As the leaders of the G20 met in the luxury resort of Cannes on the French Riviera, popular outrage and protest movements were spreading across the globe.

From Occupy Wall Street to the camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, the protesters express a deep-seated anger aimed at global finance that is shared by ordinary people and certain elites alike.

Across the globe there is an implicit, inchoate sense that big business and big government have colluded at the expense of the people. Both centralised states and free markets are disembedded from society, and society is subjugated by the global market-state.

Through local vassals like the City of London Corporation, it subordinates social to commercial purpose, as Blue Labour’s Maurice Glasman has argued.

And so global finance has become disconnected from ethical or social goals, while governments of both the Left and the Right have either replaced mutualist arrangements among workers with centralised, bureaucratic welfare, or outsourced the delivery of public goods to private service providers – or, indeed, both.

Collusion between big government and big business has generated a system that privatises profit, nationalises losses and socialises risk. From the very outset, the global economic turmoil was merely a symptom of a much larger moral crisis.

Thus far the expressions of anger are as diverse as the demonstrators’ demands are vague. That is why the call by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a new debate on specific action is so important.

Read the rest here.

The ABC Religion website is hosting a five-part Symposium on Conor Cunningham’s Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong. Please follow the links below for each part.

• Part 1, “Mind all the Way Down: On Darwin’s Pious Idea,” by Rowan Williams
• Part 2, by Peter James Causton
• Part 3, by Kent Dunnington
• Part 4, by Phil Dowe
• Part 5, by Paul Tyson

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today awarded the 2011 Michael Ramsey prize to ‘Atheist Delusions’ by David Bentley Hart at a gala lunch at the Telegraph Hay festival.

Speaking about the winning entry, Dr Williams said it “takes no prisoners in its response to fashionable criticisms of Christianity”.

On receiving the prize David B. Hart said:

“Needless to say the honour is very great. For me, it lies especially in the name of the prize – as I have such a high regard for Michael Ramsey – and in its being conferred by the current Archbishop of Canterbury – whose work is among the richest theology being written in English today”.

For the full story, please click here.

The Flickr photo set of the event may be found here.

According to British scholar Conor Cunningham, the debate today between religion and evolution has been hijacked by extremists: on one side stand fundamentalist believers who reject evolution outright, and opposing them are fundamentalist atheists who claim that Darwin’s theory rules out the possibility of God in Darwin’s Pious Idea.

The interview may be streamed or downloaded here.

‘In the third piece in our discussion about the Labour Party and the left, Alex Andrews argues that Labour needs the radical left more than the radical left needs it, and that Labour must avoid letting the Tories setting the agenda.’

Last week, a motley and anachronistic crew of liberal Anglican theologians and dissenting ministers, in collaboration with the think tank Ecclesia, launched the Common Wealth: Christians for Economic and Social Justiceinitiative, whose purpose is to oppose government cuts in public spending and welfare provision. It in turn urges the churches not to collude with such measures by supporting and enabling the “Big Society” agenda, insisting that “churches should not be deceived by claims that the government is sympathetic to Christian ideals … The ‘Big Society’ masks injustice, suffocating dissent with phoney ‘we’re all in it together’ sound bites.”

On one level, one can agree with Common Wealth about the unnecessary pace and regressive social impact of some of the budget cuts – although their scale is being somewhat exaggerated. And yet the reaction of this group is superficial, and is in sharp contrast to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury who has proffered “two and a half cheers for the Big Society.”

Now, five-sixths support is really quite a lot, and probably gets it about right. It is clear that Rowan Williams realises – andCommon Wealth does not – that the Big Society is more than a mere cover for further neoliberal privatisation. To the extent that it is, and to the extent that it fails to tackle the injustices and monopolies of the market as much as those of the state, it deserves half a cheer to be withheld. But there are four crucial reasons why the big society is no neo-Thatcherite sham. [...]

Read the rest here.

