Rowan Williams’s baritone voice emanates from deep behind his white whiskers like a foghorn through the mist. It’s quiet but sonorous, and every word is carefully chosen. The effect is an uncanny mix: three parts affable academic sharing his deep learning over a fireside tutorial, one part seasoned public intellectual unafraid of a fight. Now that he is no longer at the helm of an institution or even a voting peer, he seems determined to follow his own mind — and if that gets him into political hot water, so be it.
The starting point for our discussion is his new book, Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, a scholarly work of philosophical history and theology but whose title (a word deeply associated with the labour movement and the political Left) is laced with politics from the start. He is quick to explain what the book is not calling for. True solidarity, per Lord Williams, has nothing to do with cheap gestures of allyship with suffering people of the type found on social media. “I’m aware of the danger of a kind of sentimentality about that; the performativity that just says: Well, this makes me feel better, so never mind if it makes a difference.”
Nor is his version of solidarity simply the equivalent of empathy or fellow feeling — it is something closer to a fundamental acknowledgement of how each of our individual selves can only exist in relation to one other. “So much of the mythology we’ve all imbibed takes for granted that a self is something you got when you were born. It just comes. It’s given to you in the cradle like the fairy godmother’s gifts, and it comes with a little package of rights and entitlements and attitudes. And you go out and you negotiate with the property that is your self and its entitlements. The discussion I’ve been trying to get into comes at it from a very different angle: to say, well, what if you’re always involved, before you’ve asked to be?”
So far, who could disagree with such an invocation? But as Lord Williams knows well, this quickly gets to the core of most contemporary political battles. Solidarity, yes, but with whom? To whom do we owe our primary allegiance? The Right will commonly prioritise those closest, and the Left reminds us of our duties to those further away. Even trade unions were formed out of enlightened self-interest — fellow workers protecting their own position by standing together as one. While a recognition of common humanity with all people is a laudable Christian goal, I ask whether real-world solidarity will always be strongest between closely knitted groups who share a common objective?
“The short answer is yes, obviously. Within something like a trade union context that makes sense as it makes sense in a family or a nation — there will be a felt level of solidarity that’s much deeper. The challenge is whether that becomes something that closes itself off from explorations of what interests you have in common with the stranger, even the threatening stranger… In the chapter on Dietrich Bonhoeffer I touch on that. When he says, echoing Dostoevsky, that we’re supposed to be taking responsibility for everyone, there’s a bit of me as there would be a bit of everybody I think, who says: Yeah, well, we can’t do that, can we? And it’s possibly even rather dangerous to try. But what he glosses that to mean is: you’re never going to come across another member of the human race for whom you have no responsibility. There’s never somebody who can say, in advance: well, I’m not going to bother about that sort of person.”
So does that mean it is theologically and morally acceptable to care more for those close to us than those further away?
“The bare fact is, of course we do and we would be ridiculously subhuman if we didn’t. If we were not emotionally and imaginatively aware of the people nearest to us, what kind of awareness or responsibility could we have for those at a distance? Clearly, to adopt the Peter Singer line of Effective Altruism, and that school of thought which says there is no case at all for feeling towards those closest to you more strongly than you feel for those further away — that just seems to me deeply abstract. It lands you with individuals who remain effectively locked in their own terms, and are simply doling out indifferent benevolence. I don’t think that works… I’d want to say: of course, recognise you will feel towards your family, your fellow countrypeople, more strongly. But it’s also about that kind of relation, that sense of shared good or shared project that inches out towards something broader.”
The most literal application of this conundrum is of course the vexed question of immigration. Most of Lord Williams’s public pronouncements on the topic have been to remind people of the humanity of immigrants and to resist any demonising of them. But if immigrant arrivals are at such a high number that it is disrupting and damaging the home society, is it therefore a morally defensible and virtuous position to want to restrict and reduce immigration — even if that means individuals don’t get the better life they would like to have by coming?
“My worry is not so much about immigration numbers as such. There are lots of arguments you can have about what a reasonable, sustainable level of migration is. My worry is much more about the ease with which immigrants, in whatever number, are automatically regarded as bogus asylum seekers. That is the slogan that’s traded. They are regarded as intrinsically hostile to what we call our way of life. The effect of that is to undermine, and I would say corrupt the life that we have, the things we are proud of in our own society: the degree to which we believe we are a law-governed, a just and a welcoming society.”
