Terms of reference
The Church of England (CofE) is the established church of England, but not for the rest of the United Kingdom (UK). It is the only established Anglican church worldwide. The Anglican Church in Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Church of Ireland operate independently. An ‘established’ church or religion is not necessarily the same as one that may be considered as a ‘state’ or ‘national’ religion.
The British monarch is the Supreme Governor of the CofE,Footnote 1 and their 26 senior bishops, known as Lords Spiritual, have seats in the House of Lords (HoL). The CofE is also ‘established’ in the three crown dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. The Dean of Jersey sits as a non-voting member of the States of Jersey, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man sits as a non-voting member of the Tynwald.Footnote 2
A state religion, or official religion, is formally endorsed by a sovereign state. State religions benefit from government support, which may include official endorsement, public funding and recognition. Generally, these religions have greater rights and wider public responsibilities than other faiths in the country.Footnote 3
An established church is recognized by the state as its official church and receives civil support. It cannot change its doctrines or practices without state consent and, in return, often enjoys financial support and special privileges. CofE measures require parliamentary oversight, whereas the Church of Scotland is self-governing. Historically, the establishment was opposed in parts of the UK where the population was not predominantly Anglican. As a result of political and religious pressure, the CofE was disestablished in Ireland in 1871 and Wales in 1920.
The CofE was established in 1534 when King Henry VIII renounced papal authority. Until 1919, Parliament had legislative control. After this, a National Assembly was created, which was later replaced by a General Synod in 1969. The CofE is represented in the House of Commons by a Second Church Estates Commissioner. This paper argues that the CofE can remain the national faith of the English whilst ceasing to be established, thereby aligning with Anglicanism across the rest of the UK, Ireland and the wider world.Footnote 4
Bishops in the HoL
On 15 June 2020, the HoL debated the government’s Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020. The bishop of Carlisle, the ‘lead bishop on health and social care’ in Parliament (NB: for the CofE, and representing no other body, and with no relevant qualifications, training or expertise for such a role in public life) spoke in favour of an amendment negating the regulations. In the subsequent vote, he and several other male bishops voted against the legislation.
Which people was the bishop representing in these debates? Certainly not women from Northern Ireland, forced to travel across the Irish Sea if they needed a termination. Was his opinion in line with the CofE’s position, which says abortion, though regrettable, can be justified? It is not clear that it was. Was he representing the views of the wider English population? Not really. Yet he spoke and voted as of right. One cannot easily imagine a parallel universe in which a Roman Catholic bishop was always entitled to sit as one of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court and vote on abortion rights, including Roe v Wade. Yet the CofE did just that in 2020 and repeated such actions in debates in March 2026.Footnote 5
The grounds of entitlement – and inevitable gift to the CofE through being established – now look increasingly questionable. What is the role of one established denomination, and of only one nation, set within a devolved union of nations? Can bishops in the HoL authentically represent the plethora of opinions within their own denomination, let alone speak for the UK as a whole?
There are other reasons to question the fitness and appropriateness of CofE bishops to sit ‘as of right’ in the HoL. The bishops are not elected nor subject to any open democratic process of selection. Concerningly, they can be chosen through a closed ecclesiastical committee process that primarily gratifies internal church politics (e.g., selecting a Catholic or evangelical bishop with conservative views on sexuality, gender, etc.), to ‘balance’ CofE appointments.
Then there is representation – with the CofE often arguing that the ‘Lords Spiritual’ stand for constituencies that might not otherwise have a voice, or the complexion of the HoL is somehow overlooked. This old canard suggests that the CofE bishops enhance and complete the complexion of representation in the HoL. But a CofE diocese is no kind of ‘constituency’ in any serious sense, and bishops cannot meaningfully claim to represent the wider population of their designated dioceses, as though they were some kind of unelected MP holding surgeries that dealt with social issues that could then be aired and addressed. The public has a natural right to expect and know that those who legislate and vote in the HoL have the expertise and knowledge to perform such work. The CofE no longer ensures this in its bishops. Correspondingly, there is also the nettle of contemporary episcopal intellectual quality and distinguished service in public life that must be grasped.
