Rowan Williams is too often dismissed as an otherworldly academic, or an amateurish ecclesiastical politician , or an intellectual mystical theologian. I guess he comes over as each of these on occasion. But they are caricatures - there is substance, spiritual, moral and intellectual in this man. And I can well understand the Government of any day trying to maintain those caricatures, because time and again Rowan Williams has spoken truth to power. And he understands power.
So his comments on the big society idea promoted by David Cameron are likely to annoy and irritate, Good. That's what prophets do - they point out the Emperor's nakedness, and describe expedient moralising as 'aspirational waffle'. And then he goes on -
"And if the big society is anything better than a slogan looking increasingly threadbare as we look at our society reeling under the impact of public spending cuts, then discussion on this subject has got to take on board some of those issues about what it is to be a citizen and where it is that we most deeply and helpfully acquire the resources of civic identity and dignity."
The same day it's leaked that the Prime Minister is consdiering axing housing benefit for under 25's as a further corrective of what he and his Government call the welfare culture. Just how is that fixed by destabilising the provision for young people who are already at the hard end of the employment and opportunity spectrum of our economy. It isn't the Archbishop who lives on a different planet, or who is out of touchwith the realities of modern life.
In terms of where we 'most deeply and helpfully acquire the resources of civic identity and dignity', I'd be more hopeful of the future if the Government supported and resourced such places, as schools, college and universities to do precisely that. Education for employability is one element of human formation - but only one, and the shaping of character, instilling of virtue, opening of minds in generous critical engagement, creating and sustaining self-confidence alongside respect for others, encouraging the celebration of difference and the importance of welcome. Where does all that happen, and whose responsibility, if not the Government's, to create a context where such human fruitfulness flourishes?
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