Church of England: Defender Against Faith?

Churches are typically regarded as institutions which protect and defend traditional religious beliefs; while this may be true, there are also other ways to look at them. One particularly interesting take suggested recently, at least with respect to the Church of England, is that this religious institution helps to prevent more noxious and fundamentalist varieties of religion from becoming established in British society.

Sean Ellis writes at Internet Infidels:

Once people get used to seeing the official state religion as something to be distrusted and questioned, then they will hopefully apply the same measures to other, more virulent versions of religious mind-viruses. And this is exactly what we need--especially when faced with more and more evangelical religion in the American mould.

This is an interesting perspective - and well worth considering. However, I'm not sure how well it stands up to the growing popularity of evangelicalism within the Church of England. Perhaps it isn't growing as fast as it otherwise would. Perhaps it is only growing among committed Anglicans and not the general population. Whatever the case, it doesn't seem to be entirely succeeding.

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• Church of England
• Evangelicalism