Carl:
> In the last couple of hundred years, at least, there's also been sort of a
> tongue-in-cheek quality about official respect bestowed on the C of E. In
> the early 19th century, I seem to recall, some non-believing UK prime
> minister joked that he was "a flying buttress of the established church.
I
> support it from the outside." I believe this line was later appropriated
by
> Churchill, which in itself is remarkable. You don't find denizens of
> America's domestic Hall of Heroes creating or stealing jokes about how
> irreverent they are.
That, I suppose, is partly because flying buttresses are absent from the US landscape. OTOH creeping dirt wrapped in lofty verbiage is in abundance :)
Wojtek