Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T08:44:26.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Theological Reflections on the Place of the Sacred in Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

John Inge
Affiliation:
Bishop of Huntingdon
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper attempts an overview of currents of theological thinking on the place of the sacred in society. It considers the long tradition of active engagement between Church and State, which derives its authority from the New Testament and can be traced through St Augustine and Anglican Divines to the present day. Having examined contemporary arguments of those who question the propriety of such an arrangement it concludes that it remains theologically justifiable. The paper then turns to the particular question of the Establishment of the Church of England and engages both with those who support it and those who are in favour of disestablishment. It observes that Establishment functions at various levels in English society and, whilst acknowledging and welcoming the fact that its form will continue to change, argues that it offers distinct advantages to both Church and State. In a country where seventy-one per cent of the population professes itself to be Christian it gives the state legitimacy by reminding the latter that all authority derives from God and ensures that Christian influence for the maintenance of a just and peaceful society remains strong. Establishment reminds the Church that it has a responsibility to the whole nation, not just those who regularly attend its churches, and protects the mission and ministry of the Church throughout the parishes of the land.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2004

References

1 The Observer, 9 February 2003.Google Scholar

2 Bruton, J, The Tablet, 22 February 2003.Google Scholar

3 Augustine, St, City of God. Book XIX. Chapter 17.Google Scholar

4 Avis, PChurch. State and Establishment (London: SPCK. 2001). p viii.Google Scholar

5 Troeltsch, EThe Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (New York: Macmillan. 1931).Google Scholar

6 Niebuhr, H R. Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers. 1951).Google Scholar

7 Bellah, RBeyond Belie: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p 186.Google Scholar

8 On this matter Oliver O'Donovan writes that ‘the extent to which civil religion is an immediate and pressing threat to the authenticity of the church must, of course, be a matter of judgement which will vary from place to place and time to time. Reading the essays collected by John Witte in Christianity and Democracy, I am open to persuasion that the American situation is in this respect’: O'Donovan, O.. The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p 225.Google Scholar

9 Rowlands, C ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’, in Leech, K (ed.), Setting the Church of England Free: The Case for Disestablishment (Croydon: the Jubilee Group. 2001), p 23.Google Scholar

10 Yoder, J H, ‘Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics’ in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).Google Scholar

11 Wells, S, Transforming Fate into Destiny (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1988), p 108. It would not be fair to characterise this as Wells' position—he is describing the approach of John Howard Yoder and those who take after him. Wells' analysis of the theology of Hauerwas is well worth reading in this context.Google Scholar

12 Hauerwas, S, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), p 129.Google Scholar

13 MacIntyre, A, ‘A Partial Response to My Critics’ in Horton, J and Mendus, S, (eds), After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alastair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p 303.Google Scholar

14 Wright, N T, God and Caesar, Then and Now, Lecture given in Westminster Abbey, 22 04 2002.Google Scholar

15 Wright, N T, op. cit.Google Scholar

16 O'Donovan, O., The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Politica Theology, p 194.Google Scholar

17 Wright, N T, God and Caesar, Then and Now.Google Scholar

18 See Yoder, J H, ‘The Original Revolution’ in For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids: W B Eerdmans, 1997), pp 165179.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. p 171.

20 Ibid. p 171.

21 Colossians 1:16–17.Google Scholar

22 Wright, N T, God and Caesar, Then and Now.Google Scholar

23 Wright, N T, op. cit.Google Scholar

24 O'Donovan, O., The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p 81.Google Scholar

25 O'Donovan, O., op cit, p 49.Google Scholar

26 O'Donovan, O., op cit, p 133.Google Scholar

27 O'Donovan, O., op cit, p 2.Google Scholar

28 Sedgwick, P, ‘On Anglican Polity’ in Ford, D and Stamp, D L, Essentials of Christian Community: Essays for Daniel Hardy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), p 198.Google Scholar

29 Sedgwick, P, op cit, p 198.Google Scholar

30 Wallis, J, The Soul of Politics: A Practical Prophetic Vision for Change (New York: Orbis Nooks, 1994), p xxiv.Google Scholar

