Controversy has surrounded the comments Rowan Williams recently made about Sharia. The religious think tank Ekklesia has now weighed into the debate with the suggestion that the Archbishop’s speech demonstrates the need for the disestablishment of the Church of England. Jonathan Bartley, the co-director of Ekklesia, and the Right Reverend James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, gave their views.
Listen to it all (just under 7 minutes).
Yeah, as if any Government is going to waste precious Parliamentary time and energy on Church of England disestablishment. Regardless of its complex costs and benefits, Establishment will endure because no Government can be bothered to do anything about it.
Don’t know driver8. Churches in the British Isles have been disestablished before. What we are seeing this week is that the anger that had been directed at the ABC is now being directed at us.
It has been a disaster.
It needs significant political will and allocation of Parliamentary time by the Government of the day to tackle the controversies (including disendowent and relationship with the Crown) that any disestablishment must face. I see no evidence that any political party’s leadership has any interest in devoting the time and energy needed to complete such a task when it is hardly a pressing electoral issue (unlike in both Ireland and Wales). In effect, the Church of England’s establishment is protected by its very marginality.
In effect, the Church of England’s establishment is protected by its very marginality. The same was true in Sweden where the Church of Sweden was distestablished in 2000. More significant, I think, is that there is virtually no support for it in the Church of England nomenklatura. BTW I was astounded to hear the A of C say at General Synod that the Church of England spoke for all religious communities in England. I wondered what the cardinal and the chief rabbi made of it. That certainly was a case of the old rather self-aggrandizing establishment mentality. Surprising to hear a Welsh Anglican say that – their church was disestablished in 1920 and they never looked back.
I admit I haven’t listened to the BBC segment, but I’ll just take the opportunity to suggest yet again that the real problem here is that regardless of what may or may not happen legally, there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that the C of E has been disestablished culturally. We are dealing with DE FACTO disestablishment, even if it’s not yet true de jure. (Pageanmaster, I’d love to hear more from you about the lastest public backlash against the C of E’s privileged status).
As I like to say, “the only thing worse than a state church is an ex-state church that still thinks and acts like the state church it used to be.” In so many ways, that fundamental problem underlies lots of the various conflicts playing themselves out in western Christianity in our time. We desperately need to bite the bullet and face reality. The social context for public religion that we’ve known in the west for about 15 centuries has virtually disappeared (i.e., the old familiar Christendom world has gone the way of the Dodo bird).
This is an exciting time, with tremendous opportunities for the Church to rediscover how to truly be the Church, released from the shackles of the secular state and the corrupting power of the dominant culture. The Pre-Constantinian Church did quite well. By God’s grace, so can we. But that’s IF, and only IF, we wake up and start taking seriously the fact that we live in a scary new anti-Christian world. And that’s true even in America, the most religious of the industrialized nations.
David Handy+
Passionate Advocate of High Commitment, Post-Christendom style Anglicanism with a strongly sectarian flavor
I have listened carefully to the BBC interview–just so those who will defend the ABC on this one can’t claim otherwise. The major thrust here is that C of E, especially through the loss of leadership and importance via ABC Williams’ repeated mis-steps, no longer is regarded as important. And how arrogant is ABC to claim to speak for all religions. I assume that he means worldwide, given his supposed role as symbolic head of the AC. He is a failure for C of E–and in response takes on being spokesman for all religions? Seems to me that he has “lost it.”
#5 NRA – Rev Handy
Some articles which may give you some feel for the attack on the CofE recently:
1. ‘Church and state: Sever them: Religion should have a smaller official role in Britain, not a greater one’ – Leader in ‘The Economist’ 14th February 2008.
2. ‘Disestablishment may be back on the agenda as church feels pressure’ – Ekklesia [UK not the organisation you are probably familiar with and quite different] – 17th February 2008
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6771
3. ‘The Economist calls for cutting the cord that binds church and state’ – 18th February 2008
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6779
4. ‘Bishops fear position of Church under threat’ by Jonathan Wynne-Jones in the Telegraph on 16th February 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/nbishops117.xml
We do have a privileged position in England with a say in the legislature and 26 bishops seated in the second chamber, the House of Lords, although they rarely bother turning up and if they do one can never be quite sure what they are going to say; involvement in the major national events and access to some public funds for our buildings – a grant has just been made for repair of cathedrals.