Even in the early postwar years, many bishops serving in the HoL were drawn from backgrounds in which they had served with distinction in the university sector (e.g., as professors), other spheres of education, the armed services or other public fora. Contemporary bishops, with very rare exceptions, simply lack such grounding. Bishops demonstrably do not have the kinds of expertise or experience that most other members of the HoL bring to debates. Bishops are not distinguished in law, academia, politics economics, or even necessarily in theology.
The entitlement and privilege of episcopal representation in the HoL have a very attenuated relationship with the qualities that would be sought in and seen as essential for others preferred to a peerage. It need hardly be stressed that to privilege one English denomination with 26 automatic seats in the HoL makes little sense in the context of a Parliament that is there for the whole of the UK.
Plainly, if senior faith representatives are seen as important for the makeup of the HoL, then a system could be devised that was democratic, meritocratic, and applied putatively across the UK rather than just privileging England and its CofE bishops.
Furthermore, with the principle of hereditary peerage giving rights to sit in the HoL now effectively at an end, it is peculiar, if not perverse, that the principle of ‘ontological inheritance’ remains aloof from this reform. In the minds of most people, inheriting the power through one’s bloodline to sit in the upper chamber of the legislature in any country seems, at best, quaint and outright as undemocratic, elitist, and unconstitutionally hegemonic.Footnote 6
If the argument of bloodline is now rejected for the HoL, then, by extension, a medieval concept of ‘ontological’ entitlement and inheritance becomes similarly problematic. The principles and problems of hereditary peerage are the same as those in the polity of ontology, if the person sitting in the HoL is there by an inherited quasi-mystical right, not by merit, public scrutiny or democratic mandate.
The canard that Monarchy, Coronation and Church are all intertwined and cannot be unravelled also fails at this juncture, because an established church is not needed across the rest of the UK. Constitutionally, the reigning monarch is the ‘Defender’, solely, of the Protestant Faith of the CofE.
Establishment is an English argument for the preferment and privilege of the CofE. Yet the other home nations function perfectly well with national churches (e.g., the Church of Scotland, etc.) that are not ‘by law established’.
Establishment is an outdated artefact from medieval governance, from a time when bishops wielded significant financial, civic, legal and local political power. As with Ireland and Wales, once it was recognized that this was no longer the case for the Anglican churches, or was indeed unwelcome, their establishment ceased. England’s time for disestablishment has now arrived.
National Trends
The statistics of churchgoing in 21st-century Britain make for sobering reading. There are 12,500 parishes in the CofE. Even before the pandemic, only 33 of these recorded more than 100 under-16s attending church on a Sunday. That equates to a mere 0.26% of the parishes or less than one church per Anglican diocese (of which there are 42). The CofE claims Anglicanism is a global fellowship of 88+ million. It will sometimes claim over 95 million.
But this figure counts 25 million ‘members’ of the CofE in England when the usual Sunday attendance (uSa) is around 0.5–0. 6 million. Global Anglicanism probably has around 55 million regular attendees, placing it behind the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian denominations, and well behind the 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
It is generally accepted that CofE ‘membership’ numbers claimed may be close to double those of the actual attendees, which would be a maximum of around 1 million in a population of 55 million for England, so 1.82%. The time may now be ripe to ‘level up’ and share ecclesiastical power and privilege. If proof of the problem were still needed, the recent national census in the UK, with its statistics on religious affiliation, made for uncomfortable reading.
For the first time in an England and Wales census, less than half of the population (46.2 per cent, or 27.5 million people) described themselves as Christian. This represents a 13.1 per cent decrease from 2011. As the Church Times noted,Footnote 7 Christianity in England is now a minority religion. The paradox for members of the CofE is that, while the English population is primarily pro-equality and democratic, the established church remains rooted in hierarchies and autocracy.
