Rowan Williams

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this Christmas is a priest. Born in Swansea, he went from grammar school to Cambridge. He toyed with the idea of becoming a monk, but took up academic life instead. By the age of thirty six he was the youngest professor at Oxford. Six years later he'd chucked it all in to become Bishop of Monmouth a backwater, some said. But this clever theologian was unlikely to stay out of the limelight for long. His many books and his thoughtful views, conservative on many doctrinal matters, but liberal on social issues, marked him out as a leader in his Church. And so it came to pass. He became the Archbishop of Wales, and then this month, the one hundred and fourth Archbishop of Canterbury.

Presenter1:08

It's something I've been asked to do, he says, and I must do it with as much conviction and as much joy as I can. He is Rowan Williams. Is there a hint in that remark, Archbishop, of reluctance, do I detect?

Presenter1:23

A man doing his duty.

Rowan Williams1:25

I think it's very difficult when you're faced with any big job to see it.

Rowan Williams1:29

Entirely positively, because you know your own inadequacies, you know we are likely to fail.

Rowan Williams1:33

And if you've got any sense at all, you know that failing hurts. So, yes, looking at the size of the job and knowing about the failure that's inevitable. It's difficult.

Presenter1:41

And you've you've had time to to to anticipate it, and indeed I mean it's such a leaky system, this appointment of the art. We seem to have known really most of the year that you were going to be it. Did you sort of know too?

Rowan Williams1:51

Did you s ⁇?

Rowan Williams1:52

Lots of people clearly knew a great deal more than we did at home about it. But as I say, at the end of the day, it's something I've been asked to do. If you've been asked to do it, then as a Christian you believe that God gives you the resources to do it.

Rowan Williams2:06

At least without failing totally, you hope?

Rowan Williams2:09

And so yes.

Presenter2:10

Although you have called it undoable, you have said it's a bit of a nightmare.

Rowan Williams2:14

Huge variety of things to do and pressures. Expectations are enormous. And I think as the job has developed in the last twenty or thirty years, the international profile has been

Rowan Williams2:26

Probably bigger than it was at some points in the past.

Speaker 42:28

Yeah.

Presenter2:28

Two.

Rowan Williams2:29

And so, simply in physical terms, there's an awful lot to stretch you in all directions.

Presenter2:32

And also a quite different job from anything you've done before in in the sense that you are centre stage and you you have to become political with a sort of medium P, don't you?

Rowan Williams2:43

Yeah.

Presenter2:43

Yes, you have to

Rowan Williams2:44

Understand what it is for all that you say to be picked over in a new way, and to to try and

Rowan Williams2:50

Retain some level of spontaneity and honesty in the middle of that.

Presenter2:53

But dealing with government, I mean, talking to Prime Ministers. Speaking in the House of Lords, will you do that?

Rowan Williams2:56

And it's government.

Rowan Williams2:59

I shall do that, yes, and I'm in a way r rather looking forward to that, because I think that

Rowan Williams3:04

There is a vigorous debate that goes on in places like the Lord's, and this country is not at the moment, I think, short of a forum for debate on substantial and basic issues. So I'm very happy to take part in that.

Presenter3:14

Somebody

Presenter3:15

But there have been sessions of the House of Lords in the past where none of the twenty six Lords Spiritual have even been there. I think you're intending to change that a bit, aren't you?

Rowan Williams3:25

I'd simply like to see what can be of use in that system and how we best use it.

Presenter3:30

But if you've got views, and I know you have and I want to talk to you about them later, o on whether we should go to war against Iraq, you will go to the House of Lords and stand up and say what you think.

Rowan Williams3:38

I'll want to take part as best I can in that sort of discussion, yes.

Presenter3:41

There is a story, though, isn't there, of a of a of a Pope who was similarly worried, as you obviously quite rightly suggest you are, about some great issue. Um who um well, you tell me the story.

Rowan Williams3:48

Bye.

Rowan Williams3:55

Pope John the Twenty Third, when he became Pope and was trying to deal with some very complicated matter, went to bed eventually and thought he'd sleep on it. Woke up in the middle of the night and saying, It's too difficult, I'd have to ask the Pope.

