Statement

I am making this statement to bring to the House’s attention steps the Government is taking regarding Church appointments.

Restrictions set out in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and the Jews Relief Act 1858 prevent persons professing the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths only from advising the Sovereign on appointments to the Church of England and Church of Scotland. I have therefore transferred my constitutional responsibility to advise the Sovereign on Church appointments to the Lord Chancellor.

It is, however, unacceptable for there to be a legislative bar against people of any faith performing all the functions of my office. The Government will therefore introduce a Bill at the earliest possible opportunity to correct this antiquated and archaic anomaly.

In this Legal Spirits Short Take, Center Director Mark Movsesian reflects on his recent visit to Sicily and the 13th-century tomb of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily, and the famous Stupor Mundi—the “Wonder of the World”—in Palermo Cathedral. Medieval Sicily was a major theater in the long struggle between popes and secular rulers over the boundaries of spiritual and temporal power, a struggle that included disputes over the appointment and authority of bishops. Frederick was deeply involved in that conflict. His burial in the cathedral, after years of bitter conflict with the papacy and repeated excommunications, offers a reminder of the ambiguous line between church and state—and of a contest that never wholly ends. Listen in!

The post Legal Spirits 082: A Short Take on a Tomb in Sicily and a Never-Ending Contest appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

Delighted to announce our Mattone Center Student Fellows for 2026-2027: Vincent D’Avanzo ’27, Marc Derrickson ’28, Anastasia Kaliabakos ’27, and Isabel Lane ’27. Fellows help produce the Forum and the Legal Spirits podcast series and assist generally with Center activities. For more about this year’s team, please see our People page.

The post Mattone Center Fellows for 2026-2027 appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

On 7 September, the Church of England issued the following Press Release, Clergy Discipline complaints against Bishop of Salisbury.

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• Florida officials and Catholic schools are at odds over whether schools participating in state scholarship programs must provide religious exemptions from vaccination requirements.
• Several Catholic religious orders and the Archbishop of Chicago filed a federal lawsuit challenging Illinois requirements that healthcare providers inform and counsel terminally ill patients about physician-assisted suicide, arguing that the requirements violate their religious freedom.
• Maine’s highest court upheld a ruling allowing a father to prevent his daughter from attending her mother’s church after finding that participation there was psychologically harmful to the child, rejecting the mother’s constitutional claims.
• A federal bankruptcy court allowed a Jewish religious nonprofit’s lawsuit against the City of Hollywood, Florida, to proceed after the city denied zoning approval for a proposed K-12 Jewish day school, with the nonprofit alleging violations of its First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
• A South Korean court sentenced Unification Church leader Hak Ja Han to two years in prison after convicting her of bribery, violating political finance laws, and embezzling church funds.
• InterVarsity Christian Fellowship sued SUNY Broome Community College after the school denied the group official recognition because its constitution requires student leaders to affirm a statement of faith, which the college says conflicts with its nondiscrimination policy.
• Catholic leaders in Maharashtra are considering a legal challenge to a new state law regulating religious conversions, which requires advance notice of conversions and has drawn broader constitutional challenges over religious freedom.

The post Around the Web appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

The Government Consultation on wedding law reform is currently open.  As argued in my book and by the Law Commission, the Government is proposing a move from a law that largely regulates buildings to one that regulates officiants.

This is welcome and is badly needed because the law in England and Wales has not kept up to date with how people marry. It excludes many religious ceremonies that take place outside a registered place of worship as well as ceremonies conducted by belief organisations such as Humanists UK and independent celebrants.

The Consultation summarises the ‘two key features’ of the Law Commission’s proposals that ‘underpin’ the suggested reforms as follows:

“Firstly, a move away from a system based on the building in which a wedding takes place towards one focused on the officiant responsible for the ceremony. Secondly, the introduction of universal rules applying across different types of wedding (with the exception of Anglican weddings), reducing disparities between groups” [12]

The move to recognising officiants makes sense and would remove much of the discrimination, disadvantage and inconvenience caused by the current law.

The Law Commission said that it would be a political decision for Government whether to include humanist and independent celebrants. The decision in R (on the application of Harrison and others) v Secretary of State for Justice [2020] EWHC 2096 (Admin) that the current lack of recognition of humanist marriage is not compatible with human rights has settled the issue in terms of the inclusion of humanist celebrants.

The Government is consulting on the question of whether independent celebrants should be included but the consultation has taken the initial view that independent officiants should be permitted to conduct legally binding weddings. This is to be welcomed. As I have argued in article for Family Law, the reform objectives will only be met if independent celebrants are included. It is great to see the Government accept and argue for this – and this should be supported.

The Consultation raises the issue of interfaith weddings as a clear catalyst for reform. It notes:

“Couples with different religious affiliations or couples where one partner has no religion, estimated at 21% of relationships, may also face challenges in having a wedding that accommodates their beliefs.  A key driver of these issues is that the current law regulates weddings primarily by the building in which they take place, rather than the person conducting the ceremony” [22].

This is an important argument for the inclusion of independent celebrants who can conduct such ceremonies.  Merely modernising the law to include belief organisations would not accommodate this group. This underscores the need for comprehensive reform that includes independent celebrants, as the Consultation rightly proposes.

The Consultation builds upon the work of the Law Commission in most respects. However, unlike the Law Commission who suggested central regulation of independent celebrants, the Government proposes that ‘independent officiants would be required to belong to a recognised, regulator-approved membership organisation similar to the approach proposed for belief groups’ [77].  This is in line with my suggestions to the Law Commission and, as I have argued previously,  is a much better approach since it means that the central regulator can play the same role in relation to all officiants and can serve as the regulator of their regulators.

The Consultation proposes a structured dignity framework placing a legal responsibility on officiants to ensure that locations and ceremonies are safe, dignified and uphold the significance of marriage. The Consultation seeks views on whether existing wedding venues should be able to apply for voluntary pre-authorisation. This makes sense, meaning that the Dignity Framework only really applies to new venues and places.

The Consultation as a whole is an accessible, thoughtful and concise guide to be proposed reforms that would make a significant difference. Space does not permit the detailed discussion of all aspects of the reform. This post focuses on five particular areas where it is suggested that the proposals can be strengthened further.  These are little more than tweaks given the worth of the proposals overall.

[1] List rather than classify officiants 

The Consultation’s glossary defines ‘officiant’ as ‘a person who is legally responsible for ensuring that a wedding complies with the law and who oversees the legal formation of the marriage. This includes registration officers, Anglican clergy, nominated officiants, independent officiants and maritime officiants’ [9].

This list approach is unproblematic and should be adopted throughout.  However, unfortunately this is not the case and this complicates matters considerably.  The Glossary unhelpfully makes further distinctions.  It adopts a distinction drawn by the Law Commission between: ‘“Belief officiants”: Anglican clergy and nominated officiants from religious or non-religious belief organisations’ and ‘“Civil officiants”: The person who would be legally responsible for ensuring that a civil wedding complies with the law and who oversees the legal formation of the marriage, under proposed reforms. This includes registration officers, independent officiants and maritime officiants’[6].

I have been critical of this distinction and the Law Commission’s differential treatment of independent celebrants that flowed from them being treated as being under the ‘civil’ category.  This makes little sense given that they have more in common with humanist celebrants than registration officers.

This is underlined by the definition given of an ‘independent officiant’, which is what legally recognised independent celebrants would become. These are defined as officiants ‘that will be neither state appointed registration officers, nor officiants acting on behalf of a religious or non-religious belief organisation, under the proposed reforms’[8]. This underscores that the distinction between civil and belief officiants is unhelpful since independent officiants can be distinguished from bedfellows in each category.

The ‘belief-civil’ distinction can be confusing given that the main distinctions envisaged in the Consultation are not between belief and civil officiants. For the most part, all officiants are treated the same.  Under the Consultation, the only significant dividing lines are types of officiants is between State officials and all others in terms of regulation and, between Anglican weddings and all other weddings in terms of universal rules as to preliminaries etc. (There are some proposed differences but I will argue below that they should not apply)

The term ‘civil’ has two different meanings in the Consultation. For the most part, it refers to officiants other than Anglican clergy and nominated officiants. However, ‘civil preliminaries are defined as those that apply to ‘all non-Anglican weddings’ [7]. This means that Catholic and Humanist weddings, for example, would be conducted by ‘belief officiants’ but undergo ‘civil preliminaries’. This will lead to confusion.

It is true that in common parlance, there is understood to be a distinction between civil and religious weddings.  However, this distinction is not found in the Marriage Act 1949 which adopts the list approach (see section 26). It was originally reflected in the civil partnership legislation but civil partnerships can now be conducted by religious officiants.

The preferable approach is not to distinguish between ‘belief’ and ‘civil’ officiants but to simply include the list of officiants as in the definition given of officiants.  The ‘civil’ label can then be kept for the discussion of preliminaries where it denotes anything non-Anglican.

Many of the proposals in the Consultation would be even clearer if the discussion was organised around the five categories of officiant (registration officers, Anglican clergy, nominated officiants, independent officiants and maritime officiants) rather than using broader categories that conflate officiants and have little meaning in terms of the few differences in treatment of officiants that is being proposed.

The Consultation document is a master class in communicating complex information clearly and sweeping away unhelpful distinctions.  The inclusion of definitions for and therefore a distinction between civil and belief officiants is a rare blip and needs to be removed

[2] Rules on consent need recasting 

The consultation proposes that in ‘religious and non-religious belief ceremonies’, ‘consent should be capable of being expressed through actions as well as words’ and that this would better reflect the diversity of traditions and practices used in wedding ceremonies’ [33].

Given the important role they play in terms of interfaith marriages, it may be argued that this rule should also apply to independent officiants.

The Consultation argues that ‘civil ceremonies should continue to have a clear, standardised and identifiable expression of consent’ that ‘required words of consent should be used in civil ceremonies as the means by which consent can be expressed, but that these words should be limited to the core elements of the commitment of marriage’  [33-34] .  It is proposed that ‘the required words should take the form of a short statement of contract, such as:  “I [name] accept you [name] as my [husband / wife / spouse]”’ and that ‘limited variation should be permitted through the use of “words to the same effect” [34].

This protects the state’s interests in ensuring that both parties have freely agreed to marry and provides certainty in law for civil ceremonies ‘where there are no established non-verbal practices and traditions for expressing consent’[33].

This is true for registration officers but it is difficult to see why this should apply to independent officiants.

The Consultation paper states that the Government believes that these different rules are justified:  ‘It would accommodate different belief practices, while improving consistency and legal clarity in all marriage ceremonies’.  Yet, Independent Celebrants are placed on the wrong side of this line.

Indeed, it would be preferable to get rid of the line altogether and having the same rule across the board:  suggested words of consent with limited variation that could include action. The discussion of consent underscores the problem with the ‘belief-civil’ distinction and provides further reason for disregarding it. Should different rule be necessary, it would be clearer to distinguish officiants by type using the five-fold list.

[3] Clarifying the use of religious or belief materials

The Consultation also differs from the Law Commission’s proposals in terms of the use of religious or belief content in ceremonies other than religion or belief organisations.

The Consultation distinguishes ‘between a full belief service, which should not be permitted and individual elements of belief content, which may be [46]. This can be understood as allowing individual “ingredients”, but not the full “recipe”, or a combination of elements that, taken together, would amount to a recognisable religious or non-religious belief service’.  The Consultation proposes that at a civil wedding, it would be matter for the ‘discretion of the officiant, who will be responsible for ensuring that the ceremony remains clearly identifiable as civil and does not amount to a recognisable belief service’.

The Consultation further proposes that ‘registrars should not lead or participate in religious or non-religious belief elements in a civil ceremony. Couples would still be able to include permitted belief elements, provided they are led by the couple, a guest or a third party [47].

This seems to be a sensible solution but one that is confused by reference to the word ‘civil’ rather than just listing the officiant. The Consultation proposes a general rule for civil ceremonies but then makes it clear that this does not apply to registrar ceremonies.  It would be much clearer to say that the general rule applies to independent and maritime officiants with the second rule applying to registrars.

Yet again, the ‘civil-belief’ distinction is unhelpful because the same rules should not apply to independent and maritime officiants as to registrars. Classifying both as ‘civil’ causes more problems.

[4] Rethink the purpose of defining religion or belief  

The Consultation ties itself in knots attempting to define ‘religious belief organisations’ and then ‘non-religious belief organisations’ [61]. A lot of this rests upon the rather naïve belief that there is a robust and clear definition of the term ‘belief’ under the Article 9 case law. The Consultation even relies upon the ‘Grainger’ criteria under the Equality Act 2010’ [61-62], completely ignoring the extraordinary contradictory and confused case law that those criteria have led to. There is then a detailed discussion of the number of households that would need to belong to a ‘religion or belief’ for that religion or belief to be recognised.

All this is utterly unconvincing and also misses the point.  The question is whether the nominating body is able to serve effectively as a regulator for the purposes of marriage law. Under the proposals, celebrancy organisations will perform similar nominating and regulatory functions for independent officiants as religion or belief organisations will play for officiants representing them.  Yet, no attention is afforded (rightly) to the question of how a celebrancy organisation is defined; the focus is rather on whether it is able to serve effectively as a regulator.

If nominating officials are to be limited to belief organisations’ and then ‘non-religious belief organisations’ then all that is needed is the rule suggested by the Law Commission that such ‘organisations should only be eligible to nominate officiants where “it would be a manifestation of an individual’s religion or beliefs to have a wedding officiated at by an officiant nominated by that organisation”’ [62].

This could be buttressed by excluding certain types of organisations such as political parties and trade unions from the definition, an approach taken in other jurisdictions that the Law Commission rejected but that the Consultation now raises [65]. This seems a sensible addition.

Chapter seven of the Consultation deals with the Regulation of Officiants and explores many suggested requirements, some of which are only to apply to independent and maritime officiants.  Most of the time, however, it would make sense for these to apply to all officiants including those nominated by religion or belief bodies.

In particular, question 36 consults on the eligibility criteria ‘that would be necessary for membership organisations to become approved, both in relation to the organisation’s structure and to how it appoints and oversees officiants’. It would make sense for these to apply not only to celebrancy organisations but to all nominating bodies – including religion or belief bodies.  This, again, undermines the use of the ‘belief-civil’ distinction.

[5] Some thoughts on disturbances

A major, if not the major, innovation by the Consultation is the suggestion of a dignity framework that would enable officiants to determine whether locations and ceremonies are safe and dignified. There is a lot of detail on this, despite the intention being that it should enable ‘discretion in order to reflect the particular circumstances of each wedding’ [37].

One aspect that I found questionable is the suggestion that officiants should be clear that the ‘dignity of the occasion will not be undermined by distraction or trivialisation’[38]. These are very subjective terms.  The reference to ‘distraction’ is particularly problematic; a distraction for whom? In a religious wedding, the religious rituals could be seen as a distraction from the main event of the wedding in some eyes.  It is stated that:

‘Locations characterised by unavoidable interruption or distraction, such as nightclubs during normal operation or stadiums during live sporting events, will not meet the proposed standard. Settings that require participants to focus on another activity during the ceremony, such as skydiving, white-water rafting, rollercoasters or other amusement rides, will also fall short of the standard’ [41]

However, how does his differ from religious or cultural weddings where there are other traditions ongoing? The idea that a closed nightclub or sports arena might be a suitable venue but an open one would not goes against the ‘public’ nature of marriage.

It later suggests a number of factors to be taken into account including ‘Control of the environment: whether the officiant is able to maintain appropriate control over the immediate environment, including preventing interruptions or distractions during the ceremony’ [42].

This would seemingly allow other focuses provided that they can be policed. This may be a preferable approach to banning distractions or other focuses.

Indeed, the Consultation stresses that this is not ‘intended to exclude all non-traditional locations. For example, a tethered hot-air balloon or a busy public beach may require careful consideration but could be permitted provided the officiant is satisfied that the ceremony can be conducted safely, seriously and without avoidable distraction’ [41].

The other thing missing from the Consultation’s discussion of this is the proximity of the other event from the ‘legal’ part of the ceremony, the expression of consent. Surely, this makes a huge difference.  This is why a communion service during the wedding ceremony is fine – the religious ritual does not disturb the legal part of the ceremony since the two are not at the same time.  The same logic would apply to non-religious activities.

Somewhat bafflingly, the Consultation gives the following example:”

‘if a couple wanted the ceremony to be performed as a parody or comedic sketch, with the expression of consent treated as part of the performance, this would not meet the proposed standard. In those circumstances, the ceremony would not reflect the seriousness required for the legal act of marriage” [42].

Surely, the issue would be whether the sketch was the legal part of the ceremony. How different would be a recitation of a comedy routine to any other reading? It would be fine as part of the ceremony provided it is not the expression of consent.

This is the nub of the issue. It needs to be made clearer that interpreting and applying the Dignity Framework, attention is to be afforded to the proximity of the potentially undignified matter with the legal expression of consent.

These five suggestions are mere tweaks.  Most of them result from the rejection of the ‘civil-belief’ distinction.  The vast majority of the proposals are to be welcome as they stand and represent an improvement on the Law Commission’s already stellar work.  Clarity and fairness would, however, be achieved by using the five-fold list of types of officiant throughout and this would be particularly true if legislation is enacted following the Consultation, which it hopefully will be given the importance of this reform and the general brilliance of this Consultation document.

Russell Sandberg

Cite this article as: Russell Sandberg, “Five suggestions on wedding law reform” in Law & Religion UK, 6 September 2026,

England: The second round of Expressions of Interest for the Places of Worship Renewal Fund opened on Friday 4 September. The deadline for submitting an EOI is Friday 2 October 2026 at 5 pm.

Historic England has published a comprehensive Places of Worship Funding Index, described as “A resource to support places of worship in England to identify potential funders for building-focused projects”.

Northern Ireland: The Department for Communities has published a public consultation on Historic Environment Policy. It closes on 23 October.

Wales: The Welsh Government has announced a call for evidence on Culture and Sport Strategy. Question1 asks, “What is the situation now? What is the current state of play for culture, heritage, the arts, creative industries, sport and physical activity in Wales?” It closes on Friday 18 December at noon. In addition, Welsh places of worship, coordinated by Cadw, are collating data to create a report to submit to the new Welsh Government to describe their contribution to Welsh culture and language. [With thanks to the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance.]

Weddings law reform, England & Wales

On Wednesday, Jake Richards, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, gave the following reply to a series of similar written questions on the reform of weddings law:

“On 16 July, the Government published the consultation ‘Tying the Knot: Reforming weddings law in England and Wales alongside an impact assessment of the proposed reforms. The impact assessment estimates that the reforms could lead to a 3% increase in the overall number of weddings.

In relation to demand for approved wedding venues, allowing couples to marry in a wider range of locations could change patterns of demand, although the estimated increase in the overall number of weddings may also create additional opportunities for existing venues. We will consider evidence from venues and other businesses submitted through the consultation.

The Government has not yet made a final assessment of the financial impact on local authority registration services. We are continuing to work closely with the General Register Office (GRO) and local authorities on the potential implications.

One of the main four principles underpinning the consultation is to protect against forced, predatory and sham marriages. This Government wants to strengthen safeguards and ensure marriages are not used to gain unfair advantage. We are proposing a more effective system of checks and greater transparency to ensure marriages are entered into freely, with informed consent. The consultation asks questions in order to identify how protections against sham marriage can be enhanced, with improved signposting for couples and training for officiants, for example.

The Government has committed to introduce legislation to reform marriage law when parliamentary time allows.”

A review of the Government consultation by Professor Russell Sandberg – Five Suggestions on Wedding Law Reform – will be published on L&RUK tomorrow.

Richard O’Sullivan Memorial Lecture

Prof Mary Ellen O’Connell, of the University of Notre Dame, will deliver the Richard O’Sullivan Memorial Lecture on Thursday 15 October at 6 pm at The University of Notre Dame (USA) in England, 1-4 Suffolk Street, London SW1Y 4HG. The title of her lecture is There is No Just War: Natural Law Teaching on War and Peace, and it is given with the generous support of the Newman Association:

“Is the Iran War a ‘just war’? This question has sparked a global debate over the meaning and relevance of the venerable Just War theory. The debate began in April when two prominent American Catholics, Pope Leo and Vice President J.D. Vance, exchanged deeply differing positions on war and peace. This lecture is about those differences.

It looks to the origins of the Just War theory, demonstrating how it developed based on natural law, which gives it its authentic, enduring meaning—meaning that is now codified in the United Nations Charter prohibition on the use of force. This context has been largely forgotten. Politicians resort to war using self-serving interpretations of the Charter or assertions that they are acting for reasons above the law. These decisions have brought about the highest number of armed conflicts since World War II. They are also undermining the very rule of law upon which democracy and social harmony depend.”

To attend, contact https://osullivanlecture26.eventbrite.co.uk.

“Bitesize Ecclesiastical Law”

Three upcoming sessions:

• ‘What is the law on funerals?‘ with Jon Baldwin, Registrar of the Diocese of Southwark, Winkworth Sherwood Solicitors: 22 September from 5.30-6.00 pm.
• ‘What is the law of marriage?‘ with Jess Gray, Deputy Registrar of the Dioceses of York and Sodor a& Man (and from 1 September, Registrar of the Diocese of Sheffield), Flint Bishop Solicitors: 13 October from 5.30-6.00 pm.
• ‘What is a canon?‘ with Ven Russell Dewhurst, Archdeacon of Hastings: 17 November from 5.30-6.00 pm.

Cathedrals catch-up

On 28 August we noted that links to the decisions made by the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (CFCE) for the last five meetings have become available. We have made post facto insertions into the relevant monthly round up posts; starting with the inclusion of the CFCE post of Thursday 11 December 2025, this has been added to each of the ecclesiastical court judgments since the December 2025 round-up. The most recent CFCE meeting was on Thursday 3 September 2026, the determinations of which will be summarized at the end of the month.

Quick links

• Mary Downer and Catherine Pepinster, The Sunday Times: The church with 20 worshippers and an eye-watering bill to go green: on the cost of meeting the C of E’s net-zero targets – and in which David is quoted.
• Fearghas O’Beara, BYU Law: The Rules of Engagement: Identifying the Defining Features of the European Union’s Sui Generis Model of Religion-State Relations.

And finally…

The current post on the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley blog, Commendation for a Secular Funeral Where the Celebrant Doesn’t Want to be too Depressing shares a page with a side-bar link to L&RUK’s Regulating the funeral industry in England & Wales.

The Government is to bring forward “comprehensive proposals to ensure respect and dignity for the deceased in every setting, to drive rogue operators out of the funeral industry, and to protect other families from suffering this same heartache”. The Law Commission will also undertake a review of the criminal law in relation to the deceased, consider any gaps in existing legal protections and make recommendations on the creation of new offences,

The full statement is here.

The post Movsesian at ICLARS appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

In this episode of Legal Spirits, Center Director Mark Movsesian speaks with Professor Arman Tatoyan of the American University of Armenia about a controversy involving the Armenian Apostolic Church and the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The dispute centers on a civil-court order requiring the Church to allow a bishop to continue serving as diocesan Primate while he challenged his removal. After the Church defrocked the bishop, authorities brought criminal charges against Catholicos Karekin II and other senior clerics for allegedly defying the order. We discuss the case under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the principle of church autonomy, and ask whether even a temporary court order—and the threat of criminal enforcement—can become a serious burden on religious freedom. We also compare the European approach with U.S. church-autonomy doctrine and consider why the controversy matters well beyond Armenia. Listen in!

