Antidisestablishmentarianism
Following Thunderdragons provocative post a couple of days ago, here’s my personal perspective as part of the established Church. As you’ll gather, my inner jury is still out on this one, but I wasn’t going to let that spoil a good title….
What are the disestablishers arguing?
1. No religion should possess a favoured link to the government, since we are not a mono-faith society. We exist surrounded by many faiths and many claims of truth. Who is the State to proclaim which is the truth? (TD)
Disestablishment doesn’t guarantee the severing of links between faith and government. There are many ’secular’ governments in Muslim states who grant far more priviliges to Islam than ours does to Christianity. And though our structures are rooted in Christendom, the state itself doesn’t proclaim that Christianity is true, and politicians are notoriously nervous about God-talk. And I’ve not even mentioned the USA. Oh, sorry, yes I have.
2. A related argument: “the Anglican church is shrinking and the church more marginal to our national life”. Sean Gabb writes in the Times that the CofE has become too amateurish, replacing ancient traditions with trendy and shallow pronouncements
The Church should be disestablished because it has, in a sense, disestablished itself. It has made itself an object of derision where not of contempt. It should not be allowed to continue representing itself as England at prayer.
but neither could a church using only the Authorised Version and the Book of Common Prayer represent itself as England at prayer. The church has to be both relevant and rooted.
Any argument premised on current social trends has to recognise that, if those trends change, then the logic must change too. So if we disestablish because the Anglican church is weak, and it then grows and becomes strong again, do we re-establish it? We should be wary of any argument to change centuries-old arrangements based on a snapshot.
3. “One church shouldn’t have a privileged position, nor should politicians interfere in the way it’s run.”
Agreed, Anglicanism isn’t intrinsically better than any of the other church streams. Not that our privileged position does us any good - what use are 26 Bishops in the House of Lords when it’s fringe groups like Christian Voice who end up on the phone-ins on 5 Live? But….
What does this ‘privileged position’ mean?
- It means a context of meaning for key national events: Remembrance Day, state funerals and so on. Even if you don’t buy into the meaning (and the majority of us do, in some form or other), it makes for a stronger national life that we have something to fall back on, rather than making it all up from scratch.
- It means a voice for Christianity, and for religion in general, locked into relationship with the government. As Cranmer notes: A multi-faith society can certainly accommodate a privileged position for one religion, especially if that religion is as accommodating and benign as Anglicanism. It provides a canopy of religion under which all religions may find a voice in the public political sphere. In a time when we are debating the relationship of state and religion, the Anglican church is helping to broker that debate.
It brokers other debates too - on schooling, regeneration, welfare reform and the 3rd sector. And there are many chaplaincies in other agencies: from hospitals and police to supermarkets, where the Anglican church has been a safe pair of hands to draw together resources from other churches, and other faiths.
If there was no established church, the government would be faced with a cacophony of voices all claiming to speak for their faith. There would be less consultation with faith groups, or faith groups would become more politicised as they compete for access to the levers of power. God save us from this.
- It is part of our local context. There are still huge numbers of people who want ‘The Church’ in the frame at those crucial moments of birth, marriage and death. Disestablishment would rip this up: I know that there are some vicars who are less welcoming than others, but for the most part we are there for every member of this country. This is wired into our culture - decreasingly so, but it is still there. The local church, and the local vicar, have a symbolic role within the community, which establishment has facilitated.
It’s easy in this debate to focus on the Lords and the monarchy, and forget the local context. The Church of England isn’t a few bishops and a pseudo-parliamentary system of governance that doesn’t work very well. It’s 16,000 local churches, one for nearly every community in the land, part of our social fabric even as we renegotiate our relationship with it.
However: this situation is changing. Here in Yeovil we have several churches taking the lead in different areas. The Elim church supplies chaplains for the police and football club, and the Community Church leads the way in working with the council over young people and Street Pastors. Churches which don’t have hundreds of years of taken-for-granted status can sometimes work much harder, and more creatively, at community and political engagement. We’re recognising (at last), that The Church is all of us, not just 1 denomination.
What If…?
Personally, I haven’t completely made up my mind on this issue. It is a nonsense to have politicians choosing bishops, and I’m sometimes embarassed by the way my church operates as if it were the only show in town. But…. I guess some of it is fear of the unknown, what if there are unintended consequences? In recent years we’ve laid down much more clearly what rights people have, and we’ve become a more litigious and fearful society. The horrendous levels of abortions in this country are far beyond those envisaged by the folk who first liberalised the abortion law.
