Bosco Peters Liturgy Deconstruction Part 1
Philip Zoutendam Earth & Altar Who is Thomas Cranmer?
One of my fellow editors at Thinking Anglicans has written this.
Simon Kershaw Thinking Allowed The Coronation Liturgy
Jasvinder Sanghera, Survivor Advocate Independent Safeguarding Board Response to SCIE report on safeguarding practices into Lambeth Palace
Stephen Parsons Surviving Church Trying to be heard. How Lambeth Palace has let down the Abused in their search for Justice
See also links in the comments to our article Lambeth Palace safeguarding audit published.
Thanks Simon, for all the detail and information about the coronation. I was a few weeks old when the last coronation took place. It’s been almost a lifetime and now we have another. I do value ritual, especially when it is collectively shared and entered into, imaginatively, by many people. On the Stone of Scone (aka Stone of Destiny), that of course resides in Edinburgh Castle which is owned by the Scottish Government. Indeed it is fair to say that the Stone of Destiny belongs to Scotland too, as it was stolen by Edward I of England in 1296. There… Read more »
I thought the Stone of Destiny, closely guarded, had already been transferred to London. I thought I had read a report of this happening some time ago, but can’t find it today. In any event there is no intention to keep it in England! It will be returned to Scotland after the Coronation.
Alex Salmond and others are vocal about a second Referendum. The Supreme Court of the UK unanimously held that this proposal is unlawful without the consent of the UK Parliament. Also, note that the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Reed, is a Scot!
Thanks to Simon for the overview of the coronation liturgy. I wonder whether its setting within the Eucharist will be maintained this time? If not, it will represent a real break. But it may be that in the interests of keeping the whole service shorter than previously, that is one element that has to go. Also, an Anglican eucharist might not seem the most inclusive liturgy for what is otherwise something of a stand-alone series of ceremonies, at least one of which (anointing) is specifically religious and together with the actual crowning(s) will probably be what most people nowadays (if… Read more »
When I read reports of the plans for coronation, alongside all the reports of abject poverty and social breakdown all around our country, I can’t help thinking of that great prophet of socialism, Edward Carpenter. He wrote this in a 1908 pamphlet entitled “British Aristocracy and the House of Lords.” “IT has often been said that our victory at Waterloo was a great misfortune to England; and in general terms the truth of this remark can hardly be gainsaid. Our successes as against the armies of the French Revolution certainly kept the current of new human forces and ideas associated… Read more »
If Carpenter really thought that the battle of Waterloo had been fought against the armies of the French Revolution, he was curiously misinformed. The army was that of the Emperor Napoleon, who had put an end to the revolution a decade previously. He was equally misinformed about the feudal system, which had been formally terminated in England in 1660, having more or less died out under the Tudors.
I think the signs are that the structure will be similar, if modified, but the anointing with chrism oil is definitely intended. The BBC carried a report yesterday of the oil being consecrated in Jerusalem by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Anglican Archbishop in a ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The existence or not of an Anglican Eucharist on the prayer service for coronation will likely to lie on whether they want it to be truly ecumenical with both the presence of the Roman Church, other Christians and other non Christian Faiths in order to express the reality of the whole multi cultural and diverse religious current England’s society. If their aim is to include that ecumenical and societal embrace, the Anglican Eucharist will be left apart, perhaps for ever and ever to facilitate things both theologically and socially speaking. If they have other ideas like a CofE service plus… Read more »
If there were a wish for it to be “truly ecumenical”, the service could be moved to Wembley Stadium.
The Eucharist is The Eucharist. We need to discover that differentiating Anglican, Roman Methodist and Baptist etc is the folly of fallen humanity. If we want to be ecumenical we should stop playing such silly games.
We may do things in differing ways and we may have different theological understandings. None of us is ‘right’ . The mystery of Faith is understood only by God.
Are you using the word ‘England’ to refer to just the land mass between the Cheviots and the English Channel or instead of the inclusive word Britain? Charles is being crowned King of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ie four nations. In Scotland, the Anglican Scottish Episcopal Church is a tiny minority. Should the Church of Scotland, the established Church, not have a larger role than hitherto ?
If the Eucharist were to be dumped for the sake of brevity it would speak negative volumes!
There is plenty of flummery which could be abbreviated to shorten the service.
