Church of England must free itself of the ‘dead hand’ of Parliament: Bishop Nazir Ali

BY HILARY WHITE


LONDON, March 12, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Should the Church of England consider allowing itself to be disestablished in order to allow it to work independently of the “dead hand of parliamentary procedure”? This was the question at the heart of a message from one of Britain’s most outspoken defenders of public Christianity, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester.

In a letter to his superior, the recently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Nazir-Ali wrote that Britain is plagued with “unprecedented loneliness, sky-high levels of depression, anxiety about the future and addiction to drugs, alcohol and even shopping to mask emptiness and dread.” He said the British people need to hear the spiritual message of Christianity “loudly and clearly” in answer to these struggles.


“Resources need to be released away from lawyers, experts and civil servants towards such equipping of those in the pew,” he wrote. “This will lead to a lightening of bureaucracy at every level and to church gatherings which are characterised by prayerfulness and attention to God’s word rather than the ‘dead hand’ of parliamentary procedure.”

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