In Britain today, a new Archbishop of Canterbury will be enthroned with pomp and ceremony, the 104th since the year 597. To many readers, it may seem as extraordinary that a newspaper based in Saudi Arabia should feel drawn to comment on head of the Anglican Church, even one with 75 million members worldwide. But the new man selected for the office, Rowan Williams, is no ordinary archbishop. He will be a thorn in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s side, even though Blair, a practicing Anglican, appointed him. He has already condemned military action in Afghanistan as “morally tainted”, campaigned against UK asylum policies, and is now the unquestioned moral leader of the movement in Britain against an attack on Iraq. Again last week he spoke out with the moral authority of his office against an attack, again saying that there was still no moral legitimacy for such action, again pointing that the unpredictable humanitarian consequences that would flow from such an attack.
In the few months since his appointment was announced, the media, British as well as international, have been impressed by him. In part, it is because this is a man whom even cynical Western journalists can recognize as unworldly and holy. Furthermore, they see an intellectual, again something not seen in religious leaders every day. He speaks seven languages, is a poet, became at the age of 36 the youngest professor ever at Oxford University, and has written a whole library of books.
What intrigues people most, though, is that he is seen in the uncommon role for an Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times: He has become almost the leader of the opposition to the British government. That is perhaps not so strange. There is no one else. The ever-bickering Conservative Party has turned itself into an irrelevance. But for the British government, the fact that it is the Archbishop of Canterbury who is saying that their support for an attack on Iraq is wrong and unjustifiable is far more damaging than if the criticism came from mere politicians.
Blair likes to present himself as a politician on a moral mission. That image can work when his opponents are politicians from a Conservative Party still damaged by sleaze. But the mantle of apparent righteousness starts to slip when the man opposing him has an unchallengeable, higher moral authority. The archbishop’s opposition undermines his case that the removal of a tyrant is a moral necessity. It is immensely damaging, far more so than anything his own left-wingers or even hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters on the streets of London can do.
All the indications that Williams will continue to exert a tremendous moral and political influence on Britain and elsewhere — and beyond the Anglican circle. One area where he can be relied to give considerable attention, building on the work of his predecessor, is in the development of dialogue between Islam and Christianity. A group from Al-Azhar University in Cairo will be at today’s enthronement in Canterbury. Such a dialogue is obviously necessary in Britain and in the wider world.
It might be worthwhile if an invitation to visit the Middle East were to go to this politically active morally insistent archbishop — who incidentally was lecturing in a building next door to the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11 — to talk about and take up the issue of justice for the Palestinians. He is a man the world will listen too.
