by Bijan Omrani, Telegraph
Given the core values of Polanski’s party, it seems perverse that our national religion is under threat
As the Labour Government beavers away undermining our historic constitution – jury trials, hereditary peers, free speech rights – the Green Party has announced that it wants to go one better. If it wins the next election, it will separate the Church of England from the state.
Its new policy calls for the final split between the Christian faith and national government, which have been intertwined since Saxon times. Bishops will be expelled from the Lords. The state will play no role in their appointment. The Church Commissioners, who administer billions of pounds of historic property, will no longer be represented in the Commons. Parliament will lose oversight of a church, which, like the NHS, has a role of spiritual service for the “cure of souls” for all.
This policy would be the culmination of a relentless drive to edge Christianity out of public life. The Greens might argue that this trend is progressive and inevitable. But is it what the British public really wants?
The Greens, especially under Zack Polanski, invoke the language of populism: they claim to speak for the masses that have been neglected by the mainstream parties. But disestablishing the Church of England is far from popular.
The results of a survey released last week by Whitestone Insight shows that 58 per cent of Britons think that “Christianity has something to offer governance”. It also finds that 52 per cent believe that if Britain continues to move away from its Christian roots, “it will be to the detriment of future generations”.
Only 25 per cent, meanwhile, called for a complete separation of church and state with no interaction between them. And strikingly, the youngest age group were more positive about Christianity in public life than the middle-aged.