On 29 December 1838, the Dean of Exeter Cathedral, Whittington Landon, died. In the months that followed, the cathedral chapter repeatedly refused to elect the individuals nominated by the Crown, setting the stage for a protracted struggle that would play out in Parliament and in the Court of Queen's Bench. This is the story of R v The President and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exeter.1

In May 2021, Jesus College Cambridge submitted to the Diocese of Ely a ‘faculty petition’ – that is, a formal request to alter the fabric of an ecclesiastical building – asking for permission to remove from the west wall of the college chapel a large memorial to Tobias Rustat, ‘because of Rustat's known involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans’. On 23 March 2022, following hearings the month before, Hodge Dep Ch provided a written judgment in which he denied the application. The college, he said, had not provided a convincing case that the removal of the monument was ‘necessary to enable the Chapel to play its proper role in providing a credible Christian ministry and witness to the College community’, and such a case was needed to outweigh the ‘considerable, or notable, harm’ that would result from the removal ‘to the significance of the Chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest’.

This article seeks to provide a constitutional law perspective on the contribution of the Lords Spiritual to the scrutiny of legislation in the House of Lords. It examines the legal basis of the bishops’ role in the Upper House and how this has evolved. It considers how far the bishops currently meet expectations about their role against the background of calls for reform of the House of Lords and changes in religious affiliation in the United Kingdom. The paper draws, amongst other things, on the experience of a group of current and former Lords Spiritual who shared their views with the author in the course of some informal semi-structured conversations. It also examines the relationship between the Lords Spiritual and the Church of England's national institutions. It concludes that the Lords Spiritual make a distinctive contribution to the legislature which should be maintained, with some modifications to meet the needs of the time.

Cathedrals have been described as ‘normative space’ insofar as their regulation both shapes, and is shaped by, their architecture. This article extends that description and applies it, by analogy, to listed Church of England churches and examines how the concept of ‘normative space’ relates to, and informs, their regulation within ecclesiastical and secular systems. The article goes on to outline the implications for (1) architectural and artistic innovation and (2) the worship and mission of the Church.

In October 2022 the Church of England commissioned an examination of the impact of the debate on same-sex blessing and same-sex marriage within other Anglican Churches. The examination involved a literature search, an original survey among key informers and a general internet search. This paper draws on the general internet search to contrast the impacts in New Zealand and Australia. Drawing on Jungian psychological type theory, this analysis employs the contrasting decision-making functions of feeling (concerned with subjective interpersonal values) and thinking (concerned with objective logical analysis). The data suggest that the feeling approach dominant in New Zealand, which prioritized offering space and time for those of differing opinions to meet together, reported more positive outcomes than the thinking approach dominant in Australia, which gave greater priority to adversarial debate.

The rhetoric of spiritual kinship was a pungent part of a “discourse of separation” which materialized among the English puritans in post-Reformation England. Using print literature aimed at properly preparing the godly to come “worthily” to the Lord's Supper, most of which was penned by puritan divines, this article examines family language in use among the godly in the context of the communion meal in the Elizabethan and early Stuart national church. This rhetoric signaled a real identity – an identity tied intimately to the nexus of right doctrine and a certain type of English Protestant practice. The present essay traces out the theological framework that buttressed this identity and suggests the ways in which family language fostered both inclusive and exclusive responses among the godly as they sought to “rightly” celebrate the sacrament. It argues that the use of the language of spiritual kinship helped the godly come to terms with their uncomfortable position in a national church they considered insufficiently reformed, and with the difficulties that ensued from “holy” living, as naturally unholy beings, in a fallen world. This study contributes to our understanding of the informal mechanisms by which early modern English Protestants could navigate the choppy waters of social and religious life in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. More generally, this consideration of a distinctive puritan usage of familiar scriptural language to make sense of England's religious landscape in this period underscores the interpretive importance of remaining acutely aware of discursive context in early modern religious sources.