• ‘Poverty, Justice, and Virtue’ [PDF]
• Fry’s Unsexing of Sex [PDF]

Just released is Crisis and Recovery: Ethics, Economics, and Justice, by Rowan Williams and Larry Elliott (Palgrave Macmillan [30 Sep 2010]). [Purchase UK | Purchase US].

From the book description: ‘During the ongoing global financial crisis, a lack of moral and ethical leadership in society has been exposed. The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and Larry Elliott, The Guardian, bring together their thoughts on the issues of ethics and morality in business, with contributions from leading business figures.’

Blurbs:

‘The future of humankind in an interconnected and globalized world will be based on the notion of togetherness. This notion is at the base of any recovery and this book provides the principles for how this can be achieved.’ — Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

‘An excellent, very readable book for the layman that is immensely interesting and encouraging for anyone who has a nagging sense that the current economic crisis might also be a profound opportunity for change — and the possibility of a fairer, more equal and eventually, longer-lasting planet.’ —Richard Curtis, writer, director, and co-founder of Comic Relief

‘Two of the most powerful forces in our world are religion and money. This book brings them together in ways that are both well-informed and ethically and politically sensitive. The result will be of interest to any religious or secular citizen concerned about the wise shaping of twenty-first century society.’ — David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge, and Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme

‘Suddenly, theological and ethical approaches to economics are no longer marginal, but central to the most penetrating analyses of the current crisis. This book shows why. It also shows how thinkers from both left and right are converging on the view that we can only correct market injustice by establishing an ethical market that is more integrally related to cultural values, political purposes and environmental flourishing. Such a market, it is suggested, would be more egalitarian, and yet more genuinely free and less subject to cyclical instability than the one which we have at present. Everyone interested in a different global future should read these fine essays with care.’ — John Milbank, Research Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics and Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham

Also, a video from Archbishop Rowan Williams may be found here or by clicking on the image on the right.

This morning at 7.50am (GMT) and 8am on Sunday morning, Simon Oliver will be speaking about Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the UK for the beatification of John Henry Newman. He will be on the BBC’s Radio Nottingham.

Dear colleagues,

Late on Monday 26 April, the Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities, Ed Esche, informed staff in Philosophy that the University executive had ‘accepted his recommendation’ to close all Philosophy programmes: undergraduate, postgraduate and MPhil/PhD.

Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject in the University. Building on its grade 5 rating in RAE2001, it was awarded a score of 2.8 on the new RAE scale in 2008, with 65% of its research activity judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world.

The MA programmes in Philosophy at Middlesex have grown in recent years to become the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009.

The Dean explained that the decision to terminate recruitment and close the programmes was ’simply financial’, and based on the fact that the University believes that it may be able to generate more revenue if it shifts its resources to other subjects – from ‘Band D’ to ‘Band C’ students.

As you may know, the University currently expects each academic unit to contribute 55% of its gross income to the central administration. As it stands (by the credit count method of calculation), Philosophy and Religious Studies contributes 53%, after the deduction of School admin costs. According to the figures for projected recruitment from admissions (with Philosophy undergraduate applications up 118% for 2010-11), if programmes had remained open, the contribution from Philosophy and Religious Studies would have risen to 59% (with Philosophy’s contribution, considered on its own, at 53%).

In a meeting with Philosophy staff, the Dean acknowledged the excellent research reputation of Philosophy at Middlesex, but said that it made no ‘measurable’ contribution to the University.

Needless to say, we very much regret this decision to terminate Philosophy, and its likely consequences for the School and our University and for the teaching of our subject in the UK.

· Professor Peter Hallward, Programme Leader for the MA programmes in
Philosophy,

· Professor Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European
Philosophy,

· Dr. Stella Sandford, Director of Programmes, Philosophy

[source]

Nina Power has written an article in the Guardian commenting on the situation here: “A Blow to Philosophy, and Minorities”

Of the many ways that support for the department has materialised, there is an official website here, a Facebook group, and a petition to sign, with over 3,000 signatures and counting. There are also instructions here on how and who to write letters to the university administrators at Middlesex.