Terry Sanderson: If Rowan Williams hasn't come out in favour of disestablishment, it's because he knows it would kill his church

my highlights in blockquotes, as usual

Dec 18, 2008 16:30:00 GMT Share

The Archbishop of Canterbury has once again raised the issue of disestablishment, but isn't very enthusiastic about the idea. Why would he be? His church is already in a precarious position, with numbers of worshippers dropping like a stone. Without the support of the state and left to its own devices, the Church of England would be dead and gone within decades, ripped apart by its own internal rivalries and left penniless by the indifference of the population.

Williams says that his hesitancy over disestablishment is caused by the rise of non-belief and the desire of secularists to see religion pushed from the public square.

The Archbishop misunderstands secularism. What he describes is certainly not the kind of secularism promoted by the National Secular Society, of which I am president.

Although a secular state would mean that religion would have to take its place with the vast array of other interest groups that lobby our democratically elected government, it does not mean that religious people would be disenfranchised or discriminated against. No, it would simply mean that the growing minority religions and the vast majority of people in this country who have no interest in religion would achieve equality.

Of course, if you have long-standing privileges taken away from you, it will feel as though you are being discriminated against. The Church of England should realise that it has had its day. According to the latest edition of Religious Trends, from Christian Research, less than a million people now attend its services regularly (and this is predicted to drop to 100,000 by 2050) and so it has no business being part of the state and purporting to speak for us all. It does not.

The bishops' usual response to this is that they are the voice of all religion in government. The foot in the door for faith, as Rowan Williams put it on the Today programme. This is, of course, nonsense. Minority religions may be even smaller than the Church of England, but they can speak for themselves and their own interests, and they increasingly do.

Another idea that the Church of England constantly pushes (and is reiterated by Giles Fraser on Cif today) is that the Church is somehow the "centre of all local communities". But this isn't borne out by the reality.

Although the domineering presence of church buildings can hardly be overlooked, and they are familiar landmarks in every town and village, they cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called "the centre of the community". Few people go anywhere near them – unless there is some kind of secular event like a concert or evening class going on.

The number of church weddings is dropping, the number of secular funerals is rising and there is widespread unease about "faith schools". The Church may well have influence in communities, but it wouldn't be greatly missed it if weren't there.

And if you ask most people in this country who "their" bishop is, I guess the answer from about 99% of them would be a blank stare and an uncomprehending "Eh?"

Disestablishment would be a mammoth legislative task that would stretch over decades. This government doesn't have the stomach for it and nor will the next. Disestablishment will only come if the church sees that it would have a better chance of survival as an independent entity rather than an arm of the state. And for the church to set in train the process of disestablishment would be rather like asking for assisted suicide.

If, as Rowan Williams implies, he's scared of the competition from secularism and atheism, then his hurch has conceded that it has no legitimate claim to special treatment.

So though Williams has once again waded into the debate, he hasn't faced the real issue: his own Church's demise.

My Christmas message? There's probably no God by Polly Toynbee (President of Brit. Humanist Assoc.)

It is neither emotionally nor spiritually deficient to reject religions that seek to infantilise us with impossible beliefs

Comments (801)

• 
• • Polly Toynbee
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 23 December 2008
  • Article history

Antidisestablishmentarianism is on the march. Which is odd, considering there is only the faintest whiff of disestablishmentarianism to fight. The Archbishop of Canterbury set this hare running with his usual confused mumbling into his beard. To disestablish the church would be "by no means the end of the world", he said bravely. He hastened to add that he did not want the church sundered from the state right now. And he would oppose "secularists [boo, hiss] trying to push religion into the private sphere". This sent the Telegraph and Mail into a spin, claiming a devilish distestablishment plot on the Labour backbenches - though they could find only three usual suspects. These MPs say the likely move to end the 1701 Act of Settlement that bars Catholics from the throne will make an established church impossible.

more ....

Next stop disestablishment - Religious Secularism

Calls for the removal of the blasphemy law must be seen in the context of its original relation to the established church

Christian Theo Hobson calls for Secularism.

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/theo_hobson/2008/01/next_stop_disestablishment.html

Chris Street comments are in bright green;

highlights in yellow blockquotes.

