The coronation of King Charles III in early May was the subject of intense speculation as to whether the ceremony and subsequent monarchy would depart from or uphold tradition in an increasingly secular and multifaith Britain. Commentators and analysts were divided on the degree to which the monarchy would change with the first coronation since that of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. In Commonweal magazine (May 9), Austen Ivereigh notes that Catholic and other religious leaders were prominent during the coronation, with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, being the first cardinal to attend the coronation of a monarch since 1543. The event was informed by Queen Elizabeth’s 2012 address to faith leaders that sought to redefine the Church of England, stating that it was recognized as the official church not to “defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions [but] to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country.” This reframing of the church’s mission went along with its identity as a “liberal national church whose liturgies are rare and sparsely attended [and that] has taken on the role [of] an NGO, in partnership with other churches and faiths,” Ivereigh writes. The Church of England has exploited its physical omnipresence and relations with powerbrokers to support a wide range of social services. In the same way, the monarchy has become an “uber-NGO” in its charitable activities, even as it embodies a national mythos that still resonates with the British people.
Source: Twitter account of Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
But Ivereigh adds that the retention of the coronation oath, dating back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of maintaining a “Protestant and Reformed religion” is offensive to Catholics, other religions, and even Anglicans who do not view themselves as Protestant, even if it has been downplayed by Charles himself. In the Religion and Global Society blog (May 11), James Walters writes that although the coronation service was spun by the media as a multicultural and multifaith event, it did not live up to such expectations. That the biblical reading was delivered by a Hindu prime minister and a Muslim mayor of London was in attendance did show that religious minorities in the UK have come of age. But non-Christian religions were kept at arm’s length during the actual ceremony, although, Walters writes, “not because religious pluralism was ignored; it was because we are finally starting to take it seriously. Other faiths are not exotic variations on the Christian model. They have their own worldviews, their own ideas of the sacred, and their own theologies of governance and the monarchy, which should not be appropriated and shoehorned into an ancient ceremony as a tokenistic form of inclusion.” He concludes that the reign of King Charles as an “era of flourishing religious pluralism will depend on…how well we continue to take religious communities seriously on their own terms…With his strong interfaith friendships and knowledge of different traditions, King Charles shows every intention of taking the lead.” Esoteric scholar Mark Sedgwick, writing in the same issue of Commonweal cited above, might concur with Walters, as he notes that King Charles has long espoused a “traditionalist” view which teaches that there is a mystical core to all religious traditions, a view which also informs his environmentalism.
(Commonweal, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org; Religion and Global Society, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2023/05/the-coronation-was-not-a-multifaith-service-for-sound-interfaith-reasons/)
