The Church of England Calls on its Flock

In the Telegraph Nigel Farndale calls on patriotic Englanders to rally in support of our ailing national church:

Is there a true Englishman alive who has not taken that word “kingdom” to mean, in a poetic sense at least, England? As well as worshipping Jesus, the Church of England also worships England. That is why its churches are so often adorned with regimental colours and roll calls of the Glorious Dead.

And here’s the rub. I feel an almost patriotic duty to defend the Church of England against its enemies. I hate to see it on its knees, not in prayer but in cowering submission to political correctness. I feel a deep emotional attachment to it. Affection is not too strong a word. Yet I am an atheist.

I wouldn't go as far to call myself an atheist, but I am agnostic; yet still, there's nothing that lifts my heart as much as the sight of an English parish church with a Cross of St George fluttering above it. Unfortunately the flying of England's national flag is about as close as the Church of England gets to being a national church. Rather than argue for a national parliament for England (as the Church of Scotland's leaders argued for a Scottish national parliament) bishops of the Church of England argued for England's balkanisation, many of them playing leading roles in England's dismemberment with the regional constitutional conventions and the Campaign for the English Regions.

Others, like Lord Carey, whose thoughts prompted Nigel Farndale's article, seem more interested in bolstering British identity than English identity:

Does it matter if we consign Britain to the detritus of history, concluding that it has served its useful purpose?

Indeed, some would argue, we should ditch it because it no longer has any relevance left. Once you have affirmed your identity as English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish, extra identities are unnecessary. I find this argument unconvincing. We are all used to multiple identities. I could say for myself, having been born in London, that I will always remain in some part a Londoner, an Englishmen, a Briton and a European. My wife, with Scottish blood flowing through her veins, will proudly affirm her Scottish identity which always becomes more visible when we go north of the border on holiday, as we did this summer, or when Scotland is playing England at any sport. She too, I am confident, would not see British and Scottish identities as either meaningless or in competition. Linda Colley shows in her book that Great Britain in 1707 was not at all a trinity of three self contained and self-conscious nations but more like a patchwork in which all three were cut through by strong regional attachments with porous boundaries. So it is today. This would not be affected if devolution proposals were to give England greater independence. It is possibly the case that anger and frustration at the present state of devolution has led some, but certainly not the majority, to prefer their English identity over British. What, however, would be the consequences if Scotland were to revert to a pre-1707 situation in which complete independence were the prize? We should all be the poorer, perhaps in more ways that we realise- culturally, economically, historically and socially.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, of which the Church of England is the Mother Church, and due to his constitutional role the Archbishop of Canturbury is very much part of the British Establishment. The Church of England, like Parliament itself, extends its influence beyond England, often to the detriment of England, or to England's exclusion as a nation in its own right. The Church of England is England's national church to about the same degree that the Houses of Parliament can be called England's national parliament.

Nigel Farndale unwittingly sums this up near the beginning of his article:

To be British is to be one of Her Majesty’s subjects. It is also to be a member of the Church of England by proxy - unless you want to be awkward about it and opt for one of the other religions, or declare yourself an atheist.

And at its end:

I may no longer believe in God, but I still feel I belong to the Church of England. It’s called being British. One of Her Majesty’s subjects.

The Church of England is an Imperial Church in the same way that Westminster is an Imperial Parliament; Church and Parliament bound together through the Imperial Crown, under which we are British subjects (British Nationality Act 1948 notwithstanding).

When the Church of England starts acting like a national church, I will rally to it, but not before then.