Rowan Williams4:06

Went back to sleep, woke up again ten minutes later and said, Just a minute, I am the Pope.

Rowan Williams4:10

Something of that feeding, yes. That's right.

Presenter4:12

Absolutely. But the call came and it was I mean is that how you see it? It was it was its vocation. The call came and you couldn't.

Rowan Williams4:17

Cool, and yes, you respond with, as I said, as much joy and as much enthusiasm as you can.

Rowan Williams4:24

I look forward to it.

Presenter4:25

Tell me about your first record,'cause we're going to send you away to a desert island, which, you know, might be just about what you might need right now.

Rowan Williams4:31

Ask me in a few months' time. Uh

Rowan Williams4:34

The first record is a sort of orchestral fantasia by Vaughan Williams, on the basis of a very ancient folk tune, which is also used as a hymn tune. And the hymn tune I've always loved very greatly is called Kingsfold in the hymn books, and one of the hymns that's been written to fit that tune I'm hoping to have at my installation in Canterbury in February.

Presenter5:51

Part of the first of Vaughan Williams' five variants on Dives and Lazarus, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the fields, conducted by Neville Mariner, and um a version of that tune you're having played, um, you say, Archbishop, at your um

Presenter6:05

Ceremonial investiture, as it were, in February, but you are already it. You earlier this month, you became the 104th.

Rowan Williams6:13

That's right, yes, the uh legal formalities were completed at the beginning of this month.

Presenter6:17

That was in St Paul's, and it was the legal ceremony, as you say, but it was there was quite a lot of ceremonial and flummery, as it were, the kind of stuff we're led to believe you don't.

Rowan Williams6:18

Um

Presenter6:27

approve of, you know, hats and hierarchy in the Anglican Church.

Rowan Williams6:31

I love ceremonial when it's well done. Good ceremonial in church is ceremonial that makes you think about God, and bad ceremonial in church is ceremonial that makes you think about bishops.

Presenter6:40

So what do you want to do away with, the sort of the buttons and the hats?

Presenter6:44

I'm not

Rowan Williams6:45

Not campaigning to do uh away with anything in particular. I think it's a style that I'm concerned about.

Rowan Williams6:50

One of the things that's always appealed to me about

Rowan Williams6:53

The Eastern Orthodox Church is there's plenty of ceremonial, but very little fuss. People seem to be at home with what they're doing, and to feel that it's it's right to be festive, and yes, perhaps to put on fancy clothes and do strange things for festivity's sake, but not a sense of anxiety with it.

Presenter7:09

An anxiety as to who is better than whom, who is higher than whom. It's that kind of thing.

Rowan Williams7:09

Nice to have.

Rowan Williams7:13

Who stands where in the procession, that kind of thing. And anything in worship that brings out that.

Rowan Williams7:18

Competitive and anxious streak, I think, is working against the basic purpose of worship.

Presenter7:23

This of course follows from a man who, as I said in the introduction, did once consider very seriously becoming a monk. How how close did you get to it, and how old were you at the time?

Rowan Williams7:32

This is really in my early twenties.

Rowan Williams7:35

I spent quite a bit of time in vacations from university, staying in monastic houses and saying my prayers and seeing what it felt like. And then of course my first actual job was in a college run by a monastic community in Yorkshire, at Murfield.

Rowan Williams7:48

And so for two years I followed basically the rule of life of that community.

Presenter7:52

So you went on retreat.

Rowan Williams7:55

The regular round of services during the day.

Rowan Williams7:58

And so I I felt by the end of that I kn I knew a bit of what it felt like.

Presenter8:02

And we've decided it didn't appeal.

Rowan Williams8:03

And once again, it was, I think, a sense of what was being asked, what was being asked of me at that time was to carry on with teaching.

Presenter8:11

Apparently a lot of women were relieved when you made this decision, I hear.

Rowan Williams8:15

You hear, do you?

Rowan Williams8:17

I couldn't possibly comment, I'm sure. But there was, of course, one in particular that I met later on who I'm sure, I hope, is still relieved I didn't make that decision. That's my wife.

Presenter8:18

I'm sure.

Presenter8:27

Record number two.

