THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.
Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”.
In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation
I think the ABC may be right in saying the US is not necessarily the center of what God is looking to do in our world right now — which we can take as a blow to our pride as Americans. Actually, why should we have to be the center of everything? God’s general policy is to use the weak to do great things, and that is not what Americans tend to be.
“In the interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that its “political solutions were not the most impressiveâ€. ”
Only “mild criticisms” eh. What is +++Williams ‘real’ knowledge of the Muslim world?
I am basically an isolationist ‘at heart,’ but the reality is that in today’s world, isolationism is a dangerous delusion.
The end of the Cold War left a vacuum where the Soviet Union, in its own self-serving, evil and anti-Western way, helped to ‘hold in check’ the Islamic fundementalist and pan-national islamic forces ‘boiling under the surface’ in the Third World.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a blessing that came with an onerous burden. That burden is the ‘filling of the vacuum’ left by that collapse. For about ten years after the collapse, the USA did nothing, even though we were were repeatedly subject to organized hostility from muslim radicals. Finally, on 11 September 2001, those hostile muslims made their most overt declaration of war when they launched a major attack against the USA.
We responded. What would +++Williams have done if he were leading the USA?
By the way, when you answer that question, you might just examine how he has been leading the Anglican Communion.
Some might claim that the ABC’s attempt to intervene overseas by “dialogue†with a “sustained slog of ineffectual inaction†had led to “the worst of all worlds†(rampant apostasy and the disintegration of the Communion for which he suppossed to be an “instrument of unity.”)
All of which goes to say we should keep up prayer for all in leadership. Any course of action can have unintended consequences. President Bush (and the next President) and the ABC face hard challenges without easy answers. Action and inaction both have their time and place and both carry unintended consequences.
Amen to his view of the recent USA policies
Shame on him for not critising the Islamic terrorist nations: why does he have to cuddle up to them?
It really is worth reading the text of the interview in full, rather than just The Sunday Times article. The following quotations are particularly interesting:
[blockquote] We discuss Jesus as an individual shared by both the Christian and Muslim tradition, and I ask him if Jesus is a role model, “Not in celebrity terms, but as someone whose style and rhythm and direction of life was one that we seek to realise in our lives.” But was he a revolutionary? “Yes, so revolutionary that he puts all revolutions into question. The change is so different that it is not so much a change from one system to another, but a change from one world to another. A new creation where our relations to each other are no longer mutually suspicious, or exclusive or competitive, but entirely shaped by giving and receiving – building one another up by a community of transformed persons, not just by a new legal system. That’s revolutionary.” …
He is not afraid of being critical of Muslims either. In Pakistan he was “surprised by how the extremely small Christian minority there is perceived as so deeply threatening by an overwhelming Muslim majority which ought to be more confident and generous about its identity.” He also feels that the Muslim world should be ready to acknowledge that “their present political solutions aren’t always very impressive,” and that there is something to learn from asking questions of “classical liberal democracy that might fit with an Islamic world view.” [/blockquote]
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/arch2.pdf
The Archbishop’s warped view of history is staggering. Does he imagine that the British “took over” territories without “bursts of violence?” Does he imagine that all was sweetness and light until an enlightened Empire gently kissed its possessions goodbye? There is no question that the British in South Asia were more constructive in their territories than many previous conquerors had been. They built railroads, put in telegraph lines, and left a parliamentary system which functions, if barely. But he should talk to the educated Hindu woman I met who, while acknowledging all of the above, said bluntly, “The British raped us.” Like the Romans and all the others, this empire took tax money and resources out by the boatloads and did relatively little to encourage self-sustaining industry. Does “no taxation without representation” ring a bell? Does he know nothing of the atrocities committed by British troops leading up to Indian independence, and does he understand that the Partition of India resulted in massive refugee movements and perhaps a million deaths?
And now, just when very encouraging progress is being made in Iraq, when massive US tax expenditures are going in and not out, when the Iraqis are feeling their way towards a political reality that may very well function, he feels called upon to label us monsters. I wish he would feel called to do something about the one thing he does have responsibility for, which is the Anglican Communion, collapsing around his feet.
Well said, Katherine. I’d only add that it’s highly questionable whether the British had anything to do with the parliamentary system in India. Certainly Indians like Nobel Prize winner (economics) Amatrya Sen would beg to differ. Williams is projecting back his assumption that the Indians would have a parliamentary system without British rule. But in fact the British suppressed any self rule. India has a parliamentary system despite the British.
