Recently there have been some pretty eye catching headlines about what the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams supposedly said about Christmas. As I commented on Titusonenine, it seems that Archbishop Williams was not so much displaying doubts about the Bible as he was airing doubts?criticisms of Hallmark. Anglican Mainstream in the Diocese of Chelmsford had similar thoughts and took the time to gather more info, so here it is:

There are some really terrible headlines in the papers at the moment about what Rowan Williams ‘said’ about the Christmas story:

“It’s all a Christmas tall story” The Times
“Three Wise Men are just a legend, says Archbishop of Canterbury” The Daily Mail
“Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend'” Daily Telegraph

I’m sure there’s plenty more around like this. The only problem is, none of it is true. Instead, one ‘journalist’ seems to have fed on another. (So no surprise there, then.)

The story is based on a lengthy interview with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 live. You can hear the whole of it, which is very wide-ranging, here. You can read a transcript of the relevant bit of the Archbishop’s conversation here. And you can see the bit where he overlaps with Ricky Gervais on Youtube here.

You’ll notice the Archbishop uses the word ‘legend’ as follows (Simon Mayo is describing an archetypal Christmas card – manger, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, star, three kings, snow):

{Read it all}