So it is morally acceptable, in his view, to advocate for greater immigration restrictions?
“In principle, yes.”
Another current application of this moral conundrum would of course be climate change. The proper response to rising temperatures offers another balancing act between solidaristic action across all of humanity versus economic protection of those living here and now at home. Just last week, Williams was the number one signatory to a public letter to the proprietor of this publication, Sir Paul Marshall, criticising the climate scepticism espoused by GB News, in which he is an investor, and his public disparagement of Net Zero as a policy. It’s a bit close to home but I thought it would be odd not to ask him about it. Why is opposition to Net Zero not just another public policy disagreement on which good people can disagree, rather than a moral problem that needs public letters by clergymen?
“How we respond to what is, I think, agreed to be a climate emergency is a moral issue. For that moral issue to be fairly and fully considered, it’s important that all public outlets give a reasonably detached and, if possible, generous account of what the issues are. If there are some outlets which appear to resist this, we would like to hear more about why…”
But, rather like the question of immigration restrictions, if I come to a judgement, after careful consideration, that on balance the destruction done by Net Zero to our national economy, and the suffering that flows down from that, exceeds the theoretical good it would do to temperature rises over the longer term, is that not a reasonable judgement for me to make? It doesn’t make me a bad person?
“It doesn’t make you a bad person. I’ve said already that there is an argument to be had about that. But the worry is whether what’s being presented is adequately comprehensive of the issues involved… The questions about whether Net Zero as a policy is destructive of our national economy, and therefore the wellbeing of those vulnerable communities we’ve mentioned earlier — it’s not as if that has not been addressed by some of those advocating for Net Zero. There’s quite a lot in the bank on that subject. And there’s also the concern that in the short to middle term, the degradation of the environment in other parts of the world will equally impact us, if not addressed… Back to the migration question. Environmentally driven migration is already a factor in parts of Africa and parts of Asia — it’s not going to go away and that wave will move back towards us. So it’s not as if you can draw an absolutely clear disjunction between the good of the immediate neighbour and the good of the distant neighbour.”
The harshest line between the competing claims of these two groups come from the Christian nationalists — a growing presence in the politics of both the US and the UK. How does he define Christian Nationalism, and what is his reaction to it?
“It’s one of those terms which you can throw around without ever standing still long enough to define it. But I think among the things it can mean would be a benign version (or a less malign version) which says: the Christian heritage has shaped the kind of society this is, its signs, its legacies are around us, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of in recognising that and we would be wrong just to tear up that legacy. I don’t find a great problem with that. There’s a less benign form which would say: what we need to do is to recover that heritage in a way which disadvantages or marginalises other kinds of presence in our society. And the most malign of all is: our national identity is absolutely bound up with the will of God. The good of the nation is the will of God. End of story. And that’s what we have seen in the Russkiy Mir rhetoric of Putin and his ecclesiastical acolytes.”
Just last week, in a discussion at The Spectator about Christian nationalism, Lord Williams went even further, referring to the American political culture as “demonic”. Predictably, it caused a stir on social media, with right-leaning Americans duly expressing outrage and crying foul. What exactly did he mean by it?
“A couple of things in my mind. One was certainly the normalisation of extraordinary public displays of aggression, a kind of rolling back of civil standards and expectations. I know this sounds terribly old maidish, but I am still shocked at the profanity that the chief executive of a nation can use in public. When did that become acceptable? I find myself really disgusted by that — but that’s not demonic as such. The demonic is the erosion of standards of truthfulness in public life and the normalisation of violence in word and deed.”
The example Lord Williams gave was Pete Hegseth invoking the will of God in the Iran military campaign. I ask him: by using the word “demonic” is he not guilty of demonising his political opponents? He might have said that Hegseth was misguided, perhaps not very intelligent, or making a grave mistake. But to call him demonic is to suggest something different, which is that he is animated by a malign spirit.
“Animated by a malign spirit,” Lord Williams confirms, “which is not necessarily Pete Hegseth. I’m rather old fashioned in believing in the Devil. I actually do believe that there are malign forces in the universe and that people who may not have consciously malign or diabolical designs can be manipulated and exploited by those destructive forces. When I call something demonic, I’m not saying that we demonise any individual — God forbid — but that we recognise the diabolical as an element of gratuitous destructiveness which finds a way in where it finds a leak.”
