Although the Anglican communion seems to be collapsing around his ears- or perhaps just because this is happening- Rowan Williams has despatched a cringe-making communication to Muslim leaders apologising for Christianity's historic faults. The worst passages slip into the sociology professor's passive subjunctive that he favours. The point of this exercise is to discover common cause against secular modernity's darknesses. One might take it seriously if at any point the Archbishop expected a reciprocal admission of fault on the part of Muslim leaders, some of whom have knowingly preached hatred against the West, Christians and Jews. Various religious commentators have tried to elucidate the dilemmas Williams faces over the gay clergy/women bishop issues. It seems simple to me- he is stuck, like a rabbit in the headlights, between three of the mutually exclusive progressivisms he espouses- hopelessly imagining that these can be endlessly debated in the endless seminar he confuses with leadership, a notion virtually absent from the great democracy of British academia from which he comes and to which as Minette Marrin indicated in the first Standpoint he should return.