God’s Graffiti?
Guest Editorial
Professor Martyn Percy
Martyn Percy is Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of St. Joseph Macao and Provost Theologian at Ming Hua College, Hong Kong. He is aResearch Professor at the Institut für Christkatholische Theologie, Theologische Fakultät, Universität Bern (CH/Switzerland), and Senior Research Associate at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland.
See: https://anglicanism.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Martyn-Percy-Introduction-Autumn-2024.pdf
Undoubtedly the nation (by which I mean England) is now at a turning point in its history and culture. In 2034, the Church of England—a national Protestant church that decisively broke from Rome—will be 500 years old. Lambeth Palace has no plans to mark this event, as Anglicans are divided on whether this is their quincentenary.
Some Anglicans think that the Church of England is a continuing Catholic church. That is not how the Vatican views this national Protestant denomination founded in Swiss-German Reformed theology. Unable to explain itself, the Church of England hierarchy stays quiet on such issues, doubtless hoping that keeping up appearances will obfuscate the reality.
One bicentenary that comes to mind falls in a few years too. In 1832, Parliament introduced the Reform Bill designed to level up the status and rights of other denominations. The Bill sought to overturn the Test Act of 1673 which had effectively barred Roman Catholics from holding public office and attending university in England. The government had been chipping away at religious discrimination since 1828, with non-conformist denominations being extended some equality measures.
But in 1832, the Church of England stood its ground on privilege, and despite broad religious support for change, bishops in the House of Lords voted against to help defeat the Reform Bill on its first reading. Cue protests and mayhem. The Archbishop of Canterbury was heckled in public, the carriage of the Bishop of Bath and Wells stoned, and a crowd of almost ten thousand turned up to watch an effigy of the Bishop of Carlisle being burned. On the third reading of the Reform Bill, no bishop was found to be in Lemming-like opposition.
The Victorian era marked a sea change in how the public viewed the Church of England. The first census of 1851 found that of the 18 million population of England and Wales, around a quarter were Anglican—only fractionally more than those who identified as non-conformists.
Pressure to reform led to the disestablishment of Anglicanism in Ireland (overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) and eventually Wales in the Edwardian period. The changes were slow but inexorable.
Perhaps the most significant shifts were directed towards the entitled, lofty elitism often displayed in the Church of England’s hierarchy. The USA had acquired its native bishops in 1784 following the defeat of the British in the American War of Independence. Yet, well into the 19th century, Church of England bishops declined to recognise and affirm visiting American clergy, insisting they should be regarded as laypeople since they could not affirm allegiance to the crown. This “religion of class”, as John Henry Newman dubbed it, still believed in Rule Anglicana and presumed to treat other denominations as inferior species and even other parts of the Anglican church outside Britain as second-class citizens.
There is now mounting pressure on the Labour government to reform the House of Lords and, with that, address the anomaly of Church of England bishops sitting in the legislative chamber as of right. The Establishment has its stock of old canards to meet such demands. These include all the arguments about Church of England schools, and even occasionally, a conservative commentator might venture that bishops in the House of Lords go back to feudal times (1295, to be more precise).
In truth, the history is uneven and complex. Wales only gained parliamentary representation in 1536, Scotland in 1707, and Ireland in 1801. The anomaly of English bishops sitting in a UK parliament looked stranger when the Irish and Welsh Anglican bishops were removed in 1869 and 1920, respectively. Scottish Anglican bishops have never been represented in the House of Lords.
Reforms to bishops sitting in the House of Lords are nothing new. The Clergy Act, also known as the Bishops Exclusion Act (effective from 1642), prevented clergy from exercising any temporal jurisdiction or authority. It was repealed in 1661 with the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
In the 21st century under Charles III, there is no case for privileging English peers in the House of Lords, let alone a tiny group known as ‘Lords Spiritual’ who cannot conceivably represent the interests of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the Church of England’s refusal to be held to account for its actions in relation to safeguarding, and more generally its complete resistance to ‘Nolan Principles’ for conduct in public life has rendered it unsafe and unfit for public service. (https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/author/4193/martyn-percy).
There is however a means of securing reform, which is for the government to establish a Royal Commission, and if necessary by Act of Parliament. The Church of England, as a recipient of public funds and support, should be asked to bear the cost of this work. A Royal Commission is an exercise of the Royal Prerogative, historically administered by the Home Office.
The constitutional settlement made for the Church of England in 1919 – its first ‘devolved parliament’, then known as the Church Assembly – has been superseded by General Synod. This is provenly ineffective, riven with internal strife, and currently means that there is no functioning external agency which can compel the Church of England to address and its failures as a national body. Several bishops in the House of Lords and the current Archbishop of York are culpable of egregious failures and coverups in safeguarding and governance. But the Archbishops’ Council will continue to sidestep all criticism and avoid the recommendations made by IICSA in October 2020.
The Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1904-1906) interviewed a large number of people. The final Report recommended that the law on public worship be updated in order to meet the needs of a more modern era, and that the Church should be given power to make these changes. Today, however, on governance, safeguarding, accountability and public service we have reached an impasse. The Church is provenly unable to reform itself and has shown itself incapable of adopting standards of truthful conduct that are otherwise expected of public institutions.
If only the leadership of the Church of England could read the proverbial writing on the wall (see Daniel 5) it would understand that the party is well and truly over. I fear, however, the bishops will stay until the bitter end, hoovering up the crumbs from the floor even as the walls of privileged autocracy collapse around them. But ordinary churchgoers across the Anglican Communion can read too: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” is graffiti written on the wall in God’s own hand. Roughly translated, this meant “your days are numbered; you have been weighed and found wanting; your kingdom will be divided.” As it is, so shall it be.
Martyn Percy
Feast of The Conversion of St Paul, 2025
Martyn Percy’s The Crisis of Global Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England is published by Hurst Books.