Rowan Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 3680944 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rowan Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rowan |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | a Archbishop of Canterbury |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-2378-1213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms
Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms brings together activists, artists, scholars, and migrants with diverse histories to explore what the experience of migration does with, and to, knowledge, and how its own ways of knowing find expressive form. As the volume’s authors think about physical and imaginative crossings, and the traversals and transactions of knowledge they entail, the book itself crosses and complicates disciplinary and form…
Poetry and Doctrine
Poetry is one of those things in human language that gives a glimpse into something fundamental about humanity, something not about functional, performance-oriented communication but about the business of creating worlds of recognition. It is, from this point of view, inescapably theological. But thinking about this should also illuminate the sense in which doctrinal statements are ‘poetical’ – not because they are imprecise and non-literal, but …
Negative Theology: Some Misunderstandings
Much discussion of ‘negative theology’ seems to assume that it is simply a policy of not making strong truth‐claims about God, even of refusing the positive content of revelation. This essay proposes a typology of negative theologies—grammatical, qualificatory, metaphysical and descriptive—looking at the various points from which negation may arise as an appropriate strategy for adequate or truthful speech about the divine, and seeks to locate th…
Art and the religious imagination: A conversation with Rowan Williams
Dr Deborah Lewer introduces this conversation between herself and Dr Rowan Williams by reflecting on how word and image point to the risk and the promise involved in words about wordless works of art. As a theologian, poet, and former Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams highlights the ongoing, responsive, and dynamic relationship that human beings can develop with particular pieces of visual art. Such an interaction can be extended when a painting…
On Not Misreading Origen
This essay draws together points from earlier short studies in an attempt to clarify why and how Origen was misunderstood by both his critics and his defenders in the fourth century. We need to identify what he is seeking to avoid saying: his concern is to rule out any kind of divisibility in the divine life, and also to challenge any suggestion that the effect of the Logos’s activity in creation is in any way limited. These concerns explain why …
A True Otherness
Karen Kilby’s collection of essays displays all her usual virtues as a writer of theology: concision, clarity, a touch of necessary abrasion from time to time, and a profound humility and realism a
‘Saving our order’: Thomas Becket and the law
The Becket controversy has traditionally been misrepresented as simply a conflict between a universal ideal of the rule of law and the demand of a particular group for certain kinds of immunity. The issue was not only about the secular court’s right to judge delinquent clerks, but about rights of appeal and the control of ecclesiastical property for purposes not determined by lay authority. But Becket’s belief that such resistance required a doct…
Response to Amy Hollywood
The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation by John Wortley
Research Article| April 01 2019 The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation by John Wortley Wortley, John, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 652 pp. Rowan Williams Rowan Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2019) 25 (1-3): 409–410. https://do…
‘Not Cured, Not Forgetful, Not Paralysed’: A Response to Comments on The Tragic Imagination
Religion and the environment
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams and renowned sociologist Bruno Latour discuss the role of religion in society within the context of escalating environmental crisis. If we move away from an ownership worldview we will stop seeing the environment in terms of owner and possessor
Charles Taylor and Rowan Williams in Conversation
The question of terms is important to settle before we begin to question the phenomena of religion and secularism in present day society.Very often, the term religion in the news is associated with terms like fundamentalism or extremism, but religion is not always the same thing in every place, and extremism is not always religious: it takes many forms in different kinds of societies.This association of religion in our secular condition with fund…
Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life
"Discipleship," says Rowan Williams in this companion to his best-selling Being Christian, "is a state of being. Discipleship is about how we live; not just the decisions we make, not just the things we believe, but a state of being." Having covered baptism, Bible, Eucharist, and prayer in Being Christian, Williams turns his attention in this book to what is required for us to continue following Jesus and growing in faith
