{"id":930,"date":"2026-03-30T12:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/930\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T12:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:10:15","slug":"sadiq-khan-should-stop-pretending-britain-has-freedom-of-worship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/930\/","title":{"rendered":"Sadiq Khan should stop pretending Britain has freedom of worship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Labour\u2019s official X account opted to mark the beginning of Holy Week with a weirdly liturgically tone-deaf post<\/a>, wishing the public \u201cHappy Palm Sunday from all of us at the Labour Party.\u201d Then Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, posted<\/a> to mark the Holy Week procession across Trafalgar Square to St Martin-in-the-Fields.<\/p>\n

Though Khan did not reference it explicitly, the Palm Sunday procession came in the wake of an internet bunfight over a public Muslim prayer celebration which also took place in Trafalgar Square this month, and in which Khan participated. That event prompted a critical post<\/a> from Nick Timothy MP, who called it \u201can act of domination\u201d and demanded that public Muslim worship not happen again in Britain.<\/p>\n

Timothy\u2019s post caused<\/a> a furor, including demands<\/a> from some MPs that he be censured under Labour\u2019s new \u201cIslamophobia\u201d definition, and even a call<\/a> by Keir Starmer for Kemi Badenoch to sack him as shadow justice secretary. In this context, Khan\u2019s acknowledgment of the Palm Sunday procession \u2014 and likely also Labour\u2019s X post to mark the day \u2014 should be interpreted as an intervention in this debate on the side of equal freedom of worship for all in Britain, including Muslims.<\/p>\n

Journalist Oli Dugmore made the same point<\/a> more directly, copying Timothy\u2019s complaint about Muslim worship but substituting in the Palm Sunday procession photo. Why, we are presumably to wonder, should a Christian procession get to do this but not a Muslim one? Yet the answer to this is straightforward: Anglican Christianity is England\u2019s established Church. Our King is its head, and its bishops sit in the House of Lords. There is no tradition in Britain of freedom of worship.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it was this lack of freedom of worship which prompted the Puritans to depart for the New World in the 17th century, and later to write freedom of worship into America\u2019s constitution. Meanwhile, England passed the Test Acts, banning faithful Catholics from public office. Until 1791 Catholics in England had to hold Mass in secret, and even afterwards were forbidden from worshiping in the open air.<\/p>\n

Though the Test Acts were repealed in 1828, Britain is so far from being constitutionally secular and liberal that Tony Blair only converted<\/a> to Catholicism after leaving Downing Street. Were a royal heir apparent to convert to Catholicism, it would cause a constitutional crisis. It\u2019s hard to think of a clearer example of one faith being institutionally privileged. And contra the insidious equalizing-down implied by Khan\u2019s \u201cecumenical\u201d celebration of the Palm Sunday procession, the logic of an established state faith should in fact mean Anglican public religious displays are permitted by default, and others only by express permission.<\/p>\n

Dugmore knows this perfectly well. He has since posted to the effect<\/a> that the Church of England should not play any role in governance. But the freedom of worship principle that both he and Khan have chosen to pretend is already the default is an American norm, not an English one. Those who imply covertly (like Khan) or overtly (like Dugmore) that Anglican public worship should be tolerated as, at best, one instance of a smorgasbord of interchangeable \u201cfaiths\u201d are asserting something radically disruptive to Britain\u2019s actual constitution.<\/p>\n

The only reason all of this is not more obvious is that senior clergy in the modern Church of England seem, on the whole, uncomfortable with their own constitutional primacy. Many seem to spend as much time genuflecting<\/a> to religious pluralism as performing their historic role upholding England\u2019s established faith in the public square.<\/p>\n

In turn, a cynic might suggest that whatever Britain\u2019s state faith is de jure, the behavior of our bishops affirms that they are more aligned with Khan and Dugmore on Britain\u2019s de facto state faith than with Nick Timothy. That, whatever role Timothy may think England\u2019s established church should play, in practice its bishops view their role as sustaining a tolerant public square able to hold all competing faiths in a kind of mild, smooth emulsion, like confessional mayonnaise.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, we might further wonder whether Dugmore should be careful what he wishes for when he longs for their disestablishment. Anglicanism\u2019s current crop of mild-mannered, pluralistic primates are not an obstacle to British secular liberalism, but a keystone of its survival. The most likely outcome of displacing them from their constitutionally privileged position would not be entrenching religious pluralism in Britain, but signaling the beginning of its demise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday, Labour\u2019s official X account opted to mark the beginning of Holy Week with a weirdly liturgically tone-deaf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[466,13,467,468,469,470,471,472,473,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-anglicanism","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-christianity","11":"tag-easter","12":"tag-islam","13":"tag-nick-timothy","14":"tag-palm-sunday","15":"tag-religion","16":"tag-sadiq-khan","17":"tag-uncategorized"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}