The UK is one of the last western democracies with a state religion: the Church of England.
The Church's entanglement with the state is bad for both.
Join our campaign to disestablish the Church.
CAMPAIGN ALERT: Support the disestablishment bill
In November 2023, a private member's bill to disestablish the Church of England was selected in the ballot.
Please write to your MP and urge them to support this bill, to make the UK are more equitable and democratic country for people of all religions and beliefs.
Since our founding in 1866, one of our primary objectives has been disestablishment of the Church of England: its formal separation from the state.
More than 150 years later, census figures show most people in England and Wales are not Christian. Surveys consistently reveal a similar picture in Scotland. The case for disestablishment has never been stronger.
Disestablishment means the Church would no longer have privileged input into government - but also that government could not involve itself in the running of the Church. Both sides would gain autonomy. This is why support for Church-state separation can be found within the CofE itself.
There have been many proponents, religious and non-religious, for church-state separation, and there are a wide variety of motivations for supporting this reform.
The existence of a legally-enshrined national religion privileges one part of the population, one institution and one set of beliefs. Removing all symbolic and institutional ties between government and religion is the only way to ensure equal treatment to citizens of all religions and none.
The Church of England has enjoyed significant privileges relating its established status for many centuries. These privileges have remained largely unchanged despite the massive and continuing reduction in support for the Church in the UK. It is highly likely that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, making the Church of England's continuation as the established church unsustainable.
- Christians are a minority in Britain. In Wales and Scotland the majority have no religion.
- Just 1% of 18-24 year olds say they belong to the Church of England.
- Less than 1% of the population regularly attend Church of England church services.
The Church of England is also out of step with the UK public on several key issues: it remains opposed to same-sex relationships and allows parishes to reject women as bishops and priests. These discriminatory positions cannot be reconciled with the Church's status as part of the UK state.
And no institution with the shameful historical record of the Church of England safeguarding and abuse should retain its privileged role in the British establishment.
The existence of a legally enshrined national religion privileges one part of the population, one institution and one set of beliefs. Removing all symbolic and institutional ties between government and religion is the only way to ensure equal treatment of citizens of all religions and none.
Take action!
1. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to support the separation of church and state
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
New paper calls for secular ceremony of remembrance at the Cenotaph
Posted: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 14:58
A new academic paper examining the origins of the Cenotaph and the ceremonies surrounding it has questioned the role of the Church of England at the annual ceremony of remembrance at the Cenotaph, and calls for the event to be made more inclusive.
The paper, by Professor Norman Bonney, emeritus professor at Edinburgh Napier University, and a director of the National Secular Society, argues that in a religiously diverse nation where large sectors of the population do not hold or practise religious beliefs, it is no longer appropriate for the Church to lead the nation in remembrance.
The Remembrance event has changed little since it was first introduced in 1921. Christian rituals are prominent, hymns are sung, a bishop leads a religious procession, and cross is born in front of the procession and the bishop invokes the 'Lord Jesus Christ' in a prayer.
The paper reveals that the Cenotaph monument was deliberately designed and approved by the Cabinet to be a secular monument without Christian or other religious inscriptions or features because of the diversity in the beliefs of the allied and Empire dead of the First World War.
The paper demonstrates the initial hostility of the Church of England to the monument and outlines its attempts to replace the ceremony with one in Westminster Abbey at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier – a second monument to the dead of the First World War that was devised to become an alternative focus for national remembrance. This attempt failed because of strong public preference for a ceremony at the Cenotaph.
The paper's author, Norman Bonney, said; "Changes in religious belief, emphasised in recent census findings, demonstrate that Christianity in general, and the Church of England in particular, can no longer be fully inclusive of the whole community, particularly when over a quarter of the population have no religion. It is therefore right to question the appropriateness of the Church being so closely associated with a national ceremony of remembrance which should be equally inclusive of all citizens, regardless of religion and belief."
A summary of the paper, The Cenotaph: A consensual and contested monument of remembrance, can be found here.
NSS members challenge judicial church service that reinforces links between church and state
Posted: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 11:45
Two members of the National Secular Society have written to the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, asking that he end the Anglican Church service in Westminster Abbey that marks the opening of the judicial year on 1 October.
