It is one of the things about those who do theology at this level that their breath and depth of scholarship, combining the style of academic philosophy with that of other disciplines, is hard to match in any other field. I remember being impressed with the breath of knowledge that 1960s-early 70s style medievalists of my experience considered a basic prerequisite but theologians outdo them.
I am certainly not equipped to deal with what Rowan Williams says in more than a few details that impinge on practical politics. I think the most important thing for that is the explanation that no rights held by human beings can be held to be absolute without enormous danger coming from the exercise of those rights.
At best I'm able to jot down a few ideas. The ideas that Rowan Williams discusses here strike me as being extremely important. Someone coming up with a simple and easily understood articulation of that complication in a notion of rights which protects individuals from both an oppressive government and from other people and institutions in the private sector will become more important in the preservation of egalitarian democracy. The simplistic view of it in secular thought is extremely dangerous. I think that in the context of the United States, there is no better example of that than in capitalist economics and the popular culture and academic culture that takes that as a given. The result of such a view of rights is that "market state" which I pointed out in Williams' lecture posted yesterday. I think where we are is a direct result of that secular view of rights unregulated by the Jewish-Christian, likely, Islamic conception of our Creator. Where that or a similar kind of limit put on rights, the admission that no human being has an unlimited divine right to do anything is absent, rights will turn around to oppress those with less power.
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