Rowan Williams Quotes
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How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us?
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It's a moral question.
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The question, 'How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?' is therefore very much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't - indeed it would be wrong if it weren't.
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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.
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We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.
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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.
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Silence is letting what there is be what it is. In that sense it has to do profoundly with God: the silence of simply being. We experience that at times when there is nothing we can say or do that would not intrude on the integrity and the beauty of that being.
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Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.
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We are called to show utter commitment to the God who is revealed in Jesus and to all those to whom His invitation is addressed.
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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.
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It is impossible to deny that Christians and Muslims have a common agenda here: both faiths have at their heart the living image of a community raised up by God's call to reveal to the world what God's purpose is for humanity.
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I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we've got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.
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If there is one thing I long for above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture.
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The world's creation has a beginning from the world's point of view, not from God's.
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It would be a real failure if agreeing that it [abortion] was not an electoral issue provided an alibi for taking it seriously as a public issue.
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Nobody...likes talking about enforceable international protocols and yet unless there is a real change in attitude, we have to contemplate those very unwelcome possibilities if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions, of people to die.
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Let's cut to the chase, the sharia controversy. I don't think I, or my colleagues, predicted just how enormous the reaction would be. I failed to find the right words. I succeeded in confusing people. I've made mistakes - that's probably one of them.
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Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable.
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The answer was that in Burundi, having a clean bill of health has taken on a very particular meaning: unless and until you have paid for your hospital treatment, you simply can't leave, you are in effect a captive.
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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.
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To conclude: good journalism is one of the models of good conversation and communication in the wider social context.
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Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.
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One of the most powerful defences the media can offer for controversial actions is, of course, public interest.
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The planet should not be used as a warehouse of resources to serve humanity's selfishness