In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Williams said Britain is no longer a nation of believers.

While the country is not populated exclusively by atheists, the former archbishop warns that the era of regular and widespread worship is over.

His stark assessment comes after David Cameron ignited a national debate over the place of religion in British public life.

The Prime Minister urged Christians to be "more evangelical" about their faith and claimed that Britain should be a more confidently Christian country.

His remarks, in the run-up to Easter, provoked a furious response from atheist and secular groups.

A succession of senior politicians gave their views, culminating in Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

In the interview, Lord Williams accepted that Britain's "cultural memory" was "quite strongly Christian".

"But [Britain is] post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted," he said.

"A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers, and we are not that."

The former archbishop continued: "It's a matter of defining terms. A Christian country as a nation of believers? No."

"A Christian country in the sense of still being very much saturated by this vision of the world and shaped by it? Yes."

Lord Williams suggested that there may be "a further shrinkage of awareness and commitment" as a result of a lack of knowledge about Britain's Christian legacy among younger generations, under the age of 45.

More than half the people surveyed in a poll for the Telegraph regarded Britain as a Christian country.

But the poll also revealed that almost two-thirds of practising Christians appear to be frightened of speaking out about their beliefs.

Lady Warsi, the senior Conservative peer and the minister for faith, said "Christianity is part of the landscape of this country and always will be".

She suggested that large numbers of immigrants from Christian backgrounds were leading to a religious revival in Britain.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Rowan Williams interview
• Image: Theology Forum

"Religion has always been a matter of community building, a matter of building relations of compassion, fellow-feeling and, dare I say it, inclusion," said Williams, who stepped down as the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion on December 31.

He pointed out that respect for human life and equality was inherent in all organised religion. "The very concept of human rights has profound religious roots…. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights would not be what it is were it not for the history of philosophical religious debate."

Dawkins, an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, told the audience his main concern was simply whether religion was true, and described religion as a "cop-out".

"It is a betrayal of the intellect, a betrayal of all that's best about what makes us human," he argued. "It's a phony substitute for an explanation, which seems to answer the question until you examine it and realise that it does no such thing….

"It peddles false explanations where real explanations could have been offered, false explanations that get in the way of the enterprise of discovering real explanations."

Williams argued that the writers of the Bible "were not inspired to do 21st-century physics; they were inspired to pass on to their readers what God wanted them to know.

"In the first book of the Bible is the basic information — the universe depends on God, humanity has a very distinctive role in that universe, and humanity has made rather a mess of it."

"I am baffled," responded Dawkins, "by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it." God, he said, "cluttered up" his scientific worldview.

"I don't see clutter coming into it," Williams replied. "I'm not thinking of God as an extra who has to be shoehorned into it."

Sources:

Christian Post

The Times

Image: The Guardian

Archbishop David Moxon is currently the Bishop of Waikato, Senior Bishop of the New Zealand Dioceses and an Archbishop of the Anglican Church in New Zealand and Polynesia.

He will step down from these roles in April and expects to take up the roles as the Archbishop of Canterbury's Representative to the Holy See and the Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome in May next year.

The representative role involves relating to the Vatican and the Pope on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion; while the Anglican Centre is an Anglican "embassy" in Rome which promotes Christian unity though hospitality, prayer and education - and which brokers new joint endeavours by the Catholic and Anglican churches.

Archbishop Rowan Williams says he and the Governors of the Anglican Centre in Rome are delighted with the appointment.

"There can be few people in the Communion so well qualified for this work.

"Archbishop David has done distinguished service to the Anglican - Roman Catholic dialogue both locally and globally, and brings to this post both a wealth of experience and a range of profound friendships across the confessional frontiers. I wish him every blessing in his new role."

Source

After hours of debate, the proposal for women bishops won the required two-thirds majority from the general synod's house of bishops and house of clergy, but was four votes short of the required margin in the house of laity.

The outgoing archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, admitted his dismay and "deep personal sadness" and said the Anglican Church had "lost credibility". His successor, Bishop Justin Welby, who will take up the office at the end of the year, said the vote marked a "very grim day" in the history of the Anglican Communion.

The result was greeted with emotion, with some supporters in tears.

Women bishops already serve the Anglican Church in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, but the issue has divided the Anglican Communion for years and member churches in many developing countries oppose any female clergy and are working together to oppose any change.

In New Zealand, the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch, Bishop Victoria Matthews, described the decision as a "product of fear".

"I have to admit I was gutted by the announcement," she said. "I would describe it as more than disappointing. As someone who is a woman in leadership and someone who dearly loves the Anglican Communion, it was quite depressing."

More than 100 members spoke during six hours of discussion in the synod. The discussion focused on ways to designate alternative male bishops to work with traditionalist parishes that might reject the authority of a woman bishop named to head their diocese.

But one lay member, Jane Patterson, urged the synod not to "bow to cultural pressure", warning that more priests would defect to the Roman Catholic Church, where there are no female clergy, if the law were passed.

Sources:

Reuters

BBC

Image: National Post

Dr Rowan Williams made the plans known in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, saying the 'president' would oversee the Anglican communion and its 77 million members, leaving the Archbishop of Canterbury free to concentrate on running the Church of England.

