The UK is by history a Christian country. We have an established Christian Church. We also have a long embedded tradition of religious toleration and open access to opportunities for people of all faiths and none.
For this to work well all citizens need to practise that tolerance and fairness. All have to accept that there are national events which will be performed in Christian cathedrals that provide many of our great public buildings. The ceremonies will often be led by the government assisted by the Established Church.
In its turn the Established Church needs to have wise and sensitive leaders. The Church of England has done itself harm by its failure to root out child abuse. It has made itself a left wing intruder into the UK political debate, seeing higher taxes and more public spending as the answer to every problem and equating socialism with moral superiority. It has lost so many followers, with dwindling congregations. It is easier to sustain the case for an established church if it can show good levels of voluntary support.
The Church of England still has considerable inherited wealth. It demands charity tax exemption whilst urging that others with wealth should pay higher taxes. It urges the UK to accept more migrants and provide them with subsidised homes, yet most clergy do not offer their spare rooms to ease the shortage.
This Easter Sunday it would be good to hear the stand in Archbishop break out of the politics of Church decline, and put the sins and hypocrisy of the past behind it. Easter is the Christian Church’s opportunity to put forward its own message as it has no national event to host. Many of us are listening, so what new does the Church have to say?
Let me wish you all a Happy Easter. May you have a great day with family and friends, enjoying the eggs, Easter lunch and the stories of spring.
April 18, 2025
We don’t seem to be permitted to celebrate a Christian event for fear of “the offence” which it may cause to other people who practice a far less tolerant faith.
The Establishment seems determined to ram Islam down our throats at every opportunity. The only part of the Christian “message” they promote is Matthew 5:39 “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
The Established Church has no relevance for the vast majority of people in the UK now. If you want to hear the Christian message why on earth would you go to a C of E service which is “pushing” everything but Christianity?
Happy Easter everyone.
April 18, 2025
Not just the views of the CoE but also the head of our church and our king ….I’m old enough to remember easter parades, getting dressed up for easter sunday church service, easter egg hunts, and christain movies/programmes on TV ….now its all about inclusion with other religions, even our king couldn’t send an easter message without appeasing the jewish & islamic faith
April 19, 2025
Not happy.
Britain is under attack.
April 18, 2025
The CofE has become a national disgrace. The recent Archbishop of Canterbury covering up child abuse and the forceful emigration of children to the colonies in the past.
What should be a force for good is now a left wing megaphone for all that is wrong with the establishment.
Soon with their blessings we will be ruled by an alien culture and they will wonder how it happened when their great buildings and palaces are transformed into ghettos.
April 18, 2025
Happy Easter to all. At my local church we are trying to raise £200k to repair the ancient belltower. This church, nestling below the scarp of the South Downs, has stood there since Anglo saxon times, on a site that was possibly used in the Romano-British period. The stones and styles of masonry show the work of early Saxons has been repaired by the Tudors and others. With comparatively little Victorian “improvement”, it is nevertheles remarkably intact. A Templar grave lies under the nave floor. The edifice is a eulogy to England’s history.
Despite this it is very hard to raise the funds to do the repairs. Our rural Parish has a population of 234. The church is isolated. I’m not sure we’ll get the necessary money, without divine intervention.
So it is very galling to see that the Church is intending to give away £100m of its money overseas for slavery “reparations”. Especially when it is argued that this is in defiance of the charitable purposes which, as a registered charity, the Church Commission can spend its money on.
April 18, 2025
W,
The church at the top is my road is 12th century Church of England. Allegedly it was a stopping point en route to The Crusades. The church at the bottom is Methodist. The Methodists seem busier. Koreans are a big part of their congregation and they are quite active. They are also prominent in New Malden. I use their hall for voting. I occasionally the Anglican hall when there are pre-election speeches by the various candidates.