And what if there had been road side bombs in India? How would the British have reacted? Here’s how they reacted to a peaceable assembly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_Massacre
Churchill said India was no more a country than the Equator before the British arrived. Rowan Williams does not seem to have progressed much beyond that view even with the benefit of hindsight.
I’d like to know what Williams thought the US was supposed to do after 9/11. That said, The Sunday Times report distorts what the archbishop says – and leaves him appearing to be ignorant of basic distinctions in the American political landscape.
For example, it omits his even handedness in criticizing the US and the UK in the war in Iraq.
But worse look at this:
1) The Sunday Times writes, He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanityâ€.
2) Emel writes, Christian Zionists support the return of Jews to Israel because they believe the second coming of Jesus will not occur until all Jews are in Israel. The Archbishop is scathing, accusing them of being connected to “the chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity.â€
I would like to be humble about our role in world affairs but unlike the British Empire our chief aim of late has not been conquest but rather to export democracy.
The words “imperial”, “imperialist”, and “imperialistic” do not seem to exist anywere in the article nor in the full interview, but only in the mind of the (clearly anti-revolutionary) creator of the headline. This merits a new entry in the [url=http://resurrectiongulfcoast.blogspot.com/2007/11/briar-patch-dictionary.html]Briar Patch Dictionary[/url].
And yet Rowan is such a soft touch when it comes to The Episcopal Church’s apostasies.
I agree that the whole article is worth reading. The Times has, naturally, quoted the most inflammatory parts; but he did say what he’s quoted as saying.
With reference to Muslims, he does commend their five times a day of prayer. I think that we, as Anglican Christians, have lost a great deal with the disappearance of daily morning and evening prayers. It is impressive, in Muslim countries, to hear the call to prayer as an integral part of life. We need to recover that. We can easily do it in our families with a Prayer Book and the daily lectionary. We should.
I must respectfully disagree with the idea that India would have a parliament without the British. With all of its flaws, it is true that the British Empire exported representative government around the world. Why the American efforts to do the same, without the colonialism, are so disliked is difficult to understand.
Katherine,
The Europeans dislike acknowledging their diplomatic and military dependency upon the United States. It’s a lot like a twenty five year old still living at his Mom’s house and still having to borrow her car.
# 4 IMHO, it is because, as is painfully evident of late, he lacks the spine to speak truth to those whom he fears for one reason or another.
# 6: I must disagree strongly with your view of Indian history. The British Raj was overwhelmingly benign and beneficial. It created a sense of national identity where none had existed before, and it ended the Muslim hegemony over the Hindu minority, and caused the Hindus to scrap suttee and other barbaric practices. Sadly it could not abolish casteism. The main failure of British rule was the creation of that illiterate cesspit of a nation, the religious apartheid state of Pakistan, which continues to inflict harm on the world. The oppression of Pakistani Christians is entirely typical of the totalitarian instincts of Islam.
The discussion about Jesus in this interview misses the point; there is nothing quoted here that most Muslims couldn’t affirm. Ironically, Williams spoke much more clearly about Jesus and the Bible on a visit to Pakistan some years ago.
Williams’ grasp of America’s role in the world and its post-WW2 history is equally lamentable, but is fairly typical of the world of 60s, and 70s British leftism in which he was reared: anti-American, pacifist, nuclear disarmament, detente witn Soviet Union etc. All the old echoes are still there.
In the mean time, aren’t we still waiting for some pontification on TECs response to the Primates? It’s nice that he has opinions (such as they are) on the US. There might even be one or two people in the world who care what he thinks on the matter. He is the AoC after all, and it is well known that World Opinion turns on the flick of his eyebrow. But in between such profound and important pronouncements on the Great Issues of the Day, do you think he could have found time in the last two months to address the raging fire that is consuming his church?
carl
re #16:
Yoo hoo! Rowwwwannnnnn! Where aarrrrrrrrre youuuuuuu?
Good grief. What has this man said? . . . “worse than Britain during its imperial heyday” — WHAT?
I’m sure that Britain did some amazingly wonderful things for its colonized subject countries, but I believe that the money and the slaves — unlike the case of the US and Iraq — flowed from the colonized to the colonizer.
