An anointing
Tom Holland a couple of weeks ago pondered the religiosity of the coronation hoopla.
The United Kingdom is alone in Europe in marking the accession of a new monarch with a coronation. Key elements of the ceremony – that it should be presided over by the archbishop of Canterbury, that two bishops should escort the king, that the congregation at the end of the service should join in acclaiming the newly crowned monarch – date back to the coronation in 973 of Edgar, the great-grandson of Alfred the Great. Dunstan, the formidable archbishop who composed the order of service, had in turn drawn on even older exemplars: some native to Britain, others reaching back to Roman times.
Oldest of all, however, and most imbued with a sense of the sacred, was one ritual in particular: an anointing. The inspiration for this, older than England, older than the house of Wessex, older than Christianity itself, was to be found in the Old Testament: “Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king.” This same verse, chanted at Edgar’s coronation and famously put to music by Handel, will be sung as well during Saturday’s service. Charles III will share in a ritual that originally marked out the kings of Israel – Saul and David and Solomon – as the adopted ones of God. The 21st century will be joined by means of a living ceremony to the bronze age.
It’s very archaic and it’s very theocratic. That’s one compelling reason to object to the whole thing, and indeed to protest it, even though that leads to 12 or 13 hours of imprisonment in today’s Britain. Charles is just another human, and a ceremony of “anointing” doesn’t change that, but everyone is supposed to pretend it does.
The British are an immeasurably more secular people than they were when the last coronation was staged 70 years ago. Almost 40% of the population of England and Wales described themselves in the most recent census as belonging to “no religion”. Meanwhile, the Churches of England and Scotland, both of which the monarch is constitutionally pledged to defend, are in decline relative both to various other Christian denominations and to religions that had barely registered in Britain when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne.
There are many in the country who are not just hostile to Christianity but wholly ignorant of its history, its doctrines, its ceremonies. That its head of state rules by virtue of claims that are rooted not merely in the supernatural, but in a specifically Christian understanding of the supernatural, is an aspect of the constitution that often remains discreetly veiled. There will be no hiding it, though, at the coronation. The insistence of Charles III on following the example of his mother, and refusing to allow his anointing to be screened on TV, will serve only to heighten viewers’ sense of the sacral quality of the ritual. A British coronation stands in a line of descent from the age of Solomon or it is nothing.
Most people watching the service next weekend probably will not care very much. A spectacle is a spectacle, after all, no matter its theological underpinnings. Yet it is likely that a substantial minority of people in Britain, rather than being dazzled by the display in Westminster Abbey, will find their distaste both for the monarchy itself and for its supernatural pretensions only confirmed by the pomp and ritual of the coronation. Catherine Bennett, writing in this paper recently, despaired of how arguments for a secular coronation “appear to have dented neither the church’s coronation ambitions nor the palace’s matching enthusiasm for spiritual choreography and knick-knacks”.
God-bothering plus servile adoration of rank. I’m not a fan.
A nit to pick: The writer is incorrect; the kingdom (if it existed) was during the early Iron Age, not the Bronze Age.
Err, United Kingdom of Israel, that is
All democracies need a head of state as distinct from a head of government. (The US Trump administration has been the latest to show where that can lead if there is not sufficient distinction between the two.) The most important function of a head of state in most of the British Commonwealth lies in their power to dismiss for whatever reason a government, and then immediately call a fresh election; leaving the ultimate power with the people. It has proved IMHO to be the least worst of all arrangements tried to date.
With an hereditary setup you get the occasional Mad King George.for Head of State. With its not-hereditary alternative you can finish up with an ambitious and ruthless egotistical megalomaniac of an ex-politician.
I don’t see how or why it’s obviously desirable to have a head of state who has the power to dismiss a government for whatever reason.
OB: In Australia, the Senate was set up to a ‘states’ house’ as a condition of Federation of the separate colonies in 1901. A government can form out of a majority of lower house (House of Representatives) members, and the Senate functions as a house of review of legislation coming ‘up’ to it from the Reps, on the model of the American Senate, or to a lesser extent the British House of Lords. (Some politicians have been known to carry on as if they believed they were born to rule.)
