LONDON: Archbishop attacks 'erosion of Christian values'

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/24/nlabour124.xml
4/24/2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will launch a fierce attack today on the "moral relativism" that is eroding Christian values in society and Government.

In a speech that will be seen as a sharp criticism of New Labour, Dr Williams will say that "those who run things" reject the idea that society needs core values as "unfashionable and unwelcome". But without such shared values, he will warn, society's definition of what is good for people will be largely determined by powerful interest groups.

Dr Williams will say that religious leaders must be guaranteed a central role in a reformed House of Lords to ensure moral issues are taken seriously. Otherwise, he will argue, political debate will lack "voices unconstrained by electoral anxiety and narrow considerations of practical profitability".

The most recent vote in the House of Commons for a fully elected second chamber would remove the 26 Church of England bishops who currently sit in the Lords.

The Archbishop will also decry the lack of moral vision displayed by MPs compared to the likes of William Wilberforce, who was instrumental in the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago.

Giving the William Wilberforce lecture in Hull, the birthplace of the Christian reformer, he will say: "The old idea of political virtue is becoming more and more remote."

And in a strong rallying cry, he will tell Christians that they are justified in mounting vigorous campaigns against the state if it is eroding Christian morality. "If the state perpetuates in the corporate life of the nation what is directly contrary to the Christian understanding of God's purpose, then Christian activism in respect of changing the law is justified, primarily when the state is responsible for - so to speak - compromising the morality of all its citizens."

Dr Williams will call for a return to a moral society in which the state recognises "wider considerations than those of immediate profit and security." "This makes sense, though, only if it is possible to convince those who run things in the public sphere that there are human values and ethical norms to which an entire society is answerable. In our relativist climate, this is very difficult. What tends to happen is that nothing much is left as a substantive moral basis for public life except a poorly defined principle of tolerance or avoidance of mutual harm.

"The idea that you can give substance to a common social ethic, something to which society as a whole can be held accountable, is unfashionable and unwelcome.

"Even from the point of view of many who have no religious commitment, there is a recognition that this is a thin diet.

"But the problem is deeper still. Without a notional standard of human excellence and human flourishing, the definition of what is good for people is always going to be vulnerable to what happens to suit a dominant interest group."

Dr Williams will say that it should be "disturbing" for MPs that some of the most effective political campaigns of recent times, such as the campaign to cancel Third World debt, received most of its impetus from outside Parliament.

Arguing for a role for religious leaders in the House of Lords, he will say: "The nature and extent of religious representation in the upper house... is not a marginal question at all in the light of this discussion."

END