The Enabling Act 1919 provided for a new National Church Assembly able to make Measures with the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament. The 1919 Act was without question a constitutional moment with far-reaching effects; and it was about law, not morals: legalists triumphed over moralists. However, it was just one stage in a much longer trajectory of thinking about the constitution of the Church of England. This article, which started life as a lecture to the Ecclesiastical Law Society's day conference on 2 April 2022, takes the story further back – and widens it. It presents the key elements of thinking about the constitution – accidents, continuity, change – in the works of English ecclesiastical lawyers – civilians, common lawyers and clerical jurists – from the Reformation to the Act of 1919. To what extent, if at all, in their understandings of the church constitution, were our historic ecclesiastical lawyers legalists, or moralists, or both? Was the ecclesiastical constitution itself simply a legal category, or did it, and its basics, also have a moral quality? This article explores these questions in relation to: (1) the nature, sources, and purposes of the constitution of the Church of England; (2) legislative, administrative and judicial power; and (3) the rights of the individual enforceable against the decisions of ecclesiastical government. This article is based on a paper delivered to the Ecclesiastical Law Society's 2022 day conference.

It is a great challenge to respond as a theologian to Professor Doe's magisterial survey in the article published in the previous pages of this Journal.I was asked to respond to the paper upon which that article is based from a theological perspective as part of the Ecclesiastical Law Society's 2022 day conference. Professor Doe demonstrates how, in the years between Hooker and the Church Assembly, ecclesiastical lawyers had recourse to both ethical, natural law arguments and those purely from legal or even positivistic ones. It is significant to see how frequently the Anglican theorist, Richard Hooker, is invoked throughout the article. He dates, of course, from the Reformation period when, as Harold Berman points out, a pre-Enlightenment jurisprudence still obtained which combined all three dimensions of law – the political, the moral, and the historical. In my view, what is important about Hooker is that he makes no separation between the legal and the ethical because law is divine in origin and even in God himself there is a law of his being: ‘the being of God is a kind of law to his working’ in giving his perfection to what he makes and ‘God is a law both to himself and to all other things beside’. Moreover, the ethical is only realised in what we decide to do and the laws we make. Law in Hooker is even Christological because, just as the Father begets the Logos (the Son), so the law proceeds as his continuing work in creation and history. To walk in God's ways and obey his laws is to be in union with Christ. Hooker was, of course, working out the meaning of the emerging Church of England in the Reformation Settlement, but even the pragmatic is itself participatory in the divine law and he appeals back to the natural law tradition for that reason.

Charles III acceded to the British throne on 8 September 2022, becoming at the same time Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This article presents an overview of the law relating to the King and the Church of England, and considers the effects of the royal supremacy today.

There is much to address in responding to such a rich and thoughtful range of reflections as given by Bishop Pete in his article published in the previous pages of this Journal. I was asked to respond to that paper from a theological perspective as part of the Ecclesiastical Law Society's 2022 day conference, and this comment piece has been based substantially on that response. So many areas of theological relevance are raised by Bishop Pete: the nature of authority in the Church of England, the role of the bishop, the shortcomings of the synodical process and the legal framework for evangelism.

This article is based on a paper delivered to the Ecclesiastical Law Society's day conference in 2022. It is a reflection on the workings of General Synod from the perspective of an author who has been a member of Synod for around 36 years. The article examines three discrete themes: (i) the problem of authority in the Church of England, (ii) the shortcomings of Synodical government, and (iii) the urgency of mission. It examines these themes by considering, among other things, the Church of England's response to a number of contemporary issues: its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, proposed reform of its governance structures, its ability to respond to issues concerning sexuality and racial justice, and the proposals for reforming the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011, as set out in GS 2222.

Roman canon law did not cease to have an effect within the Church of England after the Reformation. English ecclesiastical lawyers continued to use pre-Reformation foreign papal law and domestic provincial and legatine law. These lawyers used several ideas to explain its status in pre-Reformation England. They usually held that it continued in force after the Reformation on the basis of section 7 of the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 (if not repugnant to laws of the realm) – and a commission would reform it. However, it is submitted here that this statute enabled the continuance of only domestic provincial law and perhaps legatine law but not foreign papal law. Yet a 1543 statute continued the provincial law and ‘other ecclesiastical laws’ used in England, which may or may not have included legatine and papal law. Another of 1549 has no continuance provision, but the commission was to review ‘ecclesiastical laws used here’ – which, too, may or may not include legatine and papal law. A statute of 1553 repealed these earlier statutes. A statute of 1558 repealed that of 1553 but revived only the 1533 statute, not those of 1543 or 1549. This suggests that only domestic provincial law, and perhaps legatine law, continued on the basis of statute, and not foreign papal laws. The latter might have applied from 1543 to 1553 but not after 1558, as only the 1533 statute perpetuating solely domestic law was revived. Nevertheless, English lawyers continued to invoke foreign Roman canon law. By the nineteenth century they did so on basis of custom not statute – and the 1533 Act section 7 was repealed in 1969.

