Lord Justice Laws’s judgment on the Gary McFarlane case in the Court of Appeal ”“ that legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious ground cannot be justified ”“ has driven a coach and horses through the ancient association of the Christian faith with the constitutional and legal basis of British society.
Everything from the Coronation Oath onwards suggests that there is an inextricable link between the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the Bible and the institutions, the values and the virtues of British society. If this judgment is allowed to stand, the aggressive secularists will have had their way.
It also raises a number of fundamental questions to which answers need to be provided. Will there be, once again, a religious bar to holding office? We have already had a rash of cases involving magistrates unable to serve on the bench because of their Christian beliefs, registrars losing their jobs because they cannot, in conscience, officiate at civil partnerships, paediatricians unable to serve on adoption panels”¦ Will this trickle gradually become a flood, so that rather than conforming to the Church of England, the new discrimination tests will involve conforming to the secular religion as promoted by Lord Justice Laws?
We stand at a crossroads and I think that secularisation(sp?) is complete. I assume that my grandchildren will suffer great persecution and want them to have the strength to bear it. The traits given by St. Peter (IIPeter 1:5 – 7) are a wise foundation.
Don
Isn’t there a difference between (1) officiating at civil partnerships and (2) supporting, within the Church, a re-definition of the Christian definition of marriage? Could a Christian do the first, as part of his work in a secular society, without doing the second?
#2 Only at the risk of eroding one’s beliefs as to make them largely meaningless.
I find it incredibly ironic that it takes an outsider, a non-Brit, an immigrant from Pakistan, to remind the British of the importance of their Christian heritage that so many are eager to chuck as so much unwanted baggage from the past. Very ironic and revealing indeed. And disturbing.
But not surprising or depressing. This latest jeremiad just illustrates the truth of the obvious fact that while England may still have an established church in a legal sense (de jure), the reality is that the CoE has been culturally disestablished for some time now (de facto). Like all the other state churches of Europe, the CoE is going the way of the Dodo Bird and becoming extinct.
Let me clarify that, lest I cause offense needlessly. I’m NOT saying that the CoE is dying as a church, even though only 1 million of its supposed 26 million members nominally on the rolls bother to come to church for worship on any given Sunday. No, I think the best days of Anglicanism in England may yet be to come. It’s merely the state church connection that is dying or dead. And utterly obsolete, IMHO.
But in the post-Constantinian, post-Christendom social setting that is unquestionably a stark reality throughout the global north (including in America, which is more devout), we have a golden opportunity that we haven’t had in something like 1500 years, and that’s to recover the vitality of the PRE-Constantinian Church that not only survived but thrived as a misunderstood, often maligned and even persecuted minority in a syncrestic, pagan world. A world increasingly similar to our own in the West.
And I find that prospect exciting and very promising. Until they come to arrest me, of course!
David Handy+
Passionate advocate for deeply committed, post-Christendom, Christ-against-culture style Anglicanism for the 3rd Millenium