Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Culture Wars

The Archbishop in the Glass House

by Clay Staggs

I’ve frequently bemoaned the sorry state of the Episcopal Church USA. The Church of England is apparently even worse off, if the recent comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, are any indication.

The Archbishop recently gave an interview to Emel, which is described as a “muslim lifestyle magazine.” (I’m not even going to touch that one.) The interview was excerpted in The Times (UK).

Dr. Williams throws out some doozies. Get this:

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”

Either this man is rabidly ignorant of history and current events, or he is outright lying. Whichever it is, he sounds utterly ridiculous. Does anybody really believe that we went into Iraq, bombed away, and then left for someone else to “put it back together”? Who would that be, exactly? I’m sure the families of the soldiers who are bleeding and dying there would like to know why their loved ones are bleeding and dying if someone else is putting Iraq back together. Probably the folks at the US Treasury would like to know who’s paying to put it all back together, if the US isn’t.

And the British went into India to normalize it? Really? Then can someone please explain to me what all of Ghandi’s protests were about then? The UK got into India for trade, and nothing else. How many decades were they there before granting India independence? Contrast this with Iraq. We invaded in 2003. In 2005, the Iraqis held elections (twice) and began to govern themselves.

Is it any wonder, with leadership like Dr. Williams is providing, that the worldwide Anglican Communion is about to be torn apart? Perhaps he should refrain from political analysis (and probably from interviews with muslim “lifestyle” magazines too) and concentrate on his own problems.

Here’s a start. He should figure out what’s wrong with this quote that he gave in the interview:

He commends the Muslim practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.