April 18, 2025
While the basic tenets of Christianity as espoused by J C remain credible to this day, the subsequent church became a very successful business and political force which went on to create slaughter and mayhem in its name in both Europe and South America. In various negative ways it has continued to this day. The CoE was merely Henry VIII cornering his share of the business, and sovereignty of this sceptered isle. Of late the CoE seems to have lost its way, not knowing if it is a business or a herald for christian values. I like the original message of Christianity, but am not drawn to the institution.
April 20, 2025
Wanderer:
Every child has two biological parents, doubling at each generation preceding.
A slave trader of some 200 years ago may have resulted in 8 or more generations of children following, with the latest, possibly living in England today, being up to 90 or more years old.
The great grandparentage of the original trader may be only one of hundreds the people in the current day living child’s father & mother to offspring direct ancestry.
The latest child was not guilty nor liable for Church of England ‘reparations’.
April 18, 2025
“The UK is by history a Christian country”
That may be so, but the fastest growing religion in the UK is Islam – up from 2.7% recorded by the 2001 census, to 4.4% in 2011. The most popular boy’s name registered here in 2024 was Muhammad.
Islam, like Christianity, is a religion of many branches and sects. Those of the Wahhabist and Salafist persuasions hold that all unbelievers should be killed, as should be their apostates. Our prisons are full of them.
Religions in this country have a historic problem with paedophilia, whether they be Church of England, Roman Catholic or the Pakistani rape gangs. The reason is that religious leaders are held in awe by their believers – who give them unsupervised access to their children.
Once caught out, the religious leaders offer apologies, pay compensation, make noises about “safeguarding” – and continue to look the other way. It’s long past time that the practice of allowing religious leaders unsupervised access to children be banned.
April 18, 2025
Fastest growing via conversion or fastest due to immigrants?
April 18, 2025
The Church needs to be cognisant that we have democratic elected representatives, the electorate hold them to account and they have the ultimate control over them therefore it does not need to be overly involved. I have on occasions disagreed with the Church’s idealism and impracticality and I wish it to take a step back from politics.
That said I still look forward to Easter Sunday Eucharist at my local Anglican parish church. Wishing Sir John and everyone a very happy Easter!
April 18, 2025
Likewise, Mr Redwood. A happy Easter to you and your family.
April 18, 2025
The church needs a change to sensible leadership with higher standards of quality and behaviour. Such change may not encourage large numbers to become regular churchgoers after decades of decline, but those with faith often may not need to attend a special place to be faithful to what is morally right and to lead a happy life in the spirit of help and kindness to others.
Our monarch who is traditionally ‘Defender of the Faith’ should also lead by example. A specific faith is not defended by diluting that loyalty with others’ different faiths and occasionally-opposing beliefs. The ‘religious’ Easter message should focus solely on Christianity, not a mish mash of meaninglessness for some sake of misguided inclusivity. Good wishes to other faith events belong separately, as do some appropriate actions opposing hostility.
Happy Easter to SJR and all.
April 18, 2025
“established church”, No thanks!
Every individual should keep their Religion to themselves!
Having an Established Church makes it that much more difficult to restrict, control, or even understand, the challenges thrown up by other religions, makers us ignorant to threat posed by their growth!
Not that anyone individual should rely on an Established Church! They should be responsible for their own Moral Structure, especially as living by the Rule of Law assumes it! Or, is that what’s wrong with our Legal system?
April 18, 2025
As an Atheist I look at religion with disbelief. In the 21st century, how can humans still believe such nonsense and fairy stories.
However, even I am alarmed by the slow destruction of Christianity in the UK. Not because I care about it. But because I’m witnessing it’s replacement by Islam.
I fear Britain is on the road to becoming an Islamic state. I’ll be dead and gone by then but my Children and Grandchildren will be here.
April 18, 2025
The Church Commission has found £100 million down the back of the sofa to give to West Indian slave descendents who find themselves in a top holiday destination instead of living in the paradise of the DRC or Nigeria. Or perhaps the descendents of 15the Africans who sold the slaves to the Europeans at the ports will get some money too. But because churches have been told to go for net zero, our local C of E church can’t afford a new heating system or insulation. The congregation is down to about 15 and fewer when it’s cold.
