Williams Is Dangerous. He Must Be Resisted

The Archbishop's ideas on Sharia and autonomy for faith communities are badly misguided

by Matthew Parris - February 9th, 2008 - The London Times

"You say," said Lord Napier (confronted as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India by locals protesting against the suppression of suttee) "that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

[snip]

Properly understood, the effect of devolving national law and national morality to local and group level is profoundly conservative. Dr Williams's ideas really represent the wilder fringes of a bigger idea: communitarianism. Communitarianism can come in a surplice, a yarmulka or from a minaret and is all the more dangerous because armed with a divine rather than a local loyalty. It almost always proves a repressive and reactionary force, fearful of competitors, often anti-science, sometimes sceptical of knowledge itself, and grudging towards the State.

There is absolutely nothing “left-wing” or woolly-liberal about empowering it. A Britain in which Muslim communities policed themselves would be more ruthlessly policed, and probably more law-abiding than today. But it would be a Britain in which the individual Muslim - maybe female, maybe ambitious, maybe gay, maybe a religious doubter - would lose their chances of rescue from his or her family or community by the State.

The State, not family, faith or community, is the guarantor of personal liberty and intellectual freedom, and it will always be to the State, not the Church, synagogue or mosque, that the oppressed individual needs look.

Liberty and freedom are not simple. As this article suggests, a secular state guaranteeing the freedoms granted to man by God is arguably a conservative principal when the state has always been reasonably fair in its enforcement of these protections. Even here in America, the guarantee of freedom of religion in the Constitution provides freedom FROM religion to those who do not want to be coerced into worship. And as this new confrontation in England shows, there are powerful moral arguments to blur the line.

What is more important? The liberty to not worship or the liberty to enforce church rules? The always blurry line previously allowed any of us here in America to say what we wanted. Now of course the "secularists" in the democrat party argue that to listen to anyone express admiration for our private God is oppressive to the listener. That is a huge movement of the line. Is it fair that a socialist can argue his unreasoned belief in an economic system that has repeatedly failed but a Christian cannot argue his belief in creationism?

Two sentences in this article need to be challenged with intellectual force. 1 - "It [the church] almost always proves a repressive and reactionary force, fearful of competitors, often anti-science, sometimes sceptical of knowledge itself, and grudging towards the State." 2 - " . . . it will always be to the State, not the Church, synagogue or mosque, that the oppressed individual needs look."

The truth or falsity of these two statements is dependent on the relative level of respect for liberty and freedom by the two institutions, the church in question versus the state in question. There is no universal respect for liberty and freedom by the state. I even challenge the accuracy of this statement when applied to a specific state, the democracy of the United Kingdom, as the writer implied. Nor is it true today about America.

Here in America we have granted freedom of religion in our Constitution. However when secularists redefine freedom of religion to be freedom from religion in the absolute they can use it to suppress the rights of Christians against all others simply because they are the majority. At this point a backlash is needed. The state is the ultimate power. As has been proved time and time again, only a universal demand for liberty by the power of a state will assure it. In America, the power is the vote. Our freedom is dependent on the people wanting freedom for everyone. The question is do they still want that?

We need to return to the time when freedom warriors fought for freedom for all more than political power for themselves. That concern for freedom is not reality in America today as freedom is thought to be so secure people can be blase about it. People just assume the state will assure freedom. The premise that freedom is secure is frightening. As our founders warned us, freedom must be secured by each generation. Even more important though is the need to make sure it is freedom for all and not freedom for some small group but denied to others. This article is a reminder of how complicated freedom can be and how easily we can lose it to those who rationalize their justifications.

If you want to live in a state that tells you how to live, fail for one generation to respect liberty and freedom for all.