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BBC NEWS | UK | Archbishop defends Sharia remarks

Rowan Williams is undoubtedly a profound thinker leading the Anglican Church through some of its greatest crises in recent years. The ordination of women, gay priests and the adoption issue, alongside more traditional subjects such as the war in Iraq are areas where he has - successfully so far - walked a tightrope.

So whatever possessed him to sound off on a subject which he admits is largely beyond his competence? And, after so many years walking a careful path through many minefields, how is it that he so misjudged the prevailing mood?

For the record, the actual text of the Archbishop’s speech is here.

It is quite clear that the hysterical presentation of Dr Williams’s views in parts of the media is both unhelpful and unfair. But it is also clear the Dr Williams really is advocating (in his words) “a higher level of public legal regard being paid to communal identity”, or, in other words, the genuine enshrinement into national law of some of the religious laws of a particular community.

It has since been suggested that Williams is simply trying to put ideas into the public debate. But this leaves us with the question: why is it necessary to consider these ideas? In academic debate, certainly all ideas can be considered, and all ideas are in some certain sense (purely as ideas) acceptable. But, equally, in public political debate, some ideas are simply dangerous. Enoch Powell’s famous ‘rivers of blood‘ speech might have had a different impact if published in a dusty academic journal, and written in academic language. But its actual effect, in Birmingham in 1968, was purely negative.

Why might these ideas be dangerous? (I am not, at this point, saying that they are). Essentially, they create the notion in a community that (in parts at least) already sees itself as poorly served and beleaguered, that certain rights or moral expectations are denied to them.

Is this a bad thing in itself? Quite possibly not. If we decided to outlaw ideas which might be disquieting or destabilising in a particular community, then we would not have many ideas left, and they would not be very interesting ones.

Is it a bad thing that the Archbishop of Canterbury is putting this forward? I think, most definitely, yes. There is no ‘ex cathedra’ in Protestant religion in the way it exists in the Roman Catholic church. Rowan Williams does not speak for all Anglicans, and certainly not for all of Britain. But the people who know that are Anglican and other Protestant Christians, and people who are culturally close to them. Very few people - unless they have made a special study - have much awareness of how other religions function. Witness the Western reaction to the pronouncements of the Ayatollah Khomeni which, in yet less enlightened times than these, were interpreted by many as the statements of all of Islam for all of the Muslim world. Rowan Williams’s ideas are couched in the careful language of the academic, which denies as much as it affirms. But the authority they appear to carry immediately cancels that out. I won’t labour the point: the reaction which the Archbishop’s comments have generated in the secular British press clearly indicate the ambivalent status of Archepiscopal pronouncements.

But there is another question: are his ideas right? Are we fooling ourselves with the belief that the British legal system can continue without compromise with Sharia, or other legal systems? If the Archbishop is right, then his comments are all the more important for being controversial.

Rowan Williams makes much play of deconstructing Sharia, the Enlightenment, and the nature of Law itself. Has no-one mentioned to him that deconstruction, which was all the rage in the 1980s, has gone out of fashion as an academic tool? He talks about overcoming the crude opposites and mythologies, but he fails to recognise (at least in this lecture) that both the enlightenment discourse and Sharia are founded on opposites (crude or not) and on unproven, a priori positions (generally referred to by atheists with the shorthand ‘mythologies’).

Deconstruction is not, in any case, a tool which has been much used by constitutional experts or by lawyers. We can talk about multi-layered discourse and contextualisation as much as we like, but the purpose of constitutions and legal systems is to be as unambiguously prescriptive as possible. Law is by its nature normative. Non-normative law is a contradiction in terms.

The progress of British jurisprudence from the Middle-Ages to today is the simplification of many systems into one system. In fact, to some extent, we still have two systems because civil and criminal law operate in tandem. However, civil and criminal law are administered by the same organisation. We have dispensed with ecclesiastical courts, courts of honour, courts for the nobility, for the commoner and for the serf. Whether or not this makes sense in a different cultural context is a moot question.

It was Samuel Rutherford in 1644 who, in Lex Rex (the law is king) refuted the doctrine of Rex Lex (the king is the law). After the Restoration of the monarchy he was cited for high treason, but his ideas (incidentally argued straight from the Bible, from Deuteronomy 17) set the stage for limited government and constitutionalism.

Rowan Williams argues that Sharia and Rabbinical courts are already in use in Britain for arbitration. This is a red herring: two persons may choose any means they like of arbitration, provided that they both accept the outcome. If, in retrospect, one party is unhappy with the outcome, they can still go to the courts. In many cases of civil law, the courts will first ask what attempts at arbitration have been made, and look askance at a case where no attempt at arbitration has been made.

In reality, while there may be space for more than one system within British jurisprudence - even if that is undesirable - there can be no basis for accommodation with a system which cannot exist as a subordinate partner. Rutherford’s argument about limited government and constitutionality apply as strongly to Sharia law as to absolutist monarchs. A system which cannot accept a restriction on its authority cannot be accommodated: and, without any attempt to mythologise or trade in crude opposites, Sharia is not a system (or tradition, if you like) which is designed for compromise.

