Rowan Williams comments would have been much better said by someone else. The trouble is that he’s leader of the worldwide Anglican communion. His words therefore reflect on Anglicans in Pakistan, Nigeria and Uganda, whose churches are being firebombed by gangs of Muslims, whose leaders and their families are being attacked and murdered. Patrick Sookhedeo of the Barnabas Fund is pretty trenchant:
Furthermore for the many Anglicans and other Christians living in contexts where shari`a is being applied and causing untold misery and suffering, for example in parts of Nigeria and parts of Sudan, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestions are not just unwise, but insensitive to the point of callousness.
In many parts of the Muslim world, England is (mistakenly) seen as a ‘Christian’ country, so for the leader of global Anglicanism to suggest that Muslim law could possibly replace ‘Christian’ laws looks like a massive admission of defeat by Christians. The Ugandan church’s decision today to disassociate from the Lambeth conference may, in part, be a damage limitation exercise. There is a cost to the mission and ministry of the church in Uganda of being associated with a global church which looks like it’s lost confidence in the Christian faith. We haven’t lost that confidence, it’s just that a debate about culture, law and society within the UK looks very different when you’re looking from Uganda. That’s why, if this needed to be said (and the issue certainly needed to be raised, though maybe not this way), it would have been better said by a local, English bishop rather than AB of C. Symbolism is so important.
David Keen For what it is worth