I would hope the Eucharist isn’t dropped in favour of what might “appeal more, ” since only the King and Queen are to communicate. It’s fitting the Church’s central act of worship shouldn’t be abandoned to accommodate current fashion. If we are looking for a Coronation based on contemporary CofE worship, the Coronation “meeting” would have Chief Minister Mr Welby in a nice T-shirt with M&S chinos, accompanied by the Abbey band singing “Jesus wants the King for a Sunbeam”.
But isn’t a ‘Eucharist’ in which only the King and Queen communicate while everyone else watches their betters, thoroughly debased from its inclusive meaning anyway?
The Eucharist isn’t only about Communion. Offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice for the new King is the Church’s greatest gift and has nothing to do with the British class system.
It has everything to do with class in this case and I still maintain a Eucharist where the majority are expected to be spectators rather than participants is a perversion.
It really doesn’t. It has to do with monarchy. It would be about class if communion were to be restricted to people who’d been to public school, or who spoke in a certain way, or had a desk job.
As it is, it’s a coronation, and part of that is that the two people involved take holy communion.
I assume, by the way, that the common practice in Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches of the congregation often not taking communion at Mass is equally perverse in your view?
Non-communicating masses have been around for centuries. What is wrong with being a spectator at the Eucharistic Sacrifice when the Host is raised on behalf of all people present? You may have a completely Protestant view of Holy Communion, but it’s offensive to describe other people’s views as a “perversion”
The snappy answer would be: No, it isn’t. Why would you think so? Incidentally, it’s your choice to regard their majesties as your “betters”. They’re King and Queen Consort, and the rest of us aren’t. That arrangement is the settled will of the British people.
The will of the English people maybe, but neither settled nor the clear will of the other nations of the Union, which hesitation will be exacerbated by holding the coronation in London. Again. Why can’t it be in Edinburgh or Cardiff? And if you answer ‘Because it is always held in London’ or ‘Because of tradition’ then that bias encapsulates the problem.
Support for the monarchy is high in all four nations. Wales and Ulster slightly higher than England, and Scotland lower.
Incidentally, “bias” is one of those asymmetrical words. Your settled view may be someone else’s bias, and vice versa. If you don’t think tradition is important or valuable, by all means say so, but to reject an argument before you’ve heard it is an exemplar of bias.
Isn’t the tradition Westminster Abbey… as opposed to London?
And there’s another reason why I find it difficult to see how the organisers will feel able to justify the coronation ceremony as it has been received. In 1953 and before it was unusual for mainstream churchgoers to receive holy communion on all but the rarest of occasions. Now it is the norm.
Would it be non-inclusive if nobody else could get themselves crowned?
I agree, Kate. It’s just wrong to have a service of Holy Communion at which all are obliged to sit through the liturgy, but only two of the practising Christians present are allowed to receive.
Until at least the end Michael Ramsey’s time, communicating at bishop’s consecrations was restricted to the new bishop’s immediate family
That is just awful.
The king and queen are not the only people to receive. So do the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dean of Westminster and the assisting bishops (Bath & Wells, Durham, the two who support the queen, the two who read the epistle and gospel — these last four traditionally bishops too, but we’ll have to wait and see whether others are asked to fill some of these roles). But if you were to communicate the several thousand in the abbey, or at least those who wished to receive, you’d have a big distribution on your hands. You’d need a lot of… Read more »
The obvious solution is for the King and Queen to have a service of communion in their private chapel before the coronation service, inviting anyone else they wish to share the sacrament with them.
It’s wrong in principle to exclude people who would be receiving in their own church – ‘we are all one body because we all share in one bread’.
I don’t disagree with the principle that there should be a general communion and that restricting communion is a Bad Thing. The practicalities make it difficult though. The key constitutional requirement is for the monarch to be demonstrably in communion with the Church of England.
Ah, I can see the logic there. But to my mind it’s another reason for disestablishment, if being established requires us to contravene such a central principle of Christianity. I know that principle is contravened elsewhere, but this would be probably the most public example.
The word “solution” suggests that the Coronation service is somehow a problem. Unless someone is invited or even required to attend the service, I wonder why they would not take the advice so freely dispensed to conservatives by progressives on the issue of same-sex marriage: that what other people do in church does them no harm.
Fortunate, then, that this is not “a service of Holy Communion”, but a coronation, as part of which the King and Queen Consort receive communion.
Holy Communion is not just an add-on, like garnish on a plate.
