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
Former Anglican bishop Peter Ball jailed as victims sue Church of England over ‘cover-up’
Posted: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 13:12
Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester and Lewes, has been sentenced to 32 months in prison after pleading guilty to offences against 18 teenagers and young men – allegations Ball denied for over twenty years.
The prosecution said that for Ball "religion was a cloak behind which he hid in order to satisfy his sexual interest in those who trusted him".
The court heard that police documents in the 1990s revealed they received telephone calls of support for the disgraced bishop from dozens of people, including MPs, former public school headmasters, magistrates and a judge. In addition, his defence team claimed to have more than 'two thousand letters of support… including letters from cabinet ministers and Royal Family,' said prosecutor Bobbie Cheema-Grubb QC at the Old Bailey.
Keith Porteous Wood, National Secular Society executive director, commented: "Such volumes could not have been achieved without an huge orchestrated campaign. Copies of the letters should be examined, as complete a list as possible of writers and callers obtained, particularly for those of high profile as their support would have been especially influential. It should be established whose idea this was, who masterminded it and who carried it out.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently commissioned an independent review of how the Church dealt with the allegations, but the National Secular Society has expressed concerns that the review will not have the scope required to establish the full extent of wrongdoing.
Speaking after sentence was handed down, Mr Wood said: "Much more important than Ball's sentence is that this case has demonstrated the power the Church which has even recently bullied victims into silence and sought to curry favour with the law to let off perpetrators, or let them off lightly and impose reporting restrictions.
"Ball's case is a disgraceful catalogue of the legal system letting him off at every juncture. Just last month, two serious charges were inexplicably ordered to 'lay on the court file' - presumably to be ignored at least until Ball becomes too old or unfit to stand trial, a ruse he has already tried.
"Abuse victims' lives are often ruined by the abuse, they are much more likely to be substance abusers and vulnerable to suicidal impulses. One of Ball's victims, Neil Todd, killed himself and another, Graham Sawyer of Briercliffe, said that he had wished at times that he were dead. He was adamant that 'people at the highest levels of the Church are more concerned with 'saving face'."
Mr Wood said there were numerous examples of this evident in Ball's case alone.
"Evidence abounds of an institutional culture of intimidation of victims, in effect compounding the abuse, robbing the victims of justice, and not just allowing the perpetrator to escape justice, but enabling them to continue the abuse.
"The extent to which the Church's attitude has changed is as yet unclear. Several survivors were recently reported to have been told by Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham (responsible for dealing with abuse), that 'the Church was too busy working on banking reform' to have time for abuse responses, and his statement when Ball pleaded guilty was perfunctory, given the depth of the Church's complicity and the extent to which that had increased the suffering of victims. Sawyer maintains that Bishop Butler 'is out of his depth, and should step aside'.
"The first step in a change of culture that this case demonstrates to be so necessary is that employees and volunteers in all organisations involved with minors, including religious ones, should make reporting of reasonable suspicion of child abuse mandatory, with failure a dismissible offence. And the law should be amended to make the failure of those working in such institutions to do so a criminal offence."
Mr Wood is calling for the Lowell Goddard led Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse to fully examine not just the Church's role, but also the part played by the Crown Prosecution Service, by police and by politicians.
In the 1990s the CPS assured then-Archbishop Carey that no further action would be taken against Bishop Ball after he accepted a caution and resigned.
The Guardian reported that the court was told "MPs, a lord chief justice the royal family and public school headmasters all intervened" to stop Peter Ball from being prosecuted in the 1990s.
The National Secular Society has set-out twenty questions which an inquiry must answer on the relationship between the Church and police, and why the CPS did not take matters further when allegations against Ball were made. The CPS have now admitted that Ball should have been prosecuted two decades ago when the claims about sex abuse were made.
Victims are suing the Church of England for compensation amounting to "hundreds of thousands of pounds" over their handling of the case.
The Church of England has offered "an unreserved apology to all the survivors".
NSS asks Government to clarify religious influence on exhumations from public cemeteries
Posted: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 11:32
The National Secular Society has written to the Government to clarify whether the Church of England is seeking to block the exhumation of remains not buried on Church land.
The Church of England has objected on doctrinal grounds to an increase in the number of people seeking to move the buried remains of relatives if they relocate away from the burial site, a trend which is becoming more popular with an average of 25 such applications being received by the Ministry of Justice every week.
"The permanent burial of the physical body, or the burial of cremated remains, should be seen as a symbol of our entrusting the person to God for resurrection," a Church spokesperson said, stressing that burials should be "permanent".
NSS executive director Keith Porteous Wood has written to Caroline Dinenage MP, the Minister responsible for burials and cremation policy, and asked that the Government not heed the Church's theological objections to applications for exhumation of remains over which the Ministry of Justice, rather than the Church, has control.
While the NSS accepts that the Church is "entitled to refuse" requests for exhumation on Church land, the National Secular Society hopes that the Church will take "compassionate factors into account" when making these decisions.
Mr Porteous Wood commented: "Relatives of the bereaved derive great comfort from visiting graves, and many visit them weekly. If the relatives move a long way this would be impractical on grounds of cost and time, and possibly disability or age.
"Where the body is buried in land not under the control of religious bodies, and the decision on exhumation falls to the Ministry of Justice, we believe it inappropriate that religious objections should play any part in their decision," he added.
The Church however believes: "We are commending the person to God, saying farewell to them (for their 'journey'), entrusting them in peace for their ultimate destination, with us, the heavenly Jerusalem. This commending, entrusting, resting in peace does not sit easily with 'portable remains', which suggests the opposite: a holding on to the 'symbol' of a human life rather than a giving back to God."
While applications to the Ministry of Justice are on the rise, the Church has declined several requests relating to the exhumation of remains on Church lands in recent years, including applications from elderly relatives and people not physically able to visit the graves of their loved ones.
In 2014, a judge in a Church of England consistory (ecclesiastical) court declined to allow a daughter to have her father's cremated remains exhumed so that they could be scattered together with her recently deceased mother.
In a similar case in July 2015, another Church of England ecclesiastical court refused the request of a wheelchair-bound pensioner to move her mother's cremated remains, despite the fact that the elderly woman was not able to visit the grave.
In October 2006, a widow who was too unwell to maintain her late husband's burial plot requested that his ashes be exhumed, but her request was refused by a Church of England ecclesiastical court which said that remains were not "portable". The judge in the case said, "The general principle is that exhumation will only be granted in exceptional circumstances."
The National Secular Society is calling on the Church to take personal considerations into account compassionately, and has urged the Government to clarify whether theological objections are playing an influence on exhumation requests from non-Church grounds.
