THE present crisis over homosexuality in the Church of England has a certain air of unreality about it. Yes, the antagonism is real, as is the threat of a deep split. Yet both sides are shying from a larger issue, which they find far harder to discuss. The bishops would rather bicker with each other about genital sexual activity than reflect honestly on the political basis of their Church.

The last thing that the Church wants right now is a debate about disestablishment. Yet the present crisis raises fundamental issues about its identity: the question of establishment is bound to re-surface, and with unprecedented force. For this is the quiet, looming nemesis of the Church of England, its Moby Dick. Whether you ignore it or acknowledge it, it’s not going away.

It is tempting to rush straight into the arguments for disestablishment, and to turn up the rhetoric. But familiar arguments produce familiar responses. Let me begin in another way, and relate how I became a strange form of single-issue fanatic, a theological Ahab.

I am a fairly typical Anglican, in that my relationship to the Church has always been rather cool, detached, awkward — yet on the other hand I have not felt drawn to any other Church. In various ways I have tried to become more involved, to seek a stronger connection between my own faith and the life of the Church.

This process of tentative involvement was continuing in a rather inconclusive way until around two years ago — shortly after September 11, in fact. I realised that my problem with this Church, my difficulty in feeling enthusiastic about it, at home in it, was its established status. This was not something that had bothered me much before, although I was always vaguely aware that establishment was an ambiguous legacy, that it associated Christianity with an old national ideal, which was a turn-off to many young people (I am 31).

But I had always been ready to see the other side of the issue as well: the established Church was part of our national identity, and this helped the Church to reach many nominal members. It seemed to be one of those classic conundrums that it is just too complicated to judge, too evenly balanced to call.

But now I began to question establishment more closely. Perhaps it encourages indifference towards religion, and a vague sense that Christianity is being done for us by a department of state. Perhaps it also encourages a certain complacency within the Church, a reluctance to rethink its mission, to challenge old habits of thought and to address its gaping theological division.

It can hardly be denied that the Church, over the past few decades, has been failing to connect with contemporary British culture. Look at the general indifference of our intelligentsia towards our official national religion: it takes a sex-based split to interest them.

My reflections were also related to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11. There was a widespread fear that many British Muslims were not assimilating into British cultural life, with dangerous consequences. It struck me that our profession of an official national religion did not help: it conveyed the message that Muslims were tolerated aliens rather than full and equal citizens. If a nation is serious about multiculturalism, surely it must be explicitly secular? The secular case for disestablishment seemed obvious: I wondered why atheist commentators did not make it more forcefully.

But it was not primarily the secular case for disestablishment that motivated me; it was the theological one. The Church exists to communicate a very particular message, and to do so with freshness and force. But an established Church in a multi-faith society dare not proclaim its account of truth, for fear of abusing its privileged position. And so it errs on the side of caution and puts diplomacy before all else. An established Church is a neutered Church. This situation, incidentally, suits the secular-minded majority very well; it helps to keep religion out of politics and culture.

So I began to look into the ways in which the idea of establishment is defended. The most obvious argument of all is the old Tory one. Establishment is needed to maintain order and to promote national identity and moral values. It is part of a delicate mysterious organic structure: start unravelling it and you will end up reducing the constitution to rubble.

This argument has a certain aura of authority, like an ancestral voice. But it is logically flawed. It implies that political order is dependent on national religious unity. But in reality we are already an effectively secular, pluralist state; the Church has already lost its old cultural authority. Could it really be that we are staving off anarchy by the mere pretence of national religious unity? If Tory Anglicans were consistent they would campaign for the restoration of a pre- modern social order in which clericalism ruled.

Only a few people still make this old Tory case for establishment — and, oddly, many of them are Roman Catholics. But it still retains a huge subterranean power over the English imagination. And of course it influences Anglican thought. Dr John Habgood, the former Archbishop of York, has been perhaps the foremost defender of establishment of the past few decades: he often warns of the political dangers that disestablishment would unleash. The same case is repeatedly made by bishops who call themselves liberals.

Of course establishment is also defended on more theological grounds. It is often asserted that this Church is called to serve the entire nation, believers and nonbelievers alike. This sounds very noble until you realise that it also sounds rather arrogant. It means that the Church claims to own society, that it cannot renounce its old patriarchal role.

Disestablishment is favoured by a significant minority of clergy and by a few bishops. But it is never properly discussed by the Church; it is widely seen as a dangerous, demoralising debate. The dominant reaction to the issue is annoyance that it is being raised at all: “Let us be positive about our established role rather than always doing ourselves down!” people say. A jovial, bullish evasion reigns.

I believe that the Church must now confront the question of its establishment far more fully, openly and honestly than it has ever done. This is its only hope of cultural renewal. Perhaps Rowan Williams quietly knows this. Shortly before he was appointed to Canterbury he was asked whether disestablishment would weaken the Church. “As the philosopher Nietzsche said,” came his reply, “what does not kill you makes you stronger.”

In the hope of kicking this sluggish debate into life I have organised a public forum for discussion. “Who’s Afraid of Disestablishment?” will be held at St Mary’s church, Putney High Sreet, London SW15, on Saturday November 22, from 2.30 pm.

Theo Hobson is author of Against Establishment:An Anglican Polemic, published by DLT at £7.95.

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