Parents were prosecuted for failing to send their children to school on Ascension Day. They argued that Ascension Day was a day ‘exclusively set aside for religious observance’ by the Church of England.
Held: A Church which is established is not thereby made a department of the State. The process of establishment means that the State has accepted the Church as the religious body in its opinion truly teaching the Christian faith, and given to it a certain legal position, and to its decrees, if rendered under certain legal conditions, certain civil sanctions. The Church seeks to serve the purposes of God, not those of the government carried on by the modern equivalents of Caesar and his proconsuls. This is true even though the Church of England has certain important links with the state. Those links, which do not include any funding of the Church by the government, give the Church a unique position but not that of a department of state.
Judges:
Phillimore J
Citations:
[1907] 2 KB 112
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Parochial Church Council of the Parish of Aston Cantlow and Wilmcote with Billesley, Warwickshire v Wallbank and another HL 26-Jun-2003
Parish Councils are Hybrid Public Authorities
The owners of glebe land were called upon as lay rectors to contribute to the cost of repairs to the local church. They argued that the claim was unlawful by section 6 of the 1998 Act as an act by a public authority incompatible with a Convention . .
Cited – Isle of Wight Council v Platt SC 6-Apr-2017
Regular school attendance is following the rules
The respondent had taken his child out of school during term time to go on holiday. The child otherwise had an excellent attendance record. The Council having failed on appeal to the Administrative Court, it appealed saying that the word ‘regularly’ . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Ecclesiastical, Education
Updated: 29 April 2022; Ref: scu.184045