The post Legal Spirits 081: Who Chooses the Bishops? Armenia’s Church-State Crisis appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• Parents in Georgia have filed suit challenging requirements of the state’s Promise Scholarship Program, arguing that forcing their children to attend low-performing public schools before receiving funds for Catholic education violates the Free Exercise Clause.
• A federal court allowed a Title VII religious discrimination suit against the Department of Homeland Security to proceed after Customs and Border Protection withdrew a job offer because of an applicant’s sacramental use of ayahuasca as a member of a Christian Spiritist denomination.
• The Sixth Circuit rejected a challenge to a Michigan city’s restrictions on which flags may be flown on city-owned flagpoles, while questioning whether the Establishment Clause still requires government action to have a secular purpose after the Supreme Court abandoned the Lemon test.
• A federal court allowed Establishment Clause claims to proceed against the Philadelphia School District based on allegations that officials created a Muslim prayer room, restricted access to Muslim students, and disciplined non-Muslim students for entering it.
• A Minneapolis church asked a federal judge to hold DHS in contempt, alleging immigration agents surveilled worshippers despite an injunction restricting immigration enforcement at the church.
• Iraq’s Court of Cassation ruled that a Christian woman has the right to have her religious identity officially recorded as Christian, overturning her classification as Muslim under Iraqi law.

The post Around the Web appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

Summaries to the seven consistory court judgments reviewed during August are listed below, with links to the L&RUK review. These included [*]:

• Procedural
• Reordering, extensions and other building works
• Exhumation
• Churchyards and burials
• Organs

This review also includes: CDM Decisions and Safeguarding; Reports from the Independent Reviewer; Privy Council Business; Other legal issues; Visitations; CFCE Determinations; and Links to other L&RUK posts relating to ecclesiastical law.

An index to these and earlier judgments in here.

Procedural

Reordering, extensions and other building works

• Post-disaster remediation
• Reordering and alternative uses

[top]

Post-disaster remediation

Re St. Mary the Virgin Beachamwell [2026] ECC Ely 1 The Chancellor considered a faculty petition to restore the Grade I listed Church of St Mary the Virgin, Beachamwell, following a devastating fire in February 2022[1]. He assessed the proposals under the ‘Duffield’ principles governing alterations to historic churches, and considered objections from anonymous objectors, concerning inter alia accessibility, provision of a toilet, paths, seating, and the font’s location[2] and [14].

Submissions on behalf of the PCC were drafted by Gregory Jones KC “an experienced ecclesiastical lawyer and Chancellor”[16] to [35]. The court accepted the decision of the Parochial Church Council not to install an internal lavatory, finding that this was justified by the church’s exceptional historic significance, limited space, practical constraints, and the availability of accessible facilities in the nearby village hall. The Chancellor rejected arguments that a toilet was legally required under equality or health and safety legislation[39]. However, the court held that if the village hall facilities were to be relied upon, a wheelchair-accessible path between the church and village hall was necessary[43].

The proposal to level the church floor was approved, while concerns remained about the proposed location of the font, requiring further consultation. The restoration using pews, replacement memorial windows, and other reinstatement works was supported. A faculty was granted subject to conditions [49](a) to (e), including provision of the accessible path and further consideration of drainage pipes and font placement. [Re St. Mary the Virgin Beachamwell [2026] ECC Ely 1] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of post]

Reordering and alternative uses

Re St. Peter Addingham [2026] ECC Lee 3 Hill CH. considered a faculty petition to reorder the west end of the Grade I listed church. The original proposals included removing three pews, improving the accessibility of the WC, replacing inner porch doors with a single glazed timber door, and altering baptistery panelling[1].

Following objections and negotiations with a Party Opponent, the panelling proposal was withdrawn and the petition proceeded on the remaining works. However, the Chancellor noted that although the petitioners had removed the panelling proposal from the instant petition, they put down a marker that the matter was likely to come before the Court for determination on a future occasion[3].

The petitioners argued that the changes would improve accessibility, create a more welcoming environment, and better support contemporary worship, particularly for families, children, wheelchair users, and those with mobility difficulties [9]. The DAC supported the revised scheme, considering its impact on the historic fabric to be minimal. Objectors raised concerns about security, heat loss, the WC door arrangement, necessity of the works, and disruption to worship.

Applying the Duffield framework, the Chancellor found that any harm to the church’s significance would be minimal, that the justification for the works was cogent, and that the resulting public benefits outweighed the limited harm. A faculty was therefore granted for the revised proposals, excluding the baptistery panelling works[14]. [Re St. Peter Addingham [2026] ECC Lee 3] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Exhumation

• Errors in burial
• Other

Errors in burial

Re St. Mary Kempsey [2026] ECC Wor 2 The Chancellor granted a faculty permitting the exhumation and reinterment of Bryan Kenneth Jones’ remains within St Mary’s Churchyard, Kempsey. Mr. Jones had reserved a burial plot in 2005, but on the day of his funeral it was discovered that a neighbouring coffin encroached on the reserved space, making burial there impossible[3]. An alternative grave was allocated at very short notice without consultation with the family, and they were not offered the option of delaying the funeral while the issue was resolved[4].

Applying the principles in Re Blagdon Cemetery, the Chancellor noted that Christian burial is normally permanent and exhumation requires exceptional circumstances. However, she found this case analogous to a “mistake” because Mr Jones was not buried in the reserved grave he had chosen, and the family’s decisions were made under significant pressure. The family acted promptly, all close relatives supported the application, and relocation would avoid disturbing another family’s loved one.

Whilst the case was not on all fours with previous reported ‘mistake’ cases, Humphreys Ch. considered that in her view was sufficiently similar to be permitted[13]. The court therefore held that the test of exceptionality was met and authorised exhumation, subject to immediate reinterment in another agreed location within the same churchyard and the process being carried out reverently and discreetly[15]. [Re St. Mary Kempsey [2026] ECC Wor 2] [Top of section] [Top of post]

Other

Re Pershore Cemetery [2026] ECC Wor 3 The Chancellor refused a petition to exhume and relocate the cremated remains of David Richard Jones from Pershore Cemetery to Wooburn Green Cemetery. The application, made by his son, argued that David and his late wife Mary wished to be buried together near family in Buckinghamshire and that Pershore had little relevance to the family[4].

Applying the principles in Re Blagdon Cemetery, Humphreys Ch. emphasised that Christian burial is presumed permanent and exhumation requires exceptional circumstances. She found no such circumstances here. There were no medical reasons, no mistake in the original burial, and the application was made nearly 30 years after the interment. The support of family members, while relevant, was insufficient on its own[15].

The court noted that Mary Jones’s 2011 will expressly stated her wish for her ashes to be interred at Pershore Cemetery with her husband, and there was no evidence that she changed that intention before her death. A family grave could still be created at Pershore, making relocation unnecessary. The inconvenience of visiting or maintaining the grave was not an exceptional factor justifying exhumation as was clearly set out in Re Astwood Cemetery[19]. Accordingly, the petition was refused[20]. [Re Pershore Cemetery [2026] ECC Wor 3] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Re St. Michael Brantham [2026] ECC SEI 1 Christine Danes(CD) and her brother Leslie Dunthorne(LD) petitioned to exhume their father Dennis Dunthorne’s cremated remains, interred at St Michael’s Church, Brantham in 2007, so they could be scattered with their mother Pamela’s ashes in the River Orwell[1]. Their mother had long regretted the original decision and believed it conflicted with her husband’s wishes[4]. The application was made in the form of an email dated 20 July 2025 from CD; two emails from LD were said to “give permission” for the exhumation of their father, although they did not mention what they wished to happen to them after that. Gau Ch. indicated that he was prepared to accept that they too wanted the ashes to be scattered with those of their mother[5].

The incumbent and the Church wardens had no objections to the exhumation, but the incumbent raised the issue that the cremated remains may well have become integrated into the soil after this length of time; he proposed that the surrounding soil should also be removed to ensure that all the ashes are exhumed[6]. The petitioners were said to be fully aware of the likelihood that there may not be any recoverable ashes when the grave was opened, but as their mother was so upset about her husband being in the churchyard, the family felt that they must at least try to fulfil her last wish[8].

Applying Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, the Chancellor emphasised that exhumation is permitted only exceptionally, although he stated that  he did not consider that the guidelines were set in stone, and was entitled to use his discretion in considering other relevant matters whether raised by the petitioners or not[10]. However, unlike many other cases that come before Consistory Courts the application was not for the re-interment in either consecrated or even unconsecrated ground, but in the river Orwell[11]. Guidance was available in Canon 38, in a consideration of the Convocation of York in 1951, and from the Legal Advisory Committee. However, he bore in mind that no Anglican minister would be involved in the proposed scattering and that this would be a deliberate removal from consecrated ground not just to an unconsecrated area, but to a running river[12].

Although the incumbent and PCC were not opposed to the exhumation, the proposed scattering in a river did not constitute a family grave and raised concerns under Church of England rules concerning the reverent disposal of ashes. The possibility that the remains had over time been integrated into the soil further weighed against exhumation. The petition was therefore dismissed. [Re St. Michael Brantham [2026] ECC SEI 1] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Churchyards and burials

• Designation of closed churchyard
• Churchyard Regulations
• Environmental Permit

Designation of closed churchyard

See Privy Council Business.

Churchyard Regulations

Re St. Lawrence Mereworth [2026] ECC Roc 2 The judgment concerns a confirmatory faculty for restoration of Alan Waller’s 1955 memorial at St. Lawrence, Mereworth. The memorial had been substantially cleaned and repaired, its lettering replaced, and the recorded month of death corrected from September to June. Bright blue chippings had also been added. A significant issue was ownership. Under the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018 and the common law, ownership passed through the deceased’s heirs according to pre-1926 rules of descent. As Alan’s eldest sons and their descendants had died without surviving descendants, his surviving son John became the owner. John opposed the restoration. The Chancellor held that an owner’s opposition is important but not conclusive. A faculty may be granted where the circumstances constitute an exception to the normal rule that the owner controls alterations. Here, the memorial was objectively deteriorated, unstable and barely legible, and its inscription contained a factual error. The Chancellor concluded that a faculty would have been granted even before the work was undertaken and therefore granted the confirmatory faculty. The faculty required removal of the blue chippings within three months, with replacement approved by the incumbent and PCC. [Re St. Lawrence Mereworth [2026] ECC Roc 2] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Environmental Permit

CA16 6DA, The Parochial Church Council (PCC) of St Cuthbert’s Church, Dufton: environmental permit application advertisement – EPR/PP3226MS/A001.

WR13 6HE, The PCC Of The Ecclesiastical Parish Of St James The Great, Colwall: environmental permit application advertisement – EPR/YP3226MF/A001.

Organs

Re All Saints and St Margaret, Chattisham [2026] ECC SEI 2 The Chancellor considered a petition to remove and rehome a nineteenth-century pipe organ, replace it with a digital organ, remove and alter certain pews, level part of the floor, and install a kitchenette with water supply and storage to make the church more flexible for worship and community use[1].

The organ itself was built in the early part of the nineteenth century, between 1825 and 1830 and built by Thomas Elliott, a highly regarded organ builder[5]. It was purchased and introduced at some time after 1969, replacing a reed organ that was in place. For the purposes of the Petition, the Chancellor assumed it was installed with the benefit of a Faculty[6].

The petition was supported by the PCC and the DAC, which considered the organ historically significant but under used and an obstacle to developing the church’s mission[8]. The DAC advised that its removal would cause only a small degree of harm to the church’s significance and would allow valuable new facilities[14]. Objectors argued that the organ was important for worship, weddings, funerals and the annual carol service; that a kitchen was unnecessary; and that community activities could instead use the village hall in the next village.

Applying the Duffield test, the Chancellor found that any heritage harm was limited and outweighed by the benefits to mission, pastoral well-being and the viable use of the church. The faculty was granted, subject to conditions requiring the organ’s installation (subject to faculty) at St Leonard’s, Wixoe, expert removal, and replacement with a suitable digital organ. [Re All Saints and St Margaret, Chattisham [2026] ECC SEI 2]  [Top]

CDM Decisions and Safeguarding

Penalties by consent

Name: The Revd GRANT BOLTON-DEBBAGE
Diocese: Southwark
Date imposed: 18th August 2026
Relevant CDM section: 16(1)
Statutory Ground of Misconduct: 8(1)(d) conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders
Penalty: Rebuke (with effect from 21st August 2026)

Name: The Revd THOMAS EDWARD GLOVER
Diocese: Chester
Date imposed: 14th July 2026
Relevant CDM section: 16(1)
Statutory Ground of Misconduct: 8(1)(d) conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders
Penalty: Limited Prohibition for 10 years (with effect from 10th July 2026)

Name: The Revd Gary Hughes
Diocese: Liverpool
Date imposed: 13th July 2026
Relevant CDM section: 16(1)
Statutory Ground of Misconduct: 8(1)(c) neglect or inefficiency in the performance of the duties of his office
Penalty: Rebuke and injunction

Name: The Revd ALISON JANE COZENS
Diocese: Durham
Date Imposed: 9th July 2026
Statutory Ground of Misconduct: 8(1)(d) conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders
Penalty: Injunction and Conditional Deferment for 5 years (with effect from 21st July 2026).

CFCE Determinations

The dates of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England may be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the page Cathedrals Fabric Commission.  The programme for 2026 is here and the next meeting will be on Thursday 3 September 2026

Links to the decisions made by the CFCE, for the last five months, “Form 10s”,  are reproduced below. The equivalent “Form 8s” on the applications that the Commission examined have also been published.

2025

• Thursday 11 December 2025

2026

• Thursday 5 February 2026
• Thursday 26 March 2026
• Thursday 7 May 2026
• Thursday 2 July 2026

See CFCE Decisions – Update, (28 August 2026).

Links to other posts

Recent summaries of specific issues that have been considered in the consistory courts include:

Procedural

• Abuse of faculty jurisdiction in Oxford Diocese, (5 August 2025).

Reordering, extensions and other building works

• Fire damage and the faculty jurisdiction, (24 August 2026).

Churchyards

• Headstone ownership – the fine print, (27 August 2026).

General/Miscellaneous

• CDM statement: Bishop Paul Butler, (18 August 2026).
• Rev Canon Andrew Cornes – CDM Tribunal, (6 August 2026).

[Top]

Revised: 29 August 2026 at 15:12.

[*] This is an approximate classification based upon the  main issues considered by the court. Determinations relating to reordering and building works will often address other aspects of the Petition.

Notes on the conventions used for the navigation between cases reviewed in this post are summarized here.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 16 July and has been scheduled for a second reading on 11 September. Last week, the Prime Minister indicated that the Government remains neutral on the question of assisted dying and on the passage of the bill, stating that it was vital that every view be respected. In his letter to  Ministers, he confirmed that, as is the convention for issues involving conscience, collective responsibility would be set aside, with frontbenchers free to vote or abstain as they wanted. An Equality Impact Assessment of the Bill was published on 28 August.

Attacks on Jewish community ambulances

On Friday, Hamza ⁠Iqbal, Rehan Khan, Judex Atshatshi and Saif Ali pleaded guilty  to a charge of destroying or damaging property being reckless whether life would be endangered. They destroyed four ambulances belonging to the Jewish volunteer emergency service, Hatzola, in an arson attack that caused about £1m of damage.  Cheema-Grubb J ordered pre-sentence reports for the four. A fifth defendant, Subhan Ahmed, pleaded not guilty to a charge of assisting an offender and will be tried at the Old Bailey on 27 January.

England: Places of Worship Renewal Fund

We understand from DCMS that Round 2 of the window for Expressions of Interest [EOI] in the Fund opens on Friday 4 September 2026 and the deadline for submissions is Friday 2 October at 5 pm. Historic England will not accept Expressions of Interest submitted outside this window, and applicants who submitted an EOI after Round 1 closed will need to reapply. Further information and guidance on the application process will be available through the Historic England website: Places of Worship Renewal Fund | Historic England.

In response to feedback from Round One, the EOI window has been increased to four weeks to give applicants more time to prepare their EOIs, and the guidance has been clarified and amended. DCMS says that applicants do not have to use the full word allowance for every question: at the EOI stage, the important thing is to provide basic information and show why the project is eligible for PWRF, and anyone who is in any doubt about that is welcome to contact the regional Historic England office to talk it through.

Those invited to prepare full applications will receive additional detailed guidance and support, so that they can submit them between 26 October and 18 November.  Funding decisions are anticipated in January 2027.

Scotland: maintaining church buildings

In reply to a written question in the Scottish Parliament from Julie MacDougall (Mid Scotland and Fife, Reform UK) asking about financial assistance to the Church of Scotland for the maintenance and upkeep of its church buildings, Simita Kumar, Minister for Equalities and International Development, said this:

“The Scottish Government recognises the important role that church buildings play as places of worship and as valued community assets. Responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of Church of Scotland buildings rests with the Church of Scotland and its congregations.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Scotland’s Places of Worship Fund announcement by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) on 18 August 2026. This new pilot scheme for 2026-27 will provide up to £1 million to help eligible listed places of worship across Scotland recover VAT costs associated with repair and conservation works.

The Fund has been developed in direct response to the closure of the UK-wide Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme and is expected to open for applications in autumn 2026.

The Scottish Government and HES have worked closely to explore options to ensure that Scotland’s listed places of worship are not disproportionately affected by the withdrawal of the UK-wide scheme. This pilot scheme will help assess demand and gather evidence to inform consideration of future arrangements.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with faith and belief organisations, heritage bodies and other partners on issues affecting places of worship, including the sustainability and preservation of historic church buildings.”

Quick links:

• Gladys Ganiel, Solange Lefebvre and Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (eds), Journal of Religion in Europe: a special issue on Religion and Covid-19.

• Callum Martin and Andy Silvester,  The Times: A grave problem: why London is running out of space for burials.

And finally…

The Religion Media Centre reported that Vanity Fair had put Pope Leo on its “best dressed” list, after he was pictured wearing his papal cassock with Nike trainers and a baseball cap. Vanity Fair says: “What the people in this list have in common is that when it comes to personal style, they have it in spades — that and a singular point of view.” On Pope Leo, it explains: “Even prior to the papacy, Leo, FKA Father Bob, took his modest cream cassock to heavenly heights by pairing them with Nikes”. And on his fashion claim to fame, it says: “Leo has kept his sense of wry casualness, sometimes sporting baseball caps”.

Links to the decisions made by the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, (CFCE), for the last five meetings, “Form 10s”, are now available and are reproduced below. The equivalent “Form 8s” on the applications that the Commission examined have also been published. These will also be included our next roundup of ecclesiastical court judgments.

2025

• Thursday 11 December 2025

2026

• Thursday 5 February 2026
• Thursday 26 March 2026
• Thursday 7 May 2026
• Thursday 2 July 2026

Remaining dates 2026

• Thursday 3 September 2026
• Thursday 22 October 2026
• Thursday 10 December 2026

Scheduled dates 2027

• Thursday 11 February 2027
• Thursday 8 April 2027
• Thursday 27 May 2027
• Thursday 15 July 2027
• Thursday 2 September 2027
• Thursday 21 October 2027
• Thursday 9 December 2027

* Genesis 42:2.

Bishop Anne Dyer to retire after nine years in Aberdeen & Orkney

The Rt Rev Anne Dyer, Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney, has announced that she will retire early next year.

Bishop Anne, who was consecrated in 2018, will reach the Church’s retirement age of 70 in February 2027, and she has now given the required six-month notice ahead of demitting office.

Her last day as Bishop of the Diocese will be 20 February 2027, when she will chair the Diocesan Synod in Aberdeen. Her final service will be that afternoon at St Mary’s Carden Place, where she will lay down her crozier.

Bishop Anne shared the news of her retirement in a pastoral letter to the diocese this morning [27 August].

She wrote: “People of God, from the day of my election in November 2017, and particularly following my consecration in March 2018, you have come to be very dear to me. Through times that have been both joyful and sometimes very challenging, it has been a privilege to serve as your bishop. I am much changed by this experience, and very grateful to God for all the grace and encouragement I have received.”

Looking to the final months of her episcopacy, she added: “I will look forward to worshipping with as many of you as possible and continuing to give attention to the many projects that are in progress.

“As I remain here, I will continue praying ‘that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.” (Col 1:9-10)

Bishop Anne was ordained a deacon in 1987 and a priest in 1994. After over 20 years of ministry in the Church of England, she became a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church when she was appointed Rector of Holy Trinity Haddington in 2011.

McClean Ch, Re Kilnhurst St. Thomas

The ownership of a headstone is important in relation to the nature of its memorialisation and the liabilities related to safety. A comprehensive review of the legislation is provided by McClean Ch. in Re Kilnhurst St. Thomas [2012] Sheffield Const. Ct., McClean Ch. Also see: Church of England Opinions Churchyards: ownership of monuments and trees[1]; and the Ecclesiastical Judges’ Association Report of Working Party into Churchyard Memorial Regulations, (October 2024).

The recently reported judgment Re St. Lawrence Mereworth [2026] ECC Roc 2 concerns a petition which sought a confirmatory faculty for the restoration of a 1955 memorial, and explores the application of and exemptions to “heir-at-law”. The ELA Summary is here.

Confirmatory faculties

The judgment concerns a confirmatory faculty for the restoration of Alan Waller’s 1955 memorial at St. Lawrence, Mereworth, Kent. Without authority, the memorial had been substantially cleaned and repaired, its lettering replaced[3], and the recorded month of death corrected from September to June[5]. The space surrounding the grave kerbs had been filled with bright blue glass or stone chippings, whereas there were no stones before[4].

A significant issue was ownership of the memorial. Alan Waller had six children, but his two eldest sons and their descendants had also died without surviving descendants, v infra. His next surviving son, John, then became the owner of the memorial[7]. John opposed its restoration. Although he was said to have previously agreed to the works being done, there is apparently no contemporaneous supporting evidence. Willink Ch. noted that the rift between John and the other three siblings was so severe that none of the three was able to provide John’s contact details, which had to be obtained from the incumbent[8]. A long-standing family feud was also a feature of Re Kilnhurst St. Thomas (at [2] in the judgment). 

Principles of legislation

Willink Ch. reviewed the principles of the legislation on confirmatory faculties, [10] to [12], in which he considered Re All Saints Buncton [2018] ECC Chi 1 and more recent cases [2]. He then addressed the law relating to works to memorials, [13] to [18], and noted that S66 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018 provides [emphasis added]:

(1) The consistory court of a diocese may grant a faculty for the moving, demolition, alteration or carrying out of other work to a monument erected in or on, or on the curtilage of, a church or other consecrated building or on consecrated ground, even if the owner of the monument—(a) withholds consent to the faculty, or (b) cannot be found after reasonable efforts to find him or her have been made.”

Consequently, the court could not consider a petition for such a faculty unless and until it had addressed:

• who the owner of the memorial is; If the owner can be identified;
• whether the owner consents to the work or not (whether or not a failure to consent takes the form of failure to respond, neutral withholding of consent or active opposition); and
• if the owner cannot be identified, whether reasonable efforts to find the owner have been made.

Until 1964, the refusal or failure of an owner to consent to work being done on a monument was apparently “a complete bar to a faculty for any such work”. The position was altered by the Faculty Jurisdiction Measure 1964 [3]. Subsequently, S7 Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure 2014 amended S3, to permit the grant of a faculty in cases of such urgency that it would not be reasonable for the petitioner to seek the consent referred to. This amended provision was repealed and re-enacted in the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018. The Chancellor noted that as this is a consolidating Measure, it was presumed not to have changed the law.

After reviewing the legislation relating to the ownership of a memorial, [19] to [21], and heir-at-law [22] to [23], Willink Ch. considered who owned the memorial in the instant case. He explained:

“[25] Alan Waller’s eldest son was David. He would have been the first heir of Alan. He is now deceased, having had one son – David junior, who (if he had survived David) would in turn have been the heir. David junior died aged 18, without children. After both David and David junior, Alan’s second son, Keith, would then have been the heir, if he survived them. In any event, he has also died, without children. This means that, there being no male descendants from John’s two elder brothers, the next son, John, is now Alan’s heir. Consequently, John is the owner of the memorial,

and then addressed the issue of what principles to apply when the owner of the memorial does not consent to the grant of a faculty. The Chancellor noted:

“cases on this particular question are rare. In Oldswinford, St Mary (1997) 17 CCCC 37 (as cited in Re St. Augustine Droitwich Spa [2016] ECC Wor 2 [4]), the court considered a petition to remove a headstone whose inscription was said to be factually inaccurate – in its reference to the parentage of the deceased”.

