The Order of Service for the Coronation of King Charles on Saturday is now available online, and a very interesting read it is.
The central element is obviously the anointing of the King, but there’s much else of interest there. I especially commend the bit about the presentation of the Regalia, whereby peers of non-Christian faiths present to the King treasures like a jewelled sword (to protect widows and orphans) and the spurs of Charles II (poor man; he really did need to move fast), and the Orb and Glove. What’s not to like? If the world is divided between the Wrong and Romantic and the Right and Repulsive, then this is all something for the Romantics (and who’s to say they’re Wrong?).
The service, drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is heroically inclusive and also traditional, which means, as you might imagine, some discordant elements sitting together. Archbishop Welby has introduced a new element to the Coronation oaths, which acknowledges the diversity of the religious environment in Britain. It goes like this:
“The Oath: Archbishop of Canterbury: Your Majesty, the Church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain, is committed to the true profession of the Gospel, and, in so doing, will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely. The Coronation Oath has stood for centuries and is enshrined in law. Are you willing to take the Oath?”
It’s neither particularly grammatical nor particularly clear, but we get the gist: the C of E is committed to the free practice of all faiths and none. The King is upholding the Settlement of the Church of England, so it follows that he too will be protecting the practice of all beliefs (a nod to his remark about being Defender of Faith). Some observers may quibble that being committed to the true profession of the Gospel does not necessarily commit the C of E to fostering an environment in which all kinds of belief may flourish (Satanism…really?). But it is an eirinic sentiment which is entirely characteristic of the Church of England.
But not long afterwards we get quite another oath to do with maintaining the Protestant Reformed Religion. It goes like this:
“Archbishop of Canterbury: Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?
“The King: All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised I will perform and keep. So help me God.
And it’s followed by this:
“Archbishop of Canterbury: Your Majesty, are you willing to make, subscribe and declare to the statutory Accession Declaration Oath?
“The King: I am willing. I Charles do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law.”
This is the element of the coronation which is designed to exclude Catholics. It is not a robust repudiation of Catholic doctrines as it was formerly – Edward VII, the last to take this profession, did so reluctantly, thinking it a bit strong. But when it affirms the Protestant succession to the throne we are transported right back to 1689 and the accession of William and Mary, who displaced the anointed king, James II. It would have been possible, no doubt, for the King to decline to make the oath in this form but as Catherine Pepinster, in her interesting book, Defenders of the Faith (Hodder, £12.99) makes clear, he deliberately chose not to do so.
The question is, do we care? Personally, I don’t. I should in fact be rather glad to think that the King is a committed Protestant in the manner of his mother, though we know that he is interestingly attracted to (and perhaps more) the Orthodox Church to which his paternal grandmother belonged.
A good Protestant beats a weedy agnostic – and has anyone else registered the remarkable declaration of the King’s younger son recently, to the effect that he believes that we’ll all come back in another life as animals? If the younger Royals were sufficiently Christian to be Protestant, I could handle the aspects of the faith with which I must disagree.
In fact, one could welcome the Protestant oath in that it is a reminder of harsher times, when the one prerequisite for the heir to the throne was that he shouldn’t be a Catholic, and that the spouse he married shouldn’t be a Catholic either. One doesn’t want to labour the point, but James II was unjustly dethroned because of his Catholicism; Catholics nowadays don’t think about it, but I remember university dinners where the toast to the monarch would entail passing your wine glass over a glass of water, in tribute to the king over the water. Nowadays that would be a little odd.
The reason Catholics don’t, on the whole, mind the oath to uphold the Protestant religion and succession is that it’s almost meaningless, given the heroic hospitality of the Anglican church to almost any interpretation of Christian doctrine. If Prince William had wanted to marry a Catholic and that Catholic had insisted on her children being raised in the faith, I really don’t think many people would have cared. The real divide now is between believers and non-believers, not between Catholics and Protestants, which isn’t to say the points of difference between the religions are unimportant. People have died for them. But given that less than half of the population of the UK feels able to describe themselves as Christian even in the nominal sense, I think we have other things to worry about.
(St Edward’s Crown, with which King Charles III will be crowned on Saturday | Getty)
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