Sure, the present situation is unfair, but it’s not exactly being abused by the church, and I don’t hear many voices from other faith groups arguing for disestablishment. And if disestablishment means a more sectarian CofE, and less constructive engagement between faith groups and the government, then count me out. This situation is evolving, I say let it carry on evolving. Whether it’s India or Saudi Arabia, the world needs more models of constructive partnership between religion and politics, not less. We have a model of established religion which has evolved to support freedom of religion - a right which, interestingly, Sarkozy sees as the essence of a secular state.
It’s our inability to have a constructive debate about this stuff that got Phil Woolas pulled from Question Time. Can we honestly see that improving if we get out the constitutional scissors? And what exactly will be gained?
Categories: Columns, Touching Base
>There are many ’secular’ governments in Muslim states who grant far more priviliges to Islam than ours does to Christianity
In Turkey all Imams are employed by the Secular State.
Dawkins would choke on that !
Thought: the £86m for the “Combatting Extremism” project would hvae paid for pretty much one FTE per Mosque for a year (assuming around 2000 and increasing the wages).
Matt
The kerning of the H and M in this font is terrible. Gah.
David, I think you’re raising a few straw men in this piece, thinks with which I wouldn’t disagree, such as “disestablishment doesn’t guarantee the severing of links between faith and government” which it definitely won’t and can’t, as faith plays a part in the lives of a lot of people, one way or another. But it will remove religion from the government. Also, “we should be wary of any argument to change centuries-old arrangements based on a snapshot” as that way we are taking short-term decisions. But there can be little doubt that the CofE has been declining in almost every way for a long time now.
But you’ve raised several points which are entirely wrong, such as:
“It means a context of meaning for key national events”. How, precisely? It wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether the Church was established or not.
“It means a voice for Christianity, and for religion in general”. Again, how? It wouldn’t make any difference if the church was established or not.
“There are still huge numbers of people who want ‘The Church’ in the frame at those crucial moments of birth, marriage and death.” This would not change under a disestablished church. They will still be there to do this. This isn’t an argument against disestablishment, it’s an argument for the church to exist - two different things.
In your conclusion, you state that “it is a nonsense to have politicians choosing bishops, and I’m sometimes embarassed by the way my church operates as if it were the only show in town. But…. I guess some of it is fear of the unknown, what if there are unintended consequences?” But I can’t see what these unintended consequences could possible be. The CofE won’t immediately fold and the state won’t collapse with the ’support’ of the CofE. So what unintended consequences could there be?
Key national events: Remembrance Day, state funerals etc. There is a given setting for these things. A secular state would need to rethink all of this.
The voice for Christianity/religion is in part the presence of Bishops in the Lords (which I’m very much in two minds about), but the CofE, as the established church, has facilitated the involvement of other faith groups in politics, and the ABC makes a natural spokesman when the faith groups want to make a common statement. A disestablished Anglican church (it couldn’t call itself the church of England) will become one of many, without official status, the situation will become more confused and disjointed.
The local church: as a vicar I’m licensed to take weddings, I can’t act as a government functionary if the church is disestablished, and the church laws would no longer be held within the law of the land. The principle of universal access to baptisms, weddings, funerals, the pastoral care of the church etc. would have to be unstitched from its place in the law of the land, and that will have consequences for how the church functions locally. Yes we could still be ‘in the frame’, but the way that happens would change.
The unintended consequences I’m mainly wary of is the politicisation of the church as in the USA. Groups such as Christian Voice make me deeply uneasy, whilst the Anglican church currently provides a moderate voice at the heart of the politics/religion interface.
In the long run I personally don’t think it will make a massive difference to the CofE whether it’s established or not - a formal relationship to the state isn’t something which forms the essence of the church. However, it is currently part of our national fabric, and if we’re going to change things it would be good to have an alternative model which is works well in other countries to put in the place of what we currently have.
I guess I’m just arguing for caution, and a positive vision of what we want to see as well as the arguments for what we don’t want.
David Keen´s last blog post..The Bible in 60 seconds
I’m not sure where I stand on the establishment or disestablishment of the Church of England. I can see positives and negatives in it - the church would be more free to be what the church should be, without being part of the government / civil service / national fabric; but then the nation would lose out on so much.
Perhaps I can offer a British-Irish perspective. The Church of Ireland has been disestablished for almost 140 years and it has flourished as an independent church. What appeared to be a disaster for Irish Anglicans when Gladstone introduced the legislation has actually turned into something very positive.
Gary´s last blog post..Acts 17: 16-34 Paul in Athens
David (I write as a practising Anglican), the Church of England is already one of many. And non-Anglican ministers have long been able to hold weddings etc. A disestablished C of E (would anyone really make it change its name?) could still offer weddings and funerals to everyone, even those who never darken its doors, if it wishes to. I agree we should proceed cautiously along this route, but I don’t see a good reason not to proceed and all sorts of good ones to do so.
Peter Kirk´s last blog post..Dawkins abandons atheism!