You have to hand it to Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister: he's good value for money. He doesn't realise that there are some subjects that ministers should leave well alone. There's a reason why he's not on Question Time tonight. Immediately after being appointed, he opened up the Pandora's box that is the Government's immigration policy.

In the same interview with The Times he declared that the Church of England would end up being disestablished: “Disestablishment - I think it will happen... once you open debate about the House of Lords you open up debate about the make-up... It will probably take 50 years but a modern society is multifaith.” Hang on, Mr W. The assumption that a multifaith society can't accommodate a privileged position for one religion, Anglicanism, can't be taken as given.

The case for an established Church, like monarchy, tends to be inchoate, being concerned with one of those parts of the constitution that works well without anyone quite knowing why. Admittedly, it worked better 50 years ago, when being CoE was nearly everyone's default religious position. But there's still a case for antidisestablishmentarianism.

Actually, leaders of minority faiths tend to be rather favourable to the CoE position, on the ground that its bishops provide a religious take on various issues with which they usually agree. And a reformed House of Lords could accommodate a few well-behaved bishops.

But the reason, I think, why most people don't mind establishment, insofar as they think about it at all, is that it's a reassuring reminder that there is some sort of moral touchstone within the political structure. It allows non-churchgoers to identify themselves, at several removes, with Christianity in its most benign and unthreatening form.

The presence of the Church within the constitution is a bit like having churches in towns and villages - something most people like to have around, even if they don't frequent them. What Rowan Williams calls the thousand silken threads that bind Church and State appeal to the kind of people who begin sentences with: “I'm not religious, but...”

When Anglican bishops say that the Church's position puts it in a relationship of service to the nation, they are right. A report last year by the Von Hügel Institute demonstrated that the value on the charitable work undertaken by the CoE would cost the State hundreds of millions of pounds. And that bears out a Home Office citizenship survey showing that the religiously observant are 48 per cent more likely than the uncommitted to engage in regular voluntary work. The CoE is good for England. Leave it alone.

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