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The View from the Vicarage - April 2008
The Conscience of the Nation
During the 1960s, when the legislation that abolished the death penalty for capital crimes was passing through the House of Lords, a remarkable comment was made by a politician. The night before the Final Reading of the Bill, Prime Minister Harold Wilson spoke to Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the telephone, urging him to speak in the final debate. Wilson encouraged Ramsey to take part in the debate with the words: “Archbishop – you are the conscience of the nation.” Now that the dust is beginning to settle about the comments of the current Archbishop of Canterbury about Sharia law what are we to make about the hornet’s nest that he stirred up? My own personal feeling is that there was a great deal more heat than light shed during the hysterical reaction to Rowan Williams’ plea that “we have to think a little harder about the role and rule of law in a plural society of overlapping identities.” I think that the Archbishop may have been a little unwise about using the highly emotive word Sharia during his lecture - but it is important to understand that he was not suggesting that there should be hand-chopping and stoning in the UK. In fact he stated that “no one in his right mind would want to see that kind of inhumanity in Britain.” He was not calling for the introduction of Sharia as a parallel jurisdiction to civil law, but was “exploring ways in which reasonable accommodation might be made within existing arrangements for religious conscience.”
Many have called for the Archbishop to resign, but I for one say ‘three cheers’ for someone in public life trying to suggest a Christian way forward through a difficult problem that results in the fact that the UK is now a multi-cultural and multi-faith country. What the Archbishop suggested may be mistaken and he might well be guilty of being naïve about the likely reaction in the media about his suggestion – but I for one am glad that someone in public life has had the courage to ask the awkward questions, rather than pandering to the prejudices of public opinion and not leading and speaking from principle.
There have been a few more reasoned reactions to the controversy provoked by the Archbishop’s comments about Sharia; one of these was in the Aberdeenshire Press and Journal (19 February 2008): “Moslem people make a huge contribution to the life of this country. The Archbishop of Canterbury may be something of an innocent abroad when it comes to the press, but he was right to invite the country to consider the matter.”
The question that I want to ask is this: is it possible that behind all the howls of complaint and criticism about a good and wise man’s comments about Sharia that there lies a deeper and much more significant issue? Militant secularism, that wants to sideline all religion from public life, is now a powerful force in our country. All religions are being progressively excluded from the national decision-making process. Faith has been privatised and marginalised. More than ever today we need ‘the Conscience of the Nation’ to call us back to the faith-based centre that is the very foundation of our nation. More than ever today we need to be reminded of the words of Jesus: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s – and to God the things that are God’s”.
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