Theological Doubt and Institutional Certainty: An Anglican Paradox
Explicating John Donne's ‘doubt wisely’, this essay argues for the theological and psychological sophistication of Richard Hooker's distinction of wise from unwise doubt and shows why this led him to support compulsory adherence to the Church of England. Framed by consideration of how his ideas were adopted by Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643), it explores Hooker's thinking on what is certain in itself and where we can properly doubt. It is w…
Silence: A Christian History
Book Review| January 01 2016 Silence: A Christian History MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Silence: A Christian History. (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 338 pp. Rowan Williams Rowan Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2016) 22 (1): 122–123. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3323073 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Linke…
A Man of Many Parts: Essays in Honor of John Bowker on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday
From the moment of leaving school at 16 to learn spectacle making, Neal Arden has truly been 'a man of many parts'. After service in the British South Africa Mounted Police in Rhodesia, he was accepted to study drama at RADA, which led to a long and varied career in theatre, film, radio and television. He has appeared with many of the greats of their day from Richard Tauber, Leslie Henson, Trevor Howard and Dulcie Grey to Roger Moore, Harry Secom…
Response to Kerr, Hedley, Pickstock, Ward and Soskice
The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation
Book Review| September 01 2015 The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation Wortley, John, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 652 pp. Rowan Williams Rowan Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2015) 21 (3): 510–511. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961…
An intellectual presence? Alister McGrath on C. S. Lewis 1
This article reviews Alister E. McGrath’s The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis
A Companion to Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker was a learned philosophical theologian and engaged polemicist of the later sixteenth century who explained and defended the Elizabethan religious and political settlement, and shaped definitively the self-understanding of the English ecclesiastical establishment for centuries to come. This Companion to Richard Hooker brings together a representative body of contributors with a view to offering a summary of the current state of scho…
What is Christianity: A lecture given at the Islamic University of Islamabad, Islamabad 23 November 2005
Imagine someone watching, over a period of about one year, the things that happen in a Christian church. They would be aware that one day of the week had special significance. Particularly if they
Islam, Christianity and Pluralism: The Zaki Badawi Memorial Lecture, Lambeth Palace, London 26 April 2007
The word ‘pluralism’ is used very frequently and very freely these days as a characterization of the kind of society we live in; but, like many words used freely and frequently, the more you look a
Muslim–Christian Dialogue in Britain and Beyond: A lecture given at Al-Hamra Hall, Lahore 23 November 2005
My intention in this talk is simply to offer some very basic reflections on how the dialogue between faiths has evolved in the British situation over the last ten to twenty years. But I want to put
Religious Diversity and Social Unity: A lecture given at Hilton Hotel, Singapore 6 December 2007
If you believe what some commentators have to say, one of the major factors provoking conflict in our world is the sheer fact of different religious convictions: in the United Kingdom, it seems to
Faith Communities in a Civil Society: Christian Perspectives
On 11 September 1906, Mohandas Gandhi addressed a meeting of some 3,000 people in the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg to protest against the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for all I
Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation
Negative theology or apophasis - the idea that God is best identified in terms of 'absence', 'otherness', 'difference' - has been influential in modern Christian thought, resonating as it does with secular notions of negation developed in continental philosophy. Apophasis also has a strong intellectual history dating back to the early Church Fathers. Silence and the Word both studies the history of apophasis and examines its relationship with con…
Convictions, Loyalties and the Secular State
The article examines the relationship between communal religious identity and the secular, liberal state. It addresses the concern that religious allegiance undermines an individual's or group's political loyalty. The liberal secular state is threatened when a religious community participates in public discussion because this challenges the positioning of religious belief as personal and private. Currently this issue is brought into sharp focus b…
Theological Doubt and Institutional Certainty: An Anglican Paradox
