Today Rowan Williams announced his forthcoming departure from the post of Archbishop of Canterbury (the highest post in the Church of England, after the Monarch). It always seemed to me that Dr Williams was someone who proved that faith and personal integrity do not necessarily have to be wholly incompatible with the society of the Western World in the 21st century.
I find zealousness in any belief system, theistic or atheistic, unpalatable, but it seems that much press is given to those scary people - the horrible Terry Jones, or the highly vocal Richard Dawkins as examples from either side of the fence - and so has been generally quite reassuring to see Dr Williams appear every now and then with some quiet, well reasoned statement about some piece of current affairs.
Basically, apart from being a highly intelligent man whose opinions always seem carefully considered and genuinely held, he is the kind of person who shows that not all Christians are ignorant, crazy people, whose views can't ever be respected. He's the poster-boy for those who hold that there is no conflict between science and God: believing someone lit the fuse on the big bang can't quench the passion for knowledge.* So this is me saying thank you to Dr Williams for appearing sane and praying for his future success and for the appointment of somebody suitable as his replacement.
*In fact, it's like a onus to have that passion - if you believe in God, you believe in the parable of the talents and thus you should use every tool at your disposal (including technology, since that is the product of someone else's talents) to increase your talents and help your fellow man. The biggest (and possibly the only) difference that I can see between Christian and non-Christian knowledge-seekers is that Christians believe that one day they will get all the answers. That's not a licence not to look for the answers now, though: From a personal point of view, it's like taking apart a car to find out exactly how it works with the expectation that the manufacturer, having seen I want to know, will tell me what I've missed when my time to look runs out. But in that scenario, as in many, it's a case of if you don't ask, you won't be told (that's even in the Bible, "ask and it shall be given to you", not "sit on your arse and it will be handed to you on a plate").