Harry Abbott Williams CR (10 May 1919 – 30 January 2006) was a British Church of England priest, monk, theologian and academic.
[1][5] His bad eyesight meant that he was not found fit to be called up for military service during World War II.
He had been found fit for home duties but the British Government had granted permission for ordinands to continue their training.
[4] In 1948, Williams returned to Cambridge to join the staff of Westcott House, a Liberal Anglo-Catholic theological college.
The principal, Kenneth Carey, was a Liberal Christian and had sought out someone from the Anglo-Catholic tradition to even-out the leadership.
Appointed Dean of Trinity College Chapel in 1958,[4][5] at a time when he still found officiating difficult, he gradually regained his confidence and continued in post for eleven years.
[6] After his death, the Church Times summed up this period in his career as follows:[7] "He began to feel, and say, that "religion" should be exposed as the enemy of humanity and that the God he had worshipped was more rightly hated as a sadistic monster, the Devil; and his despair resulted in a physical collapse as he felt totally isolated.
When Harry Williams wrote True Resurrection (in 1972, and again based on sermons), that was the deliverance which he celebrated and advocated.
"Williams is also remembered for a controversial appearance on the seminal 1960s BBC religious programme Meeting Point on which he suggested that the resurrection of Christ could be interpreted as a metaphor,[8] and for being one of the first Anglican priests to be open about his homosexuality, as his candid autobiography, Some Day I'll Find You, shows.
[10] In 1978 he was invited by the Headmaster of Westminster School to make a Lenten address, in the course of which he described Jesus as a "super God-filled man" and brushed off the Resurrection as a metaphor.
[1] While a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Williams fell in love with a male colleague and could not mentally process that his religion considered this to be a grave sin.