Within a generation the tide has turned against us and much of the blame must be laid at our own door.
I am not sure whether it is worse to be discriminated against/disestablished or marginalised and ignored.
Link for my reference 1. above:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10689643
Thank you, Pageantmaster (#7 & 8).
I appreciate the leads. I know I don’t fully understand your complex situation in England. But while disestablishment almost killed Anglicanism in Virginia (as part of the general weakening of the church here following the devastating (for Anglicans) Revolutionary War), we eventually recovered and learned how to compete in the open religious marketplace that is America. Or at least, we sort of recovered and sort of learned how to compete. We never did regain our exalted, leading status that we had prior to the War for Independence in the 1770s. But overall, there is no denying that disestablishment has been good for us.
In any case, when the state dumps the church (like an unwanted spouse), then you do what you have to do. The Tractarians already addressed this issue forcefully over 150 years ago. If Erastianism is no longer to be the basis for the authority of the Church of England, what new basis of authority can and should it claim? Why, its “apostolical” foundation, of course! Newman hit the nail on the head in the first of the Tracts. Apostolic Succession is our basis for authority. And we owe the State nothing whatsoever in that department; we are completely independent in that regard.
Gratefully,
David Handy+
#9 Thank you Rev Handy, I did not know that about Virginia but am I not right in thinking that the Episcopal Church recovered and became central to US public life for generations; even now isn’t the National Cathedral used for major events?
The reality is that in the UK that we still have a central role and access to influence in many areas which we could use as a springboard for telling the Good News and advancing the Kingdom. Instead we seem to spend our time talking about anything but that. One of the telling things that came across in the recent controversy was that people wanted to hear the church talking about Christ, exactly what people think our bishops should be talking about.
Even today I hear that a brace of our Archbishops are off to Cambridge to talk about immigration; if they are not talking about that, they are talking about the environment or whatever else is the topic du jour. However more on point is the Bishop of Durham who is off on tour to preach the resurrection – excellent bishop!
As a pragmatist if we use our establishment to advance the Kingdom then it is a mighty advantage, but of itself it is a double-edged sword.
Pagenatmaster (#10),
I always welcome posts from someone in the mother church. But to reply to your questions in a general sort of historical way, Anglicanism was the established church in five of the original 13 Colonies (Virginia, both Carolinas, plus Maryland and Georgia), but it was the strongest by far in Virginia. It was officially disestblished in Virginia in 1785, a few years before our national Bill of Rights prohibited the establishment of a NATIONAL state church. However, regional state churches continued in various places like Massachusetts, where the Congregational Church continued to have many legal privileges until something like 1821. Of the first five U.S. Presidents, four were Anglicans/Episcopalians: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (although he was a Deist personally), James Madison, and James Monroe, all from Virginia. To this day, the Episcopal Church has produced more than its fair share of Presidents (including Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush in recent times).
But the Revolutionary War almost wiped out Anglicanism in the south. Part of the problem was that we were identified after all with England, at a time when Americans wanted independence from the mother country. Many clergy and lay leaders were Tories; and many of the relatively few Anglican clergy in America were missionaries whose pay came from England. With disestablishment, suddenly all state funding stopped, and the Anglican Church went bankrupt overnight. By about 1800, it’s estimated that only 10% of the former Anglican churches in Virginia were still operating. Many of the old parishes were never re-opened.
But in the mercy of God, Christ raised up two great evangelical bishops in a row, Richard Channing Moore and the even more legendary William Meade, who turned the tide (humanly speaking). Both were fervent evangelists, fiery preachers of the gospel, and effective administrators who inspired two whole generations of evangelical clergy to work under them in tirelessly spreading the good news and planting new churches. They founded a new seminary that would be forthrightly evangelical in conviction (Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria) and missionary in practice.
