To what extent does public presence destablise a local church's autonomy over its precinct?
Increasingly church buildings, and the sites on which they sit, are used for wide ranging community purposes as well as worship. These complex, privately-owned sites the thesis identifies as ‘religious precincts’. Each local church community uses its precinct as a place from which to express its understanding of Christian presence within its church and wider community, in fulfilment of its missional obligations. As doctrine informs a church’s missional imperative, so that doctrine shapes a church’s worldview, which in turn informs how it conducts itself through its legal and social dealings. As a church community engages its precinct in activities within a community, others impact its self-expression and thereby have power to support or undermine the fulfilment of its mission. This thesis understands the ability to project its worldview through its precinct as a church’s autonomy. This thesis begins by exploring law and religion’s approach to autonomy and identifying the insight which the thesis’ construction of autonomy provides. It examines how doctrinal selfexpression translates into legal engagement, and, through information gathered from twelve case studies within the Church of England’s Diocese of Birmingham, its practical outworking. This involves a consideration of the collaboration between ecclesiastical legal persons necessary for a church’s exercise of autonomy in the engagement of its precinct. It further involves an exploration of how long-term occupants support or undermine church autonomy. Conclusions on these issues establish a base-line understanding of autonomy against which public impact can be assessed. That impact is assessed by explaining three forms of public presence and evaluating the extent to which through each manifestation of its presence the public challenges or supports a church’s autonomy. The three forms of presence explored are physical presence, constitutional presence as beneficiaries of land and purpose trusts, and presence through public funding. The thesis’ assessment is focused through ecclesiastical landholders’ and occupants’ relationships to the land, as well as their and others’ access to and use of that land.
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