about the Church of England.

VOL: Royalty is an expensive soap opera designed to placate the masses. The Queen may well have loved Billy Graham whose message she believes in more than the Red Dean, but her children are a zillion miles from Christ. Charles would be king of all faiths not just the Christian Faith, but that won't work for what was once Christian Britain. Williams also voiced optimism about the state of the Church and said that despite a fall in attendances at services, "popular spirituality" is alive and well.

VOL: "Spirituality" is a buzzword that can be made to mean almost anything from believing the Bible to touching Ouija boards and consulting spooks. "Spirituality" is a vacuous word empty of any real content.

MISTAKES

Looking back over his time at Lambeth Palace, which has seen a string of controversies over issues such as the ordination of homosexuals and the question of women bishops, Dr. Williams acknowledged that there have been "mistakes".

"I know that I've, at various points, disappointed both Conservatives and Liberals," he said. "Most of them are quite willing to say so, quite loudly. "That's just been a background to almost everything, a pretty steady 'mood music'."

VOL: Arguably the biggest crisis he faced has been the split in the Communion over the consecration of the openly homosexual Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson. Orthodox Anglican provinces, mostly the rapidly growing African churches, made it very clear to Williams where they stood on sodomy and got beaten up by the British press as "backward", "homophobic" etc. Williams did nothing to defend his majority Anglican base. He made noises to the Episcopal Church about acting in an uncollegial manner, but took hits from LA Bishop Jon Bruno and Gene Robinson for dare suggesting TEC was out of line.

He acknowledged that he had failed to do enough to stop the split developing, but said that was proof that the role of leading the Anglican Communion and the Church of England had become too much for one person.

TWO PERSON JOB

The issue is not about one person or two persons leading the communion. Had he stood up with a fixed biblical worldview, one most of the Anglican Communion believes in, there would not have been any real problem at all. He would have offended only one side of the divide instead of two. He wanted us to believe like Atlas that he could hold the whole thing together when he could not.

"Thinking back over things I don't think I've got it right over the last 10 years, I think it might have helped a lot if I'd gone sooner to the United States when things began to get difficult about the ordination of gay bishops, and engaged more directly with the American House of Bishops," he said. He went on, "I think the problem though, is that the demands of the communion, the administrative demands of the communion have grown, and are growing. I suspect it will be necessary, in the next 10 to 15 years, to think about how that load is spread; to think whether in addition to the Archbishop of Canterbury there needs to be some more presidential figure who can travel more readily."

There is a biblical model for dealing with problems that is found in Acts 15. It is to call a Council and pound out the problems, whether it is circumcision or meat offered to idols, and then conclude, "It seems good to us and the Holy Spirit". Why did Rowan Williams not do this when he had the opportunity? Of course, when the Primates did meet, they were so disunited they couldn't even have Eucharist together... Frank "Granola" Griswold came up against the lion of Nigeria, Peter Akinola. The whole thing fell apart with the Global South were no shows at later primatial gatherings. There is nothing in Scripture to even vaguely suggest that the ABC is supposed to be a one man diplomatic mission or even a UN delegation trotting around the communion looking for compromises to keep the Communion together.

Had Dr. Williams turned up to an FCA meeting in London earlier this year when Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen was preaching, he would have heard a stem-winding sin and salvation sermon and all the attendant spirituality that goes with it, thoroughly convincing he and his hearers of exactly what evangelical spirituality really is. Had he done so he might not have modified his views but at least he would have heard what it is the vast majority of the Anglican Communion really believes.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

The ABC also said that future Archbishops of Canterbury should be free to focus on spiritual leadership and leading the Church of England.

Now what sort of "spiritual leadership" does he offer that would be acceptable to the Global South? Dr. Williams "spirituality" if it can be defined at all, is Patristic, pro pansexual, with a dash of Affirming Catholicism topped off with a cherry of Russian Orthodoxy. The Global South is almost universally evangelical. Their spirituality is rooted in sin and salvation, personal holiness, justification and sanctification. The two spiritualties are not even vaguely close.

Williams recently gave a lecture on The Spiritual and the Religious, articulating the differences between religion as "a matter of the collective mentality", and the spiritual as that which "opens up and resources personal integrity at a new depth," and allows "ordinary human activities to be understood afresh against a broader background of 'sacred' meaning." Now that will play in Abuja, Singapore, Recife or Argentina....not.

