The latter two seem to dominate as spiritual religions wane.

@snytiger6 we can but hope that they will all wane. 3 has not done you much good & #2 is throwing a choice between a bumbling idiot & a mammon worshipping narcissistic crutch groper.

Had no idea Bishops had guaranteed seats in the UK. The enlightenment, separation of powers and all that. How did that happen? When the Church of England was formed the King made a deal is my guess.
I hope they pay tax at least

@puff Yes it is part of having an established church. In practice, they are not too bad. Often they have been a voice of compassion when benefits were liable to be cut and the only anti-abortion stance I have heard from them is to ask for limits to be revised in light of better medical procedures.
There is a huge difference between having power and having a say. Rather like a family meeting, the kids can propose but mum and dad dispose.
As for taxes, there are registered charities and as such are exempt.
Personally, I do respect the work that they do (apart from the god bits). Most of the food banks operate out of churches and during the lockdown, not only did they not kick up any kind of a fuss over social distancing (unlike their American counterparts) but were there organising shopping deliveries etc.
I think that a lot of this is due to a climate of non-belief. When churches were full, there was much more finger-wagging and dictating of terms. It is their very tenuous claim on the soul of the nation that leads them to tread carefully. Any other course might lead to them losing whatever influence they do have. If you have no real mandate, you can only advise and lead by example.
Oh and one other right they have is that they retain only one of two surviving provisions laid down in the Magna Carta.* Ecclesiastical courts still operate and have legal authority.

*The other being the rights of the City of London.

@273kelvin My simplistic interpretation of the separation of Church and State is this. Stay out of politics and you don't pay tax. Participate in politics, lose the tax free exemption. That's the deal for secular societies.

@puff But how does that work for charities? Any body of good works can often fall into political lobbying.
Besides, the UK is not technically a secular state, it has an established religion. Despite the majority of the population being non-believers and operating to all intents and purposes as one. We still have them inside the tent pissing out. As in most of the UK constitution (such as it has one). It is a crazy, undemocratic, cobbled-together Heath Robinson affair that kinda works but I am not convinced that the US technical separation works any better at keeping god-botherers out of legislation. In fact, it is plainly obvious that it fails miserably.

@puff Also, the bishops and Jewish/Muslim life piers are crossbenchers. They do not align themselves with any party. Although they may support or vote against particular policies, they have no allegiances save to the crown.

@puff Either way, there is little chance of reform in this matter. The last Lords reform was under Blair when most of the hereditary peers were disenfranchised. This has left Labour oddly with a Lords majority. (So no pressure for change there) The church congregations are mostly Tory voters (so ditto)

@273kelvin UK justice is basically secular where belief dogma is trumped by secular law. Secular law is a defining feature of Western culture really, or so we like to pretend like many other things.
Australia has the Westminster system which was not designed for 2 party politics. But what gets me is the Senate, the house of review, also votes along party lines. I would like to see a Senate full of non-party aligned independents. Voting pragmatically on any issue depending on it's merits. That's how it's meant to work, what review means. "What did the Roman's ever do for us?"
Charities are a totally different issue. Religions don't have a monopoly on that area. Nowadays most charities are a scam anyway, with a minute amount actually ending up where it is needed. Donations that can be claimed on tax is a good idea but don't agree with government involvement at all. The need for charity shows a failure of government so government should use that resource to address the cause itself, not the symptom by funding for profit charity.
Your House of Lords is the house of review as they tend to vote independently I believe. Perhaps more in the past than now?