In response to Mynors comments from [30] to [33] and [36] in St. Augustine Droitwich Spa , Willink stated [emphasis added]:

[29]. However, the suggestion that a faculty should be granted against the wishes of a memorial owner in “altogether exceptional” circumstances has been doubted. In re Kilnhurst, St Thomas (2012, Sheffield consistory court), Maclean Ch said:

“[21]. The views of the owner of a memorial are not necessarily conclusive. It has been said in some of the cases that the courts will act against the wishes of the owner only in exceptional circumstances. I am not sure that the practice shows the courts applying that rather strict test. Or, at least, it is clear the ‘exceptional circumstances’ include the sort of intra-family dispute that lies at the heart of the present case“…

[30] In my judgement, the test to be applied to any such petition must recognise not only the burden on any petitioner to persuade the court to grant the faculty they seek (expressed in the Duffield questions as “the ordinary presumption in faculty proceedings ‘in favour of things as they stand’), but additionally give due weight to the views of the memorial owner who (in the words of the Bishop of Chester cited at paragraph 16 above) “would have the right to object and have the case heard.

The cases in which such a test may be met could very well be described as “exceptional” – albeit not in the sense of “exceptionally unusual” but in the more nuanced meaning of the word as expounded in re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, meaning “forming an exception”. In re Blagdon Cemetery, the question was whether the facts of a case formed an exception to the general rule of permanence of burial; in a case such as this, the question is whether the facts of the case form an exception to the general rule that the owner of a memorial may determine what is done to it. Whether the facts in a particular case warrant a finding that the case is to be treated as an exception is for the chancellor to determine on the balance of probabilities (as in re Blagdon Cemetery at [33]).

Disposal [31] to [37]

In granting a confirmatory faculty, the Chancellor noted that had he been presented with a petition for a faculty before the work had been carried out, together with John’s grounds for opposing the petition, he would have taken the opportunity to engage with him on the issue of the incorrect recording of the date on his father’s memorial.

Having considered carefully John’s reasons for not having wished the memorial to be restored, he recalled the well-known dictum, that a grave memorial has a threefold purpose: to honour the dead, to comfort the living, and to inform posterity about the deceased[33]. All in all, Willink Ch was satisfied that, even against the wishes of John as the owner, he would have granted a faculty for the proposed works if one had been sought[34].

On whether this case would fall within the principle wherein a confirmatory faculty might be granted for works which would not have been approved, on pastoral grounds, the work was undertaken with the ostensible permission of the incumbent, bearing in mind that the permission was given in ignorance of the ownership of the memorial, or of the significance of the point. And it was…a mis-statement of the true position to indicate that the work could be carried out without a faculty, although [he was] sure this would have been an oversight. On balance, bearing all these matters into account, [the Chancellor] would in any event grant the confirmatory faculty sought[35].

The Chancellor therefore directed that a confirmatory faculty pass the seal as sought, subject to the condition that the blue chippings will be removed within three months of the date of th3 judgment, any replacement having been approved by the incumbent and the PCC before being introduced[36].

[1] Scroll down to “Churchyards: ownership of monuments and trees” and to “Monuments“.

[2] Re St. Mary Middleton [2022] ECC Lee 3; Re St. Andrew Kinson [2024] ECC Sal 3; and Re St. Michael Twerton-On-Avon [2024] ECC B&W 1.

[3] The Bishop of Chester: House of Lords motion that that Measure be presented for Royal Assent, Lords Hansard [24 March 1964] vol 256 Col 1138.

[4] Summarized here.

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld a preliminary injunction barring the city of Quincy from installing two religious statues on the façade of a new public safety building, finding there is a substantial likelihood that the installation would violate Article III of the Massachusetts Constitution.
• Plaintiffs in New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America v. Department of Homeland Security filed a motion seeking to hold DHS in contempt for violating an injunction issued in February by a Massachusetts federal district court. The injunction barred immigration officials from enforcing a new policy that allows ICE to conduct arrests, searches, or interrogations in or near churches/other houses of worship at the agents’ own discretion.
• The Second Circuit upheld the district court’s decision to grant summary judgment for defendants in Belya v. Kapral, finding that the church autonomy doctrine barred a former priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) from suing church leaders/entities for defamation.
• The FBI released its 2025 Reported Crime Statistics, showing a 7% overall decrease in hate crimes in 2025 as compared to the year before.
• A joint petition for certiorari was filed with the Supreme Court in Nathan v. Alamo Heights School District and Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District. The petitioners seek review of a Texas law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom.
• A Maryland Jewish Center is suing Montgomery County, Maryland to enjoin enforcement of imposed Expedited Bill 23-26, which bans even licensed firearm holders from carrying a firearm within 100 yards of houses of worship and other “places of public assembly.”

The post Around the Web appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

Re St. Mary Charminster

The church is situated in an area which is prone to floods, and the planning for repairs was made on the expectation of future water damage. The church had been flooded six occasions since 1937, most recently in January and February 2014. It was proposed to replace the wood block flooring with stone laid over insulation and with underfloor heating, but substantially different solutions were put forward by the architect for the PCC and those on the Diocesan Advisory Committee. After considering conflicting technical advice of the architects and that from a Chartered Civil Engineer, the Chancellor granted a faculty for the works as proposed by the church. Wiggs Ch. noted:

“[23]. At the December 2014 meeting I observed that I was faced with two views, both from highly experienced sources, both put forward in the utmost good faith. On the one hand the church architect could only support closed cell insulation whereas the DAC architects were strongly opposed and preferred open cell. I also observed that because of the difficulty of the problem no-one could be absolutely sure that they were putting forward the correct solution”.

Re St. Mary the Virgin Beachamwell

By way of contrast, in St. Mary the Virgin Beachamwell – “a rare and possibly uniquely small Grade I round‑tower church” – there were a number of anonymous objections in addition to submissions by the amenity bodies and on behalf of the PCC. Leonard Ch. observed:

“[6] It is perhaps unusual that it is the objectors rather than the Petitioners who are seeking to make use of what is essentially a blank canvas to make alterations which may offend against the Duffield principles”.

[8] There is no doubt that the proposed scheme for the restoration has gone through a number of twists and turns which I do not find in the least surprising when there has been so much to consider and so much time for further ideas to come forth, particularly with the assistance of input from the DAC, the amenity societies and the architect instructed on the project”.

In addition to the objections from six unnamed individuals, there was a 10-page document which was assumed to have come from a seventh objector[2]. As is common practice in the consistory courts, these unnamed objectors were assured that the Chancellor had “read each of their letters of objection and had taken what they have written into account in coming to [their] conclusion”. However, he noted:

[14] …It is clear to me that there has been a great deal of personal rancour expressed in the various documents of objection, which has had to be met by the PCC and the petitioners in response. Each side will blame the other for the tone of the debate and that is not something that I seek to address other than to suggest that it is the sort of behaviour which should not pervade a Christian community.

In his assessment of the proposals under the ‘Duffield’ principles, Leonard Ch. considered the various issues which had been raised by the objectors, [14(a) to (l)],  including inter alia: accessibility, provision of a toilet, paths, seating, and the font’s location. In addition he also noted In Re St John the Baptist, Penshurst where the court referred to the tension which frequently exists between on the one hand conservation of what is best in our heritage and on the other hand the requirements, or claimed requirements, of present day worship and mission.

Submissions on behalf of the PCC were drafted by Gregory Jones KC “an experienced ecclesiastical lawyer and Chancellor”; his report addressing the issues raised by the amenity bodies and the objectors is summarized in detail in [16] to [35], and edited extracts are reproduced, inset below. In particular, Jones KC relied upon “Changing Churches: A Practical Guide to the Faculty System”[1], where it identifies that, although the Measure refers only to worship and mission, it was arguable that these elements of the church encompass, at least, five distinct overlapping elements – worship, fellowship, teaching, service and mission. He also stated:

“[22]. [t]he Court should also give weight to how the works would facilitate the congregation’s worship. Where reasonable adjustments provide effective access outcomes, the Equality Act 2010 does not require intrusive physical works that would damage a listed church and he provides authority for that proposition, in particular the EHRC Code and FirstGroup Plc v Paulley [2017] UKSC 4, (hereinafter “FirstGroup”).

[23]. As to the proposed changes…they are justified because the insurer is funding restoration ‘as was’ in circumstances where the walls did not fall to a statutory ‘rebuild’ height. The PCC has worked throughout to deliver reinstatement consistent with the policy and to return the church to its pre‑fire state…

[25]. The level access is proportionate to St Mary’s size and significance, satisfies the PCC’s evidence‑based priority from community feedback. Importantly it avoids the irreversible penetrations, and footprint loss that a plumbed lavatory would entail.

[26]. As to compliance with the Equality Act…the village hall provides up‑to‑date lavatories, including a spacious accessible WC with baby‑changing facilities, which are always open when the church is in use under an updated Memorandum of Understanding. This is a lawful and effective reasonable adjustment under the EHRC Services Code and FirstGroup.

[28]. …St Mary’s is a very small Grade I Saxo‑Norman round‑tower church with little floor space; an accessible lavatory would “consume” the tower base, impede tower access and remove essential storage.

[29]. Achieving water supply and foul drainage in a church with no historic mains water, rainwater‑only soakaway, and no deep foundations requires new penetrations through/under medieval fabric and ground—bringing irreversible harm and archaeological risk.

[30] …Historic England’s guidance is clear: where improved access cannot be achieved without unacceptable loss of fabric equivalent outcomes may be delivered by other means which is what the PCC’s plan achieves.

[31]. The insurer has a duty to fund restoration and provision of the lavatory is betterment and outside the policy’s core scope. It is accepted that this could be done separately at a cost to the PCC and therefore the church, but such funds as are available are being devoted to a level entrance.

[32]. In FirstGroup the Supreme Court held that the Equality Act duty is to take “reasonable steps”, not to guarantee an ideal or preferred outcome irrespective of context. Reasonableness is contextual; it turns on practicability, cost, disruption, resources, impacts on others and the availability of alternative means; and it must be assessed alongside other legal duties, which in this case would be heritage protection.

[33].  …applying FirstGroup, the PCC has met the Equality Act duty through reasonable adjustments; insisting on a new internal lavatory would exceed what is reasonable in light of heritage law, practicality, and effective alternative provision.

[34]. The EHRC Statutory Code of Practice (Services, Public Functions and Associations) reinforces, consistently with FirstGroup, that the Equality Act duty is to take reasonable steps, assessed in light of practicability, cost, disruption, the organisation’s resources, and the availability of alternative measures. It also identifies that the duty is anticipatory, applies to disabled people as a class, and may be discharged through policies and practices, not only structural works. The EHRC Code supports the PCC’s conclusion that the Equality Act duty is fully met without an internal lavatory, and that the PCC’s level access and nearby accessible WC provision constitutes a lawful, proportionate, and heritage‑compatible reasonable‑adjustments strategy.

[35]. Historic England’s guidance on Building Regulations & Historic Buildings confirms existing buildings are not generally required to meet newer Building Regulation standards unless specific triggers, such as material alteration or change of use arise…there is no duty to retrofit lavatories into historic churches.

Decision

The Chancellor considered whether the petitioners should be required to issue a new public notice because of the changes they have made at a late stage to the faculty application; he decided it was not required, in part because it is clear that both the objectors and supporters seemed to know of the changes and because of the conditions he intended to impose of the grant of the faculty[36].

The court accepted the decision of the PCC not to install an internal lavatory, finding that this was justified by the church’s exceptional historic significance, limited space, practical constraints, and the availability of accessible facilities in the nearby village hall[39]. The Chancellor rejected arguments that a toilet was legally required under equality or health and safety legislation[41]. However, the court held that if the village hall facilities were to be relied upon, a wheelchair-accessible path between the church and village hall was necessary[42].

The proposal to level the church floor was approved[43], while concerns remained about the proposed location of the font, requiring further consultation. The restoration using pews, replacement memorial windows, and other reinstatement works was supported. A faculty was granted subject to conditions, including provision of the accessible path and further consideration of drainage pipes and font placement[49].

Reference

[1] Mynors C, Changing Churches: A Practical Guide to the Faculty System, Bloomsbury, 2016.

Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) was appointed Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 21 July 2026. It has now emerged that she has been given the faith brief as Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith. According to the Religion Media Centre, though she was appointed in July, her portfolio and appointment as Faith Minister was only confirmed in the last week. She’s the umpteenth (number 11?) in ten years.

Resurrecting the offence of blasphemy?

On 30 April 2026, Stephen Gray, a retired police officer and member of the Free Speech Union, was convicted at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court for posting an allegedly “grossly offensive” message on Facebook, contrary to s.127 Communications Act 2003. He had reposted a message from his Facebook feed which read: “Fun facts about bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!” He told the court that the post was a reference to the marriage between the Prophet Mohammed and Aisha, and that his purpose was to start a discussion about whether that marriage had contributed to the acceptability of child marriage in Muslim countries. He said that the post was satirical, but the intention behind it was serious.

District Judge Steven Hood ruled that the post was indeed grossly offensive. He dismissed the notion that it raised serious political issues regarding child marriage and concluded that it was designed to be offensive and that it was not capable of being a serious post because it was framed in such a light-hearted way. He concluded that a conviction would not be a disproportionate interference with Mr Gray’s right to freedom of expression.

According to the report in the Sunday Telegraph, Lord [Toby] Young of Acton, Founder and Director of the FSU, commented: “Prosecuting people for making jokes about Islam, particularly if they contain a kernel of truth, is a new low. No one making a similar joke about Jesus would face prosecution. Blasphemy laws were abolished in England 18 years ago and should not be resurrected by the courts and applied to just one religion.”

Mr Gray is to appeal. [With thanks to Trevor Cooper and Simon Hunter.]

Antisemitism just isn’t funny

Philip Simon, a Jewish comedian, was due to perform his stand-up show at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but the venue scrapped it at short notice after it carried out what were described as “routine” checks on his social media. It concluded that his views aligned with what it described as “groups associated with humanitarian violations”. Mr Simon, however, believed that he had been cancelled “just for being Jewish” – and he sued.

On Monday, his lawyer told Edinburgh Sheriff Court that the venue had conceded that it had acted unlawfully and had “discriminated against the pursuer, contrary to the provisions of the Equalities Act” – and that the issue of liability had been resolved in Mr Simon’s favour.

Sheriff Roderick Flinn confirmed that the parties had “agreed by joint minute that the defender discriminated against the pursuer, contrary to the provisions of the Equality Act 2010” and that the defender had acted “unreasonably” in leaving it until 5 August to accept that it had discriminated against Mr Simon. Expenses relating to preparations for a substantive hearing would be awarded at the higher solicitor-client rate.

Support for listed places of worship in Scotland

On Tuesday, the Historic Environment Scotland announced a pilot scheme, the Scotland’s Places of Worship Fund, to support eligible listed places of worship by helping them recover VAT costs associated with repair works. It is expected to open for applications in autumn 2026 and will operate as a standalone scheme until the end of March 2027, with up to £1 million available through the existing Historic Environment Scotland Grants budget. Funding will be allocated to eligible applicants first-come, first-served. The pilot is intended to help assess demand for the scheme and provide evidence to inform any potential future funding arrangements. The Scottish Government provided a confirmatory answer to a written question on Wednesday.

Quick links

• Joshua Rozenberg, A Lawyer Writes: Defining Cohabitation: Lessons from Scotland: If Parliament gives enforceable legal rights to cohabitants in England and Wales, how should it define cohabitation? And does recent Scottish experience cast any light on the matter?

And finally…I

The Times has reported that academics at the University of Oxford have drawn up a new version of the Hippocratic Oath for engineers, designers and programmers working in the world of AI. The Oxford Oath for AI Practitioners is a collaborative public project of the Oxford Collaboration on Theology and Artificial Intelligence (OCTAI), bringing theologians, AI practitioners, and business leaders into shared reflection on vocation, responsibility, and the moral realities of AI work.

And finally…II

David Campanale, a former BBC journalist, was selected as the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam in 2021 but was removed in August 2023. He argued before the Central London County Court that he had suffered discrimination on grounds of his Christian beliefs – and the Lib Dems admitted liability. The Guardian reports that Mr Campanale is currently claiming £788,740.75 in compensation – including for “loss of political capital”. The Lib Dems are offering him £14,000 for injury to feelings. Watch this space … possibly.

Lord Braid noted at [16] that Lady Tait had recently summarised the current law on the exercise of parens patriae in A Scottish Health Board, Petitioner [2026] SLT 71, as follows:

• the Court of Session can authorise treatment for a person, including a child, who does not have capacity and who cannot consent to medical treatment;
• it may do so where such treatment is in the best interests of the person;
• such authority has the same effect in law as consent provided by the person (or, in the case of a child, a parent);
• there is a strong presumption that it is in a person’s best interests to stay alive; and
• though the religious views of the child or parents are a factor which may be taken into account, they do not carry pre-eminent weight.

Lady Tait had not addressed whether the child had to be an orphan for the parens patriae jurisdiction to apply; for his part, however, though to be orphaned was a sufficient reason for the court to step in and give parental consent where required, he could “see no reason either in logic, or in law, why it should also be a necessary one” [20].

Because exercising the jurisdiction interfered with family life, any authorisation had to be proportionate to a material risk, and when considering whether to exercise the jurisdiction, the court had to balance the welfare of the child against other considerations, including the parents’ wishes and religious beliefs and their right to parental autonomy [20].

In the cases of Child A and Child B, “stated bluntly, there was a risk of the child dying if the orders were not granted: it would be unsatisfactory if the Court of Session were not entitled to make an order in such circumstances” [22]. Child C’s case was much more finely balanced. There was “a greater than negligible risk” that she might contract tetanus if not vaccinated [26] and if she did so she would suffer serious harm [27]. It was therefore in her interests to be given the necessary vaccines [29].

Ross McCormick notes the case in Scottish Legal News at greater length, here.

Introduction

In Mbashe Diocese of the Anglican Church v Mayapi and Others (5243/2024) [2025] ZAECMHC 30, the Bishop of the Mbashe Diocese of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa was the applicant. He stated that the property of the Parish of Lower Gwadu was allocated to the Anglican Church by means of a “permission to occupy” which was issued to it in terms of the regulations promulgated under the ‘Land Act of 1936, however, the applicant could not find the “right to use” after a diligent search, and the officials of the Department Land Reform and Rural Development reported that they were unable to find a copy.

The land issue

This case highlights South Africa’s land issue. The parish is on tribal or communal land in what was termed the “independent state of the Transkei”, in the Eastern Cape Province. The “permission to occupy” or a leasehold system applied, and occupiers did not receive title deeds to the property. As a result of the apartheid system, there are still properties which Churches have built on and used for more than fifty years which are not registered in the names of the Churches. In the former Black townships, Church properties were held on a leasehold system. In the African homelands, a “right to use” was granted by the Chief and the Traditional/Tribal authority. The South African Department of Land Reform and Rural Development is responsible for endorsing title deeds of properties to reflect the present owners. In this case, the applicant stated that the Government or Traditional Authority/Chief at the relevant time had issued permission to occupy the land.

The background to the dispute

The Bishop of the Diocese appointed the Revd Mr Ngubo as the Rector responsible for the parish of Lower Gwadu, and he was to assume his duties in January 2023. As it happened, however, he could not do so because no congregants turned out for church services on several consecutive occasions. At the instance of the Bishop, an investigation was undertaken into the possible cause of the persistent non-attendance of church services by the members of the congregation of the parish. The investigation revealed that the congregants of the parish stayed away from church services as a way of showing discontent with the Bishop’s failure to install the first respondent, Nkululeko Mayapi, as Rector of the parish.

A meeting was subsequently held on 2 March 2023 at the homestead of the fifth respondent, the Tribal Chief. Its purpose was to resolve the impasse that had arisen and in which the Lower Gwadu community members had become involved. It was at this meeting that the Bishop’s representative, the Revd Mr Sifuba, was forced to hand over the keys to the property to the fifth respondent. According to the applicant, the keys to the property were unlawfully taken away, thus dispossessing the Diocese of the property without its consent.

The applicant’s case

In summary, Judge Rusi set out the case as follows: in the applicant’s founding affidavit, Bishop Fikizolo stated that the property had been used and occupied by the applicant, and it has been in its control since time immemorial. Before 2 March 2023, the property was in its peaceful and undisturbed possession. This was where the parish always held its church services. According to Bishop Fikizolo, the applicant was the owner or bona fide possessor of the property, and the respondents had no title, right or authority to use the church building without its consent. The applicant further stated that the property was allocated to it by means of permission to occupy issued to it in terms of “the regulations promulgated in Proclamation 26 of 1936”.

The first and second respondents’ case

The first and second respondents denied that the applicant was unlawfully dispossessed of the keys under threats of violence. The two respondents disputed that the applicant was the owner of the property. They also disputed that the applicant was in peaceful and undisturbed possession of the property because the property was always used jointly by the community and the parish. The Judge noted that the Diocese, led by a Bishop, had various parishes under the governance or tutelage of a pastor (Priest/Rector).

The third respondent’s case

The third respondent raised a point in limine of the Diocese’s lack of locus standi, in light of the fact that it had not produced the permission to occupy on which it relied to prove its ownership of the property. Judge Rusi held that the point was ill-contrived.

The fifth respondent’s confirmatory affidavit

The fifth respondent, the traditional leader of Lower Gwadu Administrative Area, filed a confirmatory affidavit in which he denied that permission to occupy the property forming the subject of the application was ever issued to anyone or to any organisation or Church. He also stated that the property was owned by the community. According to the fifth respondent, the keys to the property were voluntarily handed over to him.He denied that the applicant was unlawfully dispossessed of the property. Judge Ruso noted that the Chief did not dispute unlawful dispossession of the property by threats of violence and harassment directed at its clergy.

The law

The court considered spoliatory relief and found that the property had been used by both parties peacefully and that the respondents had claimed exclusive possession against the will of the Church. The Judge stated:

“Before the title to possess is determined, possession must be restored where the possessor has illicitly been disposed of the property, provided that previous peaceful and undisturbed possession has been proved… good title is irrelevant in a spoliation application. This simultaneously addresses the point in limine that the third respondent raised, of the applicant’s lack of locus standi. Should the asserted defence of consent prevail? Consent is indeed one of the recognised defences to spoliatory relief. But such consent will be valid if it was given genuinely, freely, and voluntarily…On the common cause facts of this application, I am satisfied that the applicant’s version is credible – the keys to the property were forcefully taken from Revd S. Therefore, the applicant has proven that it was unlawfully dispossessed of the property. I turn to dealing with whether the applicant has established its entitlement to the additional interdictory relief that it seeks.”

He found that the Diocese had not made a proper case for the grant of a declarator as to the Church’s title to own the property, due to lack of deeds to prove the ‘right to use’ or the right to occupy.

The court order

 “1. The fifth respondent is hereby directed to release the keys to the property known as the Site of Anglican Church/Anglican Church Gwadu Parish (“the property”) to the applicant forthwith, by handing them over to Mluleki Fikizolo, currently the Bishop of the applicant, or a person nominated by him.

2. The first to fifth respondents and/or anyone acting under their direct or indirect instruction and/or mandate are hereby interdicted from interfering, in any way, with the use and/or occupation of the property by the applicant and any of its officially recognised congregants.

3. In the event that the fifth respondent fails and/or refuses to release the keys to the property in the manner specified in paragraph 1 of this order, the Sheriff of this Court, duly assisted by the members of the South African Police Service, is authorised to remove the keys from the fifth respondent’s possession and hand them over to the applicant’s Bishop Mluleki Fikizolo or a person nominated by him.

4. The first, second, third and fifth respondents shall pay the costs of this application, which costs shall include costs of two counsel where so employed.”

