Quick links for more reflection on the Archbishop's speech

N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, for whom along with Archbishop Rowan Williams I have profound respect, has written an essay on ++Rowan's speech, clarifying what he sees as the essential matters of the speech, offering his appreciation of its importance and regretting its misreporting and misunderstanding. Whilst I respect them both, I find that +Wright has been given a gift of exercising elegant, piercing clarity in his prose in a way which quite often (by his own admission) eludes ++Wiliams. (H/T Steven Harris)

Moreover, Mike Higton continues offering ruminations and insights, this time from a slightly different perspective that before. A great reminder, through ++Williams and via Milbank that the 'secular' itself has a history, and is not simply the obvious or the given, much less the 'neutral' backdrop against which religion may (or may fail to) establish itself, even while there are some good reasons why it arose historically. This is offered not as a means of clearing away secularity, or traditions of universal rights, but to complicate them a bit, in order to open up a future which doesn't look exactly like the past.