The Archbishop of Canterbury has extended to the wider Church his plea for Christians to engage with unbelievers.
Dr Rowan Williams, who in March took part in a public debate on atheism, said Christians could make it easier to persuade unbelievers if they were a “bit more convincing in their witness”.
Preaching at the Shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham, the nation’s favourite spiritual place, according to a recent poll, the Archbishop said the “unbeliever cannot manage to get out of his or her head the idea that God is an unfriendly alien", and that people who believe in God become “boring at best and dangerous at worst.”
“It would be easier to persuade them otherwise,” Dr Williams said, “if we Christians were a bit more convincing in our witness to the fact that humanity blossoms where room is given to God.”
Dr Williams, who went head to head on the existence of God with atheist and popular author Philip Pullman in the National Theatre in March, said “the half-life is ultimately the life without faith.”
Dr Williams also used his Bank Holiday sermon, in which he looked at the Mary and the Magnificat, to prod his fellow believers along the path of unity.
He called for a spiritual curriculum of “the three Rs – Relate, Relinquish, Receive,” urging Christians to, in the “company of God”, let go of fear, prejudice and longing to be “known to be always right”, and receive “what God gives through friend and stranger.”
“Magnify the Lord and the Spirit overshadows you. And the Lord will magnify us,” he said.
The Archbishop also delivered a lecture on “The Christian Priest Today” last Friday at Ripon College, Cuddesdon in Oxford. “The priest has to be free to be a lookout, an interpreter, and what I can best call a weaver,” Dr Williams said at the college this year celebrating its 150 anniversary.
He encouraged students to see to see Christ in one another, interpret the Church’s teaching and “weave” communal life.
[© ChurchNewspaper.com, 03/06/04]
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