When he first came to office he was the liberal knight in shining armor. The UK broad sheets lauded him as an intellectual that fitted the new mood of the Anglican Communion. He was pleasantly vague about doctrine, somewhat loose on other peoples' morals, especially on the mordant issue of homosexuality, but he had the right Oxbridge credentials. He was seen as a definite upgrade to the red brick Evangelical George Carey who was viewed as intransigent on gay issues, not quite acceptable to the upper classes, but who was much loved by the Global South for his stance on sin, sex and salvation.

Williams swept into office on a wave of hopeful anticipation, a new enlightened man, an Affirming Catholic with impeccable liberal credentials for a new [sexually] enlightened church grappling with post modernity.

His tract "The Body's Grace" gave hope to homosexuals, but he seemed equally comfortable speaking to ALPHA groups and leaders. His books were dutifully ambiguous enough to elate the left while infuriating evangelicals, but his knowledge of the Church Fathers gave Anglo-Catholics enough of a bone for them to see him at least as a simpatico soul, if not exactly radiating high church incense.

He could handle ambiguity, talk with atheists and agnostic intellectuals, while promising little (like a Third Province) dodging and weaving as the communion began to roil and rage over pansexuality. He was, so everyone thought, a man for the times - an Everyman Anglican.

But then events overtook him. He either did not understand, or failed to recognize the growing size and impact of the Global South and their deep roots in British evangelicalism, and in his desire to accommodate liberal leaders of Western Provinces, he found himself increasingly at odds with the growing resistance of the Global South that saw the faith in more black and white terms, steadfastly refusing to cave into, or compromise, the 'faith once delivered.'

Over the months the good will he came in with, slowly evaporated. His public utterances raised more questions than they answered. His speeches and lectures were viewed as incomprehensible by ordinary Anglicans, and his statements endeavoring to cope with such titanic events as 911 and earthquakes, left ordinary Anglicans bewildered. His erudition got in the way of plain speech, opening the door to Anglo-Catholic writer, priest and intellectual gadfly Dr. Geoffrey Kirk to opine that in his statement about the Tsunami tragedy, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams had significantly omitted all mention of the Messiah.

The love affair Western liberal Anglicans had for him quickly began to evaporate.

The first to love and leave him was The Episcopal Church's leading homosexual activist, Dr. Louie Crew. He had praised Williams for his openness in inviting him and Ernest, his partner, to Williams' consecration, urging those critical of Williams to say "he needs our prayers and support. He will likely be with us for a long time. We can do that much better as friends than as adversaries."

That was then. This is what Crew thinks of Williams now.

"I confess to being so weary with +Rowan that this [Windsor Report] seems like a cup of cold water brought by a judge to the ones he has put in the jail, whether he wanted to or not. The Windsor Report is a monstrous interference in the life of The Episcopal Church, choosing sides in our democratic assembly and trying to pit one against another. It has made a crisis where there was no crisis, and it has distracted from the real crises of AIDS, war, poverty, racism..."

And this.

"The Windsor Report stoops to isolate +Gene Robinson and to shame those who participated in or even approved his consecration. +Rowan's own refusal to meet with +Gene sends a very clear signal. The blood of Morley is on +Rowan's own hands as well as on the hands of those whose rhetoric he has had the decency to condemn. How much did +Rowan's betrayal of his friend Jeffrey John embolden bullies outside as well as inside the Church?"

But it was John Shelby Spong the archdemon of Anglican conservatives and hater of all things orthodox who went right out on a limb and blasted Williams, condemning him in the most strident of language.

Wrote Spong: "His [Williams] actions have revealed a fatal character flaw. He has no courage, no backbone and no ability to lead. Seldom have I watched a quicker collapse of potential. It was an abdication of leadership so dramatic as to be breathtaking. He is now destined to be a long-serving but ineffective and empty man who has been revealed to be incapable of carrying the responsibility placed upon him. Leaders have only one opportunity to make a first impression. Rowan Williams has failed that test miserably."

Spong raged that the Windsor Report was "nothing more than a pathetic ecclesiastical attempt at damage control" and was "a dishonest effort to achieve cheap unity by sacrificing reality and truth". Spong is "scathing" in his attack on the leadership of the Church.

Spong has poured unremitting ridicule and scorn on Rowan Williams over his apparent failure to reign in Global South primates and bishops.

Dr Rowan Williams and his colleagues are described as "frightened" or "inept" and are criticized for turning a minor crisis over homosexuality into a "full scale disaster" in The Windsor Report.

And to round out his bashing, Spong, in a preface to a book compiled by the Modern Churchpeople's Union on Williams, blasted Williams for "choosing to play it safe" by failing to speak out against anti-gay "bigotry".

Among the contributors is the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev. Colin Slee who condemns Williams for making compromises with the communion's orthodox.

The book's contributors also criticized Williams for failing to criticize conservatives for their behavior at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly gathering of Anglican bishops which upheld a traditional line on homosexuality.

If the Tower of London was beheading betrayers of the liberal gospel, Spong would have Williams head stuck on a corner portico.

Truly a man's enemies shall be of his own household.

And this, despite the fact that Williams has repeatedly rebuked conservatives in the Anglican Communion for the hostility of their language towards homosexuals. He has labeled it homophobic.

In Ireland recently, where some 35 Primates gathered to weigh the consequences of Western province acts to destabilize the communion over sexuality issues, antagonism towards the genuinely humble, though deeply conflicted Archbishop Williams reached a new level.

Reports VirtueOnline received out of the conference says that Williams and Griswold had a face off just prior to Griswold's departure. The fey American leader known for his "prophetic" utterances in support of sodomite behavior lit into Williams accusing him of ineffectual and weak leadership - in short failing to play out the logical conclusions of his own liberal philosophy towards all things gay and tipping his hand towards the now vigorously engaged Global South evangelicals.

