Something Wonderful on Which We Can All Agree
Including Anglicans, Catholics & Calvinists
Before I launch into an article about Christ the King – celebrated this coming Sunday – can I tell you about how you can buy yourself, and others, some handy Christmas presents, written by yours truly?
If you’re in the UK, you can buy signed copies of my books, including my first one - Death by Civilisation - along with a bonus book that is not normally available, plus free shipping for a limited time if you order by noon on 9th December. I’ve made a little video about it all below. Do please have a look! If you’re outside the UK, sorry the postage is prohibitively expensive. There’ll be a digital deal soon.
In other parish notices, my new show, God, the Bible and Everything, is getting booked up for the spring and early summer. If you want a date of your choosing, swiftly reply to this email or contact me here.
Right. Let’s get to what you’ve really come for:
Christ The King: The Origin Story
Many dates in the calendar of the Church of England were established by papal declarations before the 1530s. Thereafter, papal bulls ceased to have any direct relevance to the feast days and festivals of the English. So I was surprised to discover the ancient sounding festival of “Christ the King”, celebrated in the Church of England on the last Sunday before Advent came from Pope Pius XI in 1925.
I must confess to being a little disappointed. I am not a member of the Church of Rome. Some of my favourite Christians were Roman Catholics, like GK Chesterton and JRR Tolkien. But I do not stare longingly at the far bank of the Tiber, wondering if I can make it across. I remain cheerfully in the Church of England – yes, with all of its grave and glaring problems – with CS Lewis and Thomas Cranmer. So what is this recent Papal festival doing in the Church of England’s calendar, having been fully adopted under Common Worshiptwenty years ago?
My disappointment at the origin story of Christ the King has turned to shame as I did my research. Pope Pius XI, I discovered, was dismayed by the climate of despair in Europe following the First World War. Not only had millions died, but the Romanovs, the mighty and ancient Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Empire had all collapsed.
One suspects the Pope was not too sad to see the back of the Ottoman Empire which had posed a serious threat to Christendom for centuries. But politics, like nature and the media, abhors a vacuum. There was much uncertainty and Pope Pius XI felt that everyone needed a strong dose of spiritual smelling salts to remind us all who is really in charge. That would be the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pope Pius’s bull proclaiming the new feast of Christ the King, Quas Primas, is well worth a look. It says lots of things like this:
If men recognise the royal power of Christ privately and publicly, incredible benefits must spread through the civil community, such as a just liberty, discipline, tranquillity, agreement, and peace.
Isn’t that great? He doesn’t say that recognising Christ things may get better. He says ‘incredible benefits must spread through the civil community’. (Okay, he said that in Latin.) Little did Pope Pius XI know that by 1925, the twentieth century was only just getting warmed up. Greater horrors on an unimaginable scale were to come over the following twenty years.
In a way, those atrocities make the point. The unashamedly anti-Christian regimes that established themselves in both Berlin and Moscow brought nothing but authoritarianism and war on a global scale that exceeded even the slaughter of the Western Front. The rate of casualties during the Battle of Normandy in 1944 exceeded a typical day during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Pope Pius’s words were not heeded. Christ was not honoured. And things got worse. Way worse.
The kingship of Christ is something on which all Christians should be able to agree. Abraham Kuyper, a Reformed Dutch theologian, is famous in Calvinist circles for some words of a speech he gave in 1880 at the opening the Free University in the Netherlands. He said:
There is not a square inch in the whole of creation over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”
Or, in other words, Christ is King. Why not celebrate that? The last hundred years have demonstrated that we easily forget this fact. The consequences for our wilful ignorance or cowardly silence are truly terrible.
Now’s the Time
The kingship of Christ is a message we really need to hear now, since a deep, dark despair has set in to our society and, sadly, the church. It seems like we are resigned to chaos, subversion, panic and fear. The problem is we have put our trust in men and women, not least politicians.
We say things like ‘The Prime Minister is running the country’. Could this ever possibly have been true? This is not a comment on Keir Starmer, or his predecessors or successors. I seek only to point out the insanity of the notion that any one single person can run an extremely complex and diverse society of 65 million people – all of whom seek to be their own king or queen. Premiership after premiership has ended in failure with ever increasing rapidity. Keir Starmer, impressively, has saved time by starting with failure. That’s rare but, at least, efficient.
As politician after politician disappoints, our nation does not cry out to Christ the King. No, we demand experts and technocrats. Anything important must be made ‘independent’ or ‘depoliticised’. The upside is that your political enemies no longer control that institution. The downside is that the institution loses accountability.
The Problem of Power
Our problem is that we are inherently suspicious of power because we understand how dangerous it is. The great work of fiction of the last hundred years may well be Lord of the Rings, an epic story about power. We do not understand how to wield it, and we are consistently beguiled by it, even when we are trying to do the right thing. The devil is happy for us to do the right thing, as long as we do it the wrong way: his way.
It's an eternal story about the fecklessness of man. Look at what we did with power two thousand years ago. Christmas is coming, in which Christ left heaven to be with us and save us. Herod used his power to slaughter the innocents. Only the Magi from the East rightly bowed down before the Christ child. This child grew up to use his power and kingship to bless, to heal, to restore and to teach. We used human power – which ironically comes from Christ - to have the Lord Jesus crucified. And on that day, Christ was put in a purple robe, crowned with thorns and killed under a sign which rightly declared his kingship.
Unless we use power in the name of Christ the King, and for his glory, we will never use power well. We are incapable of it. The power will corrupt us eventually, unless we are empowered by God’s Spirit. And even then, Spirit-filled Christians can do deeply wicked things, or at least cover them up.
We must publicly honour Christ the King for the sake of “liberty, discipline, tranquillity, agreement, and peace.” So I find it hard to understand calls for disestablishment of the Church of England which will only accelerate our insistence that Christ is removed from the public square entirely. Besides, who will crown our king? And in whose name? Will we vote on it?
Abraham “Every Square Inch” Kuyper went on to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Can you imagine a serious Calvinist theologian being elected to any public office in England today, let alone handed the keys to 10 Downing Street? Me neither. But don’t we at least want a Prime Minister who will declare the kingship of Christ? I’m puzzled that even many Christians do not see that as desirable.
So let us end with a quotation from another Prime Minster. This one was rejected, betrayed and imprisoned despite his innocence. Joseph, son of Jacob, the Premier of Egypt, said to his wicked, resentful and cowardly brothers:
You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Genesis 50:20)
Christ is King. CHRIST IS KING! What an enormous relief. Alleluia.
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Here’s that special Christmas 2024 Cary’s Almanac offer straight from the horse’s mouth. I am that horse:
James, this is so very, very good. Thanks for the “gentle” reminder of His sovereign authority. Sharing with others now.
Brilliant James. How can you get it out to a wider audience?