@puff The UK justice system is one branch of govt but the C of E was instigated as another. When Henry viii dispensed with Rome, he became England's de facto pope, putting the state as the spiritual leader of the nation. Right up until Blair it was the PM who decided on the appointment of bishops* and we have never had a Catholic PM (although Blair came close).
The Lords non or less partisan nature can be attributed to its lifetime appointments. This is supposed to be the reason for the US supreme court lifetime jobs but it does not seem to working that well recently. Democracy is all well and good but if you are dependent upon party support for re-election...
As for charities and govt funding. You use my least favourite word "should". You should be able to get all the Vegemite out of a jar but nobody ever has. No system is perfect and at best charities can help when govt programs fail. Should govts do more? Maybe but people hate paying taxes and feel good donating to charities so...
The Lords are a lot less right-wing than of yore. The disenfranchisement of most hereditary peers cost the Tory power base of its landed gentry. The Lords are now nearly all life peers who if not appointed by Labour are old enough to have made their money and don't give a fuck.

• A funny take on when the PM chose bishops

@273kelvin I mean we don't pay taxes so government can give to others to look humane. That's not the reason we pay taxes. Many of these charities get "one off" contributions from government that suddenly become annual grants.
Re vegemite, you haven't tried hard enough. Need to get the finger in there.

@puff We pay taxes for many reasons, defence, infrastructure, policing, the justice system and social welfare. As for the last one, it can be more cost-effective to use existing charities that already have people on the ground and experience.
Vegemite is not the only "should" I could quote. Easy peel cellophane lids also spring to mind.

@puff One of the reasons that Britain is so secular, is probably because it has an established church. Firstly because, as an arm of government the church is tainted with anything that the government or the political establishment does, which is later seen as wrong. And secondly, because the separation of church and state, as in the US, freed the churches and made them into private enterprises, able to use all and any of the tools of the free market, to sell their wares.

@Fernapple Another reason is the Church of England itself. A dull drafty monotonous dirge of a faith, often referred to as an inoculation against religion.

@273kelvin In part of course, that is because it does not have to compete in the market place. If it did, it would perhaps have to do what many other religions do to find support. Which is to provide a justification for populist exclusivity and hate. As do many of the worlds religions, because the haters need an authority, to prove and justify prejudices which are hard to justify with logic or appeal to common sense, while the religions need people who are in search of an authority which does not require them to show logic or reason to gain its backing. The perfect pairing, the buyers have a hunger for backing, and religion can back anything.

@Fernapple Oh the C of E does have competitors. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians etc. were all founded in the UK. I recently visited Llanenlli in S Wales where chappels are as numerous as Irish pubs. (nearly all of them are no longer active) They all had Sunday schools attached where 19th-century working-class kids got a basic education on their day off from work. Once that need had been taken over by the state, people started not to bother.
Apart from the general dullness of British religion, the attachment to the establishment has a lot to do with its decline. American evangelicals could find out that the best way to promote atheism is to try and force high school kids to worship.
Many have the misconception that we Brits are rather stayed and compliant. A closer examination of our history will show otherwise. Apart from all the best sports and games the world has, we have also given it the concept of "fuck off !" I know you like to think that you guys are the cradle of freedom but where do you think those ideas came from? (hint Thomas Paine) Over the centuries Brits have fucked off the church, monarchy, aristocracy and pseudo-patriotism. Even in my city as I type there is a 40+ year ongoing campaign to fuck off the Murdock press.

Nb. Sorry I just realised you are a fellow Brit after I typed

@273kelvin I think "Fuck off" is better described for what it actually is, the old empire strategy.
Divide and conquer. The establishment of the CoE divided the Catholic Church in the UK conquering the power they held.

@273kelvin That is all very true, but I think that you slightly miss my point, in one respect. Since when I said that the C. of E. did not need to compete, I did not mean that it had no competitors, only that it did not need to compete with them, since it enjoyed a lot anyway.

@273kelvin, @puff True, though I think that Henry the Eighth intended not merely to divide the Catholic Church but to replace it completely. I think that one of the most underrated aspects of British history which led to secularization, was our civil war. Which started as primarily a political war, but ended as mainly a religious one. It was also, especially bloody, even more than World War One, and long lasting, nine years with a couple of intervals, and then several years of religious dictatorship, under Cromwell.

It brought the country to its knees.

