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Establishment: Some Theological Considerations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2019
Abstract
Liberal modernity and its associated individualism have created conditions in which a case for an established Church appears to contradict all the principles of social diversity. But the characteristic mechanisms of liberal modernity for managing difference – the ballot and the market – have proved inadequate to prevent social divisions from deepening, as the national argument about Brexit demonstrates. Despite the Church of England's lack of a confident narrative of establishment and the tendency to evaluate establishment on pragmatic grounds, this article proposes that a robust theological defence of establishment can be made in terms of both Anglican ecclesiology and a theology of power and authority in which the highest sources of authority are those with the least power. Whether the Church of England is able to regain confidence in such a theology of establishment and rise to the challenge of generating a unifying national narrative of identity post-Brexit, is left as an open question.
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1 One important area where it is impossible to argue that all the mechanisms of liberal modernity should withdraw in favour of small-scale communitarian solutions is that of safeguarding. Safeguarding abuses have served to demonstrate the potentially toxic undercurrents of some communities, and some of the principles of liberal modernity have proved necessary to combat them. The thrust of my argument, however, is that the pendulum has swung too far toward liberal institutions and that, on many fronts, a revived communitarianism constitutes an important corrective. This argument is taken much further in my book, Tensions in Christian Ethics: an introduction (London, 2010).
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4 One problem with this argument is that the monarch rules over a nation greater than England. But, as an extension of the point that there is no position from nowhere, the particular role of the Church of England in the coronation need not be an offence to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland unless some invented neutral institution that is not English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish is posited as the only inclusive mechanism to do the job – or if the Church of England were to forget its role of speaking generously for identities beyond its own.
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6 MacIntyre, After Virtue, p 69.
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