https://freethinker.co.uk/2023/05/blasphemy-and-bishops-how-secularists-are-navigating-the-culture-wars/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blasphemy-and-bishops-how-secularists-are-navigating-the-culture-wars The magazine of freethought, open enquiry and irreverence Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:41:58 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://freethinker.co.uk/2023/05/blasphemy-and-bishops-how-secularists-are-navigating-the-culture-wars/#comment-189 Fri, 19 May 2023 17:11:14 +0000 https://freethinker.co.uk/?p=8794#comment-189 Re the monarchy, how about replacing with either the Irish or German models. Either would be far better than the inbuilt hereditary privileges assigned to the royal family and the descendants of William the Conqueror.

]]> https://freethinker.co.uk/2023/05/blasphemy-and-bishops-how-secularists-are-navigating-the-culture-wars/#comment-188 Fri, 19 May 2023 15:59:01 +0000 https://freethinker.co.uk/?p=8794#comment-188 Emma, while regarding free speech as a virtue of the first order I find it increasingly and troublingly difficult to grasp where the boundaries lie. It seems we have this in common. Your article poses many good questions but provides few answers. I suppose nobody can provide the right answers without answering the right questions.
You say that the NSS has no position regarding abolition of the monarchy. Its founder, Charles Bradlaugh, was the leading republican of his day and his republicanism was broad and grounded in an opposition to inheritance and aristocratic privilege in general. He was part of a radical tradition which first found its popular voice in the writings of Thomas Paine. More recently the NSS has been concerned to highlight the religious nature and roots of the coronation and the monarch’s status as Head of the Church of England. I find it difficult to understand how a head of state without a democratic mandate can claim legitimacy without resort to the divine. Isn’t that what the coronation ceremony is about and must be about? I can’t help concluding that freethinkers opposed to religious privilege must be republicans whether they like it or not. What greater privilege can there be than to anointed head of state by the Almighty?
You conclude by suggesting that too little consideration has been given to what might replace the monarchy. Absolutely. Too often I find monarchists’ first objection to a presidency is their wheeling out a nightmarish, divisive, Trumpian vision. But it doesn’t have to be that way in a parliamentary democracy. How about a head of state indirectly elected by the legislature with closely prescribed and acutely limited, emergency and ceremonial powers?

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