a nuanced, scholarly lecture
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazi…
Last month, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture in London about whether the British legal system should allow non-Christian courts to decide certain matters of family law.
Err…the entanglement of the CoE aside, it’s not the case that there are currently “Christian” courts, and in the spirit of openmindedness, other courts should be created.
It is the case that the State, for better or worse, currently holds a monopoly on violence and force, and the courts are an extension of this, and the debate was broached as to whether the State, which strives to be religion neutral, should be suplanted for some citizens with religious courts.
I also love how the NYT takes it on itself to call the Williams’ speech “nuanced”, and “scholarly” and “a lecture”.
I note that when Pope Ratzinger, a former professor of theology, quoted the Byzantine emperor Paleologus in a speech that the ignorant failed to understand and got upset at, the NYT characterized it thusly:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/world/…
he used language open to interpretations that could inflame Muslims, at a time of high tension
(to be fair, the article did quote a bunch of reasonable people, and was quite fair…but we still don’t get the fawning terms from the NYT that Williams gets…)
March 16th, 2008 at 4:41 pm Quote
I think of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as “Mystic Merlin”.