Crown Him With Many Crowns
On Christian kingship, holy matrimony and holding your nerve
Last time, I wrote about how our desire for any kind of multiculturalism is perfectly embodied by the Christian gospel, which paints a compelling picture of a King of Kings sitting on a throne, surrounded by every tribe and tongue.
It’s not just a nice idea. God is making it happen, having poured out his Spirit at Pentecost to give us the power to make disciples of all nations. This is the grace we need to live with each other and celebrate our differences, rather than feel threatened by them. It does not come naturally to us.
The Tanner and the Centurion
I could go on, pointing out how Peter, who is dubious about eating with Gentiles, ends up staying at the house of Simon, the tanner, a handler of unclean animal carcasses. Here, Peter has a vision about all foods being declared clean and then goes to a Roman centurion’s house, where God’s spirit is poured out again. Cornelius the centurion is baptised. This is all in Acts 10. There’s a little comment that Simon’s house was near the sea, previously a barrier. Now it is a means by which the gospel of Christ will go across the Roman Empire.
Let us remember that the Roman Empire was a brutal regime, established and maintained at the point of a sword and operated an apartheid system in which Roman citizens were given preferential legal treatment. There are all the things that people today hate about the British Empire. Why? Because it doesn’t sit right with Christianity which we take for granted.
There was an inexcusable intertwining of Christianity with colonialism, in a scramble for land and power. We are still living with the poison of that hypocrisy today. But we are judging that misuse of military might and hegemony because one can see how Christ did not come to establish that kind of kingdom.
Let us also remember that is the Christians who refused to play along with the Roman Empire as they wouldn’t offer that pinch of incense to the Emperor. They preferred to be coated in tar and lit as human candles. In time, the power of the gospel and the blood of these martyrs toppled the unshakeable empire that seemed like it would last forever. That’s why Rome was originally known as The Eternal City.
We need the gospel to transform our society and, in many ways, it has and we now judge our past and our present by gospel values. But we still need the gospel to keep transforming us, and every generation because we cannot do it on our own.
The King and the Archbishop
It was heartening, therefore, to see such a robustly, unashamedly, unambiguously Christian coronation service. It was not without anomalies, inconsistencies and some displays of pageantry that looked, frankly, bizarre. But the King swore to uphold “the laws of God and the true profession of the gospel, maintain the Protestant Reformed religion established by law and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline and government thereof, as by law established.” Hallelujah! Amen! We heard him say it. Like it or not – and many do not - this is the bedrock on which our nation is built.
Some would have preferred something secular. But on what principles would that secular ceremony be based? The Spirit of the Age? Hume and Locke? Harry Potter? Cast your mind back to New Year’s Eve 1999 at the Millennium Dome. The great and the good gathered together on a momentously meaningless night that everyone has scrubbed from their minds.
Look around at the world today, and throughout history at how power has been used in a secular way. The body count from the twentieth century alone runs into the hundreds of millions. Power so easily corrupts. Say what you like about Oliver Cromwell (and they do). He is a rare example of someone who was offered the throne and didn’t take it. This is discussed on a recent episode of The Rest is History podcast and actually I wrote about this in Feb 2021. (See link below)
How To Use Power
Archbishop Justin’s sermon highlighted why it is the Christian faith that defines the kind of kingship for which we yearn – and so appreciated in Charles III’s mother, Elizabeth II when, for decades, it felt like the monarchy overstayed its welcome in an increasingly secular state.
Archbishop Justin preached that true kingship is modelled by Christ, whose crown was a crown of thorns. To lead is to suffer and serve. The hymn at the funeral of our late Queen Elizabeth II included the poignant line about casting our human crowns before the throne of Christ, the suffering servant. This is a Christian vision of how power works.
For a couple of hours, we had that Christian vision. And then it was back to business as usual. The media, the Twitterati and policymakers, took their eyes off the throne and fixed them back on each other in this culture of paranoia, fear and microaggressions.
A Failure of Nerve
The unashamedly Christian coronation service also had the effect of blotting out the feeling one got from reading the Archbishops’ Commission on Family and Household published just over a week earlier on 26thApril. It was an attempt to find out where we are when it comes to family and households. It contains plenty of careful analysis of society as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. The Commission calls on “Institutions – from the Church of England to Government – to put ‘family’ at the centre of their thinking.”
But how? The report holds back on promoting marriage as the best place for raising children. Here are the five key findings as published on the Church of England website - and look out for the words ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Spirit’, ‘Church’, ‘Bible’, ‘Holy’ and ‘Matrimony’. Bingo cards ready?
The Commission outlines five ambitions to support and strengthen family life. We must:
1. Value families in all their diversity, meeting their basic needs by putting their wellbeing at the heart of Government policy-making and our community life, including religious communities.
2. Support relationships throughout life, ensuring that everyone is able to develop and maintain loving and caring relationships, manage conflict well and promote the flourishing of individuals and families.
3. Honour singleness and single person households, recognising that loving relationships matter to everyone.
4. Empower children and young people, developing their relational skills and knowledge, recognising their value and agency, and protecting them from harm and giving them the best start in life.
5. Build a kinder, fairer, more forgiving society, removing discrimination, division and deep inequality for the sake of every family and household.
House?! Nope. Me neither.
Okay, now look again for the word ‘Marriage’.
Nope. Even that word isn’t there.
Isn’t that amazing? One expects the press to scrape off all those toxic faith words and dechristianise everything. I don’t understand why we’re doing their job for them.
Impossible Love (and not the kind you’re thinking of)
The report has been called ‘Love Matters’. How will we love? We are not lovely. How will we “build a kinder, fairer, more forgiving society, removing discrimination, division and deep inequality for the sake of every family and household.”? We are not kind, fair or forgiving. We are, by nature, divisive, grasping and adulterous. I know I should love. I can’t do it on my own. And nor can anyone else. Why would the Church of England, of all people, think anyone can?
If we want the power to love each other, we need the gospel of Christ who dies for his bride, the Church, as we, his bride, submit to Christ. That’s what holy matrimony is. And God must be at the centre of it. So why not promote that?
If the Church will not give the reason for our hope in Christ, and offer the transforming power of God’s Spirit, who will?
I’m reminded of the words to the Church in Ephesus:
“But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
Over on the Psephizo blog, Rev Dr Ian Paul’s is writes convincingly that the report is, itself, rather selective in the interpretation of evidence, and what evidence to interpret. He writes:
On the one hand, [the report] purports to be ‘objective’, in that it deals with facts about society and social attitudes. On the other hand, this is a deception: decisions are made about which facts to explore, and which to pass over. The presentation of the facts is not at all objective, but reflects the agenda of whoever has made the decisions on which facts to include—but without offering a rationale for these decisions. So, in this case, the compelling evidence that a commitment to marriage as the best context for sexual intimacy and as the best context to raise children is completely passed over—but no explanation is offered for why this is not considered important.
Read more over here.
For some encouragement, we can turn to Paul Kingsnorth who gave this 25-minute talk to the Unherd club. I’ve mentioned it here before. Having not been a Christian for very long, Kingsnorth hasn’t yet realised you’re not meant to talk enthusiastically about faith in public, least of all persuade people to take it seriously and consider it – and encourage them to pray at the end. What a pity he’s not an Anglican, although you can understand why.
And here’s that article on Cromwell:
Oh, and Wall-E is a brilliant movie. Can we have another one like that, please, Pixar?