For such an intelligent and profound thinker, it is surprising, and dismaying, that Rowan Williams did not think this through.
Finally, one more question. Should he resign? He may resign, but he should not. When we reach the point where Archbishops are subject to popular opinion in the same way that politicians are, we have reached a point where the freedom of the church - or any non-government body - has been fundamentally compromised. Rowan Williams has made a mistake. He should answer to his employer on this issue. But since, quite literally, his employer is the divinity, we should reflect on this common proverb: To err is human, to forgive divine.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Christianity is on party’s agenda

The (so-called) ‘Scottish Christian Party’ is contesting the Scottish elections with a mixture of old-fashioned Calvinism and modern right-of-centre politics. Great Britain — and especially Scotland — has a long and honourable tradition of Christians in public life, but, unlike much of mainland Europe, there is no tradition of ostensibly Christian political parties. It is true that some Christians — in common with many voters of all faiths and none — have lost confidence in mainstream political parties. But has the time come for specifically Christian parties to call on the support committed believers, or should Christians seek to involve themselves in mainstream parties? And what about this particular ‘Christian’ party?
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BBC NEWS | Scotland | North East/N Isles | Honours probe MP sorry for ‘romp’

SNP’s Angus McNeil, the Western Isles MP who demanded and vigorously promoted the Cash for Honours probe, has apologised for a ‘romp’ involving two teenage girls, half his age, just a few weeks before his wife gave birth, and two months after he was elected to parliament.

As a media story this has all the makings of a classic, offering equal amounts of prurience, bad judgment, and political hypocrisy. But it begs deeper and more serious questions about the nature of integrity in (post)modern British politics.
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Tony Blair has announced that there will be no opt-out for Catholic adoption agencies, but that there will be a 21 month delay in the introduction of the law to give them time to adjust.

In an ideal world, clashes of the kind we have witnessed between the government and the Catholic church could be resolved without violence to the law or to conscience. Let us accept that we do not live in an ideal world.

But even in this non-ideal world, the furore and its conclusion have been a shoddy episode that did nobody any credit.
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See New Statesman - Culture wars

The re-election of George W Bush has prompted a flurry of news, magazine and broadcast articles agonising about the prospect of the rise of the religious right in Britain. The New Statesman, in the person of Cristina Odone, is particularly worried about the effect of the rise of evangelicalism in the UK. She is worried about the Alpha Course, which has attracted 1.6 million Britons (data - Christian Research), and its ‘propaganda’ campaign of 1,500 billboards, 3,000 buses and 290 taxi tip-up seats.

Odone also cites the eerie words of a British teenager who talks eloquently about how she attends the Christian Union at her school, doesn’t believe it is “right” to have sex before marriage, and regards the family unit as a sacred ideal.

To be fair, her cover story also highlights the growth of secularist fundamentalism: banning Christmas cards and changing ’spouses’ to ‘partners’.

But there’s a fundamentally mistaken assumption in all of these kinds of articles: that Christians in Britain will tend to be right-wing, and that evangelical Christians will be especially right-wing.

Did the people who write these articles ever actually visit a church? And did they perhaps not spot that churches were leading opponents of the war in Iraq? Perhaps no-one remembers the church-led Jubilee 2000 campaign. It was, after all, four years ago. But somebody ought to have spotted that Christians last week opposed the legalisation of super-casinos, despite extreme pressure from US capitalists.

The truth is that the Christian faith is not beholden to any political party or political viewpoint. British evangelical Christians are pro-marriage, anti-abortion, and in unthinking moments may tend to favour Israel as an idea. So far so right. But they also oppose the greed culture espoused by Margaret Thatcher, support the rights of asylum seekers, and run hundreds of charities for third world development. Which would put them on the left of the spectrum. And then, Christians believe strongly in the conscience of the individual, in grace, freedom and the equality and dignity of all people of all races. Which puts them in the middle of the political spectrum.

The game really isn’t worth playing. Christianity - even evangelical Christianity - has been around a long, long time before British or US politics coalesced into right and left. And it will be around long after the current politics has changed into something else.

In the General Election next year, no party will have the right to call on the unqualified support of the churches. But all and any parties can show an awareness of the Christian worldview. That - and putting up politicians of integrity - may make the difference in swaying the Christian vote.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Barroso backs down over EU vote

Buttiglione has a right to his opinions. He must do - if not then we have succumbed to a new kind of censorship which does not remotely match our much vaunted views on human rights. But does this mean that he has a right to be Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner for the European Union? Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini certainly seems to think so. He has said that Buttiglione remains Italy’s candidate.

There’s a recent British comparison which no-one seems to have pointed out. Not so long ago a UKIP MEP was in trouble on a very similar issue. BBC NEWS | Politics | UKIP MEP in row over working women. After getting a seat on the Euopean Parliament’s women’s rights committee, he told journalists: “No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age.” He went on to say “I just don’t think they clean behind the fridge enough”. and “I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home. I am going to promote men’s rights.”

Of course, Godfrey Bloom later claimed that his remarks were humorous. Some of us, of course, believe that Bloom’s entire party is a bit of a joke. But I don’t think it’s the humour that saved him.

The difference, which Buttiglione and Frattini don’t seem to have grasped, is that there is a fundamental difference between an elected and an appointed office. In terms of mandate, a European Commissioner is exactly the same as a senior civil servant. Except of course that a senior civil servant actually had to go through a job interview to reach their position.

In some ways it is despicable for Godfrey Bloom to say the things he did, but, on the other hand, this may be exactly the kind of thing that the 14% of Yorkshirepersons who voted for him wanted to hear. And if not, they can vote for someone else next time.

We get no choice about Buttiglione - or, at least, we didn’t until now. The stand off engineered by the EU parliament has at last begun to swing the balance of power in favour of the elected assembly over the appointed bureaucracy.

There very definitely is a place for conscience and conviction in politics, whether it comes from faith, or from secular philosophy, or from being a very old-fashioned business man whose tongue moves faster than his brain. But that place is won through the ballot box, not through ministerial patronage.

If we are to learn one lesson from this constitutional crisis, it is that the current form of power vested in unelected commissioners is way past its sell-by date. It is festering on the shelf and should be dealt with before it turns nasty. Today the European Parliament came of age. It is high time that it be given the keys to the house.