On holding the Anglican Communion together:
The Anglican Communion, which is a series of self-governing churches that span 164 countries and which is divided into 38 provinces, is a fellowship that is more and more seeking to find its own identity. By that I mean, life in sub-Saharan Africa is very different from life in the United States or Canada or the United Kingdom, and one of things Rowan is going to have to face, as did George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury before him, is how do you take a worldwide communion that encompasses such divergent views, such different historical contexts, and give the various parts... a deep sense of its own commonality and interconnectedness? For example, if I were living in northern Nigeria, where there is a very strong and somewhat hostile, from a Christian point of view, Muslim population, I couldn't enjoy the kind of theological breadth and latitude that I can enjoy here in the United States, where as a Christian I experience no hostility. Episcopalians here can think a number of things about issues and doctrines, whereas in northern Nigeria, for example, the church has to be absolutely of one mind if it is going to hold its own against a very resolute Islam. When bishops from northern Nigeria meet bishops from the United States, there is a discrepancy that is rooted and grounded in the difference of our two contexts. I think that's part of the difficulty of the Anglican Communion finding its commonality, because we always see things from our own point of view... One of the challenges for the Archbishop of Canterbury is to help us inhabit one another's contexts, to understand deeply and with compassion and an open mind how various people in different situations are struggling to be faithful to the Gospel, sometimes in different ways.

On sexuality:
Rowan's views on sexuality are fairly broad and deeply compassionate. For some people, the dominant issue in their own theological consciousness is sexuality. But if ultimately orthodoxy is determined on the basis of one's views of human sexuality, then we have experienced the ultimate sexualization of the church, because we are then saying the divergent views on sexual ethics are more important than our fundamental understandings of God. I think Rowan has his own personal views and is not shy about expressing them, but Rowan has also said very clearly (and it's certainly something I deal with in this country), "I am someone who is called to be shepherd to the entire community, and therefore my own points of view are put aside in the service of a larger conversation that involves all points of view."

On orthodoxy:
Rowan Williams's theology is consummately orthodox. I think Rowan could probably run circles around most of us in terms of expounding in a very compelling way the classical doctrines of the Trinity [or] the nature of Christ. He is someone whose orthodoxy in my mind is beyond question, and you can't question his orthodoxy solely because he sees grace at work in the lives of homosexual persons.

On the future:
There are people in the Anglican Communion who feel they understand exactly who Rowan Williams is. Some of them see him as either their enemy or their particular friend. I think we are all going to be surprised by Rowan because he's very much his own person and isn't easily typed, isn't easily described. Whatever side of the divide we fall on, we're all going to be surprised and led to new places and new understandings by this immensely prayerful and articulate exponent of the Christian faith.