Cry For Disestablishment Essay

Conference persisted in its cries for disestablishment of the established church, re-invigorated by the furore over education. In addition, it condemned Anglican’s growing ‘ritualism’. Disestablishment was a necessary step towards ‘social reform, national education, and complete civil and religious liberty’. In 1912, when a Bill for Welsh disestablishment was in Parliament, Conference passed an almost unanimous resolution of support. Mr T. Kell, supported by one other delegate, objected to the discussion; he considered the matter to be party political rather than religious, and Conference an inappropriate arena for debate. However, neither protester disagreed with disestablishment itself, only with the context in which the debate occurred.

The Anglican Church’s influence over schools and teacher training, its alliance with the landed interests in rural communities, its votes within the reactionary House of Lords and its association with the brewers, combined to brand the State Church anathema to Primitive Methodists. Essentially, as an Aldersgate editorial asserted in 1903, Anglican clergymen were ‘all Tory Agents, and exceedingly active ones’. The religious and economic power of the parson in village societies rankled through generations of Primitive Methodists, even after they had moved to the city. The established Church was considered a reactionary religious and social force. One example of its backwardness that irritated Primitives was its opposition to cremation. Rev John Day Thompson, on the grounds of sanitation and, significantly, the sparing of valuable agricultural land, considered the Anglicans’ objections inimical to the ordinary man and woman. He insisted that ‘The earth was made for the living, not the dead’. However, Rev Arthur Wilkes’ arguments for disestablishment were characteristic of the Connexion’s position. He endorsed the 1912 Bill for Welsh Disestablishment as the first step towards the separation of the established Church from the State and, furthermore, it would eradicate all stigmas from the Anglican body and renew it as a spiritual force. The State Church