Recent comments by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore leader of world-wide Anglicanism, show a tremendous lack of critical intellect. Story from The Mail online.

Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity's history for its violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its peaceful principles.
His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has admitted that Christian doctrine is offensive to muslims
But it risked fresh controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia law in the British legal system.


(Sigh), where to begin? He seems to assume that Christianity is pacifist, a point that is at least debatable. And, Anglicanism has never been pacifist. And finding a place for Sharia in the British legal system? How can one have a nation if more than one system of Basic Law is in place? Sharia? a blueprint for the oppression of women, punishment of "apostates," discrimination against non-Muslims, etc.

The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn.
In it, Dr Williams said violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.


What? Islam spread by force of violent conquest. The Q'uran advocates violence against unbelievers. Muhammad, the exemplar of how to live, engaged in acts of violence in consolidating his power. Islam and violence are extremely compatible. What a ninny.

He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims'.
Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God.
Dr Williams added: 'It is all the more important for the sake of open and careful dialogue that we try to clarify what we do and do not mean by it, and so I trust that what follows will be read in this spirit.'


What does he mean "sometimes offensive, to Muslims?" The Doctrine of the Trinity is inherently offensive to Muslims who believe Allah to exist in splendid unitary isolation. And why do I think that Williams call "to clarify what we do and do not mean by it" will involve backpedaling on this most fundamental Christian doctrine.

He told Muslim leaders that faith has no connection with political power or force, and that Christians have in the past betrayed this idea.

What? Only if Christianity is to have absolutely no relationship, directly or indirectly with government, which as St. Paul said, has been given the sword by God. I was not aware that Anglicanism had secretly been Anabaptist all along.

'Religious identity has often been confused with cultural or national integrity, with structures of social control, with class and regional identities, with empire: and it has been imposed in the interest of all these and other forms of power,' he said.

Such as when the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century unilaterally ended the slave trade across the Atlantic, a projection of power rooted in evangelical Christian conviction.

As Bugs Bunny says, What a Maroon!