Return to Archives index page

Leave a comment

Tower and Town, March 1980


Church and State

On Tuesday 25 March Robert Runcie will be enthroned in Canterbury Cathedral as the hundred and second archbishop, leader of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion throughout the world.

Leadership is a quality we often look for today. And we're so often disappointed with what we find. Investigation by the media frequently uncovers unsavoury facts about leaders in every walk of life, including those in national life.

Yet it can be seriously open to doubt just how we in this country respond to leadership, unless it panders to our selfish instincts. Again the clamour for effective leadership can sometimes be a passing the buck operation, an excuse to allow us individually to escape from our responsibilities to our fellows.

But, having said that, it remains true that the new Archbishop of Canterbury will have a vital role to play in leading the Church of England in the continued rediscovery of the part it has to play in our country at the end of the twentieth century.

We still hold a position of authority and influence at every level from bishops in the House of Lords down to the fact that the rector is often ex-officio on this and that body in village life. We are asked to provide the nod to God at many events in national and local life.

But here lies the rub. What an opportunity these openings may provide! Yet there is always the danger that our faith may be compromised, watered down, in the process of providing a little ecclesiastical ceremony that will offend no one for what is essentially a secular occasion. The English are not noted for religious fervour or for a readiness to take hard truths genuinely to heart.

These are national characteristics that the Church of England must continue to cope with because it has hard truths to proclaim and wants a response of commitment. Too close a liaison between church and state will dampen down the proclamation. History teaches that the church can be at its weakest when such liaisons are strongest. To go to the other extreme, and call for an end to all links between church and state, is probably not for us to do. As long as the nation wants us as its church, have we not a duty to serve?

SARUM LINK

Return to Archives index page

Leave a comment