Anglican Perspectives on the State and Taxation

Anglicanism’s approach to ethical questions, being shaped largely by context and embracing different theological traditions, has no central teaching on the State or issues like taxation. However, the pivotal role of the Church of England in shaping the history of Anglicanism allows that Church to be taken to exemplify a distinctive Anglican approach to these questions and forms a valuable case study. Yet its material on the ethics and theology of taxation is extremely small. While a number of possible reasons for this are explored, a key historical factor is William Temple’s theology of the State which justified a ‘Welfare State’-a term which quickly became applied to a political programme rather than a theology of the State and led the Church to focus more on the State’s spending plans than how it raised revenue. Four examples of the Church engaging with taxation issues are explored, revealing the crisis of thinking engendered by the advent of Margaret Thatcher’s administrations from 1979 with their project of cutting taxes and eroding the concept of a Welfare State. The Church’s reaction against the social consequences diverted attention from the political shifts in taxation policy. Where the Church has considered tax as a topic, it has focussed on the implications for egalitarianism rather than revenue generation apart from a brief, recent, foray into the ethics of corporate taxation. The chapter concludes with some dilemmas of taxation policy to which an Anglican approach to public ethics could offer a useful contribution to debate.