Mike, monarchy is a “discredited institution”? That rather depends where. Over here, monarchy has–since 1776–been discredited, and quite rightly so, but in other places a crown can be just the right thing. Thus in the UK, Scandinavia and Holland the monarchy is part of the furniture, on the whole harmless, and not a bad device for separating the political from the national. That may not always be the case in the future, and it hasn’t always been in the past. In England, for example, the replacement of a dangerous king by a flawed Commonwealth in 1649 was well worth cheering, but so too was the return of a new (and somewhat chastened) Stuart monarch in 1660.
Something similar applies to the question of state churches. English Anglicanism could do with less church and more England, but as a generally benign expression of both national continuity and, in a broad sense, identity, it still has considerable value. Enoch Powell, one of more interesting British Conservatives of the postwar years, had quite a bit to say on this topic, including this snippet (quoted yesterday on Cranmer’s blog):
It is possible to have an internally self-governed church in this country, but it will not be the national church, it will not be the Church of England. The Church is the Church of England because of Royal Supremacy, because there is Royal – that is to say, lay – supremacy. It is for that reason that it is the Church of the people and the Church of the nation, and can never be converted into a mere sect or private, self-managing corporation.
Exactly. If the C of E is “disestablished,” reduced to one sect among others, all that will be thrown away — and for what?