Rowan Williams8:29

Record number two is the hymn Kalon Lan, a pure heart or an honest heart.

Rowan Williams8:34

I grew up in an environment where we still sang hymns quite a lot. Even rather irreligious teenagers would still sing hymns at parties. My wife finds this incredible. But that at parties when we'd done our Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan, we sang Welsh hymns. Not because we were pious, but because that's what we knew and what we enjoyed singing.

Presenter9:35

Hallan Lahn, a pure or a guileless heart, sung by five thousand voices at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Terry James, and that was recorded in 1972. So, Archbishop, you were an only son from Swansea, as you say. Give me a picture of your childhood, if you will. What what kind of what did your parents do for a living? What kind of home were you brought up in?

Rowan Williams9:55

My father was an engineer, working for what was then the Ministry of Works, and then became the Department of the Environment, and he used to design heating and lighting systems for public buildings. He actually designed flood lighting for some of the castles in South Wales.

Rowan Williams10:08

And so

Rowan Williams10:10

It was, I suppose.

Rowan Williams10:11

A family not uncommon in South Wales at that time, the first generation away from the mines, because my father came from a mining family.

Rowan Williams10:19

My mother more from a a farming family.

Presenter10:21

And your mother stayed at home because not least because you were quite a sickly boy, I gather.

Rowan Williams10:26

I was rather, yes, yes, having meningitis when I was very small.

Presenter10:29

So you stayed in bed and read your books?

Rowan Williams10:31

I stayed in bed and read my books.

Presenter10:32

But you're a bookish chap anyway.

Rowan Williams10:34

Difficult to say, isn't it, whether I'd have been bookish without those times of enforced solitude, but I think they did matter in my development.

Presenter10:39

But I think

Presenter10:41

What did you read?

Rowan Williams10:42

I read lots of history.

Rowan Williams10:44

And lots of folklore and mythology, and I suppose a fair bit of poetry as well.

Presenter10:49

And you went on at school to

Presenter10:52

Truly enjoy Latin. People always need to have this explained.

Rowan Williams10:57

Yes, I suppose at some point I rather fell in love with the idea of other languages, and Latin, the sound of it, and the

Rowan Williams11:03

the discipline and the structure of it really excited me.

Presenter11:06

And drama, you like.

Rowan Williams11:07

And drama, yes.

Rowan Williams11:09

I was lucky being at a school where drama was taken very seriously.

Presenter11:12

So what did you play? What kind of roles did you get given?

Rowan Williams11:14

Oh dear, typecasting from day one, really. I used to get authoritative sorts of roles. I ended up playing parts like the stage manager in Thornton Wild as Our Town, who's the kind of um god figure who hangs around the edges. Don't laugh

Presenter11:30

And you played Death squad.

Rowan Williams11:31

I played Death, yes, in Everyman, the Miracle Play, complete with a skull mask and a great big black hood.

Presenter11:36

So you you had the voice. The voice we hear now is is is

Rowan Williams11:40

Well, I imagine not when I was ten, but I suppose something of it came across.

Presenter11:41

What?

Presenter11:44

I'm singing.

Presenter11:45

Of course what's fascinating is the accent. Where's the Swansea accent?

Presenter11:49

Was it ever there?

Rowan Williams11:49

I don't know. I was never conscious of having and losing.

Rowan Williams11:53

And I know that when I go back to the sort of area where I grew up, some of it comes back, and that when I speak Welsh I sound like a Swansea Valley person.

Presenter12:00

Interesting, isn't it? But there we are, we can see it all, that the important elements. Feeding into this job that you have now arrived at because there was the love of history, there was the love of, well, a kind of sense of theatre really was there.

Rowan Williams12:12

A bit of a sense of theatre, and, I suppose, a love of what Arkanola calls story and language. I think that's a very important part of religious faith and religious practice a sense of enormous excitement about the mysteries that language can uncover for you.

Presenter12:26

Well now, how does that all lead into this third record? You've got to explain this one.

Rowan Williams12:30

Well, yes, I was never terribly keen on popular music as a teenager, but the record you're going to hear is one that was given to me as a 21st birthday present, and it's one of the Incredible String Bands records. And this particular song is one whose words I found even then very, very haunting. The chorus. You know all the words and you've sung all the notes, but you never quite learned the song. That seemed to me to be a very powerful summing up of the problems that people have with relationships with life in general.

