In the most recent of The Times Higher Education Supplement, an article by Rowan Williams, the Archibishop of Canterbury, entitled It is not a crime to hold traditional values argues that the recent arguments over Christian Union (CU) organisations within various universities should be able to associate freely, and should look at their attitudes and language to ensure that it’s vulnerable to proper challenge.

The title of the article is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. Some “traditional (christian/biblical) values” that are now crimes: slavery, child beating, stoning, bigamy, stealing grain. Some things that are “sinful”, but conveniently ignored: eating shellfish, wearing clothes of cotton and linen, leaving home on the sabbath, eat pork, keeping promises.

I’ll just wait for the “it’s in the old testament, and doesn’t count” arguments to come rolling in. Yawn.

So this is not quite a storm in a teacup, nor is it simply about anti-religious prejudice looking for a soft target. It touches some basic political questions as well as raising issues about the ethics of education itself. No doubt some Christian unions might do well to undertake a little hard self-examination about whether their language is vulnerable to proper challenge; they may need to affirm more clearly and credibly the distinction between declaring behaviour unacceptable and in effect passing judgment on a whole category of persons.

It seems that he sees this from the opposite end, whereas GLB students would see it from the other: that christian groups are deliberately looking at them as a “soft target”. There are any number of “sinful” acts mentioned in The Bible, but these christians seem to ignore (c.f. cherry-picking) most of those.

He also says that this raises issues about the ethics of education itself. What complete tripe. This issue has nothing to do with education — it is to do with the fact that a number of religious zealots are attempting to use private property to promote their intollerant agenda. The fact that this is taking place within an educational establishment is neither here nor there. The owner sets the rules as to what conduct is deemed acceptible on their property. I might fancy running a homosexual orgy in a church, but I don’t think I’d have a leg to stand on if I tried to argue my right to this in court.

But that does not alter the fundamental point about freedom of association. The integrity of the whole educational process in a democracy depends on getting this right, and it should not be obscured by hasty and superficial reactions to what are regarded as unacceptable opinions by the fashion of the day.

The second point that I want to make is that Williams is claiming that the student associations are trying to restrict the freedom of association for the members of the CU. This is clearly bullshit. Student unions have no right to tell people who they can, or cannot, associate with. What it has said, however, is that if these CUs insist on being exclusive to non-christians, then they will get no support and will be excluded from using student union facilities. He calls this the fundamental point whereas this point has, and isn’t, an issue at all.

As I mentioned earlier, some of these fashions of the day include banning slavery, et al. I’m sure Williams might be happier were we to remove these “fashionable” laws from the statute of the UK.

This entry was posted Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under argument, bad argument, bishop, education, news, reality check, response, Rowan Williams, The Times, The Times Higher Education Supplement, UK. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.