As the Archbishop shines in the spotlight, the Church has never needed saving more

In this age of many faiths and none, it is time for the King to cast the Church of England loose, writes Mary Dejevsky

Thanks to all manner of social and demographic change, the CofE has lost much of the primacy it once enjoyed (PA Wire)

The leader of the Church of England has attracted – how shall we say? – a mixed response for his House of Lords speech on the Illegal Migration Bill. Spearheading opposition to the proposed legislation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, described the measures designed to curb small boat crossings as “morally unacceptable” and warned of damage to the UK’s “interests and reputation at home and abroad”.

Some applauded his speech as exactly the sort of thing the archbishop should be saying, giving a voice to the voiceless. Others deplored not just his sentiments, but his very participation in the debate, asking by what right the country’s most senior cleric had a perch in the upper chamber of parliament at all, and then used it to challenge the will of an elected government.

I come down somewhere in the middle. My view is that Welby was indeed doing exactly what a church leader should do – and too often, in Welby’s case, has not. His acquiescence in the closure of churches during the pandemic was woeful. So it was good to see him showing some spine here.

On the other hand, I have to ask why 26 (of 42) Anglican bishops still occupy seats in the House of Lords simply by virtue of their position in the Church. The number of hereditary peers was pruned more than two decades ago. How come the bishops remain?

The answer, of course, is that the Church of England has been the established Church in England for more than five centuries and, as such, enjoys legal recognition as the country’s official church and effectively a part of the state. The official Churches of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not “established” in the same way, but the monarch includes among his titles that of “supreme governor of the Church of England” and “defender of the faith”; the UK is officially a Christian country.

A week ago, the anachronistic nature of this constitutional arrangement was plain for all to see at the coronation of Charles III. Westminster Abbey provided the august backdrop, as it does for so many state occasions; the Archbishop of Canterbury officiated, and mitred bishops abounded. The mysterious, and hidden, anointing could be regarded by those who so chose as the sacrament that confirmed the divine right of kings.

But it would have been hard to describe the service as a whole as Anglican, or even embedded in the established Church. The Abbey was more of a theatre for a spectacle that combined the sacred and the secular, with elements, you could argue, of the pagan. The music derived from a variety of ecclesiastical traditions. Leaders of all the main religious groups in the UK had a part, including their joint greeting of the King before he left the Abbey.

There was only one purely Anglican part to the coronation, and that was the communion taken by the King and Queen at the very end of the service. If you were planning the next coronation and thought, perhaps, that a shorter ceremony to suit today’s shorter attention spans might be in order, this is surely the part you would cut.

While its inclusion might be defended as meaningful to a monarch who is both head of the established Church and a believing Christian, to many, including myself, it appeared very much as a supplement, even a rather awkward accretion to the main purpose of the day.

The same might be said of the Anglican elements of the annual Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall and the Armistice Day commemoration at the Cenotaph. The ceremonial stands by itself, with the participation of the Anglican Church now looking more like an afterthought than essential to the event.

The service at the Abbey was still central to the coronation, but it was by no means an exclusively Anglican occasion and, taken as a whole – from the coaches and the processions, the balcony appearance and the flypast (curtailed by the weather) – the day could be seen as laying bare two key national institutions: the crown and the established Church, at a point of transition, hedging their bets for the future.

It also suggested – to me, at least – that if the UK is to abandon either of these institutions in years to come, it is the Church of England that could well find itself disestablished by the time of the next – and possibly last – coronation.

At one point, say after the death of Princess Diana, it might have been a toss-up which went first. No longer. Obvious indicators might include the consistency of the crowds lining the procession route last weekend or queuing for the Queen’s lying-in-state, compared with the sharp decline in regular Anglican church attendance – by almost half over the past 12 years (leaving aside the trough resulting from the pandemic).

However, the factors militating against the Church of England remaining the established Church – indeed, against the UK having any established church at all – run far deeper. The complexion of the UK population is changing. The 2021 census showed that the proportion of people in England and Wales identifying as Christians dropped to 46 per cent from 59 per cent a decade before. That means that a majority now define themselves as belonging to another religion or to none at all. On that basis alone, an established church should be hard to defend.

In fact, the process seems already on its way. Thanks to all manner of social and demographic change, the CofE has lost much of the primacy it once enjoyed in public (as in private) life, and historically in a very short time.

Tony Blair waited until he left office to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. When Boris Johnson became the first Roman Catholic prime minister barely 12 years later, this was largely ignored. At the coronation, Rishi Sunak read the lesson, taken from the letter of St Paul to the Galatians, which referred to a God and a context very far from his own Hindu tradition. Again, no one turned a hair or even remarked on any potential conflict.

Weak leadership and doctrinal divisions – on such matters as women priests and bishops, and same-sex marriage – may have reduced the appeal of the Church of England and hastened its decline. But they have also left a paradox. Having now settled most of its internal arguments in favour of modernisation, the CofE has little room to modernise further. The monarchy is another matter.

There was speculation after the Queen died that King Charles would choose to become “defender of faith” – as he had in an earlier interview – rather than “defender of the faith”. This apparently small alteration could have called into question his role as head of the established Church; and, in the end, he stuck with convention.

But the ceremonial at his coronation at times contradicted this. Not only were representatives of other faiths given a role, but Charles emerged in robes and regalia that were more reminiscent of ancient, even pre-Christian, kingship, than of a figure who was at once head of state and head of the national church.

A central question now must be whether Charles III will be the monarch who decides, or agrees, to separate church and state. As his coronation showed, much of the mystery is now gone. The trappings and rituals that remain are more of royalty than the Church. In this age of many faiths and none, it is time for the King to cast the Church of England loose. With the public appetite for a Republic still weak, he could save the monarchy – at least for a while.