The UK that goes to the polls on 4 July will be the most religiously diverse in election history. Less than half the population of England and Wales describe themselves as ‘Christian’. Most people in Scotland are now non-religious. And there are now more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland, but even here we are seeing more and more people turning away from religion.

This sustained shift in demographics demands a radical response from the state. Entrenched Christian privilege and a laissez-faire approach to social cohesion are ill-suited to a religiously diverse, pluralistic population. That’s why the National Secular Society is calling on the next Government to seriously rethink the role of religion in public and political life.

Here’s what we want to see from the incoming Government.

Secular, inclusive education

Schools play a key role in shaping future generations and fostering a culture of tolerance and understanding. But faith schools build division into the system.

A third of all schools are faith schools. This isn’t sustainable. Already, the prevalence of religious schools means many nonreligious families have no choice other than a faith-based education for their children. This needs to be addressed.

Dividing children by religion leads to ethnic segregation, too. The next Government should commit to phasing out faith-based education to better encourage integration and ensure that every child can receive a secular education.

The calling of the election means that the outgoing Government’s plans to abolish the 50% admissions cap in faith-based academies hit the buffers. The Conservative manifesto revives plans to lift the cap and allow faith schools to apply 100% religious selection, paving the way for yet more discriminatory faith schools.

Worryingly, Labour didn’t oppose plans to scrap the cap and will come under pressure from regressive religious groups to reinstate this policy. They should resist.

Religious selection means faith schools are not only less religiously and ethnically diverse; they admit fewer children from poorer backgrounds, children in care, and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Any government interested in tackling unfairness and discrimination in education can’t afford to ignore the pernicious effects of faith-based admissions. That’s why it is alarming that Keir Starmer has said a Labour Government would be ‘even more supportive of faith schools’ than the current Government.

In all state-funded schools, even the two-thirds without a religious character, daily acts of ‘broadly Christian’ collective worship are required by law. This law, dating back to 1944, has no moral or educational basis. Teachers don’t support it and many schools flout it. Imposing worship in schools undermines children’s freedom of religion or belief and opens the door to evangelism in schools. We will encourage the next Government to support its repeal as soon as possible.

England’s outdated model of religious education dates back to a similar era. Labour’s plans to modernise the school curriculum must not shy away from reforms to liberate this subject area from the inappropriate control of religious interest groups. All children and young people should have an equal entitlement to an objective and critical education about worldviews, citizenship, and ethics.

We will also push for new legislation to boost Ofsted’s powers to crack down on unregistered religious schools operating illegally. The creation of a register of children not in school is a key part of this. During their time in office, the Conservatives made plenty of encouraging noises but ultimately failed to tackle the problem. The required legislation for a register was in the Schools Bill which was ditched by the Sunak Government in 2022. The Tory manifesto promises to revive the register plans.

Labour’s manifesto makes no such commitment, but the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has previously signalled her support for a home-school register to deliver better oversight of home education, which in too many cases leads to children being indoctrinated with fundamentalist dogma in unsafe and illegal schools. She also says she wants ‘every child to receive a world-class education’. To achieve this, the next Government will need to stand up to religious lobbyists who impede attempts to protect the educational rights of children in independent and unregistered religious schools by spuriously claiming that such attempts violate religious freedom.

Free speech

For all its faults, the Conservative Government has shown willingness to protect the right to free expression. It was slow to do so when Islamic fundamentalists descended on a school in Batley in 2021. But after a parent was left pleading for mercy after her son was involved in the scuffing of a Quran in Kettlethorpe last year, the Home Secretary robustly asserted: ‘We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country.’

A recent recommendation for the creation of guidance to better protect schools and teachers facing blasphemy accusations should be adopted and implemented—as should the recommendation from Sara Khan, the Government’s Independent Advisor on Social Cohesion and Resilience, to create a special unit tasked with responding to ‘flashpoint incidents’ such as blasphemy protests.

