EGN NEWS DESK
Political logic seems to be on the aspect of Conservative MP Sir Gavin Williamson in his bid to deprive 26 Church of England bishops of their seats within the House of Lords. But the Labour authorities is probably going to withstand his modification as a result of the “Lords Spiritual” have proved to be so reliably left-wing.
The former Education Secretary within the Conservative authorities led by Boris Johnson has tabled an modification to Labour’s House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: “No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by advantage of being a bishop or Archbishop of the Church of England.”
In an article on October 29, the PoliticsHome web site reported: “In the largest Lords reform shake-up in virtually 25 years, the Labour authorities has determined to abolish the remaining 92 hereditary friends, as promised in its manifesto. But 26 Lords Spiritual additionally possess an automated proper to take a seat and vote within the Lords and have completed so because the 14th century. They represent one other block now thought by some to be outdated and undemocratic, not representing Britain at this time.”
PoliticsHome defined the political background to Sir Gavin’s modification: “Tensions between the bishops and the Conservatives reached boiling level over the past parliament, with relations described as ‘poisonous’ and ‘unfixable’. The bishops had been criticised for being too political by taking robust views on authorities laws, specifically its flagship immigration coverage. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was one of many main critics of the Rwanda Bill on the time, labelling it ‘immoral and merciless’.”
The article quoted Sir Gavin explaining the logic behind his modification: “The Government has made the choice to take away one outlier that has grow to be outdated, they need to additionally recognise the truth that there may be one other nice outlier. What can justify the Church of England having the precise to such legislative energy? This is totally out of sync with any trendy democracy. It’s frankly incorrect, and it is truly fairly insulting.”
Significantly, Martin Sewell, a outstanding lay member of the C of E’s General Synod, agrees that the bishops ought to lose their seats within the Lords. He wrote to The Church Times on November 1: “The Bishops’ privileged standing has been based upon a premiss of ethical integrity, which was presumed to make sure that they ‘spoke fact to energy’. That justification has evaporated with their collective failures to urgently deal with the a number of disasters in safeguarding…
“The Church that they lead obstructs each try to carry episcopal delinquency to account. Under its processes, any grievance is refined and diluted at every stage till it’s decided that it’s doesn’t ‘fairly’ attain the requisite commonplace and is dismissed.”
He concluded: “The sooner the Established Church is held to the identical requirements as each different establishment the higher; the withdrawal of its privileged place in Parliament is the worth we now have to pay. We solely have ourselves guilty.”
Fortunately for the Lords Spiritual Labour’s new Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova MP, appointed by the federal government to discipline questions within the House of Commons on behalf of the established Church, has revealed the Westminster elite’s dedication to reward the leftist loyalty of the bishops.
She defended the bishops with none obvious irony for being non-partisan. She advised PoliticsHome: “They scrutinise authorities laws, which is what the Upper Chamber is there to do, and one of many optimistic issues is that they don’t seem to be partisan…To me that’s one thing we must be applauding.
“I at all times consider there can be a spot within the Lords for our bishops. I can not see any house the place that would not be the case.”
So, the bishops will virtually definitely maintain their pink seats within the Upper House exhibiting that loyalty to neo-Marxist dogma relatively than political logic is the dominant issue within the authorities’s purge of the hereditary friends from the Lords.
But beneath the Labour authorities’s House of Lords shake-up would the C of E’s bishops be protecting their hereditary locations within the UK legislature if that they had constantly stood up for conventional, orthodox Christianity in all its counter-cultural glory?
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist primarily based in Lancashire.