April 18, 2025
Reparations for so many years ago are strange.
A child is not guilty of a parent’s wrongdoing, nor that of their great great grandparents’.
Why should today’s citizens pay compensation for what others’ ancestors did, or may have done hundreds of years ago, in money to descendants of those affected overseas?
The notion distorts common sense.
Even more so, as some of those whose money the church appropriated for the purpose of payment are descendants of the slaves themselves!
Life would make more sense for meat-eaters to be charged, for causing the continuous slaughter of innocent animals.
April 18, 2025
I’ve often said I want reparations from Italy for the Romans controlling us for 400 years- a recent Ferrari in proper working order will do.
April 20, 2025
Maybe the Jutes and Vikings should club together to add a Saab private jet and luxury yacht.
April 18, 2025
A very happy Easter to you too.
There are many who would do well ro remember that all religions are a matter of faith rather than certainty, so toleration of the faith of others should go without saying. If it did, the troubles of the Middle East, and sadly increasingly in parts of this country among others, that is far from the case.
April 18, 2025
One of the pleasures of political websites is the comments from people whose indignation gets the better of their spelling. Yesterday one commenter (not here) railed against Labour “hypocracy”.
What a splendid word for rule by hypocrites – or should that be hypocrats?
As our host notes, the poor old CoE is now a hypocracy. If there’s one thing Brits can’t stick, whether in government or the pulpit, it’s a hypocrat. Let’s do all we can to make sure they know it.
April 18, 2025
Thank you Sir John. A very Happy Easter to you too.
April 18, 2025
Happy Easter to you SirJ
April 18, 2025
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that Trump would “walk away” from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days, unless there are clear signs that a deal can be done. Trump’s attention span is limited, he is now distracted by his tariffs trade war and is taking aim at a new MAGA enemy – Fed Chairman Jay Powell
As predicted, Putin had no intention of agreeing to any 30 day ceasefire deal. His army is being reinforced with thousands of N Korean troops and is supplied with daily trainloads of N Korean artillery ammunition. The Russians have spent the winter calling up conscripts and preparing a spring offensive. Putin has been reassured by Trump recently repeating his ridiculous claim that Zelenskyy started the war and his failure to place any tariffs on Russia.
On the face of it there would appear to be no alternative but to continue to support Ukraine. Appeasement of Putin by agreeing his demand for a Ukraine capitulation is unacceptable. Trump needs to demonstrate real leadership and issue a military ultimatum to Putin, backed up by reinforcement of US troops in Germany and Poland. He is reported as playing golf this weekend. Maybe his time would be better spent in visiting Ukraine and seeing for himself the reality of Russia barbaric bombing of Ukraine civilians.
April 18, 2025
Zelensky refuses to make any concessions. Therefore there can be no deal. Zelensky will just have to be beaten. He, like the EU and NATO (excluding Trump) understands nothing until their noses are rubbed in it.
April 19, 2025
Your country gets invaded, hundreds of thousands of dead, thousands of homes bombed – why would you be willing to make concessions? How many white flags do we need?
April 18, 2025
A happy Easter to you in turn Sir John, the first in a long while without the yoke of parliamentary membership.
(I have been luxuriating in the knowledge that we commenters here no longer have to see your constituents come first in claims on your time. I record with pleasurable amazement that I have seen comments whisk though moderation on occasion at lightening speed, even before I have rearranged windows after posting.)
The history of European thought for c. five hundred years has been a drift towards secularism and so it continues. I am not clear that the Church can do so much to change that.
April 18, 2025
Happy Easter to you and yours, Sir John, and to all readers and comment posters.
Of course, there’s the flip side to our tolerance, and that is Zealotry. This nation experienced it during the Cromwell regime where Puritans even forbade Christmas. Now we have it in the form of Net Zero and Climate Zealots. Perhaps one could even mention the mask-and-vax zealotry from five years ago.