31 Habgood, J, Church and Nation in a Secular Age (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983), p 49.Google Scholar

32 Habgood, J, Making Sense (London: SPCK, 1993), p 144.Google Scholar

33 Yoder, J H, ‘The Orginal Revolution’, p 176.Google Scholar

34 Hauerwas, S, After Christendom (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p 23.Google Scholar

35 Avis, P, Chruch. State and Establishment (London: SPCK, 2001), p ix.Google Scholar

36 For an interesting comparison of the situation in different contexts. particularly Ireland. see McDonagh, E, ‘Prophecy or Politics? The Role of the Churches in Society’ in Nation, M Thiessen, and Wells, S, Faithfulness and Fortitude. In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas (Edinburg: T & T Clarke 2000), pp 287312.Google Scholar

37 Hauerwas, S, Wilderness Wanderings (London: SCM Press, 2001), p 217.Google Scholar

38 S. Hauerwas, Ibid., p 217.Google Scholar

39 Carr, W, ‘A Developing Establishment’, in Theology, Vol. CII, (1999), p 4.Google Scholar

40 Church and State 1970 (London: CIO, 1970), p 2.Google Scholar

41 Morris, Jeremy, ‘The Future of Church and State’ in Dormer, D et al. (eds) Anglicanism: the Answer to Modernity (London: Continuum, 2003), p 163.Google Scholar Keith Ward has characterised what we see in England today as a ‘weak view’ of Establishment. He speaks of this ‘weak view’ in the following terms: ‘A particular religion could be sanctioned in society, by the maintenance of institutions (like universities or schools) for encouraging religious understanding or practice. One would not be compelled to hold specific beliefs (dissent would still be permitted). But certain intellectual disciplines and spiritual practices might be positively supported by the State as an important contribution to the life of the community’: Ward, K, ‘Is a Christian State a Contradiction?’ in Cohn-Sherbok, D. and McLellan, D (eds) Religion in Public Life (Basingstoke and New York: St Martin' Press, 1992), p 1.Google Scholar

42 Henson, H, Bishoprick Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p 90.Google Scholar

43 Hurcombe, T, ‘Disestablishing the Kingdom’ in Leech, K (ed), Setting the Church of England Free: The Case for Disestablishment (Croydon: the Jubilee Group. 2001), p 23.Google Scholar

44 Carey, G, Holding Together: Church and Nation in the Twenty-First Century Lecture at Lambeth Palace, 23 04 2002.Google Scholar

45 Carey, G, op cit.Google Scholar

46 Avis, PChurch. State and Establishment.Google Scholar

47 In private conversation.Google Scholar

48 Hastings, A ‘The case for retaining Establishment’ in Modood, T, (ed), Church State and Religious Minorities (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997), p 41.Google Scholar

49 Modood, T, ‘Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship’ in The Political Quarterly (1994), p 72.Google Scholar

50 Badawi, Z quoted by Harries, R, Chruch Times, 24 05 2002.Google Scholar

51 Sacks, J, The Persistence of Faith (London, Weidenfield. 1991), p 68.Google Scholar

52 Habgood, J, Church and Nation in a Secular Age, p 112.Google Scholar

53 Davie, G, Religion in Britain since 1945, Believing Without Belonging, (Oxford. Blackwell, 1994), p 107.Google Scholar

54 Pitt, V, ‘The Church by Law Established’ in Leech, K (ed), Setting the Church of England Free: The Case for Disestablishment (Croydon: the Jubilee Group, 2001), p 58.Google Scholar

55 Gill, R, ‘Church and Nation in a Secular Age’ in Theology Vol. LXXXVIII (1984), p 24.Google Scholar

56 Hardy, D, Finding The Church (London: SCM Press, 2001), p 63.Google Scholar

57 The Church should not, of course, be triumphalistic. Establishment must at all times remain open and hospitable. As Keith Ward declares: ‘It is a good thing to have a religion established by law as long as most members of a state religious questions seriously. as long as dissent is permitted, as long as the established religion is concerned to encourage constructive conversations with other religious communities, to permit diversity of interpretation within itself and to show a concern to formulate a broad value base for the state as a whole’: K Ward, ‘Is a Christian State a Contradiction?’, p 16.Google Scholar

58 McFadyen, A, Bound to Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Ibid. p 6.

60 Ibid. p 7. McFadyen follows with a sophisticated attempt to draw back the doctrine of sin into public discourse arguing that ‘consciously relating the world to God (specifically, its pathologies through the language of sin) holds explanatory and symbolic power in relation to reality’. Ibid., p 12.