David Scrooby, Attorney, Pretoria, South Africa

Cite this article as: David Scrooby, “Spoilation but not ownership: the South African land issue in Mbashe Diocese” in Law & Religion UK, 18 August 2026: https://lawandreligionuk.com/2026/08/18/spoilation-but-not-ownership-the-south-african-land-issue-in-mbashe-diocese/.

Clergy Discipline complaint against Bishop Paul Butler

On 7 August, Paul Waugh, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the DfE, replied to a written question from Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth, Restore Britain), asking whether guidance is issued to schools on assessing the eligibility of pupils to wear kirpans on school premises, as follows:

“Headteachers have my full support in ensuring schools are safe. Schools are advised by the department that decisions on uniform need to consider their individual circumstances, taking into account both religious freedom and pupil safety.

It should be possible for most religious requirements to be met within a uniform policy and many schools have arrangements in place to allow the wearing of kirpans alongside sensible safeguards, for example limiting their size and requiring them to be sheathed and further enclosed in a securely fastened cushioned pouch.

The department’s advice for schools on developing school uniform policies is available here.  The government keeps all its guidance under regular review.”

Solar panels again

The Westmorland Gazette reports that St Anne’s Church, Ings (which Frank frequently drives past), has finally been granted planning permission to install solar panels on its roof – though not as many as it had originally planned for.

In 2023, an application for 28 solar panels was rejected by the Lake District National Park Authority and the Planning Inspectorate upheld that decision on appeal: we reported the decision on the original faculty application here. However, the Park Authority has now approved an application for 20 solar panels and rejected the advice of its officers, who opposed the application.

In support of the renewed planning application, it was pointed out that Ings is a very small community – the church has a congregation of 20 in a village with a population of about 140 – and that the PCC would struggle to cover the building’s upkeep without the financial benefit of the solar panels. It appears that common sense has prevailed.

Dean of Guernsey

The Religion Media Centre reports that the Ven Matthew Trick, currently Archdeacon of Derby City and South Derbyshire, has been appointed Dean of Guernsey and will leave Derbyshire this month to start his new job. The Dean of Guernsey has “quasi-episcopal, archidiaconal and decanal responsibilities”. He is an ex-officio member of the States of Deliberation, Guernsey’s parliament, but without a vote.

The Deanery includes 16 churches in Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, with around 20 clergy. Archdeacon Trick’s appointment is the latest in a series of recent changes in the Diocese of Derby. In January, Bishop Libby Lane left on sick leave, and in May, Bishop Jackie Searle came out of retirement to become part-time acting Bishop of Derby.

Quick links

• Hugo Walford, Bates, Wells: Faith-based charities and regulatory engagement: prevention and response: the article notes that “Faith-based charities can sometimes find themselves slightly more at risk of regulatory action than other charities. This is because faith-based charities often undertake activities, work with partners or make grants in ‘high-risk’ areas, such as warzones or countries with corruption issues or weaker financial controls” [or[ … “have spiritual leaders, or individuals who occupy a delivery role that comes with remuneration or other benefits”.

And finally…

On removing a Banksy mural painted on a wall at the Royal Courts of Justice: according to the Guardian:

An English judge? With a gavel?????????

In Maree and Others v Moravian Church of South Africa and Another (1091/2020; 15254/2023) [2026] ZAWCHC 383, the applicants sought a finding of contempt of court against the respondents. However, mala fides were not established against the respondents for noncompliance with a previous court order of 21 February 2022, and the applicants were ordered to pay the respondents 50% of the rental collected, as directed by the previous court order. The applicants also applied for review of disciplinary proceedings and a sanction imposed by the Overseers Council. The Court found that the disciplinary proceedings and the imposition of a sanction were not provided for by the Church Order and Ordinance and that the Church had acted beyond its authority. The Church’s decision was therefore set aside.

Both applications were based on the same factual circumstances, and the parties agreed to consolidate the two and they were subsequently heard together. In the contempt application, the applicants sought an order declaring that the respondents were in contempt of the previous court order, that the court impose a fine on the Church, and that the Church must account to the Elim Overseers Council (“the EOC”) for the period February 2022 to the date of the court’s order and pay to the EOC 50% of the rental collected in respect of land rented to government institutions.

Background

The Elim Moravian Mission Station located in the Western Cape was established more than two hundred years ago. The land comprising Elim is registered in the name of the Moravian Church and governed by the Moravian Church Order (“the Church Order”) and the Elim Mission Station Ordinance” (“the Ordinance”). The Ordinance governs occupational rights and life on the Mission Station. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of the EOC are set out in the Ordinance. The residents of Elim are required to build their own houses at their own expense. During the hearing of this application, the Court was informed of pending action proceedings about the ownership of the land comprising Elim.

The Moravian Church was founded in the 15th century in what is now the Czech Republic and is one of the oldest Protestant churches in the world. In 1737, a Moravian missionary established Genadendal mission station in the Western Cape. The communities consist of members of the Church, who have the right to a plot of land on which to build a house as well as the right to agricultural land for subsistence farming.

The supreme regulatory authority of the Church is the Provincial Synod, which convenes quadrennially, followed by the Provincial Board, District Councils, Congregations, and Overseers’ Councils. The Overseers Council is responsible for the daily operations of the Mission Station. In terms of the Church Order, the Provincial Synod embodies the unity of the Church and serves as its legislative body. It has the authority to administer and control all immovable property of the Church. the Provincial Board, as the executive body, represents the Provincial Synod; it is responsible for executing the Synod’s decisions and is accountable to Synod. Its function is to exercise the duties assigned by the Provincial Synod to control all transactions involving immovable property. An Overseers Council accounts to the Provincial Board.

The conflict between the applicants and the Church and the existing order of court

A longstanding conflict has persisted over many years between the residents of Elim, the EOC, and the church leadership represented by the Provincial Board. The applicants contended that the Church’s leadership disregarded their constitutional and other rights as residents. This led the residents to challenge the Church’s ownership of the land. The residents of Elim have, over generations through rental payments, fundraising and direct financial contributions, purchased additional farms adjacent to Elim, which were subsequently incorporated into the Mission Station. At the Elim Mission Station, all revenue from property leases and projects has been paid directly to the Church.

In 2020, the Church Board brought an urgent application for a declaratory order that the Board had exclusive rights to conclude lease agreements concerning land within Elim’s boundaries, and to void all lease agreements made with the EOC. The Church also sought an urgent order that the EOC remit all rental income collected, amounting to R1,758,155,22, to the Church within five days of the order being granted.

The EOC opposed the Church’s application and filed a counterapplication seeking an order that the inhabitants of Elim are the beneficial owners of the land comprising Elim and the Church is only the nominal or titular owner of the land. The EOC contended that the Church had failed in its fiduciary duties to hold, govern, and manage Elim for the benefit of the inhabitants, and sought an order that the land be transferred to the Elim Community Trust.

At the 2022 hearing, the Court requested the parties to explore the possibility of settling the matter or narrowing the issues. Both parties submitted draft orders. The Court then granted an order that obligated the Church to pay the EOC 50% of the total monthly rental collected for land leases to government institutions. The Church was also ordered to provide monthly spreadsheets of the total rental collected. The EOC also had an obligation to submit a monthly statement in respect of municipal property rates, and the costs of the upkeep and maintenance of the Elim Mission Station. The applicants contended that they had submitted monthly reports and statements. The EOC said the Church was victimising and harassing members of the EOC, and no payments were received from the Church. Accordingly, the Church was in contempt of the original order. The Board contended that the EOC cannot produce invoices or receipts, as required in the same Court Order.

Findings

The Church raised two preliminary issues in response to the application. Firstly, that the applicants were suspended, pending an independent inquiry. The report of the independent inquiry was submitted on 15 August 2023, and the Church resolved to remove the first to fifth applicants as members of the Board of the EOC. Secondly, the respondents submitted that the EOC was a subordinate structure within the Church. Due to resignations and the removal of five members, the committee was not correctly constituted and lacked legal capacity.

The issues to be decided in the contempt of court application were whether the application was premature and whether the respondents were in contempt of court. Lekhuleni J did not find the respondents in contempt of court; however, he did order the Church, as respondents, to pay punitive costs.

Regarding the conduct of the respondents, Lekhuleni J said this at [44];

“In my view, this approach was contrary to values and ethos of a Church that ought to uphold the Christian values on which its foundation rests. The Bible, central to the Church’s mission, instructs Moravian Church members, including the Church’s leadership (the respondents), in Galatians 6:2 to carry each other’s troubles to fulfil the law of Christ. Significantly, the Bible tells the Church and its members to clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, and forgiveness, just as God forgave them (Colossians 3: 12–13; Ephesians 4: 32). Regrettably, the Church leadership failed to live up to these principles.”

In addition to the contempt application, he reviewed the Provincial Board’s decision to suspend the first five applicants, who were members of the EOC. He set aside the decision to suspend the applicants, and the decision to place the EOC under “under administration”.

He also ruled the Church’s internal appeals procedure unconstitutional because it violated the applicants’ rights under section 34 of the Constitution: “Everyone has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court or, where appropriate, another independent and impartial tribunal or forum”.  It is trite that any law or conduct inconsistent with the Constitution is invalid, and the Court directed that the Provincial Board remedy the appeal process within six months of the date of judgment.

He set aside the Church’s decisions to suspend the first five applicants and to hold a disciplinary inquiry, and he directed the Provincial Board to remedy its appeal process within six months of the date of his judgment: 3 August 2026.

David Scrooby, Attorney, ACSA Diocese of Pretoria

Cite this article as: David Scrooby, “When a Church’s internal appeals procedure conflicts with constitutional law: Maree and Others” in Law & Religion UK, 10 August 2026: https://lawandreligionuk.com/2026/08/10/when-a-churchs-internal-appeals-procedure-conflicts-with-constitutional-law/

In Autumn 2026, elections are taking place to select General Synod members for the next quinquennium. The Church of England is “looking for candidates who represent the whole range of people and churches in the Church of England, particularly those whose background may currently be underrepresented”.

Antisemitic incidents

On Wednesday, the Community Security Trust published a report on Antisemitic Incidents January-June 2026. The Trust recorded 1,926 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2026: the second-highest total ever reported to CST in the first six months of any year, exceeded only by the 2,019 incidents recorded from January to June 2024. This is an increase of 21% from the 1,598 incidents recorded in the first half of 2025.

Scotland: closure of Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme

On 8 July, Tim Eagle MSP (Highlands and Islands, Con) lodged a written question asking the Scottish Government “what assessment it has made of the impact of the closure of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme on listed places of worship in Scotland, including any additional costs faced by congregations undertaking repairs and maintenance”.

On Wednesday, Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic, answered as follows:

“The Scottish Government recognises the concerns from both faith groups and heritage organisations following the decision of the UK Government to close the UK-wide Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme. As soon as we were aware of this decision, we strongly encouraged the UK Government to rethink their policy position.

We have engaged with key stakeholders and Historic Environment Scotland to understand the implications for Scotland’s listed places of worship. The previous scheme enabled eligible organisations to recover the equivalent of VAT incurred on repairs and maintenance, and its closure may increase costs for congregations undertaking essential works. We are aware that many places of worship face financial pressures, and we continue to assess potential options for support.”

Hmmm.

Anti-Zionism as a protected belief: Miller again

Regular readers may recall the case of Dr David Miller, who was Professor of Political Sociology at Bristol from 2018 to October 2021 and who was dismissed after complaints about his conduct, including what was said to be his use of antisemitic language. In Dr David Miller v University of Bristol [2024] ET 1400780/2022, he argued that his “political Zionism” was a protected belief under the Grainger criteria, and the Employment Tribunal upheld his claim for unfair dismissal, though his claims of harassment and direct discrimination failed. We noted the case here.

The University appealed, and on Tuesday the Employment Appeal Tribunal handed down its judgment, dismissing the appeal almost in its entirety. We hope to post a full note later in the week.

Change to the definition of regulated activity with children

From 1 September 2026, there is a change to the definition of regulated activity with children. The law on regulated activity with children is changing, and the current rule about the supervision of paid staff and volunteers carrying out specific activities with children will be removed from the legal definition. This is due to changes made by the Crime and Policing Act 2026, and many church activities which rely upon volunteers will be affected. Initially, the changes will affect those within the organisation responsible for the regulated activity.

The changes mean that some people will be in regulated activity with children from 1 September 2026 when they were not before, because they were sufficiently supervised by someone else. This will apply if they do the work often enough, or overnight. Regulated activity is work that a barred person must not do. It is against the law for: a barred person to engage in regulated activity; or someone to allow a barred person to do regulated activity.

The change only impacts regulated activity with children. No change is being made to the definition of regulated activity with adults. From 1 September 2026, the former supervision rule will no longer apply; those who teach, train, instruct, care for or supervise children often enough or overnight will be in regulated activity with children even if someone else supervises them.

This means that an organisation will be able to ask for an Enhanced DBS check for its children workforce with a Children’s Barred List check. The work is done often enough, or overnight, if it occurs: on more than 3 days in any 30-day period or once overnight between 2 am and 6 am.

The Department for Education’s guidance on supervision in schools, colleges and childcare settings is available here.

And finally…

Defend Our Juries reported that last week, Bristol police arrested a 16-year-old boy under the Terrorism Act for holding a sign with the words “PLASTICENE ACTION GROUP” on it. The comment on X/Twitter was: “For anyone who’s unsure, it is not yet illegal to mention plasticine action, Morph, Wallace & Gromit or Chicken Run”.

Following a preliminary oral hearing on abuse on 28 April 2026 and a preliminary determination on the papers of an application to amend the charges, both of which matters were dealt with by the Chair alone, the final hearing of the case took place over two days on 27 and 28 July 2026. The Decision finding the charge proved was announced at the end of the oral hearing with written reasons here.

On 6 August 2026, the Church of England issued the Press Notice Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal in case of the Rev Canon Andrew Cornes extracts of which are reproduced below.

An unopposed retrospective faculty application for the alteration of two original pews and their installation in the porch of St. Mary-le-Moor Cadmore End, was made against the background of a 2018 quinquennial inspection report; this report reiterated the need to undertake significant repairs to the nave roof, [2], [3]. The unintended consequences of proceeding with the unauthorised installation of the pews have had an impact on the undertaking of developments in the parish over the next two years.

The essence of the case is encapsulated in the Chancellor’s statement [emphasis added]:

[14]. …I am satisfied that the removal of these two pews from the rear of the church, and their permanent alteration to enable them to be installed in the church porch, has caused no harm to the significance of this Grade II listed church building…The parish have therefore provided a clear and convincing justification for this proposal. I would therefore have had no hesitation in granting this faculty had the parish applied for it prospectively, before they had carried out the alterations to the pews. But they have not done so. Instead, they have carried out the works before obtaining faculty permission, [a]nd they have done so in the full knowledge that faculty approval was required.

Whilst the illegal actions of the parish were a primary concern of the court, the importance of these in relation to the ecclesiastical exemption was also stressed[1].

The history of the petition

Following a review of the history of the petition[5] to [8], the Chancellor indicated to the Registry that he was considering whether to make an “excluded matters order” under S78 (3) of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018 (the 2018 Measure), [2]. Such an order would deprive the parish of the benefit of List B authorisations for a specified period of time, which he proposed should be two years.

As the making of an order was not urgent, the Chancellor was required by S78(4) first to seek the advice of the DAC[9]. In due course, responses by email were received from the Head of Church Buildings (and Secretary of the DAC), the Chair of the DAC, and the Archdeacon of Buckingham. All three supported the proposed route forward. The Head of Church Buildings expressed the view that “it is important that there is a consequence when the rules, which are clearly understood, are ignored, and this would signal that this is not acceptable”. The DAC Chair indicated that on the basis of the timeline provided by the Church Buildings team, it sounded very sensible to inhibit the parish’s freedom a little in order to regularise their behaviour. He therefore had no objection at all to [the] proposal, which seemed very well judged. The Archdeacon also indicated that she was content with [his] suggestion [10].

The Church Buildings team was requested to provide a full “email trail” relevant to the parish’s knowledge that they should not have proceeded to carry out the works without a full faculty[11]. From this it was clear that the works to the two pews, and the replacement of the original benches in the church porch, was undertaken both (a) without faculty permission and (b) in the full knowledge that such prior permission was required [12].

The legal framework

As a Grade II listed church building, the court was required to have regard to the Duffield guidelines when determining this faculty application, the leading case in the Court of Arches Re St. Alkmund, Duffield [2013] Fam 158. In the present case, Hodge Ch. was satisfied that the removal of these two pews from the rear of the church and their permanent alteration to enable them to be installed in the church porch, had caused no harm to the significance of this Grade II listed church building. But for the actions in the absence of a faculty, a prospective application would have presented few difficulties, if any.[14].

Excluded Matters Order

Hodge Ch. reviewed the relevant parts of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018 relating to cases where a faculty was not required, viz.

• S77. Power to specify matters in rules; and
• S78. Power of chancellor to specify matters. 

He noted that in addition, the Faculty Jurisdiction Rule  3.6(4) provides that:

“Where the chancellor has made an excluded matters order and it is proposed to undertake a matter specified in the order in respect of the parish, church, churchyard or other building or place in the diocese to which the order relates, a faculty (or an interim faculty under Part 15) must be sought”.

Sanctions

In his analysis, the Chancellor cited Re St. Mary Stalbridge [2024] EC Sal 1 & 2 and Re St Mary the Virgin, Stevington [2024] ECC StA 1[3]. In Re St. Mary Stalbridge [2024] EC Sal 1 he noted that the court had concluded the parish had not followed the ‘net-zero’ guidance, although the particular chronology provided a cogent reason for that failure. Considering the matter afresh, with the benefit of additional material on the cost of alternatives which had not been available to the DAC, the court was satisfied that a new, oil-fired boiler was the only practicable, and affordable, heating solution available to the petitioners. It therefore granted a confirmatory faculty, subject to a condition that carbon emissions from fossil fuel must be subject to accredited offsetting[18].

The unlawfulness of the Petitioners’ actions were addressed in Re St. Mary Stalbridge [2024] EC Sal 2. The Petitioners had written to the diocesan bishop and others announcing their intention to proceed in the absence of lawful authority, and expressing frustration at the Church’s lengthy legal processes[4]. The incumbent’s evidence was that, had the recipients responded to that letter with advice as to what could or could not be done, there might have been a different turn of events. However, given that the letter had been written on the same day that the installation of the new boiler had been commissioned, the court considered that suggestion to be fanciful.

The court concluded that, in the light of the sustained and serious way in which the conduct of the incumbent and the PCC had fallen short of what the faculty system required of them, some sanction was appropriate. Subject to the views of the DAC, the court proposed to make an excluded matters order under S78(3) of the 2018 Measure, depriving the parish of the benefit of any List B authorisations for a period of two years.

In Re St Mary the Virgin, Stevington [2024] ECC StA 1 the petitioner sought a confirmatory faculty for the removal and replacement of an extremely rare and important Anglo-Saxon window head within a Grade I-listed church. The works in question had been carried out, on the basis of List B approval, as part of wide-ranging repair works identified as necessary in the church’s quinquennial inspection report. “It should have been apparent that the proposed works to the window head would go far beyond what could properly be permitted in that way”. The DAC did not oppose the grant of a confirmatory faculty; but the Diocesan Archaeological Advisor had advised separately that a replacement more closely reflecting the original shape of the window head should be ordered. The court, of its own motion, considered the possibility of making a restoration order under S72 of the 2018 Measure.

The court was satisfied that the deeply regrettable, and inexcusable, failure to identify, and to act upon, the need for care and specialist advice was the result of inadvertence, rather than a deliberate desire to contravene the law, or to subvert due process. It was therefore unlikely that the replacement that had taken place would have received faculty permission had this been applied for prospectively.

The court noted that the option of simply dismissing the petition would have the effect of neither legitimising the unlawful works, nor compelling their reversal. The court agreed that this was rarely a sensible solution. A restoration order was likely to be a necessary corollary of the refusal of a confirmatory faculty; and the practicalities of such an order should also be considered. Whilst “strongly deprecating the shortcomings in the processes that have been involved leading to the unlawful works”, the court decided – by the barest of margins – to grant the confirmatory faculty sought, on condition that any future replacement of the new stonework should be based as closely as possible on records of the lost original piece.

The court also indicated that it would be inappropriate for the church to have any proposals considered under List B for a period of 12 months; and it reserved the right to make a formal excluded matters order in the event of any deviation from this approach.

In the instant case Re St. Mary-le-Moor Cadmore End , Hodge Ch. stated [emphasis added]:

“[22]. In my judgment, the court should not make an excluded matters order merely in order to express the court’s disapproval of the way in which a parish has proceeded in the past. The making of such an order is not intended to operate simply by way of sanction for past misbehaviour. The making of such an order should be related to a past misuse or abuse of the List A or List B system…

The parish’s subsequent explanation of how this abuse of the List B process had come about was neither full nor frank. Two at least of the petitioners had been fully aware of what had been going on; yet even now they have not explained themselves fully in response to the court’s queries. In these circumstances, I am satisfied that there are special circumstances affecting this parish and church which justify me in making an excluded matters order under s. 78(3) of the 2018 Measure. That order will provide that for the period of two years from the date of this order, any matter specified in List B of the FJR may not be undertaken without a faculty, even though it is a matter that is specified by virtue of section 77(1).

Comment

A recent post summarised the sanctions available to a consistory court in circumstances such as this. Since all of the petitioners were lay persons, recourse to the the archdeacon as in Re St. Mary Doverdale [2025] ECC Wor 1 is unavailable[5], although as officers of the bishop, the two churchwardens are subject to S10 Churchwarden’s Measure 2001.

[1] At [15], the Chancellor cited an article in the Church Times (£) by the Revd Deiniol Heywood (a member of the Oxford DAC, and an Assistant Archdeacon of Buckingham) Parishes should cherish church buildings officers’, (12 June 2026), which examines the importance of the ‘ecclesiastical exemption’ from the requirement of obtaining listed building consent for works to church buildings.

[2] Also  Rule 3.6 of The Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015, as amended.

[3] See also 6 Ecc LJ 349 (in the Salisbury Consistory Court), 27 Ecc LJ 143 (in the St Albans Consistory Court), and our links to these judgments, here.

[4] Quite correctly, the parish received acknowledgments of the letter to the Bishop of Salisbury but no substantive response. By contrast, the letter from the local Member of Parliament, presumed to be instigated by “someone connected to the parish”, asking the Chancellor to take a particular approach in his considerations, was deemed “entirely inappropriate”; however, no regard was paid to the letter [29, 30], again quite correctly.

[5] However, Summers Ch. noted: “What disciplinary steps, if any, should follow, is entirely a matter for the diocesan authorities to consider”[at 30].

In Mr R Daudet v Computacenter (UK) Limited [2024] 2301071/2023, Mr Daudet claimed unfair dismissal under s.98 Employment Rights Act 1996; direct discrimination because of race and/or religion or belief under s.13 Equality Act 2020, harassment related to race and/or religion or belief under s.26 Equality Act, and breach of contract [1]. In brief, Computacenter said that the reason for his dismissal was that he had harassed a female employee [3].

Mr Daudet claimed that he had not harassed the female employee; instead, he had been dismissed because he had expressed a religious belief in dreams/premonitions to said female employee – which did not amount to harassment. He had therefore been directly discriminated against by being subjected to disciplinary proceedings and dismissed. He further claimed that he had been subject to harassment related to his being black and/or his religious belief in dreams/premonitions. He argued that no reasonable employer would summarily dismiss someone for expressing religious or philosophical beliefs. He also believed that his dismissal had been automatically unfair because the principal reason for it was that he had asserted a statutory right to express his religious belief in dreams/premonitions [4].

The focus of interest for this blog is the religious discrimination claim. On that issue, Computacenter (UK) argued [181] that Mr Daudet’s asserted beliefs failed the five tests set out by Burton J in Grainger plc and Ors v Nicholson [2009] UKEAT 0219_09_0311 at para [24].

