History > 2006 > UK > Religion, sects (I)

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Yet again we cave into religious bigots.

And this time they're Hindus

Sunday May 28, 2006
Nick Cohen
The Observer

The Satanic Verses, Behzti, Theo van Gogh's Submission, Jerry Springer: The Opera, the Danish cartoons of Muhammad ... now we can add the London exhibition of the work of Maqbool Fida Husain to the rapidly expanding list of works of art and satire targeted by militant religion.

For readers interested in Indian culture, the show at the Asia House gallery in the West End's fine art district should have been essential viewing. Husain is the grand old man of Indian art. He began as a boy painting cinema hoardings for six annas per square foot before getting his first break at the Bombay Art Society in 1947. His international appeal lies in his mixing of classical traditions with modern styles. Art from all over the world inspires him - Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka were early influences - but you only have to glance at his pictures to know an Indian must have painted them.

The Indian High Commissioner, Kamalesh Sharma, claimed at the opening that Husain was India's greatest modern artist. The exhibition was to run until August, to allow visitors to decide for themselves if he was right.

They won't be able to now. Asia House closed the show on Monday after threats of violence from anonymous Hindu fundamentalists. Arjun Malik of the Hindu Human Rights campaign assured me they had nothing to do with him, but said his group had been willing to do everything short of violence to stop the public seeing two of Husain's works.

His supporters had already deluged the gallery with letters, phone calls and emails complaining that Husain's 'so-called art' offended the 'sentiments of the Hindu community of the UK'. (Whether it did is debatable, as no one has elected the Hindu Human Rights campaign to represent the Hindu or any other community.) The protesters also went for Hitachi, which had given Asia House plasma TV screens, and demanded public apologies from everyone involved, including the Indian High Commissioner.

They called off a planned demonstration in London yesterday because, like the managers of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre who closed Behzti after the demonstrations by conservative Sikhs and the national newspaper editors who refused to publish the Danish cartoons, Asia House buckled under the pressure to censor.

The apparently separate protests from different faiths are connected. What we are seeing is rival fundamentalists egging each other on in a politics of competitive grievance. Every time one secures a victory, the others realise they can't be left behind. If satirists are frightened of having a go at Islam because they believe they may be killed - and they are - why shouldn't Christian fundamentalists decide to become more menacing?

A comedian who takes a pop at the Pope sends the subliminal message: 'We can deride your religion as despicable because we know you are not so despicable you will resort to violence.' There is a limit to how long the ultras for any religion will put up with that before they change the ground rules.

After abusive Sikh men closed Behzti, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's play about the abuse of Sikh women by Sikh men, Christian Voice upped the ante against Jerry Springer: The Opera. It had previously run at the National Theatre for months without attracting protest. But when BBC2 came to broadcast it, London Christians imitated Birmingham Sikhs and BBC executives suddenly needed the protection of private security guards.

You can see the same pattern in the hounding of MF Husain. The paintings the demonstrators targeted were nudes of the Hindu goddesses Draupadi and Durga. Arjun Malik went into all kinds of verbal convolutions when I asked what he had against them, before coming out with the explanation that 'according to tradition, they should not be disrobed'. The reason for the tongue-twisting is that nude gods and goddesses have been a part of the Indian tradition for 5,000 years. As Husain said: 'Here, the nudity is not nakedness; it is a form of innocence and maturity.'

It is no longer innocent because, after the state-sponsored violence of the Danish cartoon protests, Hindus from the religious Indian right looked around for a grievance of their own. They picked on Husain - the fact that he was born a Muslim made him a natural target - and began a confessional arms race. In February, a Muslim politician in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh offered a large reward to anyone who beheaded the Danish cartoonists. A Hindu politician responded by saying he would pay the same to anyone who would kill Husain.

What is depressing is that, apart from a letter to the Guardian, from Lord Meghnad Desai, the closure of a major exhibition by fanatics has passed without comment. British troops are fighting against forces motivated by the religious fervour of the ultra right. British police officers arrest suspects they claim are inspired to kill because they, too, have a psychotic religious mission. Yet every week, comedians, art gallery owners, TV producers, newspaper editors and Home Office ministers give in to religious extremists. This is no way to win a war.

Guilty in the eyes of man and God

In 2001, Kenneth Lay, the chairman of Enron, declared: 'I believe in God and I believe in the free market.' And when he came to die, he was sure God would 'look at the way I treated people and the opportunities I've created'.

Last week, it wasn't God, but a Texan jury which passed judgment on Lay, finding him guilty of fraud after the collapse of Enron with the loss of all jobs in one of the biggest scams in history. Carolyn Kuchera, a payroll manager, said she and other jurors with managerial responsibilities were used to going home at night 'so tired we hardly knew who we were'. They 'were always accountable' for their treatment of subordinates and she thought that the employees at Enron were entitled to 'the same thing' from Lay. They didn't get it, which is why he is going to jail.

All roads should lead to Euston

Last thursday, I chaired the official launch meeting for the Euston Manifesto, which I played a tiny part in writing. The Euston what? Come now, surely you must have heard of it. There have been 300,000 mentions of it on the internet and it has provoked rave reviews and splenetic denunciations in the mainstream press. If you don't believe me, type 'Euston Manifesto' into Google and see if your computer can cope with the workload.

Yet its success is puzzling. Academics, journalists and bloggers, who met in a pub in Euston, produced it and, at first glance, their work seems nothing more than a straightforward restatement of obvious leftish values. You should not allow cultural relativists to persuade you that brown-skinned women should not enjoy the same rights as white-skinned women, for instance. There should be no excuses made for fascistic religious movements and totalitarian states.

Yet you only have to look at the Liberal Democrats, read the liberal press or turn on the Today programme to realise that these values are no longer obvious.

It is not at all clear that modern, middle-class, liberal-leftists are either liberal or left wing in the old senses of the words, although they will always be middle class to their bones. Many of them are becoming little Englanders, all for human rights and democracy at home but not abroad.

I guess this is why an obscure manifesto has created such a fuss, not only in Britain, but in the United States and Europe. Many people have had an uneasy feeling that the mainstream liberal-left is going badly wrong. The manifesto explains why and, in doing so, puts its finger on a very raw nerve.

    Yet again we cave into religious bigots. And this time they're Hindus, O, 28.5.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1784662,00.html

Churches queue up

for karaoke hymn machine

Thursday April 27, 2006
Guardian
Steven Morris


Not every member of the congregation will approve, but at least it solves the problem of who will play the organ. The Hymnal Plus, a karaoke-like machine with a repertoire of almost 3,000 hymns and psalms, is becoming a must-have item at churches around the country.

As well as traditional songs of praise, the British-made machine can play a disco version of Amazing Grace and a jazzy adaptation of The Lord's My Shepherd. Church-goers who struggle to remember the words can look up at a big screen for help, just like real karaoke.

Traditional churches will, no doubt, favour the "pipe organ and piano" settings or perhaps even try the "big strings and harpsichord", but the more adventurous will be able to experiment with driving drum beats and horn sections.

Built-in Midi and MP3 players mean that music directors can add their own songs - hymns or rock favourites - to the standard repertoire.

And clergy beware, the Hymnal Plus can also lead parishioners in prayers and recite pre-recorded sermons.

