{"id":147252,"date":"2026-09-14T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147252"},"modified":"2026-09-14T18:42:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T22:42:25","slug":"church-times-government-to-introduce-bill-concerning-right-of-jewish-and-rc-prime-ministers-to-advise-crown-on-ecclesiastical-appointments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147252","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) Government to introduce Bill concerning right of Jewish and RC Prime Ministers to advise Crown on ecclesiastical appointments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/prime-minister\">Prime Minister<\/a>\u00a0has pledged to change what he calls the \u201cunacceptable\u201d law that prohibits\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/roman-catholic-church\">Roman Catholic<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/judaismjewish-people\">Jewish<\/a>\u00a0Prime Ministers from advising the Crown on ecclesiastical appointments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday of last week,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/andy-burnham\">Andy Burnham<\/a>, who is the first Prime Minister to be a Roman Catholic on taking office (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2026\/4-september\/news\/uk\/roman-catholicism-the-andy-burnham-brand\">News, 4 September<\/a>), said that the restrictions were an \u201cantiquated and archaic anomaly\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201crestrictions set out in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and the Jews Relief Act 1858 prevent persons professing the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths only from advising the Sovereign on appointments to the Church of England and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/church-of-scotland\">Church of Scotland<\/a>\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As such, Mr Burnham had transferred his constitutional responsibility for advising the Sovereign on church appointments to the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Alex Norris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2026\/18-september\/news\/uk\/government-to-introduce-bill-concerning-right-of-jewish-and-rc-prime-ministers-to-advise-crown-on-ecclesiastical-appointments\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">EXC: Legislation to remove the constitutional bar on Catholics advising the King on Church of England appointments being introduced in the Commons tomorrow <br><br>It\u2019s our first Catholic prime minister\u2019s first bill<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ojXo0L6Yuv\">https:\/\/t.co\/ojXo0L6Yuv<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/patrickkmaguire\/status\/2099614219603714118?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 14, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Prime Minister\u00a0has pledged to change what he calls the \u201cunacceptable\u201d law that prohibits\u00a0Roman Catholic\u00a0and\u00a0Jewish\u00a0Prime Ministers from advising the Crown on ecclesiastical appointments. In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday of last week,&nbsp;Andy Burnham, who is the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147252\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199,133,114,151,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-england-uk","category-history","category-law-legal-issues","category-politics-in-general","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147255,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147252\/revisions\/147255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}