I would be more than happy to cut all of our foreign aid and start spending it on refurbishing our borders. But somehow I don’t think that that’s what the ABC has in mind.
What he’d like is that we 1) allow terrorists to have free reign in our country, killing thousands on domestic soul, 2) yammer with the UN, 3) give a lot of money away, and 4) form a Lambeth Committee, I suppose.
It’s always embarrassing when religious leaders comment on matters of which they are inexpert — China, healthcare, Adam Smith, military strategy.
NT Wright does it all the time, and I’m always embarrassed for such a brilliant man in his own area commenting on matters which he knows very little of.
It’s a little like my waxing eloquent on flexible sigmoidoscopies or the practice of weaving in 12th century France.
The knowledge gap is simply staggering.
Ah well . . . though I don’t agree with Williams on so much within Anglicanism, I appreciate reading him when he’s talking about something that he knows about.
And thankfully, what he says about foreign policy is not, I think, very meaningful to those setting foreign policy in any nation at all.
Gordian, it was more benign and beneficial than the Mughals, certainly. But then, I was in India for the 150th anniversary of the 1857 rising, in which Hindu and Muslim together rose in support of a hapless Mughal. The 1857 event was celebrated as the first strike in the war for independence, and its participants, Hindu and Muslim alike, as national heroes. Most Indians definitely don’t share your view. My view is somewhere in between.
I suppose we can forgive some national envy and spite, but if the ABC said: there is something to learn from asking questions of “classical liberal democracy that might fit with an Islamic world view,†he is profoundly out of touch.
Islam has already told us, in unmistakeable words and actions, that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. The deleted two words hasn’t been listening. Or maybe he knows Islam better than the Muslims.
I agree with some of the other posters: the ABC should take care of his own part of the world’s religions before branching out.
Katharine, the Sepoy Mutiny was largely put down by Indians. Look up Lucknow and Cawnpore on the history sites to find out what it was like. Of course the Brits went too far in reprisals – the same mistake they made in Ireland in Easter 1916. But Indian nationalist propaganda has to mythologize the recent past, playing up British excesses and denying the far bloodier massacres perpetrated by Indians on Brits and Indians alike. It’s pretty dubious calling it ‘the first war of independence’, other than in the sense that some Indians wanted to restore Mughal rule in some places. There never really was a ‘war of independence’ in India – other than the Indians who fought for the Japanese in the ‘Indian National Army’.
Anyone else recall the exchange between ABC and Sec’y of State Colin Powell a couple years ago? After a similar ABC blast about US imperialism, Gen. Powell was reported to have stopped the ABC cold by noting that the only land the US sought was a place to bury its casualties.
Echoed from SF:
Dear Archbishop Williams,
In light of the actual usefulness and intellectual coherence of your “imperialist†statements, you might want to think seriously about keeping your day job.
…Oh. Uh. Er. Never mind. Belay that; we’d prefer you didn’t.
Signed,
the majority of the world-wide Anglican Communion
Gordian, I would by no means overlook problems with the Indian culture and Indian history. I lived there and I see big problems. The point is that while the British weren’t the devil personified in India, they weren’t always angels either. Williams is looking at it through his British rose-colored glasses, while he looks at current American policies through glasses smeared with mud.
Sarah’s got the best line so far, as is her wont. What did he want us to do in response to 9-11? Call a Lambeth Commission?
#22 – You’re close, but he was answering a question from former ABC George Carey. And he didn’t say place to bury our dead to Carey, but in another context. Still what he had to say to Carey is powerful stuff.
Check it here
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-colin-powell.htm
It also provides the place bury our dead quote and context.
Colin and Alma Powell are good Episcopalians – as most of you know.
Why should anyone pay attention to what Rowan Williams has to say?
“Sarah’s got the best line so far, as is her wont. What did he want us to do in response to 9-11? Call a Lambeth Commission?”
Yes, I think that rather summed up his conclusion to ‘Writing in the dust’. IIRC, he didn’t think high altitude bombing was the right response to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
This is disappointing but not surprising. He sounds eerily like our Presiding Bishop in his ambiguous response about Jesus, condemning America and placating the Muslims. His one criticism of Muslims is that their politics have not been the most impressive. Bravo, that’s what the leader of a Christian denomination of millions has to say about those Muslim governments that persecute, oppress and kill Christians while making it illegal to have a Bible, etc. Way to stand up for your brothers and sisters in Christ.