Worried by the shortage and ageing population of organists, churches are beginning to snap up the machine, which costs £1,900. The 15th century St Mary the Virgin church in Mudford, near Yeovil in Somerset, was one of the first customers. The parish does have an organist, Christine Whitby, but she is in her 80s and sometimes wants a week off.

Bill Watkins, a church warden and now "hymn DJ", will have his fingers on the remote control when it makes its debut next month. He said: "We don't want to replace Christine with this box of tricks but it will allow her to take a break or to stay away without her feeling guilty when she is feeling under the weather. There are no young organists on the horizon, which is a nationwide problem so one day it might be all we have."

Mr Watkins is impressed with the flexibility of the machine. If the congregation is struggling to hit a particular note, he can change the pitch at a touch of the button. If a rousing finale is required, he could alter the tone, volume or style.

But he said: "We are quite a traditional church so I don't think we'll be going for any disco beats or jazzy sounds just yet." Alan Kempster, a director of the machine's makers, Hymn Technology Limited (motto: No organist? No musicians? No problem!), said there had been growing interest in the product, not just from churches but also hospitals, prisons and military chaplins.

He said the response from organists had been positive. "It's not about putting organists out of business. It's about giving churches an alternative. I spoke to one church organist from Gloucestershire recently who had been playing the organ for 50 years and was sick to death of it. This takes the pressure off people like that," he added.

    Churches queue up for karaoke hymn machine, G, 27.4.2006, http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1762183,00.html

Archbishop: stop teaching creationism

Williams backs science over Bible

Tuesday March 21, 2006
Guardian
Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools.

Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools.

"I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said.

The debate over creationism or its slightly more sophisticated offshoot, so-called "intelligent design" (ID) which argues that creation is so complex that an intelligent - religious - force must have directed it, has provoked divisions in Britain but nothing like the vehemence or politicisation of the debate in the US. There, under pressure from the religious right, some states are considering giving ID equal prominence to Darwinism, the generally scientifically accepted account of the evolution of species. Most scientists believe that ID is little more than an attempt to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.

States from Ohio to California are considering placing ID it on the curriculum, with President George Bush telling reporters last August that "both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about." The archbishop's remarks place him firmly on the side of science.

Dr Williams spoke of his determination to hold the third-largest Christian denomination together in its row over the place of gay clergy. He was also highly critical of parts of the church in Africa and said he did not wish to be seen as "comic vicar to the nation", speaking out on issues where he can make no difference.

Speaking of the church's situation in Africa, the archbishop issued snubs to two of the region's archbishops. He described the position in central Africa, where Archbishop Bernard Malango has just absolved without trial Bishop Norbert Kunonga of Harare, accused by his parishioners of incitement to murder, as "dismal and deeply problematic" .

Dr Williams also criticised Archbishop Peter Akinola, leader of the largest single national church in the Anglican communion, in Nigeria, who has been accused of encouraging violence against Muslims during recent rioting by warning that Christian youth could retaliate against them. Dr Williams claimed the African primate had not made himself sufficiently clear: "He did not mean to stir up the violence ... I think he meant to issue a warning which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation."

Speaking of the gay debate which threatens to split the church, Dr Williams insisted he would continue to try to hold the communion together. "I can only say that I think I have got to try ... For us to break apart in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual misunderstanding is really not going to be in anybody's good in the long run." But he accepted there might come a moment where the Anglican Communion says "we can't continue, we can't continue with this".

    Archbishop: stop teaching creationism, G, 21.3.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1735730,00.html

'I am comic vicar to the nation'

Gay priests ... faith schools ... a church at war with itself. Rowan Williams's first three years as Archbishop of Canterbury have been fraught with difficulties, and his critics have begged him to provide moral leadership. But, he tells Alan Rusbridger in a rare interview, that's just not his style

Tuesday March 21, 2006
Guardian
Alan Rusbridger

Shortly before Christmas last year a number of senior journalists and clerics met in the cloistered fastness of an ancient place of worship (which, for reasons of protocol, must remain anonymous*). During the course of an interesting dialogue about the church and the media there occurred a notable collision between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Daily Mail.

Dr Rowan Williams was talking eloquently about society's expectations of the Church of England and said words to the effect that society was missing the point in expecting the church to be in the business of moral leadership.

At this the man from the Daily Mail practically fell off his chair. He recovered sufficiently to offer a spirited rejoinder. Surely moral leadership was the whole point of the church? An archbishop who didn't believe in moral leadership was worse than useless. Or words to that effect.

There are many people, watching Williams's first difficult three years as Archbishop of Canterbury, who would agree with the man from the Mail - by no means all of them Mail readers. Many liberals, initially excited by the prospect of this thoughtful, articulate man taking over as leader of the Anglican Communion, have been both puzzled and disappointed as they watched him become mired in a series of brutal battles between conflicting wings of the church.

The liberals might not quite have yearned for "moral leadership". But they did hope they had a church leader who would remain true to what they assumed him to believe - and many were dismayed by his apparent retreat in the face of ferocious fire from evangelicals and theological conservatives, most notably over the issue of gay priests. The archbishop's defenders counter by blaming liberals for misreading the man who was catapulted from the relative obscurity of Monmouth to the full panoply of Canterbury three years ago. While certainly a social liberal, they say, Williams has always been a "radical traditionalist" in theological terms. This cuts only so much ice with some of his otherwise faithful flock. "The question you should ask him, but you can't," said one frustrated observer, "is, why should anyone care what his beliefs are if he's never going to stand up for them?"

Ouch. Actually, I did ask him the question, but first I invited him to elaborate on the remark which had so astonished the man from the Daily Mail. Was he really so averse to the idea that the Archbishop of Canterbury should offer moral leadership? "Leadership is, to me, a very, very murky and complicated concept," he begins, sitting in an armchair in his Lambeth Palace office, his minder a watchful presence across the room.

"I think the question I always find myself asking of myself is, 'Will a pronouncement here or a statement there actually move things on, or is it something that makes me feel better and other people feel better, but doesn't necessarily contribute very much?'"

The voice is simultaneously deep, mellow and precise. The sentences emerge perfectly formed - subtle, often conditional and multi-layered, sometimes laden with sharp irony. He accepts that his scholastic background brings with it both pluses and minuses.

"The downside of it is, I guess, that academic habits die hard, and the urge to qualify and complicate dies hard. I don't congratulate myself on that - that's just one of those things that makes it a bit more difficult sometimes."

Could he understand why a doctrine of habitual reticence should make the Daily Mail man come close to implosion? "Hmmm, yes, I can. I think there is a bit of a myth, if you like, that Religious Leaders - 'capital R capital L' - are, by their nature, people who make public pronouncements on morals." Williams parodies this position as, "Why doesn't the archbishop condemn X, Y, Z? Because that's what archbishops do, you know, they condemn things. They make statements, usually negative, condemnatory statements." It's part of what he terms being "comic vicar to the nation".

But still, don't most people look to archbishops for some sort of revelation or guidance on the basis that they are unusually clever or holy or reflective? "I just wonder a bit whether, you know, when an archbishop condemns something, suddenly in, I don't know, the bedsits of north London, somebody says, 'Oh, I shouldn't be having premarital sex', or in the cells of al-Qaida, somebody says, 'Goodness, terrorism's wrong, the archbishop says so. I never thought of that.' I'm not sure that's how it is." He believes that his heroes in the job - William Temple and Michael Ramsay - were quite sparing in what they said in public.

