WILLIAMS: TV SOAPS ARE GOOD FOR PRIESTS

Jamie Doward, religious affairs correspondent

The Observer

May 30, 2004

Todd Grimshaw's confusion over his sexuality has kept millions of Coronation Street fans glued to the small screen in recent weeks. And Kat Moon's anguished decision to sleep with evil Andy Hunter so that he wouldn't call in husband Alfie's loan has sparked endless debate among EastEnders' addicts.

But now it has emerged it may not just be soap fans who need their regular fix of what is happening in Weatherfield and Albert Square.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called on priests to watch soap operas as a way of helping them connect with parishioners in the real world.

Rowan Williams used a lengthy speech on Friday, which drew on a diverse range of writers, from the atheist Frederick Nietzsche to the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, to stress how important it was for the Church of England to listen to the world around them.

Williams told trainee priests at Ripon College, Oxford, that 'along with instruction in theology and ethics, there must be active encouragement to nourish this seeing and listening, (through) the novel and the newspaper and the soap opera and the casual conversation - even when it looks like wasting time.'

A priest who follows the plotlines of a soap opera or a novel, Williams suggests, is someone who 'has a fair bit of literacy about the world we're in - literacy about our culture, about the human heart.'

Last year Williams likened tensions over homosexual priests within the Anglican Church to a 'soap opera'. In March he drew parallels between contemporary society and the plotlines of Footballers' Wives.

END