Having been a firm atheist for 15 years or so, I have no trouble with the Church of England being established. It costs me nothing and affects me not at all. Yes, they have bishops in the House of Lords, but there’s 26 out of around 750 - they are unlikely to transform things unless it’s a very narrow vote. Even then, on a day-to-day basis, only one or two turn up.
Even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll vote together. They don’t sit as ‘The Church of England Party’, and quite often they will openly disagree with each other and vote differently.
I quite like the religious pageantry that goes with it, too. Given that this country is more secular and religiously tolerant than certain sectors of the US, I don’t think formal separation is quite the panacea it’s assumed to be.
The assets of the Church Commissioners do not largely represent assets orginally granted by the state. Some do, but most of what the church commissioners now hold can be traced back ultimately to endowments received from non-State sources.
But this can be complicated - take Queen Anne’s Bounty, a fund which eventually found its way to the Church Commissioners. Queen Anne’s bounty was provided under Parliamentary authority to augment the stipends of poor clergymen. So, provided by the state? Well, yes and no. The funds for Queen Anne’s Bounty were obtained by levying taxes on the income of richer clerics. So, state authority is involved, but what we actually have is a redistribution of church revenues from richer to poorer areas. Do we count this as something provided by the state?
Or, consider the endowments of the Diocese of Oxford. These were largely built up out of revenues granted to the diocese when it was established by the crown in 1541. So, state provision? Yes, but the crown simply assigned to the diocese (part of) the revenues it had acquired by dissolving Osney Abbey just two years before that. The Abbey in turn had acquired its assets, or at least the core of them, from the D’Oyly family, who founded the Abbey in the thirteenth century. But they got their money, or much of it, from crown grants of land, or from crown appointments. State provision?
Ultimately, this doesn’t have much to do with the question of establishment. Lots of churches, established and non-established, enjoy the legacy of historicl patronage by wealthy people, many of whom were royal, or who themselves got their money from royal patronage. If the Church of England were disestablished tomorrow, which is the question the OP canvasses, its financial position wouldn’t be altered in any material way.
If you ask me, I’m antidisestablishment of the CoE. You might say that I’m an antidisestablishmentarian. The philosophy I follow is antidisestablishmentarianism.
TBH, I don’t care either way, but this is the first time I’ve been able to work that classic word into a conversation.
In fact it may result in the opposite (if you think non-religiousity is a panacea, which I don’t, but I’ll go with it here). A disestablished freedom of religion promotes the founding of different religious sects, which argue and fight amongst themselves. An established church tends to get kind of dull and ruled by the government’s idea of how they should be, which tends to turn off people from going to church. Different sects, doing their own thing, fighting with each other (verbally, I hasten to add) is far more interesting.
However, the Episcopal Church USA, the equivalent US denomination, is independent of the government, has been for many years, and has become a politically liberal hotbed of gay everything and de-emphasized doctrine. Sometimes I attend mass at the local Episcopalian cathedral - it’s become more a show and a club than a real church nowadays. Mostly harmless.
I don’t really have an opinion on the thread’s topic, but can I just say, I love that you introduced the question with a reference to a relatively obscure Anthony Trollope novel.
The Episcopal Church USA is almost dead as well. Average Sunday attendance is around 700,000 people (though I believe they count 2mil people as members).
Yeah, raised Catholic, now atheist, and I’ve yet to meet anybody that gives a shit. The only minor oddity that irks me is the continued presence of the Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords, who I fully expect to disappear within the next few decades as the upper house is slowly reformed, anyway.
The bishops will eventually fade away from the House of Lords but it is not a priority, there are only a few of them. Reform of the House of Lords is a recurring topic that takes up a lot of government time, for little tangible benefit.
The Church of England is only in the news when we hear of its internal wrangles of issues the gay marriage, women priests and its tensions with other more conservative parts of the Anglian Communion. The government and popular opinion are more progressive and does not really take the Church of Englands sensibilities into account.
Unpicking all the constitutional law associated with Church of England is seen as a thankless task, rather in the same way as the laws regarding the Monarchy.