Many people - witnessing the archbishop's baptism of headline fire - wonder whether his aversion to this expectation of leadership hasn't hardened the more he has felt the wrath of the commentariat, both left and right. He must have felt burned at times. "Burned?" An eye glints from beneath an overhanging eyebrow. "Singed, maybe, from time to time."

Worse than singed, surely? The buckets of abuse poured over his head would have tested the thickest-skinned politician. How could it not have affected this mild scholar whose previous life had previously been reasonably protected?

"Well, you can't be oblivious to it. You - you just have to live with it and try and put it in perspective. At the risk of sounding horribly pious, you always have to ask, when somebody makes a criticism - 'Well, what's it about?'"

His frustration with the way his often subtle signals have been mediated to the public beyond seemed to inform the address he gave last June in which he accused the media of distorting the public debate. What sort of reaction did he get to that? "Some of it I thought was fairly predictable. I mean, 'Here's somebody else in public life whingeing about the press.' Some of it I thought was very helpful. People saying, 'Well, OK, yes, there are problems here, and although the archbishop hasn't got it right in every respect, it's fair enough to make the point.'"

Nearly all the media representatives at last December's dialogue were of the opinion that Williams wasn't sufficiently visible. Here was someone of tremendous intelligence, warmth, integrity and personal charisma and yet (that leadership issue again) for the most part he remains hidden from view. "I know that I'm not the world's greatest strategist ... but I think I need to take more advice on what makes sense. It's a great temptation to try and do everything or be good at everything. You can't be.

"I'm just a bit cautious of this fascination in our culture with personality, making yourself an object in a particular way. And I'm not very comfortable with that. I just feel that the centrality of highly individual drama - individual struggles, individual views - is not a comfortable place for a Christian to be, perhaps for anybody to be. So I guess the unease is ... a recognition of the fact that a lot of my professional background has been such as not to make me feel very confident in this."

Is it this academic ability to see ambiguities and complexities in everything that holds him back from speaking more often about moral certainties? "It's not just moral certainties. I think, believe it or not, there are some times where I can speak clearly - and even have done. I suppose one of the things I find is that I'm most at ease speaking with a particular audience, a concrete audience, and less at ease when there's a vague sense that anyone and everyone is listening and, therefore, I'm not quite sure what's getting through or how, or what the response is.

"It's harder when, let's say, you're writing a text for a lecture or a sermon, where, as I say, I'm not quite sure who's listening - anyone or everyone. And that breeds a certain self-consciousness, and that can sometimes breed a certain over-elaboration or fussiness."

The single episode where Williams's assumed beliefs were most tested came, of course, when he first proposed, and then rescinded, the ordination of an openly gay priest, Canon Jeffrey John, as Bishop of Reading. Before becoming archbishop he had spelled out what seemed to be his position in a June 2002 interview with the Daily Telegraph: "My theological conviction is that there is a good case for recognition of same-sex partnerships if they are stable and faithful. I would not, however, call it marriage. If physical sex is not always tied to procreation, then same-sex relationships might be legitimate in God's eyes."

It is, to be sure, a statement hedged with caveats and conditionality, but to liberals such pronouncements offered hope that the Church of England might be edging in an "enlightened" direction on this issue.

In crude terms, Williams, reluctant to provoke a schism, actually threw in his lot with the African bishops, who are opposed to gay priests, and not the liberals. So this was the moment to ask if he understood why people demanded why they should care what his beliefs were if he didn't stand up for them?

"Yes, I understand that and hear it repeatedly," he says, with just a flicker of exasperation at being pulled back to what was evidently the most painful episode of his career to date. "This is where I want to go back to what I think about the church. I've been given a responsibility to try and care for the church as a whole, the health of the church. That health has a lot to do with the proper and free exchange between different cultural and political and theological contexts: the people are actually able to learn from each other. And it's got a lot to do, therefore, with valuing and nurturing unity, not, as I've often said, not as an alternative to truth, but actually as one of the ways we absorb truth.

"That means that, structurally speaking, in the church as I believe it to be, it really is wrong for an archbishop to be the leader of a party; in a polarised and deeply divided church it's particularly important, I think, not to be someone pursuing an agenda that isn't the agenda of the whole."

And there we are, back to the thorny questions of whether he is there to lead or to broker. Again, his defenders say this comes partly from his academic background - a lifetime of testing ideas against each other so that a truth can be teased out.

He rejects comparisons with politicians, though he does reach for a political simile. "I suppose what I'm saying is if the church moves on this, it must be because the church moves, not because, rather like getting rid of Clause 4, a figure of leadership says, 'Right - this is where we go.'

"My conviction, my views, my theological reflections ... they are things which I have to bring to that common process of discernment. It's not as if I can say simply, 'I know this is right, this is where we've got to go, come along, whatever the cost.' And if you ask is that a comfortable position to be in, no, not particularly. But I think it's part of what's intrinsic to the role of any bishop and, therefore, a priori, an archbishop."

There must be moments when he wonders whether the task he's set himself - of listening, of holding the ring, of trying for unity at all costs - is either possible or even desirable?

"I can only say that I think I've got to try. We have now such a level of mutual mistrust between different bits of the communion, certainly accentuated by the sort of heightened rhetoric that's encouraged generally these days ... that, for us to break apart in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual misunderstanding, is really not going to be in anybody's good in the long run."

Could he live with a loose federation rather than a formal communion of churches? "You couldn't do it if, as I say, there'd been a rupture in circumstances of deep bitterness. That's when people say, 'We're not taking your tainted money, we don't want your help' ... And that's rather what I fear, an atmosphere in which it becomes impossible even to hold on to that minimal federal loyalty to each other."

But the present position requires him to be bedfellows with one or two archbishops who are, at best, uneasy theological companions if not positively unappetising.

I mention the gay-baiting Archbishop of Central Africa, the Most Rev Bernard Malango, who recently absolved, without trial, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare - a crony of Robert Mugabe accused of incitement to murder, intimidation and mishandling funds. Malango has also been accused of persecuting and smearing the Rev Nicholas Henderson, a London vicar who was chosen last summer as Bishop of Lake Malawi.

"I think the situation in Central Africa is dismal and deeply problematic," says Williams without much hesitation. "I wish I knew how to resolve it. It doesn't mean ignoring it." And, he adds, it doesn't necessarily mean conducting a dialogue in public.

Then there's the Archbishop of Nigeria, who recently told Nigerian Muslims, in the aftermath of the Muhammad cartoon furore, that they did not have a monopoly on violence and that Christians might strike back. Coincidentally or not, the remark was followed within days by a spate of attacks on Muslims by Christians which left 80 dead. "Hmmm, I think that what he - what he meant was, so to speak, an abstract warning - you know, 'Don't be provocative because in an unstable situation it's as likely the Christians will resort to violence as Muslims will.

"It was taken by some as open provocation, encouragement, a threat. I think I know him well enough to take his good faith on what he meant. He did not mean to stir up the violence that happened. He's a man who will speak very directly and immediately into crises. I think he meant to issue a warning, which has been taken as a threat, to have meant a provocation. Others in the Nigerian church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured."