I agree with Sarah above about his statements regarding the US. He is quick to criticize and use cliche’s about us without acknowledging the gifts we give to the world. He tells us to give more…how about the gracious giving of our hundreds of private charities and our tax dollars that go around the world. Just the example of our response to the Tsunami flies in the face of his comments.
Meanwhile, he offers no leadership. What we have from him regarding our denominiation is hearsay and incoherence.
It is one thing for him to speak theologically but now he has thrown an arrow at our country while we are at war and our enemy indiscriminately kills children receiving toys from our soldiers. And we are told to give more. Imagine the peace and rehabilitation of Iraq that would have occurred by now if the Muslim terrorists had stopped fighting.
100 years ago we were pouring our treasure and sweat into the Phillipines, then it was France, then it was Holland, then it was Britain, then it was Germany and Japan, then it was South korea, then it was Vietnam, then it was Afghanistan & Iraq.
Personally, I don’t think that we are getting our money’s worth out of the investment but it is damnable to think that we raped any of these countries! If we raped Germany after WWII then what must he think of what Britain and France did to Germany after WWI???
At the least, AB Williams chooses mighty strange fights. I sometimes think that he is educated beyond his intelligence.
This will certainly keep ++Rowan on all the fashionable guest lists in London. He’s probably moved down the crocodile’s menu, too.
How come the Archbishop of Canterbury has time to be interviewed about world events, when he has yet to have time to provide leadership to his own church?
Anyone seen an interview on South Cone, Canada, the Virginian court cases (and the interesting revelations about the Presiding Bishop’s true view on her agreement in Dar es Salaam and her willingness to sell churches to anyone other than Anglicans…..)?
I thought he was one of the instruments of unity in the worldwide Anglican church.
While I believe the spineless ABC would be better served dealing with the problems in his own CoE, he does echo the loud anti-American sentiment across the world. Once we get rid of Bush and elect a new president who is clear that God did NOT send us into war, America might be able to repair it’s damaged reputation around the world.
Around which world, Fred? The one that just elected Sarkozy? Merkel? Stephen Harper? Even the new Aussie Labour PM is pro-American.
Or are we needing to burnish our standing with Ahmadinejahd, Chavez and Assad?
He is wrong about both the British Empire and the US.
And we are left wondering what he thinks about the Anglican Communion. There won’t be one by the time he issues his oracle.
Thanks, John. The version saw was definitely RW, but the confusion was likely over an imprecise reference to ABC.
I agree with what he said, and I’m glad he said it. I just wish Americans wouldn’t issue knee-jerk, ad hominem remarks as seen in the comments after the article. They vividly show the anger and violence he discussed.
We all know now that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. That country has been used as a staging ground to draw would-be terrorists there, diverting them from our soil. Is it just to inflict damage on a country, wiping out its infrastructure and tens of thousands of innocent people for that purpose? As for Saddam, yep, he was a bad guy but there have been worse in other countries and we left them alone. The ABC is right — we vented our anger at the 9/11 terrorists on Iraq and, in the process, did not adequately attack the place where the true terrorists (including Bin Laden) were hiding (Afghanistan), which would have been just and justified. That is precisely the problem with the type of war/violence described by the ABC.
As for him speaking out, does anyone believe he called up the Times and said, “Please send over a reporter and photographer. I would like to criticize America!” No, he was asked for his opinions and reflections, so he gave them. Telling him to shut up or mind his own business is childish, frankly. I wish MORE religious leaders would speak up about the state of the world.
[blockquote]We all know now that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11.[/blockquote]
And exactly how do we know this? As a matter of established fact, Saddam had everything to do with 9-11. Did you happen to peruse Osama bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war and the reasons for it?
Well said #11: “yet Rowan is such a soft touch when it comes to The Episcopal Church’s apostasies.” You don’t think the money has anything to do with that?
Fred: “Once we get rid of Bush and elect a new president who is clear that God did NOT send us into war, America might be able to repair it’s damaged reputation around the world.”
So, Bush is the only reason we’re disliked around the world? There was no anti-American sentiment before Bush?