The next Government needs to find ways to address anti-Muslim prejudice in ways that don’t impede the freedom to scrutinise and criticise Islamic beliefs, ideas, and practices. It needs to be clear that there is no right not to be offended—and no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion.

In opposition, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, and the Greens have all shown a worrying disregard for free speech by uncritically adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)  for British Muslims. The concept of Islamophobia unhelpfully conflates hatred and discrimination against Muslims with criticism of Islam. This blurring is intentional. The silencing of scrutiny, criticism, mockery, and anything deemed ‘offensive’ has been a long-term aim of Islamist groups, some of which have been too close to Labour for comfort. Labour has promised to reverse the Conservatives’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate incidents that fall short of criminality. There are also fears that a Labour Government will seek to incorporate the APPG definition into law.

Hindu groups have jumped on the bandwagon, calling on the next Government to criminalise ‘Hinduphobia’. Any attempt to do so will be met with fierce opposition from secularists and free speech campaigners. Resisting the politics of competitive grievances and sectarianism is something the next Government needs to do if Britain is to avoid becoming increasingly fraught with ethnic and religious tensions.

Towards a secular democracy

It makes no sense for one of the most diverse and secularised nations in the world to retain an established religion.

One manifestation of the Church of England’s established status is the twenty-six unelected Anglican clerics sitting as of right as legislators in the House of Lords. In 2022, Keir Starmer called the Lords ‘undemocratic’ and ‘indefensible’. He launched plans drawn up by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to replace the upper chamber with an elected Assembly of the Nations and Regions. The plans would bring a welcome end to reserved seats for bishops.

Despite originally suggesting the plans be implemented within the first five years of a Labour Government, the party is now promising a much more incremental approach. Replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber remains the goal, but the manifesto commits only to ‘immediate modernisation’ of the Lords by introducing an upper age limit of 80 and scrapping hereditary peers. Secularists will be arguing that any immediate modernisation must also include the removal of the archaic, unfair, and undemocratic bishops’ bench.

But we need to go further. A state religion is incompatible with a democracy in which all citizens of every religion and belief are equal. The announcement of the election unfortunately spelt the end of a bill backed by the National Secular Society to disestablish the Church of England.  But we’ll urge the next Government to engage with this long overdue democratic reform to transform the UK into a fully secular democracy, free from religious privilege.

A new administration will bring fresh hope for other necessary reforms, such as assisted dying, making wedding law fairer for all, outlawing caste discrimination, removing the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose, and effectively protecting children from abuse in religious settings.

Ultimately, Britain needs a new political framework to foster unity and keep religious fundamentalism in check by balancing religious freedom with other fundamental human rights. Secularism offers such a framework.

That’s why we’ll be urging the next Government to adopt secularist principles and policies which move us towards a freer and fairer society, where people can live by the creed they choose but where no particular religion or belief is privileged or imposed.

Related reading

Faith schools: where do the political parties stand? by Stephen Evans

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Religion and belief in schools: lessons to be learnt, by Russell Sandberg

The case for secularism (or, the church’s new clothes), by Neil Barber

Three years on, the lessons of Batley are yet to be learned, by Jack Rivington

Secularism is a feminist issue, by Megan Manson

Blasphemy and bishops: how secularists are navigating the culture wars, by Emma Park

Bad Religious Education, by Siniša Prijić

Silence of the teachers, by Nath Jnan

The perils of dropping a book, by Noel Yaxley

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

Cancel culture and religious intolerance: ‘Falsely Accused of Islamophobia’, by Steven Greer, by Daniel James Sharp

‘This is not rocket science’: the Disestablishment of the Church of England Bill 2023, interview with Paul Scriven by Emma Park

The post What secularists want from the next UK Government appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

On the afternoon of Wednesday 6th December 2023, Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer, introduced his private member’s bill, the Disestablishment of the Church of England Bill, in the House of Lords, after it had been selected by ballot.

In the UK Parliament, the first reading of a bill is usually a mere formality, with the meat of the debate being reserved for the second reading – which may happen a few months later, if there is time and circumstances do not intervene.

