Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to convene the 7th Building Bridges Seminar in Rome next week. This is a unique annual series which brings together a range of internationally recognised Christian and Muslim scholars for an intensive study of relevant Biblical and Qur'anic texts.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, yesterday welcomed the members of the Good Childhood Inquiry panel to Lambeth Palace for a discussion about the emerging themes of the Inquiry's work.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, paid tribute to Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement, whose death was announced last week.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York will be making a joint visit to Cambridge on 20 -22 February 2008. During the visit Dr Williams and Dr Sentamu will visit the Oakington Immigration Detention Centre and the Emmaus Community at Landbeach.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has hosted a study day with Chinese and British academics to consider the topic of "Religion and the Public Square”.

The study day, chaired by the Archbishop on Friday 8 February, brought together eleven academics from China and Britain, a combination of theologians, historians, sociologists and anthropologists. The discussion considered the ways that religion interacts with society both in China and Western Europe, and what role religion has to play in issues such as social cohesion in these different contexts.

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There has been a strong reaction in the media and elsewhere to the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks of yesterday on civil and religious law.

The full text of the Archbishop's lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice 'Civil and Religious Law in England: a religious perspective', can be viewed on the Archbishop's website, here:

Archbishop's Lecture - Civil and Religious Law in England: a religious perspective

The transcript of his interview on yesterday's World at One programme can also be viewed online, here:

BBC Interview - Radio 4 World at One.

The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will tonight give the first lecture in a series of discussions ‘Islam in English Law’, part of the Temple Festival 2008.

In his lecture entitled ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: a religious perspective’, being given at the Royal Courts of Justice, Dr Williams will look at what space can be allowed alongside the secular law of the land for the legal provisions of faith groups, noting that “the issues that arise around what level of public or legal recognition, if any, might be allowed to the legal provisions of a religious group, are not peculiar to Islam: while the law of the Church of England is the law of the land, its daily operation is in the hands of authorities to whom considerable independence is granted." The issue also arises in relation to Orthodox Judaism.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has called upon the government to look critically at the use of strip-searching and prison segregation units for children in the criminal justice system. Asking a question in the House of Lords, the Archbishop invited the government to agree that different standards in how society treats its children and how it treats those children that are in prison were "indefensible".

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, gave the James Callaghan Memorial lecture yesterday entitled “Religious Hatred and Religious Offence”. In his lecture Dr Williams outlines the problems with the present blasphemy laws, and also looks at the problems that society could face without any protection from religious offence.

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, have launched new websites to help project the Archbishops’ beliefs, activities and personalities to a wider audience, with the aim of creating sites that utilise the best in web technology and design.

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Lambeth Palace has issued the following statement in response to reports that some Anglican church services in Harare have been disrupted by state officials.

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The Archbishop of Cantebury's annual televised New Year Message for 2008 has now been posted on Youtube and can be seen at:

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Archbishop’s Pause for Thought on Terry Wogan programme BBC Radio 2

We sing quite a bit about ‘Tidings of comfort and joy’ at this time of year. But it would be a pity if we felt Christmas ought to be a time when we turned our faces away from uncomfortable things in our society. Surely it ought to be a time when we summon up courage to confront a few issues – simply because it’s a time when we are more conscious than ever of the good things that have been given to us, material good things to celebrate with, and also, if you’re a Christian, the biggest gift of all, the birth of Jesus.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has said that the case for action on climate change is a moral as well as a practical one, challenging the world’s rich and powerful nations to act with justice towards future generations and to the world’s poorest. 

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to make a brief visit to Israel this week to meet with the Chief Rabbis of Israel. Archbishop Williams will meet with Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has sent a message to the Bishops of Los Angeles and San Diego expressing his sadness at the devastation brought by the raging fires in California.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has sent a greeting to Islamic communities for the coming festival of Eid, marking the end of Ramadhan.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today received a copy of a key letter from Muslim scholars and religious leaders addressed to Christian religious leaders. Dr Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali, Chair of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, and one of the signatories to the letter, presented it to the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has described as 'heartbreaking and harrowing' a meeting he held in Syria with refugees from Iraq. Over two hundred refugees, mostly members of Christian congregations, met Dr Williams in a Syrian Orthodox monastery at Ma'aret Sednaya, outside the Syrian capital.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has returned from a visit to Armenia, Syria and Lebanon.

In a gruelling schedule of visits, meetings and services he spent time with senior politicians, Church leaders, senior Muslim clerics, refugees and communities and community projects ranging from prison inmates and chaplains in Armenia, to people with learning disabilities living in a L'Arche community in Damascus, and first, second and third generation refugees living in one of the Palestinian camps outside Beirut.

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