The Queen (and any British monarch who happens to be reigning) is Head of the Church of England, so the monarch can only be Church of England. It's similar to the Pope, who is Head of the Catholic Church - the Pope can therefore only be Catholic. The monarch being Head of the Church of England is required under Article 2 of the 1707 Treaty of Union.
Some ignorant members of Britain's left-wing Labour Government, including the Scotsman, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which has a track record of cultural and historical vandalism, wish to change the law to allow Catholics and other religions other than Church of England to become Monarch. This would probably give us the bizarre situation of a Catholic being Head of the Church of England, which wouldn't go down well with both Protestants and Catholics.
The established Church in England is the Church of England, and there are far more people in England and Wales whose religion is Church of England than those who are Catholic (13.4 million Church of England and 4.2 million Catholics). On top of those 13.4% million Church of England followes are people who are members of other branches protestantantism.
Just 13% of people in England and Wales are Catholics, and about 17% in Scotland.
Canada is opposite to Britain because there are more Catholics - 44% of Canadians are Catholics and 29% are Protestants, according to the 2001 census.
Protestants are also in the majority in Scotland and Wales -Presbyterianism is the established church in Scotland, and the Church of Wales is the established church in Wales, both of which are protestants churches.
I think Britain is also the only country in the Western World - or, at least, the only supposedly secular country - to have members of a religion sitting in parliament.
The monarch has been the Head of the Church of England since the reign of Henry VIII, when he broke the English Church away from Rome in 1534 and made himself, rather than the Pope in a foreign land, its Head. Henry made himsel
f Supreme Head of the Church of England to ensure the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
In fact, Britain is one of only around nine or ten countries in the whole of Europe where the majority of people are protestants. The others are Germany, Holland, the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland) and a couple of the Baltic states (Estonia and Latvia). It's also interesting to note that Britain, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Holland are all Germanic states.
