Article

Comment

Economics

Hinduism

Sustainability

23 August 2023

10 min read

What Gandhi's economist can say about sustainability today

As twentieth-century notions on economic growth for its own sake are questioned it may be worth revisiting JC Kumarappa, the most influential Christian of the India’s independence struggle.

'Sha'

'Sha' serves as the administrator of Indo-Christian Culture, a Twitter account and Medium blog.

A mechanic stands in a workshop beside a motorcycle under repair.

A motorcycle mechanic in his Chennai workshop.

Photo by Palash Jain on Unsplash.

J.C. Kumarappa (1892 – 1960) was an Indian economist, writer and freedom fighter in the Indian Independence Movement. Widely regarded as the most influential Christian of the India’s independence struggle, Kumarappa’s most notable contribution was as the father of Gandhian economics. Informed by a lifetime of travel through rural India, Kumarappa fused Gandhian thought with Christian ethics to create a school of economics that is difficult to place within the traditional Western understanding of the political spectrum.

Fusing traditionalist perspectives on economics with a radical commitment to universal upliftment, Gandhian economics was regarded by many as being too idealistic for real world application. But in an era where twentieth-century notions on the inherent superiority of central planning, material consumption and economic growth for its own sake are being increasingly questioned, it may be worth revisiting this school of thought, its early achievements and its founding father.

Early Life

J.C. Kumarappa was born on January 4, 1892, in what is now Thanjavur District, Tamil Nadu, India. The son of a well to do civil servant and the grandson of a Lutheran Pietistic Minister, his family descended from some of India’s earliest Protestant converts.

His parents were strong believers in Pietistic notions of morality and charity. Kumarappa’s father was a strong proponent of academic achievement and professional success, encouraging all his children, including daughters, to pursue higher education and careers.

Kumarappa’s mother believed in the importance of imparting a sense of personal responsibility and concern for the poor to her children. A defining experience of Kumarappa’s childhood working alongside his siblings to raise chickens and turkeys for sale in the market, with all proceeds going to support his mother’s charitable endeavors.

Though most readers would nod approvingly at the Kumarappa’s parenting strategies they were ahead of their time in many ways. Facilitating higher education for their daughters at a time when even many upper-class Indian women were illiterate and encouraging their children to raise chickens in a society where the upper classes recoiled at the thought of performing any sort of manual labour.

In keeping with the high academic and professional expectations of his family, Kumarappa would go on to study history before departing for London in 1913 to pursue an accounting apprenticeship. Unlike many Indian independence activists, including Gandhiji, Kumarappa steered clear of the political activism that was becoming increasingly mainstream among Indian students studying in the UK.

A regular church goer at first, he grew disillusioned by the British church’s active support for World War I war efforts and became increasingly influenced by Christian Pacifist war resistors. He returned to India in 1919 to pursue a career as a successful accountant before travelling to the United States in 1927, at the age of 35, to pursue a business degree at Syracuse University.

By this time, Kumarappa had psychologically detached himself from the organized church in favor of independent spiritual practice. Kumarappa was not alone in this. The ascetic, Sadhu Sundar Singh, and the women’s rights advocate, Pandita Ramabai, regarded as the mother of Indian Pentecostal Christianity are two other notable Indian Protestant figures, from the twentieth-century, also rejected formal church affiliation. In all three cases, an intense Christian devotion coexisted alongside a sense of disillusionment over the organized church’s support for the British Raj.

With his spiritual transformation complete, Kumarappa’s time in the United States marked the start of his political awakening. Following the lead of two of his elder brothers, who had already joined the independence movement, Kumarappa grew increasingly disillusioned by the actions and attitudes of the British Raj. He published Public Finance and India’s Poverty, a critical analysis of British colonialism’s economic exploitation of India. The publication was disseminated internationally and widely read by many including Gandhiji himself.

He also expressed skepticism in the unchallenged belief that technological innovation was always a net good.