When Lord Scriven, however, ‘beg[ged] to introduce a bill to disestablish the Church of England, to make provision for the protection of freedom of religion or belief, and for connected purposes,’ there were noises of dissent halfway through – apparently from the Conservative government’s side.

And when the Lord Speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith, asked the House whether they were ‘content’ to let the bill be read a first time, there was vociferous opposition, to the point where he initially responded that the ‘not contents’ had it, before changing his mind. The full drama can be seen (and heard) in the video clip linked in Lord Scriven’s tweet below.

A brief history of (dis)establishment

The origin of the establishment of the Church of England was Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534. This made him the ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’ and required that his subjects swear an oath of loyalty recognising his marriage to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, after he had unilaterally decided to cancel his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

The Act of Supremacy was repealed under Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter when she became Mary I, but then re-enacted in 1558 under Elizabeth I. Section VIII, entitled ‘All Spiritual Jurisdiction united to the Crown,’ is still in force today.

The last time a bill was introduced into Parliament that would have disestablished the Church was in 1991, in Tony Benn’s Commonwealth of Britain Bill, which would also have abolished the House of Lords altogether and removed the constitutional role of the monarchy. However, the bill’s second reading was repeatedly deferred and there was never a full debate.

In January 2020, another Liberal Democrat peer, Dick Taverne, introduced a private member’s bill on one aspect of disestablishment: the House of Lords (Removal of Bishops) Bill. This passed its first reading, but fell by the wayside during the pandemic.

Other points in recent history at which disestablishment or the removal of the bishops from the Lords was considered are recorded in a paper on ‘The relationship between church and state in the United Kingdom’, published by the House of Commons Library in September.

The 2018 debate

Disestablishment was briefly debated in the House of Lords on 28 November 2018, under Elizabeth II. A Labour peer, Lord Berkeley, asked the Conservative government ‘what assessment they have made of the case for the disestablishment of the Church of England.’ The laconic answer, from Lord Young of Cookham, was, ‘My Lords, none.’

Lord Berkeley pointed out that attendance at the Church of England was falling rapidly, and that ‘half of British people have no religion’. He therefore proposed that it would be time for Charles, when he became king, ‘to embrace this secular state’ and swear an appropriately non-religious oath. This led to a discussion about the status of the Church of England and constitutional reform.

For anyone who thinks that the bishops in the Lords are a mere relic, their entrenched place in the establishment can be illustrated by a few quotations from this debate. Lord Young argued that the bishops in the Lords ‘add a spiritual dimension to our discussions. They speak with a moral authority that escapes most of us…The bishops seek to heal religious conflict and promote religious tolerance and inclusiveness.’ In a word, the government’s policy was ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. Without a trace of self-interest, the Lord Bishop of Worcester proposed that ‘the established Church is a significant force for good.’

Lord Scriven’s Bill

About 24 hours before the Disestablishment Bill was introduced, I interviewed Paul Scriven over a cup of tea in the House of Lords. An edited version of the interview is below. We discuss his motivations for bringing the bill, even though it is almost certainly doomed to fail, and why he is bringing it now, of all times. We also look at the relationship of the Church to the monarchy and of disestablishment to wider constitutional reform; and whether the bishops or other religious leaders really have any claim to moral authority.

~ Emma Park, Editor

Interview

Freethinker: How did you come to introduce this bill?

Paul Scriven: A little bit by accident. I entered the Lords reluctantly, as I do not agree with an unelected second house. In 2014, Nick Clegg wanted to put a number of peers in, like me, who believed that when the time came, we would vote for a reformed elected chamber. I am quite a nonconformist by background. I grew up on a council estate in Huddersfield and have always rallied against authority. When I have seen unfairness, I have fought it. Then Nick finally beat me down and got me into this place. Now that I am here, I realise it is a place where you can champion causes which are important to improve either individual lives or the state of the nation or internationally.

