Disestablishing Church of England ‘won’t be a priority’ at next election, says Green Party

The Green Party has responded to claims it desires to disestablish the Church of England by saying that it will “not be a priority” at the following General Election. 

The Daily Mail reported that it had seen the plans in a Green Party policy document stating that the Church can be disestablished and as a substitute turn into “self-governing” in order that future appointments of offices just like the Archbishop of Canterbury can be refrained from involvement from secular government officials. Bishops would even be faraway from the House of Lords under the alleged plans. 

Responding to the claims, a Green Party spokesperson said: “As a democratic party our members have determined policy over a few years and, like all political parties, revising, updating and determining recent policy is an ongoing process. We will set out our detailed plans for presidency on the time of the following General Election just as we did on the last election.  

“Disestablishing the Church of England won’t be a priority. We will as a substitute concentrate on addressing the actual and immediate needs of individuals and the planet, equivalent to addressing climate breakdown, tackling the associated fee of living and rebuilding our public services, including the NHS.”

The Church of England became established in the course of the reign of Henry VIII within the sixteenth century, when the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534. It was this law that declared Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church of England, officially breaking away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Under his daughter Elizabeth I, the title modified to “Supreme Governor” and it has remained to at the present time. 

Commenting on the prospect of the Church of England being disestablished, Rev Pat Allerton, vicar of St Peter’s Notting Hill, said that “rather a lot” would change attributable to the best way during which Church and State are intertwined within the UK. 

“I feel it could change rather a lot. Constitutionally, obviously the bishops sit within the Lords, and there are church schools everywhere in the nation … ” he told GB News.

“Every prison has to have an Anglican chaplain. I’ve met quite a lot of prisoners who got here to faith in prison, lives transformed, and that might that might all go. It definitely would not have the suitable to remain, so it could have an effect.”

He added, “So lots of our laws, a lot of our heritage relies on the Christian story. The Houses of Parliament, within the lobby, inscribed on the ground is a scripture from Psalm 127 verse one, which says ‘unless the Lord builds the home, they labour in vain that construct it’, so there’s a lot heritage.”

Rev Allerton said though that as a minister within the Church of England, his “primary job” was to not defend establishment but point people to Jesus. 

“We’ve got to do a greater job of creating the case of preaching the gospel, of winning people back to Christ, because there’s loads of talk of us being a Christian nation, and historically, we now have been, we’re one, however the only probability of being a Christian nation again is that if people come to Christ or come back to Christ and begin going to church again,” he said. 

The Titular Archbishop of Selsey, an independent Catholic, said, “The Green Party’s proposal to disestablish the Church of England would reshape way over Parliament.

“It would affect church property, marriage law, burial rights, and a constitutional relationship between Christianity and the English state that stretches back over a millennium – on the very moment when sectarian Islamist mobilisation is increasingly visible in British electoral politics and recent policies on ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ are emerging.”

The Green Party faced strong criticism over its pro-Palestine campaign that courted the local Muslim vote and led to its recent victory within the Gorton and Denton by-election.