John Humphrys asks: what should be the relationship between God and the state?
David Cameron predictably caused a flutter in the dovecotes before Easter when he said that Britain should be more confident in its ‘status’ as a Christian country. Now his deputy, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has weighed into the controversy by arguing that the Church of England should be disestablished: that its links with the British state should be broken. So what should be the relationship between God and the state?
Political leaders have tended to be a bit coy about their religious beliefs for fear of offending one side or the other. Some have taken a wholly cynical attitude to the issue. One told me many years ago that he reckoned there were more votes to be had in posing as a moderate believer than the agnostic he really was because that posture tended to reassure the believers without particularly alienating the non-believers. These days such a self-serving calculation might come out the other way.
For devoutly believing politicians, however, the problem has often been baffling. Tony Blair was famously told by his spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, that ‘we don’t do God’ even though his boss evidently did. It is striking that Mr Blair waited until he left Downing Street before converting to Roman Catholicism, the faith of his wife and children.
So perhaps it was surprising that David Cameron ventured into this territory with his article in the Church Times before Easter. The Prime Minister describes himself as a believer though makes no claim to being an especially ardent or zealous one. What caused the controversy was his saying that he thought ‘we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country.’ He added that he thought Christians should be ‘more evangelical’.
As if on cue, fifty prominent secularists wrote to the Daily Telegraph arguing that, on the contrary, Britain was a ‘non-religious’ and ‘plural’ society and that to claim otherwise ‘fosters alienation and division’.
In response to them, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, countered the charge of divisiveness by pointing out that non-Christian faith leaders from the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities had come out in support of the Prime Minister. More particularly, he argued that although declining church attendance might seem to support the idea that Britain was not a Christian country, much of what made up British culture, ethics and law was based on Christian teaching and tradition and that this was a ‘historical fact (perhaps unwelcome to some, but true).’
All this might be little more than an interesting joust between believers and non-believers about the historical context and the current state of Britain were it not for the very thing Nick Clegg has picked upon: the continuing legal and constitutional links between the Church of England and the British state, something that distinguishes Archbishop Welby’s church from all other religions practised in this country. The Church of England is the ‘established’ church of the United Kingdom. The Queen is the ‘Defender of Faith’ and the ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church. Twenty-six of its bishops sit in the House of Lords and much of the law that governs the church has to be passed through Parliament before it can become enacted.
To many this is an anomaly. Census figures show that the number of people in Britain describing themselves as Christian (never mind Anglican) is falling: from 72% in 2001 to 59% in 2011. In any case it is obvious that some of the most vibrant religions in Britain are not even Christian let alone Anglican. So it seems to make no sense in this multi-faith country to single out one religion as the state religion.
This has been an issue that has vexed even supporters of the established church for a long while. Several years ago Prince Charles, looking forward to the time when he becomes king, floated the notion that at his coronation he should perhaps become ‘Defender of Faith’ rather than ‘Defender of the Faith’, in order that, as head of state, he might have some role in upholding other faiths too. It may be that Tony Blair felt he couldn’t convert to Catholicism while still prime minister because that job involved him constitutionally in the Church of England’s affairs.
Now Nick Clegg has suggested that the link between church and state should be ended. In his regular radio phone-in this week he said: ‘I think it would be better for the Church, and better for the people of faith, and better for Anglicans, if the Church and state were, over time, to stand on their own two separate feet.’
The case for disestablishment is clear enough. In the first place it would deal with the anomaly that privileges one faith over the many others practised in this country. It would also, say its advocates, be liberating for the Church of England itself. Instead of being part of the establishment (it used to be mocked as ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’, though these days there are those who regard it more as the Labour Party at prayer, given its concerns over social justice issues), it would be freer to pursue its own agenda and ruffle more feathers when it thought it needed to do so.
It’s worth pointing out, though, one of the arguments that is rarely used to promote the disestablishment case: that being the state church it has too much influence on what ought to be the purely secular business of government. Few people seriously argue that the presence of the bishops in the House of Lords amounts to intolerable influence.
By contrast, other countries have long been troubled (or delighted, according to the point of view) by the influence of religion over government. Napoleon’s France was radical in breaking the link between church and state and modern republican France is vigilant in maintaining the division. The Catholic Church’s political influence in Ireland was long a highly controversial issue and modern Turkey is struggling with the issue of how much power Islam should wield in a country that has been fiercely secular for nearly a century.
Here, though, the charge of undue influence by the Church of England is seldom made. And this is perhaps the first argument of those who oppose disestablishment. The link is doing no harm, they say, so why change it? That leads to a further argument: that disestablishment would cause untold constitutional upheaval because of how pervasive the links are. It has even been suggested that the monarchy is so entwined in these links that it would not itself survive disestablishment.
Perhaps the most surprising of the arguments against disestablishment is that many of the other religions are opposed to it. Their leaders seem to take the view that it is better for them that the state should acknowledge one religion as a state religion (so conferring respect on religion itself) than that the state should be a purely secular power with the potential to act as competitor to religions of all types.
It was perhaps significant that Mr Clegg advocated disestablishment ‘over time’. Little is likely to happen before the current Supreme Governor of the Church of England goes to meet her maker. But when that happens there may be much more that becomes open to contention than whether the Church of England continues as the established church of the United Kingdom.
What’s your view about the current and future ‘status’ of Britain as a Christian country?
Let us know what you think.