This study draws on data provided to the Covid-19 & Church-21 Survey by 826 ‘non-ministering’ Anglicans living in England in order to explore why some people gave up worshipping online or in church during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2021. Nearly a quarter of the participants had given up online worship, attending offline services in church, or both: 15 per cent had given up on online worship, 13 per cent had given up on going to church, and 5 per cent had given up on both. Giving up was significantly correlated with negative experience of services. Those under the age of forty and Anglo-Catholics were most likely to give up online worship. Women and extraverts were most likely to give up on socially distanced services in church. The results indicate the sorts of people who might drift from the church post-pandemic and what the Church could concentrate on to prevent this process.

This article examines an account by William Grant Broughton, describing a journey made in 1845 to the south of his Diocese of Australia. It was published by English supporters, describing the impossibly large area of his responsibility and pleading for a subdivision of his diocese. Broughton wanted to overcome ignorance of Australia, to thank his supporters for money and manpower, and to demonstrate that his work as a bishop was not just a state appointed official, but as a spiritual Father-in-God in apostolic succession from Christ. Broughton was inspired by the Oxford Movement. Broughton met influential colonists and inspired support in his vision of church buildings where the Gospel might be preached and the sacraments of the Church of England celebrated with a dignity to inspire and attract the flock. Broughton knew the 1836 decision of the Government to give state aid to all major Christian denominations undermined the claim of the Church of England to have inherited established legal status the church enjoyed in England. Broughton’s heroic efforts form an inspiring Anglican heritage. The article concludes that by the time of his death in 1853 his church was but one denomination in a spiritually plural, and secular, society.

In a 1683 sermon, Benjamin Calamy, an Anglican priest, claimed that the separation of Dissenters from the Church of England was unjustifiable. Thomas Delaune, a London Baptist schoolmaster, responded in A Plea for the Non-Conformists (1684), which compared seventeenth-century Dissenters to sixteenth-century Reformers who had escaped from the “Church of Rome.” The Restoration authorities judged the book to be a seditious libel, for which Delaune was arrested, tried, and imprisoned in Newgate, where he was soon joined by his poverty-stricken wife and two children. By 1685, the whole family had perished in Newgate. This tragic story guaranteed Delaune's status as a martyr for generations of Nonconformists. Indeed, the Plea achieved amongst Dissenters the reputation of an “unanswerable” text. Its enduring appeal transcended denominational and geographical boundaries. This paper explores the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reception of the Plea, which Dissenters, both in England and America, repurposed for various politico-theological circumstances. Throughout the eighteenth century, Dissenters invoked the Plea against perceived cases of episcopal tyranny. By the pluralistic nineteenth century, however, this external, episcopal threat had largely been replaced with an internal one, prompting Dissenters to deploy the Plea against corruption and lethargy within their own denominations.

J.A.F. Gregg, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, played an important role in religious life across the island of Ireland for half of the twentieth century. He has been portrayed by historians as the “Marble Arch,” a leader who reigned over one Church across two states. This article reevaluates that interpretation: by using the period of the Second World War as a case study, it suggests that the historiographical portrayal of Gregg has neglected other significant aspects of his character and career. This article contends that, in addition to being a dominant leader, he was a British patriot, a pastor, and a scholar. Gregg navigated a course that recognized both states and their differing positions regarding the conflict; and he contributed to post-war desires for unity among Irish Anglicans across those states during a period of increased division on the island. The article, by bringing fresh attention to Gregg, discusses an under-examined figure in the history of the Church of Ireland and explores a hitherto neglected period in that historiography. By contextualizing Gregg's wartime rhetoric with that of Anglican churchmen in England, the study also addresses lacunae both in the historiography of religion and the Second World War and in that of Irish and Northern Irish experiences of the conflict.