It was a dramatic turning point in the relationship between the two men. From public photo ops and benign bear hugs to private vituperation, their relationship has slipped into estrangement, perhaps never to recover. Griswold saw Williams' siding with the Global South as the great betrayal of his hopes and expectation to broker in a life-denying, death affirming behavior.

Following the primatial conference, Williams looking painfully wan, explaining that someone is going to have to say they are sorry, but it won't be Frank Tracy Griswold. "It might end up in further divisions. We hope not. We will try to avoid it. Any lasting solution, I think, will require people to say somewhere along the line, yes they were wrong."

Then came word that Williams had come under attack from unnamed primates in Ireland. A report in the leftist Guardian newspaper by Stephen Bates said certain Primates treated Williams badly.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Bates wrote: "Some primates were personally offensive towards Rowan and gratuitously rude about him behind his back. They had no respect for him and said: 'He'll do what we tell him to.' If I wasn't a Christian, I would walk away from this right now. I believe a split in the church is inevitable."

In contrast to the archbishops' statement that they had met together with "a generosity of spirit ... Christian charity and abundant goodwill", one of the leaders at the meeting told the Guardian that it had, instead, taken place in an atmosphere of rancour and mutual hostility with Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, being treated with contempt by the conservative faction."

A number of the African Primates privately attacked Williams for his lack of will, his prevarications and much more on the issues, wrote Bates. He was losing their confidence, he said. As a result Williams could not even muster an agreement to have communion together thus declaring that a de facto schism was already in place.

Following the primatial gathering the attacks erupted quickly and fiercely. Criticism of the Archbishop came from his own Affirming Catholic friends, an organization he himself helped found and whose American patron is none other than Frank Griswold. The liberal Catholic group took him to task following the Primates' meeting in Ireland saying they were "disappointed" for his hardline stance on homosexuality.

They resented that the North American Churches had been asked to repent for consecrating a homosexual bishop and blessing gay "marriages". They saw in Williams' action, a complete reversal of his earlier stand and a repudiation of his position in "The Body's Grace."

In a letter to The Telegraph, signed by the organization's standing committee, the group expressed skepticism that homosexuals would be given a fair hearing throughout the Church.

By appearing to side with the conservative majority in the row over homosexuality, he had dismayed liberals who once hailed him as their champion.

The Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, said he was "profoundly anxious" about the direction in which Dr Williams was taking the Church. That was to put it mildly.

The Rev Giles Fraser, chairman of the liberal Inclusive Church pressure group, also expressed his disappointment at the Archbishop's stance.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has been accused of "betraying his own principles and betraying the gay community" by pressuring the gay canon, Jeffrey John, to resign from his appointment as Bishop of Reading.

And Peter Tatchell the head of OutRage! accused Williams of caving in to pressure from the theologically orthodox. "The Archbishop of Canterbury has betrayed his own principles and betrayed the gay community. He is appeasing homophobes within the Anglican Church. A brave man betrays his friends with a sword, a coward does it with a kiss. The Archbishop of Canterbury has kissed the ring of ecclesiastical bigots like the Archbishop of Nigeria. He is allowing the church's agenda to be dictated by the voices of unreason and intolerance. Dr Williams is colluding with Anglicans who preach a gospel of prejudice and discrimination." On the American front a common objection to Williams was found in John Gibson an attorney in southern California and a member of St. James (Wilshire) an ultra liberal parish who said, "On a personal level, I have the gravest difficulty in having any respect at all for the titular head of the Communion, the singularly overmatched +Rowan Williams. An old friend of mine from Texas says, "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos". I fear the Archbishop is living proof of the wisdom of that remark. By his sheer pusillanimity over the past several months, he has succeeded in demonstrating to me only that he has no leadership qualities whatsoever and is certainly not one to whom I am likely to look for spiritual guidance."

Williams, once the darling of the left, was now being scorned and ridiculed by those who once threw garlands at his feet.

In a strange touch of irony only American conservatives had nice words to say about him. Network leader Robert Duncan praised the outcome of the Communiqué, heaping praise on both the primates and singling out Rowan Williams for his leadership qualities. The president of the American Anglican Council, Canon David Anderson described Williams as "a godly man."

The left saw it as the Great Betrayal, the right saw it as Williams [finally] doing the right thing.

A Church of England leader who knows him well says that if Williams leads with his head he will be orthodox, if he leads with his heart he will swing the other way. It is the paradox of a pastoral heart attached to a brilliant mind. Which part of Williams will win?

Publicly, at least the primates insisted they had no desire for their communion to fall apart. Archbishop Peter Carnley of Australia told a press conference: "A loose federation is of no interest for the primates ... we want to pursue a common mission in the world."

Archbishop Drexel Gomez, primate of the West Indies, added: "We have a deep affection for the Anglican communion. We want it to thrive and do well."

But there is no sign of a fundamental change of heart or any intention from Frank Griswold that he will retreat in his attitude towards the Episcopal Church's liberal stance on homosexual behavior. He has said publicly that there is no backing down on his church's position on practicing homosexual priests and bishop(s) in the ECUSA.

But the 'Good News' itself has the power to effect change, someone wrote, but unless Dr. Rowan Williams sounds a clear bell about what he believes, and will side with truth rather than a misplaced compassion, then his loneliness will only grow and the estrangement already there will isolate him further. He will be the loneliest occupant ever to reside in Lambeth Palace.

In the end he may have to turn to the people he feels most uncomfortable with - the communion's faithful, orthodox believers, men and women who have a gospel to proclaim, who are single-minded about human sexuality, and who will, at the end of the day draw alongside him in his struggle to affirm the truth and sustain his leadership.

END