Antidisestablishmentarianism

The word commonly (but erroneously) called "longest in the English language"* seldom appears in the news and could be defined by few English-speakers. It crept into last week's news when a little body called the National Free Church Assembly gathered at Weston-super-Mare, Somer-setshire, England, and urged that, "in the interests of the Kingdom of God, the Anglican Church should be disestablished and disendowed."

This proposal has been made from time to time, and is even said to be favored by the Bishop of Durham and a considerable body of Anglican clergymen and laymen. Essentially, however, it is the protest of the great body of British Dis-senters--Presbyterians, Methodists, Bap-tists--against the favored position of a Church to which they do not subscribe, but for whose upkeep they are taxed. If the proposal were to take effect, English Episcopalians would be obliged to support their own Church out of voluntary funds, and they would lose the prestige conferred by the presence of the Bishops (Lords Spiritual) in the House of Lords.

The question has already been faced and solved in another part of the British Isles. In 1868 Gladstone carried his famous resolutions which disestablished and disendowed the Episcopal Church in Ireland, on the ground that the large Catholic population and the Dissenters so far outnumbered the Episcopalians that the situation was anomalous. Accordingly the Irish Bishops lost their seats in the House of Lords and the Church of Ireland was thrown upon its own resources, greatly to the advantage of that institution, as its members subsequently admitted. The question has been raised as to what would happen to Westminster Abbey and the great cathedrals, in the event of disestablishment. In Ireland this point was settled by the simple process of leaving the cathedrals in the possession of the Episcopalians. In Dublin there are no less than two Protestant Cathedrals, Christ Church and Saint Patrick's, both Episcopalian. There is one Catholic cathedral in that city, the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough St.

*Than "antidisestablishmentarianism"--28 letters there are several longer English words. Recently published by Robert L. ("Believe It or Not") Ripley was 60-letter unhypersymmetrico-antiparallelepipedicalisationalographically.

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