Further to my last post, the always-interesting Language Log also posted on the beleaguered Rowan Williams. Now, the post seems a tad harsh on the A of C, while explaining what total hash the media has made of his comments, so I am going to cheat here and quote the concluding paragraph first, lest you think poster Geoffrey Pullam is as much of a negative nancy as the rest:
Dr Williams is a gentle, learned, brilliant, scholarly man, and a bit of a public relations doofus. The calls for his resignation are not unjustified. He should be the holder of an endowed professorship in some suitable subject at some research-led university. He should not be a prominent church administrator, and certainly not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Someone duller, less original, less intelligent, and more political should be found for that job.
Now, half my brain is shrieking in outrage at Pullam's fatalism, while the other half is nodding and thinking yeah, pretty much.*
Anyhoo, with that caveat I send you on your way:
The archbishop, the law, and the press
*Interestingly, Pullam criticizes Willaims for taking a tolerant stance on homosexuality--though he, like I do, agrees with said stance--because of the schism it threatens within the Anglican Church. Perhaps it is because I am (a) only nominally Anglican, or (b) not British, but I am less bothered by the spectre of a schism than I am by the idea of any church paying lip service to intolerance in order to maintain political and financial prominence. I'd be perfectly happy to declare my self a "New Order Anglican" or "Reformed Anglican" or whatever, if it meant belonging to a more inclusive church, and especially if said more-inclusive church was still headed up by the A of C, thus granting us entirely symbolic but still pretty nifty authority.
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