A Queen anointed
like Solomon to reign over a Christian People
When the Queen was
anointed and crowned Her Majesty underwent an ancient and deeply spiritual
ceremony, combined with a service of Holy Communion with all its meaning of
remembering Christ’s giving of Himself for our sins.
As much as the concept
of Monarchy runs through the DNA of these islands, so too does Christianity –
which is why the coronation has been since time immemorial a Christian
ceremony. Christian teaching not
only legitimises our Head of State, but it informs our laws and the roles of
our various institutions. Just as
our kings and queens are anointed in the same way as the kings of Old-Testament
Israel and Judah, so our legal system in the older concept of Equity and the
Twentieth Century concept of tort law where case law makes specific reference
to Christ’s teaching, is imbued with Christian ethos. Our education system, especially since the formation of the
National Society, gives a major role to the established church in educating the
next generation.
It is both sad and
deeply troubling then that fashionable thinking pays no attention to the system
of beliefs that is woven into the very fabric of England. A Christian understanding remains, but
almost unconsciously present.
Ideas of fairness and neighbourliness in domestic affairs and being a
force for good in global affairs stem from our view of ourselves as a Christian
nation. It is because of this
concept that individual Christians have campaigned for reform when this nation
falls short – whether it be William Wilberforce campaigning against slavery or
Emily Hobhouse campaigning against the use of concentration camps in the Second
Boer War. Strip this Christian
understanding of ourselves away and the shadow of that self-understanding will
only be cast so far.
Such forgetfulness can
be seen in the selfishness of those bankers we now blame for our economic woes
and in a belief that liberty alone is supreme – whether that be liberty to have
something such as same-sex marriage regardless of the impact on the institution
or to make money quickly despite the impact on others. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his
sermon at the Westminster Abbey service commemorating the sixtieth anniversary
of the Coronation, spoke rather of “liberty under authority” meaning freedom in
obedience to God. As Archbishop
Welby said: “Liberty is only real
when it exists under authority.
Liberty under authority begins, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it,
with our duty to God, ‘whose service is perfect freedom.’”
Meanwhile modern
intellectuals employed in thinktanks, providing theories for politicians’
policies, pay too much homage to abstract theories about rights and choices –
but pay no attention to that which actually does amount to the much sought-after
“social glue”, our common set of values.
It is not the
contention of this blog that everyone in these Islands would be regular
church attendees but for the influence of policies thought up in Westminster
thinktanks; rather, it is being argued that, whether or not the population is
actively religious, our laws and institutions base their claim for authority on
a commonly-understood set of overtly-Christian values.
Just as church
steeples are ubiquitous throughout town and country, so that their very
every-dayness renders them invisible, despite their architectural beauty; so
our institutions with all their striking pageantry, insofar as they embody and
reiterate Christian teaching, gently yet firmly tell us that we are a Christian
people and must live up to those values.
As the Archbishop put it in the same sermon:
“The very nature of
being British follows this simple logic.
It is founded on liberty under authority. It imitates the example of Jesus who did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled Himself and took the form of a
slave. In Jesus we see the
greatest servant of all, whose service gives us freedom, whose love is
generously offered to each of us.”
The saving of souls is
for the evangelists, but our politicians and judges have a duty not to chip
away continuously at the Christian foundations of our nation’s values.
Like Saint Paul’s in
the Blitz our more ancient institutions remain as affirmations of who we are in
a modern Britain coming to terms with an economic crash and the social impact
of broken families. It is those
institutions that rely on Christianity for their authority that the Political
Class least understands and regards disdainfully as irrelevant. The Monarchy, the Established Church
and the Lord Chancellor (with his role as Keeper of the Queen’s conscience and
guardian of equitable law) are incomprehensible to the shallow, modern minds of
many of our politicians; yet it is loyalty to the Crown and the life-service of
our Queen; the sanctifying by a National Church of our ceremonies; and the
fairness of equity in law that give us our almost unspoken understanding of who
we are.
Returning to that
Coronation ceremony sixty years ago:
In that service in which a young princess was stripped of her regalia to
be anointed like Solomon we saw the embodiment of our Christian values as a
person was set aside for a life of service to God and Country. As the Archbishop put it:
“Her Majesty is the
servant of the King of Kings, and so she serves us, as we serve her, in liberty
under authority. It is a system
that points to freedom in God, in whose love we alone are fully human, fully
free.”
Deeply spiritual,
almost mystical and profoundly patriotic, the coronation is known to have had a
real impact on the young Queen.
The worry is that it is because of those old-fashioned and profound
ideas laying behind it that so many in the Westminster Bubble just do not
understand its importance.
No comments:
Post a Comment