I do wonder though why it is that none of those preaching tolerance ever demand reciprocity from those we tolerate …
April 18, 2025
I suggest it’s because they know what their demands would result in.
April 18, 2025
Happy Easter Sir John and to all who red your daily wisdom.
You can no more be unilaterally welcoming of ‘all religions’ than you can unilaterally disarm to unilaterally open your market to free trade.
‘Religions’ which will not tolerate pure, and indeed will not tolerate us, cannot be allowed to be practised in the U.K. or indeed in the west.
We will not be going to our church this Easter, because we are Christians and the CofE has lost the way – the only way.
April 18, 2025
No mention of peace.
In September, the Pope :-
‘ “Yesterday, children were bombed,” the pope said. “This is cruelty. This is not war.’
This needs saying again. Politicians, press and TV ignore the issue.
April 19, 2025
‘Cruelty’ is almost a let-off for total barbarity.
April 20, 2025
MT,
Agreed.
April 18, 2025
We have in power an elite, who having seen how Communism/Marxism has failed against the capitalist West’s successful ideas of freedom and meritocracy, are now attempting to sabotage the West’s living standards by transitioning it’s energy and theology back to the early Middle Ages.
April 18, 2025
A happy Easter to you, Sir John. The problem with the C of E is that it has had a series of woke Archbishops of Canterbury. They then appoint woke Bishops who agree with them, and the powerful Christian message gets diluted.
As others have commented, the C of E is increasingly a woke, left / liberal organisation.
Congregations are declining, but not to worry, let’s focus on slavery and use the money needed by local churches to pay reparations.
When you follow the culture rather than the bible, you end up going round in circles. As with recent governments’ weak, wishy-washy leadership. Pymies when we needed giants!
April 18, 2025
Sir John, Wishing you and your family, a very Happy Easter.
I wish the same to all contributors on this blog. I hope everyone enjoys this very special time.
April 18, 2025
A joyful and thinking Easter to you. I think we have become too much for the chocolate and not enough for our souls. I was listening to Gyles Brandreth on BBC2 yesterday and what an interesting life he has led and come out better from his experiences. Jesus for me has always been the one of all religions (I know he was a Jew and we came later) but his treatment of women made him different in his time. We should not forget this and remember him often in our daily lives so that we can become better human beings to all things created by God.
April 18, 2025
211 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …contravening the Illegal Immigration Act 2023 ….and hundred more today, and many will pretend to be christians
April 18, 2025
GC :
Christians from which century? The High Middle Ages?
April 18, 2025
The Church of England is a political organisation because its bishops are appointed by the state based on their political opinions.
Perhaps we should have a change of bishops with a change of government? Alternatively, the CoE could be
disestablished so it no longer should see itself as a political organisation with representation in the
House of Lords. People are leaving the CoE and some are joining the Roman Catholic church because they want a purely spiritual engagement and are fed up with the secular compromises of the state church.
April 18, 2025
Unfortunately The Vatican is also an earth-bound political entity. Rather like our King.
April 18, 2025
Thank you Sir John,
Whatever people’s beliefs, the Easter message is that utter despair can be transformed into joyous hope. We all need to be reminded of that.
April 18, 2025
ons.gov.uk ‘Religion, England and Wales, Census 2021´.
46.2% Christian, 37.2% no religion, Muslim 6.5%, Hindu 1.7%
94% of people in the census answered the religion question.
Happy Easter to all.
April 18, 2025
In Holland they added an innocuous question to the census. ‘What religion are you?’
The Dutch then outdid the German Nazis in rounding up their Jews.
In a country and a Continent about to fall, many remember that and choose not to take on the powers that be who demand submission.
Every heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali? She reports that the Swedish PM admits he has lost the monopoly of Violence. They have not yet admitted that in Germany, France, the U.K. etc. but we see evidence every day.
April 18, 2025
The next census is 2031.
I think that even today, the figures will have greatly changed due to the millions who have arrived here since 2021.
