Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury has been widely criticised for his views on homosexuality.   In particular, a speech he made to members of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Association when he was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University in 1989 has been often attacked or quoted out of context.   

It was a brave talk.  Williams began by describing the essence of what I would call good sex, but which he preferred to call “the body’s grace”.  He took care to separate it from the many other good things that sometimes go with sex, such as love, fidelity, honesty, and wanted children, to name but four.   Williams agreed that these things were all good but he also recognised that there was something else good about sex. 

He took as his example, the experience of Sarah Lawton, a character in the Raj Quartet novels by Paul Scott, who gets coldly seduced by a man who does not love her, and ends up having a miserable abortion.  Nevertheless, the novelist tells us, during the act, their bodies each make the other happy.  Their pleasure is heightened by the knowledge of the happiness each has caused the other, and by knowing that their excitement is having this effect.   As anyone who has ever experienced this sort of reflexively heightened pleasure in another's body will agree, that is indeed good sex, albeit surrounded by a bad relationship and horrid consequences.  

This was not an original idea.  Williams quoted the philosopher Thomas Nagel saying more or less the same thing, but it’s strong stuff for a bishop.  It led him on to say much more that was interesting; the potential for the body’s grace to be experienced in both heterosexual and same sex encounters, and the importance of risk and failure in good sex.  Williams knows faithfulness and commitment are good but he recognised the reality of human sexuality and was able to accept that, as with Sarah Layton’s loveless encounter, the body’s grace exists outside perfection. 

The speech is tolerant and wise.   Read the full text here.

Jim Thornton. Nottingham 22 Dec 2002