The end of the official Church Of England? by fredgiblet

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The end of the official Church Of England?

POSTED BY: FREDGIBLET
UPDATED: Thursday, January 10, 2008 21:06
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Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:39 PM

FREDGIBLET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080110/od_afp/britainpoliticsreligionoff
beat_080110125749

Discuss.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 3:26 PM

LEADB

Won't happen. It will get tabled and forgotten.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:32 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I don't think the proposal acquired its number by accident. Clearly someone was making a statement. Someone of flesh and blood.

But I was surprised to hear that there is no seperation of church and state in England. I am especially surprised because of the level of religious discrimination present in England's history. At various times, Catholics or Protestants were being butchered wholesale. One would think to take religion entirely out of the equation of government to prevent any future troubles.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:43 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Great Britain is still a Monarchy too. Yet, it has no trouble recognizing democratic rule. And if you’re referring to the Troubles in North Ireland, that is a nationalistic struggle not a religious one.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:49 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I was referring to the widespread slaughter of Protestants and Catholics at various times in English history.

Not Irish history.

But if it doesn't bother Brits, I guess it shouldn't bother me.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:02 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

I don’t think that’s a fair criticism. English history goes back to post-classical times. Long before the modern idea of freedom even existed in the world. Certainly the kind of thing your talking about influenced the Founding Fathers of the US to seek the system they did. And philosophically I think they had a good point, which I think most British would agree with, but looking back at the last 200 years, it seems pretty clear that both the US and the UK developed a liberal culture quite in parallel despite their different governments. Now the UK may have done so by learning to keep a culture of constraint on their government institutions, while the US did so by codifying it in law, but the results seem to have worked out pretty similar, not exact, but similar.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 7:22 PM

FLETCH2

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

But I was surprised to hear that there is no seperation of church and state in England. I am especially surprised because of the level of religious discrimination present in England's history. At various times, Catholics or Protestants were being butchered wholesale. One would think to take religion entirely out of the equation of government to prevent any future troubles.

Actually we dealt with it in a completely different and very British way, we fudged the issue. The Anglican Church is founded on a subset of Luthors concepts, enough to be called Protestant but not aggressively so at the same time the pomp and imagery of the Catholic Church was brought into it and the net result is that the Church sits somewhere in the middle between being fully Catholic and fully Protestant.

The Queen is head of the C of E with the Archbishop of Canterbury effectively in charge. The PM gets to advise on the appointment of Bishops as first minister of the crown, in theory parliament gets to vote on aspects of Cannon law, but in practice never do. Bishops sit in the house of Lords and thus in theory have the ability to vote against government legislation.

The thing that I think confuses Americans about the UK's unwritten constitution is that the government has awesome levels of power but in practice hardly ever uses it. Gordon Brown could wake up tomorrow and decide to invade another country completely on a whim and wouldn't need parliamentary approval something a US President just cant do. The point is that in our history we have had revolutions, successful and unsuccessful, lots of civil strife and discord. We actually protest just about everything and while a government might not back down immediately it knows it's on notice.

I dunno why it works, perhaps because we don't believe that we have mythically "God given" rights but only the rights you fight to defend. Oh and we're big on the rule of law. Lawyers as a whole are respected in the UK while in the US most people think them sleezeballs. The law in the UK is inherently (small c) conservative, it's principle concern is if something can be seen as fair and reasonable and in keeping with 1000 years of jurist prudence.

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 9:06 PM

PONYXPRESSINC

Quote:
But I was surprised to hear that there is no seperation of church and state in England.

Prince Charles was already going in that direction.

"It seems unlikely that we can expect much defending of Britain's historic faith from the future head of the Church of England. In Britain, our future monarch, perhaps on line to become the first truly Multi-Cultural Monarch, has already made it clear in his 1994 BBC interview that he wishes to be defender of faith rather than Defender of the Faith when he ascends the throne."

The whole article if you are interested: http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/03/prince_charles_.html

Of course it rather depends if he ever gets to sit on the throne. His mother doesn't seem inclined to move over.

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