I consider myself a “cultural Anglican”.
I rejoice that my college’s chapel choir is one of the finest in the world.
The sound of bells makes me catch my breath.
The King James Bible (mostly the work of William Tyndale, burnt for heresy) has been rightly called “England’s greatest cultural contribution to the world for 500 years”, and the Book of Common Prayer appeals to our deepest feelings.
The Church is unrivalled in solemnising the great moments of our lives.
I admire the way it is so often the parish church and its vicar who provide the place where communities come together to rejoice or weep.
If it were always like that, I would not be suggesting that as a New Year approaches, we should seriously consider disestablishing the Church.
The functions of a national church are of course to worship God, but also to hold the nation together.
That was why it was established as both a religious and a national institution – indeed, a state institution, governed by the monarch.
We owe a historic debt to the Church for combatting religious extremism and making moderation and tolerance England’s religious hallmark, however long it took to get there.
But those running the Church today seem to have abandoned, or perhaps consciously rejected, a national mission.
St Paul’s Cathedral has gratuitously and publicly attacked England’s heroes, including Churchill (accused of racism) and Nelson (accused of “commitment” to slavery); and yet it raised a memorial glorifying a major African slave trader solely on the grounds that he was deposed by Britain.
The Church Commission is insisting on giving away £100mn in reparations for slave trading, despite having got the facts wrong.
This concerns not just the Church’s history, but the history of all of us, and hence our sense of who we are.
We might admit, of course, that its bishops and bureaucrats are following the dictates of their private consciences or the prompting of activist minorities.
But as prelates of the Established Church they are not private persons, and there now seems a permanent gulf between their personal opinions and the feelings of most of the country, including most parishioners.
The bishops sit in the Lords, in practice swelling the ranks of the Lib Dems.
All this makes the Establishment increasingly anomalous.
The French disestablished the Catholic Church over a century ago.
Church buildings and assets became the property of the nation, which is responsible for maintaining them.
Churches are provided to associations of worshippers. This works reasonably well.
Here, the Church Commission’s vast assets could go to a Heritage Fund to maintain church buildings. Parish councils could use the churches and cathedrals, and employ their clergy.
Deans and chapters could be dissolved. Bishops would have purely spiritual roles, and the diocesan bureaucracy would cease to be a burden on parishes.
When the French did this, they thought it would destroy Christianity: but it revived it.
Is it coincidence that the most de-Christianised parts of the world are those with Established Churches?