Rowan Williams pays tribute to Rabbi Sacks while accepting honorary doctorate

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams, has been given an honorary doctorate by a university in recognition of his work in religious life.

Rabbi Alex Goldberg, Surrey University’s Dean of Religious Life and Belief, presented Lord Williams to the university for the award on 14 July.

Williams, who helped to create the university’s chaplaincy team, paid tribute to the former Chief Rabbi, who he worked closely with.

“Real life-giving humanism is a vision of global generosity: shared work, shared hope, shared success, shared service,” he said, accepting the doctorate. 

“The neighbour on the other side of the world is not someone else’s business”.

Rabbi Goldberg praised Lord Williams as “one of the great public intellectuals of our time”, adding both he and Lord Sacks “provided us with an ethos, and an intellectual underpinning for Religious Life and Belief Centre.”

He added: “Whilst Rabbi Sacks urged us to treat our university as a home from home where individuals from different backgrounds build a home together, Lord Williams taught us of the need to widen the doors of our home: to be more socially and more economically inclusive.”