Don't be put off by the title. Andrew Goddard recognizes that Rowan Williams’ ‘Christ-centred, kenotic theology’ negates the whole project of legacy-building (p. 313). ‘Legacy’ in this book is a device around which to construct an assessment of Rowan's ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Throughout his incumbency at Lambeth, Rowan's attitudes to church and society came under attack from people who had neither read what he had written nor listened to what he had said. Although his theological and political reflections do not always readily accommodate a readership looking for bullet points and sound bites, his resolute complexity has never justified the peculiar animosity and the sustained misrepresentation which have characterized much of his press (p. 40).
In Rowan Williams – His Legacy Andrew Goddard sets out to present a record that is fair, favourable and, most of all, informed. He works not only from printed sources, but also from digital media and conversations (where, incidentally, Rowan expresses himself with clarity and concision). Nevertheless, this book is no hagiography. Goddard acknowledges the criticisms of disappointed friends and determined enemies. Rowan's perceived failures can be summed up as a neglect of consultation (p. 294), bad media management, naïveté, and ‘academic theorising detached from the reality of most people's lives’ (p. 226).
The book opens with a brief biography and ends with a series of anecdotes and encomia. In between, there is a well-structured exploration of Rowan's prelacy in three broad categories – mission, the Anglican Communion, and church and society. In each case the author begins by summarizing Rowan's background thinking. These summaries are perhaps the core of the book, helping the reader to chart Rowan's faithfulness to deep principles which persists through apparent changes of direction. His commitment to procedure rather than programme is made explicit in Goddard's engaging passage on polity and Rowan's indebtedness to Figgis (p. 228). The prioritization of process over policy is, claims Goddard, the only way ‘to balance and manage real difference’ (p. 232).
Rowan's approach to human difference is unwaveringly theological, and Goddard is a sympathetic interpreter, even if he is one whose interests are more weighted towards Evangelical concerns (such as Fresh Expressions and human sexuality) which might be expected from one of the founders of Fulcrum. Being primarily a theologian, Rowan is himself frequently placed in a position of difference that defies meaningful engagement not only with the interrogators of the BBC Today radio programme and its counterpart Newsnight (p. 254) on the television, but also with those princes and posturers of the church for whom theological discourse is secondary to the politics of pragmatism or power (p. 187).
Goddard offers detailed accounts of issues that left Rowan standing at the centre of a storm – most notoriously, the Sharia Law lecture (Chapter 13), and the Jeffrey John episode (Chapter 6). (The author's treatment of the Anglican Covenant is less precise, which may disappoint some readers, as will hints of an animus against ECUSA, particularly in Chapter 9. Smaller niggles are the erratic index and unattributed quotations, as on p. 67.)
What comes through is Rowan's constant emphasis on asking us to listen. And in order to listen, we must put ourselves in the place of the other. This requires the adoption of perspectives that transcend personal desire and parochial agenda. He certainly makes us listen when he says, ‘Coming back from Sudan … underlined for me [that] it matters a lot to a Church in vulnerable situations, to have partners elsewhere…’ (p. 186). Those who have benefited from Rowan's support in one context have not always been appreciative when it is applied (with equal fidelity) in another: ‘too often he seems to bend over backwards to be kinder to his enemies than he is to us’ (an anonymous source, cited on p. 115).
Although Rowan's eventual testament will be only words, Goddard identifies a ‘deeper yet generally hidden and unrecorded legacy [which] is personal encounters through which lives were changed’ (p. 66). Rowan's primacy was above all else about the gestures that emanate from a confident, orthodox faith. This generous-spirited book is an extension of those gestures. Apparently members of the English House of Bishops felt at times disempowered when Rowan was speaking. Hopefully, this book will have the same effect on its readers.
