This paper attempts an overview of currents of theological thinking on the place of the sacred in society. It considers the long tradition of active engagement between Church and State, which derives its authority from the New Testament and can be traced through St Augustine and Anglican Divines to the present day. Having examined contemporary arguments of those who question the propriety of such an arrangement it concludes that it remains theologically justifiable. The paper then turns to the particular question of the Establishment of the Church of England and engages both with those who support it and those who are in favour of disestablishment. It observes that Establishment functions at various levels in English society and, whilst acknowledging and welcoming the fact that its form will continue to change, argues that it offers distinct advantages to both Church and State. In a country where seventy-one per cent of the population professes itself to be Christian it gives the state legitimacy by reminding the latter that all authority derives from God and ensures that Christian influence for the maintenance of a just and peaceful society remains strong. Establishment reminds the Church that it has a responsibility to the whole nation, not just those who regularly attend its churches, and protects the mission and ministry of the Church throughout the parishes of the land.

The aim of this short paper is to examine whether and how canon law might be acknowledged as one of the instruments of Anglican unity. First, the study proposes that there are principles of canon law recognised by churches. These are rooted in the canonical tradition shared by churches of the catholic and apostolic tradition. Secondly, the following proposes that the profound similarities between Anglican legal systems indicate, as a matter of descriptive fact, what Anglicans share in common juridically. Together, the principles of canon law and the similarities between Anglican legal systems represent the common law of the Anglican Communion. Thirdly, the study addresses some methodological issues raised in ascertaining and formulating the canonical principles of the Anglican his commune. Finally, it suggests some reasons and justifications for an acknowledgement of the Anglican common law.

The aim of this paper is to make a comparison between the legal status of religiously affiliated schools in America and those in Italy, taking into account the difference between the two legal systems in which these institutions operate, and the different understanding of Church-State relations (separatism in the USA, Church-State Agreements in Italy). First, the study examines the different juridical legal structures offered by the two legal systems to religious organisations to manage secular works and protect their property. Secondly it examines the problem of the access of religiously affiliated schools to the public funding necessary for these institutions to continue to develop their mission: in both legal systems religiously affiliated schools are constitutionally denied direct access to public funding, but some forms of indirect access have been gradually admitted. Thirdly, the article examines new perspectives opened by recent statutes (in Italy) and decisions (in the USA) that are altering the traditional relationship between public/private and religious/secular which are going to offer a new, more equal role to religiously affiliated schools in both systems, preserving their spiritual identity and ethos.

I am grateful to the Ecclesiastical Law Society and the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland for their invitation to address this theme, although I have to confess, as a non-lawyer, I do feel rather a fraud standing here. I take comfort, however, first from the fact that, albeit welcome, your invitation was unsought, and second from my understanding that the purpose of canon law is to give legal expression to the theology of the church and that the purpose of the theology of the Church (in its positive and articulated aspects) is to explain the purposes and the work of God. In other words, the ultimate point of canon law is and must be pastoral, as is well expressed by the last canon, Canon 1752, of the 1983 Code of Canon Law for the Roman Catholic Church, with its reference to ‘the salvation of souls, which in the Church must always be the supreme law’.

The Data Protection Act 1998 came into force on 1 March 2000. It replaced the Data Protection Act 1984, and implements the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. This paper examines its implications for the Church.

In the last decade, the religious dimensions and significance of the European Union have been increasingly recognised. This paper sets out the role and regulation of religious associations within European law. Although it is often assumed that European competence does not touch on matters of religion, a jurisdictional separation of ‘economics’ and ‘religion’ has been increasingly hard to sustain. European law grants various privileges and exemptions to religious bodies. However, the dominant model to emerge is one of pluralism: distinctive substantive legal regimes applicable to religious bodies, and a distinctive participatory position within the governance of the European Union. However, the paper suggests that the pursuit of pluralism has not been entirely successful National diversity in this field coupled with the sheer complexity of achieving a reasonable balance of competing interests conspire to make it remarkably elusive. What is needed is a greater recognition of the right of States to adjust European legal requirements to accommodate the legitimate needs of the religious bodies within their jurisdiction and a renewed commitment to producing workable solutions in dialogue with religious associations.

The entitlement of all persons capable of validly contracting marriage to have such marriage solemnised in the church or chapel of the parish in which they live was, until recently, widely accepted and often repeated. Argar v Holdsworth is the case most often cited as evidencing the existence of this right. However, this received orthodoxy has recently been challenged from two sources. First, by Professor Norman Doe in The Legal Framework of the Church of England and secondly by the late the Reverend Michael G. Smith, in an article in this Journal. Both Doe and Smith throw doubt upon Argar v Holdsworth as providing any basis for proving the existence of such a right and Doe goes further in suggesting that the right to marry was abolished by the Marriage Act 1936 and has only survived since that date as a legal fiction. I seek to demonstrate that Smith's understanding of Argar v Holdsworth is seriously flawed and also that the criticisms levelled against this case as an authority both by Smith and by Doe cannot be upheld.

In the aftermath of the tragedies in the United States on 11 September 2001, the news media in the United Kingdom reported a great increase in crime and attacks on Muslims. A Director of the Central Mosque spoke publicly of the unprecedented backlash against the British Muslim community and whilst emphasising Islam to be a religion of peace and opposed to terrorism, urgently stressed the need for greater protection. The police chiefs were responsive. The government had to act.