Speaker 312:59

But just when everything is going fine and absolutely nothing is wrong.

Speaker 313:05

This funny little hedgehog is always around every time he wants to sing me this song.

Speaker 313:12

Oh, you know all the words, and yes, some all the nose, but you never quite learned the songs she sung.

Speaker 313:20

I can tell by the sadness in your eyes that you never quite learned a song.

Presenter13:26

The Incredible String Band and the Hedgehog Song. You might have some explaining to do after that.

Presenter13:31

So there was no history of service uh in the clergy in your family at all. Uh where did it come from in you, do you feel? Did you have a mentor? What what inspired you?

Rowan Williams13:41

I think it had a great deal to do with having inspirational figures around um the local vicar Canon Eddie Hughes, who was, I suppose, the greatest single inspiration for me and my my calling.

Rowan Williams13:51

He was somebody who had a

Rowan Williams13:53

A very lively imagination and intelligence was interested in everything, in everybody.

Rowan Williams13:58

Read widely.

Rowan Williams13:59

Encouraged me to read widely when I was a teenager.

Rowan Williams14:03

and always took absolutely seriously the questions that you asked. So you never felt stupid, and you never felt, oh, you shouldn't ask that.

Rowan Williams14:11

Because he had a a hospitable mind and soul.

Presenter14:13

So these are obviously, one can tell from the way that you say it, lessons that you've borne very much in mind ever since, and lessons presumably you seek to apply all of the time.

Rowan Williams14:21

Yes, I think they've always been the kind of benchmark for me.

Presenter14:24

But how do you put it to use? Because obviously with you he was pushing at an open door, but you have the Church of England has, does it not, a diminishing clergy, I think in a vast percentage drop over the past ten years of the numbers of priests that you have. How do you encourage them in? How can you make a difference?

Rowan Williams14:41

Well, clergy numbers, of course, have been up and down a bit, and they've actually increased here and there in recent years, so it's not it's not all bad news. I think the willingness to be there at the end of people's questions, at the receiving end of hard questions

Presenter14:54

If they will come to you with their questions.

Rowan Williams14:55

But that that means also you've got to go out and invite those questions. And I've given very high priority in the last ten years as a bishop in South East Wales.

Rowan Williams15:05

To going around local schools.

Presenter15:06

But you can't do that as Archbishop of Canterbury. There's so much else you have to do. How are you going to do it?

Rowan Williams15:07

Bonding.

Rowan Williams15:09

How are you going to do that?

Rowan Williams15:11

What I've seen again in the local church in South Wales is that planting new congregations does attract people if they feel they don't have to go through a huge kind of cultural conversion to get in.

Presenter15:22

What does that mean?

Rowan Williams15:24

If you've got a place where people sense that they're welcome, that they don't immediately have to learn a a totally strange language and do totally strange things, it's surprising how many people need that, respond to that.

Presenter15:34

I still don't quite see how you're going to approach it in a different way from the way in which it's been approached before. What are you going to do to make a real difference?

Rowan Williams15:44

More, I hope, of what I've been trying to do as a bishop in the last ten years, which is to encourage these new enterprises which say don't let's unravel the parish system by any means, but see what can happen alongside it. Go and open the community centre in the council estate and see who comes. Make yourself known and trusted in an area like that. For the first time in many years, recently, we saw in Wales a bit of an upturn in attendance because of these new congregations coming coming online.

Presenter16:12

Record number

Rowan Williams16:13

Four.

Presenter16:13

Yeah.

Rowan Williams16:14

One of the bits of music that I was deeply moved by when I first heard it, and still love to go back to, is Monteverdi's Vespers.

Rowan Williams16:22

The basic tune is a an ancient bit of plain song, very simple.

Rowan Williams16:26

And what Mottevedi does with it is to change the rhythm a little bit, so the very simple theme underlying it is played with, so that it says different things, evokes different feelings, works in different ways. That seems to me not a bad analogy for how we treat the whole basic structure of Christian belief.

