My Weekly Book

I have always suspected the Archbishop of Canterbury of being a reasonably intelligent man, and here is some proof from The Guardian:

Archbishop praises author accused of blasphemy

Philip Pullman, the best-selling author with a widely-advertised contempt for organised religion, has found an unlikely champion in the Archbishop of Canterbury who has risked the wrath of fundamentalists by praising the National Theatre’s adaptation of the author’s His Dark Materials as a “near-miraculous triumph”.

Rowan Williams, already regarded with some suspicion by conservative evangelicals for his liberal social views, writes in today’s Guardian: “This extraordinary theatrical adventure sets a creative religious agenda in a way hard to parallel in recent literature and performance.”

In a private address to religious leaders and academics at Downing Street on Monday night, Dr Williams even went so far as to suggest that study of the Pullman trilogy could form part of schools’ religious education syllabuses.

Such praise is a far cry from the Association of Christian Teachers, who have condemned it as shameless blasphemy. What Dr Williams appears to have spotted, which Pullman’s critics have not, is that the author’s ire is directed less at religious values than at institutions, particularly Catholicism. Read on here…

What I do find annoying, however, is the idea that religious groups could be ignorant enough to accuse Pullman of blasphemy in the first place - Rowan William’s remarks in the fourth paragraph of this seem so obvious as to hardly need stating.

Here’s what Williams thought of it in the first person - but watch out, as it is littered with spoilers.

Now, if he could just come out and publicly say that GP Taylor’s Shadowmancer is rubbish with its heavy-handed moral message, and instruct him, as his boss, to pack it in on the grounds of total lack of literary merit, my day would be complete.