The church service — complete with the judges wearing wigs and gowns and gilt regalia processing into the Abbey — is seen by Peter Fisher, a long-serving Justice Ministry official and John Butcher, once a parliamentary candidate for the Tories and now a Councillor in Surrey, as an inappropriate reinforcement of the link between the Church and the state.
In their letter to the Justice Minister they say that in an increasingly secular and multi-faith society it is wrong for judges to be seen paying homage to one denomination, the Church of England.
The letter says that they fear the church service risks prejudicing decision on religious matters and asks that the names of judges attending the Abbey since 2007 to be published. The two say they have no objection to judges attending services in a private capacity.
In medieval times, they point out, it was customary for judges to seek "divine guidance" for judicial decisions. Judges are at risk of seeming biased in cases involving a witness or defendant in which an issue of religion arises, they argue. "The judge trying such a case is placed in a difficult position if [he or she] has attended the judges' service [and] may appear to have prejudged the religious issue by publicly appearing to support particular beliefs," their letter states.
They add: "In Scotland there has long been a related tradition of holding two judges' services at the start of each legal year: a Protestant service in the Kirk, and a Catholic 'Red Mass'. That practice is now a topic of public controversy in Scotland, where it is currently under debate, and so may well soon have to be changed."
Mr Butcher and Mr Fisher ask Chris Grayling to cancel the service in the Abbey but allow the Lord Chancellor's breakfast that follows the service to continue, since that is not a religious event.
Next Tuesday's procession will be led for the first time by the new Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Thomas.
Fisher told The Guardian that he knows "for a fact" that some judges are quite uneasy about [attending the Abbey service]. Judges are reluctant to complain about it, however, in case it adversely affects their careers.
Butcher said: "To attend the service in public, in judicial time, in this way really does compromise their independence." One way of resolving it, they warn, would be a judicial review of the practice – decided by a judge who had never previously attended the service.
The Guardian's legal affairs correspondent, Joshua Rozenberg, argues that attendance at a religious service does not necessarily indicate any allegiance to that religion. And nor does allegiance to a religion necessarily impair a judges ability to make sound judgements when that religion is subject of a court proceeding.
He points to the case of Lord Justice Laws — himself an Anglican and married to a prominent theologian — who dismissed the appeal of the Christian marriage guidance counsellor Garry McFarlane who did not want to provide services to gay couples.
His judgement was a model of secularism, including this passage:
"We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion — any belief system — cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.
"The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself."
Mr Rozenberg expressed some sympathy with the points that Mr Butcher and Mr Fisher had made and thought the church service was, indeed, not appropriate. He wrote:
"Much though I enjoy legal traditions of all kinds, I do wonder whether it is still appropriate for judges of many faiths and none to pray together for guidance. It is not very edifying to see independent judges taking part in religious rites which are, at best, meaningless to them and, at worst, offensive to their actual beliefs."
Rozenberg discouraged the two from carrying out their threat to challenge the whole thing in court:
"I cannot see how an application for judicial review could succeed in bringing the Abbey service to an end. Attendance is not compulsory. How can it be unlawful for the Lord Chancellor to invite judges to a religious service or for the dean to conduct it? And how can it be unlawful for a judge to go to church?"
Mr Rozenberg did, however, have strong reservations about the cost of the proceedings.
The Ministry of Justice was quick to dismiss the protest, a spokesperson telling The Guardian: "We believe concerns about possible religious bias resulting from the judges' service are completely unfounded. On appointment every judge is required to take both the oath of allegiance to the Crown and the judicial oath which requires them 'to do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of their realm without fear or favour, affection or ill will'. Judges attach the greatest importance to this oath and reach decisions without partiality or bias of any kind, including on matters of religious faith."
In May this year, the NSS raised objections to similar ceremonies taking place in Scotland, which additionally have a sectarian element. The NSS wrote to Kenny MacAskill MSP, the Scottish Government's Cabinet Secretary for Justice to draw his attention to a possible undermining of the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Scottish judiciary.
The NSS complaint relates to two ceremonies, the Red Mass (Catholic) and the 'Kirking of the Court' (Protestant). At the ceremonies, which are attended by all levels of the judiciary in Scotland, judges are invited to request 'guidance from the Holy Spirit' for all who seek justice.
See here for more details of our complaint.
