This is the first in what is intended as a series of comments on current developments in the law concerning freedom of religion that will appear regularly in this Journal. This first survey deals with religious liberty challenges brought in the UK courts in 2007 and 2008. A subsequent survey will examine similar developments in international human rights law and especially before the European Court of Human Rights.

Amongst the subjects discussed by the theologians of ARCIC, canon law has been conspicuously absent. The ecclesiology of koinonia, which is central to the work of ARCIC, has been of the greatest importance in ‘re-imagining’ the Church and so promoting ecumenism. It has faced received canon law with new questions: to what extent can canon law facilitate those structures and practices which undergird the ecumenical initiatives promoted by koinonia ecclesiology? Already, canon law provides for shared institutions and chaplaincies to institutions. Test areas for future ecumenical convergence include the reception of a member of one tradition by the other, ethics and suitability for ministry. The proposed Anglican covenant presents a challenge to the canon law of member churches within the Anglican Communion and may present a model for future ecumenical convergence. The work of canon lawyers in developing this and other new models for ecumenism is indispensable to a deeper and more extensive koinonia amongst the churches.

Norman Doe's book Christian Law compares and contrasts the internal regulations of churches and seeks to identify principles common to churches across the denominational spectrum. This response to Doe's work reviews the religious questions that have come before the House of Lords and Supreme Court since 2004 and seeks to identify the principles governing the secular courts' approach to religious questions. The relationship between those principles and the principles outlined in Christian Law is far from clear. While an understanding of the rules of particular religious bodies is sometimes necessary for secular judges deciding civil rights in a religious context, in most cases the courts are not concerned with the conformity of religious beliefs with religious laws, but simply with protecting the freedom to hold and manifest those beliefs.

In an article in this journal published in 1998 entitled ‘Digging Up Exhumation’, Rupert Bursell, Chancellor of the Dioceses of Durham and St Albans, surveyed the then existing case law on exhumation and identified divergencies of approach between the cases. He concluded: ‘A definitive decision from the Court of Arches and Provincial Court may, therefore, seem to be called for […]’. Shortly afterwards the Chancery Court of York had occasion to consider the matter in Re Christ Church, Alsager. This article considers that case as well as two cases subsequent to it where the impact of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights has fallen to be considered.

Reconciling conflict between religious freedoms and non-religious human rights is a subject that has begun to affect many countries as they have become more liberal, multicultural and secular. The law relevant to the subject is currently developing at a fast pace, and is of particular interest in England and Wales given the historical position that Christianity has had within the establishment – the monarchy, Parliament and the law. This article charts the development of the law in these areas from an era of officially Protestant uniformity to the current plural and tolerant society. The fast pace of development, particularly since the end of the Second World War, is shown through examination of the development of the law in the fields of racial discrimination, discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, and religious freedom and discrimination. To all intents and purposes, the law has now become neutral towards religion and belief and provides an enlarged space where, subject only to legitimate interference for the protection of that freedom and the rule of law, all are free to adhere to their own faith and belief system.

Hate preaching is capable of constituting both hate crime and hate speech, lies at the centre of many religions’ understanding of the manifestation of their religion, and frequently raises the contentious issue of regulation of the use of sacred scriptures. This brief article explores the regulation of hate preaching by criminal law, discussing the particular problems posed by oppositional religious speech, before concluding with suggestions for a number of ways to reduce these problems.

The faculty jurisdiction of the Church of England is the core of what remains as a distinctive system of Church Law in England. It serves inter alia to safeguard the national heritage of parish churches and it is the reason why ecclesiastical buildings in use generally are immune from listed building control under secular planning law. The faculty jurisdiction still provides a model for regulating the conservation of buildings of historic and aesthetic interest and their contents which can be compared favourably with listed building control.

