Everything Old Is New Again

Many people believe that if the Qur'an could be subjected to the historical-critical method, many of our problems would go away.
I've never thought about it like that, because the Qur'an is the Qur'an is the Qur'an. I think the attempt to modernize by this historical-critical thing is not the way to go. We've done historical-critical stuff on our own scriptures, Jewish and Christian, and it's actually just dug us into a hole, it's a way of saying, "Let's turn Christianity and Judaism into something which is safe in the postenlightenment world." We all now know that religion is more complicated and interesting than that—not that it's inherently unsafe, but that it's an irreducible component of human life. I would rather take Islam full on and say let's just talk about what is really going on here, and let's see how we can find things that we can say and do in common.

At the Lambeth meeting this summer, the subject of gay unions and gay clergy will top the agenda. What do you think will happen?
I think it's going to be messy. It's already messy. It's not clear quite what the Lambeth Conference could say, let alone is likely to say, that will make things more sharply focused, more wholesome. My hope is—and I know this is [the Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams's hope—that the Lambeth Conference, by starting as a retreat, will set the tone of prayer, of humility, of listening to one another. Whether that will be allowed to happen, I don't know. This is the task we have been set at the moment, and we have to address it. At the same time, I wish we could prioritize so that we were actually talking about issues of global justice and debt remission and global warming and so on. I mean, there's something very bizarre about the rich arguing about sex while the poor are clamoring for justice.

© 2008