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A Christian State? A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Reid Mortensen
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Extract

Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, told a congregation in Melbourne's St. Paul's Cathedral that he had recently received a letter addressed to “Jesus Christ, care of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Kingdom.” It had been posted in the United States, but found its way to London. There, a postman, understandably a little unsure as to where the letter should go, had marked the envelope, “Try Lambeth Palace!” Under the public law of England, his was actually a most reasonable course for a civil servant to take. The Church of England is established by law, so if any official question relating to God must be decided, the law presumes that the Church of England is best placed to answer it. The law in New Zealand and Australia is different. Even if the inherited public law in both countries requires the Head of State to be an Anglican, that is where the religious establishment ends. The public law is otherwise agnostic: it makes no judgment about the orthodox and heterodox, and it does not recognize an established church. In these countries, the envelope would lie in a dead letter office, and the correspondent would have been wiser to pray.

Type
New Zealand Symposium
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 1998 , pp. 509 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1998

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References

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2. Coronation Oat Act 1689 (Eng) § 3; Act of Settlement 1700 (Eng) §§ 1-3; Princess Sophia of Hanover's Precedence Act 1711 (UK).

3. Compare Watson v Jones, 80 US 679, 728 (1872); and see Baldwin v Pascoe, 7 NZLR 759, 769-70 (1889); Gregory v Bishop of Waiapu, 1 NZLR 705, 708 (1975); Glebe Administration Board v Commissioner of Pay-roll Tax, 10 NSWLR 352, 357 (1987).

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25. Id at 354.

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