Church and Crown: The Quest for Relevancy

In the mid 1990s, the popularity of the British monarchy reached its lowest depths in recent memory. The controversy surrounding the divorce of Princess Diana and Prince Charles left the Royal Family seeming cold and out of touch. The young Princess was, after all, referred to as “the people’s princess,” a label that implies certain members of the Royal family did not receive the people’s affection. However, the monarchy managed to retain an overall positive image though the controversy and beyond. The Queen’s popularity at its very lowest was 66%. Compare that with congress’s record low approval rating of 9%.

In recent years the Queen’s popularity has done nothing but move upward, peaking in 2012 when the Queen held an approval rating of 90%. Similar levels of support are shown for the monarchy as an institution. 66% of the country thinks it preferable to retain the monarchy instead of becoming a republic. A majority of 53% actually believes the country would be worse off if they ditched the monarchy for any other system. As you can imagine, there has been no serious movement to abolish the monarchy, and both Liberal and Conservative politicians have stated their support for retaining the Crown.

Contrast this with the recent history of the Church of England. 65% of the country still regards itself as Christian, but public opinion regarding the nation’s church is a bit more volatile. Out of the 53 million inhabitants of the country, only a little over one million people attend an Anglican service weekly. Hardly a day goes by when the Church is not embroiled in some controversy which the media is all too happy to report as just another chapter in the long and inevitable decline of the established Church. In the past year the Church made news for renting out its unused spaces to pagan, actual pagan, congregations. The Church is losing members so quickly it can’t afford to maintain all its parish facilities and many are being forced to close altogether.

Skeptics of the establishment are also more vocal than the critics of the monarchy. In 2011, one of the three major political parties introduced a bill to expel the Anglican Bishops from the House of Lords arguing their presence is an “anomaly” in modern secular democracies. With an approval rating at 90%, the monarchy easily transcends political lines, however, attitudes towards establishment are much more partisan. The Church is more likely to find its most vocal critics coming from the left and its most ardent supporters coming from the right.

But why is the division between the two so striking? Surely the increasingly secular elite of Britain have something to do with raising their voices against the Church, but why haven’t they also criticized the monarchy? Every year millions of people tune into the Queen’s Christmas message, the content of which is always overtly Christian. Prince Charles has become increasingly outspoken about matters of faith in the public square, and the largest and most anticipated events associated with the monarchy are typically religious in nature. When the Archbishop goes to Canterbury Cathedral the church suffers losses in attendance, but when Prince George is christened millions try to catch a glimpse of the service.

It simply doesn’t make sense. The same country that nearly sent a minister to jail for talking about the gospel on a sidewalk anxiously tunes in every year to listen as a kind elderly lady talks about the birth of Christ. In short, the monarchy has retained all its ancient form and outdated practices, and its members retain many of their ancient beliefs about God, country, and other quaint things, yet they continue to capture the hearts and minds of the English people.  Meanwhile, the Church of England screams for relevancy. It rewrites it prayer book, “evolves” on its doctrine, demystifies its chapels, and in general tries to please everyone and ends up pleasing no one.

It’s entirely possible all this can be boiled down to the Anglo-Saxon fondness for stability. The most radical Englishman is still more Burkean than the Continental Conservative. When explaining their support of the Royal Family most will typically say they find the stability in an otherwise chaotic politic system comforting. The men dress like gentleman and the women dress like ladies and they go about doing the sort of things you would expect Royals to do. They don’t scream for attention. They just do what they have always done.

Suppose the Church of England were to adopt this model. Imagine that its priests dressed and sounded like Christian priests, that its services sounded like ancient Christian services, and that they went about doing things you would expect Christians to do. What if people desired some stability in an otherwise chaotic world? The monarchy is comforting because you can clearly see it and you know where it stands. It’s like standing above the Grand Canyon on a clear day and taking in its beauty. The Church of England is despised because it is constantly shifting. It’s like standing in the same spot near the Canyon on a foggy night. What was once beautiful is now potentially deadly.

I’m not naïve enough to assume a return to orthodoxy will instantly solve all the Church’s problems. Conservative churches have many problems of their own. However, it remains a fact that if you know where a person stands, whether you agree with them or not, they win a certain kind of respect. The person who tries to play both sides because he wants to be liked by everyone always comes off as a fool and ends up losing the respect of everyone. The desire to primarily be relevant must ultimately lead to a sacrifice of substance. It also assumes the Christian religion should be adapted to things below rather than things above.

During the revolutionary period, thinkers in America and France used religious reasons to argue for disestablishment. Trying to out-Christian thousands of years of Christian thought, they sometimes argued the state should not be involved in the Church because government officials are theologically ignorant and the Church would be corrupted by their influence. Recent events in England show a curious case where the opposite is true. Take the recent controversy over the Prayer Book. The leadership of the Church of England removed the terms “sin” and the rejection of the devil from the Baptism Rite in the name making the language more accessible and easy to understand. Meanwhile, Charles, the Prince of Wales, has said in numerous speeches that the Prayer Book ought not to be tampered with. Speaking on proposed revisions he said, “A good many changes were made just to lower the tone, in the belief that the rest of us wouldn’t get the point if the word of God was a bit over our heads. But the word of God is supposed to be a bit over our heads. Elevated is what God is. And for meddling with the Prayer Book there isn’t even a scholarly excuse. The idea is to put great thoughts within our reach by changing the words. But the words are the thoughts.”

Perhaps the Church should take a few lessons from the Crown. There is nothing wrong with being a little old fashioned. People may even find great comfort in it.