Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Ecclesiastical Law Journal
  4. Collections
  5. The established nature of the Church of England: a collection of essays to mark the Coronation of King Charles III

The established nature of the Church of England: a collection of essays to mark the Coronation of King Charles III

FOREWORD

BENJAMIN HARRISON
Editor of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal

The constitutional status of the Church of England was famously considered by the House of Lords in Aston Cantlow v Wallbank (2004) 1 AC 546. In that case, Lord Hope explained that (para 61):

The Church of England as a whole has no legal status or personality. There is no Act of Parliament that purports to establish it as the Church of England ….What establishment in law means is that the state has incorporated [the Church’s] law into the law of the realm as a branch of its general law.

That rather neat summary of what establishment means in practice, however, belies what Lord Rodger later observed in Aston Cantlow to be the ‘notoriously, somewhat amorphous’ juridical nature of the Church of England (para 154). It is unsurprising that the meaning, effect and future of establishment has generated so much discussion and debate within the pages of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal over the past two decades. This was stimulated not least by the conference convened in April 2019 by the Ecclesiastical Law Society concerning ‘Church and State in the Twenty-First Century.’

This special collection of past articles and comment pieces examining the nature of establishment has been created to mark the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III on 6 May 2023—an event which, on any view, will be of real significance to the life of the nation and of the Church of England.

The collection has been compiled thematically, rather than chronologically. The articles and comment pieces found in Part I of this volume examined the nature of establishment as it touches most directly on the role of the Sovereign as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, including: the sacramental significance of the coronation service itself, the importance of the form of the oath that the King will be required to take at that service, and the consequences that may follow if any amendments to that oath are not authorised appropriately.

Part II of the volume shifts focus and includes those articles and comment pieces which examined the issue of establishment through historical, social, political, and theological lenses—all from the perspectives of authors who were once at the very heart of some of the institutions most affected by establishment.

Finally, Part III provides a case study examining how the process of disestablishment has played out in Wales over the past century, and turns (from the perspective of an author writing in 2010) to imagine what establishment for the Church of England might look like in future.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, which includes as part of the subscription three volumes of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal each year, please visit their website here to join.

CONTENTS