Presenter17:38

Hail Bright Star of Heaven, Arve Maristella from Montevede's Vespers, sung by Paul Eswood and the Louis Halsey singers with the London Bach Orchestra, conducted by Louis Halsey. You married Rowan Williams in your early thirties to Jane, also a theologian, and essentially went into academic life both in Oxford and Cambridge, ending up as Professor of Divinity at Oxford, aged thirty-six.

Rowan Williams17:54

Day.

Rowan Williams18:04

It was enormously enjoyable. But from ooh, 1980, I think, onwards, I'd also been working in a parish in Cambridge, in one of the council estates, and that's where we lived, that's where we started our married life. And that was another kind of enjoyment, another kind of stimulus. So I was sort of moonlighting, really, for a few years between this parish and the city.

Presenter18:23

So you were seeing what it was like outside the academic arena, as it were.

Rowan Williams18:27

It seemed to me essential to to see what what what was involved in trying to talk about Christianity in a not so comfortable environment.

Presenter18:35

To real people, you might say.

Rowan Williams18:37

I think there are real people in academies too, but certainly to see a quite different social world.

Presenter18:37

Yeah.

Presenter18:42

But nevertheless, generally speaking, life was very comfortable, and then when you were forty two you were offered the job as Bishop of Monmouth, and uh you took it.

Rowan Williams18:50

I think I'd sensed, ever since being a curate in the estate when I was also a lecturer, that I hadn't been ordained a priest just to write books or to supervise research students.

Presenter19:00

So there was this feeling that there was a job to be done and you could make a a strong contribution to it, and you had to do that.

Rowan Williams19:07

Yes, I think the challenge was, how do I take the theology I've been talking about and writing about and make it make sense to people in Clanverhangel Gobian and Abatileri?

Presenter19:16

So that's what you went to do and yours became, if we're following you through chronologically here, yours became a name to come to with. And certainly there was a point in I think round about ninety seven, wasn't there, when you were considered, it seems, as the Bishop of Southwark. And George Carey, then Archbishop, your predecessor, asked you, I think I'm right in saying, to distance yourself from what you'd written and said about homosexuality, about gay clergy. And you declined.

Rowan Williams19:44

A great deal of what I think of as urban myth has grown around this this period, and really I'm I'm slightly baffled as to where some of this has come from. I did gather that my name was considered for the Diocese of Southwark. I didn't think it right to pursue that at the time, and I must say that Archbishop Carey was never anything other than completely supportive in that period.

Presenter20:05

But this is a a controversial issue and one that I understand you would like now to put on the table, isn't it? You would like gay men and women to be acknowledged by the Anglican Church.

Rowan Williams20:16

It's certainly no part of my my programme to to change this by fiat, or even to push it as a matter of discussion. But there it is on the table, we have to think about it.

Rowan Williams20:25

And my hope is simply that we think about it without too much rancor, without too much prejudice, or too much fear. And I think it can run both ways, too.

Presenter20:31

I think that was coming wrong.

Presenter20:32

There are large tranches of the Anglican Church who do not wish to consider this at all. They are crystal clear, and believe the Bible is crystal clear on the matter, don't they?

Rowan Williams20:40

That's right, and the reason they're worried about it, I think, is largely that it comes to be an issue about the significance of the Bible.

Rowan Williams20:46

and the authority of the Bible.

Rowan Williams20:48

And it's not for many people primarily about sex, it's about what you think of the authority of the Bible, and that is sufficiently important, I think, to justify.

Presenter20:57

But you have, I believe I'm right in saying, have you not ordained a priest whom you knew to be a practising homosexual?

Rowan Williams20:57

Cool.

Rowan Williams21:05

Gotta take a moment.

Presenter21:06

Mm-hmm.

Rowan Williams21:10

When bishops decide to ordain people they take advice from all sorts of people who've been involved in selection and in training, and I've never overridden the advice I've received.

Presenter21:18

But is it something, as Archbishop of Canterbury, that you would do again?

Rowan Williams21:23

But you would

Rowan Williams21:26

The Church of England has a fairly clearly declared policy.

Rowan Williams21:29

On this.