Williams, who steps down in December, admitted he may not have got it right and that the job might better be done by two people.

Of the new role, Williams said: "It would be a very different communion, because the history is just bound up with that place, that office [archbishop]. So there may be more of a sense of a primacy of honour, and less a sense that the archbishop is expected to sort everything."

He expected the presidential figure to be able to travel more easily.

Williams' tenure as Archbishop has been marred by a conservative and liberal split in the communion. Williams says he thinks he disappointed both groups.

The issues of homosexuality, the ordination of gay bishops and the row over female clergy are some of the contentious issues Williams has tried to deal with.

Williams suggested he did too little to prevent the fracturing of the Anglican church over homosexuality.

"I don't think I've got it right over the last 10 years, 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," he said.

"The problem with the job is the demands of the communion have grown and are growing".

"I don't think I cracked it", he said.

With regards to the Islamic sharia law controversy, Williams admitted he failed to find the right words; Williams opined that Islamic shiria law might be recognised by the courts, particularly in family matters.

"I don't think I, or my colleagues, predicted just how enormous the reaction would be".

"I made mistakes - that's probably one of them", but four years on he does not apologise for the arguments he made, saying there is a case for allowing Muslims the same legal latitude that applies to Christians or Jews.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• The Telegraph
• Image: The Guardian

He is described as "Britain's foremost theologian" in an article by Toby Helm and Julian Coman in the Guardian.

"In an incendiary book", called Faith in the Public Square, the Archbishop is forthright in his views about such topics as the Big Society: "'Big society' rhetoric is all too often heard by many as aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable".

Dr Williams also writes about consumerism; Muslims and citizenship; the meaning of economic growth; Christianity, politics and public life; criminalising incitement to religious hatred; ageing; and the secular misunderstanding of religion.

The book is to be published on 22 September.

• Read the article by Toby Helm and Julian Coman.
• Image: On Islam

Hinting at the pressures of the job, he said he hoped his successor would have 'the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros'.

Before he steps down the Archbishop of Canterbury will visit Christchurch in November to offer his support to the quake-ravaged city. This visit will be his final international duty.

Archbishop David Moxon, Archbishop and Primate at Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, speaking on behalf of Archbishops Brown Turei and Winston Halapua has paid tribute to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"He was greatly respected by us," he said, "as a deeply prayerful, thoughtful person, as someone of huge intelligence.

"But he was above all wise, in the Biblical sense, with a great heart for the diversity of the Anglican Communion, across all its cultures, and with all its theological tensions.

"We will miss Archbishop Rowan's grace and mind very much, and we wish him well."

Source

• Anglicantaonga
• The Press
• The Daily Mail
• Image: The Guardian

"I'm being invited to give some theological reflections on the nature of mission, the nature of evangelization, and I'm extremely honored to be invited to do this," Williams told Vatican Radio.

"I hope that it's a sign that we can work together on evangelization in Europe," the archbishop said.

"It's disastrous if any one church tries to go it alone here and tries to assume that it and it alone has the key," because reviving the Christian faith in Europe requires as many and "as deep resources as we can find."

"One of the hardest, yet most important, lessons the different Christian communities today have to learn is that they cannot live without each other and that no single one of them in isolation possesses the entirety of the Gospel," he said.

In their divisions, Christian communities have developed different spiritual gifts and traditions, which should be shared to build up all communities.

He told Vatican Radio that Anglicans and Roman Catholics "can become so fixated" on issues of authority and church structure "that we can forget the gift of baptism and the gift of one another in baptism," which are the true basis of unity.

The Archbishop's comments came after the recent shared Vespers marking the 1000th anniversary of the Camaldoli monastic community in the church of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill, Rome.

Earlier in the afternoon, Pope Benedict urged Anglicans and Catholics to remember the common roots of the Christianity they share, and said both should renew their commitments to praying and working for Christian unity.

"Christian admonishment is never motivated by a spirit of accusation or recrimination. It is always moved by love and mercy," Benedict said in a Lenten reflection on Twitter.

Sources

• CNS
• Pope2YouVatican
• Image: Agnus Radio

Williams is the third successive archbishop of Canterbury to visit San Gregorio al Celio, the place from where Pope Gregory the Great sent out Augustine and 40 of his monks to take the gospel to England.

"It is good to touch the soil on which your are nurtured," Williams said.

Both leaders made only glancing references to the divisions between their Churches.

Pope Benedict called the celebration a "stimulus for all the faithful, Catholic and Anglican, encouraging them to renew their commitment and prayer for the unity that Jesus himself asked of His Father."

Williams spoke of the "certain but imperfect" link between the two Christian traditions.

Previous popes and Anglican leaders have raised more 'testy' topics such as women priests, homosexuality and Church doctrine.

That none of these issues were addressed publicly will be seen my many as a sign just how entrenched the differences have become, reports Reuters.

Before leaving the church, the two leaders lit a candle in the small chapel thought to have been Pope Gregory's simple monastic cell - a tangible reminder of the need to continue bringing the light of the Gospel to today's world.

