Disestablishmentarianism and Antidisestablishmentarianism

[jack]

Sometimes I feel like the Church of England should either disestablish or bite the bullet and actually represent everyone, regardless of religion or lack thereof. I like having a comparatively fluffy national church, but when I saw it did do things I disagreed with, I suddenly felt uncomfortable having it enshrined in the constitutions.

The first is the obvious choice. But the second has some attraction for me. In many ways, couldn't you say that the right to have services and get married in churches, have "moral" representatives in the house of lords, choose the sexual orientation of bishops, etc, etc, are the equal legacy of everyone English, not just the faction which is currently identified as 'chruch of England'? I realise that's likely to be controvertial to both anti-disestablishment and disestablishment opinions :)

Comments

Re: ObSnark

[jack]

LOL. I think I read the dictionary definition ages ago, and am vaguely familiar with the idea of disestablishing the church, but this is the first time I ever actually used "antidisestablishmentarianism" to mean what it says, and not just as a long word :)

What would be involved in disestablishing the Church of England, anyway?

I'm honestly not sure.

I _think_ the current issue was that if gay marriage were officially adopted, since the church technically has an obligation to marry anyone within the diocese, some church of England churchs might be forced to conduct religious gay marriages, and hence some spokespeople for the church spoke against the issue.

And I can sympathise with people who are conservative with their religion, but if it's the state religion, it _should_ accept everyone, and if it isn't, we should remove the special case. (The queen can still be head of it, but shouldn't have restrictions on her own religion. The church can pick someone else if we choose a non-anglican monarch.)

But I don't know exactly what happens: we presumably abandon the bishops in the house of lords (which is a good thing anyway, although I like the idea of _some_ arbitrary representatives), I don't know what happens to all the churchs, if the state and the church share them or what?

Re: ObSnark

[alextiefling]

I _think_ the current issue was that if gay marriage were officially adopted, since the church technically has an obligation to marry anyone within the diocese, some church of England churchs might be forced to conduct religious gay marriages, and hence some spokespeople for the church spoke against the issue.

While this has been claimed, it is untrue. The government's consultation, in fact, shows that their current thinking goes much too far in the other direction, and would prevent religious same-sex marriages even if the religious authorities wanted to conduct them.

Of course, it's in the interest of certain people within the church to make false claims about how the eeevil and oppressive authorities might make them be nice to us queers.

Re: ObSnark

[jack]

*headache* Thank you. (Sorry.)

It seems bizarre that people should be PREVENTED from having an egalitarian religion. (I can think of some reasons that might matter, such as requiring an impartial regristrar as an observer to ensure there's no coersion, but I'm not sure why that would apply in cases where heterosexual marriages are ok.)

Re: ObSnark

[kerrypolka]

Yeah, it's really bizarre and hateful. As you can guess the Quakers and Liberal and Reform Jews UK (among others) are extremely unhappy about it.

Re: ObSnark

[eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com]

(oops, just commented as anonymous by mistake, it was me ...)

Re: ObSnark

[lavendersparkle]

Also, as a mentioned above, there is already precedent for allowing CofE churches to refuse to marry couples on a specific doctrinal grounds, because they are not obliged to marry divorcees whose ex is still living to accommodate CofE churches which don't believe in divorce.