Christians ‘must try to understand IS’, says Williams

IF WE give in to the temptation not to even try to make sense of the perspective of Islamic State terrorists we have given up on something vital in our humanity, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said this week, writes Joanna Moorhead.

Giving the annual Orwell Lecture in central London, Lord Williams of Oystermouth said it was entirely understandable to feel it was impossible to make sense of the sort of terrorism the world saw in Paris a week ago.

“It’s so tempting – we feel a revulsion that settles easily,” he said. “But I know as a Christian I’m not allowed to do that … it doesn’t mean sentimental niceness, it’s about the humanising thing of making the effort to imagine the other. How do you imagine the unimaginable – the idea that God and justice is represented by murder and brutality? But if we give up on it, we’ve given up on something colossal about our humanity.” Lord Williams was speaking on “War, Words and Reason: Orwell and Thomas Merton on the Crises of Language”. The two shared an abhorrence for war and a love for literature, he argued.