Britain's Neoconservative Moment

Daniel Johnson in Commentary on attending an address by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr. Williams said that he disagreed with other Christians, in particular Pope Benedict XVI, who argue that we live under the "dictatorship of relativism." Far from living in an age that does not believe in right or wrong, good or evil, truth or falsehood, we Westerners, he asserted, are guilty of the opposite fault: we are absolutists, very sure we are right about everything.

I was on hand for Dr. Williams's presentation because I had been asked to give a response. I said: "No one is quite so absolutist as a relativist. And no one is less absolutist than an archbishop." To which the good-natured prelate replied: "I think we really agree." Afterward I heard somebody exclaim: "Wasn't the archbishop wonderful! He never mentioned God at all!"