This article looks closely at the legal nature of Establishment, both in England and North of the Border. The legal material shows that the two cases are very different. The Ace od Supermacy 1558 and related legislation enable the English church's porition to be presented so as to meke it one aspect of the State, and tetwntieth-century case-law has tended to confirm that understanding. The Scottish kirk enjoys statutory autonomy under the Church of Scotland Act 1921, and again case-law emphasises the reality of its exemption from some of the usual jurisdiction of the secular authorities and courts (though its scope may be becoming less clear-cut in the light of developments within the European Community). The author asks how, in the English context, the legal analysis relates to the reality of the English situation, as seen through the insights of other disciplines, to the role of the Church of England nationally and locally, and to the, sometimes confrontational, relationship between Synod and Parliament.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the ‘LDS’ or ‘Mormon’ Church, regulates its membership by means of a system that recalls the Old Testament far more than the modern West. All important decisions relating to joining and leaving the church are invested in the inspired discretion of local priesthood authorities who are governed by general standards rather than rules that have the character of law.

The paper surveys the English Reformation in the wider European context to demonstrate that the concept of ‘Anglicanism’ is hardly appropriate for the post-Reformation English Church in the sixteenth century: it was emphatically Protestant, linked to Reformed rather than Lutheran Protestantism. Henry VIII created a hybrid of a Church after breaking with Rome, but that was not unique in northern Europe. There were widespread attempts to find a ‘middle way’, the model being Cologne under Archbishop Hermann von Wied. Wied's efforts failed, but left admirers like Albert Hardenberg and Jan Laski, and their Reformations gradually moved towards those of central Europe—the first Reformed theologians. Edward VTs Reformation aligned itself with this new grouping, and produced prototypes of liturgy and theological formulary which endure to the present day—with the exception of a proposed reform of canon law, with its provisions for divorce. Elizabeth Ts 1559 religious settlement fossilised Edward's Church from autumn 1552. It made no concessions to Catholics, despite later A nglo- Catholic myth-making: minor adjustments were probably aimed at Lutherans. There is nevertheless a ‘Nicodemite’ association among the leading figures who steered the Settlement through its opening years. Important and unlikely survivals were cathedrals, uniquely preserved in a Protestant context and a source of future ideological Catholic ‘subversion’. Nevertheless the theological tone of the Elizabethan Church was a broadly-based Reformed Protestantism, aligned to Zürich rather than to Geneva. Early seventeenth-century Arminianism or Laudianism represented a new direction, and the Puritanism of New England may better represent the English Reformation than the ‘Anglican’ synthesis which came to fruition in the English Church after Charles II's restoration in 1660. In any case, Anglicanism continues to represent in uneasy but useful tension the two poles of theology contending for mastery in the century after Elizabeth Is coming to power.

The concept and terminology of ‘accessibility’ have in recent years become very fashionable. This is partly a reflection of a gradually increasing awareness of the desires, needs and aspirations of all sorts of groups within society that were in the past insufficiently taken into account or else completely ignored. So with women, children, the elderly, those of particular races or nationalities, those of different religions (or denominations) or none, those of particular lifestyles or sexual orientations—each has been gradually recognised, and brought into the mainstream of society. Thus, for example, we now take it for granted that equal facilities should generally be afforded for men and women—but it is not so long since this was far from universal.

This paper questions accounts of the English Reformation which, in line with sometimes unacknowledged Anglo-Catholic assumptions, present it as a mere clean-up operation, the creation of a reformed Catholicism which removed medieval excesses but left an essentially Catholic Church of England intact. It argues instead that the Elizabethan reformers intended to establish a Reformed Church which would be part of a Protestant international Church, emphatic in disowning its medieval inheritance and rejecting the religion of Catholic Europe, with formularies, preaching and styles of worship designed to signal and embody that rejection. But Anglican self-identity was never simply or unequivocally Protestant. Lay and clerical conservatives resisted the removal of the remains of the old religion, and vestiges of the Catholic past were embedded like flies in amber in the Prayer Book liturgy, in church buildings, and in the attitudes and memories of many of its Elizabethan personnel. By the early seventeenth century influential figures in the Church of England were seeking to distance themselves from European Protestantism, and instead to portray the Church of England as a conscious via media between Rome and Geneva. In the hands of the Laudians and their followers, this newer interpretation of the Reformation was to prove potent in reshaping the Church of England's self-understanding.

There is no single system of state-religion relations within Europe which is equal to another. Each one is distinct. Many countries know a number of different systems within themselves, as does the United Kingdom, Germany or France. The presence of history is strongest perhaps in this field of life. Tradition and truth, emotion and identity flourish in this field. Future law on religion in Europe is best built on strong regional structures. This paper reports on three aspects of state-religion relations in Europe: What is the situation in Germany? What does the United Kingdom look like from the continent? And what about Europe?

A convenient starting point for these reflections is the Ordinance of William I, separating the Spiritual and Temporal Jurisdictions, issued some time between 1070 and 1076. If strictly adhered to this might have prevented some subsequent conflicts, but as we know, the next hundred years saw a number of conflicts in the course of the Investiture Contest leading to the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. Further conflict in the reign of King John ended in Magna Carta of which Archbishop Stephen Langton is thought to have been the chief inspiration.

In 1998 the government published a White Paper entitled Fairness at Work. It invited views on whether legislation should be introduced to take the power to extend the coverage of employment protection rights by regulation to all those who work for another person, not just those employed under a contract of employment. It would not have been apparent from this that the government was considering extending employment protection rights to ministers of religion. Nor is it likely that many people realised this could be the effect of section 23 of the Employment Rights Act 1999 by which Parliament subsequently enacted the proposal contained in the White Paper. Nonetheless the possibility was recognised as the Bill passed through Parliament. Pressed about the government's view as to the position of ministers of religion, the Minister explained that no policy decision had been taken, but he did say: