Rowan Williams's teaching on sexuality

David Phillips  |  Features
Date posted:  1 Sep 2008
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The teaching of Rowan Williams on Scripture and sexual immorality has been documented by a number of people, including a substantial report entitled ‘Rowan Williams and Scripture’ produced by the Society for the Propogation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine (SPREAD). The following is a summary of their summary.

Text in italics is from the SPREAD Report.

It should be noted that Williams has been more coy about articulating his opinions since being appointed to the See of Canterbury, but he does not appear to have been willing to distance himself from his earlier teaching which is much more forthright.

Williams began his efforts to overcome Scripture’s prohibition of same gender sexual relations and obtain the Church’s approval of such conduct some 25 years ago when he was a university professor. Williams explained in a newspaper interview in 2002 that he set about to do so when, during the course of his experience of ‘being the spiritual director to people of the homosexual persuasion’, he ‘did come to a point where’ he ‘could no longer say that the biblical account answers all of the questions we have or want to ask.’

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