I was an agnostic when I came in. I have sat and watched the Bishops’ Bench for the last nearly ten years, and their views on social matters have made me a confirmed atheist. It is quite clear they are way behind the curve on where the vast majority of Britons are, whether on same-sex marriage or women or a number of issues. If that is Christianity in action from the Church of England perspective, then I do not want anything to do with it. They do not represent modern Britain – that was clear from the 2021 census.

Has being gay influenced your perspective on this issue?

I find some churches’ views on being gay baffling. Others are clearly more progressive. It is hurtful at times having to hear that you are not equal, even though they say that God loves you – and then it is quite clear that they do not like my kind of love. That is wretched. It has not driven me to my position. I just think that, on a wider number of issues, listening to the bishops has made me not want to be associated with what I see as predominantly white old men arguing about how to keep an institution together and very conservative in their views.

I also find it absolutely bewildering that in the UK Parliament, there is only one institution that is guaranteed places, and that is the 26 Anglican bishops who sit in the House of Lords. In 2023, how on earth does a Church which has 0.9% of the population [in England] in regular attendance at a Sunday service have an automatic right to be in Parliament, determine laws and have influence and power beyond its relevance to most people?

More broadly, why is it that the Church of England has so much influence, power and a special status in our society, when those who want to practise any faith or belief should have equality? The time now is ripe for disestablishment – especially when you consider what a diverse country we are, in terms not just of our faith, but of our cultures and beliefs. It seems ridiculous that one religious denomination should have a special status that goes back to a king wanting a divorce in the 1500s.

In terms of tactics, the next general election has to take place no later than January 2025. Did you ever consider leaving the bill until the next government?

Very few private member’s bills actually become law. In all honesty, I think it is more likely that snow will fall in hell than that my bill will get through this time. It is important, though, to raise the issue, because of the diversity of beliefs and faiths revealed by the 2021 census. I could stay quiet and hope for the next government to have a different view, which I think highly unlikely. It will have a large legislative programme and probably the disestablishment of the Church of England will not be among its priorities.

If the bill falls, I can file it again at the start of the next Parliament. I am looking at this in the longer term. During the debate in the second reading, I will be able to listen to people’s objections and amend the bill, which will hopefully strengthen it next time round.

Is the bill officially supported by the Liberal Democrats?

No, as a private member’s bill it is not. It is not an issue which I discussed with my party first. I am sure that as the debate happens and as the bill progresses, there will be cross-party support from all over the House. My guess is that there will also be opposition from people of different parties too.

How did the drafting process work?

I had been in touch with the National Secular Society (NSS) over a number of issues, and I just said to them, I think now is the time to introduce the private member’s bill for disestablishment. We had a discussion and they told me what was important to them. I also had discussions with Humanists UK (HUK). There were a number of issues which both organisations wanted in the bill. To actually draft the bill in appropriate parliamentary language, I worked with the House of Lords Private Bill Office.

Apart from the NSS and HUK, did you work with any other organisations on the bill?

Those were the two organisations that reached out and spoke to me. I have had quite a lot of emails from people in the Church of England supporting disestablishment. They have told me that, for them, there is a real feeling that disestablishment could be liberating. They would no longer be seen as an organ of the state, and would be able to start doing things based on their true mission, which were not either weakened or diluted by their Church’s established status.

Have you asked the bishops for their point of view?

I talked to the Bishop of Sheffield briefly about it. They will probably disagree. And when we get to the second reading, they will have arguments as to why they want to keep their privileged status and their seats in Parliament. However, they do not come from a position of neutrality. It will be interesting to see if they all have the same view.

Is your argument for disestablishment premised on the state of the Church of England now, or is it a matter of principle, or both?

It is a matter of principle. No faith or belief should have a special status. People should be able to pursue their belief or religion equally.

One possibility sometimes mooted by supporters of religion is that, instead of simply having 26 bishops, the major religions and Christian denominations in the UK could all have allocated seats. What would you say to this?

