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via http://ift.tt/2zJ2MRy:
ithelpstodream:
The church advises that nursery and primary school should be a time of “creative exploration”, and that pupils should feel free to “try out the many cloaks of identity” and “explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgment or derision”.
In the guidance, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, warns that homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying causes “profound damage leading to higher levels of mental health disorders, self-harm, depression and suicide”.
http://ift.tt/2iVdrAD
This kinda fascinates me because it really illustrates the unspoken checks and balances in a lot of the UK system.
On paper, the Queen, the Church of England and the House of Lords (all anachronisms in modern society) have a frankly ludicrous amount of power. The Church of England owns masses of land across the UK and makes a lot of revenue out of it. The Queen can dissolve Parliament if she doesn’t like their stance on cupcakes, the House of Lords can veto almost any bill they don’t like.
Yet, on the whole, they don’t.
This is because they know they’re anachronisms. They are very well aware that of all our closest allies- France, Germany, the US, the UK is the odd man out with these outdated norms, and there are always a lot of people in the UK who would be happy to get rid of these institution if they have the chance.
(this goes double for the monarchy where this has happened repeatedly, see also, British Civil War, Glorious Revolution, just about anything that nearly happened during the reign of Queen Victoria, and Edward the VIII)
Basically, all these institutions have a sense of living on borrowed time. They are dinosaurs, kept alive because people in the UK, on the whole, like them. They like the grandmotherly Queen with her addresses and pageants and Christmas chats. They like the House of Lords with its pomp and bombast and silly wigs. And they like the meek, easygoing Church of England where you’re more likely to be greeted with a biscuit and a history lesson when you walk into a church, than a sermon about Jesus.
The problem is that this is all well and good as long as they remain passive, but if these entities start being active in politics- that’s not good.
This is actually an issue right now. The Queen is old and her successor, Prince Charles, is seen as too opinionated and headstrong to succeed her (he is fronting an organisation to protect the London skyline and likes homeopathy), to the point where some major papers were talking about what happened to the First King Charles, as a warning (he got his head chopped off for not listening to Parliament). Now, I don’t think King Charles the Third is going to be decapitated, but there’s a real chance that unless he sticks to the incredibly narrow line of acceptable behavior we want from monarchs, he will be deposed.
Again, this has happened before. Quite a lot. The last time the King in question had Nazi sympathies so it’s generally seen as a good thing. It’s also the only reason British didn’t go the way of France- and that was touch-and-go for a while there.
So, bringing this back to the C of E. They can’t afford to go against prevailing opinions in the UK. If people want gender norms to be relaxed and trans people to be accepted, the only thing the Church can do is to go along with it. They put up a bit of a fuss a decade or so back about gay clergy, but folded pretty quickly when people started talking about revoking their tax exemption.
So anyway, this has been a PSA about how anachronistic entities in the UK still-kinda-work, and why the Church of England seems so shockingly progressive- because unless they want to become just another Protestant denomination in the UK, the have no choice.
ithelpstodream:
The church advises that nursery and primary school should be a time of “creative exploration”, and that pupils should feel free to “try out the many cloaks of identity” and “explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgment or derision”.
In the guidance, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, warns that homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying causes “profound damage leading to higher levels of mental health disorders, self-harm, depression and suicide”.
http://ift.tt/2iVdrAD
This kinda fascinates me because it really illustrates the unspoken checks and balances in a lot of the UK system.
On paper, the Queen, the Church of England and the House of Lords (all anachronisms in modern society) have a frankly ludicrous amount of power. The Church of England owns masses of land across the UK and makes a lot of revenue out of it. The Queen can dissolve Parliament if she doesn’t like their stance on cupcakes, the House of Lords can veto almost any bill they don’t like.
Yet, on the whole, they don’t.
This is because they know they’re anachronisms. They are very well aware that of all our closest allies- France, Germany, the US, the UK is the odd man out with these outdated norms, and there are always a lot of people in the UK who would be happy to get rid of these institution if they have the chance.
(this goes double for the monarchy where this has happened repeatedly, see also, British Civil War, Glorious Revolution, just about anything that nearly happened during the reign of Queen Victoria, and Edward the VIII)
Basically, all these institutions have a sense of living on borrowed time. They are dinosaurs, kept alive because people in the UK, on the whole, like them. They like the grandmotherly Queen with her addresses and pageants and Christmas chats. They like the House of Lords with its pomp and bombast and silly wigs. And they like the meek, easygoing Church of England where you’re more likely to be greeted with a biscuit and a history lesson when you walk into a church, than a sermon about Jesus.
The problem is that this is all well and good as long as they remain passive, but if these entities start being active in politics- that’s not good.
This is actually an issue right now. The Queen is old and her successor, Prince Charles, is seen as too opinionated and headstrong to succeed her (he is fronting an organisation to protect the London skyline and likes homeopathy), to the point where some major papers were talking about what happened to the First King Charles, as a warning (he got his head chopped off for not listening to Parliament). Now, I don’t think King Charles the Third is going to be decapitated, but there’s a real chance that unless he sticks to the incredibly narrow line of acceptable behavior we want from monarchs, he will be deposed.
Again, this has happened before. Quite a lot. The last time the King in question had Nazi sympathies so it’s generally seen as a good thing. It’s also the only reason British didn’t go the way of France- and that was touch-and-go for a while there.
So, bringing this back to the C of E. They can’t afford to go against prevailing opinions in the UK. If people want gender norms to be relaxed and trans people to be accepted, the only thing the Church can do is to go along with it. They put up a bit of a fuss a decade or so back about gay clergy, but folded pretty quickly when people started talking about revoking their tax exemption.
So anyway, this has been a PSA about how anachronistic entities in the UK still-kinda-work, and why the Church of England seems so shockingly progressive- because unless they want to become just another Protestant denomination in the UK, the have no choice.