The Employment Tribunal agreed:

“183. We understand from the legal principles that beliefs that have a narrow focus may be excluded if they are parochial rather than fundamental. The subject matter of the belief in question must be of some general importance. While it is accepted that people of different religions and beliefs worldwide believe in the power of dreams, the Belief is expressed to be that the claimant believes in prophetic dreams that predict the future and he is gifted with that psychic ability and that the majority, although in evidence he said all, of his dreams come true.

184. We understand the Belief he is seeking to rely on is very specifically about his own gift. We are satisfied that it would not gain protection merely because it was connected to any Christian belief. We conclude that that is a narrowly focused belief and is not of general importance as it concerns an individual’s belief in his own particular abilities and no more than that. We do not consider that it meets the test set out in case law as Grainger iii.

185. We would not need to go any further to consider Grainger iv but were invited to go further in case we were wrong in any of our conclusions. We understand that the fourth Grainger criterion is that the Belief must have a similar status and cogency to a religious belief. While it doesn’t have to govern every aspect of an individual’s life, it must be a fully-fledged system of thought. On the claimant’s own evidence, the Belief does not influence his conduct at work and has a small impact on his conduct outside of work, as he shares his dreams only on a very limited basis. We would also find that it does not meet this criterion. We conclude that the Belief does not qualify as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act. Even if, which we do not accept, the claimant’s Belief motivated the respondent, it is not a protected characteristic.

186. The claimant also relies on his Christian faith, and we have found that the decision-maker was unaware of it. It therefore could play no part in what happened.

187. We conclude for these reasons that any claim based on either Belief or Christian faith cannot succeed on these facts.”

Dream on…

Assisted dying

After a speech on social care at a Jewish care home in Golders Green, the Prime Minister told reporters:

”I take the view that that debate [assisted dying] – and I don’t say that there shouldn’t be a debate at some point about those issues – personally, I think there’s something that needs to happen first. That is the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care. I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care. That’s the way I kind of see this, and that’s the position that I will stick to.”

In the last session of Parliament, MPs had voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill with majorities of 55 and then 23, but the Lords heavily criticised the bill and tabled more than 1,000 amendments, with the result that it ran out of time and was lost. Labour MP Lauren Edwards reintroduced the bill, and it is set down for second reading in September. The Government had previously said that it was neutral, but Keir Starmer himself was always in favour. 

Andy Burnham’s change of approach has given hope to opponents of the bill. A critique of Ms Edwards’ position by the Complex Life and Death Decisions Group (CLADD) asserts that “wherever one stands on the principle…the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill…is not good law”. Another opponent, the Conservative peer Lord Moylan, observed on TwiX that

“The problem here is that a vote for Assisted Dying on 11 September isn’t a vote to ‘continue the debate’. It’s a vote to force the existing deeply flawed and dangerous Bill – unamended – onto the statute book under threat of using the Parliament Acts … The problem with that argument is that the current Bill has a FIXED 4-year implementation period. It is not dependent on fixing the social and palliative care systems, which may, by then, be the responsibility of a government for whom doing so is not a priority”.

Palestine Action: R (Ammori)

In R (Ammori) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 292 (Admin), the Divisional Court of King’s Bench made an order quashing the proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025 on two grounds:

• that the decision to seek the Order proscribing Palestine Action was made by the Home Secretary in breach of her own policy on when she would exercise her discretion to seek an order proscribing an organisation; and
• that the decision to seek proscription was contrary to the Human Rights Act 1998 because it amounted to an unjustified interference with Articles 10 (expression), 11 (association and assembly) and 14 (discrimination) ECHR.

The Home Secretary appealed, and in Secretary of State for the Home Department v R (Ammori) [2026] EWCA Civ 721 the Court of Appeal reversed the Divisional Court, concluding that the proscription decision was lawful because the Home Secretary had correctly applied her policy and that proscription was a proportionate interference with Ms Amori’s rights under Articles 10 and 11.

On 29 July, the Supreme Court granted permission to appeal on the first of those grounds and expedited the proceedings; the appeal is to be heard in the course of Michaelmas term 2026. Irish Legal News notes that the outcome could affect more than 3,500 people who have been arrested for alleged support of Palestine Action and whose cases have been put on hold pending a final ruling on the legality of the proscription.

Preventing lawful burial

On Friday, Robert Bush, of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors, Hull, was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to 67 charges, including preventing a lawful and decent burial, fraud, fraudulent trading, and theft. The Government responded immediately with a press statement in which the Health and Social Care Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was quoted as follows:

“Robert Bush’s actions were utterly abhorrent, and my thoughts are with all the bereaved families in Hull who have been so badly let down. In the wake of this horrific case, we will now bring forward comprehensive proposals to ensure respect and dignity for the deceased in every setting, including proper regulation of the funeral sector. We are determined to drive rogue operators out of this industry, and protect other families from suffering this same heartache”.

Of the 67 charges to which Bush pleaded guilty, counts 1-30 related to preventing a lawful and decent burial. In his sentencing remarks, Hilliard J observed that “there are no sentencing guidelines for these offences; no analogous guidelines which might help; and no case decided by the Court of Appeal which is factually similar, although some assistance can be derived from the case of Russell [2023] EWCA Crim 1080” – as reviewed in our post in 2024, and now updated. 

Clergy Conduct Measure

At the afternoon session of General Synod on 11 July 2026, the Clergy Conduct Rules 2026 (GS 2446), as amended, was carried and will be laid before both Houses of Parliament pursuant to the Statutory Instruments Act 1946. On 31 July, the Church Times reported that the Dean of the Arches, Morag Ellis KC, explained the new provisions and reminded members that the Code of Practice will be brought to the Synod for consultation. [Note: The Clergy Disciplinary Measure 2003 became fully effective on 1 January 2006, following the development and approval of the Code of Practice].

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025: two training opportunities

Church of England and Community Security Trust: “A practical walk through the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025”: The emphasis will be on Standard Duty premises. Coverage will include what must be done to comply with the Act, looking at which premises/events are in scope, and the requirements for Standard and Enhanced Duty Premises, as well as Qualifying Events. The webinars will also look at the regulator’s responsibilities and enforcement. Finally, there will be discussion of practical examples and suggestions. Anyone interested in participating should click on one of the following links:

• Tuesday 8 September, 10 am
• Thursday 1 October, 12:30 pm.

Home Office: In the autumn, the Home Office will host an in-person roadshow throughout the UK for anyone overseeing premises or events within the scope of the Act. You can register your interest here.

[With thanks to the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance.]

Quick links 

• Church of England: Cathedral Statistics 2025.
• Kevin Gallagher and Orla Bingham, Lexology: NI Tribunal dismisses first gender critical belief discrimination claim: a note on the Fair Employment Tribunal decision in Sara O’Gorman (Morrison) v Belfast Film Festival Limited [2025] FET 83/23.
• Historic England: Places of Worship Funding Index: A resource to support places of worship in England to identify potential funders for building-focused projects.

And finally…I

Scottish Legal News reports that City Building (Glasgow) was fined £17,000 at Dumfries Sheriff Court on 27 July for breaching animal conservation laws between June and July 2023.  The construction company pled guilty to the charge after a large number of bats were killed as a result of building work at a sheltered housing bungalow. (And if you’re wondering about the point of this, disturbing bats is also an offence in England and Wales, and they’re very common in churches, so…)

And finally…II

Recent events have been accompanied by heated debate, and a satirical image of the Guardian newspaper reporting on the discovery of “genetic links” between “eating bacon in the morning” and “far-right activism” has been shared widely online, including by many who seem to think it is real. The fake front page was shared as a joke on 22 July, appearing to be taken out of context. With regard to those of a roseate hue, Wikipedia adds: “In British political culture, gammon is a pejorative term typically used to describe a specific demographic of older white men who express reactionary or right-wing views, particularly in support of Brexit”. 

No comment.

Summaries to the seven consistory court judgments reviewed during July 2026 are listed below, with links to the L&RUK review. Six of these have been covered by stand-alone posts (marked “§“), and the reviews below use those of the Ecclesiastical Law Association.

The topics covered in this post include [*]:

• Procedural
• Reordering, extensions and other building works
• Exhumation
• Churchyards and burials

This monthly review also includes: CDM Decisions and Safeguarding; Privy Council Business; CFCE Determinations; and Links to other L&RUK posts relating to ecclesiastical law.

An index to these and earlier judgments in here.

Procedural

Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon (Number 2) [2026] ECC B&W 2] §. The Consistory Court reconsidered its earlier faculty decision in Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon [2025] ECC B&W 1 after discovering that through an administrative error, the court was not aware that Historic England had wished to be a party opponent.

To remedy the procedural unfairness, the Court joined Historic England, considered its expert evidence on the significance of the Victorian chancel stalls, and revisited the merits. Historic England demonstrated that the children’s choir stalls were an exceptionally rare, possibly unique, survival of Victorian church furnishing and that their removal would cause moderate harm to the significance of the Grade I listed church.

However, the Court concluded that the stalls are functionally redundant and that the parish’s need to create a smaller, more practical, energy-efficient worship space close to the altar outweighed that harm. It rejected Historic England’s proposed compromise as insufficient to meet the church’s present needs. Accordingly, the application to vary the existing faculty was dismissed, leaving the original faculty in force, including the condition preventing disposal of the removed stalls without further court approval. [Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon (Number 2) [2026] ECC B&W 2] [Post] [top]

Reordering, extensions and other building works

• • Reordering and alternative uses
  • Removal and replacement of pews

Reordering and alternative uses

Re Holy Cross Binsted [2026] ECC Win 1 The judgment concerns a faculty petition for alterations to the Grade I listed Church of the Holy Cross, Binsted, to improve accessibility, facilities and community use. The proposals included a new lavatory extension, servery, flexible seating through partial pew removal, underfloor heating, stone flooring, storage, audio-visual equipment, drainage works, and relocation of the font[4].

The court accepted that the church had demonstrated a long-standing and compelling need for these improvements, particularly to provide accessible toilets, catering facilities, disabled access and adaptable space for worship and community activities. However, the Amenity 7(b), 7(d), 7(e), (12) commented on the lack of detail in the petition.

Applying the ‘Duffield’ test, the Chancellor found that some elements—particularly the loss of a small section of medieval fabric (“the area of ancient wall is a little more than 1m x 1m. It is in part of the church both inside and outside which is less visible, due to being at the back of a side aisle and dwarfed by the tower outside[12]), partial removal of Victorian pews, and repositioning of the font—would cause limited harm to the church’s significance[10]. However, that harm was outweighed by the substantial public benefits of improved mission, accessibility and long-term viability.

Ruffell Ch. therefore granted a faculty, including permission for chairs omitted from the original petition, subject to conditions requiring further approval of archaeological measures, drainage, chair design, font detailing, servery design, flooring, and the mechanism for movable pews before relevant works commence, [13], [14]. [Re Holy Cross Binsted [2026] ECC Win 1] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Removal and replacement of pews

Re St. Mary-le-Moor Cadmore End [2026] ECC Oxf 12§ The Chancellor considered an unopposed retrospective faculty application for the alteration of two original pews and their installation in the church porch. Although the removal of the pews caused no harm to the significance of the Grade II listed church and created a useful community space, they had been shortened and moved to the church porch without faculty permission, despite repeated advice that prior approval was required. The parish also failed to disclose that the works had already been completed until this was discovered by the Diocesan Advisory Committee. Applying the ‘Duffield’ principles, the Chancellor held that the pews were of limited significance, the alterations were justified, and a faculty would have been granted had permission been sought in advance. However, the deliberate disregard of the faculty jurisdiction justified a response. Following recent authorities, he made an ‘excluded matters order’ under S.78(3) Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018, requiring the parish to obtain a faculty for all List B matters for two years. The retrospective faculty was nevertheless granted, but the judgment emphasised that abuse of the faculty system would not be tolerated. [Re St. Mary-le-Moor Cadmore End [2026] ECC Oxf 12] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Exhumation

Family graves

Re Lavender Hill Cemetery Enfield§ The Chancellor of the Diocese of London refused two petitions by AA to exhume the remains of her parents, HS and RS, from consecrated ground at Lavender Hill Cemetery and reinter them in her paternal grandfather’s grave in South Wales. The Chancellor reaffirmed the principle in Re Blagdon Cemetery that burial in consecrated ground is intended to be permanent and that exhumation is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. Relevant considerations include mistake, family reunification, delay, and evidence supporting the application. AA argued that she had promised her father he would be buried in Wales, but her mother’s memory loss led to his burial in Enfield. She later buried her mother in the same plot, explaining that financial constraints prevented reburial in Wales. The court held that the family had consciously chosen the original burials, had not sought to change them during RS’s lifetime, and had waited 30 years (HS) and 12 years (RS) before applying. Although sympathetic to AA’s motives, the Chancellor found no exceptional circumstances sufficient to displace the presumption of permanence. Both petitions were dismissed, with no order as to costs. [Re Lavender Hill Cemetery Enfield [2026] ECC Lon 1] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Churchyards and burials

• Designation of closed churchyard
• Churchyard Regulations
• Reservation of grave space

Designation of closed churchyard

See Privy Council Business.

Churchyard Regulations

Re St. Margaret Halstead [2026] ECC Roc 1§ Mrs. Margaret Galletly died in 2013, was buried in the churchyard, and a memorial stone was erected over her grave.  The memorial was replaced in 2021, because the porous stone had not aged well. A ceramic photograph had been placed on the memorial without lawful permission. Squadron Leader Galletly died in 2024, and his daughter now sought permission for a new and larger headstone with two ceramic photographs. The Chancellor stated that photographs have historically been prohibited across the Church of England and remain outside the scope of the new model regulations. Although one unauthorised photograph had been on the memorial for several years and both the incumbent and the Diocesan Advisory Committee supported retaining it on pastoral grounds, the Chancellor held that allowing photographs would undermine consistent application of the regulations and create future pastoral difficulties. The faculty was therefore granted for the replacement memorial only on condition that no photographs be displayed on it. [Re St. Margaret Halstead [2026] ECC Roc 1] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of post].

Reservation of grave space

Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 1§ The Consistory Court of the Diocese of Guildford granted Mrs Janet Clarke a faculty reserving a grave space at St Peter, Wrecclesham for 30 years after discovering that the original refusal was based on incorrect information. Mrs Clarke, a parish resident for nearly 40 years, had applied for a reserved grave space with the PCC’s support. The court initially proposed refusing the petition because it had been told only eight grave spaces remained, making reservation unjustified. However, subsequent investigation revealed that approximately 96 spaces were actually available, meaning the churchyard would not be full for over 30 years.  The judgment also criticises the handling of the application. Mrs Clarke’s request was approved by the PCC, she paid the fee and was given plot markers, creating the reasonable impression that the reservation was complete, yet the petition was not lodged with the Consistory Court for almost four years. The court described this history as causing significant distress, waived any contribution to churchyard maintenance, and recorded the Church’s “unreserved and sincere apology” to Mrs Clarke. [Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 1] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of page].

Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 2§ The Consistory Court of the Diocese of Guildford granted Jeffrey and Kathleen West a faculty reserving a double-depth grave space at St Peter, Wrecclesham, for 30 years. The petition had initially been provisionally refused because the court had been told that only eight grave spaces remained, making reservations inappropriate unless exceptional circumstances existed. However, further investigation revealed that the churchyard actually contained up to 96 available grave spaces, meaning it was unlikely to be full for over 30 years. The judgment also criticised the handling of the petition. Although the PCC had unanimously supported the request in 2023, the petition was not lodged with the Registry until 2025, for unexplained reasons. The petitioners were led to believe their reservation had already been approved, causing significant distress when the court later issued its provisional refusal based on incorrect information. In light of the revised evidence, the Deputy Chancellor granted the faculty, waived any contribution to the churchyard maintenance fund, and issued an unreserved apology on behalf of the Church for the delay, misinformation, and distress caused. [Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 2] [Post] [Top of section] [Top of page].

Privy Council Business

8 July 2026

• Burial Act 1853 (Notice): Order giving notice of the discontinuance of burials in:
  • St Mary the Virgin Churchyard, Denby Village, Ripley, Derbyshire; and
  • St John’s Church Churchyard, Throapham, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

CDM Decisions and Safeguarding

Name: The Revd JAMIE ALEXANDER FRANKLYN TAYLOR
Diocese: Oxford
Date imposed: 26 June 2026
Relevant CDM section: 16(1)
Statutory Grounds of Misconduct: 8(1)(d) conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders
Penalty: Rebuke and Injunctions

CFCE Determinations

The dates of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England may be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the page Cathedrals Fabric Commission.  The programme for 2026 is here and the next meeting will be on Thursday 3 September 2026.

There has been a continuing delay, year-on-year, in reporting the outcome of CFCE meetings. As we noted in 2023, we have adopted the policy of posting only the links to the latest reported CFCE meeting; at the time of writing this was for the meeting on Thursday 22 October 2025.

Links to other posts

Recent summaries of specific issues that have been considered in the consistory courts include:

Procedure

• Archdeacon uncovers errors at St Peter, Wrecclesham, (17 July 2026).

Reordering, extensions and other building works

• “Net zero”, church heating, and the consistory courts – VI, (13 July 2026).

Exhumation

• Permanence of burial: Re Lavender Hill Cemetery, (23 July 2026).

Churchyards

• Newbury Racecourse revisited – lessons learned?, (2 July 2026).

General/Miscellaneous

• Church of England: Revised “Net Zero ” Routemap, (10 July 2026).
• Two “net zero” updates, (7 July 2026).
• CDM Tribunal, WhatsApp and Snapchat evidence, (2 July 2026).

[Top]

Updated: 30 July 2026 at 13:05.

[*] This is an approximate classification based upon the main issues considered by the court. Determinations relating to reordering and building works will often address other aspects of the Petition.

Notes on the conventions used for the navigation between cases reviewed in this post are summarized here.

Further to our recent post Safeguarding: St Andrew’s Chorleywood, (29 July 2026), the Church of England summary of its safeguarding Reviews and Reports links is reproduced below; the index to L&RUK posts on safeguarding and “lessons learnt” reviews may be found here.

The Church Times has published(£) Report sets out allegations of harm over three decades at St Andrew’s, Chorleywood on the abuse and practices described as ‘exorcism’.

Call for information and listening exercise: St Andrew’s Chorleywood.

The Diocese of St Albans has published the report of a call for information and voluntary listening exercise relating to non-recent safeguarding concerns connected with St Andrew’s Chorleywood. The concerns described in the report relate to the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and not to current safeguarding practice or leadership at the church.

The call for information and voluntary listening exercise was launched after safeguarding disclosures received in recent years indicated that others may have experienced harm but had not yet been heard. It invited people to share information or experiences connected with the church during that period, so that any current safeguarding risks could be identified, support needs understood, and learning taken forward.

The report brings together themes from the experiences and information shared by 27 individuals who raised concerns or described experiences of harm. It identifies accounts of abuse and harmful behaviour, the misuse of authority, barriers to challenging leadership, and institutional and cultural factors that may have influenced how concerns were responded to at the time.

A Safeguarding Case Management Group, chaired by His Honour Philip Waller CBE, a retired Family Court Judge, oversaw the process. The Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panel provided strategic oversight, and the Diocesan Safeguarding Team delivered the operational work.

The call for information and voluntary listening exercise was not a formal investigation and was not established to make findings of fact about individual cases. Its purpose was to provide a safe opportunity for people to share experiences, to identify any current safeguarding risks, to understand support needs, and to contribute to learning and safeguarding improvement.

[…]

All disclosures received through the exercise were assessed and managed in accordance with current safeguarding policy and guidance. Where necessary, action was taken, including referrals to relevant agencies and the implementation of appropriate risk management measures. Participants were offered support through a survivor care strategy, including pastoral and therapeutic support.

The report does not raise concerns about current safeguarding practice or current leadership at St Andrew’s Chorleywood. Safeguarding standards, oversight and accountability arrangements have developed significantly since the period described in the report.

[…]

The themes identified will inform ongoing safeguarding development, support for those affected, and continued learning within both the Diocese and the Parish. A lessons-learned review of the process will also be undertaken.

The Diocesan Safeguarding Team will continue to listen to and support anyone who wishes to come forward following publication of the report

In this Legal Spirits Short Take, Center Director Mark Movsesian discusses a new federal lawsuit challenging New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act. Catholic healthcare providers argue that the state’s statutory regime will require them to counsel patients about medically assisted suicide, even though their religious commitments prohibit them from participating in the practice. New York has not yet responded, and important questions remain about what the law actually requires. Assuming the plaintiffs’ account is correct, Mark considers whether the counseling obligation substantially burdens their religious exercise, whether the law’s different treatment of hospices undermines its general applicability, and whether New York could protect patient access to legal end-of-life options through less restrictive means. Listen in!

The post Legal Spirits 080: A Short Take on Religious Objections to New York’s Assisted-Suicide Law appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

The Petitioner’s mother died in 2013 and was buried in the churchyard of St. Margaret Halstead. Because the porous stone had not aged well, the memorial stone over her grave was replaced in 2021 including a small ceramic photograph, (see [11]). Her father, Squadron Leader Galletly died in 2024, and permission was now sought for a new and larger headstone with two ceramic photographs, repeating the details of her late mother and adding his details and the RAF crest (for which the appropriate permission had been obtained)[1].

Willink Ch. observed [at 2]:

“If this were the whole story, this matter would not call for a written judgment. However, this matter concerns the inclusion of photographs on churchyard memorials. There is, on the plinth of the current memorial, a small ceramic photograph of the petitioner’s late mother. No permission for that had been sought or obtained from the court. The petitioner does, however, now petition for the addition of a similar ceramic photograph of her late father to match or mirror that of her late mother”.

The petition was treated as being for a confirmatory faculty in respect of the first photograph, and for a prospective faculty in respect of the second. On account of of this, it warranted a fully-reasoned decision [3].

Faculties for memorials – the principles

Citing Hodge Ch. in Re All Saints Calverton [2021] ECC Oxf 7 (on the threefold purpose of a grave memorial[4]), and following the dicta in the judgment of the Court of Arches in Re St. Giles Exhall [2021] EACC 1 (which determined that the court does not require a petitioner to satisfy any exceptionality test before a faculty for a memorial would be granted[5]), Willink Ch. noted that the burden of proof always lies on the petitioner to persuade the court to grant a faculty; to that limited extent, there is a presumption, or default position, that no faculty will be granted.

However, “the petitioner simply has to satisfy that burden of proof by establishing, to the usual civil standard of the balance of probabilities, that there is a good reason why the faculty should be granted. Broadly, the more egregious the departure from the Regulations, the more justification would be required before the burden of proof is discharged. And the court will always want to be alive to particular issues concerning the individual churchyard concerned, which is why the views of the incumbent and PCC are relevant[6]

Confirmatory faculties – the principles

The Chancellor stated [emphasis added]:

“[7] As a general principle, a confirmatory faculty should only be granted if a faculty would have been granted for the work if one had been sought at the appropriate time, before the work was carried out: see, for example, Re All Saints Buncton [2018] ECC Chi 1. It requires exceptional circumstances to diverge from this principle; and the mere fact that work has been carried out without authorisation, and expenditure incurred, is not a relevant factor.

[8]. It is clear that pastoral reasons can be sufficiently compelling to warrant the grant of a confirmatory faculty for a memorial in circumstances where a prospective faculty would not have been granted. However, recent cases where this has been found to be the case have tended to have the distinguishing feature that those in positions of responsibility in the parish had been involved, even to the point of approving the memorial, before its introduction: see for example Re St. Mary Middleton [2022] ECC Lee 3“.

Photographs on memorials

“[9]. A refusal to permit photographs on memorials was one of the most universal aspects of older versions of Diocesan Churchyard Regulations across the Church of England, which were recently collated and analysed by the Ecclesiastical Judges Association’s Working Group on Churchyard Regulations. The Regulations in over three quarters of all dioceses expressly prohibited them; and in the remainder, they were generally prohibited by implication. In none were photographs expressly permitted.