He picks his words with care - though, it is said, that in private he has certainly stood up to Akinola and can even "swear like a trooper" at fellow prelates if he feels he is being pushed too far.

The guest list for the 2008 Lambeth Conference presents Williams with a very great headache. It is surely inconceivable that he would ban Bishop Gene Robinson (the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire) from attending while extending the warm hand of welcome to Messrs Akinola and Malango. At what point does Williams bump up against the irreducible core of his socially liberal values and decide there is something more valuable than unity?

He reaches for a rather startling historical parallel. "It's a dangerous comparison, because it sort of ups the stakes a bit, but I'm very struck by what (the German theologian) Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in the middle 30s about the division of the Church over the Aryan laws in Nazi Germany."

The reference is to the split in the German Church when the Confessing Church - a breakaway group of German Lutheran (Evangelical) Christians - split from the state Lutheran Church's support of Hitler. The leaders were persecuted - Bonhoeffer was hanged - and in 1939 the movement was suppressed until the end of the war.

"Bonhoeffer says both that it's extremely important not to try and work out in advance every circumstance in which it would be necessary for the church to break, and that it's important to have the freedom and the clarity to know when the moment comes, and there just isn't a formula for that, I think he's saying.

"He felt in 1935 the moment had come, that he was faced with a context in which he just couldn't see a common Christianity between himself and the German Christians who accepted the racial laws. He just couldn't see what it meant for them to think they were a church at all. That's pretty drastic, but he says you've got to have the ability to say that at some point ... I wrestle with that text constantly, I must say."

Williams recently took part in services to mark Bonhoeffer's centenary in Germany and Poland and says these texts "were sort of pounding in my head". So there might come a moment when he decided the Anglican communion could no longer be held together? "There might come a moment where you say, 'We can't continue, we can't continue with this.' I don't know when or if."

It is a signal of the difficulty of reading Williams, that there is confusion about how the analogy plays out in his mind - ie, which side in the present near-schism mirrors the Confessing Church of Bonhoeffer? Liberals might assume that Williams would finally break with the Africans and conservative evangelicals. But close Rowan-watchers believe the reverse is true.

They point to a meeting at Lambeth in September 2003 between Williams and six American conservatives who were planning to split their church - plans now rather further advanced. In the course of this, Williams suggested that they call themselves "The Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes". One of the American delegation later claimed that Williams had not only suggested the name, but linked it explicitly to Bonhoeffer's struggle.

If this interpretation is right, it suggests that Williams may be mentally preparing for the possibility of siding with the African churches and the conservative evangelicals rather than the liberals within the Anglican Communion. In any event, the time left for contemplation and constructive ambiguity may be short.

We go on to talk about faith schools, about which he made a speech last week. He strongly believes that Muslim schools could play "a hugely important step in what you might call the normalising of Islam in many of our communities". As for Church of England schools, he argues that "in plain language, we have to ask, are we, even with the best will in the world, producing selective education by covert means?

"Although I don't think that's a fair accusation, there's just enough there to make it a fair question and, therefore, to make it absolutely crucial to have nationally agreed admission criteria which are completely unambiguous about inclusion as a goal."

Is he comfortable with the teaching of creationism in schools? "Ah, not very. Not very," he says. "I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, 'Well, how am I going to explain all this ... I know: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's just been a jarring of categories. It's not what it's about.

So it shouldn't be taught? "I don't think it should, actually. No, no. And that's different from saying - different from discussing, teaching about what creation means. For that matter, it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is - is the only thing that ought to be taught. My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."

Our time is up, but he wants to say one word about Tony Blair's remarks, made to Michael Parkinson, about war and God's judgment. Asked about Iraq, the prime minister said: "Well, I think if you have faith about these things, then you realise that judgment is made by other people ... If you believe in God, [the judgment] is made by God as well." The remarks caused a sensation.

"I think he was trying to say something which I hope any religious believer would say, which is, 'When I make a decision, particularly a really appallingly difficult decision, I know that finally what makes right or wrong is not what I think or even what the general public thinks, but God. I struggle, I pray, I weigh it up, I do the best I can but I know it is not infallible and I have to lay myself bare finally to judgment.'

"That seems to me bog-standard religious conviction and I am glad to hear it. But it's very odd how that was processed immediately into a crude, 'God tells me what to do story.'"

He thinks Blair's intentions became twisted because of the perception of religion "as a very alien, very mysterious, rather malign force, which gives people ideas above their station, whether it's prime ministers or terrorists ... What I heard the prime minister trying to say was not about convictions of rightness."

And with that he groans at the prospect of having to face a photographer ("the eyebrows," he sighs) and heads off down the long, lonely corridors of his palace.

*The church-media dialogue was on Chatham House terms, but permission was sought to disclose this exchange.

    'I am comic vicar to the nation', G, 21.3.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1735679,00.html

Transcript

Interview: Rowan Williams

This is the transcript of an interview between the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger

Tuesday March 21, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Alan Rusbridger: Could I begin by talking about the job and then we can talk about the church. To the extent that you imagined it before you took over, what is different? How is it different from what you did before?

Archbishop of Canterbury: How is it different from what I expected.? I think I hadn't really taken on board just how much international work there'd be, certainly, but the quantity of the interfaith involvement has slightly surprised me. It's - I think it's a necessary part of, you know, where - where we are and where the job contributes at the moment. But I don't think I quite expected to be that much involved in that amount of dialogue, and compared to what I was doing before, well, again, the international dimension and the lack of regular week by week contact with the ordinary people of the diocese, that's the biggest difference of all, I think. It's not as if I can, every Sunday, now be in two or three parishes. I try to do it every other Sunday, but er, in practical terms I think that's it. And I think one of the things that means is that there's - there's not a great deal of routine to the job. There are minor - well, not minor, but there are daily routines like morning prayer with the community here, and there are the family routines but, otherwise, you never quite know what's ahead one day to the next. And that's - that's a big difference.

AR: What do you think the public role of Archbishop should consist of?

AC: Should or does?

AR: Should.

AC: Should. Setting some kind of tonal vision for the church, the Church of England; pastoral involvement and collaboration with the other bishops. And the Church of England being the way it is, trying to - to find, crystallise some sort of - some sort of moral vision that's communicable to the nation at large. I think those - those are the ascensions of it. And I think that - that brings with it the elements of the times being what I once called comic vicar to the nation.

AR: The what vicar?

AC: The comic vicar.

AR: The comic vicar.

AC: You are bound to be where a lot of the brickbats end up as well, you may have noticed.

AR: At [your meeting with journalists last year] - and I appreciate that was all on Chatham House rules so you don't have to - are you happy to talk about this? - there was a very striking moment when you said that you didn't see your role as being about moral leadership and the man from the Daily Mail almost fell off his chair.

AC: Yes, yes. Leadership is - is, to me, a very, very murky and complicated concept. Often, as I - I think I've said before, what people mean when they say leadership is making - making the right noises, affirming a particular set of views, convictions or even prejudices. It doesn't always have very much to do with how you make a difference. And I think the question I always find myself asking of myself is: will a pronouncement here or a statement there actually move things on, or is it something that makes me feel better and other people feel better, but doesn't necessary contribute very much?

