Barrel Strength

Once again we find the Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury pursuing relentlessly his seeming plan to drive the established church into oblivion:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called for new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking.

Dr Williams, who has seen his own Anglican Communion riven by fierce invective over homosexuality, said the current blasphemy law was “unworkable” and he had no objection to its repeal.

But whatever replaces it should “send a signal” about what was acceptable.

This should be done by “stigmatising and punishing extreme behaviours” that have the effect of silencing argument.

[...] 

“The legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting,” he said.

The article notes that the last conviction under Britain’s blasphemy law was 1979. It is not so much an unworkable law as one blithely unenforced. As for Dr. Williams, his intellectual rigour is exemplified in his abortive attempt to denounce Freemasonry as a secret anti-Christian society… just as he was being inducted as a Welsh White Druid.

 The archbishop’s own style: cruel? A tad. Thoughtless? QED.