[10]. In the new model Regulations being introduced (with some variations) across the Church of England following the recommendations of that Working Group, any motif, emblem or image on a memorial is only permitted if it ‘is of a character commonly found in churchyard memorials‘. Given the previous history, this plainly excludes photographs”.

The present case: the original memorial

The Chancellor accepted that the original, 2013, memorial included a small ceramic photograph of Margaret Galletly on the headstone, although he had seen no confirmatory photographs.

“In order for the photograph to be a lawful introduction, it would have required the authority of a faculty; and there is no evidence in the Registry files that any such faculty was applied for. I am in no doubt that, had it been, it would have been refused“.

He further noted that if the photograph had remained on the headstone since 2013, it would by now be too late for him to require its removal, save as a condition to the grant of a permissive faculty[12]

The replacement memorial

In the papers submitted in support of the present petition, there was a curious document. On its face it appeared to be a signed and dated faculty petition by Squadron Leader Galletly concerning the 2021 replacement of his late wife’s memorial; but there is no evidence that such a petition was ever, in fact, lodged. This was subsequently referred to it as the draft petition.

The draft petition suggested that the proposal was for a like-for-like replacement for the existing, weathered stone; but it gave no indication either that the old memorial had a photograph attached, or that the photograph would be transferred to the new one. If, therefore, a petition had been filed in accordance with the draft petition, then the inclusion of any photograph would have rendered the memorial non-compliant with the permission that would undoubtedly have been given[13].

There were differing recollections of the specific approvals sought: from the petitioner he incumbent, who was clear that he had not given permission for anything to do with a photograph on the memorial. “Whatever the position, the authority of a faculty should have (again) been sought in 2021[14].

The present petition

The petitioner sought permission for a memorial headstone including two ceramic photographs. The reason put forward by the petitioner is to fulfil the wishes of her father, on which the Chancellor recorded that the petition had the support of the incumbent; and the DAC raised no objection to the photographs, on pastoral grounds, since one photograph was already in place[16]. Willink Ch. reiterated the relevant legal principle, viz, that the presence of photographs would be an egregious and significant departure both from the existing Churchyard Regulations of the Diocese and the position common across the Church of England; and therefore would need a significantly good reason for allowing it. He also set out the reasons for the petitioner’s personal wishes[17].

Addressing the advice of the DAC, on which he took full note, he stated:

“[18] I have concerns that the pastoral difficulties which can be expected to arise in the future, if other bereaved families are told that they are not permitted to have photographs on their loved one’s memorial despite their perpetual presence on this one, are not adequately weighed in the balance – for perfectly understandable reasons, since they are future and to some extent hypothetical, whereas the immediate pastoral concern is present and real.

[19] …I am clear that the reason given is insufficient to displace the strong presumption against photographs on memorials…But now is an appropriate moment to return matters to how they should always have been.

[20]. I will grant a faculty for the proposed memorial, but subject to the condition that there will be no photographs affixed or displayed on it”.

The above discussion is based upon reported judgment Re St. Margaret Halstead [2026] ECC Roc 1; its importance lies in the express prohibition of photographs on memorials in over three quarters of all dioceses, and the implied prohibition in the remainder. In none were photographs expressly permitted. 

Nevertheless, this post does not purport to give legal or technical advice, or technical analysis of the issues discussed. Situation-specific advice from experts in the area should be sought where potential problems have been identified. 

… and on 21 July, The Gazette carried the following Proclamation by the King: “Whereas, if the England men’s football team win the FIFA World Cup in the year 2026, to mark the achievement, We consider it desirable that Friday the twenty-fourth day of July in the year 2026 should be a bank holiday in England“. Given that the overall cost in lost production in England would have been about £2bn, some might be tempted to add. “Fortunately for the UK economy, England lost“!

England: financial support for listed places of worship

Historic England has published the Places of Worship Funding Index, which it describes as a resource to support places of worship in England to identify potential funders for building-focused projects. We understand that it was researched by Good Faith Partnership and has been approved by DCMS.

The guidance is intended primarily as support for those who have submitted Expressions of Interest to the Places of Worship Renewal Fund and are now being advised whether they are being invited to submit a full application.  DCMS hopes that the guidance will help them to find the funding they need, whether they are offered a PWRF grant or not.

Scotland: financial support for listed places of worship

On Thursday, the Scottish Government answered written question S7W-01271 from Liam Kerr (North East Scotland, Con), asking the Scottish Government “whether any Barnett consequential funding has arisen from the introduction of the Places of Worship Renewal Fund in England, which replaced the UK-wide Listed Places of Worship Scheme”. Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic, replied as follows:

“The Scottish Government has not identified any Barnett consequential funding specifically linked to the introduction of the Places of Worship Renewal Fund in England.

Under the Barnett formula, changes to the Scottish Government’s funding are calculated at the level of overall UK Government departmental spending, rather than individual programmes or schemes. UK Government ministers have confirmed that the funding for the Places of Worship Renewal Fund is included within the wider Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) settlement, and that Barnett consequentials are applied to the total departmental allocation rather than to specific funding lines.

Decisions on how to allocate funding received through the block grant are a matter for the Scottish Government, in line with devolved responsibilities. The final decision to end the UK-wide scheme was also only confirmed to the Scottish Government after the 2026-27 Scottish Budget was set, further limiting Scottish Ministers’ options. However, Ministers will continue to seek options”.

No comment.

Civil marriage followed by Church of England service

The potential cost of a religious ceremony following one at a register office has been a discussion topic on X/Twitter. The Church of England web page Wedding Blessings notes “Many couples who have had a civil wedding decide they would like to dedicate their marriage to God in church soon afterwards. The Church of England service is called a Service of Prayer and Dedication, which is often known as ‘a blessing’”. It  further states:

• “It is a simple service acknowledging the commitment already made between husband and wife during a civil ceremony and asks for God’s blessing and guidance in your new life together.
• Because it is not a marriage service, banns are not required, there is no exchange of rings and there is no signing of the official marriage paperwork during the service.
• It can be designed to have a similar feel to a wedding with hymns, readings, flowers and even bells if you would like that, or it can be an intimate, low key service. The service itself has no statutory fee (because it is not a legal service) but there may be some costs, such as flowers, bells and use of an organist. These would be charged at the church’s local rate.
• It is possible to have a blessing in any church of one’s choice, provided the church and the vicar are free on your preferred date. Many couples have opted for this service where one or both of them is remarrying after divorce” (see s8(2) Matrimonial Causes Act 1965).

UK Government Ministers holding the “faith” portfolio

Also on X/Twitter, Richard Chapman has compiled a list of the UK Government Ministers holding the “faith” portfolio since 2005,  Bs Warsi being the first to have the formal title of “Minister for Faith”. It seems we are currently without a Minister for Faith, Lord Lemos having been moved to the Ministry of Justice after 40 days in post. So it will be twelve in ten years, once the new one is appointed.

Progress on safeguarding in the Church of England

The iNEQUE group has published its Independent Safeguarding Audits of Church of England Dioceses and Cathedrals 2025, based on an audit of ten cathedrals.  While it identifies “much good practice” and suggests that “Across most staff and worshipping communities, arrangements have improved and a safeguarding culture is becoming embedded”, it notes that “inhibitors of progress” remain. The problem, it concludes, is not senior clergy, most of whom “demonstrate a genuine desire for change”: rather, the problems

“… are structural and, in certain cases, institutional. They arise from a small group of influential senior officers at the diocesan level and certain individuals within the national Church. This resistance manifests in unhelpful and frustrating ways, such as a readiness to hide behind exceptionalism, canon law, tradition, and procedural defensiveness”.

Perhaps its most radical recommendation on governance is this:

“Each diocese should formally separate the Bishops’ Council from the Diocesan Board of Finance, establishing clearly distinct memberships, terms of reference, and governance agendas. The DBF, as the principal charitable trustee body, must operate in full accordance with Charity Commission requirements rather than ecclesiastical convention. Where a Bishop currently chairs the DBF, the diocese should transition to chairmanship by a suitably qualified independent lay person”.

James Macintyre comments in the Church Times, here.

CFCE Determinations

Our round-up of ecclesiastical judgments for July will be posted on Friday. The dates of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England may be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the page to Cathedrals Fabric Commission.  The programme for 2026 is here, and the next meeting will be on Thursday 3 September 2026.

However, there has been a continuing delay, year-on-year, in reporting the matters considered (Form 8s) and the outcome of CFCE meetings (Form 10s). As noted in 2023, we have adopted the policy of posting only the links to the latest reported CFCE meeting; at the time of writing this was nine months ago, for the meeting held on Thursday 22 October 2025.

Quick Links

• Elizabeth Rough, House of Commons Library Research Briefing, Changes to the law on abortion in England and Wales (22 July 2026).

And finally…

On 25 July, The Guardian included The UK has its first Catholic PM – but don’t expect a US-style religious culture war to follow; this concluded:

“But Britain’s growing religious pluralism sits uneasily alongside the constitution. Prof Russell Sandberg, an expert in law and religion, said legislation still prevents practising Catholics and Jews from advising the Crown on Church of England appointments.

‘In practice, the role of the prime minister in appointing bishops has declined’, Sandberg said. ‘That said, even the presentation of one name by Burnham would breach the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.’ Those responsibilities could be delegated to another minister, he added.

While right-wing Christian nationalist politics does not have the same influence in Britain as in the US, Sandberg said right-wing populists could, in government, ‘use and abuse the legal framework that favours Christianity to roll back the clock on our legal rights’.”

Intinction and the common cup: a reading list was posted on 21 Jul 2026 in Christianity by the Revd Anthony Smith, a Priest in Charge of the ‘Riverside’ group of parishes near Darlington, and is reproduced with permission.

‘Intinction’ means ‘dipping’, and it refers to the practice of dipping the bread (usually a wafer) into the wine as part of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass).

I’ve been dipping into the topic a little, far enough to gather a short reading list (also covering related topics, such as individual communion cups). I haven’t read all of the articles listed below, and I’m unlikely to take it much further any time soon, so I thought I’d deposit my notes here for future reference. It might even be useful to someone else, who knows.

First, a brief summary…

There are very few references to intinction in the early centuries of church history. It might have been introduced in some places as a way of making the bread easier to swallow for the sick or for young children. It is difficult to know when the practice arose, but in the Eastern Orthodox Church today, the bread and wine are mixed together and then served using a spoon. Intinction was a controversial practice in the Western (Roman) Church, and it was banned in the thirteenth century. In the Roman Catholic Church, the laity received only the bread (the host) between around 1415 and 1970, so intinction wasn’t a live issue in recent times prior to 1970. In other churches, it seems to have become more popular since the early twentieth century, in response to growing awareness of the role of germs in spreading diseases.

The two links in the summary above are to the best articles I have found so far as entry-points into the topic (also mentioned below):

• ‘Intinction: An Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination’, by Lane B. Keister, published in 2018 in the Mid-America Journal of Theology (MAJT). Originally written in the context of debates around 2012 in the Presbyterian Church in America, with numerous references to other sources, the focus is on the history of intinction in the early church and in the Reformed tradition, and on the exegesis of key biblical texts.
• ‘Germ Panic and Chalice Hygiene in the Church of England, c.1895–1930’, by Andrew Atherstone, first published in 2025 in the Journal of Religious History. This article documents a very important period of history both for the move towards intinction and for the move towards individual communion cups, in response the new science of germs and subsequent widespread public concern about hygiene.

In dictionaries and encyclopaedias, there are brief entries on ‘Intinction’ in A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (SCM) (see under ‘Communion’ in its successor, The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship), in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and in An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Wikipedia also has an article on the topic.

In the Church of England, current practice is that intinction is generally discouraged but not actually prohibited in the Church of England as a whole, although it is prohibited in quite a few dioceses. Examples of diocesan guidance in which intinction is strongly discouraged include:

• Diocese in Europe: ‘A note about receiving Holy Communion by intinction’.
• Diocese of London: ‘Intinction of wafers’ as part of some Communion guidelines.

The Church of England’s Legal Advisory Commission of the General Synod issued a legal opinion way back in ‘January 1991, revised September 2003’ on ‘Holy Communion: administration of the Sacrament’ (also available as a PDF). This includes a lot of detail about individual cups and a smaller amount about intinction. However, the current version includes the following note at the top:

“At its meeting on 13 June 2024, the Legal Advisory Commission noted that there are two respectable views on the matter of the use of individual cups at Holy Communion.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Church of England guidance was issued in mid-2020 on ‘Holy Communion and the distribution of the elements’, in which the common cup was suspended. This led to an intense debate on the use of individual cups:

• Various responses are linked from a Thinking Anglicans blog post of 27 August 2020 …
• … including a legal opinion on ‘The legality of the use of individual cups for communion wine in the Church of England’ (also here).
• Thomas Renz published numerous articles on the topic on his own blog, as well as a post on the Psephizo blog
• A post on the Law & Religion UK blog from March 2021 contains links to various resources.
• Andrew Atherstone wrote a Grove Booklet on the topic, ‘Drink This, All of You’: Individual Cups at Holy Communion, which is described in a post on the Psephizo blog.
• That blog post refers to Andrew Atherstone’s significant article on an important period in the history of the Church of England regarding individual cups and intinction, ‘Germ Panic and Chalice Hygiene in the Church of England, c.1895–1930’, originally published on 19 September 2025.

Subsequent Church of England guidance was issued in December 2020 regarding intinction, using the language of ‘simultaneous administration’, where the priest (rather than the communicant) dips the wafer into the wine (otherwise known as ‘priestly intinction’). That guidance is available on the Thinking Anglicans website (linked from a blog post).

The Church of England website still contains a page with Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance. This page includes a link to a July 2022 document, ‘Opening and managing church buildings’, which says the following under ‘Administration of Holy Communion’:

“If communicants do not wish to receive in both kinds, they may do so by receiving only the bread (communion in one kind) or the president may dip the bread in the wine before giving it to the communicant (simultaneous administration). Intinction by the communicant is not recommended.”

More recent discussion in the Church of England has been on the topic of gluten-free bread and alcohol-free wine, precipitated by a question posed at General Synod.

• A press release was issued by the Church of England on 10 February 2025: No, we’re not banning ‘gluten-free’ bread or ‘non-alcoholic’ Communion wine
• Andrew Atherstone wrote a post on the Law & Religion UK blog, which was published on 17 February 2025: ‘Wheat bread and fermented wine at Holy Communion? The origins of Canon B17’
• That same blog has an update on the topic from 10 July 2025: ‘Progress on those unable to consume gluten and/or alcohol at Holy Communion?’

In the Anglican Communion more widely, the Lambeth Conference of 1948 had the following resolution:

“Resolution 118: Administration of Holy Communion

The Conference holds that administration from a common chalice, being scriptural and having a spiritual meaning of great value, should continue to be the normal method of administration in the Anglican Communion; but is of opinion that there is no objection to administration of both kinds by the method of intinction where conditions require it, and that any part of the Anglican Communion by provincial regulation according to its own constitutional procedure has liberty to sanction administration by intinction as an optional alternative to the traditional method, and that the methods of intinction to be adopted or permitted should not be left to the discretion of individual priests.”

Outside the Church of England, there was quite a debate on the topic of intinction in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) around 2012, with the 40th General Assembly in 2012 giving ‘initial approval’ to an amendment ‘to prohibit the practice of intinction in communion’, which was then not approved by the presbyteries and was therefore taken no further, as noted at the 41st General Assembly in 2013.

• The most detailed treatment I have found on the topic of intinction is a paper by Lane B. Keister published in 2018, ‘Intinction: An Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination’.
• An earlier (December 2012) version of that paper (which contains some additional material at the end) is linked from a blog post from 20 April 2020 by Cameron Schaffer: ‘A Personal Journey on Intinction’.
• There are a few posts on intinction on the website of byFaith , which is ‘the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America’, such as the following from 2012: ‘The Intinction Debate’, ‘Adiaphora and Intinction’, and ‘Update on Intinction Vote: Six in Favor of BCO Change, 12 Against’.
• More recently, R. Scott Clark has a post from 2021: [John] ‘Owen Gives Us Theological Reasons To Object To Intinction’, which contains a few helpful links at the end.
• Also from the PCA stable is a blog post from 29 March 2025 by O. Palmer Robertson: ‘Should you Dip the Bread in the Wine at the Lord’s Supper?’.

On the same side of the pond, in The Episcopal Church, I came across a couple of articles:

• From 1945, there is an article by Gardiner Mumford Day on ‘The Importance of Intinction’.
• From 2025, there is an article by Matthew S. C. Olver of The Living Church: ‘It’s Time to Retire Intinction: An Open Letter to the Bishops of The Episcopal Church’

That post has some helpful links to the science, including ‘Holy Communion and Infection Transmission: A Literature Review’ by Dimitrios Anyfantakis (2020).

In the Roman Catholic Church, the laity received only the bread (the host) until 1970 (following Vatican II), after which practice has been governed by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, as described in various places.

Plenty to read, if anyone is inclined to delve deeper into the topic!

Cite this article as Anthony Smith “Intinction and the common cup: a reading list ” in Law & Religion UK, 24 July 2026, https://lawandreligionuk.com/2026/07/24/intinction-and-the-common-cup-a-reading-list/.

Etherington Ch had begun by pointing out that the general rule governing exhumation from consecrated ground for reburial elsewhere was that “this is their final resting place and exhumation will only be permitted where there is an exceptional justification for it (subject to provisions covering urgent judicial or police investigations of suspicious death)” [2]. The leading authority for that assertion was Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, 4 All ER 482 [3].

Etherington Ch fully understood that dementia was very distressing and often involved extremely difficult decisions by the sufferer’s family [18]. AA and the family had acceded to their mother’s wish to have her late husband buried in the cemetery at Lavender Hill, and it was not clear that their mother understood her late husband’s wish to be buried in South Wales [19]. Further:

“Unless she was mentally incompetent, RS’s wishes are likely to have been paramount in any event, but even if she was unable to make an informed decision, AA and the family decided in her interests to override the promise made to HS and bury his mortal remains at LHC. Many would think that this was entirely the correct decision and likely to have been one of which HS would have approved in those circumstances” [20].

When RS died in 2014, AA and the family decided to have her buried in the same cemetery, and it was likely that

“this is where RS had wished to be buried as I am not told of any expression of any wish by her to be buried in Wales and, in any event, she would doubtless have wished to be interred in a grave with or adjacent to that of her husband who was buried in LHC” [21].

In conclusion, he was not convinced that either HS or RS would have wished their place of rest to be disturbed “many, many years (30 and 12 respectively) after their original burials” [28]. Petitions dismissed [29]. [With thanks to Ray Hemingray.]

On Thursday, the Government published Tying the knot: reforming weddings law in England and Wales: consultation document. Its proposals follow the Law Commission’s 2022 report, Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law and the Government’s announcement of its intention to reform the law. The document states that the Government’s approach to reform is guided by four principles, which underpin all the proposals in the consultation:

• Providing a simple, fair and inclusive framework and establishing a clear, coherent and consistent legal structure for weddings, to ensure fairness across different groups through a common set of rules and enabling non-religious belief organisations, including Humanists, to conduct legally binding ceremonies.
• Expanding choice as to how and where couples marry, to allow greater flexibility over the location and form of weddings, so that ceremonies can better reflect couples’ beliefs and circumstances.
• Upholding the dignity and significance of marriage, to ensure that all weddings meet clear and consistent standards of dignity through a comprehensive framework governing ceremonies and locations, supported by oversight of officiants and clear criteria for organisations to preserve the integrity of marriage.
• Protecting against forced, predatory and sham marriages by strengthening safeguards through a more effective system of checks and greater transparency to ensure that marriages are entered into freely, with informed consent and are not used to gain unfair advantage.

The closing date for responses is 24 September, either online here or to: Family Justice Policy Team, Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9AJ:  weddingslawconsultation@justice.gov.uk.

Culture, Media and Sport Committee: Protecting built heritage

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report, Protecting Built Heritage, was published on 13 July. It highlights the growing challenges facing England’s historic buildings, particularly listed places of worship. The Committee notes that there are around 14,800 listed places of worship in England, the majority belonging to the Church of England, and warns that they face mounting financial, demographic and organisational pressures.

The report expresses concern that replacing the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme with the Places of Worship Renewal Fund could disadvantage historically significant buildings outside areas of socio-economic deprivation. It recommends that funding should be maintained at least at previous real-terms levels and that eligibility should balance heritage value with measures of deprivation.

The Committee also suggests that the current VAT regime discourages the repair and reuse of historic buildings by making restoration more expensive than new construction. It recommends targeted VAT relief for listed buildings and wider reform to remove incentives favouring demolition over conservation.

Recognising the sector’s heavy reliance on volunteers, the Committee ]calls for funded professional support to reduce volunteer burnout. It also urges improvements to the planning system, including greater consistency in decision-making and better integration of heritage conservation with sustainability objectives such as retrofit and net-zero.

Meanwhile in Scotland…

On Tuesday, The Herald reported that Culture Secretary Màiri McAllan, on behalf of the Scottish Government, said that, despite receiving extra money under the Barnett Formula linked to the Places of Worship Renewal Fund for England, it has “limited options” as to what it can do to help church buildings.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been published: here. It has been set down for second reading on 11 September.

Assisted dying in France

RFI (Radio France Internationale) reports that France’s National Assembly has given its definitive backing to legislation granting terminally ill adults the right to end their lives with medical assistance, bringing to a close a protracted and often fraught political battle. On Wednesday, Deputies voted 291 to 241 in favour: the fourth time the lower house has approved the text. Last year, the bill also cleared the Assembly but was rejected by the Senate. In view of this resistance, the Government permitted the Assembly to have the final say without the Senate’s consent – a mechanism permitted under the Constitution.

The report states that “euthanasia involves a doctor or other healthcare professional administering a lethal injection at the patient’s request, while medically assisted suicide typically involves the patient voluntarily taking lethal medication that a doctor has prescribed”.

The Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, intends to refer the text to the Constitutional Council for review.

Quick links

• Ruth Deech, The Guardian: David Lammy’s proposed cohabitation law would be bad for couples – and worse for some women: a negative view of the proposal to confer rights on cohabiting partners.

And finally…

Premier Christian News reports that the Church of Norway had temporarily changed its logo to the Church of England’s cross to commemorate England’s World Cup victory.

It explained: “…after the airline Norwegian first challenged British Airways to a bet, stating on Instagram: “If Norway wins, you have to switch to our logo on Instagram on Sunday (one day). And vice versa. Deal?”, Den Norske Kirke then posted a challenge of its own to the CofE, asking: “Ready to risk your logo?” The Church of England responded: “We know our logo will look great on you.”

Akvavit all round!

Hill Ch, Re All Saints, Featherstone [2025] ECC Lee 1

However, it is not always well-served by those providing it with information, as demonstrated in three cases circulated this week: Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 1, Re St. Peter Wrecclesham [2026] ECC Gui 2, and Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon (Number 2) [2026] ECC B&W 2.

The Wrecclesham cases

Both cases concern the reservation of burial space. In memoranda dated 31 January 2026, Whitehouse Dep. Ch. gave provisional decisions that neither Petition would be granted since the parish had informed the Registry that there were only eight grave spaces left in the churchyard; there had been a total of seven burials over the past three years, indicating that the grave spaces would all be used within the next three years.

Since then, further information was provided to the Court which was contrary to that provided to the Registry. This  indicated that there were, in fact, 96 possible available grave spaces – “a material change in circumstances” ([2] and [3], both judgments, et seq.).

In each case, the respective Petitioner(s) had first approached the then incumbent in about January 2022. On 19 July 2023, the PCC noted that a request to reserve a plot for a couple (who were not named in the Minutes, but were Mr and Mrs West) (and likewise for Mrs Clarke) had been received and the PCC “agreed unanimously” [6].

