That old tease, Archbishop Rowan Williams, has titillated New Statesman readers with the enticing prospect of thew Church of England finally getting its lardy butt off the gravy train and being disestablished, not before time.
No problem with that - it's about time for the church to stand on its own two feet (or kneel on its own two knees, as it tends to do when chatting with the hypothetical Almighty). But then the famously labyrinthine workings of the Beardy One's mind turn the idea over and spoil a simple statement thusly:
If the pious old twit wants to bloody-mindedly defend the privileged position of of an established church against all comers, then bring it on - I think he'd have maneuvered himself into an indefensible position and would be toast before evensong. Unfortunately, I think he's pontificating in the certain knowledge that politicians have more important things on their minds right now (the economy, stupid) and few currently have the time or stomach for giving the State a long-overdue chuchectomy. So there's no immediate prospect of a stop to that stream of state-supported auld blather about how without "the public presence of faith in society", we'd all be doomed to unreflective lives of empty, swinish materialism. Which is a load of hooey - you don't need to be indoctrinated by unquestioning religious faith to have compassion, curiosity or creativity, to do good, to feel awe or to seek meaning in life. It's about time for a quote from the late Arthur C Clarke again, so here are two:
and
* NB - I really must get those words added to my will - I remember my dad's funeral and the preacher retrospectively asserting that dad certainly had at least some fuzzy sort of religious faith, when for the life of me, I never heard him say anything of the sort. Made a mockery of the whole thing.
I grew up in a disestablished Church; I spent ten years working in a disestablished Church; and I can see that it's by no means the end of the world if the Establishment disappears. The strength of it is that the last vestiges of state sanction disappeared, so when you took a vote at the Welsh Synod, it didn't have to be nodded through by parliament afterwards. There is a certain integrity to that.
No problem with that - it's about time for the church to stand on its own two feet (or kneel on its own two knees, as it tends to do when chatting with the hypothetical Almighty). But then the famously labyrinthine workings of the Beardy One's mind turn the idea over and spoil a simple statement thusly:
At the same time, my unease about going for straight disestablishment is to do with the fact that it's a very shaky time for the public presence of faith in society. I think the motives that would now drive disestablishment from the state side would be mostly to do with . . . trying to push religion into the private sphere, and that's the point where I think I'd be bloody-minded and say, 'Well, not on that basis."
If the pious old twit wants to bloody-mindedly defend the privileged position of of an established church against all comers, then bring it on - I think he'd have maneuvered himself into an indefensible position and would be toast before evensong. Unfortunately, I think he's pontificating in the certain knowledge that politicians have more important things on their minds right now (the economy, stupid) and few currently have the time or stomach for giving the State a long-overdue chuchectomy. So there's no immediate prospect of a stop to that stream of state-supported auld blather about how without "the public presence of faith in society", we'd all be doomed to unreflective lives of empty, swinish materialism. Which is a load of hooey - you don't need to be indoctrinated by unquestioning religious faith to have compassion, curiosity or creativity, to do good, to feel awe or to seek meaning in life. It's about time for a quote from the late Arthur C Clarke again, so here are two:
...the only things in this world that really matter are such imponderables as beauty and wisdom, laughter and love
and
Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral*A questioning mind and lack of reflexive piety does not equal shallowness, your Beardiness.
* NB - I really must get those words added to my will - I remember my dad's funeral and the preacher retrospectively asserting that dad certainly had at least some fuzzy sort of religious faith, when for the life of me, I never heard him say anything of the sort. Made a mockery of the whole thing.
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