I Believe

Belief is an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially without proof.

I believe in the Church of England, especially when I worship in the Wren Chapel at the Royal Hospital Chelsea or listen to Choral Evensong on the BBC. Where I have doubts is in the establishment of the Church as part of the State. How can monarchs be heads of the church? The Aga Khan, you say, gets away with it but with respect that’s not relevant.

The Reformation (The Act of Supremacy) in 1534 effectively nationalised the Church in England and so it has remained. Frankly it is hard to justify. Henry VIII’s matrimonial problems led him to hijack the Church, deposing the Pope, and put himself in charge. Today on one hand the population of the UK is more secular and on the other is multi-faith; either way the monarch should rule impartially over the entirety of the population. It is an anomaly for the Crown to be head of the C of E.

Richard Hooker (1554 – 1600) sheds some light on this quandary in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. “The work is a defence, written in a dignified and harmonious prose, of the position of the Anglican Church against the attacks of the Puritans. The principal characteristics of the work are its breadth of outlook and tolerant spirit, and its advocacy of intellectual liberty against the dogmatism of Calvin and the ecclesiastical despotism recommended in the Admonition to Parliament, a statement of the Puritan case by John Field and Thomas Wilcox (1572).” (Oxford Reference) But although a remarkable piece of prose it is too long for me to read and too clever for me to understand.

Incidentally it is easy but fallacious to link the twenty-eight lords spiritual sitting in the House of Lords with the Reformation. The history of the Church advising on affairs of state has its roots in 14th century witans, councils of advisers and nobles that met the king to discuss matters of state.

Not being a theologian and leaning when possible to simplicity I reflect that the monarch’s sway as head of the Church does not extend to Ireland. At least not since Prime Minister Gladstone disestablished it in 1871. Since then the head of the Church of Ireland has been the Primate of All Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh. The C of I is governed by a General Synod comprising 648 elected members, 216 clerical members, 432 lay members and eleven bishops. This structure has enabled the C of I to take a lead in, among other things, allowing women to be ordained as priests and bishops since 1990. The C of E followed two years later.

Despite the shortcomings of the present Archbishop of Canterbury the C of E, I believe, should be disestablished and adopt a similar model to the one that has served the C of I so well for more than 150 years.