But meanwhile, the Presbyterians controlled much of the Middle States (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania), and the Congregationalists controlled New England. There was NEVER a chance for any one denomination to dominate the whole country. But these three together did dominate American religious life well into the 1800s. But as America grew westward, new groups proved much more adept at reaching the people on the western frontier, namely the Baptists and especially the Methodists. And massive immigration started bringing large numbers of Catholics and Lutherans to the New World, further complicating the mix.
You mentioned the “National Cathedral.” Well, it’s true that our cathedral in Washington, DC is often used for big state events (most notably the service of prayer Pres. Bush called for just after the devastating attacks on 9/11/2001). And while the massive cathedral is indeed beautiful and worthy of being compared to any in England, it has no official status in America. After all, there is also ANOTHER national cathedral in Washington, the Roman Catholic one.
But the sad fact remains that Anglicanism in America has always been hampered by our strong association with the plantation aristocracy in the south. We never really cared that the Baptists and Methodists were far outgrowing us. Let them have the riff raff; as long as we have the wealthy, the well-educated, and the socially well-connected, who cares?
But by the 1960s, this unofficial establishment fell victim to social changes beyond our control. For forty years, the Episcopal Church, like the other so-called “mainline” Protestant groups, has been in steep and inexorable decline. We have continued to offer a palid, insipid form of Christianity Lite that fewer and fewer people are interested in. People who want real religion increasingly look elsewhere. The Catholics and especially the evangelicals and charismatics are thriving. All the oldline liberal denominations are withering away, and deservedly so. Back in the 1950s, it seemed important what the national spokemen for the “mainline” groups had to say on political and social matters. But after the hard turn to the left in the 1960s, that rapidly changed. Now all those pompous, lofty political statements coming from the liberal denominations are rightly discounted as the useless, meaningless exercises in futility that they are.
But at least we have the tremendous advantage that we have an open religious marketplace in America. If we start offering a better product (real, biblical Christianity), we can reasonably expect to get results. That’s why I keep optimistically saying, “The best days of Anglicanism are yet to come in North America!” I really believe that.
David Handy+
#11 Rev Handy – that is very interesting – particularly about the fate of Anglican churches during the Revolution. It rather puts current affairs into perspective. When you consider it, rather like the Civil War in England when the cathedrals were smashed up, it must, for the religious, have felt as though the world was ending.
In England we are seeing a huge resurgence in churches – but it tends to be the large new non-traditional denominational ones in the large cities. They are drawing the youngsters in, even from CofE families – and they do offer clear biblical teaching. It is not fair to expect to attract people through our doors if we do not know what we believe.
As far as the CofE is concerned, it is treated like an eccentric elderly aunt by the population and is perceived as fairly moribund. However it has some fantastic theologian-bishops and there have been pretty encouraging signs that we have begun to get our act together. I don’t know if you go in for that sort of thing but there has been a prophesy that the resurgence of Christianity in England will be led by the Church of England.
Seems extraordinary as a proposition, but that is why in part I am optimistic. Spreading the good news is not rocket science and think that what is going on is Christ shaking up his church and asking us “who do you say that I am?” Like you I think for Anglicans that the best is yet to be.
btw through the wonders of the internet I watched President Ford’s funeral in the Washington Cathedral. It was very impressive and I felt right at home with the hymns and liturgy. He seemed like an example of a great Episcopalian.
Thanks again, Pageantmaster (for posts #12 & 13).
As a charismatic, I certainly believe that the Spirit is reviving the gift of prophecy in our day. But as for any specific prophecy, like the one about the C of E leading the way in the coming revival, well, I guess we may have to wait and see. I’d LOVE for it to turn out to be true. May it be so!
But historically, we’ve actually faced worse times in the past. You would be in a better position to judge this than I would, but all the reading I’ve done in English church history suggests that before John (and Charles) Wesley and George Whitefield led the great Evangelical Revival of the mid 1700s, the C of E was in even worse shape than it is today in terms of being spiritually moribund and powerless. Maybe there was less heresy, but there was also just a lot less life in the Anglican Church of the Hanover period.
Today, Alpha is supposedly sweeping through the C of E like wildfire. And the seminaries are filled with evangelical students. No, I don’t think it’s at all utopian to dream that the best days of orthdox Anglicanism are yet to come. Not at all. With God, all things are possible.
David Handy+