By Ryan Hunter
Thoughts on the published Coronation Liturgy of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, “Called to Serve”:
Lambeth Palace (the seat and office of the primus of the Anglican Communion, the Most Rev. Archbishop of Canterbury) has published the full Coronation Liturgy prepared for the upcoming 6 May Acclamation, Anointing, Coronation, and Enthronement of TM King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey. It features brief annotated commentaries by HG The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
In six different dichotomous areas—the traditional and the contemporary, the national and the global, the confessional Christian and the ecumenical, the sacred and the secular, the historical and the future-oriented, and the mystical and the constitutional—the text for the Liturgy offers a magnificent harmony and inner balance in keeping with the best of ancient English coronation liturgical traditions dating to the Liber Regalis recensions and earlier.
The music—including both new compositions and ones reused and adapted from the coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953 and earlier coronations—tends toward the sombre and traditional, in keeping with the King’s lifelong aesthetic passion for classical music across the world and in particular in Britain. We can rest assured that the music will not only be magnificent, as all coronation anthems and odes should be, but that the King personally oversaw the selection of the pieces to match with and convey a particular point about the significance of a certain aspect or emphasis in the ceremonies.
Replete with the full majesty of Authorised Version (KJV) biblical psalmody married to new but reverently-wrought supplications to address the multi-confessional, pluralistic realities of twenty-first century Britain, the coronation’s theme, “Called to Serve”, is unambiguously Christian in origin yet universal, inclusive, supra-confessional, and trans-dogmatic in scope and intentionality. It is in keeping with the core Christian notion of Christ coming to earth as a Servant-King and self-humbling deity, and in keeping with the King’s (and his late mother Queen Elizabeth’s) oft-stated vision of the British monarchy as a sacred commitment of dedicated, noble service to the British people, and to the global Commonwealth family of nations.
In fidelity to his mother the late Queen’s legacy of sacrificial servant-leadership—she beautifully signed what was to become her final testament to her people and the world on her Platinum Jubilee “Your servant, Elizabeth R”—the new King will open his coronation by praying aloud for the first time in recorded history, before the whole world, in humble entreaty to Christ, the King of kings who became the Servant of servants, for divine aid in bearing his sacred trust of service to his peoples. It is as a servant of God, and servant of servants—ancient papal titles adapted by Pope Gregory I, and also for Christ in Christian theology and Muhammad in Islamic theology—that Charles will come humbly before God to be anointed (christos) as a visible sign for his people of God’s mercy, justice, and love.
The King will be robed in vestments refitted and altered from the 1953, 1937, and 1911 coronations of his mother, maternal grandfather, and maternal great-grandfather, respectively. The robes’ design obviously derives from medieval Catholic episcopal clerical robes. In Catholic, Orthodox, and High Church Anglican understanding, the robes reflect the persistent power of the mediaeval view of the monarch as a profoundly blessed, changed individual from the moment of his anointing—a mixta persona, part-layman, part sacerdote (priest). At the climax of the service—the anointing, not the physical crowning itself, which comes after—the King will be anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury whilst sitting on or kneeling before St Edward’s Chair, as numerous of his ancestors were, upon the forehead, hands, and breast with sacred chrism. One of the most extraordinary things about this coronation ceremony is that the chrism for the King and Queen’s anointing has been blessed, for the first time ever in recorded history, by the reigning Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem. This means that Charles will be the first monarch in England in over five centuries—Henry VIII and his first wife Queen Catherine of Aragon were crowned in 1509 in the last pre-Reformation coronation in England, while Henry’s great-niece Mary Queen of Scots was anointed and crowned according to Catholic rites as an infant in 1542—to be anointed with blessed chrism which all catholic and orthodox Christians regard as truly blessed and holy according to the principle of Apostolic Succession.
The King clearly sees the chief function or telos of constitutional monarchy today as supra-political and supra-confessional, as an instrument of societal healing, unity, and service, and the purpose of the coronation ceremonies is above all to seek God’s blessings, aid, and grace in helping him and his consort carry out their duties to this end. Thus, the wording of the King’s successive constitutional oaths—while firmly rooted in British Christian precedent and liturgical tradition—are thus envisioned in Britain’s twenty-first century pluralistic ecumenical and interfaith context, extending and embracing beyond the confines of established Church and dogmatic creeds to include all British society.
Ever since the King spent ten weeks as a young man studying Welsh with a Welsh nationalist professor of the Welsh language prior to his 1969 installation as Prince of Wales by his mother, through to his words at his first State Dinner as monarch at Buckingham Palace in which he acknowledged the abuses of power by Britain in South Africa, he has supported efforts to bring about a healing of the harmful aspects of the legacies of English colonialism within (and British colonialism outside) the British Isles. While one cannot predict the future, from the King’s many earlier speeches and letters, to his recent openness to public criticism of the failings, abuses, and atrocities of Britain’s colonial past—unwelcome to some pro-colonialism reactionaries as they may be—we may hope that he will continue to do as other European monarchs have done in recent years in working and speaking to help heal many of the grievances and traumas of European mercantilist colonialism and maritime slavery. The King’s first gestures and statements to this end, in his opening months as monarch, serve a vitally necessary healing role, in fact an aspect of his crucial role as something of secular priest in the body politic of Britannia and the Commonwealth.