Some historians say, that it had no major lasting effects, but I suspect that that is because they make the mistake of only looking for positive effects, and overlook the negative, and the effects of the negative. Which was that after several decades of religious conflict and dogma at its worst, the effect was not religious victory but religious exhaustion and a population disinterested in anything to do with religion, indeed the general discrediting of religion and a new feeling of cynical disregard for it. I do not think therefore that it is any accident, that the decades before it, were those of puritanism, sectarian persecution, and witch burning. While those that followed were those of the British enlightenment, the industrial revolution and the Hell Fire Club, all of which, would have been unthinkable in the first half of the seventeenth century.

@puff Sorry Puff but I think it goes deeper than that. I am not talking about the powers that happen to be at any moment. I think there is an innate rebellious psyche in the British (and descendants) character. True the empire was built on divide and conquer but it was defeated by unite and overthrow. I see its progress through the peasants revolt through the Tolpuddle martyrs and your very own Eureka Rebellion. Waltzing Matilda is a rebel song and "fuck off" is as much of a British legacy as cricket.

@Fernapple The Civil War mostly led to the castration of the monarch's power. (one of our fuck offs) It took a long while to end sectarian conflict which is still prevalent in NI. Mostly it gave us the worst taste of republican dictatorship and a bigger idea of checks and balances.
What changed British society the most was WW1. All the BS about god and country, obeying our betters to be mowed down in the mud by the thousands. Every cenotaph in every town is a reminder of what happens when you give those bastards a blank cheque.

@273kelvin That is probably true, but it is also true I think, that the Christianity which died in World War One, was not the same Christianity which died in the Civil War, but rather the Victorian revival of the religion.

The late seventeenth century, and the eighteenth, were certainly much more secular than the era before, and were in many ways a peak of secularity. It was the time when many secular institutions, such as a scientific establishment, public schools ( Not church controlled. ), and a secular civil service, were created. While people like C. Wren, I. Newton and Priestley and the many enlightenment figures in Scotland, laid the ground, in which people like Hutton, Darwin, and Wallace could work and thrive, even in the nineteenth century, without being prosecuted under religious law.

After the Civil War, it was very much a secular age for the intellectual establishment, in which the enlightenment ideas, which created the churchless government of the United States were fostered. While the Victorian revival, was very much fuelled by the discovery, that, the urban poor of the new industrial cities, were effectively godless, since the churches, both state and free, had remained stuck in their rural roots. The strength of the Victorian revival, should not blind us to just how much ground religion had lost in the proceeding two centuries. Remember, that in the late middle ages, up to the civil war, all schools were church controlled grammar schools, and the civil service was almost completely church controlled, "minister" as in political ministry, even means clergyman, literally, and even secular newspapers were banned, so as not to lessen the churches monopoly on information. All of that changed only after the Civil War, mostly between the sixteen seventies and the seventeen fifties.

@Fernapple ATM I am watching the 2nd series of "Wolf Hall" a fascinating insight into that period. The director made the observation that Christendom was of a similar age then, to what Islam is now and it was going through similar upheavals ie. sectarian conflicts etc.
Yes, there was a huge questioning of religious dogma but it was not secular per se. more fractured. Hundreds of different sects and cults sprang up but they all still retained a core belief in the divine. In fact, people had never been more invested in spiritual belief than ever before, often resorting to violence. There is a cave in Scotland where over 200 Baptists, men women and children were burnt to death by Presbyterians. Newton himself was far from being an atheist. The reason why we say there are 7 colours in the spectrum is that he thought that 6 was the devils number hence purple was divided into indigo and violet.

Because their particular brand of religion emphasizes dominance over others. I guess they missed or overlooked Christ's words about rendering unto Ceasar what is due Ceasar, etc..

Their doctrine teaches them if they convert others they get heaven brownie points.

There seems to be a disconnect that Israel is run by Zionist ie extreme religion if you really want to illustrate religious influence on government.