Kumarappa had returned to India in 1929, where after his request for an audience with Gandhiji was approved, he became a full-time independence activist and adherent of the Gandhian social movement. His first undertaking included an assessment of the economic state of rural India, something which had previously only be done from the perspective of the British colonial government and would eventually go on the become the editor of Young India, the official English language newspaper of the Gandhian movement. It was through this work that Kumarappa began to develop a school economic thought he dubbed Gandhian economics.

Gandhian economics

Inspired by the teachings of Gandhiji along with his own Christian worldview, Gandhian economics served as an indigenous alternative to the dominant ideologies of capitalism and socialism. Kumarappa recognized that contemporary Indian society was plagued by extreme poverty, low-social trust, and systemic exploitation of the rural majority at the hands of the colonial state, feudal landlords and caste hierarchy. However, he was unconvinced of capitalism and socialism’s ability to effectively address these issues, fearing their propensity to centralize decision making authority in the hands of a few, be they bureaucrats or CEOs, would only further disenfranchise ordinary Indians.

He also expressed skepticism in the unchallenged belief that technological innovation was always a net good and believed technology should be critically assessed to evaluate whether it advances the interests and values of the communities they serve.

The six pillars of Gandhian economics include the concepts of:

1. Sarvodaya (universal upliftment): Gandhian economics believed economic development must focus around achieving welfare and upliftment for all people, including those who have been historically marginalized. The emphasis on Sarvodaya is also why Gandhian economics should not be confused with reactionary political thought which emphasizes the preservation of traditional social and economic institutions for the benefit of the elite.

2. Decentralization: The decentralization of decision-making authority is necessary to protect individual autonomy and empower communities. Kumarappa believed that centralized authority and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few would lead to exploitation and disenfranchisement, regardless of the prevailing ideology. Kumarappa argued that an emphasis on small scale industries and local self-sufficiency would be more effective as a means of poverty alleviation in India.

3. Trusteeship: Gandhian economists believed that a decentralized economy would limit extreme concentrations of wealth but recognized that class differences would likely never truly disappear and thus believed that wealthy individuals be encouraged to engage in the voluntary redistribution of wealth.

4. Swadeshi (self-reliance): Gandhian economics was skeptical of globalization and believed in economic self-reliance at the national and local level with the aim of reducing dependence on foreign imports.

5. Nonviolence: Gandhian economics advocated non-violence which when taking an economic perspective includes avoiding practices such as usury, hoarding and predatory lending.

6. Environmental sustainability: Gandhian economics believed that environmental stewardship and the sustainable use of natural resources were key to ensuring the long-term wellbeing of society and that this was best achieved by giving local communities autonomy and decision-making authority over their resources and local environments.

The impact of Gandhian economics

Though the tenets of Gandhian economics often come across as overly idealistic, the ideology inspired several major economic movements during the Indian Independence Movement. The All India Village Industries Association (AIVIA) was established by Gandhiji and Kumarappa in 1934 with the aim of identifying best practice solutions that could be disseminated to promote village industries and improve economic self-reliance

One early initiative undertaken by the AIVIA was to address rural India’s dependence on foreign kerosene and kerosene lamps for lighting, at a time when rural electrification was extremely rare. AIVIA technicians worked to develop the magan dipa, a locally produced alternative to kerosene lamps that could operate on domestic supplies of non-edible vegetable oils. Aside from the employment generated through the manufacturing of magan dipas, the newly created demand for locally produced non-edible vegetable oil incentivized Indian farmers to process their oilseed crops locally rather than sell them for export. This would boost employment through the establishment of oil presses and also provide farmers with a new stream of income as they could now rent out their cattle to power oil presses. AIVIA believed that solutions like the magan dipa could create economic growth at the local level and improve the quality of life for India’s rural majority without the need for an industrialized export driven economy.

Gandhian economic principles also manifested as social movements such as Gandhiji’s call for the boycott of imported clothing from Britain in favor of locally produced homespun clothing. The impact of the boycott led to a 20% decline in sales among British clothing exporters and an upsurge in local clothing manufacturing.

