It is I suppose possible that the Archbishop of Canterbury could be wondering this morning how Jesus would have fared on the World at One’ programme. In comparison with being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, which experience would prove the more harrowing? That question is asked only partly in jest because there is in fact a clear link between this morning’s gospel and the issue which has given Rowan Williams such largely hostile headlines.
The devil takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour and offers him power and authority over them if he will worship the enemy of God. In rejecting this offer Jesus puts his disciples in a hard place when it comes to their relation to the kingdoms of the world, and to state power and authority. In his trial before Pilate Jesus points to a higher authority than Pilate who holds his power only because God has given it to him. This was a view which subsequently allowed the early church to pray for all rulers and those in authority while refusing to submit to that authority when it clashed with their loyalty to Christ. So the saintly Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna says to the proconsul who is urging him to curse Christ and so escape martyrdom,’Eighty six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?’
Our problem here in Hampstead is that our place as Christians in society seems far more secure than Polycarp’s. We assume that the law is on our side and will never come into conflict with our religious loyalties. We assume that it is only extremists and fundamentalists who feel oppressed by our laws and we feel of course that they must deserve it, being irrationally and inhumanely opposed to the rational humanity enshrined in our rule of law. If we think of examples where some Christians have clashed with the law recently, it is because they want to treat gay people unfairly, or teach creationism, or restrict all possibility of abortion, or medical research. If we think of other faiths then we picture thieves having their hands cut off or women being stoned for adultery. And of course no rational westerner except possibly the Archbishop of Canterbury would agree with that or so parts of the press would have us believe.
So we take it for granted that the law is on our side and that with such laws to protect us, state power can never be used to afflict reasonable liberal Christians like ourselves. The problem for the Archbishop is that he sees further than that but what he sees is hard to illustrate. What concerns him is a matter of fundamental principle but in the present context it is hard to find examples which will genuinely worry people like us. So if I try to present a brief summary of what I think he thinks is at issue, forgive me if it seems a little abstract or possibly to the lawyers among you oversimplified or misguided. Jurisprudence wisdom about the law is a tough subject for the amateur.
Perhaps the place to begin is the problem the Archbishop sees with our society which we perhaps fail to recognise. Our present system of law emerged at the time of the enlightenment. Then it was that unjust government based solely on tradition and privilege was overthrown. In its place came the social contract where all had equal access to the law and equal accountability before the law. Such a system has a Christian basis to it. And it works where a society is bound together by an accepted religious and moral framework, a tradition of civility and commonly recognised customs and symbols. In our modern pluralist society such a legal system is harder to administer. There is no longer a uniform religious belief or set of moral values to underpin the code of law. In a pluralist secular society the law has to defend itself. So the universals of faith are replaced by universals of law. Our understanding of the law becomes monopolistic – a kind of legal universalism. And under such a monopoly the identity of each citizen is reduced to a single set of rights, and of relations within that society. But there is no uniform understanding of citizenship, we cannot be cloned as citizens. So a problem arises when people allow their private beliefs and values to spill over into their public lives. Secular society recognises the right of individuals to their religious beliefs but it has difficulties when such beliefs assert their right to be heard in the public arena. And that is the issue which most exercises the Archbishop.
The Prime Minister may be concerned to identify a set of common values which underpin what it means to be British. But it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to present us with a code of values which will have the same power to influence us as the beliefs, traditions, customs and symbols which we find in the communities which nurture us from day to day. There is always likely to be more meaning in an old school tie, a football jersey, a head scarf or a crucifix than in a citizenship syllabus. At the moment there is a tendency to see the head scarf and the crucifix as in some sense a threat to secular society. The treatment of the Archbishop in the press is evidence enough that religious leaders who ask difficult questions which even governments are afraid of asking is likely to be seen as a threat. Much of the media coverage seems to have ignored the fact that most of his lecture at the Temple Church was about the problems of allowing any kind of sharia law to be supplementary to the state jurisdiction. If such a thoughtful and sensitive man can be ignorantly pilloried in this way it ought to make us take far more seriously than we do, the threat which a certain kind of secularism poses for the church. At the moment we think it is only the extremists who experience a conflict between loyalty to their faith and loyalty to the state. But what if the church were more actively to oppose what our faith might define as unjust economic policies or an unjust war? What if a future government were to propose banning church schools from the state system?
What the Archbishop is seeking for are new ways of understanding the state and the rule of law in which our faith affiliations can play a greater part. If religious faiths are recognised as having a part to play in the discussion of our shared goods and values then they will be less likely to find themselves in the position of having to choose between faith and state, culture and rights. If a religious faith is not to be forced into a ghetto then it must be allowed to find a way of accommodating its own laws with those of the state. So the archbishop suggests that if in certain circumstances the individual believer had a choice of jurisdiction – sharia or state law – under which to resolve certain specified matters then it might be likely that certain crude oppositions might begin to be broken down. Restrictive and inflexible interpretations of sharia would risk alienating its own followers if they could find a more beneficial outcome in state law. And if the state could in certain circumstances recognise sharia law then Muslims loyalty to the state might be strengthened and our suspicions of sharia law be deconstructed.
It is the Archbishop’s belief I think, that the only way in which our pluralist western societies can survive is if serious and profound convictions are recognised and enabled to develop overlapping affiliations both to the state and the faith community. In this way we Christians may also begin to understand more clearly what John’s gospel means by our being called to be in but not of the world. We cannot as a church afford to stand on the sidelines and watch Islam being caricatured and isolated, while we bask in the fading sunset of establishment. An archbishop who has been attacked not only by the media, but also by both liberal and conservative Christians must have got something prophetically right. If we fail to support him we may find ourselves left in the wilderness with the devil and no angels.