April 18, 2025
The comments to the inquiry by the Independent Water Commission will be accepted till 23 April 2025. Right now nationalising one or several water companies is not even part of their discussion. Anybody can provide comments.
gov.uk 27/02/2025 ‘Independent Commission for Water – call for evidence’.
April 18, 2025
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” – and it really doesn’t matter who said it but it starts with upfront Fact Checking
April 18, 2025
Sorry, another O/T: A YouGov poll of 4,703 adults carried out between 31/03 and 02/04/2025 is discussed by BestInBritain
bestinbritain 12/04/2025 ‘Poll: Voters expect trade to be Government’s top priority at UK-EU Summit in May’.
Results to various questions are presented for the population as a whole, for Labour voters, Conservative to Labour voters, and Reform-curious voters.
The methodology is discussed in the very last paragraph, several pages down.
April 18, 2025
‘Expecting’ is not approval Hefner.
April 18, 2025
Really Lynn, I give the reference of a poll not unrelated to today’s post, including the title of the relevant article, without commenting on its findings.
Can you tell me what I have done to deserve your comment, which I take as reproachful.
April 19, 2025
they mostly are!
April 19, 2025
I trust Two-Tier will be explaining to the EU that their Customs Union is protectionist, is distorting world trade and should therefore be dismantled …. not least because it excludes many of the poorer nations on earth which would greatly benefit from the ability to trade more freely.
The last thing we should be doing is encouraging the EU’s protectionism by supporting it.
April 18, 2025
Apart from the fancy dress I don’t think the church has much to offer in today’s world it’s leaders rarely speak out about important matters and then only when it is too late or trivial enough to be unimportant
April 18, 2025
The critical thing as that the British population did not appeal to the Church regarding the rape gangs.
That says it all.
An Archbishop who is ‘depressed’ and needs to take ‘sabbaticals’ is not what you would call filled with the spirit!
Neither is one who deliberately becomes a Druid immediately before moving into Lambeth Palace.
A Defender of the Faith who refuses to defend the faith, seems, to me to have resigned. Let’s let poor Charles wander off and live a more simple, short, life.
April 18, 2025
Census figures now show most British people don’t think of themselves as Christians ,let alone Anglicans.
The reality, the unspoken reality is that in Britain most people ceased to be religious from at least the time of The Industrial Revolution when people moved into cities and suburbs.
In the medieval world there were not only churches to accommodate just about everybody at church services not only in every village but also every town in Britain – see the sheer number of churches there then were proportionate to the population in ancient towns such as Norwich and Bristol. However when people later moved into towns and suburbs and the population soared while new houses were built, new churches were not in general built. For instance – and it is typical of a suburb- the churches in Prestwich where I live could not have accommodated even 10% of the supposedly Christian population attending church even 80 years ago, let alone now. Clearly even 100 years ago and possibly even 200 years ago, over 90% of the population did not attend or bother with the Church or religion.
That Britain is a Christian country was a national fiction even 100 years ago and it is absurd now both factually and intellectually. If even God’s existence is, as many including myself assert, a fiction, what chance has Christianity, one of many religions, let alone the Anglican sect, of being true?
Establishment of the Anglican Church is based on fictions which should have been dispensed with many years ago. So disestablishment should very belatedly happen now.
April 18, 2025
There is absolute proof that there is a Creator, because we are created.
The CofE has driven us from their door. That does not mean that we re not Christians.
This morning in my cousins’ two churches (the services televised in the smaller one) 66,000 people attended.
April 19, 2025
Even if there were a Creator such a Creator wouldn’t be God. The creators/builders (note the collaborative plural!) of the house I live in are now all dead! Creation does not make anything immune from death!
April 19, 2025
not an evolutionist then? Seven day wonder?
April 18, 2025
GB,
Your timings are well out.
Religion was thriving during the Industrial Revolution. Missionary societies were at their peak,sending preachers to foreign parts. The Quaker industrialists built social housing for their workers. Titus Salt was a temperance Christian who built a whole town for his employees (with no pubs) in Yorkshire.