Religions do not have a monopoly on morals, they do not have a monopoly on insight. You only have to look at some of the child abuse scandals in the Church of England and how they were covered up to realise that. If an individual within a church or a belief system has such significant impact that they can help influence the House of Lords in its present form, then they should by all means be individually nominated. But it should not be the very fact that they are an office-holder or attached to a particular religion.

One common view about the bishops in the Lords is that, well, they are quite nice, and are probably overall a good rather than a bad influence on legislation. How would you respond to that?

They are an influence. It is not for me to determine whether they are good or bad. They have a vested interest to ensure that they can use this place to ingrain their privileged position. On a number of occasions, I have been on the same side of the argument as the bishops, such as in the Illegal Migration Bill. But the fact that they are bishops does not mean that they should automatically be here and able to make those points.

Is there an analogy between bishops and hereditary peers, in terms of their lack of democratic legitimacy?

Being a hereditary peer depends on which womb you came out of. But even the hereditary peers in the Lords are now elected before they get here, unlike the bishops, who are plonked in because of the church they are in.

The peers are chosen by the world’s smallest electorate…

Yes. But the bishops come because they decided to study a certain theological doctrine and then they have climbed the greasy pole within a particular church. It is very odd to me.

What about the technicalities of disestablishment? I have heard some Anglicans saying that they support disestablishment in theory, but in practice it would simply be too difficult to disentangle all the knots that bind Church and State.

Isn’t that interesting? What they are really doing is arguing that they have got their fingers and their claws in so many parts of our constitution that it would be too difficult to touch it. On that argument, quite a lot of legislation would never get done.

My bill is not specific about the technicalities. It asks that, within six months of its being passed, a committee is set up for a year to look at the legal implications of what needs to happen to disestablish the Church of England. The committee would be made up of relevant legal practitioners and people who are specialists in the constitution and in law to do with the Church of England. A report then goes to the Secretary of State, and within six months of receiving that report, the Secretary of State has to produce a detailed legal bill on disestablishment. I am not saying this is going to be easy. There are going to be some very difficult conundrums in there, for example over the Act of Union.

Difficulty should not be a reason for not legislating, but for doing it carefully, with good legal minds and an appropriate timescale.

In terms of the implications of disestablishment, the Church of England owns a lot of property. What do you say should happen to it?

I do not want to get into a big argument about this. My bill says that property will go to the Church’s General Synod. And the sovereign will no longer have the title ‘Defender of the Faith’.

Talking of the monarchy, is getting rid of it a logical next step after disestablishment?

No, that does not automatically follow. There are many functioning constitutional monarchies in Europe where the monarch is not head of the church. So one does not follow from the other. Personally, I am not a republican. I believe in a European-style constitutional monarchy.

What sort of a coronation would you envisage post-disestablishment?

A non-religious one, which would crown the monarch as the constitutional monarch of the country, not as the head of a particular faith. It could be quite interesting to develop a new coronation.

Presumably the monarch would no longer be obliged to be Anglican?

Yes. This is not rocket science. Religion would come out of the coronation, and the monarch would no longer be the ultimate boss of the Church of England.

What about other religions with a presence in Parliament? As things stand, do they have much influence behind the scenes?

Not as much as the established church. There are people of faith – Christian, Muslim, Sikh – or of no faith, like the Humanists, who try to exert influence on legislation. But the difference is that it is equal and they have to win the argument. They have not got an ingrained position. I would not want to stop that. One of the purposes of my bill is to defend people’s right to have faith and non-belief, and to be able to pursue that equally.

One of the arguments that will get thrown about is that I am anti-religious. What I actually want to do is level the playing field between the influence of all faiths and beliefs.

Taking a step back, how far are we from full-scale House of Lords reform?

It is going to be a long journey. At the age of 48, I came here naïvely thinking I would be a turkey voting for Christmas. I am now 57, and I have worked out since being here that the evolution of the British system is not always as fast as you want it to be. To reform the House of Lords would take a lot of effort and heartache. I do not think Labour will do it in their first term, but if they get in for a second term, then there may be some significant reform. My guess is that it will be in steps rather than a big leap, which is the way that the British have tended to go for their revolutions for many centuries now. The removal of the hereditary peers and the bishops might be one of the first possible reforms in terms of moving to a democratically elected chamber eventually. Other reforms might include lowering the size of the House, fixing a retirement age for peers, and changing the way that peers are selected.

