UK: Catholic Prime Minister Pushes for Reform of a Law That Discriminated Against Catholic and Jewish Politicians

(ZENIT News / London, 09.15.2026).- For almost two centuries, a peculiar rule of Britain’s constitutional settlement remained largely invisible because no Catholic occupied 10 Downing Street. Andy Burnham’s arrival as prime minister has changed that. What had survived as a historical relic suddenly became a practical question: could a Catholic prime minister exercise every constitutional function attached to his office? The British government has now decided that the answer should be yes.

On September, the government formally introduced the Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill, legislation designed to remove the statutory restrictions preventing a Catholic or Jewish prime minister from advising the monarch on appointments to the established churches. The bill is deliberately narrow, but its significance reaches back to the religious conflicts that shaped the British state.

The immediate problem arose after Burnham became Britain’s first Catholic prime minister. Under the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, a Catholic is prohibited from advising the sovereign, directly or indirectly, on appointments to the Church of England or Church of Scotland. A similar restriction on Jewish people was retained in the Jews Relief Act of 1858.

Rather than breach the legislation, Burnham announced on September 10 that he had transferred his constitutional responsibility for church appointments to Lord Chancellor Alex Norris. The government argued that it was no longer acceptable for a person’s religion to prevent them from exercising part of the constitutional responsibilities of the premiership. The legislation now before Parliament would remove that barrier.

Its practical effect, however, should not be exaggerated. The role of the prime minister in choosing Church of England bishops has already been substantially reduced. Since reforms introduced in 2007, the Crown Nominations Commission of the Church of England has presented a preferred candidate to the prime minister, who formally advises the monarch. The prime minister no longer selects between two names as had previously been the case.

The proposed reform is therefore less about giving Burnham a powerful new role in selecting bishops than about removing a religious qualification from the exercise of a public office.

That distinction matters because Britain’s constitutional arrangements remain deeply marked by religion. The Church of England is not simply another religious body operating alongside the state. It is the established church, and the monarch is its Supreme Governor. The constitutional settlement also continues to require the sovereign to be in communion with the Church of England, meaning that the prohibition on a Catholic becoming king or queen remains a separate issue from the restriction now being challenged.

The new bill does not alter the religious requirements governing the Crown. It addresses the position of the prime minister.

The origins of the distinction lie in the Reformation and the subsequent struggle to define the religious character of the British monarchy. Henry VIII’s break with Rome led to the establishment of royal supremacy over the Church of England, while the Scottish Reformation produced a different Protestant ecclesiastical settlement north of the border. The Act of Settlement of 1701 later reinforced the Protestant character of the succession.

Catholic emancipation in 1829 removed many of the barriers that had excluded Catholics from public life. Jews received comparable relief in 1858. Yet both measures left behind specific restrictions concerning church appointments. In legal terms, the old legislation was not merely symbolic: it also extended to people advising ministers and could carry serious consequences for anyone who contravened it.

For generations, the provision could survive without being tested at the highest level because there was no Catholic prime minister. Burnham made the contradiction impossible to ignore.

The same history also explains why the issue has significance beyond the technical question of who sends a name to Buckingham Palace. Britain’s Catholic population spent centuries moving from exclusion to full participation in public life. A Catholic can now lead the government, determine national policy and exercise the immense responsibilities of the premiership, yet until this reform could not personally perform one narrow constitutional task because of his faith.

The restriction applies specifically to Catholics and Jews. It did not prevent Hindu prime minister Rishi Sunak or atheist prime minister Keir Starmer from exercising the same function. Nor has it been an obstacle to every politician with a complicated religious background. Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish-born prime minister before Burnham’s reform, was baptized into the Church of England as a child and was therefore not caught by the statutory prohibition.

The history of Boris Johnson illustrates how complicated the question can become. Baptized Catholic as a child and later confirmed in the Church of England, Johnson was regarded as Anglican while serving as prime minister, although his Catholic wedding in 2021 revived questions about whether the old restrictions might apply. The legal ambiguity was never tested in the same way that Burnham’s openly professed Catholicism has tested it.

There is also an important historical irony in the fact that the legislation is being changed by a Catholic prime minister precisely because the old rule had become practically relevant. For much of its life, the provision did not need to be confronted. Its survival was made easier by the absence of anyone placed directly in the position it regulated.

That is why the reform can be understood as part of a broader evolution in Britain’s approach to religious liberty. The question is not whether the state should erase the historic constitutional relationship between the Crown and the Church of England. The government is not proposing that. Nor is it removing the religious requirements attached to the monarchy itself: it is addressing whether the personal faith of a prime minister should determine which constitutional functions he or she can perform.

The Anglican Church of England has supported the change, while the National Secular Society had previously pressed the government to remove what it described as discriminatory provisions. The bill’s formal title — the Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill — makes clear that the government regards the remaining restrictions as inconsistent with the contemporary principle that public office should not be conditioned by religious identity.

For British Catholics, the symbolism is likely to be greater than the administrative consequences. A law born in an era when Catholicism was regarded with suspicion is being reconsidered in an age when a Catholic can stand at the head of the British government without that fact preventing him from exercising the full constitutional authority of the office.

The striking point is not that a Catholic prime minister has been allowed to advise the King on Anglican appointments. It is that Britain has reached a moment in which such a possibility no longer needs to be treated as a constitutional anomaly.

The Reformation-era architecture of the British state remains standing. But one of its oldest religious barriers is now being dismantled from within.

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