AR: Can you give me an example of something where you have, where you have felt tempted to talk about something and come to that conclusion that you can achieve more by not to saying something.

AC: I think actually, over the religious hatred legislation. We had quite a lot of lobbyings you can imagine from people who wanted a firm lead, this is a piece of legislation that's dangerous to the church just as, of course, there's lobbying from other people. I thought it wasn't particularly useful to make loud noises about this, that it was probably more useful to listen to what different groups had to say, transmit what could be transmitted to government, work at it in that way, and see if the dangers were real, and if they were, how you - how you got around them, what sort of drafting would be desirable. So that - that was an area where I deliberately decided to take a fairly low key. I think where we've ended up actually, is - is a reasonable enough placement.

AR: But can you understand why the man from the Daily Mail almost fell off his chair?

AC: Mmm. Yes, I can. I think there is a bit of a picture of it, of a myth if you like, that Religious Leaders - capital R capital L - are, by their nature, people who make public pronouncements of morals. Now, there's a sense in which every religious leader, and one can understand that, is in a position of making public pronouncements, they're going to be someone with a teaching responsibility. The church, from time to time, they try and crystallise what the church looks or believes. The difficulty in this country I think, possibly elsewhere, I don't know, is that there's a bit of an expectation that you do this for everybody. Whether or not anybody agrees with you, or changes as a result, it's somehow satisfying to have somebody making that sort of public statement. And I'm just a bit wary of the possible seductions of being drawn into the drama of that, if it doesn't actually change things, if it is, say, just to make me feel better or other people feel better.

AR: You say the expectation you are saying this for everybody, do you mean everybody in the country or everybody in the church?

AC: Everybody in the country. Yeah. What I mean I think is that why doesn't the Archbishop condemn X, Y, Z? Because that's what Archbishops do, you know, they condemn things, they - they make statements usually negative or condemnatory statements. And I - I just wonder a bit whether, you know, when an Archbishop condemns something, suddenly in, I don't know, the bedsits of north London, somebody may say oh, I shouldn't be having pre-marital sex, or in the cells of Al-Qaida, somebody says, goodness, terrorism's wrong, the Archbishop says so. I never thought of that. I'm not sure that's, you know, that's how it is. But when I was in South Africa 20 years ago, I remember talking to somebody about - somebody who was very much involved in the struggle in South Africa, about what the church should or shouldn't be saying about violence, the struggle about apartheid, and he said, I'm not by any means saying the church should be condoning violence, I am saying that a lot of people have made - made their decisions before the church steps in, and you've got to be very careful about just making empty noises. It's not as if people are waiting for the church to say something before they make up their minds. A lot of the time it's more that the church has to work with decisions people have made. And I've never forgotten that. It was - it came from a very serious situation where I think people were just being rightly wary of making noises for the sake of it.

AR: Is this something to do with changing notions of authority in society at large because presumably your predecessors in this job, you will have expected them to, they were there because they were men of learning or particularly good or felt they had insights denied to the rest of us, that's why they were there, that's why we wanted to hear from them.

AC: I'm not so sure. I think people might have expected to hear from many of my predecessors, I think of William Temple, one of my heroes in this trouble, Michael Ramsay. Actually, I think they were quite sparing in what they said in public, I don't think that they would have identified it in terms of giving a lead, they would have seen it as an attempt to make a responsible contribution to public debate where appropriate, some of it abstract. But it's rather different from just the, you know, press the button to have Archbishop condemning, or Archbishop pronouncing. Temple's an interesting case, because he, you know, he engages quite sophisticatedly with the world he's in. He's very clear, he's very visionary, but I wouldn't, I think, cast him in quite the role of giving a lead in the sense some people seem to mean it.

AR: And do you think this is true of bishops and clergy as well or is this just the way you see the Church of England or is it just your own particular position?

AC: I think it's - it's probably where the Church of England is actually. But let me give you one particular concrete case where I think I can talk about someone giving a lead of a sense that matters. A priest I know fairly well, in whose parish a particularly awful murder happened a few years ago, it involved the kidnapping and torture and eventual killing of a teenager by a group of other teenagers. He's written about this and described the way in which he found himself simply landed with the job of trying to deal with a very traumatised family, a very traumatised community, some very confused public services, and to hold it together at various points, in - in the funeral service, in events, during and after the trial and so forth. At no point during that process did he sort of get up and say this is very shocking. His task was to accompany, crystallise, draw together, make some sense of it with people, which was a rather slower process than just making a pronouncement. Now I would actually say that that's a kind of leadership, but not necessarily the kind that instantly wins the votes these days. And more than that, I think it's - it's an exemplary and costly and profoundly Christian way of doing it. I better know the story of Soham, I guess would tell something of the same story. You would talk, wouldn't you, or some people would talk of the leadership exercised by the vicar there. But it's not quite what the word normally triggers in people's minds.

AR: Let me, we'll come back to that by a different route, but because you have talked about this and gave a lecture about it, I want to talk about the media, because the media again is a bigger part of your life than William Temple.

AC: Yes, there is more of it.

AR: Some people sense that you are uneasy, that you don't feel at ease with the media society in which we live and the expectations.

AC: I think they wouldn't be wholly wrong. It depends a bit on the medium, and the down side of it or the negative side of it is I guess, that academic habits die hard, and the urge to qualify and complicate dies hard and I don't congratulate myself on that, that's - that's just one of those things that makes it a bit more difficult sometimes. The other side is I'm just - just a bit cautious of the fascination of our culture with personality, making - making yourself an object in a particular way. And I'm not very comfortable with that. I just feel that the centrality of highly individual drama, individual struggles, individual views, is not a comfortable place for a Christian to be, perhaps for anybody to be. So I guess the unease is - is those two things among others as to do things quite prominently recognition of the fact that a lot of my professional background has been such as not to make me feel very confident in this, and recognition also that I do have some genuine - and, underneath all that, I've got lots of genuine worries.

AR: I mean, on the first you were ambiguous about whether you thought the academic qualities you brought were necessarily good or bad again people might expect of someone who is the Archbishop of Canterbury as somebody who can speak clearly and unambiguously when it comes back to moral certainties.

AC: Yes, it's not just moral certainties. I think, believe it or not, there are some times where I can speak clearly and unambiguously or even have done. I suppose one of the things I find is that I'm most at ease speaking with a particular audience, a concrete audience, and less at ease when there's a vague sense that anyone and everyone is listening and, therefore, I'm not quite sure what's getting through or how, or what the response is. One reason I quite like speaking without notes or without a fully prepared text at times, whether at the pulpit or elsewhere, is that it - it does give me some capacity to pick up the feel of an audience and try to respond to that. There are all sorts of intangible ways where I think an audience or a congregation helps you on. Sometimes, of course challenges you; you find I meant to say that but, you know, this isn't making sense, I've got to - got to find other ways through here. And that's a challenge I - I quite enjoy, I feel is important. Harder than when, let's say, writing a text for a lecture or a sermon, where, as I say, I'm not quite sure who's listening, anyone or everyone. And that breeds a certain self-consciousness, and that can sometimes breed a certain over-elaboration, fussiness.

AR: And have you been burnt by your exposure to the media?

AC: Er, burnt? Singed maybe, from time to time.

AR: Is it hurtful?

