Andrew Brown: The Church should stop behaving like an adolescent child

The real problem of establishment is that it provides the Church with an excuse for all its failures

Disentangling the Church of England from the state is like getting jellyfish off fishing line. You can't see what you're doing, the process is painful, and it's really difficult to get all of it done. Yet there is a surprising amount of support for it, not just among the political classes, but within the General Synod, the body that thinks it runs the church, and that debated the matter yesterday in York.

There is a certain irony involved, since the Synod is itself a product of establishment: it is the only institution outside Parliament that can actually make English law, and was invented in 1919 so that Parliament would no longer have to bother with the details of church legislation.

But that is not what most people think of when they consider establishment. What irks the Church is the deal whereby bishops get to sit in the House of Lords in exchange for being approved by the prime minister, whose influence extends to every level of the selection process. The prime minister can't impose his own candidate on the Church. But he can, and does, act as the arbiter between contending factions.

This point is particularly painful at the moment, when the reform of the House of Lords is being considered by a parliamentary committee that has no bishops on it and that may therefore fail to appreciate the contribution that Anglican bishops make to our national life.

But though this is the most visible part of the established state of the Church, there are other parts of the jellyfish that are much more important and would be much harder to remove. All political legitimacy in the UK derives ultimately from a religious ceremony, in which the monarch is crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury. That is one reason why principled republicans can and should object to the arrangement, but their views are almost as unpopular within the Church as they are in Downing Street. It would be much easier and more effective to tinker with what we have: the coronation oath is a wonderful opportunity for political theatre.

Even more important to the Church is the fact that its money is controlled by the state. Among the Church Commissioners, who ultimately control the billions of pounds that will pay the clergy's pensions, a fifth are politicians, sitting there by virtue of their office: even the secretary of state for culture, media, and sport has a voice in the Church of England's finances; and the whole group is answerable to Parliament, and not to the archbishop of Canterbury or the General Synod. If the Church were ever to ask for its freedom from the state, it's difficult to imagine the state letting control of all that money go to the new body, whatever it was, that ended up running the Church.

Nor is there any particular reason why most of the present situation should not persist for a generation or two longer. The most sophisticated argument in favour of establishment is that it is a profound and long-lasting inoculation against religious fervour, and I think this is true and very worthwhile.

It is obvious that a wise government should be trying to make the Muslim Parliament more like the Church of England's General Synod and not vice versa. Co-option has worked for the British Establishment for centuries, and it still has much to offer. If Sir Elton John can be a knight, there is no reason why Lord Carey, as he will shortly become, should not be a spiritual leader. And the Church of England is still worth co-opting: improbable as it seems to anyone who covers Church politics; the organisation is full of intelligent, and energetic people doing unpleasant and worthwhile jobs remarkably well in all sorts of small-scale communities.

The real problem of establishment is that it provides the Church with an excuse for all its own failures and a vast distorting mirror, like something you might see in a fairground, except that this mirror flatters; and absurdly self-important synodical politicians look into it and see in themselves the moral and spiritual arbiters of the nation, ready at any moment to give an inspiring lead.

But this is not the fault of the nation that so sensibly ignores them. When the General Synod decides to have a debate on clergy vestments, as if the regulations mattered, it is nailing the stable door open long after the horses have bolted. But it was not secular politicians nor the Establishment which told it to do so. All they do is to provide it with a general sense that it might as well be ridiculous. Anyone addressing the General Synod is inflated with a pious self-importance, like a 16-year-old addressing a political party's national conference on television.

Similarly, the problem with the present system of clergy appointments is not that establishment imposes secrecy. It is that the secrecy of the process lends itself to silly corruptions. If the candidates for Archbishop of Canterbury were chosen, as they are in other Anglican churches, by an open and public process of election, the Prime Minister would not be in a position to distort the result of the Church's deliberations, even if he might choose between two deadlocked candidates. The posts should be publicly advertised, the applicants should be known and at the end of the Church's deliberations a public announcement should be made that the relevant committee had submitted the following two names to the Prime Minister.

Of course, the selection committees for bishops would then have to behave like grown-up, open, and accountable bodies. What the church needs is not disestablishment, but to stop using its establishment as an excuse for adolescence.

andrewb@darwinwars.com