Why do we have a Coronation?

It's not what you might think.

Ahh, the King’s Coronation. Pomp, ceremony, tradition and, of course, lashings of rain. Did it make you proud to be British? Or if you’re not from this Kingdom, did it make you wish you were?

It might surprise you, but this week I am not going to use the Coronation as an excuse to take a swipe at the monarchy or the King; crusty old cynic that I am. No, instead I am going to use this week’s article to ask the question ‘why do we have a Coronation?’

But more of that shortly. Firstly I want to say that watching it confirmed to me that I am actually in favour of a hereditary monarchy. It made me realise that there is a very strong justification for Charles becoming head of state – a position that stands above politics – purely by virtue of being the firstborn son of the late Queen.

You don’t agree? Think of the alternative. If you select a head of state by vote, you get opposing candidates – and what does that bring with it? Yup. Political parties. Which means you get political manifestos promising what each candidate would do if voted into office, and you have a victor who represents only those who voted for them – almost certainly less than half the population. And a manifesto, for all the promises it makes, cannot realistically be implemented by a constitutional figurehead who has no political power. Which makes it pointless.

Contrast that with selection by heredity. A system that gives us a King or Queen, who, whatever you might think of them, stands above politics and is therefore able to represent the whole population.

But if you still want elections, I would ask you this. Who would you get as candidates? Ex-politicians or faded ‘celebs’ who are unlikely to have the stature of a head of state, nor any real political neutrality. I’m sorry, but I don’t think these are people I want representing my country on the world stage. (What’s that? President Zelensky is an ex-comedian? I know – there are exceptions to every rule). But exceptions aside, give me a man who’s spent 60+ years being prepared for the role over someone like, I don’t know – Blair, Cameron or Johnson.

So, I am not using this week’s article to have a go at the King, nor at the monarchy as an institution. They may not be perfect, but they’re a whole heap better than the alternative.

No, my question this week is, why do we need a Coronation ceremony at all?

I watched the service in Westminster Abbey with that thought uppermost in my mind.

And if you watched it with unquestioning acceptance, then I want to answer the above question with the following answer - that we neither need, nor should have, such a ceremony.

Because what I saw was a sickening display of arrogance and anachronism by the established Anglican Church.

I’m sorry if you’re a committed Anglican, but there is absolutely no place for an established religion in today’s Britain, and certainly not for that religion to validate the monarch. Here’s an interesting statistic – apparently less than 1% of the population attend weekly Anglican services (2021 Census). Let me put that another way: an institution that 99% of us do not regularly support claims the authority to install our head of state.

And it’s not as if the coronation is even necessary. Under the 1701 Act of Settlement, the Prince of Wales became King Charles the moment his mother passed away. The Coronation serves only one official purpose; to install him as the head of the established Anglican church. The ‘defender of the faith’ even. So, to spend £250m of tax-payer money on a ceremony that has little or no relevance to 99% of the tax-paying population is, quite frankly, indefensible.

And boy, didn’t the church elite seem to love their moment in the glare of the world’s publicity? What a chance to grandstand their anachronistic and irrational practices! The church has said it sees the coronation as a “unique opportunity” to convert people to Christianity. WHAT? The church has used £250m of our money to proselytise to us? And it doesn’t stop there. As part of the ceremony, the King was stripped down to his shirt, and consecrated with ‘holy oil’ behind a privacy screen. According to the Westminster Abbey website, “This sacred blessing… is at the heart of the Christian coronation service, demonstrating the connection between the monarch and God.”

That’ll be a ‘god’ that fewer and fewer of Charles’s subjects actually believe in, then?

As I say, maybe you glossed over all this when you watched the ritual. Focussed on the pomp and ceremony. Revelled in the eyes of the world being on Britain for a day. Marvelled at us Brits putting on one heck of a show. And yes, you knew that there would be a load of ‘Jesus’-ing, ‘Oh Lord’-ing and ‘Almighty God’-ing going on, but you let it wash over you, because you’ve heard it all many, many times before. After all, it’s so familiar that the actual meaning no longer sinks in.

Well, I would like to challenge you with a few things that may have passed you by, but which jumped out at me as I watched.

Firstly, the sheer opulence and wealth on display. Not only the priceless jewels in the crowns and regalia, but all the gold – in the coaches, the vestments, the plates and the adornments of the abbey itself. Let me just remind you of the originator of this religion – a mythical Jewish carpenter who blessed the poor and the needy, and asked his followers to give up their worldly goods. A bloke who said that his so-called ‘kingdom of heaven’ was not open to the wealthy. Yeah, that mythical bloke. So when you see the amount of wealth concentrated into the hands of the church elite, it becomes quite clear that this religion was never really about moral philosophy – it was always just a means for the elite to control the rest of the population. That’s why it needed to demonstrate its ‘other-worldliness’ to support its power with conspicuous wealth. But thankfully, Britain no longer seems to care. The increasing irrelevance of the church’s levers of power – its promise of eternal ‘bliss’ in heaven and the threat of eternal ‘torture’ in hell – means that its power and control is slipping away like a receding tide. And in doing so, it reveals what it really is – a colourful, showy human organisation that has gathered massive wealth over the centuries, and seems to have no desire to relinquish it.

Secondly, the parade of bishops flocking around the King like purple and white crows. These are people who have a constitutional right to sit in the House of Lords, and therefore vote on legislation. Think about that a moment. Adults who have consciously left logic and rationality at the church door in favour of myth, superstition and proven falsehoods, and whose true constituency is less than 1% of the population, are able to vote on laws that affect the entire country. You only have to look across the pond to the anti-democratic theocrats in the USA to see how that can turn out.

And thirdly, the invocation to their ‘god’ for the authority to crown the King. Charles himself even undermined that, with his oath to serve, rather than be served. In other words, he was claiming his authority from the people, rather than specifically from any ‘god’. Not that Welby and his fellow bishops seemed to spot the contradiction.

So, there it is. We have a new King as our head of state. All well and good. We just didn’t need an expensive, irrelevant coronation, born out of ancient authoritarianism, to legitimise him. It demonstrates to me just how out of touch the Anglican church is, and the sooner it is disestablished, the better. Hopefully before the current Prince of Wales becomes King William V, so we can devise some secular way to signify the transfer of the crown when that time comes.

We should certainly recognise that Great Britain is no longer the ‘god-fearing’ society that the Anglican church seems to think it is.

Or wants to make it again.

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When I am not sounding off on Substack, I write action adventure novels set in Tudor England. The first novel in my trilogy features a time-traveller going back to the 16th century - and not surprisingly, being accused of being a witch.

It is out as an audiobook, performed by the unique and amazing Caroline Holmes.

For more info, see Audible UK here or Audible US here.