Friday 9 November 2012

It's An Age Thing for Archbishops


It used to be that seeing young policemen made me feel old, now it's seeing Archbishops of Cadbury who are younger than me. The really worrying time will be when Chinese leaders look younger than me.

Apropos of the new Archbish - we Brits have a natural distrust of religious people who exhibit absolute certainty over that about which it's absolutely impossible to be absolutely certain, like Mitt Romney and fundamentalist Muslims. We prefer our religious people to exhibit a bit of rational doubt over a few thorny theological issues (like whether Jesus actually rose from the dead or was the son of God) and to maintain at least one foot in reality. Mild eccentricity, as opposed to fundamental certainty, is the hallmark of our religious leaders - we find them less threatening and far less likely to want to force us to believe in unsubstantiated opinion.


1 comment:

Alan Burnett said...

I have no rational doubt - I firmly believe that the whole lot of them are bonkers.