Throughout all this, Kumarappa played a central role in the real-world application of Gandhian economics and was widely considered to be a major figure in the Indian Independence Movement. His activities landed him in prison on more than one occasion with his most notable stint being in 1942 where he penned two of his most famous texts. The first being The Economy of Permanence, which summarized the rationale and principles of Gandhian economics, and the second being the Practice and Precepts of Jesus, which contained his religious views on Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. As his prison sentence progressed Kumarappa developed a severe kidney ailment that led to his premature release. He gradually recovered on the outside and soon resumed his activist duties.

Kumarappa’s later life

After India’s independence, in 1947, Kumarappa worked for the Planning Commission of India which sought to develop national policies for agriculture and rural development. During this time, he travelled widely throughout East Asia and Europe to study various rural economic systems. However, a rift between him and the post-independence political establishment quickly began to form.

Despite the early victories of Gandhian economics, the post-independence Indian establishment came to view the field with extreme skepticism, despite lionizing its early achievements as major victories of the Indian Independence Movement. The Congress Party, with whom Gandhiji was aligned with, adopted a more mainstream attitude to economics viewing industrialization, urbanization and the centralization of decision making through modernized bureaucracies as imperative for India’s development.

Furthermore, decades as an independence activist made it difficult for Kumarappa to adjust to the conformity and hierarchy of the Indian bureaucracy and he quickly developed a reputation for outspokenness and defiance and did not hesitate to openly criticize his own government’s mismanagement and ineptitude. The Congress government began to view him as a growing irritant but were limited in their ability to control him. The public viewed Kumarappa as an incorruptible advocate for India’s rural poor and a hero of the independence era which meant disciplinary action would likely harm the government’s reputation more than Kumarappa’s.

Kumarappa grew increasingly disillusioned with the Planning Commission which he believed was staffed by out-of-touch bureaucrats who lacked a personal understanding of the rural poor and the economy of rural India. By 1954, Kumarappa’s declining health forced him to retire from his public duties though he remained as staunchly committed to his Gandhian ideals urging followers that work towards achieving sarvodaya and swadeshi though their own personal and community efforts rather than relying on the “superficial schemes” of the Government. And on January 30, 1960 Kumarappa passed away following a paralytic stroke that had overtaken him four days earlier. The Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj was established in his honour and continues to operate to this day by working to promote economic opportunities for India’s rural poor.

Conclusion

As the twentieth-century progressed, Gandhian economics gradually faded into obscurity, often viewed as too naïve for the real world. And maybe it was in some ways. Gandhian attempts at voluntary land redistribution failed almost everywhere, except in Telangana where they succeeded in part because landlords were growing increasingly fearful of the region’s growing Communist insurgency. But the core principle of Gandhian economics, the belief that economic growth can come about through grassroots organizing at the community level remains relevant. In his book Everybody Loves a Good Drought, journalist Palagummi Sainath, documents the dehumanizing poverty hundreds of millions of Indians experience and how the Indian state frequently exacerbates their situation through social, economic and political disenfranchisement. Villagers who find their public schools and clinics mismanaged by apathetic officials, entire communities are branded as born criminals and treated as such, and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy consistently drags progress to a near standstill.

Yet Sainath also describes hopeful tales of what happens when the poor are given the opportunity to take matters into their own hands. In one of his most inspiring case studies, Sainath describes what happens when illiterate, landless, female stone quarry workers are given the opportunity to form a cooperative society entirely managed by them. Within a few short years these women establish a system that boosted productivity, wages for themselves and even taxes collected by the state. Health and safety were improved, adult education classes instituted. The women even began publishing their own newsletter. The improvements contrast greatly with a similar quarry which decided to join a professionally managed cooperative society only to end up with half their income deducted to fund the salaries of the white-collar professionals now tasked with their supposed wellbeing. Likewise, across India, the fight for environmental protection and regeneration is often being led by local communities. One notable example being how the village of Lapodiya in India’s arid Rajasthan state came together to transform their communities water table and is now seen as a role model for water conservation across the country. Watch the video below.

The successful self-organization of both these communities is exactly what Kumarappa believed would happen when we as a society respect the personal and economic autonomy of individuals and communities and shift decision making power from the top of the pyramid to its bottom. Too often, in India and across the world, the poor are infantilized as being incapable of improving their own lives without the outside intervention of the state, private enterprise or professionally managed not-for-profits. Maybe Gandhian economics can help us revisit this harmful assumption and reassess how it has been used to inadvertently disenfranchise the poor across the world.

