The last gasp of political Protestantism

I'm very pleased to be able to say that an preview is available of an article that John Maiden and I have had accepted for publication in Parliamentary History. It should appear sometime in 2012/13. This version is that accepted for publication, but before the (minor) amendments made in response to peer review and before copy-editing. Read it in SAS-Space:   'Parliament, the Church of England and the last gasp of political Protestantism, 1963-4.'

It looks at the attempts by evangelicals to prevent the passage through parliament of controversial measures relating to canon law revision in 1963-4. It assesses the interaction between church and legislature, the influence of both evangelical lobbyists and MPs, and the terms by which issues relating to religion and national identity were debated in parliament. It shows that while evangelicals were able to stir up a surprising level of controversy over canon law revision in the 1960s, the influence of political protestantism, and thus a significant long-term theme in British politics, had finally run its course.

National days of prayer in a period of crisis, 1966-74

Dipping one's toe tentatively into the new world of Open Peer Review, a draft paper of mine on archbishop Michael Ramsey is now available for comment and criticism at the History Working Papers Project. The idea is that HWPP can re-create the interchange of a seminar online, with readers commenting on the paper as a whole and on individual paragraphs, with an opportunity for the author to respond, and post revised versions for subsequent rounds of review. More on the HWPP project is available here.

The paper examines the petitions that were made to Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, to call a national day of prayer. It considers the grounds upon which the petitions was made, and the Church’s official reactions to them. In doing so, it sheds light from an unaccustomed angle onto attitudes towards petitionary prayer among some of the British public, on understandings of the role of the archbishop as leader of the nation’s religious life, and of the recent providential history of the nation, particularly during the 1939-45 war.

St Paul's and OccupyLSX: towards a web archive

I thought it would be worth beginning to assemble some of the coverage of the OccupyLSX encounter with St Paul's. Once we got past the rather lame 'moneylenders and the Temple' comments, there has been some rather more trenchant and useful comment regarding the incident as an opportunity lost for the Church of England. This is necessarily just a snapshot, and I'd be more than happy to add to it if readers were to suggest.

• Observer editorial, Sunday 30th October and Andrew Rawnsley in the same issue
• Giles Fraser on his reasons for resigning as Canon Chancellor, in the Guardian, October 27.
• George Carey's intervention in the Telegraph, 27 Oct, and that of the local MP, the Conservative Mark Field.
• Peter Stanford on the Church's lost opportunity
• Reactions to the encounter between the Bishop and the Dean with the protesters on Sunday 29th, in the Telegraph , and video from the BBC of Chartres addressing the crowd.
• Graeme Knowles' statement on resigning as Dean, October 31st, along with the reaction of the Bishop of London and of the Chapter. It provoked a characteristically measured and lucid response from Damian Thompson in the Telegraph, and the first statement from Canterbury of the whole episode, which has been followed up with a fuller response to the broader issues on Nov 1st.

The Established Church: new book

I note an interesting new book on The Established Church from Continuum, edited by Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby and William Whyte. The line-up is impressive, and I look forward to reading it.

Religious freedom or discrimination ?

Very interesting article in the latest online edition of Amicus Curiae on the recent case of the gay couple and the Christian guesthouse: the legal implications of Hall and Preddy v Bull by James Hand and Pat Feast.

Ray Pahl

I note a Guardian obituary of sociologist Ray Pahl, of note here for his role in the production of the controversial Faith in the City report of 1985.

The Catholic church in Poland

I note two interesting articles in the Guardian on the state of religious observance in Poland, its connection with national identity and (allegedly) with antisemitism, and the mounting excitement ahead of the the beatification of John Paul II. Interesting in themselves, and also by no means polemically neutral in the current state of discourse in Britain.

Geoffrey Robertson on the Papal visit

The work I've been doing for the web archiving project has necessarily picked up much material in the press, little of which can be added to the UK Web Archive for reasons of permissions. I thought therefore that it would be worth capturing some of that material here.

Readers may remember a campaign by Geoffrey Robertson against the Papal visit: see two pieces amongst several, on the legal basis of the Vatican's statehood, in the Guardian, and earlier on the prospects for indicting the Pope for complicity in the child abuse scandal

White evangelicals and conservative politics in the US

I notice this paper by Seth Arbutyn and Steven Brint, in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 49 (2010), and available online. It's interesting to note that this type of analysis is not one that seems to have been attempted to any great extent in relationship to Britain.

Bishops in the Lords

Whilst doing some work for the Politics of Religion project for the UK Web Archive, a selection of interesting links, some of which will be submitted to the UKWA:

On the negative side: Heresy Corner, Johann Hari in the Independent, and Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.
There have also been in recent years ongoing campaigns for reform to change the composition of the House: from the British Humanist Association, and the Power 2010 campaign.

On the more positive side, see a debate from Theos.

Faith schools: an Irish angle

Having just discovered the work of Eoin Daly of Dublin City University on the Irish system, I note it here as a corpus of work worth keeping an eye on: see his Academia.edu page.

Civil partnership ceremonies in church buildings

I note some discussion of the differing policies of the churches in this regard. The Church of England and the Catholic church have both ruled it out, although not officially: see the Guardian, Feb 13th and the BBC; a position welcomed by both the moderate evangelical Anglican site Fulcrum and the Christian Institute. (See also a joint conservative statement by the Christian Institute and others at the Anglican Mainstream site). Reports suggest that the denominations open to the possibility include the Quakers and the Unitarian church. It remains to be seen what happens when the legislation comes forward, but it is an indication of how far the ground has shifted that this is a mostly defensive movement; nothing to do with the right of a secular state to do as it sees fit, but simply to defend against any compulsion of religious groups to comply.