Yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a lecture on climate change. Not for the first time did he speak in strong language and with a seriously prophetic edge about the world’s most pressing crisis.
I was scanning the response this evening after a full day of meetings and immediately before I go to bed and then disappear on holiday for a few days in the early hours of tomorrow morning. What I note about some responses is the remarkably easy way his critics elide from one issue into another (unrelated) issue and do so with a straight face.
Take, for example, the following: The Archbishop of Canterbury critiques the issue of climate change and addresses the ethics involved. He is deemed by some to treat unjustly homosexuals in the Anglican Communion, being accused of ‘appeasement’ of those who call themselves ‘conservative’. Some ‘conservatives’ on sexual issues are also right-winger Americans who deny climate change. The fact that some people who agree with the Archbishop on one issue but disagree with him on another undermines his credibility in speaking powerfully about climate change. Then, for good measure, throw in the added charge that his call for attention to be paid to minorities lacks credibility because one particular minority feels victimised by the way he is handling a wider issue and you’ve hit the jackpot.
Isn’t the silliness of these links obvious? To delegitimise what he says about climate change on the grounds that he pays attention to some people on a completely different issue itself lacks credibility – whatever position (so to speak) you take on the sexual stuff.
I remember writing about my admiration for John Lennon. Unlike the Archbishop, he was a total hypocrite, but it didn’t stop him speaking out. Sadly, it also didn’t stop him writing nonsense like ‘Imagine no possessions’ on an expensive grand piano in an expensive New York apartment; but hypocrisy in one area does not necessarily negate the truth of what is said in another.
Perhaps we ought to grow up a bit and learn not to make easy associations where they don’t exist. (And, in case it matters, I equally deplore the funding antics of those conservatives who are playing a dirty game ‘in the name of the Lord’. Trouble is, however, I also deplore the antics of single-issue campaigners who can only see one issue in everything.)
Now, I need my few days break…
March 26, 2009 at 10:13 pm
You wrote:
“To delegitimise what he says about climate change on the grounds that he pays attention to some people on a completely different issue itself lacks credibility.”
This is not the argument I am making. The point is not that the Archbishop must have a single set of allies. The point is that he has, within his Communion, some of the key players in the movement to deny that human beings play any role in causing climate change and has in no way acknowledged this. You can’t credibly call out the religious community for its failures on climate change without acknowledging the complicity of your own people. You can’t credibly urge people to make sacrifices and take political risks while playing it safe yourself.
Perhaps we ought to grow up a bit and understand what other people are actually saying before telling them to grow up a bit.
March 26, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Surely whatever Archbishops say, is going to be taken and shredded, just because of who they are and the position they hold. There are lots of people with an axe to grind, who will target them for it.
I have met him briefly, when he took a service in my Parish Church, where despite his status, he was a like a Priest taking Holy Communion, and he stopped and spoke to everyone and was interested in them and their stories.
A human being and bishop, serving the Church and God in difficult and dangerous times.
Politics do not belong in religion, while religion is much needed in politics.
March 28, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Jim, I have re-read your piece and am either stupid or you are not clear. When has the Archbishop suggested that everybody in ´his Communion´(!) is squeaky clean on this? It is precisely because such people exist within and without the Church that he speaks as he does. I have not heard him discriminate in the way you suggest. I still don´t see that your charge about ´playing it safe´applies here. Or are you suggesting that the Archbishop is deliberately concealing the fact that there are Anglicans with dodgy views and that some of them have loud voices?