61 Ben Quash makes a similar point: ‘If you arrived from another planet and wanted a description of the truth of the nation's life, and you read the national papers to find such a description, little would indicate to you that the church played an important role in mission’: Quash, B ‘The Anglican Church as a Polity of Presence’ in Dormer, D et al. (eds) Anglicanism: the Answer to Modernity (London: Continuum, 2003), p 49.Google Scholar

62 Habgood, J, Church and Nation in a Secular Age, p 112.Google Scholar Adrian Hastings concurs but also suggests that it would simply be a waste of time and energy. Establishment is defensible on the grounds of ‘being part of the wider symbolic culture of the nation which we would be fools to dismantle, and of requiring for its termination a quite excessive amount of time and energy’: Hastings, A, Church and State (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1991), p 76.Google Scholar

63 Conversely, as John Moses puts it: ‘The abandonment of the establishment—not merely the legal form but the expectations which it properly sustains—could so easily lend support to sectarian pressures which encourage the church to withdraw into itself, nurturing its interior and institutional life to the exclusion of that wider ministry and mission which at its best the church has always attempted’: Moses, J, A Broad and Living Way (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 1995), p 238.Google Scholar

64 Wright, N T, God and Caesar, Then and Now.Google Scholar

65 The parish is, of course, by no means a peculiarly Anglican phenomenon. As Hooker explains: ‘Evaristus, Bishop in the See of Rome about the year 112 began to assign precincts unto evry Church or title which the Christians held, and to appoint unto each presbyter a certain compass whereof himself should take charge alone. The commodiousness of this invention caused all parts of Christendom to follow it and at length our own Churches became divided in like manner. Churches were not defined then as now they are; first be the founds of each State, and then within each State by more particular precincts, will at length we descend into several congregations termed parishes with far narrower restraints than this name at first used’: Hooker, R, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 5: 80:2.Google Scholar

66 Ecclestone, G (ed), The Parish Church (London: Mowbray, 1988), p 5.Google Scholar

67 Jenkins, T, Religion in English Everyday Life: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999).Google Scholar

68 Carr, W, ‘A Developing Establishment’, in Theology; Vol. CII, (1999), p 4.Google Scholar

69 This terminology derives from the Grubb Institute. See G. Ecclestone (ed). The Parish Church.Google Scholar

70 Habgood, J, Church and Nation in a Secular Age, p 103.Google Scholar

71 Carr, W, ‘A Developing Establishment’, in Theology; Vol. CII, (1999), p 4.Google Scholar

72 Buchanan, C, Cut the Connection. Disestablishment and the Church of England (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994), p 79.Google Scholar

73 Buchanan, C, op cit, p 183.Google Scholar

74 Buchanan, C, op cit. p 183.Google Scholar

75 Davie, G, Religion in Britain since 1945, Believing Without Belonging, p 142.Google Scholar

76 Wright, N T, God and Caesar, Then and Now.Google Scholar

77 Sedgwick, P, ‘On Anglican Polity’. p 210.Google Scholar

78 Carey, G, Holding Together: Church and Nation in the Twenty-First Century.Google Scholar

79 Jenkins, T, ‘Anglicanism: The Only Answer to Modernity’ in Dormer, D et al. (eds) Anglicanism: the Answer to Modernity, p 200.Google Scholar

80 T Jenkins, Ibid. p 200.

81 I have written about the complex relationship which exists between the Christian faith. the life of a congregation and the community in which it is set in Inge, J, ‘It's a Pantomime: Reflections on Parish Ministry’ in Theology Vol. XCVIII (1995), pp 122127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82 Inge, JA Christian Theology of Place (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003).Google Scholar