Essay

Comment

Identity

Nationalism

Politics

21 April 2025

1 min read

Could a constitution capture the essence of Englishness?

A proposal for St George’s Day.

W. Elliot Bulmer

Elliot is a constitutional scholar and author.

A St George's Cross flag flutters on a tower.

St Helen's Church, Welton, Yorkshire.

Different Resonance on Unsplash.

Somewhere behind the concrete-and-glass façade of modern official Britain, one can still find some traces of England: folklore and folk music, country customs and local traditions – wassailing, maypoles, cheese rolling and bounds beating – that neither brutal 19th century industrialisation nor callous 20th century deindustrialisation could completely erase.

This idealised ‘Quaintshire England’ lurks somewhere in the psycho-geographic triangle formed by Anthony Trollope’s Barchester, Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge and Geraldine Granger’s Dibley. It is always indeterminately, reassuringly, old. It has a lot of past, but not much future. Yet its traditions are neither stagnant nor dying. Take, for example, the recognition of St George’s Day. Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, St George’s Day came and went with hardly anyone noticing. It was relegated to handful of nasty, shaven-headed, right-wing cranks. Now St George’s Day is marked by respectable newspapers and by the media classes, through the annual ritual of the Great Debate About Englishness.

For those not familiar, the Great Debate About Englishness takes the form of a stylised conflict between two sides: the Guardians and the Telegraphs. The Guardians start, with a stick-knocking assault on Saint George and all his works: he was Turkish (or, better still, Palestinian); he never visited England (which is just as well, because, as they are eager to insist, England does not really exist anyway, and if it did it would be hopelessly white and racist). Then the Telegraphs move forward, with Scruton bells on their toes, to lament the fact that we no longer celebrate St George, and how all the ills of the world are the fault of the kind of people who say ‘Mumbai’ when they mean ‘Bombay’. At this, the Guardians caper forth, wielding Billy Bragg quotes about ‘progressive Englishness’ in an intricate manoeuvre known to afficionados as a ‘Full Toynbee’. This done, the Guardians retreat before the onslaught of the Telegraphs, who counter-attack with the clincher than English is an ethnic marker, which necessarily excludes anyone whose ancestors were swarthier than a Flemish Huguenot. So concludes the ritual, which is then forgotten about until the following year.

England, becoming everything, has thereby become nothing. It is the only nation in the United Kingdom without a political life of its own.

These cathartic ritual confrontations rarely acknowledge that debating the nature of Englishness is itself a symptom of the English nation’s statelessness. Like Kashmiris, Kurds and Uyghurs, the English must debate the nature of their existence because England is – to borrow the term used by Austrian Chancellor Metternich to refer to pre-unification Italy – ‘a geographical expression’.

The institutions, symbols, and icons of political identity are all British. Despite its historical position at the core of the Union and the Empire, England remains a curiously under-developed nation in constitutional terms. It has almost no formal recognition as a national community. Indeed, England’s dominance over the United Kingdom has had the paradoxical effect of denying England – as England – a voice in its own affairs. England, becoming everything, has thereby become nothing. It is the only nation in the United Kingdom without a political life of its own. There is no English Government, nor English Parliament. Even the banal markers of national identity that people might have in their pockets, like coins, stamps, and passport, are British, not English. The absence of such markers means that English identity has high barriers to entry. In other words, we obsess about the ethnic and cultural boundaries of Englishness, because there is no English civic, legal, or political community – let us call it a ‘constitutional community’ – of which one can be a member as a matter of legal right.

Such a ‘constitutional community’ could take two forms. It might take the form of an independent England, re-founded as a nation-state after Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have freely gone their separate ways. Alternatively, given the need for collective defence and international clout in a dangerous world, it could take the form of an England which remains one of four constituent states in a voluntary, equal, confederal Union.

Either way, an English constitution, understood as a codified supreme and fundamental law, should establish political institutions of England’s own: an English Parliament, an English government, an English judiciary, and an English civil service. Only by this constitutional means can England, now that the British Empire is no more, become a normal nation, make peace with itself, and re-find its place in Europe and the world.