As you say, disestablishment may not be high on a Labour government’s list of reforms. Indeed, why should it be high on anyone’s agenda, when we have so many other problems in the UK to deal with?

Things that affect people’s lives every day, such as the health service, the economy, housing, safety, are always going to be there. I am not suggesting for one moment that the disestablishment of the Church of England should take priority over the health service, for instance. What my bill intends to do is to raise awareness so that when the time is right and government space becomes available, there will be public understanding and the pressure to deliver disestablishment. Eventually, the public will say, ‘Now is the time for change.’

And when will ‘eventually’ be?

I cannot give you an answer. We are getting the ball rolling; maybe it will happen in my lifetime, maybe it won’t. But we shall keep pushing for it. And hopefully it will become such a public discussion that, one day, the government will make time for it.

The post ‘This is not rocket science’: the Disestablishment of the Church of England Bill 2023 appeared first on The Freethinker.

And never mind the Heir Apparent’s even more eccentric idea of becoming ‘Defender of Faith’ (which, according to his official website, he has now ditched) thereby encompassing all religions whatsoever practised in Britain, but excluding the non-religious majority of his subjects, particularly the young. (The Freethinker respectfully suggests that a more inclusive title would be Defender of All Faiths and None.*)

The number of Lords Spiritual is limited to a maximum of 26 by statute. There are at present 24, five women and 19 men. Women bishops were not approved by the General Synod of the Church of England until 2014; weirdly, those now in Parliament receive the title of ‘Lord Bishop’, as though no one had noticed they were female.

Despite being a small proportion in a House of ‘about 800’, the bishops’ status is privileged by procedure. They sit on the government side of the House, on the two front benches nearest the throne. Every day that the Lords are in session, one of them leads prayers before the official proceedings can begin. When a bishop stands up to speak or ask a question, according to Liberal Democrat peer Dick Taverne, they are ‘entitled to precedence’. The Lords Spiritual must retire at 70, although former Archbishops of Canterbury and York customarily receive a life peerage, and so continue to sit in the House after retirement.

In the last two decades, the bishops’ record in the legislative process has been mixed. They tend to participate less than other peers: according to a House of Lords Library Briefing, their attendance in the 2005–06 and 2016–17 sessions averaged 18 per cent, compared with 58.5 per cent for the House as a whole.

The bishops are not affiliated to a particular party, and do not always vote as a bloc. Usually, they turn up in larger numbers for issues relating to religion or education. For instance, nine voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in 2013, while five abstained and the rest stayed away.

The most controversial debate in which the Lords Spiritual have been involved recently, together with other religiously affiliated peers, has been the debate on Baroness Meacher’s Bill, which took place on 22nd October 2021. The Assisted Dying Bill, as it is formally known, would legalise medically assisted suicide for terminally ill people who are ‘reasonably expected to die within six months’.

During the debate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the bishops of Durham, Carlisle and Chichester, spoke out in opposition to the Bill. Welby declared, on behalf of the Bishops’ bench, that there was ‘unanimity…that our current law does not need to be changed.’ John Sentamu, the former Archbishop of York and now a life peer, also opposed the Bill. It did, however, receive support from other religious peers outside the Lords Spiritual, including the former archbishop George Carey, Ruth Davidson (Church of Scotland), Augustine O’Donnell (Catholic), and Lord Leigh (a self-described ‘progressive Jew’).

