Do we need a Church of England?

So there is, as reported today, a back bench revolt against the Prime Minister introducing and supporting the idea of marriage being opened up to gay people.


Whatever your view on the actual issue, the MPs' objection seems to be largely that this was originally a Lib Dem policy with which David Cameron happens to agree, but that it did not form part of the Coalition agreement and there was no discussion or consultation with Conservative MPs before the bill was introduced.


OK, so much for inter-party warfare: I see their point, but that is between the MPs and their leader.


More importantly, the bill itself seems to be a huge mish mash in an attempt to placate everybody and offend no one.


Religion is always a difficult area, because our society traditionally accepts it as a genuine belief system. If I claimed that an alien had landed from Mars and ordered me to brush my teeth twenty times a day, I would be viewed with sympathy, indulgence and a measure of ridicule. If my claimed beliefs involved me refusing to carry out my job or displaying prejudice, I would be sacked, and possibly sectioned.


Yet the claim of thousands that their own particular Holy Scripture makes it necessary for them to denigrate people whose lifestyle is apparently condemned by that book, written hundreds of years ago, is considered in itself sacred.


Yes, the Bible - or a page in it somewhere -  may state that man should not lay with man, but other bits also say that certain meats are inedible (Jewish people still accept this, as do Moslems - so to quote Mr Minchin, 'why not, not eat pigs together'? But Christians, at the forefront of those condemning gay marriage, have conveniently forgotten that their parent religion forbids their bacon and egg breakfast and Sunday roast pork). 


Still other Bible passages label menstruating women as unclean, instruct them to keep to their homes and not mix with polite society until they have ritually bathed themselves once their period is over. Logical and hygienic when you are living in a desert-dwelling tribe four thousand years ago - as indeed is the notion of circumcision, but rather outdated in these days of tampons, flushing toilets and showers. 


So quite rightly, most Christians, and a lot of Jewish sects, view these instructions as outmoded, yet quote the Bible chapter and verse when it appears to support their own particular prejudice. Pretty easy, as a lot of the Bible is self-contradictory anyway. Other religious texts may be more or less so: I am not qualified to judge.


And the notion of accepting gay marriage for all English people, but then banning it within the state Church of England, sounds crazy. I accept the reasoning - an individual Quaker church is free to marry or refuse to marry any couple, while an Anglican parish church, by virtue of its status as the representative of the national religion, is obliged to marry any Tom Dick or Harry who requests the sacrament, irrespective of their personal belief or religious affiliation. As long as he is marrying any Thomasina, Diana or Harriet, of course. 


But the prospective ruling means that even if your local Anglican vicar is quite happy to perform a marriage ceremony for a gay couple - he or she may even be gay and in a civil partnership him/herself - this is strictly verboten. Yet if - however unlikely this may sound - the local Roman Catholic priest is not averse, he may perform the ceremony. Yet he must be male and celibate.



There is also the separate outdated law currently under review: that stating that those in direct line to the throne of England may not marry a Roman Catholic. At any time in the last few hundred years the way has been open for us to have a Queen or Prince Consort who is a Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist..... and in a way I am slightly disappointed that has never happened, for it would call into question this law. Yes, I know the history of the English fear of a Catholic monarch but would we be totally sanguine about the heir to the throne being brought up as a Buddhist, even though his destiny was to lead the Church of England?



And the answer to both the conundrums above seems to me obvious: dis-establish the Church of England. If the monarch is no longer the Head of the Church (ironically, the title the Queen still holds of Defender of the Faith was awarded by the Pope to Henry VIII in recognition of his defence of Catholicism!) then it will not matter two hoots whether the child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge espouses atheism or Hinduism and who he/she marries; equally, if the Anglican Church has the same status as the rest we can no longer demand to be married in it, and it will therefore have the right to accept or reject a request for marriage from a same sex couple.


Sinple, eh?