With Englishness being an early focus of this year's Open University module it's both opportune and interesting to see that its nature has become such a contemporary issue.
Today's Sunday Times sees a further intervention, this time after Professor Linda Woodhead, the FD Maurice Professor in Moral and social Theology at King's College London, saying of the appointment of Archbishop Dame Sarah Mulally:
“I think her challenge is to reconnect the Church of England with English society. This is a Church that can only operate if it is embedded in culture and society, and it’s drifted away from that, and she’s got to try to reconnect it. We are in cultural wars and the Church of England’s whole point is, after civil war, to hold things together.
“There’s a real opportunity because who else is talking about English values? We don’t just want to hear it from Robinson and Farage, The Church of England needs to be the church of England and not be embarrassed about it. [Mullally’s predecessor] Justin Welby wanted to make it a global church, and he was embarrassed about it being a national church, but it is a national church.
“Members of the Church of England are proud of being English, they voted Brexit more than the average. They’ve got a sense of cultural identity and she’s got to re-engage with that, and make it not a racist, divisive thing, but ‘we’re a big tent, tolerant, multicultural country’. Politicians speak for Britain, but the Church of England can speak for England.”
It is very clear that Englishness is a hugely contested issue. There is a vast swathe of opinion between academics, politicians and clergy and the St George's flag raising man on the street.
The question must be how they can ever be reconciled?