News the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, thinks Muslims should be allowed to conduct some financial transactions and family law under the Sharia code had some evangelicals apoplectic.

David Phillips from the evangelical Church Society said it seems "completely irrational" for a Christian leader to advocate a "separate system which doesn't have Christian values".
The Archbishop's defenders blamed a tabloid media beat-up.

Who is right?

Fleet Street reporting was certainly over-the-top. The Sun newspaper " its headline screaming "What a Burkha!" " described Dr Williams as a "dangerous threat to the nation".
But this was not a media-engineered scandal. They followed public opinion.

The furore was sparked by a serious interview with Christopher Landau on the BBC's World at One program, in advance of Dr William's Temple lecture on "Civil and religious law in England: a religious perspective' which tackled the pressing problems around Sharia law. 

Landau asked Dr Williams if he was arguing that it was "unavoidable" that Britain adopt some Sharia law in order to achieve "cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion".
Dr Williams answered: "It seems unavoidable and indeed as a matter of fact certain provision of Sharia are already recognised in our society…"

The opposition to Dr Williams' answer came fast and furious, and on an unprecedented scale: the BBC received a record number of emails vehemently disagreeing with the Archbishop.
However, it is clear from the subsequent lecture that Dr Williams' real concern goes beyond Sharia. He is troubled by the way secularist changes to the law have compromised Christian beliefs. Indeed, he cited the British ban on Roman Catholic adoption agencies for refusing same-sex couples as foster parents.

The secularists " some of whom knew exactly what Dr Williams was really on about " had good reason to fuel the anger at the Archbishop.

As Andrew Goddard from Fulcrum pointed out, Dr William argues that people should not be forced against their conscience to grant someone a certain "right' (such as to an abortion or a divorce) which can be accessed elsewhere.

Dr Williams acknow-ledged that this is where the particular problem with Sharia law cuts in. How do we respect the Muslim community's desire to conduct divorce in line with their religious beliefs, whilst also defending the human rights of the individual women concerned?

This is a live ethical dilemma in some English neighbourhoods, explained Dr Williams' advisor Canon Guy Wilkinson, "where informal Sharia councils are widely in operation" and "there is no proper connection with the civil courts" and "women in particular are suffering".

Dr Williams' solution is to advocate a kind of "free market" of jurisdictions, allowing individuals to opt out of the religious system and into the over-arching secular system.

Yet he made three significant errors.

1. He should have been far more attuned to the public fears around Sharia.

2. The speech was extraordinarily dense and obtuse, making it impossible to grasp for media quotes.

3. This was compounded by framing the whole discussion so heavily around an Islamic context, rather than through the lens of Christian concerns.

Dr Williams' solution to the tension between secular law and religious conscience may well be unworkable. Yet there is no doubt that the totalising impact of secular law is a critical matter for Church leaders to raise.