The law on blasphemy

I note the recent response of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Government's consultation on abolishing the blasphemy legislation (see the report in the Times. The closest thing to the full text I can find is on the Canterbury site.) It strikes me that it might have been wise, as they suggest, to take somewhat longer to assess the impact of the offence of incitement to religious hatred. It also seems inaccurate to suggest, as the National Secular Society has, that this is simply a delaying tactic on their part.

The debate in the Lords, during which the amendment was passed, may be found in Hansard, beginning at col. 1118. I've been struck by the general lack of attention to this in the press, especially when compared with the response to Rowan Williams on sharia. There is probably some useful historical work to be done on the reasons that have been advanced for having retained the legislation for so long, since the last prosecution was nearly a century ago.


For background: Christian Voice's case against Jerry Springer, the opera was defeated in the High Court and finally had a proposed appeal refused by the House of Lords.

Charles Taylor

I note a small spate of attention being paid to the work of Charles Taylor and his A Secular Age (2007). Reviews have appeared in: the Guardian (8th December); a profile in Prospect (February, with an additional interview on the website ); New York Times (December 16th), and from Edward Norman in the Spectator back in October.

Amongst the blogs, see in particular The Immanent Frame, a Canadian site to which Taylor himself has posted.

The employment of organists

I note a landmark ruling on the status of church organists as employees, and thus attracting full employment rights (Times 20th Feb and subsequent letters). From some of the reporting of this, one might form a picture of the Church of England of being at best incompetent and other-worldly, and at worst, exploitative of its organists over the years. It’s worth noting that, whilst the matter of employment has always been between organist and incumbent locally, the bishops and the Royal School of Church Music have been advising from at least the 1940s that a written agreement ought to be arrived at the beginning, particularly in the pamphlet, Organists in Churches.

Rowan Williams and sharia

Now that the dust has settled a little, I thought it worthwhile to gather together some of the more interesting contributions to a debate generally characterised by hysteria and a steadfast refusal to engage with detail. Any other contributions to this compendium gratefully received.

The lecture itself
I happened to be in the audience for Dr Williams' lecture, the text of which may be found on his own site, along with his subsequent address to the General Synod. It was (unfortunately) trailed by an interview on the BBC earlier that day. At the time I thought the lecture to be carefully argued and, whilst dense, only so far as is necessary to deal with a complex matter.

The Archbishop and the media
Much has been made of Williams' supposed naivety, and the quality or otherwise of his press officers' advice. I agree with Madeleine Bunting (Guardian 9th Feb) and Giles Fraser (Guardian 12th Feb) that, whilst he and his staff were reported as being taken aback at the ferocity of the reaction, he was well aware (as he hinted in the questions after the lecture) of the possible reactions, but that he is (rightly in my view) unprepared to succumb entirely to what a Guardian editorial described as the 'simplicity complex' in our media (9/2/08): difficult issues need to be addressed, and it will take time and patience to do so properly. Not everything can be boiled down into simple slogans.

Church and state
On the issue itself, I note a number of commentators who detected a manoeuvre on behalf of all faiths in a lecture ostensibly about Islam, which led all three in various ways to call for an equalisation downwards before the law - by means, explictly or implicitly, of the completion of the disestablishment of the Church of England: [Andrew Anthony, Guardian 12/2/08; Matthew Parris, Times 9/2/08; Janet Daley, Telegraph 11/2/08.]
One of the more interesting engagements with the detail of what was proposed came from Thom Dyke on the Prospect website.

The Archbishop and the church
Much was made of the calls for Williams to resign, but it is clear that these came mostly from those who have been unhappy about him from the beginning. On the response from his predecessor: George Carey's article for the News of the World is actually more supportive than was widely reported, but the key word he used was 'disastrous', and was the News of the World really the place for his intervention ? (now on the website under the strapline 'Hapless prelate's Sharia views condemned by Lord Carey')
There have however been some more favourable evangelical responses: see Jonathan Chaplin and more tangentially Andrew Goddard on the 'open evangelical' Fulcrum site.