Sept 11th - Lessons From History for Faith and Civil Society

Dr Williams compares "the act of nightmare violence" of September 11th 2001 and the chain of retaliation, fear and misery" it unleashed with the public meeting in Johannesburg on September 11th in 1906 (attended by people of Muslim, Hindu and Christian faiths) at which Gandhi's non-violent protest movement - the Satyagraha movement - was born.

It was a movement which put principles into action but which rejected violence; a sort of "'soul force' whose central principle was that our behaviour must witness to truth whatever the cost - and that this witness to truth can never, of its very nature, involve violence or a response to oppression that simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor."

Dr Williams says that it must be part of the work of the Christian Muslim Forum "to recover that sense of a convergent belief in the possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle, in a way that genuinely opens doors in our world."

He recounts Gandhi's words to his audience, who were angered by the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for Indians in South Africa, reminding them that their resistance was not about power:

"We do not resist [Gandhi said] in such a way that we appear to be seeking the same kind of power as is now injuring or frustrating us. We do not imitate anything except the truth: our model is the divine communication of what is good".

He was underlining, in Dr Williams' words, that "commitment to God in their work for justice involved them in an act of renunciation in the name of truth, the renunciation of any style of living and acting that simply reproduced the ordinary anxieties and exchanges of force that constitute the routine of human society".

Reflecting on the lessons of both anniversaries Dr Williams argues for the place of authentic religion in society - religion which does not compete for influence or power or resort to violence. In fact the claims of religion must be the reverse:

"The nature of an authentically religious community is made visible in its admission of dependence on God - which means both that it does not fight for position for position and power and that it will not see itself existing just by the license of human society. It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict".

Dr Williams argues that the Church's place in civil society is at its most unique when it encourages the human vision of responsibility and justice for a common good, beyond the constraints of conventional political power:

The Church "... needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share of ordinary political power ... the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment."

The strength of the Church's contribution to civil society is, he says, the commitment of Christians to their belief, as 'trustees' of God's truth and authority in human society;

"The Church is ..... the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it one where each recognizes their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all. The Church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him."

He goes on to insist that this vision is found and worked out at the level of the individual:

"The dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them. This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies."

Finally Dr Williams addresses the question of jihad and the possible convergence of the Christian and Muslim approach to religious witness in society: "Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift". "They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy."

The Archbishop will be giving the lecture at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, as part of the annual conference for the Christian Muslim Forum.

To view full text of speech, click here