Will the bishops buy into the Pledge?

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Will the bishops buy into the Pledge?

24.02.2010 // by Guy Aitchison

Over at the blog of Ekklesia, the progressive religious network POWER2010 is partnered with, Jonathan Bartley has some fun speculating on what the position of the bishops in our unreformed Lords will be.

Somewhat bizarrely, the Bishop of Leicester had name-checked POWER2010 in a debate in the Lords to support his argument that people aren't that bothered about his presence in the second chamber.

But now that the people have voted and an elected Lords is on the Power Pledge, what will his response be?

As Jonathan explains, "along with his colleagues, he may not now be that happy to discover that an all elected Second Chamber came number in at number three in the priorities of those who voted."

Indeed:

"Bishops have been hoping to maintain 20 of their 26 places in a reformed House of Lords, should it be 80% elected and 20% appointed (ie a much bigger percentage of the appointed places than they currently have). In an all elected chamber there would be no places reserved for them.

Amongst the Power2010 partners are a number of Christian and other groups such as the Charities Parliament, Faithworks, the Salvation Army, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Church of Scotland, who will presumably stand by the results of the democratic initiative and continue to give it their backing. Indeed, churches should be key in stage 4 of the campaign, often being the ones organising general election hustings.

But what will the bishops do? Will they abandon the democratic initiative because it didn't deliver the result that they wanted? Or will they just quietly drop their promotion of it, hide away, and hope that it goes away?

Power2010 point out that you don't have to agree with all five reforms to join the call for a reforming of Parliament (HT to @pmphillips). So let's see what happens. Watch this space, as well as the potential space at the hustings meetings, and indeed the places in the House of Lords which might soon be vacant.