The ABC of Disestablishment
Disestablishmentarianism: there's another long word. Not quite as long as floccinaucinihilipilification, but it has more journalistic currency. Gordon Brown's intervention this week -- with his suggestion to the Archbishop of Canterbury (AKA the "ABC" in Angican circles) that he clarify his position on Sharia Law -- seems to have helped Rowan Williams make it through the week without a riot at Lambeth Palace. But now that the dust has settled on the Sharia controversy, more and more commentators are asking for a public debate of another kind.
The ABC has accidentially triggered renewed calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. His difficulties this week have persuaded some that part of the problem he faced was his role within the British Constitution. He is simply not as free as other church leaders to fly philosophical (or theological) kites. Secularists have seized the opportunity to make a case for a religionless state; and some religious groups have made a similar argument. The secularist disestablishmentarians see a state religion as a threat to society. The religious disestablishmentarians see the state as a threat to the integrity of Christianity's message. One suspects that if Rowan Williams were not the current super-primate of Anglicanism, he might grant that the latter group, at least, has a point.
Comments
Looks like the ABC put his foot in his XYZ. Disfunctional Establishment Church? Disfunctional Royal Family? Disfunctional Parliament? Pressures to join the EU as a fully disfunctional member of a non-functional super-state (when the EU foreign reprentative recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation, what will Roumania, Greece, and Cypress among other members do?)
Will there always be an England? Will the rest of the world still recognize it as England? What will become of that plessed blot? Will the English recognize England? Will there even be English and will they speak English?...or Polish...or Californian? What is this world coming to? One thing I'm certain of...there will always be a Scotland. If the thought of men wearing kilts and the smell of haggis doesn't turn foreigners away, then the sound of those bagpipes surely will.
church state seperation is as much in the interest of the church as it is the state.
How such changes would ever come about is difficult to see without a similar commitment to church state seperation as enshrined in the first amendment of the US constitution, but then again it hasn't done much good over there with Bush and his faith based initiatives etc.