Rowan Williams21:30

The Church in Wales had never had a single policy document. The Church of England has, and I think I would have to abide by that policy document and would.

Rowan Williams21:38

I believe that was part of my my job, part of my responsibility.

Rowan Williams21:42

Record number five.

Rowan Williams21:44

The kind of music that speaks most deeply to me often is music that has a very contemplative quality. The music of Bach in particular has had a a unique importance, I suppose, there. To put some of your ideas on hold, to listen to this, to go with it.

Rowan Williams21:59

That for me is a

Rowan Williams22:01

meditative moment and something that I need very

Rowan Williams22:05

very urgently in a a pressured life.

Speaker 422:20

Uh

Presenter23:07

The opening of Bach's solo cello suite number one in G major, played by Uly Turovsky.

Presenter23:13

Um you were, Archbishop, I understand, in New York on september eleventh, two thousand and one and and caught up in the tragedy. How close were you to the Twin Towers?

Rowan Williams23:23

About uh two hundred yards away, I suppose, in a neighbouring building.

Presenter23:26

What was the first that you heard or felt or knew?

Rowan Williams23:30

The first I heard was quite literally the sound of the first aircraft hitting the tower.

Presenter23:35

I'm sure you were asked, and I'm sure you have been since, but you were probably even asked on that day, really, where's God? You know, where's God when this terrible thing happened? How how easy

Presenter23:47

Has it been to answer that question with conviction?

Rowan Williams23:51

At one level.

Rowan Williams23:52

God is where God always is, that is, at the center of things, the absolute centre of things.

Rowan Williams23:58

Nothing changes that, nothing alters that.

Rowan Williams24:01

And then you can say.

Rowan Williams24:03

God is in the the vision and the inspiration and the dedication of the people who go in.

Rowan Williams24:08

Compassionately, who risk their lives.

Rowan Williams24:11

And there were so many unbearably moving stories from that day of the people who had risked their lives in that way.

Presenter24:16

You since then have publicly criticised any kind of aggression against Afghanistan and now Iraq. I think you've been signatory to a letter saying that war against Iraq would be immoral and illegal.

Presenter24:30

What happens to that argument if no action is taken and then Saddam Hussein uses biological or nuclear weapons against another great swathe of innocent people?

Rowan Williams24:40

I think there are moments where it's inevitable, but you have to meet violence with violence. I'm not an absolute pacifist, in fact.

Presenter24:47

So if a UN resolution

Presenter24:50

Is taken that we should go to war against Iraq, you would not oppose it at that point, huh? I'd have to think about unilateral action. I'd have to think about that.

Rowan Williams24:55

But a funila

Rowan Williams24:56

Circumstances.

Presenter24:57

Yeah.

Rowan Williams24:57

We can say all right.

Rowan Williams24:59

There can be what we hope would be a short surgical war, remove a tyrant.

Rowan Williams25:03

Two years, three years down the line, what have we in place? What are we envisaging? What else are we doing to secure positively the stability of the region? What positive investment are we putting in? Those larger scale questions, I think, have to be part of any calculation about what we do now.

Presenter25:17

And are these the kinds of issues that you would now expect as Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss in this way with the Prime Minister?

Rowan Williams25:24

I'd hope there might be opportunities for that.

Rowan Williams25:27

And again, it's a difficult balance to draw. I think I I said somewhere else recently that um taking the moral high ground is very easy if you don't have to take the actual decisions, and that's always the temptation.

Presenter25:38

But you could be the moral sounding board. You would want him to have this conversation with

Rowan Williams25:40

Yeah.

Rowan Williams25:42

You can, I think.

Rowan Williams25:43

Remind people why the question's a difficult question. And I don't think it's any part of my job to pretend that questions are easier than they are. Yeah.

Presenter25:50

Bubbles.

Rowan Williams25:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter25:51

Yeah.

Rowan Williams25:51

It often is, I think, yes. Which doesn't always make you very welcome, but I think they have to be asked.

Presenter25:52

It off

Presenter25:54

Oops.

Presenter25:57

But these are the kinds of things that you would wish to air in the House of Lords. You will be doing that, will you?

Rowan Williams26:03

Uh

Presenter26:03

Right.

