Press Release

Church report is ‘special pleading of the most blatant sort’

8 June 2008

The British Humanist Association has responded to a Church of England report calling for the Church to have more influence in public life with calls for the Church to instead be disestablished.

Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Public Affairs said, ‘The Church of England is already given a prominence totally out of proportion to the low number of citizens who support it and participate in it. Even though fewer than a tenth of us worship in its churches on a weekly basis, it runs almost a third of England’s state-funded schools, entirely at public expense, while reserving the power to select pupils and staff on religious grounds; it exercises political power through Bishops in the House of Lords and it lobbies for and frequently achieves special treatment in myriad ways.

‘In a MORI poll of 2006, religious groups and leaders topped the table of domestic groups which citizens think have too much influence on government in Britain. The Church’s report is not just special pleading of the most blatant sort, it is also totally counter to public opinion. Far from giving this unrepresentative institution more influence in British life, the time has come to disentangle the state from the Church and make Britain a modern open society with no privilege for any one religion and all citizens being treated equally regardless of their beliefs.

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