A written question from Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, Con) about appointments in the Church of England for which the Government has formal constitutional responsibility produced the following useful list response from the Cabinet Office on 23 October:
“Advising the Sovereign on ecclesiastical appointments is a constitutional responsibility customarily carried out by the Prime Minister as the Sovereign’s principal adviser. The Prime Minister has temporarily transferred his responsibility to advise the Sovereign on Church appointments to the Lord Chancellor. Under the advice ordinarily given by the Prime Minister, the Crown is responsible for the appointment within the Church of England of:
Archbishops, Diocesan bishops and Suffragan bishops;
28 Cathedral Deans;
10 residentiary canonries;
The First and Second Church Estates Commissioners;
Three other members of the Church Commissioners;
Members of the Churches Conservation Trust;
Members of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved;
Dean of the Arches and Auditor;
Deans and Canons of the Royal Peculiars of Westminster Abbey and Windsor;
Master of the Temple;
Priests in approximately 200 Crown parishes.
The Prime Minister is also responsible under the standing orders of the General Synod for appointing the Chair of the Crown Nominations Commission which considers the nomination of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and similarly for the Archbishop of York. Additionally, the Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretary sits as a non-voting member on the Crown Nominations Commission.
Separately, the Lord Chancellor has existing responsibility for appointing approximately 450 parish posts and 10 cathedral canons which the Sovereign has no role in.”
All of this could be done by a church appointments commission. in the C21st there is no longer any need for political oversight, by a political class that is further and further away from the time these provisions where created.
If there is no oversight by the state there is no established church.
My understanding (happy to be corrected by lawyers) is that the requirement of appointment by the Crown dates back to the Appointment of Bishops Act and the Act of Supremacy 1533-4, and subsequently legislation upholding or modifying these. If it were to be abolished, it would require a pretty radical amendment of, or probably repeal of, these two acts and possibly others. That would remove the deepest legal foundation of Establishment (but other elements typically classed under ‘Establishment’ could remain (eg Protestant Succession, the Lords Spiritual, which would require additional legislation). The 2007 reform took much of the sting out of Crown Appointments, though at the initiative of Gordon Brown, not the Church. But the thelogically offensive symbolism of state oversight of the appointment of the Church’s senior pastors continues, without any complaint from those pastors, who seem all to happy (perhaps flattered) to receive their letters of appointment from 10 Downing St, not from Lambeth Palace or, heaven forfend, from some humble diocesan office.
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