Re: The GZG Digest V1 #507

On Sat, 16 Oct 1999, Adrian Johnson wrote:

> >I would guess that there is no official religion in North America.  I
> >don't know about our neighbors the Canucks, but I very strongly doubt
we
> >'Murricans would deal well with an official religion.
> 
> I agree.  The Canadians wouldn't buy into the idea of an official
state
> religion, at all.  But the British do - so who knows.

weeell, sort of. most people in this country aren't religious, and the
church of england has no real power, so most people just ignore the fact
that it's 'established' (ie part of the establishment, roughly equal to
the state in this case) and the RC church, islam, hinduism, etc are not.
there is a disestablishment movement, and, of course, an
antidisestablishment movement. antidisestablishmentarianism is, i
believe,
the longest word in the english language, and thus almost certainly a
bad
idea :).

> Don't a bunch of the
> senior members of the Church of England have seats in the House of
Lords by
> virtue of their Church office?

bishops and archbishops. there are 26 of them, it seems, out of 1289
peers
in total. they do attend the house, but much less than the active
political peers. none of them sit on committees. i got all of this from
the house of lords website:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199697/ldinfo/ldmeminf.htm

anyway, given that the CoE today has more to do with social work than it
does with god, i don't particularly object. it's only when some bishop
gets morally indignant about the depravity of modern life etc that i
feel
like taking a cudgel to the lot of them :).

> When the NAC is formed, with the Monarchy
> as the official head of state, maybe there would be some kind of
cerimonial
> place for the Church of England in the system - but certainly there'd
be no
> real power held by the Church.  The Americans, Canadians and South
> Americans (later) wouldn't like that very much...

it might be that the CoE remains established in engand, but does not
become established elsewhere. i think this is fairly plausible due to
the
way the uk constitution works.

tom a