AC: It can be. But, not a lot of point in dwelling on it, that's the - that's the world we're in. And I don't think there's any point in moaning.

AR: But most people in public life find it - they are either very strange people who are oblivious to it which is like (lying) in the sun, but most people are...

AC: Well, you can't be oblivious to it. You - you just have to live with it, and er, and try and put it in perspective. And the perspective is, I suppose, twofold: at the risk of sounding horribly pious, you always have to ask if somebody makes a criticism - well, what's it about, is it about me, is it God's way of telling me something, sit with that, just sit with it for a bit and see. And as often as not you can say, yeah, okay, there's something there I've got to listen to, however unpleasant or unwelcome. That's one bit of putting it in perspective. The other bit, I'm sorry to have to say, there's the awareness that a certain amount of media comment comes and goes a bit, and it's not the case that absolutely everybody will, 18 months on, have a complete file on what was said about me.

AR: What response did you get to the speech you made?

AC: Interesting, some of it I thought was fairly predictable, I mean here's somebody else in public life whinging about the press. Some of it I thought was very helpful. People saying - well, okay, yes, there are problems here, and although the Archbishop hasn't got it right in every respect, it's fair enough to make the point. Some of it I felt was a bit, pre-packaged, as if you look for the words, and you perhaps - I can't remember the wording, I might say - "some aspects of our media culture, are trivialising and so forth", right, you know, "The media's trivialising" says Archbishop. Or famously, in that case, what I said about the internet. I talked about the atmosphere of unpoliced conversation. "Does the Archbishop want to police the internet?" Well, no, no, that's not quite what I'm saying. Er, parts of the internet are, you know, the preserve of bigots and maniacs - well, as they are, but that's not to say the internet, as a whole, is. It's as if, you know, there's a sort of script of "the Archbishop condemns" kind, is absolutely ready to rush into action. And I found that a bit er, depressing in a way, and I would wish that somebody would read to the end of the sentence.

AR: And have you got a strategy for going forward as to how, given the media is always with us, what is your strategy for engaging with it in the future?

AC: It's a big question to ask really and I know that I'm not the world's greatest strategist of thinking forward, but I think I need to take more advice on what makes sense or what sounds alright, a great temptation to try and do everything or be good at everything you can't be. I think some of the things that I've done, although er, they haven't had a huge profile, have been worth doing and worth doing because I felt reasonably at ease with them. That little series on Channel 4 a couple of years ago, I thought was useful, partly because it was a way of modelling conversations about certain things, but it also opened up a number of profoundly valuable contacts for me, which I've been able to take forward more privately since then.

AR: Moving on to the church here, is it in good nick?

AC: Actually, I think it's not bad. There's always the danger of kidding yourself a bit about this, but I genuinely think that the Church of England has huge opportunities at the moment, many of which it's taking quite effectively. Last night we had a dinner here to report on progress with one of the schemes I launched a couple of years ago, and raise some more resources for it. This is the Fresh Expressions Initiative, which is about how we get resources to foster new - congregate, new styles of congregational life, er, but not on a Sunday morning, a modern church building based sort of Outreach. We had a DVD shown last night which I think has about 14 stories of things going on across the country, a cafe in one northern city, set up by local churches as a welcoming project, and it is just a cafe, but also there are events laid on there regularly throughout the day, volunteers from the churches to a Sister of the Pastoral Care and discussion, and worship events. That's the kind of thing which I think is happening quite a lot in the, what is it now, about nearly 18 months since the project really got under way with the team it wanted. We've had over 400 of these registered, so there's a lot out there. Er, that doesn't always come on to the public radar very much. I think it's one of the really, encouraging signs. I think there's also a sense, even in the most "ordinary" parishes, the ones I - I see in rural east Kent and the ones I see elsewhere in the country, in London and south London particularly, a sense that the church's place in the community is frequently still a lot more central than people might be led to believe by comments made in the public arena, it's still - to use a phrase that I rather like, it was given to me by a former student of mine - it's still the place that people take the things they can't put anywhere else, whether it's the extreme experiences of murder and trauma, which I referred to a little while ago, or just some - some hope that the church retains enough integrity genuinely to work for the interests of the whole community rather than a party within it, which is why the church is an important presence, a vast important presence in community regeneration across the country. We're about to publish, in a couple of months' time, the report of the Commission on Urban Life and Faith, which is a sort of follow-up to Faith in the City in the mid-90s, and that lays out the kinds of involvement in community regeneration that the church is committed to across the country. And when we laid some of this out before a couple of government ministers just before Christmas, I think there was genuine surprise at the level and the sophistication of the church's involvement in this. So I feel that those are hugely hopeful things. I don't feel glum at all about the church on the ground and its engagement. I mentioned rural east Kent, and we're not talking there about picturesque curtain counties, we're talking about some fairly strained, stretched communities, the decaying seaside towns of east Kent, the old coalfield of Kent. And I feel quite proud of the church in the diocese of Canterbury, I think it - it has exactly the kind of profile that a church ought to have.

AR: At St George's you spoke, again, you tried to pitch the church , but you said, well the minutes record you saying, the church is not an interest group but it is more than a forum for the negotiation of other interests and you talked about it brokering the interests of other interest groups, I mean you and I have slightly different...

AC: About the church being an interest group in itself...

AR: Whether it was purely a neutral cause.

AC: There are bound to be things where the church is more than a broker, and I think we talked about the assisted dying debate, particularly with that. Yes, I think that's right. And in that sense, no, you can't ever say the church is just a neutral keeping of the ring. All I'd want to claim, I think, is that that's one of the roles that the church has for quite a lot of the time. There are certainly bits that you bump into and principles that arise in regards to the mental conundrum and the assisted dying cases are an obvious and a difficult one. But in terms of the church being more than an interest group itself or more than a broker of interest groups, I guess I'd want, at some point, to talk a bit of theology and say that I - I can't see the church as a movement or a sort of quasi political party, it's not like that. In the very old fashioned language that Roman Catholics particularly used to use, it's a supernatural society, that's to say it doesn't exist because of human decisions, but because of God's decisions. Which means that the muddle of the failure of the church, generation by generation, doesn't invalidate the whole thing. There's an action, an invitation that's coming from outside, and just continues. And when I get extremely pessimistic about the capacity of the church to square the various circles that it's involved in, that's actually what sustains me. It's about an invitation issued to the world from somewhere else. And an invitation whose purpose it was to create a community that, as the New Testament suggests, is meant to be a sort of pilot project for the human race, it's meant to show what human relations can be. So that all helps a bit, and that's why, as I say, talking about a movement or an interest group is never going to be adequate to, at least what Christians believe the church is.

AR: You are about to speak about faith schools?

AC: That's right, yes, next week.

AR: In favour of them?

AC: You'd be unsurprised to learn, yes. Er, yes. Because actually, that...

AR: You've got reservations...