In his book The Wound of Knowledge he exposits on the central "task" of spirituality: "Christian faith has its beginnings in an experience of profound contradictoriness, an experience which so questioned the religious categories of its time that the resulting reorganization of religious language was a centuries-long task. If 'spirituality' can be given any coherent meaning, perhaps it is to be understood in terms of this task: each believer making his or her own that engagement with the questioning at the heart of the faith which is so evident in the classical documents of Christian belief...It is the intractable strangeness of the ground of belief that must constantly be allowed to challenge the fixed assumptions of religiosity; it is a given, whose question to each succeeding age is fundamentally one and the same. And the greatness of the great Christian saints lies in their readiness to be questioned, judged, stripped naked and left speechless by that which lies at the centre of their faith."

For "advanced" Christians, this might be possible to untangle, but for meat and potatoes evangelicals, many of whom have little more than a Third grade education, this sounds like a tangled, albeit brilliant convoluted mind that cannot articulate what Karl Barth so ably concluded at the end of his brilliant career when asked said, "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so."

Williams does not condemn the modern search for spiritual connection as a distraction. The truth is that it is a false pathway that leads nowhere or possibly to Hell. Talk to many converts who have come out of New Age religions and spiritual paths; they will tell you a different story. Neither does Williams seek to defend Christianity as a set of truths to be propagated. Rather, he advocates an understanding of ourselves as a community with a different story. St. Paul would profoundly disagree with him. So would Calvin, Luther and nearly every serious theologian since then, probably including his friend Dr. N.T. Wright. Even a community has rules or, in the case of church, doctrine. The Early Church quickly had doctrine with the Nicene Creed, Apostles and Athanasian Creeds to guide them as the irreducible minimum.

"The trend in our culture today is away from the structures and requirements of religion, to the more open territories of spirituality. It is a shift "away from the idea of a controlling narrative, a story about shared meanings and goals," says Williams. So, the "controlling narrative" of the gospel which DEMANDS a changed life is out while holy huddles of people engaging in interfaith dialogue is in. You are of course free to join us on the journey of "shared meanings and goals," whatever they are, but don't be dogmatic or too definitive in case you scare people off. I doubt that Cranmer waiting at the stake to die would buy that.

Presiding Bishop Mouneer Anis, leader of Anglicans in the Middle East and North Africa said that, "Speaking personally, I think having a presidential figure will not solve divisions unless the presidential figure has the support of the primates of the Anglican Communion. So [it has to be] someone who is elected, who sits and talks with the primates and would have an executive role to implement what they decide."

If the Primates could not agree, why does Williams think a Presidential figure would? Does he not remember what LA Bishop Jon Bruno said when criticism erupted from Lambeth palace over the ordination of a lesbian to the episcopacy in his diocese? He said, in so many words, we don't talk our orders from Lambeth Palace, we take them Katharine Jefferts Schori, she is our leader.

ACTS 15

No, the problem, as canon Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council noted is that Williams has misdiagnosed the problem. Ashey said the problems in the communion were not relational or administrative as Williams has articulated them but doctrinal - a fundamental denial of the basic facts of the gospel. "Deal with the problems as they did in the Book of Acts," cried Ashey. Wrong solutions will only make things worse, he concluded. You can see his commentary here: http://www.americananglican.org/

If the Anglican Communion does not get a solid biblically based Anglican leader to replace Williams, the leadership of the Global South representing 80% of the Anglican Communion will ignore him. Biblically based does not mean a man vaguely evangelical who, when push comes to shove, will jettison his beliefs like the Rt. Rev. James Jones, the evangelical Bishop of Liverpool who later apologized for opposing the openly gay Jeffrey John for Bishop of Reading. He was one of nine bishops to sign a public letter criticizing the proposed consecration and then changed his mind.

The Global South will tolerate nothing but a biblically faithful archbishop to succeed Dr. Rowan Williams. If that is not forthcoming, they will simply continue to do what they have started - not show up at global events like the Lambeth Conference or Primatial gatherings. There will be a de facto schism even if there is not a de jure schism. The days of "conversation" and "listening" are over. It is time for action.

END