IT IS IN THIS context that the appointment of Rowan Williams as the Archbishop of Canterbury emerges as one of the major religious events of the last century. It is not just that Williams is a younger man with impeccable academic and theological credentials — he speaks six languages, has written 14 books, and has taught at Oxford and Cambridge — who espouses a liberal theology; he is already on his way to becoming a media darling, noted for his ability to take on tough issues with a light touch. Almost all media reports about him have noted with delight how he attacked the Disney corporation for corrupting children by turning them into consumers and sexualizing kids’ culture. And his statement that The Simpsons is "one of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility, and virtue" will no doubt increase his likeability and media friendliness. Even on theological matters he has a light hand. After being challenged by Anglican conservatives for his ordination of a gay man in a committed, presumably sexual, relationship, he stated that he didn’t make it a practice to go looking in people’s bedroom windows.

Above all, he is unafraid of making clear moral and theological statements about world affairs. He has condemned the American-led bombing of Afghanistan as "morally tainted," speaking out clearly in an interview published in the Melbourne Anglican Home last month: "I’m still rather unhappy that we did the obvious thing. We reached for the first weapons at hand, and I think it’s yet to be seen whether this has really changed the situation we are in.... The problem of the last few months has been, I think, that because of the enormity of the horror and the great evil of the act of September 11th, people have said, ‘Well, that absolves us in the West from doing any self-questioning, because they over there are clearly so wicked that we don’t have to do any questioning, and if we question ourselves, then somehow that is equivalent of saying they are all right.’ That is absolute nonsense, and really, really dangerous nonsense."

It is easy, as the pope has done, to condemn the September 11 attacks and call for world peace — even Miss America does that. What makes Williams’s statement unique is that he puts the very act of "questioning" on a theological basis. His is not a popular position in America — most people, if you believe the polls, probably would not agree with him; patriotism, in its current guise, is not supposed to come up for "questioning." But for an influential theologian, it is a bold and important assertion. The idea that "questioning" might be a virtue — or, even more important, a moral imperative — is exactly what we need as we face the mounting horrors of our contemporary world. And questioning is exactly what Pope John Paul — in keeping with the papacy of the past century — has resisted.

Even on a smaller scale, Williams speaks soundly and forthrightly in the tradition of Christian humanism: "I think in various ways we are encouraged culturally and politically to underrate the humanity of those who are on the edges in terms of world politics," he told his Melbourne interviewer. "You do hear people saying, ‘Well, you can write off the continent of Africa in the next half century.’ In local terms people will say, ‘Well, we can’t cope with that category,’ whether it is the long-term unemployed or the asylum-seekers or whatever, and we just do not allow ourselves to imagine that human reality. Now I don’t think that Christian belief or Christian theology has an immediate practical answer to how you deal with this. What it does have, though, is an absolute refusal to let you get away with ignoring humanity — you can’t do it, you are not allowed."

Such statements are particularly relevant to the current state of the Catholic Church. As the Vatican’s moral and theological positions have grown more ossified, so has its ability to address the "humanity" of women and men around the world. Even worse, it has gone on the attack. Not content to claim that homosexual activity is sinful, the pope and his spokesmen have found it necessary to speak out against anti-discrimination laws that would protect the "humanity" of gay men and lesbians. This was driven home last week in Toronto, when our own Bernard Cardinal Law — tainted beyond repair in the sex-abuse scandals — called for young people to boycott gay civil-union or commitment ceremonies "because attending them would lend support to unnatural relationships." Law to homosexuals (and their families and loved ones): take your humanity and shove it. The question is not why and how Law could say this, but whether anyone thinks the Church has any moral authority left at all?

In the politics of world religion, Williams’s appointment rings a clarion bell. The action states boldly that the Church of England will be a progressive institution that engages with the world on open and honest terms and will not shrink from making difficult moral statements. Further, Williams’s appointment is a blow to Anglican conservatives — ironically, most of whom are African and Asian clergy — who over the past decade have had major influence in Anglican teaching, particularly regarding social issues such as homosexuality and the ordination of women. Beyond that, the new archbishop’s outspoken progressive, internationalist politics sets the Church of England — which is still intricately connected to the British government, with the queen heading the Church just as she does the country — on a new footing as well.

It is not just Williams’s candor, or his ability to confront the increasingly complicated problems of the contemporary world, that puts him — and the Anglican Church — at the forefront of religious thought today. Most compelling is his desire to engage and communicate with a wide range of people who are looking, if not necessarily for answers, for new questions and ways of understanding their lives and this world. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church played such a role — in the Middle Ages and during periods of the Renaissance, the Church was at the forefront of new thinking and new ways of looking at the world — but that time has ended.

Now, the Catholic Church and this pope — as well as the next, since we are assured that John Paul’s successor will most certainly be just as conservative — looks not to the future but to the past. It has refused to change and grow and, as a result, it has stagnated. From the broad point of view of the world’s religions, there is not really much difference between Catholicism and Protestantism — to the Jew, the Hindu, the Muslim, the animist, the Confucian, they are both simply Christian. Until now, the Roman Catholic Church has assumed the mantle to speak for all of Christendom. But now — almost five centuries since the Reformation — this mantle should pass to the Church of England and its leader, Rowan Williams.

Michael Bronski is the author of The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (St. Martin’s, 1998). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com