AC: Er, why am I in favour, first, and then what might be the questions. I think the sort of pattern that most Church of England schools have in this country - have worked their way into in this country - is a very good illustration of the sort of thing I've been trying to talk about. In spite of what seems to me sometimes as a particularly metropolitan mythology of church schools as a selective order, the fact is that the majority of them - I think that's fair to say the majority - certainly the majority of the most newly opened ones, are in areas of deprivation, with very clear commitments and admissions policy to - to the community, to the local community. They represent not an attempt to indoctrinate or control but to say here is an educational environment in which certain specific values and beliefs are assumed in the landscape, you may or may not make them your own, but they're there, and they may help you orient yourself, whether or not as they fully adopt them. On the whole, I think that's, that's been a success story, and accusations of indoctrination I think become a little bit less plausible when you look at the effects on the ground. And the fact also, of course, that in many parts of the country you have church schools with hundreds of Muslim pupils because they serve areas where Muslims live. That's true even of some Roman Catholic schools, increasingly. There was a case in Glasgow recently, which was discussed in The Tablet some weeks ago. So I'm in favour and what I say next week will spell out a bit more of that...

AR: But that must go for Muslim schools as well.

AC: Yes, and one of the things which I've argued a bit in this respect, is to have Muslim schools in partnership with government as Christian schools - Catholic and Anglican already are - ought to be a way of engaging Muslims more fully in the ordinary civic discourse of this country. It's not, as it were, a state franchising religious indoctrination, it's saying to religious communities come and negotiate with us for what will count as a plausible, public, accountable method of education. I think that's what's happened with Christian schools, I think it could happen with Muslim schools. It could be a hugely important step, therefore, in what you might call the normalising of Islam in many of our communities. And by that normalising, reinforcing those elements in the Islamic spectrum which can cope with modernity, plurality and so on. I've seen enough to encourage me about that. As for reservations or questions, one is I think, that in the last 20 or 30 years the identity - the church identity of church schools has often been a bit nominal; people have not made the best of it. And it's - it's perhaps, slightly encouraged that complaint which you often hear among the columnists, it encourages people to hypocrisy. You go to church for 6 months in order to be able to sign up your child for a church school, because you think it's better. I think where you have a tradition of church schools, and in general its not a tradition, where you have a period in which church schools have not thought very deeply about their mission or identity. There may be risks in that. The paradox is I think that the more clearly a church school thinks about its mission and identity the better it'll be able to develop policies of inclusion and deliberate intentional inclusion the less it may be victim to the - the 6 month meal ticket approach. So yes, there are challenges. I think some of the charges and accusations can be met, but in a competitive educational environment it's always important to monitor the degree to which competition may be skewing admission and selection and so forth. We, in other words, in plain language, we have to ask are we, even with the best will in the world, producing selective education by covert means, although I don't think that's a fair accusation, there's just enough there to make it a fair question and, therefore, to make it absolutely crucial, and I'll be saying this next week, to have nationally agreed admission criteria which are completely unambiguous about inclusion as a goal.

AR: Are you comfortable with teaching creationism?

AC: Ahh, not very. Not very. I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said well, how am I going to explain all this.... I know ' In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And for most of the history of Christianity, and I think this is fair enough, most of the history of the Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time. You find someone like St. Augustine, absolutely clear God created everything, he takes Genesis fairly literally. But he then says well, what is it that provides the potentiality of change in the world? Well, hence, we have to think, he says, of - as when developing structures in the world, the seeds of potential in the world that drive processes of change. And some Christians responding to Darwin in the 19th Century said well, that sounds a bit like what St. Augustine said of the seeds of processes. So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's - there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about. And it - it reinforces the sense that...

AR: So it shouldn't be taught?

AC: I don't think it should, actually. No, no. And that's different from saying - different from discussing, teaching about what creation means. For that matter, it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is - is the only thing that ought to be taught. My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it.

AR: We can't get through this without talking about gays -

AC: There comes a point in every interview where someone says...

AR: Well, let's try and find a way to talk about it that doesn't, sort of, end at a cul-de-sac. I suppose what puzzles people about you, is that people think they know what you truly think because you talked about it fairly openly before becoming Archbishop. And so it comes back to where we began, it's a question of leadership. It feels as though you are not being true to yourself, that you are being forced into a role of politician and people say "why should anybody care what your beliefs are, if you can't stand up for the things that are assumed to be your beliefs?"

AC: Yes, I understand that and hear it repeatedly. But I don't think it's a matter of being a politician here. This is where I want to go back to what I think about the church. I've been given a responsibility to try and care for the church as a whole, the health of the church. That health has a lot to do with the proper and free exchange between different cultural and political and theological contexts: people are actually able to learn from each other. And it's got a lot to do therefore, with valuing and nurturing unity, not, as I've often said, not as an alternative to truth, but actually as one of the ways we absorb truth. That means that, structurally speaking, in the church as I believe it to be, it really is wrong for an Archbishop to be the leader of a party; in a polarised and deeply divided church it's particularly important, I think, not to be someone pursuing an agenda that isn't the agenda of the whole. Now, on this question of what the agenda of the whole is or should be, is a long job to decipher or untangle ... And I suppose what I'm, therefore, saying, and it's not something new, is if the church moves on this, it must be because the church moves, not because, rather like getting rid of Clause 4, a figure of leadership says, "right - this is where we go." My conviction, my views, my theological reflections on this and, indeed on other matters, they are things which I have to bring to that common process of discernment. It's not as if I can say simply, "I know this is right, this is where we've got to go, come along, whatever the cost." And if you ask is that a comfortable position to be in, no, not particularly, but I think it's part of what's intrinsic to the role of any bishop and, therefore, a priori, Archbishop, which is to try and make sense of people to each other in such a way that whatever movement there is, is just one bit running ahead with its agenda.

AR: Don't we get back into this danger of being, sort of a ring holder, appearing to -

AC: Sure. Not having any convictions except being able to hold together, as it were.

AR: Yeah, again. None of this is news to you but looking from outside, it seems as though you're, well, you haven't made any fuss in public about the recent pronouncements of Archbishop Akinola, or the Archbishop of central Africa and yet they seem to be equal participants, of equal weight in this debate, as the people on the other side.

AC: Again, what is or - or should be said in public is something I would - see previous remarks - weigh very carefully, what actually moves things on. I don't believe that all of this should necessarily be conducted on the internet, as some do. I think the situation in Central Africa is - is dismal and deeply problematic. I wish I knew how to resolve it. It doesn't mean ignoring it.

AR: Right, so we can take of that, that it's a situation where you are saying things privately?

AC: The correspondence continues...

AR: And what about Akinola and his troubling statements about Muslims (not being allowed to bear arms) which was followed by 80 people being macheted to death?

AC: Hmmm. I think that what he - what he meant as, so to speak, an abstract warning, you know, "don't be provocative because in an unstable situation it's as likely the Christians will resort to violence as Muslims will." It was taken by some as, you know, open provocation, encouragement, a threat. I think I know him well enough to - to take his good faith on that, what he meant. He did not mean to stir up the violence that happened. He's a man who will speak very directly and immediately into crises. I think he meant to issue a warning, which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation. Others in the Nigerian church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured.

AR: Is it - I mean can you hold all this together realistically? And is there a point where it is better to admit you can't?

AC: I can only say that I think I've got to try. We have now such a level of mutual mistrust between different bits of the communion, certainly accentuated by - well, by the sort of heightened rhetoric that's encouraged generally these days, and certainly happens a lot on the net, such a culture of mistrust that, for us to break apart in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual misunderstanding, is really not going to be in anybody's good in the long run. So I'd rather try and see what can be done to recreate or reinforce trust. And I think it's worth doing, because the Anglican communion as a multicultural, an international body, is, I dare to say, more important, more significant than an Anglican communion fracturing along the cultural lines which is unable to relate to, work with, even in different sorts of contexts. And you know, coming back from Sudan, that's clearly much underlined for me, it matters a lot to a church in vulnerable situations, to have partners elsewhere.

