Archbishop Welby’s lecture on the need to end religiously justified violence.

Feb 12, 2016 by Andrew Symes

From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website.

In his Church of Ireland Theological Lecture [8^th February], the Archbishop said that to realise the vision of a world in which violence justified on the grounds of religion is eliminated, we need to build a new “narrative of beauty” based on love, hospitality and human flourishing.

A transcript of Archbishop Justin’s lecture:

It’s a great privilege to be asked to be here. I feel very grateful to have been invited, but also to come to such a place as Queen’s, with its extraordinarily distinguished history, and to Northern Ireland and particularly the reality of its own struggles and developments with which it is teaching the world in many places about peacemaking and reconciliation. I have much more to learn than to say.

I’m not going to talk about Northern Ireland and reconciliation. And the reason for that is very simple: that there is a long history of people from elsewhere, outside Northern Ireland, coming and telling you how to do it – and actually you are, quite rightly, telling the world a great deal about what you’ve learned over many years, and it would simply be arrogant. And so I want to reflect on the nature of religiously-justified violence, and as a case study, on the nature, particularly, of the conflict we are facing with Daesh, or ISIS.

Read here