The prospect of defeat over the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant, under which the Church of England would effectively ban openly gay clergy from being ordained as bishops, was the last in a string of delicate and contentious matters arising during Dr Rowan Williams’s tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury.
— Dr Williams was appointed the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002. Born in Ystradgynlais, Swansea, to a Welsh-speaking family, he had previously been Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, making him the first Welsh incumbent of the Church’s most senior post, and the first since the 13th century to be appointed from outside the Church of England.
— After an education at Dynevor School in Swansea he studied theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge, before earning his doctorate at Wadham College, Oxford. He lectured in Leeds for two years before being ordained deacon in Ely Cathedral and returning to Cambridge, where he spent nine years in academic and parish work, being ordained a priest in 1978.
— Dr Williams returned in 1986 to Oxford, where he was later awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989, and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990. A year later he was consecrated Bishop of Monmouth, a position held for eight years until he succeeded Archbishop Alwyn Rice Jones as Archbishop of Wales.
— His subsequent appointment, 11 years later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, was widely lauded. He was confirmed in December 2002 and enthroned the following February, beginning a ten-year tenure.
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— Dr Williams has consistently had to tread a difficult line between traditionalists and liberals in the Church of England on the issue of homosexuality.
— Before becoming Archbishop, his career was punctuated by relatively illiberal contributions to the Anglican view of homosexuality. As soon as he was enthroned his views were thrown under the spotlight by the proposal that a gay priest, Jeffrey John, be consecrated Bishop of Reading. After initially appearing not to oppose the move, Dr Williams asked the priest to withdraw his candidacy, instead arranging his appointment as Dean of St Albans and so sidestepping the contentious issue.
— In 2007 he demanded guarantees from bvishops of the US episcopal church that they would not allow the election of more gay bishops or authorise blessings for same-sex couple.
— In 2010 he was quoted as saying: “There’s no problem about a gay person who’s a bishop. It’s about the fact that there are traditionally, historically, standards that the clergy are expected to observe. So there’s always a question about the personal life of the clergy.”
— Government proposals to introduce same-sex marriages, backed by David Cameron and Theresa May, the Home Secretary, have heaped further pressure on Dr Williams to take a firm stance. While the new proposals will not force the Anglican or Roman Catholic churches to hold gay weddings in churches, traditionalists fear that it could be a move in that direction.
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— In 2002, shortly after the beginning of his tenure, Dr Williams caused a mild panic when he was inducted as a Druid in an ancient Celtic ceremony. Concerns over what was seen as a pagan ritual sprung up across the Church, but the Archbishop insisted that many had “reached the wrong conclusions” about the ceremony, which took place at that year’s National Eisteddfod celebration of Welsh culture in St David’s, Pembrokeshire. Dr Williams became a member of the highest of the three orders of the Gorsedd of Bards — a 1,300-strong circle of Wales’s key cultural contributors – in a ceremony founded in 1792 and whose rituals hark back to when Celtic druids led society.
— Dr Williams was never afraid of wading in to political debate. In November he led a high-profile move by bishops across the country to condemn the Government’s controversial welfare reforms, which he called “radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”. In June, just two months after being hailed as “a national treasure” for officiating at the royal wedding, he complained that David Cameron’s “Big Society” vision had been generated for “opportunistic and money-saving reasons” .
— Dr Williams has given tacit support to the decision to ordain women bishops. “I feel nothing less than full support for the decision the Church made in 1992 and appreciation of the priesthood exercised,” he is quoted as saying.
— He is against abortion. A member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, he has been quoted as saying: “It is impossible to view abortion as anything other than the deliberate termination of a human life.”
— He was loudly outspoken against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009 he used a national memorial service commemorating servicemen killed in Iraq to attack Tony Blair’s failure to “measure the price” of the “flawed” military intervention.
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— Shortly after the September 11 attacks, during which Dr Williams was in New York, he caused a stir by claiming that terrorists “can have serious moral goals”.
— In 1985 was arrested for singing psalms during a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protest at an American airbase in Suffolk.
— An internationally acknowledged theological writer, scholar and teacher, Dr Williams also speaks or writes 11 languages: English, Welsh, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Latin and both Ancient and Modern Greek.