This paper attempts an overview of currents of theological thinking on the place of the sacred in society. It considers the long tradition of active engagement between Church and State, which derives its authority from the New Testament and can be traced through St Augustine and Anglican Divines to the present day. Having examined contemporary arguments of those who question the propriety of such an arrangement it concludes that it remains theologically justifiable. The paper then turns to the particular question of the Establishment of the Church of England and engages both with those who support it and those who are in favour of disestablishment. It observes that Establishment functions at various levels in English society and, whilst acknowledging and welcoming the fact that its form will continue to change, argues that it offers distinct advantages to both Church and State. In a country where seventy-one per cent of the population professes itself to be Christian it gives the state legitimacy by reminding the latter that all authority derives from God and ensures that Christian influence for the maintenance of a just and peaceful society remains strong. Establishment reminds the Church that it has a responsibility to the whole nation, not just those who regularly attend its churches, and protects the mission and ministry of the Church throughout the parishes of the land.

The entitlement of all persons capable of validly contracting marriage to have such marriage solemnised in the church or chapel of the parish in which they live was, until recently, widely accepted and often repeated. Argar v Holdsworth is the case most often cited as evidencing the existence of this right. However, this received orthodoxy has recently been challenged from two sources. First, by Professor Norman Doe in The Legal Framework of the Church of England and secondly by the late the Reverend Michael G. Smith, in an article in this Journal. Both Doe and Smith throw doubt upon Argar v Holdsworth as providing any basis for proving the existence of such a right and Doe goes further in suggesting that the right to marry was abolished by the Marriage Act 1936 and has only survived since that date as a legal fiction. I seek to demonstrate that Smith's understanding of Argar v Holdsworth is seriously flawed and also that the criticisms levelled against this case as an authority both by Smith and by Doe cannot be upheld.

The paper surveys the English Reformation in the wider European context to demonstrate that the concept of ‘Anglicanism’ is hardly appropriate for the post-Reformation English Church in the sixteenth century: it was emphatically Protestant, linked to Reformed rather than Lutheran Protestantism. Henry VIII created a hybrid of a Church after breaking with Rome, but that was not unique in northern Europe. There were widespread attempts to find a ‘middle way’, the model being Cologne under Archbishop Hermann von Wied. Wied's efforts failed, but left admirers like Albert Hardenberg and Jan Laski, and their Reformations gradually moved towards those of central Europe—the first Reformed theologians. Edward VTs Reformation aligned itself with this new grouping, and produced prototypes of liturgy and theological formulary which endure to the present day—with the exception of a proposed reform of canon law, with its provisions for divorce. Elizabeth Ts 1559 religious settlement fossilised Edward's Church from autumn 1552. It made no concessions to Catholics, despite later A nglo- Catholic myth-making: minor adjustments were probably aimed at Lutherans. There is nevertheless a ‘Nicodemite’ association among the leading figures who steered the Settlement through its opening years. Important and unlikely survivals were cathedrals, uniquely preserved in a Protestant context and a source of future ideological Catholic ‘subversion’. Nevertheless the theological tone of the Elizabethan Church was a broadly-based Reformed Protestantism, aligned to Zürich rather than to Geneva. Early seventeenth-century Arminianism or Laudianism represented a new direction, and the Puritanism of New England may better represent the English Reformation than the ‘Anglican’ synthesis which came to fruition in the English Church after Charles II's restoration in 1660. In any case, Anglicanism continues to represent in uneasy but useful tension the two poles of theology contending for mastery in the century after Elizabeth Is coming to power.

This paper questions accounts of the English Reformation which, in line with sometimes unacknowledged Anglo-Catholic assumptions, present it as a mere clean-up operation, the creation of a reformed Catholicism which removed medieval excesses but left an essentially Catholic Church of England intact. It argues instead that the Elizabethan reformers intended to establish a Reformed Church which would be part of a Protestant international Church, emphatic in disowning its medieval inheritance and rejecting the religion of Catholic Europe, with formularies, preaching and styles of worship designed to signal and embody that rejection. But Anglican self-identity was never simply or unequivocally Protestant. Lay and clerical conservatives resisted the removal of the remains of the old religion, and vestiges of the Catholic past were embedded like flies in amber in the Prayer Book liturgy, in church buildings, and in the attitudes and memories of many of its Elizabethan personnel. By the early seventeenth century influential figures in the Church of England were seeking to distance themselves from European Protestantism, and instead to portray the Church of England as a conscious via media between Rome and Geneva. In the hands of the Laudians and their followers, this newer interpretation of the Reformation was to prove potent in reshaping the Church of England's self-understanding.

Requests for exhumation are increasing. Home Office licences appear to be more easily granted than heretofore. Consistory Court applications have multiplied, as witness the case notes in this Journal, and both the Chancery Court of York in Re Christ Church, Alsager and the Arches Court of Canterbury in Re Blagdon Cemetery have given judgments on appeal. Significant articles have appeared in this Journal from Rupert Bursell and Philip Petchey.

The two main aspects of the Aston Cantlow case1 have been the subject of considerable academic interest.2 The first concerns the status of a parochial church council (‘PCC’) for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998, and by implication the status of many other church bodies under that Act. The second concerns the law relating to the liability of certain individuals and corporate bodies to repair the chancel of the parish church.

The parish church is: held upon trust for the parishioners. The abiding theme is one of temporary custodianship. Today's generation holds on trust its inheritance from former generations for the glorification of God in the present and in the future.1.

On 10 July 2003, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg delivered a significant judgment concerning the qualified nature of the right of freedom of expression enunciated in Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The previous May saw the House of Lords deliver a judgment on a similar matter. The former related to the resurrection; the latter was about video footage of unborn fœtuses. Each is illuminating and may prove of wider application.