#37–Uh, perhaps because the government has since admitted that Iraq wasn’t involved with 9/11? And that our strategy has been to engage the terrorists there so they wouldn’t come here? And that the intelligence was faulty? And then there are the military bigwigs who expressed frustration over the big push in Iraq and the delay in Afghanistan, which allowed Bin Laden and his minions to escape.
#40: The three reasons Osama bin Laden declared war on the West, and America in particular, were:
1. American presence in Saudi Arabia. Why were we there? Saddam.
2. Sanctions on Iraq that were proving a hardship for the Iraqi people. Why were the sanctions in place? Saddam.
3. The Israeli/Palestinian problem that was flaring up. Who was fanning the flames with $25,000 stipends to suicide bombers? Saddam.
Was Saddam involved in the operational details of 9-11? No. Was it all about Saddam. You bet it was.
a great critique by Victor Hanson Davis is here:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTliNzFlYzk0YWE2OTk5MjU1MWI0NWVhMjc5Nzk0NDI=
# 43: I think Kendall should publish this one.
Aaargh, I mean # 42, of course. Hanson is a real historian with his finger on the contemporary pulse.
This is fun – now Mark Steyn has chimed in:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWM5NWI4MWU1OWQzOTU0NjFhNTFkZWI5Y2Q1ZmExZTg=
Primary source: Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Secondary source: Emel, a Muslim Lifestyle magazine
Terciary source: Sunday Times
The ABC is interviewed by the Emel reporter; he answers questions put to him by the Emel reporter. The reporter selects from those comments and writes the article. The Sunday Times reporter selects comments from Emel and comments upon them in the Sunday Times. American blog posters comment on the comments of the Sunday Times and Emel…terciary and secondary sources…how very American! What did the ABC actually say in the context of his own comments? Shall we track down the primary source and ask him? Or shall we continue to comment upon comments posted here?
From #45’s link:
[blockquote]Of course, the third explanation is that this is just the usual leftie shell game, and if Bush were to say, “You’re right, we need to stay there for another 200 years, and I’m making Max Boot the first viceroy”, the Archbishop would hitch up his cassock and recoil in horror.[/blockquote]
Ahhhhahahahaha!!! Bingo!
Britain’ s record as the Holy English Empire is bitterly mixed. RW seems to be unaware of the dreadful things Eng land has done. Its role in Ireland from the 15th century on is a brutal tale, and its role, say, in forcing opium on China in the 19th Cent. is a terrible story of bullying and greed carried to an extreme. RW really needs to learn some history first.
But a p[artocularly agreed with one of the responses above, that we have little reason to listen to RQ any more. He has made himself disposable, like an electronic device whose repair cost exceeds its value. LM
#41
Why were we in Saudi Arabia? The same reason we don’t do ANYTHING about the human rights abuses there or the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Oil.
I’ll grant you number 2, but to say Saddam was a big reason for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a huge stretch. Especially since we have consistently armed Israel AND conflict in that region has been going on for a very, very long time — in modern times, since the creation of Israel itself. You give Saddam FAR too much credit. Would we have been attacked if there was no Saddam? Yep.
Katherine, the points you made are good ones. I think I will make a good one too. ABC Williams is entering a political quagmire that he may be sorry he stepped into. I believe he would do better speaking of Jesus and His saving Grace and listen to the warnings of Saint Paul to not get embroiled in such issues of politics.
#46
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/index.html
is the AoC’s press release site, however, the AoC’s staff is notoriously slow in getting new stuff posted (the last item posted is dated 9 Nov), and furthermore the staff fails to recognize how posting their transcript of any such interview might provide ballast against some journalistic issue as you imply has happened.
So we are indeed left with a secondary source as was cited in #5. Given the AoC’s staff’s record, that is all we are likely to see. But putting this into context, if EMEL slopped up the interview, is the AoC’s responsibility. We cannot presume that EMEL did anything wrong until the AoC says so.
[blockquote]#41
Why were we in Saudi Arabia? The same reason we don’t do ANYTHING about the human rights abuses there or the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Oil. [/blockquote]
Sophistry. Prior to 1990, there was oil in Saudi and we had no troops. Why did we go there then? (Saddam) After 2003, the Saudis still have oil and we’re no longer there. Why? (Saddam’s gone). We were in Saudi for one reason and one only: Saddam.
The suicide bombers were THE issue that was exacerbating the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Saddam was most certainly fueling that fire with his subsidies to the bombers.