The Petitioner(s) “then paid the required fee and were provided with markers identifying and reserving the plot. It appears that they were not told that the Petition would be referred to the Consistory Court. Instead, they were given a clear and reasonable expectation that the plot had been approved” [7].

The Petitions were not lodged with the Registry until September 2025 and it was at that point that they were sent to the Chancellor and Deputy Chancellor, who noted: “It has been impossible to establish why it took, possibly, as long as three years and nine months to reach that point. The parish is now in an interregnum and no correspondence has been made available to explain the delay” [8].

The provisional decisions to refuse the Petitions were given in separate Memoranda on 31 January 2026. Those decisions were made “because, as a general principle, when the number of available grave spaces is very limited a faculty will not normally be granted unless the Petitioner can show that there is sufficient justification for the court to take an exceptional course” [9].

Subsequently, the Assistant Archdeacon of Dorking visited the parish in April 2026 and was shown the churchyard, as well as a plan of the churchyard marking all the grave spaces, both occupied and those that are still available. The plan indicated that, contrary to the information provided with the original Petition, there were potentially 96 available grave spaces [10]. The Deputy Chancellor was informed that “the reason that the full number of vacant grave spaces was not provided at the time of the application is that the Incumbent and PCC intended to request closure of the graveyard when the eight spaces in the last row were filled. The burden of maintaining the graveyard is significant for a relatively small parish and the remaining unused area of the graveyard had become overgrown in parts [11]”.

In light of the revised evidence, the Deputy Chancellor granted the faculty, waived any contribution to the churchyard maintenance fund, and issued an unreserved apology on behalf of the Church for the delay, misinformation, and distress caused. Noting the very great distress suffered by the Petitioner(s) in the process of making the Petition, the Deputy Chancellor concluded:

“[16]. …The unexplained delay in progressing the Petition, the impression given that the parish had the power to grant the Petition, and had, indeed, granted it, and the provisional Consistory Court decision, based on erroneous information, have all combined to contribute to that distress and for that the Church must, and does, offer an unreserved and sincere apology. “

Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon (Number 2) [2026] ECC B&W 2

The Consistory Court reconsidered its earlier faculty decision in Re St. Andrew Compton Dundon [2025] ECC B&W 1, after discovering that through an administrative error, the court was not aware that Historic England had wished to be a party opponent.

To remedy the procedural unfairness, the Court joined Historic England, considered its expert evidence on the significance of the Victorian chancel stalls, and revisited the merits. Historic England demonstrated that the children’s choir stalls were an exceptionally rare, possibly unique, survival of Victorian church furnishing and that their removal would cause moderate harm to the significance of the Grade I listed church.

However, the Court concluded that the stalls were functionally redundant and that the parish’s need to create a smaller, more practical, energy-efficient worship space close to the altar outweighed that harm. It rejected Historic England’s proposed compromise as insufficient to meet the church’s present needs. Accordingly, the application to vary the existing faculty was dismissed, leaving the original faculty in force, including the condition preventing disposal of the removed stalls without further court approval.

Comment

The “Wrecclesham cases” raise an important question in relation to the closure of a churchyard: “To what extent is this within the gift of the incumbent/PCC?” Parishioners and those on the Electoral Roll have a legal right to be buried in a churchyard provided it has not been closed by an Order in Council under the Burial Act 1853 or 1855. The Ministry of Justice has issued Guidance Notes which explain the criteria for closure, including an application form to be completed by the PCC, (Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1956). The grounds for making an Order in Council are that:

(a) further burials would constitute a public health risk;
(b) further burials would be contrary to decency;
(c) burials should be discontinued for the prevention or mitigation of nuisance;
(d) there is no proper room for new graves; or
(e) [other] valid grounds as justified by the PCC.

Grounds (a) to (d) have been agreed by the Ministry of Justice, Church of England and local government representative organisations as potential grounds for justifying closure.

If (a), any Order to discontinue burials in a churchyard on the grounds that it is full will be made subject to exceptions allowing further burials in existing reserved grave spaces, vaults, walled graves or earthen graves provided they have sufficient room.

If any of (b) – (e),  a covering letter requires providing further information as to why burials should be discontinued.

In Barsuk and Gyl v Ukraine [2026] ECHR 145, the applicants, two female Jehovah’s Witnesses, had been attacked and beaten up by one S when they were preaching door-to-door and distributing religious literature in 2017 [1-8]. S was subsequently arrested and charged with “infliction of minor injuries which caused short-term damage to health” and “infliction of injuries of medium severity” under the Criminal Code [10].

The domestic proceedings

S admitted at his trial that he had pushed and grabbed them. He was an Orthodox Christian and regarded the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrines as false and dangerous, but he had not acted out of religious hatred but because he had previously seen a television news programme about fraudsters visiting people’s houses [16]. However, several Jehovah’s Witnesses, examined at the request of Ms Barsuk and Ms Gyl, testified that on other occasions S had been rude to them when they had been speaking to people in his neighbourhood, telling them that they belonged to a sect and were spreading propaganda, and that on some occasions he had pushed them [17]. He was convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and the court awarded Ms Barsuk and Ms Gyl compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage [18].

Both the prosecution and S appealed: the prosecution arguing that the sentence was too lenient, and S claiming that he had attempted “from a subjective point of view, to prevent a crime and detain the applicants whom he had sincerely believed to be fraudsters” [21]. Ms Barsuk and Ms Gyl lodged objections to the appeals, requesting that no retrial be ordered and that a decision be made to hold S criminally liable on the basis of “religious enmity” in respect of the offence [22].

In 2017, the Kharkiv Regional Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and remitted the case for retrial [23].  The retrial began but kept being reassigned to new retrial judges, until in March 2021, at S’s request, the court discontinued the proceedings as time-barred – a decision which the prosecutor did not oppose [24 & 25]. The applicants appealed the discontinuation, but the Kharkiv Regional Court of Appeal upheld it [26 & 27].

Complaints and judgment

Before the Fifth Section, the applicants complained that the authorities had failed to carry out an effective investigation into the assault on them, in particular by failing to uncover the motive of religious prejudice behind it, in breach of Articles 3 (inhuman or degrading treatment), 9 (religion or belief) and 13 ECHR (effective remedy) taken alone and in conjunction with Article 14 (discrimination) [35]. The Government submitted that the applicants had failed to exhaust domestic remedies by, for example, failing to lodge a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court against the ruling of the Court of Appeal on the time-bar [37]. As to the alleged breach of Article 9, the acts complained of were carried out by a private individual and were not directly attributable to the Government [66].

The Court noted that it was not disputed that when they were attacked, the applicants had been disseminating the doctrines and literature of the Jehovah’s Witnesses [68], so the domestic authorities were confronted with prima facie indications of violent acts motivated by the applicants’ exercise of their religion [69]. The State’s positive obligations under Article 9 of the Convention were, therefore, engaged, and the authorities had failed to carry out an effective investigation into the applicants’ complaint that they had been attacked while exercising their religion [71]. The respondent State had failed to comply with its positive obligations and there had been a violation of Article 9 taken in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention [72 & 73].

Judgments after 1 July 2022

Judgments prior to 1 July 2022

 Comment

The recent post Church of England: Revised “Net Zero ” Routemap (10 July 2026) gives an indication of the approach of the Diocesan Advisory Committees (to 2025) to the the replacement of “oil boilers”.

However, “oil boilers” is not a metric which has a direct equivalent in the Faculty Jurisdiction (Amendment) Rules 2022, which refer to  fitting “boilers which do not use fossil fuels” and “boiler replacement using same fuel supply”. Oil-fired heating systems are only referred to in relation to the the work being undertaken “by a person whose work is subject to an accredited certification scheme (as defined in rule 3.1(6))”. Furthermore, it is the diocesan consistory court which determines the conditions under which boiler replacement may be undertaken.

Updated: 12 July 2026, 04 :52.

… so apologies to Jonathan David Harvey or whatever he’s called…

Clergy Conduct Measure 2026

On Wednesday, the Clergy Conduct Measure 2026 received Royal Assent. It will be brought into force by Order.

Prime Ministerial religious affiliation

On Tuesday, in a written question, Lord Birt (CB) asked HMG “what plans they have to legislate to ensure a Prime Minister of any religious faith can discharge all of his or her responsibilities” – to which the short answer is evidently, “none”. Bs Anderson of Stoke on Trent replied:

“While religious faith does not prevent anyone from becoming Prime Minister, the Government recognises that there are some historical restrictions on duties in statute. In such cases the Government would make alternative arrangements, so that it can discharge its responsibilities in full.”

Assisted dying in Jersey

On Thursday, it was announced that Jersey’s Assisted Dying Bill had been given Royal Assent. The Assisted Dying (Jersey) Law 2026 will come into force when it is registered at Jersey’s Royal Court, although it will not come into effect until next year.

Church “Treasure”

It was reported by Kaya Burgess in The Times that “a stash of gold coins, now valued at £30,000”, was found by accident in the 14th-century church of St Wilfrid in the village of Melling in Lancashire. A parishioner, cleaning the church for its last Easter services, found a bag behind the wedding kneeler under the altar, with a note dated 2022 saying: “Hi there, I’d like to donate these nine gold Britannias to Melling church”, and signed “James, servant of the living God”.

A number of other churches and a school in the area have also reported finding gold coins, but the identity of the donor is unknown. The money will not pay in total for the repairs estimated at £750,000, but the injection of cash has also brought hope and the local community has started a heritage fund to try to save the church.

Dr Bernard Randall

In March 2023, we reported on the Employment Tribunal case, Mr B Randall v Trent College Ltd & Ors [2023] UKET 2600288/2020. The Revd Dr Bernard Randall, an Anglican priest, was employed as Trent College’s Chaplain. In May 2019, he delivered two sermons to the pupils about “competing ideologies” on identity politics and transgenderism, the content of which led to his summary dismissal in August 2019. He was reinstated on appeal but made redundant in November 2020 and subsequently lost his licence. His claim in the Employment Tribunal  was unsuccessful.

On Thursday, however, The Times reported that he has been reinstated. After an independent review, the Diocese of London has concluded that it could not be established on the balance of probabilities that Randall’s sermon caused harm. The investigator for the diocese recommended that “the concern or allegation” over Dr Randall “was unsubstantiated and there are no ongoing safeguarding concerns”.

Questions at the July 2026 Group of Sessions of the General Synod

The 239 Questions (and answers) for this weekend’s meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod were issued on 9 July 2026. Of these, the following may be of interest to readers.

Q3: Clergy Discipline Commission

Following the Makin Review, the questions were asked on: (a) how many clergy have been subject to applications for disciplinary proceedings under the CDM; and (b) against how many clergy are disciplinary procedures still outstanding?

Replying on behalf of the Chair of the Clergy Discipline Commission, Canon Dr Jamie Harrison said:

“Following the publication of the Makin Review, the Director of the National Safeguarding Team sought from the President of Tribunals permission under section 9 CDM 2003 to bring proceedings out of time against 10 individuals.

Out of the 10 applications, 7 were granted permission. Following this, 7 complaints under the CDM were brought, with 1 case being subject to a decision to take no further action by the bishop under section 13 CDM 2003, and 2 other cases having a finding of no case to answer following an investigation under section 17 CDM 2003.

The remaining 4 individuals are awaiting trials, which will be later this month”.

Q65: Quantifying emissions 

In response to another question, (Q65), the Church Commissioners were asked “What estimates have been made of the net effect on global temperatures if the Church of England achieves its Net Zero target?“, to which Sir Robert Buckland replied as Chair of the Net Zero Programme Board:

“Taking the Church of England’s efforts to decarbonise its buildings in isolation, the contribution to halting increases in global temperatures is impossible to measure. The same can be said for virtually every organisation, every home, every individual, and place around the planet but that is to miss the point. When the collective action, including that of the Church, is aggregated then our actions together will make a difference that can be measured. And not just in temperature terms but to the lives of our brothers and sisters, and the whole of creation, around the world”.

A more quantified analysis is here, in which we observed that the total emissions of the Church of England constitute less than 0.05% of those of the United Kingdom, which themselves are one hundred times smaller in global terms. Furthermore, in 2024, places of worship – churches, church halls and cathedrals – accounted under 32.5% of the Church’s total GHG emissions.

Q72:  Current policy on AI for the C of E’s National Church Institutions

In response to a Question on the use of AI within the Church of England (Q72), Mr Carl Hughes to reply on behalf of the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council:

“There is an NCI-wide AI policy which covers all employees and trustees working on company devices or personal devices used for work purposes. The policy allows the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot in a way which ensures compliant, secure and ethical use of GenAI technology and is under constant review as the technology develops.

As NCI employees the Communications team are covered by this policy. However, while the team regularly reviews how AI can be used to increase productivity, they ensure the graphics, images, videos and text are created by the team of communications professionals with relevant expertise. No prayers or worship materials are created by AI.

Additionally, AI guidance for churches is being worked on as part of Digital Labs training to equip church leaders. This is in response to the growing number of questions from church leaders and volunteers wanting support and guidance as they consider whether to use AI tools to help with their communications”.

Measures approved at Synod

The Draft Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, and Draft Ecclesiastical Property (Exceptions from Requirement for Consent to Dealings) Order 2026 were deemed approved. The associated Explanatory Notes and Policy Note are here, here, and here.

In addition, the Church has issued Synod Roundup: Saturday 11 July 2026.

And finally…

Nothing whatsoever to do with “religion” (though in some extreme cases association football does seem to excite a similar level of uncritical, undying devotion), but since the World Cup is reaching its climax, read on. The ECtHR recently had to consider a case involving football and freedom of speech. In De Carvalho Marques & Ors v Portugal [2026] ECHR 139, the Fourth Section held that a fine levied on Porto FC by the Portuguese Football Federation for comments in its club newsletter accusing a video assistant referee, one BP, of bias was a breach of Article 10 on freedom of speech. The Fourth Section said that the remarks were comments on BP’s professional conduct rather than on his private life and were “common in the context of football competitions”.

Quite so, Mr Trump. [With thanks to Scottish Legal News.]

Methodist Church

Unsurprisingly, there are a number of similarities between the Methodist church report on its work and aspiration to become net zero by 2030, summarized here, and the Church of England report Routemap to Net Zero revised (GS 2418). The Methodist report states that progress has been made but parts of the Church have struggled to develop a robust strategy to meet the target.

“While progress has been made which wouldn’t have happened without this target, it is important for us to recognise and acknowledge with lament that we will not be a net zero Church by 2030. The target was an aspirational one precisely because we knew the scale of the challenge in achieving it, and it is one which the Church has not had the capacity to achieve. To retain a target we know we are unable to achieve would undermine our credibility on this incredibly important issue and would open us to accusations of ‘greenwashing’”.

The report recommends a move from the 2030 target while also noting all the progress that has been made.

Church of England

Echoing some of these issues, the Church’s report GS 2418 states:

“Progress in some areas has been harder to achieve however; developing the approach for decarbonising Theological Education Institutions and other buildings for example. And progress against some Routemap Milestones is behind schedule (e.g. developing the approach for carbon offsetting and deciding on whether Church landholdings should come into scope or not).  The programme’s capacity is not infinite and lack of progress in these areas is reflective of the scale of the ambition set out in the Routemap and work needing to be prioritised”.

The Programme Team worked with consultants Arup to estimate the likely emissions reductions achievable by 2030; they forecast that by the scheduled end to the Net Zero Carbon Programme in 2024, an emissions reduction of approximately 50% was possible, and further. “If effort is embedded into day-to-day operations and continues beyond 2034 through to 2050  (and the UK Government’s own Climate Change target), getting within the 90% reduction threshold set by the Routemap to Net Zero is possible”.

Pages 18 to 25 of the Report present the progress on milestones for dioceses in the Routemap to Net Zero Carbon 2030[1]. The forecast reduction by 2030 is around 29% from the 2023 level (when the Programme formally commenced); this is the result of a combination of internal action (~50% of the forecast reduction) and reductions secured through external factors (e.g. the decarbonisation of the grid – the remaining ~50%).

“Net zero” and the faculty jurisdiction

The two National Milestones, 2.1 – Agree faculty rule changes for some net zero carbon measures,  and 2.2 – Promote Practical Path to Net Zero for churches are marked as completed, and with regard to the former, the new provisions Faculty Jurisdiction (Amendment) Rules 2022 came into force on 1 July 2022. These rules introduced:

• Requirement to have due regard to net zero guidance, (rule 2);
• Consultation before starting faculty proceedings, (rule 3);
• Changes to Lists A and B, (rule 4, and changes to the Schedule).

and an Explanatory Note [2]. The judgment Re St. Saviour Croydon [2022] ECC Swk 5, handed down on 21 November 2022, was the first to be considered under the revised legislation; links to this an subsequently reported cases are here. The Report summarizes the response from the dioceses, and is summarized in the following table.

Target Date: 2025; Percentage of dioceses

Comment

This post focusses on the “net zero” provisions within the Church of England and the extent to which these are subject to the faculty jurisdiction. It should be emphasized that in 2024, churches contributed 32.5% of the total church carbon footprint.

At 42.6%, schools were the largest contributor, followed by clergy housing at 14.1%, and cathedrals 2.9%[3]. It is notable that for clergy housing, 21% of dioceses are still replacing gas/oil boilers with like for like as standard practice (4.4.5 Milestone), and for schools, 19% have not Identified schools with end of life boilers, work with school to apply for grant funding for feasibility studies and are not planning to in 2025 (4.3.3 Milestone).

Although an approximate indication of the approach of the Diocesan Advisory Committees (to 2025) to the the replacement of “oil boilers” is given, this metric which has no direct equivalent in the Faculty Jurisdiction (Amendment) Rules 2022 which refer to  fitting “boilers which do not use fossil fuels” and “boiler replacement using same fuel supply”.  Oil-fired heating systems are only referred to in relation to the the work being undertaken “by a person whose work is subject to an accredited certification scheme (as defined in rule 3.1(6))”.

[1] Milestones to Net Zero Carbon 2030

For Dioceses

• 4.1.1 Milestone for Diocese: Convene NZC working group
• 4.1.2 Milestone for Diocese: Provide annual carbon emissions report to Diocesan Synod
• 4.1.4 Milestone for Diocese: Provide outline of decarbonisation plan to Diocesan Synod as a NZAP.
• 4.1 (Consideration 8) Consideration for Diocese: Engage with local authorities regarding potential heat networks.
• 4.2 (Consideration 5) Consideration for Diocese: Identify top 20% churches and plan to support them.]

For Churches and Cathedrals

• 4.2.12 Milestone for Churches and cathedrals: No new oil boilers

For schools

• 4.3.3 Milestone for DBE: Identify schools with end of life boilers, work with school to apply for grant funding for feasibility studies

For housing

• 4.4.2 Milestone for Housing Managers: Retrofitting and maintenance plans in place
• 4.4.5 Milestone for Diocese: Stock improvement plan to decarbonise heat in place that refers to ‘Advice Note: Moving Houses to Net Zero’

For offices

• 4.6.1 Milestone for Office managers: Offices working towards Eco Church Bronze and Silver
• 4.6 (Consideration 2) Consideration for Office managers: Adopt flexible working policy
• 4.6.3 Milestone for Office managers: All offices have a high level NZAP
• 4.6.4 Milestone for Office managers: Review options for EV charging at offices

For land

• 6.2.2 Milestone for Diocese: Review tenancy agreements to include NZC and
  biodiversity
• 4.1.6 Milestone for Diocese: All dioceses audit their landholdings and develop a land management plan.

For work-related travel

• 5.3 (Consideration 2) Consideration for Diocese: Update expenses policies to encourage sustainable transport
• 5.3.3 Milestone for All: Have a Travel Plan that includes ‘no travel’ options

For Comms

• 4.1.3 Milestone for Diocese: Develop a communication strategy to churches and schools
• 5.1 (Consideration 4) Consideration for Diocese: Integrate NZC questions in the Archdeacons Articles of Inquiry.

[2] Explanatory Note

These Rules amend the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015 (S.I. 2015/1568) (“the 2015 Rules”).

Rule 2 provides that persons proposing to undertake certain works must, as part of the procedure, provide an explanation of how they have had due regard to guidance issued by the Church Buildings Council on reducing carbon emissions.

Rule 3 makes minor amendments to the procedure for consultation before faculty proceedings can begin, including by imposing a requirement that, where the online faculty system is used for the consultation, responses to the consultation should also use the online system.

Rule 4 introduces the Schedule, which makes amendments to Lists A and B in Schedule 1 to the 2015 Rules. In particular, the amendments in Part 2 of the Schedule are concerned with promoting environmental protection (for example, fitting boilers which do not use fossil fuels and installing charging points for electric vehicles).

Rule 5 makes some minor drafting improvements and corrections to the 2015 Rules, and Rule 6 makes transitional provisions.

The Explanatory Note is not part of the Rules.

[3] See Carbon Footprint Reports, (12 June 2026), and The Church of England, Carbon Emissions Report 2024.

Lord Mackay was a devout member and elder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which has traditionally banned its members from attending Roman Catholic services. In the mid-1980s, however, he attended requiem masses for two of his judicial colleagues, Lord Russell of Killowen and Lord Wheatley, and he was summoned to a meeting of synod to explain himself. He denied that he had broken the Church’s prohibition, explaining that he had attended purely to pay his respects to his dead colleagues; however, the synod suspended him from the eldership and barred him from communion for six months. In 1989 it met again to review the decision, but he refused to give any undertaking not to do the same in future should the occasion arise, and he later withdrew from the Church.

The result was a split in the Free Presbyterian Church that led to the establishment of the Associated Presbyterian Churches by those who felt that the FPC did not give sufficient weight to freedom of conscience as set out in the Westminster Confession of Faith: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any way contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith or worship”. 

Lord Mackay will be remembered as a great reforming Lord Chancellor, inter alia introducing the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, which ended the Bar’s monopoly on audience in the higher courts, “no win, no fee” litigation, and the reforms that ended fault-based divorce.

There are obituaries in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and  Scottish Legal News,

On 29 June 2026, The Methodist Conference received an update on the Church’s Action for Hope work and aspiration to become net zero by 2030. Representatives heard that progress had been made across the Connexion, but parts of the Church have struggled to develop a robust strategy to meet the target. The report concluded that it would be better to move from the 2030 target while also noting all the progress that has been made.

In an associated report, the Connexional Council advised that retaining the 2030 target would risk undermining credibility and invite accusations of ‘greenwashing’ and therefore recommended its withdrawal. Instead, the Conference was asked to adopt a more flexible, ongoing approach to carbon reduction that prioritises sustained progress over a fixed deadline.

This includes developing tools to support voluntary carbon footprint measurement, encouraging engagement at every level of the Church and focusing on practical actions such as property reviews, reducing travel emissions and increasing participation in schemes like Eco Church. The Conference heard that while this represents a step back from a time-bound ambition, it reflects a more honest and sustainable pathway – one that maintains both inspiration and a sense of urgency while focusing on long-term carbon reduction.

The report to the Conference reads:

“While the reality of the scale of decarbonising the Church has meant that the aspirational target of net zero by 2030 will not be reached, this must be viewed as one stage of the journey and not the end of it. The scale of the challenge ahead, alongside the worsening situation and unjust impacts of the climate crisis on God’s creation, requires us to increase our efforts rather than lose focus or momentum.

“As we consider the work of Action for Hope to this point it is important to hold both the lament that the Church will not reach its aspirational target and the celebration of progress which has been made as a result of setting the goal. Both the lament and celebration must be used as motivation to further effort.”

Dr Hamish Leese, Director of Environmental Engagement at the Methodist Church, said:

“In 2021 the Methodist Conference agreed and affirmed that the global climate emergency is a crisis for God’s creation and a fundamental injustice. It is, therefore, not only a practical issue but a deeply spiritual one, which is inextricably linked to discipleship and God’s mission which we are called to join. At the same Conference, an aspirational target was agreed for the Church to aim to become net zero by 2030.

