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Peter Webster deposited Race, religion and national identity in Sixties Britain: Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury and his encounter with other faiths in the group
British History on Humanities Commons 7 years, 7 months ago This essay explores two main themes, one major and one minor. After an examination of Michael Ramsey’s own engagement with inter-faith theology in the abstract, it briefly considers his interventions on behalf of Anglican minorities caught up in religiously inflected conflict overseas. The main preoccupation of the essay, however, is with the interaction between the Church of England and the emerging non-Christian minorities in the UK. It examines the role of the archbishop in the diplomatic interaction between faiths nationally, and also his interventions on behalf of religious minorities, whether in relation to the admission of immigrants or to their lot once they arrived. Whilst Ramsey was no syncretist in his theology, he knew that the mission situation both at home and abroad required that the Church of England became less and less the embodiment of Protestant Englishness, and (to borrow a phrase) more and more the defender of faiths.