A good account of the 1975 crisis that arose out of this is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis
I think that it is a good thing to be able to dispose quickly of a government that for whatever reason has become genuinely dysfunctional, but I don’t believe that Whitlam’s was in 1975. But enough of the usual suspects in the media and elsewhere agreed that it was, and successfully convinced the voting population on that subject, who rightly or wrongly confirmed Whitlam’s dismissal in the election following straight after it.
(I voted at the time for Whitlam.)
Omar, a major failing of the Australian Senate.
It was, as you write, set up to represent the interests of a Snator’s state, with each state, regardless of population, having an equal number of Senators, thus Tasmania with less than 15% of NSW’s population elects the same number of Senators.
The Senate has been corrupted by allowing government Senators to hold ministries, therefore their affiliation to both their party and their ministry will often be in conflict with what is best for their state.
A case can be made, I believe, that a head of state is an anachronism that can be abolished without affecting the good governance of the nation. Apart from ceremonial duties and singing to foreign dignitaries, our GG offers nothing at all to the nation. The major functions of HoS are carried out by the Prime Minister, eg negotiating and signing treaties, representing national interests if oversea fora, etc.
Many nations function well with a Unicameral parliament, and I see no reason why we could not do the same.
I don’t think I agree. The State’s house thing is something we picked up from the US. And in America in 1776 it was almost certainly an absolute political necessity but in Australia in 1900, probably not. So the fact that in practice it was quickly forgotten is hardly surprising. The inequality of electorates is hardly ideal but since Australian states, unlike US ones have roughly similar demographics, in practice I don’t think it’s a significant problem as long as the Senate stays in is role as a house of review. Maybe the fact that senators can be ministers is a problem but I don’t think it has much to do with their role representing their states. (I just don’t think the idea of states is that important.)
An elected Head of State has greater legitimacy, and therefore scope, to act as circuit breaker and wield reserve powers in exceptional circumstances than does a hereditary one. That can cut both ways. When the succession of Brexit Referendum and inconclusive 2017 general election led to crisis, remainers were in a stronger position for having a strictly neutral crown than they would have been with the sort of independent-minded, middle-of-the-road, heart-of-nation type (e.g. Frank Field or, anachronistically, John Biffen) likely to have been elected a President of a British Republic.
Francis @#7: As I recall, WA was a holdout, refusing to join the Federation unless on ‘equal’ terms with the rest, despite having a human population pretty thin on the ground. Even today, that vast state 3 and a half times the size of Texas has only 2 million people in it, half of them living in Perth.
Of course, their bluff could have been called, and then WA could have been as a result grabbed by any major colonial power, and incorporated into say the French, Dutch, German etc empires then running; or into the fresh post-WW2 regimes like Indonesia (in reality today the Javanese Empire.)
Given WA’s mineral wealth, they would have scored a monumental bargain.
Omar @#9
Sandgroper here. Not just that, the 1933 referendum for WA to leave the Federation passed decisively, but had no legal effect.
SwanAlien: You could say that by that stage, the fix was in. ;-)
A slightly unpopular opinion, perhaps, but I can’t see any problem in the UK that would be improved if we became a republic tomorrow. Were I setting up a state de novo, would I make it a monarchy? Maybe, maybe not. But we have one, and… well, meh.
For this reason, I disagree with Alan’s claim that an elected HoS has more legitimacy. In virtue of what? I mean, maybe if they were ruling, you might want to say so. But this is where Tom Holland is wrong: CIII won’t rule. He’ll reign. That’s an important distinction. Qua monarch, he has no power save for appointing members of the Order of the Garter and one or two other ceremonial bits and bobs. On paper, he might have quite a lot of power: but can he exercise it? Nah.
One other dispute with TH; I don’t think it’s true that we’ve become more secular here since the fifties. More *atheist*, yes. But we’ve been increasingly secular since the seventeenth century. Bishops in the HoL is an anomaly on this front; but even they have the good sense to keep the godditude down. Again, we may be a kind of theocracy on paper, but in practice? Nope.
The secularism/ atheism distinction is a bugbear.