There was a huge religious revival in Wales in the early twentieth century.
The abdication crisis before the war revolved around religion and divorce.
Religion was fairly strong until the 1960s.
April 19, 2025
You are putting the conventional view and there were certainly some very ardent Christians then. However the unmistakable evidence that the churches even before the Second World War could not accommodate within them even 10% of the population at their Sunday morning services proves otherwise!
April 19, 2025
GB,
The number of services on a Sunday can be increased/reduced according to demand. There is no fixed capacity for a particular number of churches. You also need to factor in the large number of different denominations. Not everyone will be attending Anglican services.
Half a dozen masses on Sunday – 7, 8, 9, 10:30 12 and an evening mass at 5. Saturday masses are a quite recent change. So that could mean seven different services.
I forgot to mention Gladstone, our longest serving prime minister in the nineteenth century. He was an ardent Christian.
Then there was the formation of the Salvation Army.
In the 1950s there was Billy Graham tour of Britain. That drew massive crowds, non conformist rather than Anglican.
I also remember Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormons used to knock on doors quite regularly around the 1960s.
April 19, 2025
Could we get back to reality? Very,very few churches do two sittings of their main Sunday service, let alone seven! In former times when churches were more traditionalist that would have been almost inconceivable. We know this because most churches used to advertise all their service times on the noticeboard outside the church. I know about and take into account other denominations. For instance there were claimed to be around 7,000 Roman Catholics living in Prestwich (most of the Catholics I know claim to be chuchgoing in contrast to the Anglicans I know who are happy to say they have nothing to do with the church) and only one medium sized Catholic church in Prestwich – it cannot and never could seat more than 5% of Catholics and as I have for many years occasionally walked past that church at the end of their Sunday service, I can assure you attendance has long been a few dozen, not even a few hundred.
The limited seating capacity of churches reveals the reality of church non-attendance and irrelevance in Britain in a better way than mere folklore. The truth seemed to be that while previously it was not respectable for people to say they were not bothered with(let alone did not believe in) religion, the hidden reality as revealed by their actions (rather than words) even despite it not being respectable in the past was that most British people have had nothing to do with religion for well over 100 years.
April 19, 2025
they still do…..
April 19, 2025
GB,
‘Could we get back to reality? Very,very few churches do two sittings of their main Sunday service, let alone seven! ‘
From the sound of it you have never set foot inside a church. The seven masses I quote were a normal week in a Catholic parish in NW London during the 1970s. Parishioners used to stand in the porch for some of them.
April 18, 2025
The Christian Church does not maintain control of subjects by fear and violence, unlike others.
April 18, 2025
Good article in todays DT by David Frost
Jesus existance has been proven not just by the gospels but by Roman writers
He was spoken and written about more than his contemporary the Roman emperor Tiberius
So Jesus existed as fact
The only issue for people to decide is the Resurrection and if the deciples thought there was just a body lying in the tomb why did the go round preaching and facing persecution and martyrdom and the subsequent explosion of Christianity across the world
We have to make up our own minds
April 19, 2025
May I suggest you read the last chapter of each of Matthew, Mark and Luke and the last two chapters of John. No two of those ‘accounts’ concerning the alleged resurrection agree on the basics of where Christ appeared to his followers, hand how often he appeared and to whom he appeared. As they all contradict each other they are all unreliable.
Furthermore ‘apparitions’ of the recently dead are an alleged psychical phenomenon that is not all that uncommon even today.
April 19, 2025
The gospels were written 50 or so years after Jesus died
April 19, 2025
Also Geoffrey
You should read “Dominion “ by Tom Holland
April 18, 2025
For the establishment God is now Net Zero, the High Priest is the UN Sec Gen, the bible is the IPCC’s ‘Summary for Policymakers’ (not the WG1/Science) and true believers are led by feelings not facts. The UK’s Net Zero Strategy – Build Back Greener is the resurrection.