Natalie Hanman asks which comes first, gender equality or religious liberty?
Writing on Comment is Free, for the Guardian, Hanman wonders if gender equality can become the law of the land in Great Britain if there is an exception for religious institutions.
On Thursday night the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, captivated an audience, as he is wont to do. In a lecture on religious faith and human rights at the London School of Economics [transcript and podcast available next week], the most senior figure in the Church of England outlined in his usual composed and intellectual style some of the ways in which his religious tradition may offer a foundation for a discourse of universal rights.
Exploring the idea of a communicative body, he argued that a purely secular account of rights is always going to be problematic, citing how the unshakeable inadmissibility of torture has in recent years been very much shaken. The church, he said, has a right to argue and seek to persuade the state on complex matters such as the right to life and the right of the unborn.
Yet when it came to issues of gender equality and sexuality, I charged the archbishop with sitting on the fence. It’s one thing to argue, as Williams did, that “the church reserves the right not to have its mind made up for it on these matters”, but reality may soon force just such a decision.
Comment is Free: Cross purposes.
Lambeth Palace has made the text of the address available.