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• Vatican Insider
• Reuters
• Images: Reuters

In an article for the Christmas edition of the Radio Times magazine, Williams considers the slogan 'What Would Jesus Do?', with particular reference to those involved in the recent events at St Paul's Cathedral.

"The Jesus we meet in the Bible is somebody who constantly asks awkward questions, especially questions addressed to religious people, moral people and rich people - all the sorts of people involved at St Paul's," the Anglican Primate said.

Encouraging us to ask uncomfortable questions of ourselves, the Archbishop also urges us to do some self-examination: "There are places in the Bible where Jesus prods us to ask ourselves about our motives before we embark on grand gestures. Are we doing this for the sake of the real issue, or for an audience?"

"What changes the world isn't a single formula for getting the right answer but a willingness to stop and let yourself be challenged right to the roots of your being," Williams said.

The magazine article was not Williams' first involvement in the anti-corporate protest movement. He said last month that the demonstration marked "a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment."

The City of London Corporation, which owns much of the land around St. Paul's, has taken legal steps to try to get the protesters moved. But the Occupiers have vowed to remain until the Olympic Games in the British capital next summer, and perhaps beyond.

"Christmas tells us two big things. First, what changes things isn't a formula for getting the right answer but a willingness to stop and let yourself be challenged right to the roots of your being. And second, we can find the courage to let this happen because we are let into the secret that we are in the hands of love, committed, unshakeable love. I hope that something of that great secret will find its way into your celebrations this year."

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Archbishop of Canterbury
• Image: Heads down, Thumbs up

Writing in the New Statesman, Dr Rowan Williams questioned the morality of David Cameron's Conservative party's policies on welfare reform.

Dr Williams attacked changes in the National Health Service and education which he said had left people "baffled and indignant".

He labelled Cameron's "Big Society" as "painfully stale" and something that is viewed with "widespread suspicion".

"With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context," Williams wrote.

"The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument."

On welfare reform, he said there had been "a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor" combined with a "steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system."

"The Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around."

An angry PM hit back swiftly at Williams claiming that Jesus would back his "Big Society" plans.

Speaking from Ireland, Cameron said he agreed that the Archbishop was free to express his political views and that the Church is entitled to make political interventions.

However the PM also said he profoundly disagrees with many of the views that the Archbishop expressed, ­particularly on issues like debt and welfare and education.

"I don't think it is good or right for people and our country if we just give up on paying down our debt and just pass that down to our children."

"I don't see anything good or even moral in that approach. I don't think it is good or right for us to pay people to stay on welfare, trapped in poverty, when we should be trying to get them a job."

Catholic support of "Big Society" being tested

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, the nation's leading Catholic bishop, has praised Cameron for putting marriage and family stability at the centre of policy-making.

Having previously spoken of the "genuine moral agenda" driving the Government's the "Big Society," as an opportunity to build a stronger society, he fears communities hit by the economic downturn will suffer if they don't get support.

Nichols accused the Government of washing its hands of responsibilities to communities and expecting volunteers to fill the gap.

"It is all very well to deliver speeches about the need for greater voluntary activity, but there needs to be some practical solutions," he said.

"At the moment the Big Society is lacking a cutting edge. It has no teeth."

"Devolving greater power to local authorities should not be used as a cloak for masking central cuts," Archbishop Nichols warned.

"It is not sufficient for the Government, in its localism programme, simply to step back from social need and say this is a local issue."

"We're now at a very critical point, with the philosophy of the Big Society getting clearer, but on the other hand the effects of the cuts are becoming real and there's real pressure about what will happen on the ground," said Archbishop Nichols.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Press Association
• Catholic Herald
• Sky News
• The Guardian
• Image: Mirror

In an interview with Piers Morgan, he said he believed the terror chief should have been put on trial in the U.S., but Americans were too scared.

"We've lost something of our soul", he said.

As scenes of jubilation at Osama's death were seen across New York, Moore said, "The world is a better place without him. To celebrate someone's death I think goes a step further... it's the way I was raised."

"A lot of people say "what would Jesus do?" I don't think Jesus would go down to Ground Zero like a lot of people did on Saturday night with champagne and pop corks and have a party", Moore said.

"Common sense tells you he was executed," Moore tells the Wrap in a new interview. "That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children."

"I have a lot of faith in Obama," he adds, "but we've received three different stories in three days. We heard, "There was a firefight." "He used a woman as a shield." Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn't armed".

"I'm a Catholic", Moore said, and the position of the Catholic Church and the Pope is that we are 100 percent against the death penalty unless it is in self-defense.

Look at the Nuremberg Trials. We didn't just pop a bullet in the heads of the worst scum in history. We thought it was important to put them on trial and expose their evil. In a democracy we believe in a system of justice and we believe in a judicial system that gives people a day in court...and then we hang them.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has voiced his reservation about the manner of bin Laden's death.

"I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling, because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done. In those circumstances, I think it's also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help."

"I don't know the full details any more than anyone else; but I do believe that, in such circumstances, when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted, it is important that justice is seen to be served", Rowan Williams said.

Sources

• The Wrap
• Church Times
• Mail Online