Anglican Communion News Service

'The last enemy to be overcome is death' (I Cor 15.26)

Your hair and your nails may keep growing for a while after you die; but nothing else does. Death is when growing stops - the routine ways in which your body repairs itself and grows fresh tissue, and the ways in which the mind and heart stop developing. We know the suffering that is caused when the mind and heart have already apparently stopped responding even before physical death - the agonizing spectacle of vegetative states or dementia.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has expressed his deep shock and sorrow at the appalling murder of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul

 

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The Archbishop of Canterbury announced the formation of the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG), as proposed in his Advent Letter. The WCG will address outstanding questions arising from the Windsor Report and the various formal responses from provinces and instruments of the Anglican Communion. 

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'The prevailing attitude...was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the (speaker) had not said'. Ronald Knox's description of discussion at a student society in the nineteen thirties has a certain familiarity after the last few days; but given that public comment and criticism has been cast in such highly-coloured terms

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A lot of what gets said about Europe these days suggests that we are better at saying what it isn't than what it is. We say 'Europe' when we mean 'not Britain' or 'not America', sometimes 'not the Islamic world' or even 'not the developing world.' But we need from time to time to try and rescue a positive definition of some sor; which means a bit of historyand a bit of philosophy.

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By this stage of the holiday season, I imagine you might be looking with dismay at your overflowing rubbish bin, or the mountain of debris piling up outside your back door.   Food, drink, presents – they all come with more and more packaging. Even the most eco-conscious of us is likely to have a bit of a bad conscience after Christmas.

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Eleven days ago, the Church celebrated the memory of the sixteenth century Spanish saint, John of the Cross, Juan de Yepes – probably the greatest Christian mystical writer of the last thousand years, a man who worked not only for the reform and simplification of the monastic life of his time but also for the purification of the inner life of Christians from fantasy, self-indulgence and easy answers

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Greetings in the name of the One 'who is and was and is to come, the Almighty', as we prepare in this Advent season to celebrate once more his first coming and pray for the grace to greet him when he comes in glory. You will by now, I hope, have received my earlier letter summarising the responses from Primates to the Joint Standing Committee's analysis of the New Orleans statement from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church.  In that letter, I promised to write with some further reflections and proposals, and this is the purpose of the present communication.

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One of the strangest yet most moving expressions in the New Testament is a verse in the Letter to the Hebrews (11.16): God ‘is not ashamed to be called their God’. The writer is talking about the history of God’s people. When they have been faithful to God, faithful in keeping on moving onwards in faith rather than settling down in self-satisfaction, when they are true pilgrims, then God is content to be known as their God...

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the governors of the Anglican Centre in Rome are delighted to announce the appointment of the Very Revd David Richardson as the Archbishop’s Representative to the Holy See and Director of the Centre.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has given a wide-ranging lecture today in Singapore, at the Building Bridges Conference. In his lecture Dr Williams discusses the position of the "absolute truths” of faith over and above political power, and how this plays out in a society where several faiths co-exist: “Does disagreement about truth necessarily mean the violent disruption of social co-operation?

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that churches need to be brave, imaginative and honest in the fight against the spread of HIV and Aids.

In a message for World Aids Day [Saturday 1st December], issued for the first time as a video available on the internet, Dr Williams said churches are actively engaged in the global response to HIV and described as ‘a scandal’ the limited access to drugs and treatment in deprived parts of the world.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury  has written to Anglican Communion Primates and members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC)  with a summary of their individual responses to the outcome of September House of Bishops meeting of the Episcopal Church (USA).   He made it clear that he was not at this stage advancing his own  interpretation of these responses. 

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has sent a message of greeting to the Hindu community for their celebration of the festival of Diwali. Dr Williams praised the Hindu Community for their contribution to so many areas of life in this country, and also expressed the hope that Christians and Hindus "should renew and further develop the local and national frameworks within which we can explore and appreciate our common and our distinctive characteristics".

