Being an American of Irish and Mexican heritage has certain
advantages, and one of them is that I do not usually fret about the
pronouncements of Anglican leaders. John Henry Newman had it
indelicately but indubitably right some 120 years ago, I think,
when he asserted, “There are but two alternatives, the
way to Rome, and the way to Atheism,” before adding that
“Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism
is the halfway house on the other.”
Like Newman eventually did, I look to the Pope and the Catechism
of the Catholic Church for theological guidance. Accordingly, I had
promised myself that I was not going to write about Anglican
troubles.
But that was before Nicholas Thomas Wright, Bishop of Durham,
England and fourth-ranking Anglican prelate, volunteered an
insufferably condescending defense of his
colleague Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Now I feel
like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III: Just
when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
You already know that in a recent interview with the BBC,
Williams mused that the British legal system ought to formally
accommodate Islamic Sharia law where it can, in the interest of
greater social cohesion and because Muslim influence in Britain
will not wane anytime soon. There was more than a hint of the
apocryphal Victorian resolve to “lie back and think of England” in
this prescription.
Coming as it did from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams’
preemptive capitulation and nonchalant attitude toward taking a
sledgehammer to one of the pillars of western civilization was
viewed with dismay in many circles. The editor in chief of this
magazine even dubbed
Williams “Islam’s most recent celebrity convert.”
RET, as Bob Tyrrell is known around these parts, had company.
Satirist David “Iowahawk” Burge lampooned Williams with a brilliant update of The Canterbury
Tales. On the other side of the Atlantic, Craig Brown rewrote “the cat sat on the mat” in
over-processed prose that sounded like it had come from the
Archbishop himself. Meanwhile in Missouri, Christopher Johnson
tracked events with the same bemused diligence he applies to all
things Anglican, pausing to note that the celebrated N.T. Wright had
defended his colleague in perhaps the worst possible fashion.
As one who characterized what the Bush administration did
in response to the attacks of 9/11 as “astonishingly immature,” and
as a champion of what some Protestants
call the “new perspective on Paul,” Wright has long been
controversial. The man knows what the back of a podium looks like,
and can usually dream up something sonorous and theological before
his first cup of coffee. But what he had to say in defense of Rowan
Williams was spectacularly ill-considered.
In an essay posted February 13, Wright said Williams was talking
to lawyers, focused on civil rather than criminal matters, and had
distanced himself from those aspects of Sharia law that non-Muslims
frequently find abominable. If the rest of you were not so twitchy
about Islam, he implied, you might understand that the relationship
of individual conscience to society is an important question.
By way of concluding comment, and in spite of that fact that
Williams had two days before allowed for the possibility that his
remarks caused may have caused “distress or misunderstanding,”
Wright huffed, “We should be grateful that we have an Archbishop
capable of such work, not demand that his every word be instantly
comprehensible by the casual uninformed onlooker.”
The aforementioned Mr. Johnson rejected that defense “Wright
quick,” so to speak, observing that “the idea that Britain or
anybody else can cherry-pick which aspects of Islamic law will be
accommodated and which will not is the apotheosis of the term ‘pipe
dream.’”
IT’S SAFE TO SAY that British triumphalism of the kind that once
set a poem to music with the idea that a singer
“would not cease from mental fight or let my sword sleep in my hand
till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land”
is long gone and little missed, but one does not lightly substitute
Mecca for Jerusalem.
Wright’s tone was more irksome than his surprising failure to
grasp the idea that Sharia law grows like kudzu wherever it gains a
foothold, precisely because Islam does not make the Christian and
Enlightenment distinction between church and state. Moreover, the
under-remarked aspect of Wright’s “you people just don’t
understand” defense is that it’s lifted from the same playbook that some
Episcopalian and Anglican leaders have used to criticize
conservative African bishops who think homosexual conduct is sinful
even if a bishop in New Hampshire says differently.
Wright does not explain how people who allegedly misunderstand
the Archbishop of Canterbury can nevertheless grasp the overtly
theological language in the Book of Common Prayer. Similarly, too
many of the voices raised against Nigerian prelate Peter Akinola
and his allies stop just short of suggesting that conservative
African theologians would agree with progressive churchmen if only
they had a little more seasoning and a lot more practice at reading
between the scriptural lines.
Snootiness is not unique to the Anglican Communion, of course.
At least one Catholic bishop objects to a more accurate translation of
liturgical prayers on the grounds that accuracy might be
“pastorally challenging” and “hard for ordinary churchgoers to
understand.” But there are more reasons to call balderdash on the
benighted idea that an interview aimed at barristers ought not also
be bandied about by barkeeps, ballerinas, and perhaps even bosun’s
mates on banana boats.
Had Rowan Williams been as technical as Tom Wright claims he was
being, he would not have shared his thoughts so willingly with a
non-specialist at the BBC. Had the people arguing with the
archbishop been as immune to nuance as Wright seems to believe they
are, Williams’ cautious advocacy of Sharia law would not have been
parodied as quickly and skillfully as it was.
Even the left-leaning Guardian, hardly a bastion of
lawyers or theologians, correctly paraphrased his assertion that laws are not just
instruments of control, but also public affirmations of “the
affiliations that people owe to one another.”
In short, we must look to none other than legendary lisper Daffy
Duck for a deft description of the defense offered by the Doctor of
Divinity in Durham, because it’s “dethpicable.”
