You can’t go around selectively picking and choosing statistics and then blaming everyone else for their biases.

I’m all in favour of proportional praying, the Scots led the way when they arranged this for Holyrood and also made sure that atheists/non-religious got time in the schedule.

At best, the census indicates that we are a mostly Christian country - an important distinction - and only a minority of them are actually practicisng Christians.

The Tearfund - not exactly an anti religious organisation - reported earlier this month that just 1 in 10 attend church regularly.

It is frankly ridiculous to attempt to co-opt the vast majority who may tick a box on a census return claiming to be Christian yet who have no interest in actively practicing the religion. If you can’t persuade them to set foot in a church, how dare you claim the Church should ‘represent’ them in the legislature?

You also miss off from your list the 390,000 people who identified as Jedi on that census, more than the number who identified as Sikh or Jewish. If you think the census gives the Christian church special rights in the running of the state, it follows that you have to give Jedi proportionately the same.

“There are 37.3 million people in England and Wales who state their religion as Christian. The percentage of Christians is similar between the two countries but the proportion of people who follow other religions is 6.0 per cent in England compared with 1.5 per cent in Wales.

In England, 3.1 per cent of the population state their religion as Muslim (0.7 per cent in Wales), making this the most common religion after Christianity.

For other religions, 1.1 per cent in England and 0.2 per cent in Wales are Hindu, 0.7 per cent in England and 0.1 per cent in Wales are Sikh, 0.5 per cent in England and 0.1 per cent in Wales are Jewish and 0.3 per cent in England and 0.2 per cent in Wales are Buddhist.

In England and Wales 7.7 million people state they have no religion (14.6 per cent in England and 18.5 per cent in Wales). ”

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/commentaries/ethnicity.asp

In terms of Bishops having dioceses to worry about, that’s fine. They should be allowed to concentrate on their jobs. It would be doing them all a favour by kicking them out of the Lords.

I’m also all for more religious representation in the Lords, if - and it is a big if - they get elected. Somehow though, I suspect that Williams doesn’t want to be troubled with such distractions.

As for the ‘we’re a Christian country with a Christian legal system’ argument. That is true. It is also true that our legal system can source its roots to Judaism, so maybe we should call ourselves a Jewish country (not to mention the Babylonians and others)? It also has its roots in Ancient Greece and Rome, so maybe we should call ourselves a polytheistic country? Or acknowledge our Viking roots by calling ourselves a Norse nation (certain members of the BNP would love that)?

I’m happy to acknowledge the positive influence Christianity has had on our constitution and legal system (up to a point anyway), but that doesn’t make me a Christian by default and it doesn’t make my country Christian either. If Christianity has failed in its stated role in inspiring the vast majority of the British public, which it demonstrably has, it is simply ridiculous to subsequently claim that we have to pay it reverence regardless.

Granted Sentamu is a smarter media operator than Williams, but if Sentamu plays to his strengths it doesn;t mean he wants Willaims’ job.

When Williams plays to his strengths - and I think he had some interesting things to say in his speech about a moral vision for government meaning more than management - then he outclasses Sentamu. Fact is intellectual rigous is not as sexy as media. Perhaps by keepting these two in their current oprder the Church is making a statement that they have a different value system which sees academic brilliance as more improtant than madie ability.

As for Bishops and appearances in the Lords, I think you also have to factor in that these guys (and they are annoyingly STILL all guys) also run dioceses. That is the equivalent of being the cheif exec of an SME, very often where your head office is more than a couple of hundred miles away from London.

Willaims calls for more religious representatiopn in the Lords. I’m all for that and given our statute (more than echoes of ten commandments) and case law(donoghue-v-stevenson anyone?) owes so much to our Christian heritage I think it would be foolish to simply say we are no longer a Christian nation ofr that our culture (outside metorpolitan elitism) isn’t fashioned by those values.

Jake

You are also unlikely to hear me defending crossbenchers anytime soon. At last count, they had a median attendance of 6% of all votes and a mean attendance of 10%. Hardly an institution worth defending.

As for your point about Labour working peers, we can of course test your hypothesis out by visiting Public Whip. The attendance list by itself isn’t particularly illuminating, but fortunately I have the data in a convenient spreadsheet. The median attendance of a Labour peer is 59.05%. The median attendance of a Bishop is 1.7%. Only 7 Labour peers have lower attendance rates than the average Bishop (these figures are accurate up to mid-March and are unlikely to have significantly changed since).

So yes, indeed. Let’s criticise the Bishops from a position of factual correctness.

The Bishops show up a lot more frequently than many of Tony’s working peers.