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today held talks in Jerusalem with Israel's Chief Rabbis. The Archbishop, accompanied by Bishop Suhail Dawani (Bishop in Jerusalem) and Bishop Michael Jackson (Bishop of Clogher), held the second in a series of annual discussions with Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger of Israel, accompanied by the Chief Rabbi of Haifa Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen. The first in the series was held at Lambeth Palace on 5 September 2006.

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In a video address to the Kids Company conference taking place today, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, outlined his support for Kids Company and the work that they do, saying that the greatest priviledge was being able to hear from the children directly: "what they think a real childhood is like, we all need to hear that, they know what they are missing, they know something of the privation that's at the heart of their lives. They know what they need and we need to hear it."

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Tonight in a lecture to the Christian Muslim Forum Conference in Cambridge Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury will consider the events and consequences of two events in history sharing the date of September 11th.

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The Joint Committee, which is composed of a delegation from the Anglican Communion and from the Permanent Committee of al-Azhar al-Sharif for Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions, held its sixth annual meeting in London on 2-3 September 2007 which corresponds to 21-22 Sha‘aban 1428. This was held in accord with the agreement signed at Lambeth Palace on 30 January 2002 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams is to spend four days in Sri Lanka next week as part of a visit to South East Asia. Dr Williams’ visit comes at a time when tensions have increased in the country following the apparent breakdown in peace negotiations between the Government and the Tamil Tigers.

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In his lecture this evening in Hull, birthplace of William Wilberforce, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will urge politicians to rediscover the moral energy and vision which inspired Wilberforce; defend the right of the citizen to call the state to account for its actions; and ask whether we still believe in the notion of "a moral state".

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has announced that he intends to visit the United States this autumn in response to the invitation from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams says that the whole weight human failure cannot extinguish the creative love of God. In his Easter sermon, to be preached at Canterbury Cathedral this morning [Sunday 8th April, Easter Day], Dr Williams says that conflict and failure are part of the human condition, but that Jesus' death and Resurrection turns that on its head:

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that the churches of the Anglican Communion must be safe places for gay and lesbian people. His comments come in a welcome to an interim report on the Anglican Communion’s Listening Process, a commitment to listen to the experience of homosexual people. Archbishop Williams warns that the challenge to create the safe space for their voices to be heard and for their dignity to be respected is based on a fundamental commitment of the Communion.

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have today published an innovative online reflection on the nature of the Slave Trade in readiness for the Church of England’s Walk of Witness to take place in London on Saturday March 24.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and Archbishop Bernard Malango, Archbishop of Central Africa, have held a meeting with Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, Anglican Bishop of Harare. The meeting took place today in South Africa.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury is to visit South Africa and Angola as part of a visit to the Anglican Province of Southern Africa next week - 5th - 13th March 2007. The visit, announced in the Archbishop's Presidential Address to the Church of England's General Synod on Monday, will take in a special Anglican Communion Conference on the church's contribution to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals in South Africa, as well as a visit to Angola.

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20th February 2007

May I echo the thanks for your patience which Philip has already shared with you – we’re very appreciative of the fact that it is late and we’re all tired.

Also before I start, I went from one session just to check the BBC news and heard more details about he appalling bombing on the train in India and I know that all the Primates will want to put on record their grief and shock about this and their prayers for all involved and their families.

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In mid-afternoon (16th February), the Archbishop of Canterbury made a courtesy call on President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and paid tribute to the progress the country has made in recent years. The Rev. Jonathan Jennings, Archbishop Williams' press officer, quoted him as saying that 'Tanzania has been a symbol of hope and stands for what can be achieved through democratic development.'

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams says that the care he saw being given to a baby in Bethlehem was a shining reminder of the Christmas message - that God's love comes to us as a gift. In his sermon, Dr Williams tells how, whilst visiting a creche attached to Bethlehem's Holy Family Hospital funded by international donations, he cradled an abandoned new-born child in his arms

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A special pilgrimage of religious leaders for these last days of Advent to Bethlehem has been welcomed by local Christians as a 'sign of hope' in the midst of a devastating situation. As Christians dwindle in numbers in Bethlehem, it is becoming an increasing concern for the future of what one bishop calls 'the living stones' as well as the great shrines that one Christian from Beit Jala told the Archbishop of Canterbury,

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