Tony Blair has looked constitutionally timid since devolution. Here is something he could do with huge symbolic and practical benefit. Only gilded vested interests would lose. He should disestablish the Church of England. He will do nothing unless the Church of England asks him to, but signals from the new Archbishop of Canterbury suggest that we may be about to see a historic shift in its position.
A BBC profile of Archbishop Rowan Williams broadcast on 1st December showed a man ill at ease with the establishment of the Church of England. “It’s possible to have very fruitful, very constructive relations with government and public life without all the apparatus of legal establishment as it’s evolved in England,” he said.
How very different this sounds to his predecessor. On St George’s Day 2002, Archbishop George Carey gave a lecture defending establishment: “In England, the interweaving of church and state and nation have come down to us through the long and steadily evolving set of relationships known as establishment… The Church of England alone among religious groupings has a comprehensive network of parishes and priests covering the entire country.
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