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LadyEllen -> RE: Erosion of Separation of Church and State (10/9/2006 11:09:24 AM)
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How we handle this in the UK - not to my liking, but .....
The Church of England's Bishops have always been members of the upper house (the Lords) of Parliament. As such there has never really been a separation of church and state, as long as one belongs to the right church of course. Any other religion than Church of England protestant has not been recognised since about the 16/17th century, to the extent that Roman Catholics and Jews who have lived here since then, have effectively been unrepresented. Indeed, anyone of another religion other than Church of England was subject to negative discrimination in many aspects of life.
More recently, given the many different religions now in the UK, things have had to change. Now we have token Jewish, RC, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim members in the Lords. Of course, we had members of all religions in the Lords (and the elected house the Commons) prior to this, but they were there as secular members who happened to belong to those religions. The idea being that now all religions are represented, so there should be (should) no single religious agenda forming opinion in the Lords.
That this arrangement ignores that there are more than the major world religions present in the UK, seems to have escaped notice of those who make these changes. That this arrangement also ignores the many variations on Christian religion, seems to have similarly evaded action. Thus, it is not a perfect arrangement either - and above all, the state religion remains Church of England, which is wrong when one considers that church attendance and even Christian observation here is very much a minority activity. The census returns might put C of E members in the millions, but thats only because people here tend to use C of E to mean no religion at all, or thats the best answer they can put, as theyre too ignorant to think otherwise.
But what if we in the UK, abandoned this whole state religion thing, and instead permitted all qualifying religions (ie, they can be defined by their followers and they are sufficiently followed here) to place a member (one only, not the dozens of C of E bishops we have now), in the Lords? The upper house scrutinises legislation and approves it or sends it back to the elected house for revision. This way, representatives of all religions would have the possibility to comment on and change legislation, without any one religion having too much say.
At the same time, the Parliamentary standards commission, which already looks into Members' affairs and deals with any malfaisance, could have its commission extended such that Members must also declare any religious interests and/or affiliations, in the same way they must now declare all gifts, entertainments, investments etc as a condition of office. This would then mean that under such monitoring, any religious influence they are courting or bringing to bear on the legislation and administration of the country, would be identified and could be dealt with. This in turn would negate any point in religious lobbies trying to influence Members, and with the revising house having only a limited religious representation, we could be as sure as possible that religion played no part in politics, apart from on a fair and level field which did not favour any one form, or indeed disfavour any others.
This, given that religion (by which we can assume Christianity is meant, in our culture, as it says in the bookshop), will always find its ways into politics, could be a solution perhaps? If anyone would like to comment, that would be great, but I'd rather hear alternative practical solutions than feel flames thanks. I think we all agree there is an issue, so there's no point in continuing that side of the debate?
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