The Spectator’s Notes | 26 July 2008

The news that the government is to fund a board of Islamic theologians to try to advance more moderate interpretations of Islam has been attacked as an unprecedented attempt by the state to shape the doctrine of a religion. It may well be a bad idea, but unprecedented it is not. The establishment of the Church of England meant that, until the 1970s, Parliament had the ultimate authority to determine doctrine and worship. It still has a residual role. Parliament empowered the courts in such matters. In 1850, for example, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council supported a clergyman called Gorham after his bishop had refused to institute him because of his heretical views on baptismal regeneration. The secular overruled the ecclesiastical and decided that his views were consistent with the doctrine of the Church of England. It will be amusing (and incendiary) if Parliament and the courts end up deciding what is Islamic.