In a visit to the European institutions in Brussels this week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spoke on the increasing interest of churches and faith groups in the future of Europe, reports Ekklesia.

|TOP|During the three-day visit, Williams delivered a major lecture on ‘Religion, culture, diversity and tolerance – shaping the new Europe’, before meeting with the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Durao Barrosa, on Tuesday.

The Archbishop said that he wanted “to suggest a way of understanding Europe’s Christian heritage that may open some doors for a common vision,” reports Ekklesia.

Dr Williams alleged that, in “facing – to put it as neutrally as possible – a highly critical, if internally diverse, global ‘opposition’ in the shape of the Islamic world”, Enlightenment liberalism is in a state of confusion that means “its supposed right to set the agenda for the rest of the world is no longer beyond question”.

He said deeper thought was needed on European distinctiveness and whether it has any specific moral substance.

|AD|Dr Williams added that if we refuse to discuss moral and spiritual foundations what is left “is simply violent competition for the power to set agendas, political, economic and cultural, with religious commitment seen as at best a ‘lifestyle option’ chosen for its ability to enhance individual effectiveness or comfort”.

He also warned that wholesale secularism “as a programmatic policy in the state can turn into another tyranny – a system beyond challenge”.

He said: “The presence of the Church at least goes on obstinately asking the state about its accountability and the justification of its priorities.”

Also accompanying Dr Williams on his trip was the Rt. Rev. Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of the Church of England Diocese of Gibraltar.

The Archbishop said he welcomed the opportunity afforded by his visit to the European institutions “of engaging with the European institutions and learning more about the challenges we face in a rapidly changing continent”.