Oh Lord! 2

A lot of friends and colleagues think I was being hard on Rowan Williams over the sharia law row. So let’s have another look at it. He is basically a good guy, liberal, intelligent and “one of us”. Agreed. And I don’t begrudge him the opportunity to discuss the law with lawyers, and it’s great that he’s bright enough to do it. I’m glad he’s so clever; better than that prat George Carey, who never misses an opportunity to have a go at him. George had no brain; this guy’s got two. And now that I’ve had more time to look at what he actually said, I might find some common ground, though being in favour of disestablishment I doubt it. I know he wasn’t proposing laws to allow people to chop criminal’s hands off, of course not. But I also fear for what the evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Muslims and all the rest might wish to do with what he seemed to propose. Can anyone think of examples where religious exceptions and opt-outs have been used for liberal progressive purposes? No. All the examples I can think of are occasions for religious institutions to protect their cherished positions of privilege, discrimination or inequality. And is it not in fact one more example of the bony hand of Thatcher reaching forward into our time, when an archbishop can use the words “choice” and “marketplace” when discussing the laws of the land?

What I really have a problem with is people telling me that it’s all because I haven’t understood what Rowan said, or that I should take time to read all the full transcripts, or that I should give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s an archbishop and very very clever. Well I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure what I and others heard live on BBC Radio. If I got it wrong I think that’s his problem in presentation, not mine in reception. And I’m not the only one. The fact that we’re all arguing about it without being terribly sure whether we really understood what he meant means that he has failed to make his case, surely.

I have had to think on my feet when churchwardens, ministry team members and people in the street ask me what the hell’s going on. This is annual parish meetings season. In the past fortnight I’ve had to talk three people out of resigning. One of the men who cut the grass also said he didn’t want to carry on, but perhaps he was just sick of mowing. When this happens I don’t have time to go off and do research and get my head around all the carefully nuanced subtleties in learned articles and websites. I need answers. Quick. And it may well be an orchestrated media campaign but, hey, we have to understand that this is the world in which we operate.

Now that I’ve calmed down again, I think Andrew Brown was writing for me on the first weekend and subsequently. Sensible stuff. Now please, bishops and archbishops, give us a break for a few weeks, eh? Let’s try to get through March without another public relations disaster, shall we? We’ve still got the Lambeth Conference to come. Oh joy.