The Church of England has committed itself to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. An important element required for success in this aim will be to amend the legislation around the management of church buildings and in particular the operation of the faculty jurisdiction. While aspects of the present system can and do facilitate some necessary change, to achieve the swift and widespread changes required within the timescale envisaged a more radical overhaul is required because the present faculty system favours the status quo, however bad that is from a carbon emissions perspective.

In Act Three of Shakespeare's King Richard III the Duke of Buckingham asks Cardinal Bourchier to try and persuade Elizabeth Woodville to release the young Duke of York from sanctuary at Westminster. In the event of such tactics failing, Buckingham wishes Lord Hastings to accompany the Cardinal to Westminster and ‘… from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.’ The Cardinal's initial reaction is one of horror:

‘…if she be obdurate

To mild enteraties god in heaven forbid

We should infringe the holy privilge

Of blessed sanctuary not for all this land

Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.’

As a general principle, regular marriage in the Church of England is solemnized after the publication of banns. This requirement entered the medival canon law first as a matter of local custom, but was made universal in 1215 by a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council. Lord Hardwicke's Act did not impose the requirement of banns for the first time; it simply ensured that the option of an irregular marriage without banns, previously recognised by Church and State thoughfrowned upon, would no longer be valid in law.

In the July 1995 number of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal, Mr R. H. Bloor presented an interesting account of recent difficulties encountered by the parish church of St Mary's Belton with regard to the chiming of its church clock. In his article, ‘Clocks, Bells and Cockerels’, he took occasion to consider briefly the law relating to bells as a noise nuisance and usefully brought some unreported cases to the attention of readers of the Journal. He did not however consider one question which is, it is submitted, of peculiar importance to ecclesiastical lawyers, a question raised by the present author in a letter to The Times on 22 October 1994, namely whether the obligation of clerics to ring a bell under ecclesiastical and canon law can be a defence to a complaint of nuisance for the noise caused. Nor did he examine the differences which exist, particularly with regard to defences, depending upon whether the complaint is one of public, private or statutory nuisance. The present paper is therefore offered as a discussion of these points and as a wider review of the authorities relating to them.

Some scholars, faced with the apparent conflict between the Church of England's teaching on marriage and the idea of equal marriage embraced by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, have focused on the implications of that Act for the constitutional relationship between Church, State and nation. More frequently, noting the position of the Church of England under that Act, academics have critiqued the legislation as an exercise in balancing competing human rights. This article by contrast, leaving behind a tendency to treat religion as a monolithic ‘other’, and leaving behind the neat binaries of rights-based analyses, interrogates the internal agonies of the Church of England as it has striven to negotiate an institutional response to the secular legalisation of same-sex marriage. It explores the struggles of the Church to do so in a manner which holds in balance a wide array of doctrinal positions and the demands of mission, pastoral care and the continued apostolic identity of the Church of England.

The best known of all medieval English canonists is William Lyndwood, compiler of the Provinciale. His name derives from what is now Linwood, in Lincolnshire, where his father John (d. 1419) was a woolman, and where (according to his will) he was born. William was sent to Cambridge, where he studied at Gonville Hall and is said to have become a fellow of Pembroke Hall. In the old library of Gonville and Caius College there was an inscription in the window requesting prayers for Lyndwood as ‘hujus collegii quondam commensalis’. His lectures have not survived, and the exact dates of his university residence are not known; but he was certainly a doctor of both laws by 1407, when he was ordained priest. By that time he already held a number of benefices – the earliest we know of was the wardenship of a hospital in 1396 – and he was to collect many more in the course of his career. These were not actual occupations, but sources of income intended to maintain a lawyer destined for high office.

The Church of England and the Church of Sweden have been in communion with one another since the early 1920s and have much in common. Both maintain the historic episcopate, both place great emphasis on liturgy, and since the Reformation both have long been ‘by law established’—a process which began in Sweden when Gustavus Vasa took the throne in 1523 after the successful war of liberation against Denmark, was confirmed by the Riksdag of Västerås in 1544 and, after some vicissitudes, was finally settled by the Pact of Succession of 1604.