It comes to something when the affairs of the Anglican Communion become the stuff of light satirical comedy; it is even stranger when the satirical comedy is pointedly favourable towards the Archbishop of Canterbury. UK listeners might have heard “The … Continue reading
Do you know the drinking game “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon“? Sam Norton and Mike Higton have just invented its theological/philosophical equivalent: Wittgenstein to Williams in two steps. First, this is what Sam Norton would like to be read at … Continue reading
Again, Mike Higton has nailed it exactly in his excellent commentary on ‘Shariagate’ (and I’m so disappointed it hasn’t been called that by the tabloids and broadsheets). This is how Higton concludes, with two potential narratives for any journalist still … Continue reading
‘The prevailing attitude…was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the [speaker] had not said’. (Ronald Knox) After forty eight hours in which people have been outraged by what the Archbishop said, what they thought the Archbishop … Continue reading
Mike Higton, of Exeter University, has really done a magnificent job of producing a summary of the Archbishop’s now notorious speech: actually, three summaries; brief, longer and detailed. I mentioned it as an update to my own gloss below, but … Continue reading
… then how about this for a description of the last 48 hours: An archbishop once gave an oration On religion and law in our nation; When we heard what he said We all stoned him down dead, To protect … Continue reading
I’ve often thought that the difference between reading the text of one of Dr William’s speeches, and hearing him delivering it, is like the difference between reading a music score and hearing the Berlin Philharmonic playing the piece: only the … Continue reading
It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the records department, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate…. The … Continue reading
‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” For … Continue reading
There has been a lot of snittiness about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech delivered on 7 February about the relationship between civil and religious law in England. I don’t mean the “beardy idiot surrendering our inalienable Anglo-Saxon freedoms to the … Continue reading
