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1. The crosses issue was brought into controversy by SOMEONE ELSE--a previous recent controversy. Don't know the context. It was someone wearing a cross. The Archbishop DID NOT bring it up. He merely used it as one example of recent controversies about religious displays in public, which the government should butt out of (is what he said, but of course in different wording). Freedom of religion is what he was talking about.
2. He is a very well-spoken man, very reasonable sounding, articulate, and his main themes were understanding others, religious tolerance, freedom of religion and the government's place in all this, which is to be the arbiter, or objective party, when social disputes arise that could lead to conflict, and NOT to CREATE conflicts where none may exist. He said he heard nothing in Jack Straw's remarks (Blair's guy) that indicated that the government was LISTENING to people and seeking information. That's why he weighed in, in a published article yesterday.
3. He was NOT talking about the burqa (a mere head veil), and the burqa is NOT part of the controversy--only near total veiling of the face.
4. The archbishop was concerned about an atmosphere of ENFORCED government-imposed secularism in public, where the government dictate what people can WEAR. He approves of public displays of religion, as per choice of the individual.
5. He also said, in a very polite way, that the government was stirring up religious bigotry unnecessarily.
This VERY WRONG subject line--that he "backs" wearing of veils---and marionsghost's misinformation and misinterpretation of this guy's views make discussion of these matters difficult. The posts here on one wrong and off-point item after another.
One analogy I can think of--having been brought up a Catholic by veiled nuns--is some of the bizarre costumes that these religions women wore, with "coifs" (headpieces, collars and front pieces of very hard starched white linen--sometimes rather absurd-looking) totally hiding their hair and sometimes parts of their faces (ears, cheeks), and of course with long black coverings of arms, legs and trunks. Only hands and the front features of the face were visible. They were scary to some children.
But they walked on public streets, did business transactions, went to meetings, conducted classes, sometimes visited or ate in public, drove cars and were otherwise full citizens, and no one ridiculed them or called unamerican (or unbritish), or treated them badly because of their bizarre dress.
There WAS anti-catholic bigotry when I was young. I remember that JFK had to formally defend himself before a convention of Baptist ministers, because he was a Catholic. The prejudice then was that, as a Catholic, he would be ruled by the Pope. During his presidential campaign (I was 16 at the time and a JFK campaign worker), I saw absolutely filthy and scurrilous anti-catholic, anti-JFK literature in circulation in southern California (by the same kind of nutball extremists and bigots to whom our corporate news monopolies have given free run of our public airwaves now, and whose icon sits in the White House--oh, my, my, my, do the corporate news monopolies have a lot to answer for!).
Anyway, there was some dirty literature about nuns--but it was very extremist stuff, way out of the mainstream. Bigotry against Catholics goes back to the waves of Irish Catholic immigrants of the previous centuries to the U.S.--many poor workers fleeing the potato famine and British oppression in Ireland. They established strong worker communities here, complete with Catholic Churches and many imported Irish priests and nuns all over the country, and eventually went from unions to political machine to the political mainstream, but it took time. Some of the bigotry had to do with their poverty and lack of education, but it wasn't particularly focused on nuns and their dress. Italian immigrants added to the mix and then it was Irish and Italians who were held in contempt. Also, the bigotry against Catholics is also traceable to the bitter European and English religious wars, going back many centuries (--about 1,200 years in Ireland--but covering all of old Europe and England)--the kind of bloody, internecine, religious/tribal wars that Thomas Jefferson tried to prevent here with the First Amendment. America was the "melting pot" and eventually these and other waves of immigrants settle in. England had a harder time, vis a vis the Irish--bloody warfare in living memory. And I'm sure there remains some bigotry against the Irish and against Catholics in the UK--from recent and historical religious and tribal conflicts. But I don't think Catholic nuns in England were particularly loathed. For one thing, there were English high church nuns who also wrote "the habit."
Attached to women who wear full Islamic veil--a covering very similar to Catholic nuns, but covering also mouth and nose--is a whole lot of political, social, religious, and international conflict. These matters did NOT attach to Catholic nuns this way, who in some ways were equally oppressed ("brides of Christ in slave service to the men--priests, bishops, pope--who held all the power), neither in England nor here. Communities of nuns in this country WERE strongly affected by the women's rights movement--and other social movements--and many of them liberated themselves from some or all strictures, but there was never contempt for them for their dress or condition.
And it's kind of odd, really, that they did NOT become a social controversy, during the centuries of English/Irish conflict. There was no thought of "liberating" the nuns, or interfering with the culture in which some women were segregated and severely restricted, by personal choice, which is presumably the case with Islamic women--although I've read of enough forced marriages to sometimes wonder how free Islamic women are to choose what they wear or to choose living under certain restrictions, dictated by their fathers, husbands, other male family members and religious clerics. Catholic nuns took a vow of obedience, but if they rebelled, they could leave. And many who remained have worked to increase their decision-making powers within that male-dominated structure. And some nuns that I know do not accept male domination as having any theological foundation. But I have also heard some of the more radical Islamic women say something similar about Islam--the oppression of women has been invented by the men, and is not grounded in the Koran.
I was going to say that 9/11, the London bombing, the bombings in Spain and Bali, the Israel/Palestinian conflict--and all the uses to which the Bush and Blair governments have put these events--trail along as baggage behind Islamic women who wear full veil. But London and No. Ireland also had many bombings at the hands of the Irish Republican Army. And nothing attached to Catholic nuns. But perhaps the Islamic/western conflict is just far more of a tribal/cultural/religious conflict than any other. The English and the Irish are more like each other than either would admit. AND, in the case of the Blair and Bush governments, we have people with no qualms and no conscience about stirring up hatred and bigotry, and killing masses of Islamic people and torturing them, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Sniping at Islamic women just because they cover themselves with a full veil is a measure of their political ethics.
From everything I heard, Archbishop Williams is a temperate, calming voice, bringing an ethical perspective, and trying to head off bigotry. England has assimilated a lot of different cultures over the last decades--from their former empire. London has become a "melting pot" much like New York was at the turn of the last century. And many groups, here and there, have tried to maintain tribal and religious identity in the new context, and have eventually fit in. I think Williams is encouraging this attitude--of tolerance, acceptance, kindness and understanding. He should be applauded.
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