fpb | (no subject)

Die ich rief, die Geister...

To be fair, I do not think he can be charged with The Times' campaign on his behalf. I feel fairly sure that he was not asked, let alone asked for it. It was The Times' writers who decided they liked the sound of him.

Will no one rid them of this turbulent priest?

(*joking*)

His comments saddened me, because I deeply admired him (and I guess I still do admire him, only now with an asterisk) and, on account of that general admiration, have up to now been willing to make every excuse for him when I disagreed with him. But I can't defend him on this one.

How did I come to admire him? Well, he came to Oxford (as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and canon of the Cathedral) during my tenure and I heard him preach a bunch of times, and never, in all my life before or since, have I heard any sermons to approach his for pure wisdom, simply yet eloquently offered. If he had been taking disciples at the time, I might have signed on. Really. It's been more than 20 years, and I still remember vividly his breaking my heart with a devastating Holy Week (must have been Good Friday) sermon. His preaching was the kind of thing that lights a fire under one's soul, or at least it did for me. It made me want to know God better and love others more, which is surely what preaching is supposed to do (and seldom does). I didn't believe then, and I still don't believe now, that a person could preach like that and not be close to God.

I didn't follow Williams' career after I left Oxford, but I confess to feeling delighted when I read he had become Archbishop of Canterbury. I wasn't even surprised the first time I heard he was upsetting some people. What else would such a person do, just by being himself?

Usually when I disagree with someone I know is wise, I entertain the notion that I must be wrong. Not this time.

Granted - which is why I tried to correct

filialucis when she suggested that he had something to do with the Murdoch press building him up and then knocking him down. I am fairly sure that he did not search office, and if he had any sense he must have received it with all the pleasure that most of us would reserve for a cancer or a death in the family. The post of Archbishop of Canterbury is the most undesirable in the whole roster of ecclesial offices, being charged with the leadership of a Church and a worldwide communion without having any of the means to keep any of them in line. Nobody who knows anything about him doubts his faith or his personal goodness; there are stories of people turning a corner in the Archbishop's Palace to find him prostrate in prayer.

However, as the sad story of Pope St. Celestine V proved long ago, it is not enough to be personally holy, not even to be an inspiring preacher, to lead a church. The expression "promoted above his ability" comes to mind. Celetine, a preacher so wonderful that he electrified the whole Conclave of cardinals, proved a complete disaster as a Pope and was the only one ever to resign. Mind you, he has since been canonized, which his successor Boniface VIII will never be - and Boniface, with far less sanctity, was in his different way just as disastrous. But St.Celestine is the historical proof that it is not enough to be a Saint to be a good church leader.

What astonishes me the most, however, is that Dr.Williams is supposed to be an intellectual, and that it is intellectually, more than on any other level, that he has been guilty of the most astonising incomprehension. There is no point whatsoever in admitting some Sharia usages in English law, because even the act of admitting them would be illegitimate to coherent Muslims. The issue is the source of legitimacy and power in the law. To Christians, the source of the law is Caesar - a king, a tyrant, or an elected parliament, but at any rate a human and worldly power who can amend and change the laws. To Muslims, Sharia is strictly of divine origin, and can be interpreted but never amended by human beings. So Dr.Williams' wonderful plan for societal peace is doomed in advance, and the only issue remains whether Muslims will accept any law - even Sharia-like - approved by men?

Edited 2008-02-09 15:53 (UTC)

*ahem* I fear you misread me; what I meant was the newspaper first building him up and now wanting to tear him down again. In no way did I suggest that Williams himself had played any active role.

I'm trying to understand.....

Is it kind of like being Pope, but without any of the authority that Pope carries?

IE, you're responsible for actions without having any power at all, even symbolic?

He has more seniority than any other Anglican bishop, but all Anglican bishops are otherwise equal. There is no mechanism for any bishop to be disciplined, and indeed the bishops themselves have trouble keeping the more difficult of their clergy in line. The heart of the Pope's powers is in being the chief judge of the Church, the ultimate court of appeal: all controversies that are not solved at a lower level of judicature, or that do not die down of their own accord, must ultimately be solved by him. And since the Council of Sardica (352AD), he is the sole authority who can judge bishops. The Anglican schism consisted, essentially, in giving most of the Pope's powers to the King, that is, in practice, to Parliament. In the few occasions when Anglican bishops have been tried, it has been Parliament who tried them. Parliament has also undermined the Church's own courts of justice over lesser church members, by overturning decisions properly reached by Church courts for political reasons. As a result, the disciplinary structures in the Church of England are very weak indeed.