“I actually do believe that there are malign forces in the universe and that people who may not have consciously malign or diabolical designs can be manipulated and exploited by those destructive forces.”
Does he believe, then, that the Devil is at work in the Trump administration?
“The Devil is at work in you and me. The Devil is at work in every institution. Sometimes it comes to the fore more clearly. And at the moment, I worry that something is being normalised, licensed and allowed into the room which ought to be regarded (to put it with Anglican politeness) with considerable suspicion.”
If these interventions sound unusually political for a church leader, the Pope has been going even further recently. His opposition to the Iran war is so explicit that he has called on American Catholics to contact their own congresspeople to register their opposition to it. I wonder, does Lord Williams think such a direct intervention in the political process is crossing a line? Has the Pope gone too far?
“I don’t think it’s all that novel. If you look at the history of papal and clerical interventions in elections — appeals to people to vote this way rather than that — the Vatican was doing it in Italy in the post war period. It’s not new. The global reach is perhaps new… I’m very relieved that the Pope has been clear about what the tradition of just war does and doesn’t permit. That has to be said. You can’t pretend that this is something that fits into that framework.”
So what you’re saying is that the Iran war cannot be morally defended on Christian principles?
“It will not fit into the category of a just war. A just war, in the tradition, has usually four-or-five prerequisites… A justifiable exercise of force needs to be a response to someone else’s direct aggression; it needs to be declared by legitimate authority, not just somebody’s whim; it needs to be conducted in a way that doesn’t subvert the ends of justice, which means that civilian lives have a right to be protected as far as possible; it must have a clear goal and an exit strategy so that it doesn’t go on indefinitely. None of those seem to me to be very conspicuously met in this instance — and I’m speaking as somebody who has no brief for the Iranian regime whatsoever. I think it’s an appalling theocratic tyranny. It ought to go. But as we’ve seen in other instances, when regime change is brought about by compromised and compromising means, the results are not always the change you are looking for.”
It shouldn’t surprise that church leaders like the Pope and current and former Archbishops of Canterbury should tend to encourage peaceful rather than militaristic means. But if the militaristic approach is ungodly, how should we then think about the “church militant” that Christians pray for in the Anglican liturgy every time they take communion?
“We’ve tried over Christian history, in all sorts of ways and contexts, to imitate other kinds of militancy. And my feeling about that is: well that worked, didn’t it! I want to ask: how does Christ change things? One thing I think you can be fairly sure about in the New Testament is that he doesn’t use the techniques of available power systems. ‘This is how the kings of the gentiles work.’ What we do in our militancy for the faith, that is our committed and courageous attempt to witness to what we’ve been given and make it available to others, we do by lives of holiness — which means an awful lot of hard work for the vast majority of us who are nowhere near that level and who resort to shortcuts all the time.”
Is that approach working though? It feels like the Church is decreasingly, not increasingly, influential. Perhaps a more assertive approach would work better?
“We’re not told to make it work. We’re told to be faithful and to trust in God… The more we’re imprisoned by the notion of whether we are making the kind of difference we want to be seen to be making, the less room there is (sorry, sermon time) for God to be God in it all. Very often the truth is that gentle growth does happen when there is manifest commitment and dedication. I worry about a church too preoccupied with strategy — with schemes for solving problems — and not preoccupied enough with its own integrity as a community of witness and prayer.”
Does that mean he thinks that the Church of England has become overly bureaucratised?
“In a word, yes.”
And whose fault is that?
“What about Satan! I did say, and I meant it, that the diabolical enters everywhere. Being not some character with horns and a tail, but that pull to the destructive and that pull towards a kind of idolatry of the self and the corporate self and its well being and security and control.”
So actually, the Church of England becoming overly bureaucratised is also, in its way, demonic?
“In its way, yes.”
Rowan Williams insists he is not planning to become more politically involved. He is working next on a new volume of poems, and a book with Brenda Hale on assisted dying. But there is something about the frankness of his statements that suggests he is enjoying their impact. Might we see more interventions in his retirement years?
“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? But I don’t want to be a politician in my declining years. I want to learn how to prepare myself for a Christian death. And I’m not joking.”
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