Antidisestablishmentariasm

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Separation of church and state is mainly a New World notion. European countries from Lutheran Sweden to Roman Catholic Spain are accustomed to some kind of state-church fusion. The English all it Establishment and somehow manage to make its antique machinery function, despite such intermittent creakings and groanings as to make a non-Britisher think the whole contraption is about to fall apart. Essence of the Establishment: the state protects the Church of England but also supervises its affairs; the monarch is head of the Church; bishops are appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Currently the whole question of church-state relations is once again a hot debating issue in Britain.

The controversy began when the Princess decided not to marry the Group Captain (the church's stand against remarriage for divorced persons was a primary reason). Newspapers attacked the Archbishop of Canterbury: TIME TO RESIGN, headlined the Sunday Express. A RISING TIDE OF ANGER, echoed the Daily Mirror. Orators and public-house lawyers dusted off a fine old 28-letter spelling-bee stand-by which for some years had ranked as a public issue above vegetarianism but considerably below prevention of cruelty to animals. The word: antidisestablishmentarianism.

Baby Talk? Disestablishment of the Church of England might deprive it of some lands and many privileges (such as crowning Britain's monarchs), but it would also relieve it of indignity at the hands of Parliament. In 1927 and again in 1928, for instance, the House of Commons rejected a new Book of Common Prayer drawn up by the church.

From the pulpit of St. Paul's the Rev. George Arthur Lewis Lloyd, vicar of Chiswick and rural dean of Hammersmith, last month called for disestablishment. Was state protection of the church, he asked, "worth the high price that is paid for it-- limitation of her spiritual freedom, denial of any choice in the appointment of her leaders, and insidious secularism which results from the constant attempt to impose upon the church the state's own lower standards of morals?" Prime Ministers of Britain presumably need not even be Christians, let alone Anglicans, since there are no formal religious qualifications for the post; in the last 40 years they have included "a Welsh Baptist, a Scottish Presbyterian, a Unitarian, and now a man who has defied the church by remarrying after divorce."*

Low churchmen, less sensitive about secularism, took a dim view of Vicar Lloyd's sermon. The Church of England Newspaper called it "baby talk." If the disestablishmentarians had their way, it warned, the position of evangelicals and liberals in the church would soon be "intolerable." Last week the Roman Catholic Herald surprised many a reader by siding with the low churchmen: "The tradition of Establishment has proved to be a powerful spiritual and moral factor in the country . . . Bound up with the Christian throne, the Church of England has . . . been a growing rather than a declining Christian influence . . . We find it hard to see how . . . God's truth . . . will better be served by a disestablishment which would make our society formally secularist."

Crisis in January? The debate went on in editorials, letters-to-the-editor, private speeches and public declarations. Perhaps the most significant words appeared last week in London's Daily Telegraph in an article defending Establishment by the Earl of Selborne, chairman of the potent Anglican House of Laity. "The solution that has been achieved in Scotland," he wrote, "is in many respects superior to that of England. Perhaps we shall come to it one day."

This was the closest yet to official admission that modification of the church-state relationship was overdue. Anglican churchmen have long gazed admiringly north, where the Presbyterian Church of Scotland enjoys a combination of state support and complete spiritual autonomy, but Anglican lay leadership has been less open to change. "If Lord Selborne is truly reflecting the views of the laity," said one prelate last week, "then there is no reason why some action should not be taken. But there must be a crisis to provoke it."

Anglicans may get their crisis next month. The Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, appointed by the Queen four years ago, will present its report, rumored to favor easing divorce laws (nine of the commission's 19 members are already on record for divorce by mutual agreement). If the Eden government puts this to a test, the church has no choice but to stand and fight.

* Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden.

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