English Parish Churches

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, wish to speak in the gap. I welcome this debate although I am afraid that I missed the opportunity to put my name down to speak in it.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has a number of strings to his bow. Churches are one of his passions and he is president of the Prayer Book Society, which reflects a particular approach to the Church of England, of which I am a member. That leads me to my first point, which concerns the endless paradoxes embodied in English parish churches. I think it is part of the English tradition of tolerance that we can believe what we like, although I am sure that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury would not put it quite that way. However, he made a very interesting remark in a previous debate when he said that the Church of England is everywhere. Indeed, people connected with the Church of England are involved with food banks and work on the ground everywhere. The Church of England knows more than any other organisation in the country about what is happening on the ground. It is, of course, concerned with theology, doctrine and fundamental belief but it is also defined by its church buildings.

This leads me to the many interesting points touched on by noble Lords who hold eminent positions in the world of theology—notably my noble friend Lord Griffiths and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. Somebody touched on the church and state and the establishment and the English way of doing things. In France, the Roman Catholic tradition does not allow that space. It creates a type of socialism on the opposite side which is anti-clerical. We have never had that tradition. We believe in fuzziness.

I invited a former Archbishop of Canterbury to address the TUC in Brighton a couple of decades ago. I am sure that some people in the Church of England would be horrified at the prospect of not having the cutting-edge doctrine that they would like to see. We are talking at cross purposes. Just as in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, you have to have people who are clear about the doctrine, and then, at the other end of the scale from one to 10, you have to have people who do not care very much at all about the doctrine. That is the nature of the beast. It is not like the Roman Catholic Church, which in some respects has more difficulty than we have in the Church of England with the theory of evolution. The contrast between the two non-conformist speakers as regards God and mammon was interesting. I need more time to think about tail and the dog, the baby and the bathwater, and so on.

A friend of mine at the TUC, who was known to be an atheist or agnostic, died. We were a bit surprised that she had a Church of England funeral. There was the vicar and the coffin, and about 50 of us attended. Before the service started, the vicar read out a letter from Miss Nicholson, sent just before she died. It said: “Dear vicar, I am an atheist—perhaps an agnostic—but under the Act of 1551 I am entitled to this funeral and want you to carry it out”. The “births, marriages and deaths” idea is what keeps a lot of people together, even people who do not think that they are members of the Church of England. There is a huge tapestry and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, tabled this debate.