Likewise, statistics for the broader English population confirm the same: in baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals, obsolescence has set in. One can pin the blame on either too much theological particularity or perhaps laxity, or on bureaucratic inflexibility and complexity. But the lens of obsolescence helps us see that people move on to more convenient or preferable options. And there is no penalty for foregoing the previous options.
Internally, within the CofE, the increasing internal haemorrhage of clergy and laity – volunteers who were once the backbone of the local church and served as wardens, PCC members and other responsibility-bearing roles, etc. – shows that people have had enough.Footnote 8 What once seemed integral shifted in a few generations to being optional. And it is now becoming obsolete.Footnote 9
The CofE has 16,000 church buildings – slightly more than one-third of the total number of church buildings in Great Britain. To put that in a broader context, there are fewer than 12,000 village halls, and the same again for post offices (11,800).
The CofE controls 4,700 primary-junior schools in England (out of a total of 16,700), with an average of 280 pupils per school. So again, like its churches, church schools are distinguished by small attendance numbers whilst being quite widespread. These networks of modest-sized schools and small churches are costly to maintain.
David Voas, the eminent sociologist at University College London, has been sceptical of recent reports suggesting a resurgence in young men attending church services.Footnote 10 Voas suggested that, at best, this represented a mere pause in the relentless collapse of English religion. Furthermore, the impending decline in Christian affiliation is expected to be far steeper than what many churches and denominations are currently experiencing.Footnote 11 Even the most optimistic church leaders are cautious when discussing recovery. Others quietly opine that any rumours of revival represent another PR-led ‘thesis that directs the facts’.Footnote 12 The hierarchy of the CofE certainly has form in that regard, and the relationship it has tried to foster between rhetoric and reality has steadily eroded in recent decades.Footnote 13
Were proof of the gap between rhetoric and reality needed, consider the case of the CofE Bristol diocese. In recently publishing its new brochure, Statement of Needs for its Bishop, it clearly did not find it strange that there are almost as many people working in diocesan HQ (80) as there were clergy serving in the diocese (90), effectively giving a 1:1 ratio of administrators to clergy.Footnote 14 The diocese has 193 parishes (a different figure – 166 – is cited earlier, suggesting that the authors may not be clear about the difference between a parish and a benefice). The diocese claims to be ‘serving 1.1 million people’ with a ‘worshipping community’ of 11,000, which amounts to just 1% of the population.
The Statement of Needs brochure reports that the diocese has an income of £11.8 million and an expenditure of £16.6 million, which represents a recurring loss of £5 million per year, which may be a concern.Footnote 15 To fund the diocese in line with its expenditure, each worshipper would therefore need to contribute around £1,500 per year. Most of the members of this ‘worshipping community’ are of retirement age, which raises further questions about how the gap between income and expenditure is to be closed by those with (largely) fixed incomes.
CofE ‘Culture’
There are also serious concerns regarding the CofE’s discrete internal culture and the undoubted urgency any government faces in reforming it when confronted by the lack of alignment between ecclesial and public values. Like any faith group, the CofE has every right to protect, project and promote its distinct culture to the English. But there are significant issues to address if that discrete culture is increasingly at odds with statutory law and basic standards in public life. Specifically, the CofE is currently unaligned in the following fields:
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1. On same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+, the CofE is out of step with the national mood and English law. The claim to be a ‘national church’ when the dissonance and gap are so great with the wider population is problematic. It is even more so for an established church, where privilege and entitlement ensure that the CofE has no accountability to the nation it purports to serve.Footnote 16
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2. On accountability and transparency more generally, the CofE bishops are manifestly non-compliant with Nolan Standards for Public Life and effectively operate as ‘a law unto themselves’. No peers of the realm, or indeed other professions or public services, operate without some means of independent oversight that can call the individuals or body to account. For the Lords Spiritual to be seated in the HoL and yet answerable to nobody, in any kind of meaningful, modern democratic sense, is unconscionable.Footnote 17
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3. On gender, the CofE operates with ‘two integrities’ which permit lawful discrimination within the church. Whilst discrimination on grounds of gender can be argued as a ‘protected characteristic’ in a faith, it is highly questionable whether this is fit for purpose in a national church, let alone an established one. On what other grounds would members of the HoL permit discrimination amongst themselves? None, I venture. Yet the CofE Lords Spiritual affirm discrimination on the sophistry of ‘two integrities’.Footnote 18
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4. On safeguarding, the CofE still resists scrutiny and trustworthy professional independent regulatory oversight, despite legions of scandals coming to light, and there being no sign of these stopping.Footnote 19 In 2024, The Economist noted that the 27 recommendations in the Makin Report echoed similar suggestions from numerous safeguarding reports over the past 40 years, which the CofE had either ignored or dismissed.Footnote 20 There is merit to the criticism of The Economist. For example, the CofE established an Independent Safeguarding Board in 2021, only to disband it in 2023 for being ‘too independent’. The CofE is averse to being subject to external regulatory authorities.
The 2021 census results for England and Wales have yet to be fully understood, but given that many congregations are reporting significant declines in attendance after Covid, it seems unlikely that there will be any silver linings this century. A relevant comparison can be drawn from the recent 2021 Australian census, where a voluntary question on religion received a 93 per cent response rate. This census revealed a near doubling of the proportion of people identifying as having ‘no religion’. Less than half (44 per cent) of the respondents identified as Christian, a decrease from 61 per cent in 2011. Both Roman Catholic and Anglican affiliations have seen steep declines, dropping to 20 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively (Roman Catholics have historically been the larger group). In fact, Australian figures lag behind the British experience, where recent surveys indicate that over 50 per cent of people are willing to declare that they have no religion.
One of the significant challenges facing all UK churches is that their decline is not driven by ideological hostility but rather by indifference. The forces contributing to this decline operate quietly and without notice. Aside from organized secularism and secularization, which churches often overstate, there are no obvious adversaries for them to rally against. There is a rapid obsolescence in denominational-institutional identity, though local pastoral ministry retains its social and spiritual capital.
Conclusion
A constitutional crisis is now emerging over the Crown, the Church, and the Constitution, particularly amid a significant decline in CofE affiliation and growing cultural disenchantment with its leaders. Over the past few decades, the CofE has invested substantial effort into branding, marketing, mission initiatives, and reorganizsation. However, evangelistic efforts, such as the Call to the Nation launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1975 and the Church’s ‘Decade of Evangelism’ from 1990 onwards, have proven ineffective and even counterproductive. These initiatives have further distanced the public from the CofE and led to a much steeper decline in church attendance.
Much like some erstwhile political party unable to connect with the general public, the CofE struggles to appear credible and relevant in people’s daily lives, offering little relevant hope. As an organization, it has a poor track record regarding equality and fairness. It continues to discriminate against individuals based on sexuality and gender while spending time and money to recruit loyal members. Ironically, these efforts often alienate potential supporters. There is little appetite for a national church that represents privilege and the power to discriminate while lacking proper accountability and transparency.
The most direct challenge posed by the current situation concerns the status of the CofE within our constitutional monarchy. The UK’s hereditary head of state must meet certain religious criteria: monarchs cannot be Roman Catholics (though since 2015 they can marry one), must be ‘in communion’ with the CofE, must swear an oath declaring that they are faithful Protestants, and, during the coronation, must vow to rule justly and defend the rights and privileges of the CofE.
As the Supreme Governor of the CofE, the monarch, on the advice of ministers, makes all senior appointments. Of the 40-plus diocesan bishops, 26 sit in the HoL by virtue of their seniority. Iran is the only other country in the world where religious leaders have automatic seats in the legislature. This complex arrangement is commonly referred to as ‘establishment’, highlighting a historically close partnership between church and state. Originally, this relationship reflected a degree of religious uniformity, as every citizen was required to belong to the established Church, and there was active persecution of Roman Catholics and other Christian minorities. This is no longer the case, and it arguably ended in the 19th century.
Over the last century, the CofE has become increasingly autonomous, leading to the characterization of the arrangement as ‘weak establishment’. Nevertheless, the central aspect of establishment persists through the CofE unique relationship with the head of state, Parliament and the current government. While the UK can claim to have religious freedom, it regrettably lacks religious equality due to the CofE’s continued privileges compared to other religious organizations.
This axis of inequality and privilege poses challenges to the CofE’s reputation. The HoL, which is one half of the UK Parliament, has bishops solely (sitting ‘as of right’) of members from the CofE, with no representation from Welsh, Irish, or Scottish denominations. In the UK, where power and governance are increasingly decentralized and devolved, there is no justification for this lack of diversity.
If it were thought important to have faith representatives in the devolved assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, an openly democratic–meritocratic system to elect them could be devised and modelled in the HoL. The present situation presumes that CofE bishops have the competence and right to address spiritual, moral and social concerns outside England and can speak on behalf of all faiths and none. This is plainly beyond their remit and expertise.
The Bill to Disestablish the CofE in Wales (1914, enacted 1920) can be extended to England. Contrary to what the CofE will claim and obfuscate, the required parliamentary bill has been enacted in other home nations and could be replicated in England.Footnote 21 Alternatively, or in lockstep, Parliament could pass a bill that would not seek to replace bishops as they retire at 70 years of age so that sitting as of right with the practice of ontological-hereditary privilege would be phased out naturally.
Parliament would cease to have any role in regulating the CofE or its General Synod, and CofE ecclesiastical law would operate at the same level it does for other Anglican churches in the UK. It would no longer be statutory law. The Charity Commission would regulate and monitor those areas within its jurisdiction, and secular law would be available to clergy, laity, bishops and dioceses in the event of legal issues arising. At present, the persistence of church courts and disciplinary proceedings, in which bishops continue to have largely unfettered powers, is unconscionable.
Safeguarding in the CofE would cease to operate in a wholly non-transparent and unaccountable manner. Safeguarding in the CofE is currently (at best) self-regulating, but widely regarded as problematically opaque, and totally unworthy of trust or professional esteem. The present situation is unconscionable, with the CofE resisting secular regulation in such spheres, claiming numerous exemptions from statutory law (e.g., under clergy disciplinary proceedings), interpreting ecclesiastical law as it wishes (e.g., still arguing for private trials of clergy) and retaining the status and lustre of being ‘established by law’ while lacking any meaningful public accountability for its actions. No other faith enjoys such privilege.
Whilst it is true that local schools and locally focused ministry in parishes and chaplaincies remain valued, this local engagement – offering spiritual, pastoral and civic support – does not necessarily require the formalities associated with establishment. However, the current leadership of the CofE fans the myth that establishment is an all-or-nothing proposition, constitutionally complex and an essential component in statecraft. Furthermore, that any such unravelling would have implications for the monarchy and constitution of the UK.
However, such assertions are demonstrably untrue. Looking across the rest of Europe, there are no other national churches with the privileges and preferential treatment that come with ‘establishment’. The CofE can be a national church if it still aspires to serve the nation. It need not be established.
For England, a national, but not an established, church represents a commendable way forward for the nation as a whole, with CofE clergy and churches continuing to provide extensive parish-based pastoral and spiritual care and also replicating this in chaplaincies (i.e., prison, healthcare, military, etc.). This would be comparable to the provision in Scotland and would bring the CofE’s position into line with that of other European countries. The time for reform is ripe. A Bill to effect these changes is long overdue and would command widespread support from within the CofE, across England and throughout the UK.
Martyn Percy is Research Professor, Theologische Fakultät, Universität Bern, and Canon Theologian, Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. His Partitioning Postcolonial Anglicanism: Discord, Dissent and Division in the Church of England, London: Routledge, will be published later this year.