Parliamentary time is a precious commodity and governments are loath to get stuck in some legal quagmire when they have their own political projects to deliver.
The old maxim: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it’ tends to apply.
The UK is quite unconcerned about religious matters and ‘God botherers’ are regarded as annoying eccentrics. Certainly ballot box poison as far as elections are concerned. So this is unlikely to find its way onto any political manifesto.
The UK may have a few bishops in government, but does not have a powerful ‘Religious Right’, like in the US, trying to sneak their doctrines past the Constitution.
So these political relics are not seen as much of a problem.
Thank you. And looking up the history of disestablishment in Wikipedia caused me to read spoilers for the outcome of the issue in the book (presuming that Trollope didn’t completely fudge with history).
You may like to read Michael Sadleir’s biography, called ‘Trollope – A Commentary’.
Sadleir was a great author in his own right, best known for Fanny By Gaslight, and Forlorn Sunset.
Disestablishmentarianism was more of a hot topic back then, not just for the usual reasons, such as that Victorians got easily excited and boredom was a way of life, but because having an Established Anglican church had one great virtue: it blocks the way to more onorous religions being Established. The nonconformists would have liked something like the Independent variation of the Commonwealth — think the nuttier baptists, methodists etc. etc. of the American South West wielding theocratic power, only less tolerant — the pressies would have liked to extend the Established Church of Scotland to the southrons in all it’s calvinistic purity; the catholics ( Chesterton mocked F. E. Smith notoriously over Welsh Disestablishmentarian, but would have adored the Church of Rome back in the saddle again ) wanted England back in the safe arms of the great mother; and state-sponsored atheism has had a dismal and cheerless record since. Although Victorians such as Herbert Spencer could have got down with that.
I believe in Victorian times, a lot the leaders of the first phase of the Industrial Revolution were religious outsiders: Non-conformists. Quakers. Protestant sects kept outside of political influence by religious laws intended to maintain the supremacy of the Church of England over all other religions and competing Protestant denominations. The likes of the Puritans and Quakers were part of the political turmoil of the 17th century, which is why many of them sought religious freedom in the US.
They became rich and influential and started to assert themselves politically. Many were social reformers, sponsors of Christian Missionaries. Obviously the wanted their Protestant churches to be recognised. The same situation prevailed with campaigns for Catholic emancipation, which gathered traction through the 18th and 19th century.
These campaigns seem to have been a major social and political issue of the time, which is quite lost on us from our modern, quite secular, perspective. I guess there were many references to it in literature, which may escape the modern reader.
The UK managed to evolve a political system that restricted the Absolute Power of Kings and also controlled religion by integrating it into the structure of a State where power was held by an elected Parliament. Other countries did this by revolution.
Consequently UK Constitutional law is littered with anachronistic artifacts…a common situation for many other countries.
Most recently, the laws governing the religion of any future monarch were changed. So at least they are now allowed to marry a Catholic. A process that involved getting agreement from 16 other countries, where the UK sovereign is Head of State.
I’m an American, but I was raised as an Anglican here; though I don’t consider myself one anymore, my father still is… well sorta. I think there are certainly issues, particularly related to your first point, that have consequences outside of England as well. These somewhat mroe populist beliefs, such as ordaining women and homosexual acceptance, without regard to their moral or scriptural basis, were instrumental in the recent schism and property fights we saw here in the US. In fact, my childhood church was one of the primary ones fighting against those ideas. Now, personally, I don’t have much of a stake in it, other than my family’s involvement in the chuch, but it does seem like this would be something that ought to bug members of the Church.
As an American, and not being a member of the Church, I’m of the opinion that it’s not really my place to have much of an opinion. Yes, antiestablishment is, in theory, a big part of the American culture, so it seems like a bad idea, but I’m not sure how well we can translate that idea to Europe, even if they are significantly less religious than America. In fact, I think it’s precisely because of the antiestablishment here in the US that we’re more religious.