“In the years since 2021 a great deal of work has been undertaken by churches, circuits and districts all across the Connexion, and I want to say a big congratulations to all those who have made progress. We have seen churches all over the country making environmental concerns part of their worship and teaching life and reduce the amount of energy they are using, as well as sourcing it from renewable sources. Many churches have added solar panels or heat pumps, and many more have taken the first steps that will enable them to travel further on their sustainability journey. Over 1,300 Methodist churches in Great Britain are now registered with Eco Church, and this number is growing all the time.

“While progress has been made which wouldn’t have happened without this target, it is important for us to recognise and acknowledge with lament that we will not be a net zero Church by 2030. The target was an aspirational one precisely because we knew the scale of the challenge in achieving it, and it is one which the Church has not had the capacity to achieve. To retain a target we know we are unable to achieve would undermine our credibility on this incredibly important issue and would open us to accusations of ‘greenwashing’.

“Although the Church is moving away from the time-bound target, this is in no way an indication that these issues are any less important to the Church. Climate change is inherently and inescapably an issue of mission, discipleship  and justice. Indeed, this proposed change is a recognition that an issue of this importance requires a realistic and practical approach which moves beyond an aspirational target which is out of reach.

“As we move into a new phase of our journey towards net zero it is critical that we maintain momentum, inspiration and a sense of urgency, where all Methodists and Methodist churches are called to act as swiftly as possible to reduce our emissions and, in doing so, promote climate justice and enable the flourishing of God’s creation.”

Church of England

On 12 July 2026, there will be a presentation by to the Church of England General Synod of the report Routemap to Net Zero revised (GS 2418) by Sir Robert Buckland KBE KC (ex officio) (Third Church Estates Commissioner); he will move “That the Synod do take note of this Report.” This item updates Synod on work undertaken on moving to Net Zero by 2030 since the debate in July 2022. The Church Times reports (£) “Church of England goal to reach net zero by 2030 will not be met, new progress report forecasts“

A further post will analyse this report, which includes analyses on the replacement of  heating boilers installed in churches and cathedrals.

• Clergy Conduct Rules – for approval
• Abuse Redress Rules – for approval
• National Church Governance Measure – report from the Legislative Committee
• House Of Clergy Election (Amendment) Rules 2025– for approval
• House Of Laity Election (Amendment) Rules 2025– for approval
• Vacancy In See Committees (Amendment) Regulation – for approval
• Legal Officers (Annual Fees) Order 2026 – for deemed approval
• Ecclesiastical Judges, Legal Officers and Others (Fees) Order 2026 – for
  deemed approval
• Draft Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) (Amendment) Regulations
  2026 – for deemed approval
• Draft Ecclesiastical Property (Exceptions from Requirement For Consent
  To Dealings) Order 2026 – for deemed approval

Links to the relevant documents are included in an earlier post. 

In Bains v Arsalan & Anor (Funeral Arrangements) [2026] EWHC 1597 (Fam), Harleen, a Sikh baby of unmarried Sikh parents, died in 2020 aged 2 months after suffering fatal injuries at home. In August 2022, her father committed suicide [1-4] after being falsely accused of Harleen’s murder by her mother, and in November 2022, Harleen’s mother was charged with her murder and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 19 years. She converted to Islam and changed her name from Sharandeep Kaur Talwandi to Zara Arsalan. For six years, Harleen’s body remained in a mortuary under the responsibility of the Coroner’s Office [5-8].

In May 2026, the Coroner’s Office contacted a charitable bereavement service, Iqbal and Sons (the second respondent), with formal written instructions from Ms Arsalan to give Harleen an Islamic burial, followed by a Burial Order authorising release of the body. The burial application form referred incorrectly to Harleen’s religion as Islam “in circumstances where she had been born into the Sikh faith and remained so at her death” [9&10], and her paternal grandparents sought an injunction to halt the burial, contending that she should have a Sikh funeral [13].

It was argued on their behalf that, under the Forfeiture Act 1982, Harleen’s mother had no locus to apply for a grant of administration and, therefore, no right to determine burial arrangements, and that Harleen’s paternal grandmother should be granted letters of administration to carry out the funeral arrangements instead [18].

Peel J pointed out that it was long established that “the law recognises no property in a corpse”. Harleen had died intestate; Rule 22 of the Non Contentious Probate Rules 1987 (NCPR) listed the order of priority of those entitled to a grant of letters of administration for someone who died intestate and “(c) the father and mother of the deceased” came before “(f) grandparents” in that list [27]. The starting point was therefore that Harleen’s mother was entitled to a grant of administration to enable her to authorise arrangements for the body [28]. However, under s.116 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, the order of priority in the NCPR could be displaced if special circumstances made it necessary or expedient to do so [29], and he was satisfied that

“…by reason of the Forfeiture Act, and accepting as I do the submissions of counsel for the paternal grandmother, Harleen’s mother is not entitled to benefit from the estate of Harleen and, accordingly, is not entitled to apply for, or receive, a grant of administration under Rule 22 of the NCPR” [38].

Harleen’s mother was her closest biological relative, and he had “no reason to doubt her acceptance of Islamic faith and her wish for Harleen to be buried in accordance with Islamic tradition” [40]; however, it was Harleen’s mother who had murdered her, Harleen had been a Sikh, it was the wish of the paternal family and of her father when he was alive that she should be buried in accordance with the Sikh tradition, and none of the wider maternal family had expressed any desire to be involved, having disassociated themselves from Harleen’s mother [41].

And if he was wrong about that, he was satisfied that, under Rule 22 of the NCPR and the Forfeiture Act 1982, the fact that Harleen’s mother had killed Harleen “in horrific circumstances” and the fact that it was expedient to grant letters of administration to the paternal grandmother “to enable her to make the funeral arrangements in accordance with the Sikh faith, culture and tradition” were, taken together, special circumstances that weighed in favour of varying the order of priority [42].

* Guest posts.

Comment

The following observations may be made on the above posts which are listed in descending order of number of page-views:

• Our very first post in 2012 addressed the successful challenge of the National Secular Society, (NSS), and the late Mr Clive Bone, a former Bideford town councillor, to the inclusion of ‘Prayers’ as the first substantive item of business at full meetings of the Council. The opinions of Local Authorities to “Council Prayers” have changed since events at Bideford, and last year the NSS observed that Reform councillors imposed prayers on Derbyshire County Council after the party had taken control of the Council.
• Posts on Parochial fees often feature in these listings, and their publication by the Church of England each December results reflects searches for previous fees as well as newly announced ones, hence the interest in the post with information on 2025 and 2026 fees.
• The two posts on CDM proceedings concerned considerations of before the Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Derby, in which it “found the Respondent’s behaviour (of non-participation) to be puzzling and in the face of many opportunities to act otherwise, to have been disappointing in one tasked with important duties in her role“.
• Further to the update on the Thomas Corker Memorial, this was considered by Truro Diocesan Synod on 9 June, here, and reported by local media.
• As in the Q1 analysis, Guest posts featured in the “top ten”; possibly an encouragement to others to submit articles?

[1]  i.e. those other than “Archives” and “Index”. However, for the present analysis, these categories did not fall within the “top 10”.

[2] For comparison, there were 20% for January to April in 2025 and ~12% for posts from 1 August 2024 to 4 July 2025.

Updated: 29 June 2026 at 08:46.

The Daily Telegraph has now reported that the urn was not filled with human ashes  and that it was taken to the races last year as part of an elaborate joke, (£) The burger van, the fake ashes and the burial no one could stop (1 July 2026). The background to Gary Bon­sor – the name on the cremation urn – relevant to L&RUK is that he died in his sleep in 2021 aged 58, and a few family members who wanted to mark his death arranged “the cheapest package, an early morning cremation” a few weeks after his death.

His ashes were not then trans­ferred to an urn, but “scattered in a lake at a park Bonsor had enjoyed walking in. The “ashes” that were found in the urn at New­bury Race­course are not human at all, but “wood fire ashes and a few mini­ature whiskey bottles as that was his tipple”. As to the future, the Telegraph article states:

“What hap­pens now to the ashes – and the whis­key bottles, if they too have been ‘reverently laid to rest’ – is unclear. The Rev Minter, when The Telegraph approached her, was not keen to divulge. ‘I’m trying hard to man­age the natural curiosity around the situ­ation with the very real demands of parish ministry,’ she said.

A spokes­man for the Diocese of Oxford says that the ashes were presented to the church as genuine human remains and were therefore treated as such. If they are found to be fake, will they be dug up again, or left to feed the grass? “’There are processes for all these things,” the spokes­man says mysteriously. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see’.”

Observations

Whilst L&RUK does not comment on on-going issues, it is pertinent to note:

• The minutes of a meeting of the Parochial Church Council on 14 October 2025 correctly noted “We cannot legally bury without the right paperwork, which we do not have”.[1]
• Paperwork on the cremation may now be accessed from crematorium now it is said to be known when and where the “early morning” cremation took place.
• Since the urn, now buried, does not contain human remains, Re Blagdon Cemetery does not apply, and its contents seem to be unlikely sources of groundwater pollution.
• On the basis of the information available to the Court at the time, a faculty was granted for the interment of the urn containing the ashes to take place within 28 days from the grant of the faculty [7].
• A record on the churchyard plan of the place and circumstances of the burial were to be made as a condition of the faculty which was handed down on 21 June 2026 [6].

[1] The Guidebook for The Clergy, General Register Office, (Issued 2012, Last Updated August 2024) lists only one exception to the rule that a registrar’s certificate or coroner’s order must be produced before the burial is allowed to take place, (para.9.5 and Appendix U), neither of  which was applicable in this case.

In the case of The Reverend Henry Curran, the content of a text sent by the Respondent was one of the four example of “unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders within Section 8(1)(d) of the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003” considered by the Tribunal.

A more recent CDM determination, The Revd Samuel Cross (June 2026) considered a different aspect of social media usage by clergy. Extensive material from WhatsApp and Snapchat assisted the court’s analysis of the relationship between the parties.

Decision

The CDM proceedings brought against the Reverend Samuel Cross arose out of a complaint by Person A (“the Complainant”) on 29 November 2024. By a decision dated 18 June 2025 the Deputy President of Tribunals referred the following charge to the Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for determination: that the Respondent’s conduct was unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders within S8(1)(d) Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 in that:

(a)  Being a married man, he engaged in a sexual relationship with the Complainant Person A from in or about October 2021 until January 2023; (b) After January 2023, he continued to engage in an inappropriate relationship with the said complainant and by his actions failed to maintain any or any proper professional or pastoral boundary, and; (c) Throughout the period of the parties’ relationship, between about October 2021 and January 2024, he behaved towards the said complainant in a manner which was coercive and controlling.

The Respondent had been the vicar of St Thomas, St Andrew and St Philip, Kensal Town, in the Diocese of London since 2017. He married in 2014 and separated from his former wife in October 2021. They were divorced on 20 January 2023.

The Complainant lived as a lodger at the vicarage from August 2021. She was baptised in the parish in December 2021 and confirmed in June 2022. Initially she was a university student but then became employed by the Diocese as an apprentice children’s worker in the parish in September 2022. She left her employment sometime in the spring in 2024[3].

At the time of the alleged misconduct, it was alleged that the Respondent was, variously, the Complainant’s priest, partner, landlord and line manager, with responsibility for supervision at work [5].

The Tribunal had regard to the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy (2015) and also Canon C 26 – Of the manner of life of clerks in Holy Orders[7]. Its description of the circumstance [emphasis added] as:

“[8] … a sad case where, in the Tribunal’s view, the relationship between the Complainant (“Person A”) and the Respondent (vicar of St Thomas, St Andrew and St Philip, Kensal Town, Diocese of London) had inappropriate features from the beginning, sometime in the Autumn 2021 until it ended in January 2024. Evidentially this case is unusual in that the whole course of the relationship is tracked across 1000 pages of WhatsApp messages between the couple from the start until the end and further messages between the Complainant and [another priest and his wife][4].

A further complication was that although initially the Complainant paid rent, which apparently went to fund the organist, there came a time, in February 2022, when she stopped paying rent altogether[21].

One of the Complainant’s concerns was that she took on an increasing level of responsibility for the running of the vicarage, including looking after a menagerie of animals that they, particularly, the Respondent had acquired. One of the animals was the Respondent’s dog, Marshall, to whom he was very attached; however it was aggressive, biting the Complainant on more than one occasion necessitating outpatient treatment, and was put down in April 2023 at the insistence of the Complainant, “which may well have been terminal for their relationship”[14].

The Tribunal observed “The evidence from the parties [was] directly contradictory[8]”, although such is the nature of prolonged WhatsApp exchanges, “[o]n several occasions [the Respondent] let his guard down”; on 4 February 2022, he sent the Complainant a message at 01:25 asking if he could he join her to which she replied BYOP, (i.e. bring your own pillow). In addition to the 1000 pages of WhatsApp messages, there were screenshots from Snapchat and photographs for the whole period of the relationship[17].

The Tribunal concluded [19] that the contemporaneous records supported the Complainant’s evidence that there was a sexual relationship between the Complainant and the Respondent…The Tribunal rejected the Respondent’s answer in oral evidence that he did not respond to messages of a sexual nature, which he considered were more appropriate to discuss with the Complainant in person and not reply on WhatsApp. It added [21]: “If there was any lingering doubt about the matter, the Snapchat messages and photographs tell the same story”.

The Tribunal considered that the Complainant gave her evidence…with clarity and confidence in a quiet and persuasive manner. It accepts her evidence regarding the nature of the sexual relationship she had with the Respondent in its entirety, however, it did not accept that the relationship was coercive and controlling [22]. However, it rejected the Respondent’s evidence regarding the sexual nature of the relationship and found that he consistently lied in these proceedings both in his witness statements and oral evidence[24].

The fact that the Respondent has lied to this tribunal is consistent with how he deliberately chose to deceive his church about his relationship with the Complainant, keeping it private from the churchwardens, PCC and other members of the clergy[25]. The Tribunal concluded:

“[28]. …mindful that that the burden of proof is on the Designated Officer, who bring this case on behalf of the Complainant, and that the standard of proof is that applied in civil proceedings, namely on the balance of probabilities, the tribunal finds that heads of charge (a) and (b) laid against the Respondent are proved and (c) is dismissed. The Respondent’s counsel accepted that if the tribunal found that the parties had engaged in sexual intercourse before the Respondent’s divorce in January 2023 then that would amount to conduct unbecoming.

Penalty

The Tribunal stated that in its view, the Respondent was highly culpable in permitting the sexual relationship with the Complainant to develop, indeed inappropriate messaging began even before she moved into the Rectory. The relationship was inappropriate from close to the outset. It also noted a number of aggravating factors:

• the Respondent’s sexual relationship with the Complainant was undertaken over a prolonged period of 15 or so months from shortly after she moved into the Rectory until his divorce was finalised in January 2023 [6].
• there was a power imbalance between the Respondent and the Complainant in circumstances where he was aware that she was a vulnerable person with mental health issues, having dropped out of university. The Tribunal considered it was important to take into account that he was a parish priest and she was a student lodger living in his home [7].
• a further aggravating factor was the covert nature of the relationship which continued until it ended in January 2024. The Complainant made clear the harm that she suffered to her psychological state both before and after the relationship ended [8].

The Tribunal considered carefully the submissions of Ms Gyane (Counsel for the Respondent), particularly in relation to the Respondent’s own history of mental health issues. They have taken into account that he was of previous good character, and that the relationship was probably not destructive of the Respondent’s marriage and did not involve anybody else’s marriage, or indeed, have a detrimental impact on children. The character references were supportive of the Respondent being a capable and effective parish priest in a difficult area [9]. It noted:

“The Tribunal was concerned that the Respondent had failed to show any insight or remorse about entering into a sexual relationship with the Complainant whilst he was still married. Such insight as he has shown related to his failure to inform persons in authority in his church that he was in a romantic relationship with the Complainant…. [10]”.

“In the circumstances of this case, the Tribunal agreed that the only proportionate penalties open to it were a limited period of prohibition or prohibition for life. It did not consider that any of the other penalties adequately reflected the seriousness of the matters found proved. Ms Gyane accepted that the threshold for prohibition has been passed. [It] considered the view expressed by the Acting Bishop of London that a limited prohibition of three years is an appropriate sanction. Whilst this may have been appropriate where the Respondent had admitted the matters found proved but not where the matters had been denied throughout [11].

The Tribunal expressed its concern whether, in the absence of the Respondent’s insight and remorse, he will be able to resume public ministry in the future. On balance, it considered that there is such a possibility but only after appropriate pastoral, training and other necessary support, and after a long period of reflection over his past behaviour[12]. It concluded:

“[13]….the appropriate penalty that it should impose is a prohibition for a period of five years from the date of this decision. It also directed that the Respondent should be removed from office as the incumbent of St Thomas, St Andrew and St Philip,  Kensal Town, in the Diocese of London”.

Notes

[1] As from 13 June 2024, the “Like” capability on X/Twitter ceased to be accessible to others apart from the person “Liking” a particular Tweet.

[2] “He did not attend the hearing. An order was made in accordance with Rule 42 of the Clergy Discipline Rules that the tribunal should proceed in his absence, the Chair being satisfied that the Respondent had been properly made aware of the hearing and did not attend through choice[2]”. See also Non-involvement with CDM proceedings (II).

[3] Some of the more explicit details of the relationship between the Respondent and the Claimant have been omitted.

[4] The “1000 pages of WhatsApp messages” refer to the export chat history from a chat on which the WhatsApp platform provides guidance on how this may be delivered from Android and Apple (iOS) devices.

In this Legal Spirits Short Take, Mattone Center Director Mark Movsesian discusses the recent controversy involving Congressman Dan Goldman and a Brooklyn coffee shop that reportedly said it would have refused him service because of his support for Israel. Was this illegal discrimination based on religion, or a refusal of service based on politics? What does this episode reveal about public accommodations law, political disagreement, and our penchant for turning ordinary commerce into a space for ideological conflict? Listen in!

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The Defense Department recently created a controversy by revising its list of religious affiliation codes for service members and failing to designate the LDS Church as Christian. After objections, DOD removed the Christian designation from the list altogether. In this Legal Spirits Short Take, Center Director Mark Movsesian explains how the episode reveals a deeper problem of liberalism in a religiously diverse society: government must frequently classify religion, but no classification can be completely neutral. Listen in!

The post Legal Spirits 078: A Short Take on Religion in the Military appeared first on LAW AND RELIGION FORUM.

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a restructuring of its Office for Civil Rights that will create separate divisions focused on religious liberty and conscience protections, civil rights enforcement, and health privacy and cybersecurity. HHS said the changes are intended to combat anti-Christian bias and race-based discrimination while strengthening enforcement efficiency.
• A Virginia appeals court revived a lawsuit against McLean Bible Church over claims that church leaders improperly handled a 2021 elder election and disenfranchised members. The court ruled that limited judicial review of the dispute is not automatically barred by the First Amendment.
• A new lawsuit in Utah, backed by pro-life advocates with religious and fetal personhood arguments, claims that disposing of unused IVF embryos violates wrongful death laws. The case has raised concerns that similar religion-influenced legal challenges to IVF practices could spread to other states.
• A Texas jury ordered an insurer to pay more than $7 million to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after the insurer denied coverage for legal costs related to lawsuits involving former seminary president Paige Patterson and the school’s handling of sexual assault allegations. The case arose from broader controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention over abuse and institutional accountability.
• Two senators introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at combating antisemitism and increasing security protections for Jewish institutions, including a proposal to expand federal nonprofit security grants to $1 billion annually. The legislation would also address antisemitism on college campuses and require greater transparency from social media companies on moderating antisemitic content.
• The Vatican’s Synod office released a new document outlining the path toward a global ecclesial assembly in 2028, continuing the Catholic Church’s “Synod on Synodality” process launched under Pope Francis. The plan establishes stages for dioceses, bishops’ conferences, and continental church bodies to evaluate how “synodality” is being implemented in local churches over the next several years.
• A Catholic nun in Los Angeles runs Francisco Homes, a housing program for formerly incarcerated men, including immigrants facing deportation. Her ministry sits in the context of ongoing debates over immigration enforcement and deportation policy.
• Archbishop John Ricard, the former archbishop of Baltimore and first leader of the National Black Catholic Congress, has died at age 86. Ricard was a prominent Black Catholic leader known for advancing Black Catholic ministry and advocacy within the Church for decades.

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This month, I have had the pleasure of teaching an online seminar on the Supreme Court of the United States for students in Yerevan State University’s Master’s Program in American Studies. The seminar focuses on the Court’s power of judicial review and the limits on that power—limits imposed by the other branches of government, by the Court itself, and by the American people. We also have been discussing current proposals for Supreme Court reform. I have used the Court’s Religion Clause jurisprudence as an example of its influence in US life.

The seminar has been a lot of fun. The students have asked excellent questions about constitutional law, judicial power, and the Court’s role in American public life. I am grateful to Yerevan State University, the Master’s Program in American Studies, Alexander Markarov, and Vahagn Aglyan for the invitation and for their hospitality.

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Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web

• The Fourth Circuit ruled that Virginia may deny state scholarship funding for students pursuing vocational religious degrees, siding with the state in a challenge brought by a Liberty University student. The court held that the Supreme Court’s decision in Locke v. Davey controlled and permitted states to withhold funding for religious instruction programs. 
• The Supreme Court allowed access to the abortion pill mifepristone by mail to remain in place while litigation continues. The decision pauses a lower court ruling that would have imposed new restrictions on the drug’s distribution. 
• A group of federal employees sued Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, alleging that religious messages sent through official USDA emails promoted Christianity in the workplace. The lawsuit claims the emails violated the Establishment Clause by amounting to government endorsement of religion. 
• An Iraqi court ruled in favor of a woman seeking to change her official religious designation from Islam to Christianity, a decision that could have broader implications for religious rights in the country. 
• France’s Senate rejected an assisted-dying bill this week, as Christian and pro-life groups called on lawmakers to preserve the decision. The debate has drawn continued attention from religious organizations and renewed disputes over end-of-life legislation. 

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Pleased to post below a link to the Mattone Center’s annual review for 2025-2026. Among the highlights: media productions, including podcasts and a video series on landmark cases in religious freedom; events, including international conferences and moot courts; and faculty scholarship. Thanks to everyone who has supported our activities–looking forward to next year!

https://t.e2ma.net/webview/imanfk/e675ed3ee68b1bd00f92234f8db7e2b3

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In this episode of Legal Spirits, I speak with Andrea Pin about his new book, Dignity in Judgment, and the role of human dignity in contemporary constitutional law. We explore competing understandings of dignity—a secular, autonomy-based view and a more communal conception influenced by religious traditions—and consider how courts choose between them. Along the way, we discuss why the secular view appears to dominate in practice and how judicial formation shapes the meaning of dignity in constitutional adjudication.

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Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, responded to Vice President Vance’s recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday Homily, emphasizing that “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.”
• This week, the Justice Department Office of Legal Policy’s Weaponization Working Group published a 37-page report which concluded, in part, that “the Biden DOJ ‘engaged in biased enforcement of the FACE Act’ and ‘pursued more severe charges and significantly harsher sentences for peaceful pro-life defendants than violent pro-abortion defendants.'”
• In a press release following the final hearing of the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, Chairman Dan Patrick rejected the notion that the First Amendment requires a total separation of church and state.
• Ohio Attorney General David Yost has filed suit seeking to prevent Hebrew Union College (HUC) from closing its 150-year-old Cincinnati rabbinical school.
• The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and Rosary Hill Home, a hospice care facility in New York, filed suit in a New York federal district court challenging New York’s requirements for care of transgender patients.
• On April 14th, a settlement was reached between the Coast Guard and three Coast Guard members who had brought a class action after they were denied religious exemptions from the military’s COVID vaccine mandate. Among other things, the Agreement requires the Coast Guard to remove references in personnel records of service members’ decision to remain unvaccinated.

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