LONDON (AP) - Welsh archbishop Rowan Williams, a renowned theologian and outspoken opponent of U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, was chosen Tuesday to be the 104th archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans.
Williams, who was chosen by Prime Minister Tony Blair, succeeds the Most Rev. George Carey, who is retiring on Oct. 31 after 11 years.
"If there is one thing I long for above all else, it is that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture, to draw the strongest energies of our thinking and feeling," Williams said at a news conference after his appointment was announced.
Williams, 52, has been praised in some church quarters as an orthodox Christian and a deep thinker. Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town, describes Williams as "the leading theologian in our communion." But some conservatives have been alarmed that he admitted ordaining a priest whom he suspected of living in a homosexual relationship.
Williams, who was in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11 as terrorist strikes brought down the World Trade Center, has criticized the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and has condemned sanctions against Iraq and the American threats of military action against Saddam Hussein.
Writing recently about the war on terrorism, Williams said, "It is just possible to deplore civilian casualties and retain moral credibility when an action is clearly focused and its goals are on the way to evident achievement.
"It is not possible when the strategy appears confused and political leaders talk about a war that may last for years."
Williams was born June 14, 1950 in Swansea to a Welsh-speaking family.
He received a Ph.D degree from Oxford University in 1975; was a tutor at Westcott House, the Church of England theological college in Cambridge, from 1977 to 1980; was lecturer in divinity at Cambridge University from 1980 to 1986, and professor of divinity at Oxford University from 1986 to 1992. He was elected to the prestigious British Academy in 1990.
He was elected bishop of Monmouth in 1991, and in 1999 was elected archbishop of Wales, the senior clergyman of the Church in Wales, the Anglican church in the principality.
He married Jane Paul in 1981. They have a daughter, Rhiannon, 14, and a son, Pip, 6.
Williams takes the helm of a Church of England which is suffering a steep long-term decline in attendance and increasing pressure on its financial resources. He has advocated "disestablishment" — ending the church's privileged position as England's legally established church, whose supreme governor is the monarch.
Within the Anglican Communion, which claims 70 million members worldwide, there are deep rifts between traditionalists and liberals, particularly on homosexuality and ordaining women.
"I think the church is in for an exciting ride with someone who is not defensive and who is open and who will engage with contemporary issues," Christina Rees, a member of the governing General Synod of the Church of England said Tuesday.
Frank Naggs, a conservative evangelical member of the General Synod, told the BBC his group had "problems with his radical agenda, but in the Christian way we would like to have him clarify some of these issues, so we are arranging an early meeting hopefully to clarify some of these fundamental concerns."
On ordaining homosexual priests, he added: "As far as we are concerned it's against the Biblical revelation ... and we are prepared to go to the wall on this one."
Williams was quoted this year as saying it was not his job to be "going around the bedroom with a magnifying glass doing surveillance." And he said it was not necessary for homosexual priests to be celibate "in every imaginable circumstance."
According to the BBC, Williams is the first Welshman elevated to Canterbury in at least 10 centuries. Records before then, going back to the first archbishop in 597 are murky.
Carey, who was appointed archbishop in 1991, held the Church of England together as it decided to ordain women, but his successor will face the equally difficult issue of whether women should become bishops — as they already do in the Anglican churches of Canada, New Zealand and the United States.