Rowan Williams26:03

I'd hope to see that as part of my job, yes.

Presenter26:04

And you'd expect to see a packed house when you say it, hmm.

Rowan Williams26:07

No idea.

Presenter26:09

Dare say it would be. Record number six.

Rowan Williams26:11

The Magic Flute is a very strange opera. It's all about power and violence, and what overcomes power and violence, and at the same time it just produces music that has such utter serenity that at the end of it you've seen a story about how imagination and loyalty

Rowan Williams26:30

Love and hope simply lead people through fire and water.

Speaker 426:41

Why is the

Speaker 426:55

In the spotlight.

Speaker 427:00

Right now

Speaker 427:02

Four, three, one.

Speaker 427:05

Riser was of whose rising.

Speaker 427:15

The field of the song.

Speaker 427:19

I give a lot of sorrow, solar toy.

Presenter27:35

The quintet from the first act of Mozart's Magic Flute, with Agnes Gielzel, Anna Reynolds, Josephine Wezey, Nicolai Gedda, and Walter Berry, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer.

Presenter27:48

The other issue that we believe we know you feel very strongly about, Archbishop, is the appointment system. You don't like the fact that the Prime Minister appoints you, do you?

Rowan Williams27:59

I think there are all kinds of historical reasons why we've got the appointment system we've got. I think it's harder to justify than perhaps it used to be. What we've seen in recent years is a gradual movement towards the Church having more freedom in its recommendations.

Presenter28:13

Because of course the Prime Minister also chooses the bishops, technically, because they're in the House of Lords.

Rowan Williams28:19

Technically that's yes, he recommends to the the Queen who was appointed, but we have now a fairly robust process within the Church.

Rowan Williams28:27

That allows the voice of the church to be heard in a way far clearer than would have been the case even twenty or thirty years ago.

Rowan Williams28:34

I would see that as a a process that's ongoing.

Presenter28:37

What about the Queen's voice, the Crown? I mean, she is the Supreme Governor. You don't like that much either, do you?

Rowan Williams28:44

Well, I think there's a much better case for the monarch's involvement than in some ways from the involvement of the government of the day. But I think we still have a lot of work to do defining exactly how that relationship is going to work.

Presenter28:54

I think they're not going to be able to do it.

Rowan Williams28:55

It gives freedom, appropriate freedom, to the church.

Presenter28:57

People will understand that you'd like to stop politicians having an influence i in the church. But are these moves towards a kind of disestablishment and it's rather like Prince Charles talking about defender of the faiths, isn't it? Are you saying this is a multicultural country, there's no religion you can call mainstream, so we really should move over?

Rowan Williams29:16

I think there is still, in a sense, a mainstream religious tradition in the country, despite the practical plurality of religious faith in the country.

Rowan Williams29:25

For most people it's still true that the Church of England is the Church of First Resort.

Rowan Williams29:30

That's where they feel.

Rowan Williams29:32

They have some right to be to be listened to and to be to be looked after. And I don't think that's going to change overnight, and I don't think it should change overnight. We're learning rapidly.

Rowan Williams29:42

The need to give other faith communities the right kind of public voice.

Rowan Williams29:46

Um we have already

Rowan Williams29:49

As it happens, members of other faith communities in the House of Lords, I think the question is whether that ought to be some sort of statutory representation in the House of Lords. That's been discussed. We're looking at.

Presenter29:59

As long as there are bishops in the House of Lords, I mean they may be abolished altogether when it's finally reformed.

Rowan Williams30:03

I think it would be a big mistake to abolish the presence of religious leaders in the House of Lords, bishops, because of the, you know, where the Church of England is in our society.

Presenter30:11

So you're saying that the that the Church of England should continue to be pre-eminent, are you, in in the constitutional structure?

Rowan Williams30:18

To the extent that that's a matter of privilege, people rightly ask awkward questions about it.

Rowan Williams30:23

To the extent that it's a matter of recognising, as the constitutions of many countries do, that the main religious body is this one this is, as I say, the church of first resort, then I don't lose too much sleep over that.

Presenter30:35

There are bumpy times to come, or there not, or not.

Presenter30:40

One of those words. Record number seven.