Reading the Hansard report, it is striking how many times religious beliefs were invoked, particularly in opposition to the Bill. Lord Eames, former Primate of All Ireland, described how he had often ‘prayed that a person’s suffering would cease—that somehow, in my faith, the Almighty would receive them out of their pain.’ Lord Davies of Gower, a Conservative, admitted that ‘my Christian beliefs play a big part in this.’ Lord Sheikh asserted that ‘human life is sacred…As a Muslim, I am totally opposed to this Bill.’ ‘We have to accept the will of almighty God,’ said Lord Suri, a Sikh peer. ‘The holy scripture of Sikhism says that whosoever has come into this world has to go on their allotted day.’ Another Sikh peer, Lord Singh, invoked religious authority in his claim that ‘assisting in the killing of our fellow human beings has been condemned by leaders of all our major faiths.’

At times, the debate strayed into the otherworldly. Lord Cormack, a Christian, criticised the Bill’s failure to ‘acknowledge the fact that many of us believe in the afterlife’. The ‘judgment’ after death was also invoked by Lord McCrea, a retired Presbyterian minister. ‘The man God, Jesus Christ,’ said the Bishop of Chichester, ‘experienced the evil and suffering of the cross in order that we….might find hope and the recovery of life in heaven.’ The award for the most mystical contribution, however, goes to Lord Pearson, former leader of UKIP, who described going through a ‘near-death experience’ during which he seemed to hear a ‘wonderful voice’ and was ‘told that all this, the eternal force of good, was losing to its opposite, the eternal force of evil’.

The closing speech was given by Robert Winston, the eminent scientist, Labour peer, and presenter of the BBC documentary The Story of God. Winston noted that, if the Bill should proceed to committee stage, ‘the Bishops’ Bench is extremely important in this.’ Although, he said, he was a Jew, not a Christian, nevertheless, ‘the influence the bishops have on the moral compass of this debate is extremely important.’ He stressed that the debate ‘is not an argument about religion; religion is irrelevant. The debate is about how we understand what our ethical standards should be and how we maintain the ethics of our society.’

These remarks are telling. If religion was not relevant, then why should the ethical views of the bishops, rather than of anyone else, play such a key role? In fact, the Hansard report reveals that, for several peers, religion was clearly of central relevance – even if they were a minority in a debate that lasted eight hours. For the ‘unbeliever’ Lord Lipsey, a Labour peer, religion was ‘the Banquo at the feast’, hovering in the background even more than it was expressly articulated.

Somehow, the Lords Spiritual are considered to have a special authority both to speak about death and to influence legislation which the government has already said, in response to a petition, is an ‘issue of conscience’. The laws on assisted dying, however, affect everyone, not just those with religious beliefs; and the population as a whole seems to be much more supportive of reform than the bishops. The debate on Meacher’s Bill thus provides a clear demonstration of the flaws in allowing bishops in Parliament: first, they are perceived to have a particular authority on ‘moral’ issues, and second, their presence there seems to encourage other peers to appeal to religious beliefs in a matter of secular legislation.

Whether Meacher’s Bill will progress further before the end of the Parliamentary session this summer seems increasingly unlikely: various members of the Lords have proposed 212 amendments that would be a marathon to get through. The Conservative peer, Lord Forsyth, recently tried to force the government to consider assisted dying via an amendment to the Health and Care Bill. During the debate on the Bill, he withdrew his amendment. However, he has not yet given up. As he tells me via email, ‘I intend to put it to a vote unless the Government gives me an undertaking to provide time for a future private members bill.’ It will be interesting to see how the bishops respond.

On occasion, the bishops also turn up to vote on legislation which seems to have little to do with Christianity. For instance, nine bishops helped to defeat a clause in the government’s Internal Market Bill 2020, which would have allowed ‘ministers to disapply the Northern Ireland protocol with the European Union,’ while eight voted against a clause which would have allowed the government to ‘renege on the Withdrawal Agreement’, according to the Church Times. In such clearly secular issues, the case for the involvement of religious representatives is even weaker.

