Nonetheless the day will come when like the rest of us she will expire. Since most of us can’t remember a time when she was not, it’s likely to be quite dramatic for all of us (or for those still alive), but not least for the Church of England.
Strangely, it had not struck me until recently just what an important figure the Queen is for the C of E. I had understood that she is the Church’s Supreme Governor, of course, but had not grasped the extent to which she is for Anglicans a sacred personage, a person of religious significance. It seems that faint echoes of that ancient doctrine ‘the divine right of kings’ can still be heard.
When Henry VIII found it convenient to break with Rome he in effect replaced the Pope as the Church of England’s highest authority. Initially he and his immediate successors were styled ‘Head of the Church’ but as there is already a claimant to that position the language was moderated to ‘Supreme Governor’. From the Reformation the monarch has held a dual role as both a civil and temporal governor and a religious and spiritual one. Elements of the Pope’s role, which is (for Catholics) undeniably a sacred one were continued into the monarch’s, constituting him or her a sacred figure attracting religious devotion.
It is not for nothing then that at the coronation of a monarch the ceremony takes place in a cathedral and is dripping with religious language and imagery. The monarch is anointed in her office, as were the kings of Israel, and given symbols of both spiritual and temporal rule. Neither is it for nothing that bishops, who used to be thought of as princes of the church, have to swear a vow of personal loyalty to the monarch’s own person.
Indeed, there is almost a mystical dimension to the devotion given to the monarch in the Church she governs. Occasionally when senior and clued-up Anglicans talk you catch a hint of it, a hint which is also evident in the cult of ‘Charles King and Martyr’. This sustains the memory of a former monarch who really did believe in the divine right of kings and acted arbitrarily and tyrannically as a consequence. Getting his head chopped of by a group of angry Puritans constituted him for at least some Anglicans a holy martyr to the cause.
Of course, this is a problem that has long existed. While Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Elizabeth has not occupied such religious roles in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Nor has she done so even for the Anglican communion in Commonwealth countries which look to her as Head of the Commonwealth. The inclusion of the religious dimension in the coronation has constituted a kind of English imperialism. Even within England, historic Nonconformity has always expressly denied a religious function to the monarch, although consistently supportive of the civil aspects of monarchy. And in an increasingly religiously diverse and secular country, the religious dimensions of monarchy are not exactly relevant.
All of this points to dividing up the roles played by the monarch to distinguish much more clearly between the civil role that may be recognised by all citizens (and which includes the protection of religious freedoms for all) and a religious one which is relevant to the Church of England which believes in it and approves it. This in turn points to two ceremonies: one in which Elizabeth’s successor assumes the civil role, with appropriate wording perhaps in Westminster Hall (interestingly, the scene of the trial of Charles I), and a second, perhaps in Westminster Cathedral where religious duties towards the Church of England are affirmed for as long as the Church wishes to maintain its sacred view of the monarchy.