Hanging on by a wing and a prayer, the Lords Spiritual fight for their survival, writes David Maddox
For constitutional geeks the years 1871 and 1920 bear a special significance in terms of reform of that much debated body the House of Lords. The first date was the removal of the Irish Episcopalian bishops from the Upper Chamber, when it was finally accepted that Roman Catholicism and Presbyterian Protestantism were the churches of its peoples. The second was the removal of Welsh bishops, making the Lords Spiritual ”“ as they are collectively known ”“ an English-only body.
It is worth noting that there were never any Scottish bishops given seats in the House of Lords, because of the success of Scotland’s politicians in keeping the Church separate in their negotiations for the 1707 Act of Union.
So with this in mind, Archbishop Justin Welby’s appearance at the Press Gallery lunch yesterday was poignant at a time when political reform, devolution and English votes for English laws are so high on the agenda.
It certainly wasn’t surprising. Justin Welby was chosen by the hierarchy of the Church of England to defend its interests, and all his actions, both positive and negative, make sense in that context.
That hierarchy is very tolerant of liberalism, but is not in itself liberal. Maintaining its own privileged position is its highest priority.
The CofE as an institution enjoys great privilege and influence in having its senior bishops automatically admitted to the Upper House of Parliament. That privilege is seriously threatened, and ++Welby as the bishops’ representative is fighting hard to protect it.
But those Bishops should be reflecting on how their own shortcomings have led to this pass. They have sought to compromise with the spirit of the world and the general zeitgeist in order to retain popularity. Yet it doesn’t actually confer any lasting popularity, it only reduces the respect in which the church is held by the public.
The irony is that, in order to retain respect, the Church must be unpopular! The CofE has courted popularity, particularly among the upper echelons of British society, and now it is finding that this will not protect it.
A useful focus of the CofE bishops, in examining where they have gone wrong, would be their treatment of conservative evangelicals. The CofE has treated this group with open contempt, despite a few mealy-mouthed platitudes of late (which essentially indicate that the hierarchy would like to keep getting a share of the tithes of the evangelicals’ parishioners).
I am not English but I have friends and family there, many of whom are evangelical. None of us have any interest in lifting a finger to argue for the retention of the Lords Spiritual in England, because it is very clear that the Lords Spiritual have no interest in doing anything for evangelicals, and indeed are probably inimical to us.
So let them be abolished.
“No bishops, no king.” –James I