The text clearly seeks to keep to the King’s vision of fostering (insofar as is possible) universal harmony in society local, regional, national, and global. In an homage to the previously suppressed ethno-linguistic diversity of the four ancient countries of the British Isles, for the first time in known history, several of the supplicatory hymns and responses will be offered in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic as well as the usual English. For the first time, foreign monarchs have also been invited to attend the coronation, in a gesture of pan-European solidarity in the wake of the ongoing war in Ukraine and drawing attention to twenty-first century Britain’s role as one among many in the European and global community of nations.
In a spirit of genuinely inclusive, post-Nostra Aetate-inspired Christian ecumenism, and a nod to Britain’s ancient Catholic (and catholic) history, relics including the Gospel of St Augustine of Canterbury will be used, and a Te Deum rendered in Latin, while a solemn Greek prayer of thanksgiving and blessing will serve as an homage to the Greek royal heritage of the King’s late father HRH Prince Philip. The Greek linguistic presence in the liturgy (itself a Greek word) also acknowledges the debt which the British coronation rites owe in their earliest antiquity to those of East Rome (Byzantium), which influenced all later European coronation ceremonies from Hungary and Poland to France, the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire confederation.
One beautiful innovation—both a nod to contemporary global citizenship and the deliberate involvement of popular participation in the Coronation rites to widen the monarchy’s horizontal, participatory touch—is that for the first time in history, those watching around the world will be invited to participate virtually in the acclamation of the King and the loyalty oaths. This novel Homage of the People is thus envisioned as a kind of spiritual communion between king and country and king and Commonwealth (indeed, king and world), welcoming people nationally and globally to join in affirming, blessing, and acclaiming his sacred charges and stewardship duties. This aspect is intended to solidify the emotional bond and contract of understanding between monarch and people in the global internet age, and serves to mirror the King’s earlier oaths to govern his peoples according to their respective laws and customs.
Anyone familiar with the King’s lifelong Traditionalist philosophical and metaphysical inclinations via Rene Guenon, Martin Lings, Charles Le Gai Eaton, et al. will be pleased to see that the text is a self-consciously, faithful Christian religious service, whose chief purpose throughout—placed as it is within the highest of High Church Anglican Eucharistic liturgies—to serve as an occasional invocation, a calling down, of God’s grace upon the new monarch and his consort to aid them in their sacred charge of service to the British people, the peoples of the Commonwealth, and, more broadly, to humanity as a whole. In this sense, the spirit of the text situates it firmly within the Christian confessional milieu, while also being open quite elegantly and naturally to the secular role of the monarch today as a bridge-builder between peoples of faiths and also the increasing number of Britons without religious faith. Thus, we see for the first time the inclusion of leading representatives of Britain’s non-Christian faith communities in the ceremonies: the Hindu Prime Minister, in his capacity as UK head of government, will read from the New Testament, while a delegation of Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist leaders will present the King with the secular regalia (Christian clergy and peers will present him with those regalia whose origin and symbolism are entirely Christian).
While current, post-1688 statutory law obliges the King—an avowed Traditionalist-Perennialist who once remarked that he wished to serve as either Defender of Faith (as such, in a predominatingly secular age) or Faiths (in a pluralistic Britain) rather than as the post-Henrican Defender of the (Anglican) Faith—to publicly avow himself to be “a faithful Protestant” and pledge to defend the established Anglican Protestant religion “according to law”, the controversial anti-Catholic confessional nature of this pledge has been deliberately and necessarily softened in this ecumenical and increasingly secular age. Introductory attestations, to be made by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Primus of the Church of England, will proclaim that the self-conscious role of the established Church today—according to its own latest social, ecumenical, and interfaith vision—is to work, non-dogmatically, toward a pluralistic society in which all faiths may flourish freely in Britain. This postmodern inclusivity, in which the Church of England has surrendered any claim to possess The Truth as such in any exclusivist sense, is in deliberate contrast to the earlier predominating Anglican view of the Church itself (at least before the so-called Glorious Revolution) as constituting the only legitimate Church in England and Ireland. The Church of England has thus arrived at a point utterly removed from its first nearly two centuries, when it regularly sought royal intervention and state power, even inviting the overthrow of the anointed and crowned King James VII and II in 1688, to maintain its established position and impose its particular doctrines on other churches and peoples (especially recusant Roman Catholics and low church Protestant Nonconformists) following the Henrican, Edwardian, and Elizabethan Reformations.
