The first question to ask of Dr. Williams is why didn’t the church grow under his tenure? What was it about his Affirming Catholicism that failed to ignite the average Brit into faith and church attendance! The answer does not require a Ph.D. Brits didn’t, because no one knew what he really believed about the Christian Faith, except of course for his ‘hairy lefty’ political and social views. His faith was incomprehensible to ordinary Anglicans, secular Brits, intellectuals of one stripe or another, Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, the Global South and most of all to God, who presumably is still scratching his cosmic brain over The Body’s Grace (a paean to homosexuality) and Rehabilitating Arius. According to Williams, Arius was in fact a theological conservative wrongly portrayed as a rebel. This once prompted Presiding Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt to stand up at a Mere Anglican conference in South Carolina and announce that Arius was in fact a heretic whose views were squashed forever by Athanasius.

That aside, Williams has some nerve declaring that England is in need of renewal and reformation when he had little use for the very people – evangelicals – who could and are still trying to make it happen. He was more in sync with US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold than ALPHA, a movement that has resonated with millions of mostly ordinary Anglicans who were never sufficiently catechized, and whatever faith they had remained dormant till they actually got to hear the Good News about Jesus!

ALPHA’s approach was clearly not intellectual enough for him, but the masses didn’t seem to think so. One can only imagine Williams and wife along with their two kids attending a Billy Graham Crusade at Harringay Stadium with their son Pip, going forward to receive Christ! Williams might never have gotten over the shock.

Williams went on to opine that 50 percent believe that Christians are afraid to express their faith because of the rise of religious fundamentalism. I asked a source in London who exactly were the “fundamentalists” that Williams was referring to. Was it Anglican Mainstream, REFORM, ALPHA et al.? Well, apparently none of the above. He was in fact referring to Muslims who are Britain’s REAL fundamentalists, so much so that entire sections of England’s largest cities are off limits to whites and where Sharia Law is practiced, a law that Williams himself briefly praised when he was ABC bringing howls of outrage from the media and parliament.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth’s (now truly living up to his name and title) comments came in the wake of remarks by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that Christians should be “more evangelical” about their faith and that Britain is a Christian country. Never mind that Cameron promoted Gay marriage and wants it legalized, something quite contrary to evangelical faith and convictions.

Cameron’s comments led to a plethora of atheists coming forward to claim that Britain is a secular country culminating in Nick Clegg, the deputy premier, calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

However, a poll for The Sunday Telegraph backed the Prime Minister with more than half the public – 56 per cent – regarding Britain as a Christian country, a figure which rises to 60 per cent among men and 73 per cent among the over 65s.

Williams opined that this was a matter of defining terms, arguing that England is not a nation of believers but somehow is still “saturated by this vision of the world and shaped by it”.

That fact has been known for decades. The secularization of England, which began in earnest in the 60s, is now coming to full flower with the embrace of pansexuality, women priests (who as far as I can discern have not made churches grow), sodomite priests and an array of priests who pick and choose from the theological smorgasbord as to what it is they choose to believe or not. Sooner or later, there will be women bishops and openly sodomite bishops, thus following the bell curve of The Episcopal Church USA and joining hands across the Atlantic to that continuously sinking highly litigious church.

If Lord Williams, now the master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, thinks England can only sound like a nation of committed believers, but is in fact not, what did he do to counter that for the eight years he was ABC? He bequeathed a dying church to his evangelical successor who is floundering around trying to figure what to do and who thinks that civil unions are okay but not gay marriage and blasts Wonga for ripping off a segment of the public with high interest loans, the notion being that this will somehow save wallets if not souls.

The poll also found that 48 per cent of respondents believe that Christianity receives less protection than other faiths. That figure rises to 62 per cent among non-practicing Christians.

Williams claimed that a lack of knowledge among people under 45 could result in “a further shrinkage of awareness” but then went on to deny that British Christians have been persecuted, a view that many, including this writer, would profoundly disagree with.

He blamed the “real stupidity” of some organizations for what many saw as the persecution of Lillian Ladele who left her job at Islington Town Hall because she refused to preside over civil partnerships for gay couples. She argued that forcing her to preside over civil partnerships went against her Christian beliefs.

In October 2006, Nadia Eweida, a Christian employee of British Airways, was asked to cover up a Christian cross, and was placed on unpaid leave when she refused either to do so or to accept a position where she did not have to cover it up. She later lost her claim of religious discrimination. A Plymouth Brethren couple were forced to sell their B & B when they refused to allow two men to rent a room for the night. Just days ago a man was publicly arrested for reading the works of Winston Churchill who condemned Islam!

While this hardly compares to the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria and the Sudan – killings, incidentally resulting in part from Williams’ embrace of the Church of England’s promotion of sodomy, it is the thin end of the wedge that will only grow as Islam grows more militant in England. A newspaper polled 2,000 adults and showed further evidence of concerns that Christian beliefs are being marginalized in modern Britain. What about that does Williams not understand!

Ironically, Baroness Warsi, (a Muslim) the former Conservative Party co-chairman and now the minister for faith, defended the Prime Minister, “Christianity is part of the landscape of this country and always will be.” She then went on to say that large numbers of immigrants such as Polish Catholics and members of Chinese and African churches were leading to a religious revival in Britain! Did Rowan of Oystermouth miss something?

It is any wonder then that there is a rise in support for far-Right groups in the UK! People feel their identity is under threat; that they are not allowed to be who they are or believe what they believe.

“That happens because people become unsure of what we stand for in our country. There is still sometimes a sense that the Christian heritage of Britain is not spoken about, not displayed. People don’t feel that they can dress in a Christian manner, can’t talk about Christianity and faith. These groups exploit that feeling and we have to stand up to that,” Said Warsi.

Instead of challenging the status quo within the church, Williams spent most of his political capital focused on the outside world. Williams happened to be lecturing close to the Twin Towers when the 11 September attacks took place. Afterwards, he wrote a book, Writing in the Dust, that reflected on the problems between the West and Islam. He argued that the bombers turned to violence out of a lack of choice rejecting the notion that they were evil. “Bombast about evil individuals,” he wrote, “doesn't help in understanding anything.” Later he condemned American policy advisers for their “criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly.” One wonders who taught Theodicy to Williams at university.

The Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen, a British cleric blogged, “It's disturbing that Lord Williams takes no responsibility for the demise of the Church of England and seems to think - as if he were a Marxist historian - that social changes are "’inevitable’." Perhaps a word of apology from Lord Williams wouldn't come amiss?

Williams goes on to say that Britain's cultural memory is quite strongly Christian. “Well, isn't that nice! So English Christianity is a part of the museum culture, like the National Trust, something for nostalgics, for the blundering tourists to gawp at; or like the TV adaptations of classic novels which sentimentalize them and turn them into frocks on the box.

“If the Church of England is dead, this was not an historical accident and it wasn't murder. The death of the Church was an act of suicide, over the long period when the balance of its mind was disturbed.”

What does Williams have to say to assuage his own failures? He blames fundamentalists, anybody but himself, for his lackluster leadership of both the Church of England and the broader Anglican Communion.

Is it any wonder that when he retired, he got the blast of a lifetime from Nigerian Anglican primate Nicholas Okoh who said that “when Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 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.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

END