Rowan Williams in Singapore

Now, some parts of the Communion would be happy if we could be just a federation of loosely connected local bodies. I’m not happy with that. We could be more than that. We should be more than that. We should be living out of each other’s life and resources and vision and be more closely connected. Because I think that is what the New Testament assumes the local church should do and not live in isolation. They lived with each other, from each other’s life. So, that’s my vision.

Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
During recent visit to Singapore, May 2007

More from Singapore with Rowan Williams:

Q: In your opinion, what is the Bible¹s view on homosexuality?

RW:I'm surprised there's only one question on this subject! The Bible tells us three significant things here, I think.

First of all, the Bible begins by setting out a model of human relationship, human sexual relationship between man and woman in the Garden of Eden and that seems to be the model from which everything else is understood and seen as the Scripture unfolds.

Second, in the law code of the Old Testament intercourse between man and man is described as something which is like ritually untouchable, it¹s something that pagans do and Jews, the covenant people, don¹t do it.

Third, in the first chapter of Romans we have Paul taking for granted the argument that this is an example of human unfaithfulness to the order of nature. But I think those taken together explains why the Christian church has historically, thought as it has thought, reacted as it has reacted, to homosexuality.

In the last 30 years or so, some Christians have raised the question of whether what we now see as the phenomenal of homosexuality in the world is exactly what the Bible has in view when it makes these prohibitions and these comments. And that is a debate that is by no means at an end yet. As you know, the position of the Anglican church is that corporately the Anglican church has not been persuaded let's say to change the traditional view on this and that's where our church stands.

That I think is how the biblical view unfolds and I do want say in fairness to those who have raised questions in the last 30 years or so, not all of them want to overturn the authority of the Bible but are simply asking, "Have we got it right? Have we understood it right?" But it's a long, painful discussion and you won¹t need me to say to you at this juncture that some of us in position of leadership in the Anglican church feels the force of the debate very powerfully but also the importance of not rushing into a change that will divide us, that will increase our difficulties in ecumenical interfaith discussion.