Explicating John Donne's ‘doubt wisely’, this essay argues for the theological and psychological sophistication of Richard Hooker's distinction of wise from unwise doubt and shows why this led him to support compulsory adherence to the Church of England. Framed by consideration of how his ideas were adopted by Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643), it explores Hooker's thinking on what is certain in itself and where we can properly doubt. It is w…
Poetic and Religious Imagination
Religious Realism“: On Not Quite Agreeing With Don Cupitt
Leach's Bible
Trinity and Revelation
The Formation of Christendom
Judith Herrin has given us in this substantial but very readable book a superb survey of the period in which the conditions for the emergence of mediaeval Europe came together—roughly the four centuries from 450 to 850 a.d. In one sense the book is also a contribution
The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick
This volume of essays honours Henry Chadwick, probably the greatest and best-known of English scholars of early Christianity. The essays, written by many of the leading theologians and church historians in the English-speaking world, discuss different aspects of how Christianity developed norms and standards in its teaching, how it came to have - and to enforce - a definition of orthodoxy and heresy. It is a collection of fundamental work by inte…
The Literal Sense of Scripture
The need for a Christian Critique of National Messianism
Damnosa haereditas: Pamphilus’ Apology and the Reputation of Origen
‘Good For Nothing’?: Augustine On Creation
Between Politics and Metaphysics: Reflections in the Wake of Gillian Rose
Interiority and Epiphany: A Reading in New Testament Ethics
Our “true self” is not an interior space but a product of the labors of time and the recognition of others. But how, then, do we move beyond rivalry to a genuinely common good beyond opposition and negotiation? Wise Stoics and Cynics had an answer. So did the Christian Church, based on Jesus’ offer of unconditional access to God for all—a non‐competitive justifying grace. A twofold ethics and spirituality is displayed in Paul and Matthew. Action …
Being a People: Reflections on the Concept of the 'Laity
Once you were not a people; but now you are the people of God' (I Peter 2: 10). This is perhaps the fundamental text for thinking about the meaning of laos in Christian theology, a text that directly evokes the promise of Hosea 2:24, though it gives it a new turn of significance. In Hosea, God has declared that he will cast off those who were called his people (1 :9), reversing the ancient covenant formula expressing God's commitment to Israel (E…
Beyond Liberalism
Russian Philosophy as Ideology
Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change
End of War
Research Article| April 01 2002 End of War Rowan Williams Rowan Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2002) 101 (2): 267–278. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-101-2-267 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Rowan Williams; E…
Conversation: Theological Education in the Anglican Communion
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Theology and the Political: The New Debate
Theology and the Political: The New Debate, sic v
The essays in Theology and the Political —written by some of the world’s foremost theologians, philosophers, and literary critics—analyze the ethics and consequences of human action. They explore the spiritual dimensions of ontology, considering the relationship between ontology and the political in light of the thought of figures ranging from Plato to Marx, Levinas to Derrida, and Augustine to Lacan. Together, the contributors challenge the beli…
Convictions, Loyalties and the Secular State
The article examines the relationship between communal religious identity and the secular, liberal state. It addresses the concern that religious allegiance undermines an individual's or group's political loyalty. The liberal secular state is threatened when a religious community participates in public discussion because this challenges the positioning of religious belief as personal and private. Currently this issue is brought into sharp focus b…
Christians and Muslims before the One God: An address given at Al-Azhar al-Sharı ̄f, Cairo on 11 September 2004
Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief
'Tokens of Trust' presents an introduction to the Christian faith which explores the key themes of Christian belief and the reality of living them
A Companion to Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker was a learned philosophical theologian and engaged polemicist of the later sixteenth century who explained and defended the Elizabethan religious and political settlement, and shaped definitively the self-understanding of the English ecclesiastical establishment for centuries to come. This Companion to Richard Hooker brings together a representative body of contributors with a view to offering a summary of the current state of scho…
What is Christianity: A lecture given at the Islamic University of Islamabad, Islamabad 23 November 2005
Imagine someone watching, over a period of about one year, the things that happen in a Christian church. They would be aware that one day of the week had special significance. Particularly if they
Philosophy (38 works) · Theology (23 works) · History (18 works) · Law (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Rowan (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works)