How Dr Williams has acquired his reputation for intellectual depth has to be one of the Church’s great mysteries. If his interview to the Telegraph was designed to throw light on it, then the departing Archdruid of Canterbury has failed as miserably as he did in his day job.
Take his comments on the sharia law, which four years ago Dr Williams suggested ought to be recognised by British courts. In the interview, all he found to say on the subject was that he had ‘succeeded in confusing people.’ His Grace is too hard on himself: there was no confusion at all. His meaning was crystal-clear: he believed then, and appears to believe still, that Muslims must have the same legal latitude as Christians and Jews.
This is nonsensical any way one looks at it, starting with the way our civilisation is called. It’s Judaeo-Christian, not Judaeo-Christian-Islamist. Surely Dr Williams, the erudite intellectual, must be aware that our legal system is rooted in doctrines enunciated in the two Testaments, not in the Koran? Killing apostates, stoning adulterers and castrating women sits uncomfortably with our ethos, be that its religious or secular aspects. Sharia does agree with the English common law in many of its tenets. But one can say – and it’s something the primate of our established religion should have said – that when it does, it’s redundant, and when it doesn’t, it’s subversive. Meaningless waffle just isn’t good enough.
Then Dr Williams uttered a few platitudes about the government’s so-called economic austerity. It would be unrealistic to expect the Archbishop to display more nuanced thinking in this discipline than in his own, and he didn’t disappoint. His main concern isn’t about the country going to the dogs, but about the ‘massive anxiety’ caused by even token cuts in social spending. Some may use such cuts as an excuse not to be ‘thoughtful about minorities’, thereby exacting an awful ‘social cost’.
One can find a better grasp of the issues at hand in any village Coach And Horses. Has His Grace considered the social cost of the economy collapsing altogether, as it surely will if his beloved ‘hairy lefty’ policies aren’t reversed? I’d guess not. Such consideration would require real thought, and this is something that can overtax the cerebral wherewithal of someone inured to uttering sweet bien-pensant nothings over a lifetime.
The great controversy of Dr Williams’s tenure, one that’s threatening to split the Church down the middle, is sex, in both meanings of the word. Specifically, it’s the consecration of female bishops, which he supports, and homomarriage, which he claims he doesn’t. The Church His Grace has led since 2003 is about to be torn asunder by both abominations, and what does he have to say about it? Nothing on the first problem. And on the second? Dr Williams expressed his regrets that ‘We’ve not exactly been on the forefront of pressing for civic equality for homosexual people, and we were wrong about that.’
So what would have been the right thing for our prelates to do? Lead the gay-rights movement? March at the head of gay parades? Decorate every church with rainbow flags? That’s what being ‘on the forefront’ would have meant in practical terms, and that’s what the good Archbishop regrets not having done. Does he actually think that such deeds would be within the remit of the Church of England? Or, for that matter, of any Christian confession? The ‘hairy lefty’ probably does think so, and it’s good to observe a deep theological mind at work. No wonder the Church is in the doldrums.
Actually, as far as Dr Williams is concerned, it isn’t, not at all. Yes, Christianity is in decline, church attendance is going down, but we must look at the big picture. And there the rosy pigment is discernible: people’s non-denominational spirituality is increasing. On what evidence, Your Grace? Well, look at all the teddy bears and flowers people bring to the scene of accidents. The Archbishop forgot to mention the bottles of vodka left outside Amy Winehouse’s house after she overdosed, but what he did say is enough.
That is, it’s enough to draw a lamentable conclusion: the head of our Church doesn’t know the difference between true spirituality and cloying, tasteless, nauseating sentimentality. You know, the kind of stuff that can be so easily whipped into mass hysteria, if you remember Diana’s death.
Any priest who confuses the two should be unfrocked; any similarly ignorant prelate ought to be tarred, feathered and run out of town. But if Dr Williams thinks he should take credit for such pornographic displays, he’s probably right. Not direct credit, you understand – it’s just that, because of him and other ‘hairy lefties’ in the Church, it has failed to provide an effective counterweight to the disgusting pseudospirituality he seems to cherish in his heart.
Towards the end, Dr Williams hinted at some structural changes in the C of E, apparently involving job share in his former position. ‘Watch this space,’ he suggested with his usual neo-Gnostic aura emanating out of every pore. But we are watching this space, Your Grace. We’ve been doing it for a long time, with fear and trepidation. ‘What on earth,’ we wonder, ‘will this lot come up with next?’