Due to the United Kingdom having been formed by the
union of previously independent states from 1707, most of the largest religious groups do not have UK-wide organisational structures. The
Oath of Supremacy, originally imposed by King
Henry VIII of England through the
Act of Supremacy 1534, required any person taking public or church office in
England to swear allegiance to the monarch as
Supreme Governor of the
Church of England. Roman Catholics who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy were indicted for treason on charges of
praemunire. The
First Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 was an attempt by
Charles II to allow for more religious toleration by suspending the execution of penal laws against
nonconformists and
recusants. However, the Declaration was rejected by
parliament and the
Test Act of 1673 was issued in its place, which required anyone holding civil, military or religious office to take
oaths of supremacy and
allegiance, denounce
transubstantiation and receive
anglican eucharist. This was extended to include
peers in
1678. The
Second Declaration of Indulgence (1687) issued by
James II shortly allowed for full religious freedom until the
Glorious Revolution. The subsequent
Toleration Act of 1688 granted freedom of worship only to
nonconformists who had pledged to the oaths of
allegiance and
supremacy and rejected
transubstantiation, i.e., to
Protestants who dissented from the
Church of England. The Act intentionally did not apply to
Roman Catholics, Jews,
nontrinitarians, and atheists.. In practice, it allowed for
Baptists,
Congregationalists and
Presbyterians to function as tolerated religions while imposing some regulations to the way they are allowed to organise themselves. The
Nonconformist Relief Act 1779 allowed freedom of worship for all self-declared
Protestants who took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. The
Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 extended religious toleration to
Unitarians.
Anti-Catholic sentiment slowly decreased over the years and in late 18th century, the process of
Catholic emancipation began. The
Papists Act 1778 allowed
Roman Catholics to own property and to inherit land and the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 allowed them to worship, practice law, and establish Catholic schools. Finally, the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 allowed catholics to hold civil offices. The Roman Catholic Church officially
reestablished dicoeses in England in 1850 and
in Scotland in 1878.
Blasphemy law The common law offence of
blasphemy was repealed in 2008. The last person to be imprisoned for blasphemy in the UK was
John William Gott in 1922, for comparing
Jesus Christ to a
clown. The next blasphemy case was in 1977, when
Mary Whitehouse brought a private prosecution (
Whitehouse v. Lemon) against the editor of
Gay News for blasphemous libel after he published a poem by
James Kirkup called "
The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name". Denis Lemon was given a nine-month suspended sentence and a £500 fine for publishing the "most scurrilous profanity" which portrayed the sexual love of a Roman centurion for the body of Christ on the cross. The sentence was upheld on appeal. In this appeal case,
Lord Scarman held that the modern law of blasphemy was correctly formulated in Article 214 of ''Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law'', 9th edition (1950). This states as follows: In 1996 the
European Court of Human Rights (case #19/1995/525/611) upheld a ban on
Visions of Ecstasy, an erotic video about a 16th-century nun, based on the video infringing on the blasphemy law. However, some acts that were once viewed as blasphemous may now be prosecutable under other legislation, such as the
Public Order Act 1986 as amended by the
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. ==See also==