In part, this is a matter of good government. As the great post-war Commonwealth constitutional scholar Sir Ivor Jennings famously put it, ‘A Constitution is but a means to an end, and the end is good government.’ An English constitution would enable the renewal of a system of government that has become too centralised, too top heavy, and long overdue for reform. It would clarify the rules of political life where these have become contested, reinforce the boundaries of power where these boundaries have been pushed to breaking point, and restate the principles of public ethics which have been neglected. It would protect democratic institutions and norms from erosion by unscrupulous authoritarian populists.

A list of priorities for consideration in an English constitution, enjoying support across the broad centre of the political spectrum, might include devolution to English cities and counties, electoral reform, reform of the Lords, codification of parliamentary conventions to limit the abuse of Crown Prerogatives, strengthening of the civil service and rebuilding of lost state capacity, restoring standards in public life, and better protection of civil liberties.

If you are reading this in England... you are probably not very far away from a place where old stones echo with the words and songs, the faith and the prayers, that have held the English nation together.

Yet constitutions are more than dull, dry, legal charters of government. They are also national covenants. They set out a vision of who we are, who we want to be, what we stand for, and what we will not stand for. Aside from all the mechanical, institutional, provisions one expects to find in a written constitution, constitutions also contain what we might call metaphysical provisions: those that bear the identity, and bare the soul, of the nation. An English constitution would help to anchor English identity in the midst of changing times.

While the mechanical constitution is in need of reform, England’s ‘metaphysical constitution’ is not so lightly to be tinkered with. It represents a mystical union of past, present and future, embodying an idea of English nationhood – and English statehood – stretching back to Anglo-Saxon times. At the heart of this metaphysical constitution is the ideal of Christian monarchy, institutionalised through constitutional relationships between the church, state, Crown and nation.

While the institutional structures of the mechanical constitution are British – and essentially imperial, rather than national, in character – the metaphysical constitution has remained steadfastly English. The Church of England is the only major all-England public institution. The General Synod, which has power to enact Measures having the force of law in England in relation to ecclesiastical matters, is the only England-wide legislative body. England (not Britain, nor the United Kingdom, nor the British Empire, but something older and deeper) can most readily be found in its great cathedrals: Salisbury, Norwich, Wells, Lincoln, Ely, Gloucester, Hereford, Durham. It can be found, too, in the abundance of ancient village parish churches with hand-tapestried hassocks, musty smells, memorial plaques and an almost tangible presence of congregants gone by. England is etched in the moss and lichen of their old gravestones. It is haunted by the Ghosts of England Past, speaking the words of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible. If you listen carefully, you can hear them. If you are reading this in England, even in the midst of a busy city, you are probably not very far away from a place where old stones echo with the words and songs, the faith and the prayers, that have held the English nation together over the centuries.

Confusion arises, however, from the failure to distinguish between the mechanical and the metaphysical aspects of constitutions.

That heritage is valued not only by Christians, but also by those who are not believing or practising Christians, but who are pleased to belong to a culture that has been shaped by Christianity. Cutting the Church totally loose from the state, by disestablishment, would abandon custody of this cultural and social heritage to a merely private organisation, having no public recognition, patronage, or connection to the national community. That would be a particularly savage form of cultural privatisation.

England’s metaphysical constitution is mostly buried beneath the accumulation of ages. If you are good with the constitutional trowel, however, and know where to dig, it is not hard to unearth it. Sometimes it even pokes above ground, as easily seen as the billowy bench of bishops in the House of Lords. The topsoil of modernity is dramatically stripped away at the coronation, when the king swears not only to govern ‘according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same’, and to ‘cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all [his] judgments’, but also to ‘maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law’. The King’s covenant with God and the nation is outwardly and visibly signified when, at the climax of the ceremony, he is anointed, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with holy oil.

