I want to suggest that, for possibly the first time since the Second World War, we have a genuine opportunity for the Church of England to reform its mission and pastoral coverage, and its institutions, for good and for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Our changing culture is the main context for this reform, but it is being made possible by two external drivers—the financial meltdown which is currently taking place at national and diocesan level, and the decline in clergy numbers which has forced the Church at last to embrace the new patterns of ministerial priesthood and lay leadership proposed by John Tiller in 1983. It is clear to me that the Church of England as an institution only embraces change when it is forced to do so. It would be perfectly possible to ignore our changing cultural situation and to die quietly in a corner, were it not for our lack of money and priests. I am upbeat about this, because I do not believe that the forces of reaction and darkness will prevail this time. But I am worried that the framework of ecclesiastical law will delay and attempt to prevent the changes that are needed—and to this concern I will return.

A recent biography of Enoch Powell quotes him as using an interesting metaphor to illustrate the way in which the House of Commons can control the Treasury:

Many churches contain an old chest with three locks. The keys to those locks were held by the parson and the two churchwardens, and they were all different. Only, therefore, by the co-operation of all three could anything be extracted from the parish chest.

Computers are in use throughout society—collecting, storing, processing and distributing information. Much of that information is about people… ‘personal data’—and is subject to the Data Protection Act 1984.

Recently, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) returned to the test of individual sincerity for determining whether there has been an infringement of freedom of religion pursuant to section 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter) in SL c Commission scolaire des Chênes. Sincerity of belief or in practice as necessary for religious expression on the part of a complainant has been accepted from some of the earliest Charter cases as the triggering requirement for a section 2(a) claim, and, in itself, sufficient to establish a claim which a court must then balance against conflicting claims pursuant to section 1 (‘reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society’) or section 15 (equality rights). In SL, the court confirmed that mere sincerity is no longer sufficient and that an objective burden of proof now rests on a claimant to show how a state-sanctioned requirement infringes the fundamental right to freedom of religion before competing claims will be assessed. In SL, the court found that the complainants had failed to show how a religious education course mandated for all students without exception by the Government of Quebec interfered with what they argued was their religious freedom as Roman Catholic parents to pass on their faith to their children. This result has also been interpreted to mean that the state has a right prior to parental rights in the religious formation of their own children, and, on this reading, has been highly controversial. The court's new formulation of a sincerity test may be of interest elsewhere. The earlier formulation in Syndicat Northcrest v Anselem was adopted by the House of Lords in R (Williamson) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment, and the subsequent spread of its use has since been subject to consideration in England.

In any discussion of church-state relations in the United Kingdom, it should be remembered that there are four national Churches: the Church of England, the (Reformed) Church of Scotland, the Church in Wales (disestablished in 1920 as a result of the Welsh Church Act 1914) and the Church of Ireland (disestablished by the Irish Church Act 1869). The result is that two Churches are established by law (the Church of England and the Church of Scotland) and enjoy a particular constitutional relationship with the state, while the other Churches and faith-communities (the Roman Catholics, the Free Churches, the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others) have particular rights and privileges in particular circumstances.

In May 1932 the House of Lords delivered its judgement in the case about the presumed snail in the ginger beer bottle with which even non-lawyers are familiar, Donoghue v Stevenson. One of the five judges, Lord Atkin, formulated what has become known as the neighbour test in this way:

In October 1993, I had to decide whether it was proper for me, as an unbeliever, to go to Parliament to vote in favour of a Church of England measure. Was it proper that laymen, not members of the church, not involved in the decisions taken, should be allowed to sit in Parliament to decide what the law of the church should be? After some discussion, I was persuaded it was proper, and cast my vote accordingly. In that decision, I recognized the triumph of one version of the Royal Supremacy over another. It is the triumph of Christopher St. German over Bishop Stephen Gardiner, of Sir Francis Knollys over Queen Elizabeth I, of Chief Justice Coke over Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and of John Pym over Archbishop Laud. That triumph took a century to arrive after Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy, and, like many other triumphs, it threw out a promising baby with its mess of popish bath-water.

This paper traces the developments in the Catholic law on mixed marriages beginning with an outline of the canonical provisions that were in force prior to the Second Vatican Council. The impact of the Council teaching on ecumenism and religious freedom became apparent with the promulgation of Matrimonii sacramentum (1966), Crescens matrimoniorum (1967) and Matrimonia mixta (1970). These documents put the legislation on mixed marriages on a new footing and provided the basis for the legislation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Bishop McAreavey analyses various ecumenical dialogues on mixed marriages: ARCIC, the dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Catholic Church, and ongoing dialogues between the Methodist Church and the Orthodox Church (primarily in the United States) and the Catholic Church. He notes in particular what those discussions have to say on the issue of ‘the promises’ and canonical form and comments on the provisions of the 1983 Code of Canon Law on mixed marriages. He considers the basis of the commitment required of the Catholic party ‘to remove dangers of defecting from the faith’ and the commitment ‘to do all in his or her power in order that all the children be baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith’. He accepts the view of Fr Navarrete that whereas the former obligation is of divine law the latter obligation goes no further than ‘to do his or her best’ (pro viribus in the Latin phrase). In the final section, he reflects on the pastoral impact of developments in the canon law regarding mixed marriages, noting the statements of the World Gatherings of Interchurch Families in Geneva (1998) and in Rome (2003).

The Churchwardens Measure is concerned with the number of churchwardens in a parish, the qualifications to be a churchwarden, how they are appointed, and how they may cease to hold office. Nowhere does the Measure state anything about what a churchwarden actually does. For this you must look elsewhere. Two useful guides are A Handbook for Churchwardens and Parochial Church Councillors by Kenneth Macmorran and Timothy Briden (Mowbray, 2000), and Practical Church Management by James Behrens (Gracewing, 1998).

Same-sex marriage is legal or likely to be legalised in many Western nations. One important safeguard invariably incorporated in the legislation providing for same-sex marriage has been an exemption for religious ministers who object to solemnising such marriages. Another category of potential objectors consists of marriage registrars, commissioners or celebrants employed or appointed by the state. By contrast, an accommodation grounded in the right of religious freedom and conscience for these governmental celebrants has not been granted. This article examines the introduction of same-sex marriage in three jurisdictions – England and Wales, New Zealand and Canada. It analyses the precise ambit of the exemption for religious celebrants, considers the vulnerability of such exemptions to future legal challenge and questions the validity of denying free exercise accommodation to state-appointed celebrants.

The Church of Nigeria's canon law revision of 14 September 2005 redefined the terms of inter-provincial Anglican unity from a focus on communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury to communion based explicitly upon the authority of scripture and historic doctrinal statements. This paper will examine the revision as an ecclesiastical reform connected to, yet independent from, the current controversy over human sexuality. Pertinent issues of episcope and ecclesial communion as they are affected by the canon law change will then be examined. Finally, the ecumenical implications of the revision will be discussed, with particular reference to the Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue and the ‘continuing’ churches of North America.