This arrangement, however, is badly outdated. The English state church is now at the centre of a worldwide communion of churches. Parliament has not only lost interest in it (parliamentary debates about the Church used once to be an entertaining staple of English politics, and as late as the 1930s could become serious matters), but would not now even dare to interfere with the concerns of a great worldwide body where its writ does not run. At the same time, thanks to the threatened schism and certain split within the worldwide communion, the demand is growing for some sort of pan-Anglican system of discipline. The time is ripe for a new worldwide settlement of Anglican matters.

I dunno. The newspapers seem to be spinning this as his advocating the adoption of parts of Shari'ah, but reading his comments, it seems that what he was really suggesting was allowing consenting adults to bind themselves religious arbitration in certain spheres. And this has been allowed for some time in other countries, like America (where, granted, the courts take an expansive view of freedom to contract). See these posts on the Volokh Conspiracy or this post on Language Log.

Not to say that Williams didn't make a mistake; being Archbishop of Canterbury is a thankless job that requires superhuman tightrope-walking skills—skills poor old Rowan just doesn't seem to possess.

Check what I said about the different ideas of law and legitimacy in Christianity and Islam. To imagine that one can place zebra stripes of "private" Sharia contracts in a basically Western legal hide created by human actors is to simply ignore what Sharia is.

Sure, some orthodox Muslims might not be satisfied, but if you check the Volokh piece, he cites examples of Muslims in the States taking advantage of religious arbitration or specifying the law of Muslim countries under choice of law provisions. Evidently there is a demand for such things.

This is not about what some random people may have done or been allowed to do. (You are assuming, at any rate, that whoever accepted their decisions was correct. In fact, there cannot be two sources of legitimacy in US law any more than in any other - something which the guns of Abraham Lincoln proved with exemplary legal logic.) It is about what the head of Britain's state church suggests should be done with British legal practice. And it shows a lack of understanding of the matters he discusses which is troublesome to say the least.

Actually, binding arbitration is really common in the US (and Canada, from what I hear). It's not unusual in Hassidic communities in New York for people to sign contracts that stipulate that conflicts be adjudicated by, say, the Bet Din of the Orthodox Union. And not just in religious contexts: contracts can specify venue in the US, but include a choice of law clause stipulating that the contract is to be adjudicated under (for example) French law. A whole segment of bad television (Judge Judy and her ilk) is based around the concept of binding arbitration. The American legal system allows great freedom when it comes to civil contracts, which are enforced by the "real" courts. Obviously, criminal law is a different matter—you can't get the criminal courts to specify beheading as a punishment. And this is still a far cry from having religion-specific civil codes, as India does.

It seems to me that this liberalization of civil law and arbitration is what Williams was talking about, since the examples he mentions are "aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution." There's plenty of room for disagreement here (how "voluntary" are many of these contracts?) but let's be certain what we're disagreeing with.

I think English law is less liberal when it comes to this. (Cardinal Wolsey, after all, was charged with primunary among other things.) But before the expulsion of the Jews the English legal system did enforce the judgments of Jewish courts in their areas of competence.

No. He was speaking, in the first instance, of social cohesion. He suggested that social cohesion might be advanced if we conceded some space to Sharia. Which, for the reasons I have already set out, is wrong. We are not talking about arbitration. We are talking about who makes the laws. I really do not see why you keep bringing in these red herrings. Surely you are aware that, across the world, the introduction or otherwise of Sharia is a most bloody political issue? Do you imagine that people are dying in West Africa, that people are fighting in Pakistan, that people turn out in the streets in their hundreds of thousands in Turkey, because they have strong opinions about ARBITRATION? Sharia is a cuckoo in the legal nest. It cannot, at the present state of things, coexist with any other legal system. And since you quote Canada, go see what happened, even in that ultra-liberal country, when someone in Ontario had the same bright idea as Dr.Williams.

I suggest you read Melanie Phillips' analysis of what he has actually written, and why his retraction is plainly mendacious (something one would not want from a Church leader). If you read the comments too, you may come to understand why his statements have roused enormous rage. There was no need for "the tabloids" to distort anything. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/495671/dhimmi-or-just-dim.thtml#comments

Edited 2008-02-10 08:39 (UTC)

(deleted comment)

Indeed I have. I know all about Tariq Ramadan, alas - including some things that are not commonly known outside Italy, such as his clash with the great Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who is under a virtual sentence of death from the Muslim Brotherhood.