Thus, the descendants, according to the flesh, of Anglo-Saxon kings, become at their coronation the descendants, according to the spirit, of David and Solomon. The birth of this metaphysical constitution can be traced to the baptism of King Aethelbert, the first Anglo-Saxon king to become Christian. As Bijan Omrani notes, in God is an Englishman, this act transformed the nature and expectations of English kingship, from pagan warlordism to a holy kingly office, responsible under God for bringing God’s peace and justice to England.

All this is very strange, and easy to mock. To paraphrase a famous scene in Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail’, ‘supreme executive power derives from the confidence of the House of Commons, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony’. From a purely mechanical point of view, that is of course quite right. As Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution said of Sir Robert Walpole, the first modern Prime Minister, ‘he ruled England because he ruled that House’. Confusion arises, however, from the failure to distinguish between the mechanical and the metaphysical aspects of constitutions. Many constitutional conservatives, eager to uphold the metaphysical constitution of England’s Christian monarchy, set their face against even moderate and beneficial reforms to the mechanical constitution. On the other hand, many constitutional reformers, eager to mend the broken mechanical constitution, would pave over the metaphysical constitution with all the misplaced zeal of a solar farm company.

The established church is a particular target of the reformers’ wrath, evidenced most recently by a proposed amendment to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, seeking to remove bishops from the upper House. According to Lord Birt, former Director-General of the BBC, ‘Embedding the Church of England in our legislature is an indefensible, undemocratic anomaly.’ There are only two countries in the world, so we are informed, where clerics sit of right as legislators: the United Kingdom and Iran. The clear implication is that this connection puts the United Kingdom in bad company, as if having a couple of dozen bishops in the House of Lords were comparable to the rule of Ayatollahs.

Incidentally, remarkably incurious of comparative practice, the people who say this always forget about Belize: a relatively stable and well-functioning Westminster Model democracy, whose tiny upper House includes a Senator nominated by the Belize Council of Churches and Evangelical Association of Churches. They also forget about tiny Tuvalu, a democratic Commonwealth Realm in the South Pacific, where the established church was planted by the London Missionary Society. Perhaps these examples do not fit the narrative that insists that church establishment must inherently be regressive and anti-democratic.

To those of us who must live also in the here-and-now, not only as Christians but also as citizens of a particular nation and polity, it all looks very bleak.

Even without deliberate abolition, we must nevertheless admit that the metaphysical constitution of England, no less than the material constitution, is in crisis. The most recent census showed that, for the first time since the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England, Christians are now a nominal minority. Of course, the invisible church of born-again Spirit-filled believers was probably always a minority of the population, in England as in any nation. Nevertheless, from the Early Middle Ages until just a few generations ago, nominal Christianity was the norm, and Christian ideas held sway over the narratives, ethics, and assumptions of English society. Not everyone conformed to a model of Christian holiness and goodness – far from it – but there was a common view, shaped by the pervasive cultural, social, and educational influence of Christianity, of what holiness and goodness looked like.

That Christian consensus is what has been lost in the social and demographic change – some might call it, a cultural revolution – since the 1960s. The Church of England is still doing excellent work in parishes up and down the land, multiplying the loaves and fishes of its limited resources to provide everything from foodbanks and debt advisory services to parent-toddler groups and pensioners’ clubs, filling the social gap that a failing state no longer even tries to fill. Yet, numerically, the Church of England – except in a few bright pockets of revival – is in free-fall. In the lands of St Ethelbert, St Edmund, and St Cuthbert, empty church buildings have been turned into private houses, gyms, carpet warehouses, soft play centres, mosques, pubs and nightclubs. Looking at things through a spiritual rather than natural lens, we should not be discouraged. We can of course have confidence that the risen King has triumphed, is triumphing, and will ultimately triumph – reconciling all things to the Father, and restoring the whole cosmos to glory. Nevertheless, to those of us who must live also in the here-and-now, not only as Christians but also as citizens of a particular nation and polity, it all looks very bleak. It is a spiritual trial, but a civilisational tragedy.

Christianity – in particular in the form of mainline Protestantism - has provided the moral, ethical, sociological and institutional props on which constitutional democracy in the Anglosphere was built. Remove those props, and the whole edifice becomes a lot less stable. When we look at the egregious behaviour of Trump and his ilk, we get a taste of how rotten pagan politics would be, unseasoned and unpreserved by the salt and light of Christianity.