The Church of England is ‘remote from reality’, Taverne told me in an interview. On 28th January 2020, he introduced a private member’s bill to remove the bishops’ entitlement to membership of the Lords, a topic on which he has long been vocal. Conventionally, the first reading of a bill is a formality. But this time, he says, there was a ‘stir of protest from the Conservative benches’ (this can be heard in the video). ‘It was a very curious occasion,’ he says; afterwards, ‘Lots of people came up to me and said, “Good bill!”’ But the pandemic struck before the Bill could move to its second reading; as a result, according to the UK Parliament website, it will ‘make no further progress.’ Unfortunately, says Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society, there are no other peers who are willing to ‘stick their heads above the parapet’ on this issue.

Despite its continuing participation in politics, there are signs that even within the Church of England, there are suspicions that the Bishops’ Bench is untenable, at least in its present form. In February this year, a confidential document about proposed reforms to the system of bishops was leaked to the Church Times. The document, entitled A consultation document: Bishops and their ministry fit for a new context, was co-authored by Maggie Swinson, Mark Sheard and Stephen Conway, who is on the Bishops’ Bench. It has since been made publicly available. Among other proposals, the authors, on the basis of a ‘listening exercise with current Lords Spiritual (and indeed with other diocesan bishops)’, anticipated that ‘reform of the House of Lords is inevitable at some stage.’ If the Church wanted to control the direction of this reform, the authors suggested, then this would need to involve ‘reduction in number of Lords Spiritual and the attachment of those roles to specific sees rather than by rotational allocation.’

It is unclear how far this analysis is shared by all senior members of the C of E. (The Church did not respond to a request for comment.) However, it does seem to suggest a certain desperation to cling onto political power, however minimal, rather than simply to give it up gracefully.

Some supporters of the bishops have been toying with another idea: to swell the numbers of the faithful in the Lords to include the diversely faithful. In 2018, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, the Conservative Minister for Faith under Theresa May (herself an avowed Anglican), ‘backed calls for leaders of other faiths to be added as official lords spiritual’ in the interests of ‘broader representation’, according to The Times.

But just which religions would be allowed in under such proposals? If Parliament intended to be as inclusive as some organisations, such as the Police Chaplaincy, it might have to feature representatives of Subud, Zoroastrianism and Bahá’i, as well as of atheism (strangely listed by the Chaplaincy under ‘Faith at a Glance’). Currently, scientology and druidism have been recognised, but Pastafarianism, in all likelihood, would not be. And yet, as worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster would say, their creed is no more incredible than anyone else’s.

As far as Britain’s non-religious majority are concerned, the argument for group representation does not apply easily to them. Some might wish to be represented in Parliament by an organisation like Humanists UK, but many others would have little common ground with one another, ethical or otherwise, beyond the bare fact of not being religious. A similar point might be made about people who were religious in some sense but unaffiliated to a particular organisation or creed.

The argument can be made that some religious beliefs necessitate, at least in some circumstances, support for a particular political stance or course of action. However, there is a difference between advocating a policy in Parliament because of your religious beliefs, and being automatically entitled to sit in Parliament because of those beliefs, or because of your affiliation to a group that promotes them.

In general, the idea that political representation should require the individual to join an organisation defined by certain beliefs and practices, rather than simply making a decision on election day among a range of choices based on whatever considerations they think appropriate, is highly problematic. It is like saying that, to vote Labour, you must be a member of the Labour party; and if you are, then you cannot vote Conservative.

All of which suggests that there are serious flaws in the ‘faith leader’ model of political representation. The secularist position, in contrast, is that religion is a private matter. Political debate, which is a matter of public concern to everyone, must be conducted in terms of our common world and through arguments and terms of reference available to everyone. It is unjust for representatives of speculative belief systems to be given the moral and political standing to impose their views on others.

As outlined in a recent webinar from the UCL Constitution Unit, the House of Lords is in need of a multitude of reforms – but lack of agreement continues to hinder progress. Clearly, there are many other problems with the Lords, such as the continued space for 92 hereditary peers. But if Britain as a country wants a political system in which religious doctrines are not invoked in secular lawmaking, abolishing the bishops would be a good place to start.

*Omnium Fiderum Defensor Nulliusque

Update: Should the House of Lords have allocated seats for ‘faith leaders’? Add your vote to our Twitter poll.

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