The last thing the Church of England needs is a pleasant middle manager; Archbishop Williams and Bishop Nazir-Ali on the place of religion in British public life
The last thing the Church of England needs is a pleasant middle manager
The next Archbishop of Canterbury must be a man who connects with all of England’s people, Charles Moore at the Telegraph has written –
Who would you like to be your next Archbishop of Canterbury? You may think this an odd way to put it. You may be Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, atheist, or just vague. How can the Archbishop of Canterbury belong to you?
Yet if you live in England, he does. The Church of England is “by law established”, and so it is there for any citizen who wants it. The Queen is the Church’s Supreme Governor, and her people, regardless of what they believe, are its people. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who stands at the Church’s head, must serve them. He belongs to them.
But we shall not choose him. This process is nowadays controlled by something referred to, with varying degrees of affection, as the Wash House. The Wash House is the old laundry of Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s London residence, and it is now inhabited by the Crown Nominations Committee (CNC). If it has dirty linen, it does not wash it in public: next week, the CNC will meet at a secret location to consider its shortlist and try to come up with two names – the first being its choice, the second being its “appointable candidate” if things go wrong – for who, at the end of this year, should succeed Rowan Williams and become the 105th man (the law still requires it be a man) to sit on the throne of St Augustine…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9557907/The-last-thing-the-Church-of-England-needs-isa-pleasant-middle-manager.html
Archbishop Williams and Bishop Nazir-Ali on the place of religion in British public life
Paul Richardson – Church of England Newspaper – With both Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali producing books on the place of religion in Britain the press were bound to focus on the differences between them. Dr Nazir-Ali talks of a ‘triple jeopardy for the West’ from aggressive secularism, radical Islamism and multiculturalism and he criticises Dr Williams’ suggestion that some kind of recognition be given to Sharia law. Dr Williams takes a more hopeful approach to Islam and worries less about the church being under attack by secularists.
The Archbishop distinguishes between procedural secularism and ‘progammatic secularity’ or secularism as an aggressive ideology and suggests not only that Christians can live with the former but that they have helped to shape it. He sees one of the dangers of secularism as being the adoption of a managerial, instrumental attitude to social policy but he does not think it actually sums up where we are as a nation.
Both Williams and Nazir-Ali claim that many of the values to which we are committed, such as belief in human equality and in the sanctity of human life, are rooted in Christianity. Nazir-Ali claims the common law was shaped by Christianity and warns that there are no free-standing moral values. He argues that the state must do more than balance the competing interests of different groups: it must provide a moral vision for the common good.
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2012/09/21/archbishop-williams-and-bishop-nazir-ali-on-the-place-of-religion-in-british-public-life/