AR: You could do that if it was a loose federation.

AC: You could do it if it was a loose federation, you couldn't do it if, as I say, there'd been a rupture in - in circumstances of deep bitterness, that's when people say we're not taking your tainted money, we don't want your help, or, we can't support a church which tolerates this or that. And that's rather what I fear, an atmosphere in which it becomes impossible even to hold on to that minimal federal loyalty to each other.

AR: So at what point, I mean these are questions that the secular society is asking itself as well in relation to Islam in particular, at what point do you eventually stub against your irreducible, small "l" liberal principles and say actually "well there is an irreducible bit I can't negotiate over"?

AC: Yes, I haven't got there yet, and if I could speculate about where those were, then it would be rather simpler now. It's - it's a dangerous comparison, because it sort of ups the stakes a bit, but I'm very struck by what Bonhoeffer writes in the middle-30s about the division of the church over the Aryan laws in Nazi Germany, where he says both that it's extremely important not to try and work out in advance every circumstance in which it would be necessary for the church to break. Equally, it's important to have the freedom and the clarity to know when the moment comes, and there just isn't a formula for that, I think he's saying. He felt in 1935 the moment had come, that he was faced with a context in which he just couldn't see a common Christianity between himself and the German Christians who accepted the racial laws, he just couldn't see what it meant for them to think they were a church at all. And that's, you know, that's pretty drastic, but he says you've got to have the ability to say that at some point. But once you start saying in advance - well, I think it will be this that will be the moment where it would all crack... That, he says, is trying to - trying to find large-scale reinforcements for your present positions before you're actually entering into the moment of crisis. I - I wrestle with that text constantly, I must say. This year, which is Bonhoeffer's centenary, it's particularly poignant. And when I was in Germany and Poland a few weeks ago, to take part in the centenary celebrations, these, I must say, were the texts that were sort of pounding in my head.

AR: And this would be a personal dilemma for you?

AC: Of course. And for lots of other people.

AR: So there might come a moment at which you thought -

AC: There might come a moment where you say we can't continue, we can't continue with this. I - I don't know when or if.

AR: Ill ask one big question about Islam. What is the problem with Islam?

AC: There are lots of Islams for one thing, just as there are lots of Christianities. One of the - one of the stories that comforts us at the moment is that there is one big thing out there called Islam, which is getting at us. If you brought together a Sudanese Sufi, a Shi'ite from Iran, an Indonesian, a Tunisian, a Bosnian, a Jordanian, never mind immigrants from all these communities elsewhere, you would not have one agenda. Part of our problem with Islam is that we, because of a history cultural ignorance and alienation, we tend just to see the bit that comes at us, and it sometimes comes at us violently, and assume well, that's the Islamic agenda. A stage further though, I think the problem with Islam in terms of geopolitics, would be something like this, there's a kind of watershed in the 1950s when a project of Islamic based democratisation and modernisation in the Middle East - the age of Nasser particularly, and somehow that sort of fails, that loses momentum, and there's a whole loss of nerve about engaging positively with modernisation and democratisation in the Arab world particularly, which is, of course, where a lot of the most fierce expressionists come from. So I think we're still living with the knock-on effect of that in a way. Work that in with the, the oil business with regards to the Middle East and the geo-politics that go with that, and you've got a recipe for a very complex and unpleasant situation, which is what we're in. So in terms of Christian/Muslim engagement which, as I said earlier, is a big part of the agenda now, I would see the priorities as recognising and engaging with the range of Islams that are there, trying to help give voice to and listen and converse with those bits that not simply locked into opposition, I think. And the - the Building Bridges seminar, which happens every year, meeting of Christian scholars and Muslim scholars from across the world, that's been, for me, quite an important annual learning experience where you can draw together precisely, you know, the Indonesians, the Bosnians, the Egyptians, the Pakistanis with Christians from different denominational and geographical contexts to talk about common agenda. We have spent - well, I chair these each year - and we've spent time looking at each other's scriptures on various points, and doing fairly intensive Bible and Koran study together, just to see what it - what it feels like to read your Holy Book. Last year we moved on in Sarajevo to discussions about the common good and faith in society as seen in both contexts. This year we are grasping, I think an even more difficult nettle, which is human rights in the two traditions. And I think what has been valuable about these is that there hasn't been any kind of agenda to get to an agreed statement or some sort of compromise between two faiths which both believe they are answerable to God's revelation, not negotiable. It's not about that. Its about recognising, two things, its about recognising and naming the issues that we can't avoid facing together and its about the perfectly, straightforward, ordinary, learning respect, understanding, which enables that first question to be addressed better. The very, I found very stretching the -

AR: In the one minute we have left, is there anything else that is absolutely burning on your mind that you wish you'd had an opportunity to talk about?

AC: I mean one of the things that has been running around my mind this week, this is sticking my neck out a bit but can't miss up on, is the reaction to the prime minister last weekend and how very difficult it is for us to, culturally, for us to understand what people mean by talking about the judgment of God. I think he was trying to say something which I hope any religious believer would say, which is when I make a decision, particularly a really appallingly difficult decision, I know that finally what makes right or wrong is not what I think or even what the general public thinks, but God. I struggle, I pray, I weigh it up, I do the best I can but I know it is not infallible and I have to lay myself bare finally to judgement. That seems to me bog standard religious conviction and I am glad to hear it but its very odd how that was processed immediately into a crude God tells me what to do story. Years ago I heard a lecture by a very interesting American sociologist called Robert Beller in which he pointed out that Lincoln in one of his Inauguration addresses had said something like you know, something like, "on both sides of this conflict we all alike stand before the judgement seat of God." Robert Beller had said that if he had said that in the mid to late twentieth century he would have been slaughtered because people would have either said he is importing religious language where it is not appropriate or he would have said the north and the south are both equally likely to be right in the civil war. Whereas I think what Lincoln said, and this is what Beller argued was, well at the end of the day neither party in this conflict is simply God's party, and while Lincoln would have undoubtedly said I think we have got it right about slavery and you have got it wrong, and that this is not a trivial or a secondary matter, believing that does not mean you have got to believe so God just rubber stamps who we are, what we do and what we think.

AR: Do you think the reason that it was processed in that way, another remark you made at the media dialogue, which was about religion coming up in society's agenda but not harmlessly.

AC: Yes, that's fair enough I think the perceptions of religion as a very alien, very mysterious, rather malign force, which gives people ideas above their station, whether it's Prime Ministers or terrorists. It just gives people that conviction of rightness, which is dangerous. And what I heard the Prime Minister trying to say was it's not about convictions of rightness. And St Augustine once said, most sins are committed by people weeping and groaning, most decisions are made by people weeping and groaning, decisions that matter and to say that you make them in good faith and hope they are right is a very different thing to saying God tells me what to do and that helps a bit in a much lesser way in the Archbishop's eye.

    Interview: Rowan Williams, G, 21.3.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1735404,00.html