This is, of course, is not to say one cannot have democracies in societies where Christianity has been less historically prevalent. Democracy can exist in a wide range of religious cultures, including in majority Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist societies. Nevertheless, at least within the Westminster Model, it depends upon an institutional subculture - a set of norms, values, traditions, expectations - which, even if successfully transplanted and adapted to different contexts, owe a lot to the kinds of Christianity that emerged from the English Reformation. The restoration of England’s Christian metaphysical constitution is, therefore, integral to restoring the health of the democratic mechanical constitution. By the works of the law – even constitutional law – shall no flesh be justified. Any constitutional refoundation of English democracy worthy of the name must be led and accompanied by a revival of the English Church and by the re-evangelisation of the English people.

The cross atop the crown represents the principle that public authority has itself been humbled and crucified; the state exists not to be served but to serve the public

his case must be made with careful nuance. It could be misconstrued as an apology for Christian nationalism. Sadly, those who make the most noise about ‘Christian values’ all too often seem, judging by their attitudes and actions, to be reading a different gospel – one from which the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Mount have been expunged. It is galling to watch far-right authoritarian reactionaries parading their Christianity for public display, while pursuing compassionless policies that hurt the poor, the disabled, and outsiders.

A restoration of England’s Christian metaphysical constitution would not limit freedom of religion, nor diminish the equal rights of all citizens regardless of their religion or lack thereof. The principles of religious liberty and non-discrimination, which go back to Catholic Emancipation and to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the early nineteenth century, should be guaranteed. Rather, establishment would simply give honourable public recognition to the place of Christianity in the nation’s heritage, grounding the state upon a core of shared Christian values, norms and traditions. If that core is maintained, tolerance and diversity can be built upon it, without undermining the nation’s historic character. In practice, this might involve a more prominent role for Christianity in public life. Public authorities might pay more attention, in their official pronouncements, to the church calendar, and less to those of other faiths, or of post-Christian causes. There might be a more obvious Christian influence in education. One of the by-products of the 1960s cultural revolution is that the clergy have retreated into a narrowly defined churchy role: the academic and the school master in holy orders have all-but vanished. Public broadcasting, too, might return to the broadly Christian assumptions of Lord Reith.

One of the constitutional functions of an established church is to act as a reminder: to remind the King, Ministers, parliamentarians, civil servants, judges, magistrates, councillors, police constables, teachers, opinion-formers, and every citizen, that to govern is to serve. The cross atop the crown represents the principle that public authority has itself been humbled and crucified; the state exists not to be served but to serve the public. Without such a concept of ethically responsible servant leadership – grounded upon truth, justice, and compassion – democracy can easily deteriorate into cruel, crude, and crass populist perversions of itself.

Another constitutional function of an established church is to remind us what freedom is for. If applied as mere abstractions, shorn from the Christian root from which they have sprung, and the teleological objectives towards which they point, human rights – valuable as they are – can produce absurd results, actually harming, rather than protecting, freedoms of conscience and expression. Taking the metaphysical constitution seriously again would certainly mean interpreting and enforcing our human rights laws in ways congruent to the Christian principles upon which they are based. After all, it is very odd, in a country where the king has sworn to maintain the true profession of the gospel, that people are being arrested for silent prayer, and that local councils are trying to ban street evangelism.

Finally, the metaphysical constitution, no less than the mechanical, needs checks and balances. The church cannot perform this constitutional function, as the ethical conscience of the state, if it is – like, say, the Russian Orthodox Church – dependent upon the state. The establishment of the church must not, therefore, compromise the autonomy of the church, to govern itself synodically, and to choose its own bishops. The current process of episcopal selection through the Crown Nominations Commission might leave much to be desired, but going back to the days of political appointment by the Prime Minister is not a viable option. Rather, the principle should be acknowledged, at a constitutional level, that – in the words of Magna Carta - Anglicana ecclesia libera sit: the Church of England shall be free. If we can create constitutional rules that enable judicial independence, and the impartiality of bodies such as the Electoral Commission, we should be able to square this constitutional circle, too.