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
Church of England 'colluded' with sex abuse bishop and failed victims, says report
Posted: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:14
The head of the Church of England, Justin Welby, has admitted that the Church "concealed" evidence of child abuse by a former bishop and failed to help his victims.
The admissions comes following the publication of independent review into the way the Church of England responded to the case of Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester, who was jailed in 2015 after admitting a string of historical sex offences against 18 teenagers and young men. Ball was released from jail in February after serving 16 months.
In the foreword to her report, Dame Moira Gibb said the serious sexual wrongdoing of Ball "is shocking in itself but is compounded by the failure of the church to respond appropriately to his misconduct, again over a period of many years".
"Ball's priority was to protect and promote himself and he maligned the abused. The church colluded. The church colluded with that rather than seeking to help those he had harmed, or assuring itself of the safety of others."
The Report says the Church's attitude to homosexuality part in the failure to act appropriately.
Responding to the Report, Archbishop Welby said: "Abuse of Faith makes harrowing reading: the Church colluded and concealed rather than seeking to help those who were brave enough to come forward".
The report makes 11 recommendations, including improving support to survivors of clerical abuse and taking steps to "demonstrate the individual and collective accountability of bishops".
Peter Hancock, the C of E's lead safeguarding bishop, said he was "appalled and disturbed" by the report's contents. He said there were "no excuses" and confirmed that the Church would accept all of Dame Moira Gibb' recommendations.
The report is highly critical of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, who has subsequently been asked to step down from his position as an honorary assistant bishop by Justin Welby.
According to the Report, Lord Carey "set the tone for the Church's response to Ball's crimes and gave the steer which allowed Ball's assertions that he was innocent to gain credence".
The Report states that Lord Carey "was already aware that the Church had received letters raising concern about Ball's abuse of other young men", yet he intervened with the Police and CPS to dissuade them from charging Ball.
The National Secular Society said this raised "serious concerns about misconduct in public office" which it has called to be investigated.
In a statement, Lord Carey said the report made "deeply uncomfortable reading" and apologised to the victims of Peter Ball.
Another former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams, is criticised for making "lamentably slow" progress, despite setting the wheels in motion that ultimately led to the criminal case against Peter Ball being reopened.
The National Secular Society, which submitted evidence to the Review, said the findings were a "damning indictment" on the established Church.
NSS executive director, Keith Porteous Wood, said: "The culture of bishops with selective amnesia closing ranks and the bullying of victims and whistle-blowers played a significant role in a suicide and in Ball escaping justice for decades. That culture persists to this day. We asked Dame Moira specifically to investigate these aspects but there is no reference to them in her report. Until these fatal institutional flaws are recognised and excised no amount of child protection procedures will be effective.
"The Report could not credibly have let Lord Carey off the hook, but it has still been very gentle on him given it states he had known of complaints of Ball's conduct which it seems inexplicable he could not have believed. We hope that this aspect is formally re-examined.
"There seems little doubt that only because it was the established Church were Lord Carey and other senior churchmen able to exert such influence over the administration of justice in a way that has belatedly been admitted to have been so disastrous. Indeed, because it is the established Church, its bishops are classified as public officers and the law rightly requires of them a minimum standard of conduct.
"It seems to us that it will be difficult for them to argue in court – even using material in this report - that misconduct in public office has not taken place. We hope that the question of whether such misconduct has taken place will be robustly investigated."
The report also highlights the role of other arms of "the establishment", most notably Gloucestershire Police, which in its submission to the CPS said that charging Ball would "have a devastating effect on the Church which is already in turmoil".
Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer at Slater and Gordon, told The Times: "Given what's in the report, there is now a clear case for the police and CPS to consider criminal charges against senior [Church of England] figures, including Lord Carey, for offences of misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice."
NSS calls for moratorium on Government funding of cathedrals
Posted: Tue, 16 May 2017 13:22
Following concerns raised by the National Secular Society, the UK spending watchdog has concluded that "improvements" were needed in the process the Government used to award vast sums of public money for cathedral repairs.
The National Audit Office criticisms related to assessing the extent to which the Church could fund the repairs without recourse to these grants, and a failure to provide agreed annual reports. The NSS is calling for these concerns to be resolved before any further funds are released.
The NSS wrote to the National Audit Office to highlight concerns about the Government's award of around £221 million since 2014 for repairs to places of worship, the vast majority to the Church of England. Cathedrals have received £40 million for repairs under the 'First World War Centenary Cathedral Repair Fund'.
The NSS said it recognised the need to maintain the country's architectural heritage, but sounded the alarm after conducting research revealing the cathedrals' substantial wealth. It asked the spending watchdog to investigate whether the cathedrals had demonstrated genuine financial need. Even excluding the massive funds at church and parish level, the CofE has estimated assets comfortably exceeding £10bn.
After investigating the grant process, the Audit Office has identified "a number of areas for improvement in the governance, operation and oversight of the Fund" which it has subsequently reported to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The NAO has told them that there were "improvements that could have been made to bolster the process".
In response to the NSS's concerns about cathedrals' substantial wealth not being taken into account, the NAO acknowledged that it had "not seen evidence that sufficient information about the liquidity of cathedrals' investments was available to allow those assets to be assessed in determining their financial need." It also revealed, disturbingly, that "financial need is assessed less strictly" than necessity and heritage significance. The NSS will be pressing the DCMS to establish who authorised financial need to be assessed more laxly than the other criteria, and with what authority.
Despite the taxpayers' enormous generosity to the Church, the Church so far has shown no inclination to honour the minimal obligation of completing year-end reports for the Fund that it undertook in writing as part of grant agreement. The NAO requested these but they were not provided.
The Church has said it will be lobbying the government for another fund similar to the First World War Centenary scheme. The NSS has urged that any further funds be made conditional on the completion of outstanding reports for the current scheme and a convincing demonstration that the improvement in the governance, operation and oversight of the Fund called for by the NAO are put in place.
NSS Executive director Keith Porteous Wood wrote to the DCMS about these "disturbing shortfalls" and asking what steps had been taken by the DCMS to secure the required reports.
Mr Wood said: "We hope that the scrutiny of the National Audit Office will ensure that in future public money is only used to pay for the upkeep of the Church's historic and architecturally significant buildings where there is a demonstrable need for the state to step in and do so."
