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

[jack]

Well, ok, it couldn't, but it could be better: for instance, let anyone get married in church without requiring them to be anglican, instruct bishops in the house of lords not to vote for things that only anglicans want, etc.

[redbird]

If bishops are going to represent everyone, does that mean they could vote only for things that everyone wants? They might as well stay home in that case, since any such bill would pass unanimously even without them. Even if I take it less literally, I suspect there is little or no legislation that all Anglicans support and that few if any non-Anglicans do.

[liv]

There's actually a really blatant counterexample which is topical at the moment: a clear majority of non-Anglicans support full marriage equality. Most of the Anglican hierarchy at least (although not absolutely all professing Anglicans) believe that same sex couples should be equal but different and have access to exactly the same rights but call the officially sanctioned relationship a civil partnership, not a marriage. In fact, this is a big part of the reason why the media in general is discussing the issues raised in jack's post!

(The other issue where there's a clear Anglican / non-Anglican split is to do with reform of our upper house. The Anglican party line is to keep the status quo, perhaps not surprisingly because it gives the church a certain amount of political power, though the ostensible excuse is that we're on the brink of economic crisis, we don't have spare resources to spend on political reform. The huge majority of non-Anglicans think that we should do away with having Bishops in the House of Lords. But that's kind of a self-referential debate!)

[(Anonymous)]

'let anyone get married in church without requiring them to be anglican'

But this is currently the case: everyone has a right to be married in their parish church.

S.

[jack]

Good question. Apparently you do have the right. Do you know how easy it is to exercise it if you are a committed atheist or a committed muslim? I know there are many cases where people feel obliged to parrot the party line to get married in church, but I guess most of that is non-Anglican or a non-Parish-church. But I don't know in practice, I assumed that there would be a lot of pressure not to, and that if the vicar didn't want to preside it probably wouldn't happen.

[lavendersparkle]

Well, I'm a committed Jew and I got married in an Anglican church.

You have a right to get married in your parish church as long as you aren't divorced and are a mixed sex couple. Most people aren't sure what the rules are because it is pretty odd when you think about it, so vicars bull shit and try to use the opportunity of an impending wedding for mission. In the end if you pushed them they'd back down and if they didn't they'd have to if you took the issue up with their arch deacon.

A possibly bigger issue is that the Church of England marriage service is laid down in law and so there is limited flexibility in how much it can be changed and still remain legally valid. There was discussion before our wedding about how much we could tweak things without invalidating our marriage. A lot of committed non-Anglicans might bulk at the wording they have to use.

I think the 'don't really believe in anything but want to have a church wedding' crowd tend to get married in Anglican churches because non-Anglican churches can turn your request to get married there down on the grounds that you're a heathen. Also those sorts of people tend to like pretty 'proper' churches i.e. CofE.

[jack]

Oh yes, good point.

And yeah, I'm not sure where "right to get married" abuts "without having to lie".