Archbishop calls for politics of 'dignity and civic warmth'
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams used the inauguration service of the new Parliament on 8th June to challenge new MPs to 'give to God what belongs to God' as well as 'giving to Caeser what belongs to Caeser'.
In a carefully crafted speech that flirted with controversy while maintaining political balance, the Archbishop called for a politics which recognises the image of God in all humanity and places the question of shared human dignity at the centre of public debate:
"Shared dignity: it is this, rather than just a set of convictions and enactments around rights alone, that will provide the vision for a society in which the main concerns are to nourish the strength of citizens and enable them to use their strength for mutual care and service, and where the arguments are about how this is to be secured. It is a vision that will never allow the weak, the supposedly 'unproductive', the very old or the very young, the mentally ill and physically challenged and terminally ill, to disappear from the radar; on the contrary, it will always ask what are the strengths that they bring, the contribution without which society would be poorer. Shared dignity is the condition for what you could call 'civic warmth' – the sense of being able to trust not only immediate neighbours but the wider social fabric. If government is visibly working for dignity in citizenship, trust will follow."
Listen to the full speech online or read it here.