Theo Hobson

January 9, 2008

British revolutions happen very slowly. This is probably a good thing on the whole, but it feels incredibly frustrating to those of us involved in keeping the momentum alive. The likely repeal of the blasphemy law, pending today's vote, is part of a revolution that started centuries ago - perhaps as early as the 1640s. We British revolutionaries are patient.

This slow revolution is called disestablishment. Since the Reformation, the English empire has had an established church, an official religion. It has been central to state power, in particular to the power of the monarch. The blasphemy law exists to defend this official church in particular, not Christianity in general. In reality, a blasphemy law has to be the tool of a particular religious institution: it otherwise lacks all coherence.

So what we are really seeing here is another very belated chapter in the demise of our established church.

The question of the blasphemy law should be seen in the context of this story.

It is tempting to launch into an attack on the very idea of an established church, an official national religion; to insist that it contravenes the basic principles of cultural freedom. We should be more nuanced. In reality, the Church of England was instrumental to the emergence of our liberal political tradition, and consequently that of the west in general.

In Tudor times, it was simply necessary to have a state church, if you were going to get rid of Rome. By creating a national church, the English also enabled the steady growth of political liberalism, under Elizabeth I and her successor James.

And so was launched the paradox of our religious history. The national church gave rise to a liberalism that began to corrode the idea of a national church. On one level the alliance of throne and altar protected English liberty from the reactionary Catholic superpowers - but on another level it was itself prohibitive of real liberty.

Why should the king and his bishops stop people from thinking freely? A free state should tolerate a plurality of creeds.

Among the Puritan revolutionaries of the 1640s were the pioneers of secular liberal thought. Cromwell himself wanted a new degree of religious freedom: he wanted disestablishment. The forces of conservatism frustrated this desire. In 1656 the fundamentalist lobby secured the conviction for blasphemy of a maverick Quaker, who dressed up as Jesus. (I have written before about this ancestor of the Jerry Springer controversy.)

After the failure of Cromwell's regime, the old alliance of throne and altar was reinstated. Dissenters from the Anglican monoculture were second-class citizens. Liberty was again held back by establishment. But again we should note the paradox: the state church ensured a higher degree of liberty than was found elsewhere in Europe - especially when France was taken over by militant atheism. (This side of the story will obviously be swept aside by atheist commentators such as AC Grayling, who would have you believe that the cause of liberty was anti-religious.)

In the 19th century the Anglican monoculture began to be thinned out by the progress of liberalism (more thanks is due to Protestant dissenters than to atheists for this). By the early 20th century the established church was a relic of a previous era, for secular liberal principles had more or less triumphed. But the nation still wanted to cling to this relic, to invest it with symbolic importance. It strengthened the monarchy, and provided a reminder of our Christian heritage. There seemed little harm in this piece of constitutional conservatism: if the church was now devoid of real political power, who cared if it retained its established status?

And then everything changed, changed utterly. 9/11 woke us from our cosy constitutional nostalgia. The rise of Islamic extremism called for a total reassessment of the religious landscape. It was suddenly necessary to affirm secular liberalism, and to end the old narrative of Anglican privilege, to affirm the basic principle of liberalism: that all must be treated equally, irrespective of religious belief. The established church was suddenly standing in the way of the renewal of our national identity. It was no longer a pretty relic, but an ugly hindrance.

It was 9/11 that made me realise that I could not condone an established church. I could not subscribe to a religious institution that contravenes the principle of secular liberalism. I found that my fellow Anglicans were complacent and evasive on this issue, and so I had to renounce my Anglicanism.

So I am against the blasphemy law, because I am against the established church. Establishment was necessary in the past; it enabled the growth of a uniquely liberal culture. But that chapter is long over. For many decades it has been an unhelpful relic, preventing us from moving on. What we must insist upon now is that our real national creed is liberalism. This is what unites us, not Anglicanism. This is not an anti-religious declaration (I am a Christian). It is a reassertion of the liberal strain within our national story.

Let all Britons be as religious as they want, as long as their religion falls within the limits of liberalism. This, and this alone, is the way out of the present mess: "Religion within the limits of liberalism alone."