For example, my ex-fiancee was born and raised in Eastern Europe, and was an atheist, but still felt like religious tradition was a big part of cultural identity. This was to the point that, though she didn’t believe, she would still celebrate religious holidays as such, including attending mass and partaking in other religious rites. Now, she wasn’t from England, and obviously not representative, but she’s also not the only person I’ve met with those sorts of attachments to tradition. I don’t really know enough about the English cultural to make a fair judgment about what the effects would be.
So, I’m not an antidisestablishmentarian per se, but I think it’s probably not in the best interests of anyone to push for the disestablishment the church, or to reaffirm its establishment either, for that matter. Instead, it seems to me that the best way to proceed is probably to let it proceed organicly. If the members of the Church get fed up enough with the doctrines that it creates, they may start leaving in larger numbers or even push for disestablishment themselves. Similarly, it seems that it’s not all that much of a political issue that even the less religious amongst the religious see it as a particularly pertinent issue to pursue, especially considering that there’s larger issues facing the nation, and there’s no way something like this would just get proposed and rolled through easily. I don’t think it’d be something on the level of what we often have here in the US, but still, that’s an awfully high bar.
I’m English and rather anti-religion. But on this matter, I’m not too bothered. The US has official separation of church and state, and yet American politicians don’t seem to be able to stop talking about God. Our politicians, generally, “don’t do God” and there is no social pressure to declare some sort of faith. There is a reference to God on some of our money, but it’s the monarch’s motto and refers to their own claims rather than the population as a whole. I’d rather have an established religion that most people keep to themselves than what the US has where you see constant attempts to subvert the official separation.
In theory, I would like to see disestablishment on principle; but in practice, any attempt to force the issue would result in the kind of entrenchment we can do without.
Well, the slide to women priests was the reason I left the Church of England, and destroyed my belief — never strong — in christianity.
*Either the Church had been wrong for 2000 years, or the Church was now wrong.
*
I even rang up their information office or something to ask if my name could be removed from any register, since I had been baptised at St. Mary Redcliffe [ pretty, nu ? ] when too young to fully discuss the matter, and although immensely sympathetic, the very nice chap said they didn’t really keep records. ( I believe that in Germany when one leaves a communion one has to notify some authorities, so as to redirect one’s Church Tax. )
However, I had only barely managed to reconcile being in a Church that had adhered to the Great Betrayal of the Stuarts and served the windsorite usurpers, acquiescing in that situation that reduced Britain to a mere crowned republic, so leaving simplified matters anyway.
But I still gave some affection for the old girl — like a discarded mistress who caught religion ( shades of Lola Montez… ) with whom one does not talk — and obviously I remain culturally christian since that culture informs western art, and other religions seem still more silly, and of course, my King is very catholic, as Bavarians tend to be; but populist doctrinal changes lose more than they gain.
( Note, the non-religion of most Europeans, lauded by some American atheists, does not automatically translate into non-belief in God or whatever, just that religious belief does not inform them greatly. The paradox is that as the different sects lose membership, fewer children will receive the essential grounding in shared [ non-loony ] christian culture that binds people, and does, after all, offer a goal of universal love and charity which is preferable to the alternatives. I can’t share that ideal now, but I can see it’s merits. )
As an atheist (but not an American one), I’m not interested in private beliefs. If people don’t act religious but believe in some kind of deity, that’s no problem with me; it causes no one else any trouble.
The idea that Christianity teaches love and charity is debatable. Or more to the point, the idea that that is the main theme most Christians take from the Bible is debatable. The only good it might serve, in my opinion, is in filling a space that might otherwise be occupied by more dangerous beliefs in those who don’t like to think for themselves.
And also for atheism. ‘Strong Atheists’ — particularly in default heavy self-congratulatory mode, as when they dub themselves The Brights — are as much enemies to the ideal of atheism as the ‘Prosperity Gospellers’ are to the ideal of christianity. Missionary zeal is not attractive for any position.
I said it was a goal, not the outward face — which has been protean, and as the Emperor Hirohito might say, ‘Not always wholly to our advantage’.
Still beats mere Randianism, or any other form of idealistic materialist bolshevism, though…