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Published: 2 July 2009

Poet and perfectionist cleric

Rowan’s Rule: the biography of a perfectionist archbishop.
By Rupert Shortt. Hodder & Stoughton £20

TWO of the most insightful quotes that sum up Rowan Williams (pictured) in a new 466-page doorstopper biography come from Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford: “His mind is such that he can’t think a sentence without at the same time thinking every possible qualification and nuance”.
He has a mind that surpasses even the minds of William Temple and Michael Ramsey, the two most perfectionist archbishops before him.
Rowan and Richard have always clashed not far beneath the surface, although Richard said it was hard to clash with him over the phone when he infuriatingly agreed with everything he said.
They are both extremely ambitious and of Welsh extraction going back countless generations, Richard was one of his main rivals to what has rightly been called “the poisoned chalice of Canterbury”.
Richard, the more media streetwise of the two, later affirmed that considering how gifted Rowan is (as a published poet and Dostoevsky-loving academic), God must have punished him by making him Archbishop of Canterbury.
This is a considerable understatement. Rowan has brought much self-punishment upon himself so far, notably the fiasco of not consecrating the openly gay Dr Jeffrey John Bishop of Reading at Richard’s and the Oxford diocese’s strongest recommendations.
Up to the time of his moving from the Bishopric of Monmouth to be Head of the Anglican Communion, Rowan had lived in a closeted academic ivory tower so greatly loved by all those about to attain high office in a C of E entirely without the slightest relevance to the needs of the 21st century in any way. He was totally unprepared for the ravenous demands of the See of Canterbury. It has been the greatest challenge of his life.
The ever polite and well-spoken Rowan has had an unashamedly rough ride in the top job so far, with the whole of the Anglican Communion on the brink of collapsing in ruins at last year’s Lambeth Conference, and his not being able to do anything about it in his much-loved role as “a knight in shining armour”.
In this premature tome, Rupert Shortt doesn’t begin to do justice to Rowan as a published poet. It is where the humanity of this shy and vulnerable man, who cannot stop qualifying what he has just said, mostly lies. He is going to regret bitterly having rushed into print when he comes to re-write Rowan’s Rule.
Rowan’s story is not over – barring acts of God the Father. Watch this space.
JOHN HORDER

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