A lifelong supporter of interfaith dialogue and respect, the King has made several pilgrimages to the Orthodox monastic centre of Mount Athos, of whose benevolent society he long served as chief Patron. As Prince of Wales, he endowed numerous interfaith-oriented traditional educational programs and scholarly efforts such as The Prince’s Trust, Temenos Academy, and The Prince’s School for Traditional Arts. His inaugural speech in the 1990s opening the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies gratified Muslims in Britain and across the world with his deep knowledge and evident appreciation for the many contributions of Islamic civilisation to the world’s heritage. Since his accession in September, the King has publicly attended a London Sikh gurdwara, a Jewish synagogue, a Ukrainian Catholic cathedral, and many Anglican churches.
One of the clearest examples of the continuation of holy tradition in the ceremony is that its most sacred moment—the solemn anointing of the monarch upon the forehead, hands, and breast in the kingly-prophetic style of Solomon—will take place behind a specially-built panelled screen, so that it will be for the King the only private moment of the entire ceremony in which he is hidden from the cameras and the view of the congregation, and thus alone with God. In elegant contrast, to demonstrate that a queen consort’s authority and status flows from the crown—and thus from her husband as monarch—Queen Camilla will be anointed only upon the forehead, and in public view, but with the same chrism used to effect the anointing of her husband. Keeping with the anointing and coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1937, Queen Mary in 1911, and Queen Alexandra in 1902 shortly following that of their husband-kings, this subtle difference in the anointing between monarch-husband and consort-wife perfectly symbolises that the queen consort shares naturally in her husband’s dignity, style, and rank, but that her authority deries from her marriage to him, while his authority as monarch derives (as the ceremony daringly insists in a republican age with few remaining ancient monarchies) directly from God, practically manifested and maintained in ordinary time by Parliamentary and popular accord.
The coronation will thus be visibly in accord with ancient English and other Christian mediaeval notions of the sacred ceremony serving as an ‘eighth sacrament’ (in Catholic tradition, or ordinance in Protestant tradition), and in this ‘post-modern’ age, it will serve as a magnificent, embodied realisation in time and place of the King’s philosophical Traditionalism married to the most praiseworthy and laudable aspects of modern British society today. The text—a tantalising foretaste of what we can as of now only imagine and conceptualise before the Coronation itself on Saturday, 6 May—elegantly balances the best of early English mediaeval coronation precedent, recognition of the unique linguistic heritage of the four countries comprising the British Isles, and the diverse religious pluralism and multi-ethnic composition of Britain today.
The coronation of a new monarch serves as a mirror by which a society sees itself reflected in the person assuming the sacred mantle of authority and trust over and as the keystone and formal fountain-head of the body politic. The supra-political monarch serves as a looking-glass, a calm and steady mirror in which an ever-changing people may see in themselves their best, highest, and noblest aspirations. King Charles’ coronation—as the first in seven decades—thus proclaims and publicises both how British society has progressed and changed over his lifetime, and what it has stalwartly preserved, conserved, and maintained in its national character and psyche. The seven decades of his mother’s unprecedented reign witnessed the end of global empires and the UK’s evolution from global (if declining) post-war empire to present-day composite, mid-sized union of four nations-in-one state. As the longest-serving heir to any throne, as a man steeped in the lifelong study of history, philosophy, and the arts along with statesmanship and government, King Charles III stands uniquely as the best-studied and best-prepared monarch in British history. He is a living icon (image) and bridge recalling the stoic dedication and self-sacrifice of his parents’ Second World War generation, and the optimism, friendliness, and accessibility of his son and heir and his heirs beyond. He stands not only between colonial empire and post-colonial state, but between the resolutely Protestant Christian Britain of 1953 and the definitely multi-faith and secular Britain of 2023.
The coronation solemnising the new reign thus spans the conceptual divide between parliamentary constitutional government and sacred divine right, between modernity and antiquity, new and old, and projects Britain’s self-concept of its role in a more egalitarian, post-colonial, interconnected world. It projects a monarchy confident in having long foresworn the ‘efficient’ aspects of coercive political statecraft and factional partisanship to have in its place carved for itself a far more powerful, transcendent, stable, and dignified role. As the paramount civil institution in British society, the monarchy alone may serve as a unifying focal point for healing historical memory outside of and beyond ephemeral partisan political considerations. It alone may serve, in contrast to the ever-changing push and pull of parliamentary partisan politics, as a stable guide and reference between past, present, and future, and a sure ballast of service, duty, and evolving tradition in the stormy seas of uncharted postmodernity.
Looking thus to both the noblest aspects of over a millennium of Britain’s pre-colonial Christian past and its post-colonial, pluralistic future, the coronation of the new king and his queen will splendidly solemnise the third Carolinean age to the nation and the world as Britons seek God’s blessings for their new servant-leader. May Britons of all beliefs, backgrounds, and becomings unite, and peoples of goodwill across the Anglosphere and Commonwealth share, in prayerful devotion, singing as one body the old anthem, in truth a prayer adapted from the Psalmist Prophet-King David: God Save the King.
This piece and other reflections on King Charles III will appear in Happy & Glorious: A Royal Celebration.