Rowan Williams30:44

Pach's Christmas Oratorio is an overwhelming celebration of the gift of God in Jesus Christ, the essential.

Rowan Williams30:52

Christmas Message. So we're going to listen to

Rowan Williams30:55

One of the pieces from the Christmas Oratorio that

Rowan Williams30:58

Quite specifically, picks that up, Herrdein Mittlad, Lord, your mercy, your compassion, makes us free.

Speaker 431:07

Where thine life, And I meet like thine ever born, Tristan bones and markets cry, Tristan martens cry.

Presenter31:59

Herr Dein Mittlight Dein Ebarum, Lord Thy Compassion, Thy Mercy, from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, sung by Michael George and Catherine Bott, accompanied by the new London consort, conducted by Philip Pickett. So we begin to hear, Rowan Williams, the complexities of your new posting. On the other hand, time is on your side. You're fifty-two and. You could remain Archbishop of Canterbury for the next couple of decades, really, couldn't you?

Rowan Williams32:25

It's a sobering thought, isn't it, for everybody?

Presenter32:26

You play a long long game, that means, hmm?

Rowan Williams32:29

Well

Rowan Williams32:30

The main priority I think now is to start looking towards the Lambeth Conference later this decade and the gathering of bishops from around the world and how that's to be managed.

Rowan Williams32:39

And I think I've got to keep my mind on that goal, that um middle term.

Rowan Williams32:44

Go before I start thinking about when I'm going to retire.

Presenter32:46

But you would be prepared to stay the course, would you?

Rowan Williams32:48

I'll think about that when we've seen what the next few years look like.

Presenter32:51

Now, if being Archbishop of Canterbury has its worries, what about being on a desert island? The soul, I'm quite sure, you can take care of. What about the body?

Rowan Williams32:59

I'm not the most practical of people, and um I don't imagine that I'd be able to well, probably not be able to light a fire, let alone build a boat.

Rowan Williams33:08

So I wish

Presenter33:08

Or a shack to live in.

Rowan Williams33:09

Or a shack to live in, yes. Yes, even if you have fairly low expectations of your living environment, you'd need something over your head, and I'd have to work rather hard at that, I suspect.

Presenter33:18

But as for the solitariness, I mean that that

Presenter33:20

Obviously appeals, generally speaking, could prove, from everything we gather, deeply desirable in the years to come.

Rowan Williams33:26

I'd miss my wife and children.

Rowan Williams33:29

But the opportunity of solitude is is very important to me, and I think you have to go back to those wells and refresh yourself.

Rowan Williams33:36

become human again before God in these moments. Tell me about your last record. I did my doctoral research at Oxford on Russian Christianity, having for a long time had a fascination with Russian culture, Russian music, and then with the Russian Church. So I've chosen as this last record some Russian music from the Copplin service for Christmas Eve.

Presenter34:46

Isaiah's Prophecy from the Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve service sung by the choir of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London, conducted by the Reverend Archpriest Michael Fortunato. If you could only take one of those eight records, Archbishop, which one would you take?

Rowan Williams35:00

The Bach Cello Suites.

Presenter35:02

Now, we give you the Bible. Wh which Bible would you like, by the way?

Rowan Williams35:06

Should be probably the authorised version.

Rowan Williams35:08

I know as a scholar it's not the most perfect translation, but it's the associations of words.

Rowan Williams35:15

It's the rhythm of the sardon that I I think I'd need to keep me centred.

Presenter35:19

And we give you the complete works of Shakespeare as well, and then you're allowed a book of your own choosing. What would that be?

Rowan Williams35:26

I'd really rather like to take a book of quite tough poetry that would make me think as well as feel, something like the collected works of WH Orden. Disciplined, quite complex.

Rowan Williams35:36

But full of nourishment.

Presenter35:37

And your luxury.

Rowan Williams35:39

I was tempted to think about a regular supply of chocolate ginger, but um why not? thinking thinking about about it in the light of the music. I think I'd rather miss a piano. I wouldn't mind having a piano with me.

Presenter35:52

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs, and happy Christmas!

Rowan Williams35:58

And to you, thank you.

Speaker 436:07

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.