Rowan Williams Quotes

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Rowan Williams

Profession : Theologian

Birth : June 14, 1950

A healthy human environment is one in which we try to make sense of our limits, of the accidents that can always befall us and the passage of time which inexorably changes us.

Rowan Williams

Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.

Rowan Williams

And when the world is created, it is created in such a way that those eternal objects of God's loving wisdom become actualities - interacting with one another, relating to God in the finite realm.

Rowan Williams

Marriage has a unique place because it speaks of an absolute faithfulness, a covenant between radically different persons, male and female; and so it echoes the absolute covenant of God with his chosen, a covenant between radically different partners.

Rowan Williams

We shall not find life by refusing to let go of our precious, protected selves.

Rowan Williams

Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn't resolve the question of whether it's true or not. I can see the temptation of simply thinking, 'Well, there's a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it'. And that really won't do.

Rowan Williams

Christians should emphatically be campaigning for justice for the poor - but the Church is not a campaign.

Rowan Williams

Institutions develop because people put a lot of trust in them, they meet real needs, they represent important aspirations, whether it's monasteries, media, or banks, people begin by trusting these institutions, and gradually the suspicion develops that actually they're working for themselves, not for the community.

Rowan Williams

To be a Christian is to believe we are commanded and authorised to say certain things to the world; to say things that will make disciples of all nations.

Rowan Williams

I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort.

Rowan Williams

The world's creation has a beginning from the world's point of view, not from God's.

Rowan Williams

Keeping our eyes on journey's end is what we need - the place where we see at last the world that is greater than the world, the new creation that cannot be contained in present thought or social order or piety.

Rowan Williams

Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old.

Rowan Williams

The Church exists to connect people at the level of their hunger for a new world.

Rowan Williams

In the context of interfaith encounter, we need to bring to the surface how our actual beliefs shape what we do - not simply to agree that kindness is better than cruelty.

Rowan Williams

Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum.

Rowan Williams

To conclude: good journalism is one of the models of good conversation and communication in the wider social context.

Rowan Williams

I am pleased that Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles have decided to take this important step.

Rowan Williams

In spite of the haze of speculation, it is still something of a shock to find myself here, coming to terms with an enormous trust placed in my hands and with the inevitable sense of inadequacy that goes with that.

Rowan Williams

Violence is not to be undertaken by private persons. If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interest.

Rowan Williams