Gladstone, church and state

Abstract

For almost a century — perhaps from the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 until Welsh disestablishment in 1919 — the question of the relationship between the state (and society) and the church (or churches) was a hot topic. Over a similar period after Welsh disestablishment, it was nothing of the sort. But towards the end of the twentieth century there was a change. It came about for a number of reasons: constitutional adjustments, especially reform of the House of Lords; the New Labour emphasis on ‘multiculturalism’; the apparently irresistible decline in church attendance; the widespread triumph of moral relativism; the growth and implications of Islamic fundamentalism; and the changing balance within the Anglican Communion worldwide. In 1998 Lord Williams told the House of Lords, in response to a question from Lord Waddington: ‘the Government have no plans to introduce legislation to disestablish the Church of England. We would not contemplate disestablishment unless the Church wished it, and it has not told us that it does.’¹ Four years later, their lordships spent three hours on a church and state debate.² In the early years of the twenty-first century, it seemed possible that the area of debate which so exercised Gladstone during his half-century in the Commons might once again become a live issue.