Read Osama’s declaration. It tells us what we did that got him so upset. And what we did was largely because of Saddam. Period.
#50 “but to say Saddam was a big reason for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a huge stretch” … which is why Jeffersonian didn’t say that. There is a clear difference between the reason for a conflict and an actor that exacerbates the pre existing situation.
#54 — Indeed, “exacerbates.” But we have NOT attacked and occupied other countries that have DIRECTLY threatened us and have the nukes to back up their threats. Thank God for that, but it makes the reasons for the Iraq war lame.
Furthermore, Bin Laden also said that unless Americans convert to Islam, we will continue to be attacked. If his other three reasons were “Saddam’s fault,” then what do you suggest we do about the conversion issue? The terrorists attacked because of their militarized, fanatical brand of religion and not because of some third-party reaction to Saddam or anything else.
If you’re pleased with our foreign policy and military decisions, good for you. But many here and around the world are not and, like the ABC, should be able to speak out without ugly Americans insulting them personally. The present and previous popes have also been quite critical of American policies.
#55
“But we have NOT attacked and occupied other countries that have DIRECTLY threatened us and have the nukes to back up their threats.”
>This is arguing that an adversary’s possession of nuclear weapons is the core of [i]my[/i] foreign policy motivations. My post never said that.
“it makes the reasons for the Iraq war lame”
>Why? I never stated any reasons. As stated in 54, this is a strawman I’ll not engage.
“unless Americans convert to Islam, we will continue to be attacked. If his other three reasons were “Saddam’s fault,†then what do you suggest we do about the conversion issue? ”
>I’ll not answer another poster’s mail here. What do we do about a fanatical rant though? Ignore it, while recognizing that the adversary is not motivated in ways comparable to us.
“But many here and around the world are not ”
>this is the logical fallacy of arguing based on the popularity of an argument.
“The present and previous popes have also been quite critical of American policies.”
>this is the logical fallacy of arguing based on the authority of the argument proponent.
Woops, sorry. My comment was addressed to Harvey and not to Tom.
Katherine, your comment #6 was quoted verbatim, into the London Guardian news source [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2217094,00.html]over here[/url].
Kendall, I am used to seeing quotes from you by newspaper reporters (including, I am sure, Steven Bates), but this is the first time in my recollection that I have seen a major newspaper reporter quoting from a commenter on your blog!
Elves, this would be a good link to post for all of us to comment on. (Hat tip: Pageantmaster)
Br’er Rabbit, thanks! Perhaps I should get a blog….
I’m also encouraged by Victor Davis Hanson’s comments. It’s nice when a major published historian agrees with one’s views as typed in a white fury on an early Sunday morning.
Ouch,
rowan-slated-for-attacking-us-foreign-policy
Meanwhile many clergy working with the [British military] Services are said to believe that constant criticism of the Iraq war by Church leaders has undermined support for British troops back home.
Canon Andrew White, the most senior British clergyman in Iraq, called for letter-writing campaigns like those of the Second World War to raise the morale of the servicemen and women risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Canon White, vicar of St George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad, said, “What really concerns me is that the British do not support their military in the same way as the Americans do. If you go around the American embassy in Baghdad it is full of letters and pictures written and sent by children to American soldiers.â€
News Flash: Rowan admits responses to interview were a plot to gain large groups of converts from Hollywood, California.
WE can always count of Dr. Williams’ leadership to be consistent.
Consistently disappointing. And his grasp of history and
geopolitics? Consistently warped.
Is this a little bit of “wag the dog” by the ABC? Is he creating controversy to deflect attention from other controvery? It sure seems like it.
The abundant discomfort/controversy, above, produced by the ABC’s declarations on the Iraq War, pretty well illustrates the debilitating effect on the Anglican, or upon any part of the institutional Body of Christ, when religious leaders go political. I remember: as a relatively new Episcopalian at the time of the invasion, I was really frosted when war-time prayers wafted down from 815 which, in effect, called for forgiveness and understanding of our enemies, but not once called on the Lord to steal our soldiers’ hearts, protect them in battle and/or lead them to victory. The final frosting, of course, was to come with VGR. That’s when I left. That’s when, as we know, our religious leaders went trendy and secular. By that time, I wondered whether my association with TEC did not compromise my beliefs both as a Christian and a patriot. When will they ever learn?
PS I posted something like this last night but it never got there.