The Sunday Times, Nov 12, 2006

Our outdated link between church and state is dangerous in a fundamentalist era, says historian David Starkey

I adore much about the Church of England, profound atheist though I am. I raise funds for its cathedrals and parish churches, which I regard as absolutely intrinsic to the fabric of England. But because of what is happening with Islam, the sweet, confused C of E has, alas, to be disestablished. Britain must become a secular state.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, without even pondering the consequences, we have imported a significant community amounting to about one in 25 of the population who are at a different stage of religious development.

Founded in the 7th century, Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity. In Islamic time, it is still AD 1400. They haven’t had a Reformation, let alone an Enlightenment. And they treat their religion with the same kind of passion that we did when we burnt heretics.

The point is this. Because certain privileges were retained for the established Christian churches, there is the argument from equity. This says that because the right to have faith schools has been accorded to the Church of England, Judaism and Catholicism, therefore we must give it to Islam.

Similarly, in the House of Lords we have the extraordinary situation where religious leaders sit ex officio in the legislature. Only one other country entertains the practice — the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now it is being suggested that because bishops are represented in the Lords, therefore rabbis, Catholic archbishops and imams should also sit there. This, in the early 21st century, is grotesque.

What is the solution? Last weekend the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, warned that Britain may be too weak to resist Islamic fundamentalism “unless there is some reclaiming of the moral and spiritual tradition which created this country”. I think his history is simply wrong.

For it wasn’t a Christian tradition that created modern Britain but the reaction against it. This means that, rather than reprivileging Christianity, we should deny privilege to all religions. Instead we must regain the Enlightened confidence to put religion back in its box and assert once more that the separation of church and state is the foundation of modernity.

And nowhere is this lesson better taught than in our own history. From the time of Christ to the Middle Ages, Christianity made a clear distinction between the sacred and the secular. That position was completely reversed in England when Henry VIII made himself the supreme head of the church. He had started as the most passionate defender of the papal monarchy. But he wanted a son — and he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn more.

Eventually, Henry came to think he was actually Christ on Earth. And he and subsequent kings of England believed they had the absolute right, as God’s anointed, to change the religion of their people according to their own lights.

The Church of England now became a mere means to that end, by turning itself into a body that saw its prime function as preaching obedience to the monarch. The whole Christian doctrine of the separation of church and state was stood on its head.

In short, Henry introduced genuine totalitarianism for the first and last time in English history. The resources at the disposal of a 16th century king were, happily, not those of a 20th century dictator. But the aspiration was identical. Henry was the English Hitler-cum-Stalin, ordering the confiscation of the monasteries and instituting a reign of terror.

However, the fact that Henry assumed supreme religious power at the Reformation, when there was acute religious tension, meant that the monarch became a disputed figure in a way kings had not been in the Middle Ages.

The result was that the English, the first to experience this totalitarian fusion of church and state, were the first to get out of it. They were even the first to develop the doctrine of tyrannicide, which endorsed the deposition or murder of a monarch of the “wrong” religion.

Henry, once again, had set this in train by establishing an extraordinary rule of succession by which each one of his children was to succeed to the throne in turn, despite the fact that two were daughters — and bastards. He could never have realised that each would change England’s religion.

Edward took us towards extreme Protestantism, Mary to extreme Catholicism and Elizabeth to a strange middle ground. Her successor, James VI of Scotland and I of England, was the only monarch in the 16th and 17th centuries not to try to change religion in England — although he started to do so in Scotland.

His son Charles I went too far, flirting with rituals that seemed too Catholic. As a result there was civil war: the king lost his head, the monarchy was abolished and Oliver Cromwell became lord protector. But we soon discovered we couldn’t do without a king, and the monarchy was restored.

But restoration solved nothing and the whole process started again. Charles II sponsored an aggressive Anglicanism that tried to suppress dissent and excluded both Protestant dissenters and Catholics from civil rights. It also left England weak, divided and profoundly old- fashioned.

Thus, by the late 17th century, the failing English monarchy had two alternative pathways to modernity — those of the Netherlands and Louis XIV’s France. The solution came when England was conquered by Holland in 1688.

The Dutch conquest showed how far we had sunk — but also how far we could rise. For England now got a king, William III, who was so contemptuous of the idea of sacred monarchy that he scoffed at his own coronation, whose rituals struck him as preposterous and papist.

This was the real origin of modernity in England. Naturally, being England, we didn’t do it properly. But we did begin the process of shifting the relationship between the church and the state.

The royal supremacy became much weaker. The monopolistic claims of the Anglican church were progressively chipped away. And forms of toleration and civil rights were introduced. They were imperfect. But they were sufficient to bring about a watershed in English history.

Within 30 years of our defeat by the Dutch, England was the leading European power and 80 years later it emerged as the first world power.

But now we need to learn the lessons once more. For religion is on the march again. Tony Blair and George Bush pray together and make war together. Messianism — the fusion of political power and pseudo-religion — was the basis of all the great 20th century tyrannies. And even in Britain the monarchy has resacralised, with the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 being a throwback to the full medieval rites of sacred monarchy. And the Queen believed it.

I think Prince Charles sort of believes it. But differently. In many ways, with his pioneering commitment to the environment, he is marking out an effective new role for the monarchy. But on the issue of religion I think he is in deep and dangerous waters with his avowed determination to be Defender of Faiths.

For modern Britain needs neither a new Henry VIII, the first Defender of the Faith, or heaven forbid an Islamic caliph who also called himself Commander of the Faithful. Instead we need a tolerant secular state in which there is a level playing field for people of every faith — and none.

Otherwise, it will be back to the dark days before 1688 with a vengeance.

A new series of Monarchy by David Starkey begins on Channel 4 at 9pm tomorrow. His book, "Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity," is published by HarperPress, £20