CHURCH AND STATE Some Reflections on Church Establishment in England R.M. Morris (editor) March 2008 ISBN: 1-903903-02-5 Published by The Constitution Unit Department of Political Science UCL (University College London) 29-30 Tavistock Square London WC1H 9QU Tel: 020 7679 4977 Fax: 020 7679 4978 Email: [email protected] Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/ © The Constitution Unit, UCL 2008 This report is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. First published March 2008 2 Table of Contents Foreword…………………………………………………………………………………. 5 Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………. 7 Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………… 9 Notes on Church and State: A Mapping Exercise Dr E R Norman Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………… 14 A View from one of the Free Churches Nigel G Wright Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………… 23 View of a Critical Friend – the United Reformed Church Geoffrey Roper Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………… 33 A Quaker Point of View Nicholas A Sims Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………… 41 Public Authorities and Religious Denominations in Italy and Spain Javier García Oliva Chapter 6………………………………………………………………………………… 51 Religion and the State in an Open Society Andrew Copson and David Pollack Chapter 7………………………………………………………………………………… 59 The National Secular Society Keith Porteous Wood Chapter 8………………………………………………………………………………… 75 Perspectives from Within the Church of England William Fittall Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………... 81 3 4 Foreword Preparatory to a seminar taking place in July 2006, the Constitution Unit published in April 2006 Church and State: a mapping exercise – known as the Mapping document or paper. This work described how the state and the Church of England were connected and how the relationship worked. It also explained the history of establishment throughout the British Isles, and looked at the very differing church/state relationships throughout the European Union, with particular reference to Scandinavia. For the seminar itself, a number of participants were invited to submit contributions giving their views on the situation described in the Mapping document. It is these that are now published in this volume together with a paper prepared by the Church of England after the seminar. The Unit is very grateful to the authors for making papers available in this way. It is also grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust for a grant which funded the seminar held at St Katherine’s, Limehouse, and which underpins the cost of this publication. The staff of St Katherine’s were unfailingly helpful and efficient throughout, facts which meant that the seminar could be conducted in entirely relaxed as well as pleasant surroundings. Because the seminar was held under Chatham House rules, no record of the proceedings may be made available, and it is partly in recognition of that fact that the Church of England paper in this collection was prepared since otherwise that voice would not be represented on this occasion. It has also to be borne in mind both that the Church of England and all the other papers were composed before the Prime Minister in July 2007 proposed in The Governance of Britain (Cm 7170) a number of changes to the way in which Crown appointments to episcopal and other clerical posts in the Church are made. At the time of writing, these proposals remain undetermined, although it seems likely that they will result in some withdrawal of government ministers from active involvement in such appointments. Those qualifications made, this publication and its predecessor, the Mapping document, will jointly constitute a resource in the public domain for those interested in church establishment. In addition, in a separate exercise, the Unit plans to seek a publisher for a work which, as well as covering similar ground, goes on to review the options for the future not only of church establishment but also how the modern state should engage with what has become the pluralized condition of religious belief as opposed to pluralized forms of Christian belief, bearing in mind the growing salience also of non-belief. R.M.Morris (editor) Honorary Senior Research Fellow Constitution Unit UCL March 2008 5 6 Executive Summary The papers begin at Chapter 1 with a response to the Mapping document from Dr Edward Norman. He raises questions about how establishment should be viewed, the extent to which nowadays the state’s moral basis is in fact a form of secularized Christianity, and how far the state understands the implications of its own policies in respect of multiculturalism. Chapters 2-4 offer the perspectives of Christian dissenters, respectively Baptists, the United Reformed Church and Quakers. Historically, each suffered persecution in the days when the state still tried to enforce religious uniformity. Whilst ancient urgent asperities have faded as state toleration matured into a more positive acceptance of religious freedom, each retains serious, principled reservations about the state and the position of the Church of England in relation to it. In all cases, however, actively pressing for changes is not high on their agendas. On the other hand, all have thought-provoking points to make about the place of religion in modern civic life. Whilst the Mapping paper spent a good deal of time at looking at church/state relations in Scotland and Scandinavia because they were analogous to, if in detail different from, the system in England, it omitted to consider the arrangements in southern Europe’s most catholic societies. The balance is redressed by Javier Oliva’s review at Chapter 5 of the situation in Spain and Italy. There, although one church is notably dominant, the legal forms addressing its position have evolved distinct patterns. The two papers from non-religious organizations – the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society – at Chapters 6 and 7 argue the case for a thoroughly secular as opposed to a merely more tolerant society. Whilst notably different in tone and emphasis, they argue essentially for the abolition of the legal privileges of the Church of England and for the entire separation of the state and religion. Finally, in Chapter 8, William Fittall offers a view from the Church of England which reminds that establishment has drawbacks as well as advantages for that Church, and contends that thorough-going disestablishment would leave gaps in public life that would need addressing. 7 8 Chapter 1 Notes on Church and State: A Mapping Exercise Dr E R Norman The nature of an ‘Establishment’ of religion is broad: It exists when the State - and its subordinate institutions - sustains a relationship between law and religious opinion. This may derive originally from a customary relationship, in which case the law itself may express the nature of the link between government and religious bodies, or a single religious body, without a systematic or coherent statement of its purpose. The religious Establishment in England is rather like this. It was assumed that the relationship of Christianity and public life in medieval England presupposed an exclusive protection of the Catholic Faith; only at the time of the Reformation, when the jurisdiction of Rome was abandoned, and the State in consequence needed to re-define its religious responsibilities, was it necessary for a legislative structure to spell out the exact form of Church and State relations. Thereafter the word ‘Protestant’ could only mean, in legislative terms, ‘the Protestant Church by law Established’. Alternatively, the link between religious opinion and government may derive from conscious constitutional construction. And in this case it may also indicate a desire by the State to withdraw from formal sponsorship of ecclesiastical institutions or from apparent endorsement of confessional bodies. Gwyn’s submission to the Cecil Commission, set up in 1930, has been to some extent accepted as a guideline in Church and State: A mapping exercise - at least in following his test of Establishment as involving the State’s recognition of ‘a particular Church from other Churches’, and according it to ‘a greater or less degree a privileged position’. The broader view of the nature of Establishment began to be posited, paradoxically, in an attempt to reject the type of definition Gwyn came to endorse. The First Amendment of the U.S. Federal Constitution, ratified in 1792, declared ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’. The intention here was not to prevent legal support of the widely-accepted Christian character of the American Republic but to make it unconstitutional for one denomination to be given legal precedence over others. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied this to the individual states, and the Supreme Court has always ruled that the establishment of religion is unlawful in them. Nineteenth-century practice made it plain that American public life expected, and achieved, legal acceptance of the recognition of Christianity in many areas of public policy - and Congress itself, indeed, begins each session with prayers. The development of secular and libertarian lobbies in the middle years of the twentieth century persuaded