During ‘The Interview’ 30th March 2025 with ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Laura K commented/asked:
In the last ten years there has, alongside lots of turmoil in the UK, there’s been a lot of changes in our culture and how we talk to each other. There’s been a speeding up of conversation, if you like, that is often more vitriolic. Is that something that you’ve observed? Is that something that you worry about?
Justin Welby replied:
Yes, The biggest challenge long-term this country faces is social cohesion. Whether you are in favour, or against, or neutral we are in the top two or three, possibly the most diverse nation on Earth. That has happened in half a century. And the challenge of that is working out ‘who we are’ and ‘where we find our values’. People are feeling that instinctively. We saw those dreadful riots last summer. Roughly 5,000 people were involved in the riots; 20,000 in the clean-up. People want a cohesive society where we know who we are, what we value and where we are going. This is where the church plays its role.
LK: You wrote about social media last year ‘We can hate at a distance’ and because of the intimacy of a tweet or a blog post that intimacy cuts into us. Do you think we rush to judge now?
JW: I think we rush to judge. The first question one hears on most interviews is ‘Are you going to resign?’…. I think there is a rush to judgment, an immense distrust of institutions and there’s a point where you need institutions to hold society together. I’m not talking about safeguarding here but there is an absence of forgiveness.