It isn’t an “add-on” to the Coronation: it is central. This is from the rubric of the 1953 Coronation: ”… the Queen shall offer Bread and Wine for the Communion, which being brought out of Saint Edward’s Chapel, and delivered into her hands (the Bread upon the Paten by the Bishop that read the Epistle, and the Wine in the Chalice by the Bishop that read the Gospel), shall be received from the Queen by the Archbishop, and reverently placed upon the Altar …” The significance of the above would be lost in a ceremony held in private. We have… Read more »
Powerful words from Jasvinder Sanghera. “Reports are important but only if they translate into immediate action”.
Looks like Charles III is hedging his bets by having the Coronation Oil of Anointing blessed in Jerusalem mainly by Greek Orthodox clerics with an Anglican Archbishop assisting. For previous coronations, including that of his late lamented mother, the chrism oils have been blessed in Westminster Abbey presumably and solely by clerics of the Church of England of which Charles III is now Supreme Governor?
This BBC page helps provide perspective.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64836101
All should be revealed with the publication of the Order of Service.
We should remember that the King’s father and grandmother were Greek Orthodox. His father was baptized in the Greek church; Princess Alice, baptized in the Lutheran church, converted to Orthodoxy and in later years became an Orthodox nun.
Please can I ask why the publication of the second biannual report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice wasn’t picked up by TA?
This is a very good question. It’s just been very busy here lately. I will add an article on this report soon.
Is Simon party to information nobody else has seen? The idea that time for mass can be found in a shorter ceremony whilst hits from just about every living composer are promised seems a bit of a stretch. I’m suspicious that not a jot of information has been released about this central point even though plenty of titbits have been dropped our way about irrelevances such as the dressmaker. Simon seems sure he even knows the rite! You’ll be lucky.
We don’t know the precise details of the service, but that it will be a 1662 communion service has I think been publicly stated. Most of the essay describes what has happened at previous coronations, especially the last two.
Please could you tell us where this has been publicly stated?
In a dream that Simon and many others may have had. In spite of the fact that the King, like Lord Chartres were both patrons of the PBS for years, both need encouragement to use it in practice.
To many observant Anglicans the 1662 eucharistic rite is as relevant to present day life and worship as the Treaty of Versailles is to contemporary political thought.
And to other observant Anglicans it remains an important part of their personal devotions.
I think that is quite apparent.
Do you think it might be in any way linked to the elderly profile of such observant folk`?
Don’t make too many assumptions – the Prayer Book Society has gained a good many younger members in recent years.
Perhaps they also ride to hounds?
What difference would that make? Surely you’re not suggesting that being elderly somehow makes someone’s views less important?
Of course not. However the Church cannot dance to the tune of the soon to be dead (as is often the case) else it might wither away itself.
… which is precisely the assertion that the views of the elderly should carry less weight, and offensively phrased to boot.
Not at all. My point is that although all the Plebs Sancta Dei matter utterly, the elderly cannot call all the shots and exercise unwarranted control over the Church and indeed the local parish. They cannot insist on calling all the tunes for all ages to dance to. Their (our) point of view matters but so does the point of views of those who have never come across the BCP….which includes a surprising number of ordinands. We elderly may represent a large proportion of a local congregation but their (or our) tacit exercise of power over what happens in the… Read more »
Thank you Simon. Wonderful to see Parry’s original setting of the introduction to “I was glad”. I find it most moving. It can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xacPK5RLwSs it is salutary to read in the Oath the words “Protestant Reformed Religion”. Of course His Majesty made a similar oath in Scotland within hours of his accession, but to see it in print (I assume the Oath will not be changed) says something profound about the Church of England that may have faded from our consciousness given that it was last used in 1953 since when we’ve endured what might be termed… Read more »
Changing the Oath would require an Act of Parliament. It was last changed for the 1911 coronation, the previous version having been very strongly worded to prevent anyone in communion with the See of Rome being able to take it.
Many thanks, but the Accession Declaration Act 1910 did not amend the coronation oath (which remains much as it was under the terms of the Coronation Oath Act 1689), but rather the declaration to be made by the sovereign on his/her accession (the previous texts of 1678 and 1701 having condemned Mariolatry, the sacrifice of the mass, and the ‘superstition and idolatry’ of the RCC). This was at the prompting of George V himself, noting Asquith’s dependence on Redmond. There are useful discussions on this topic here: (i) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-monarchy-and-the-constitution-9780198277699?cc=gb&lang=en; (ii) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/sites/constitution-unit/files/180_swearing_in_the_new_king.pdf; (iii) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OXhovNnt76QC&pg=PA63&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false (political background neglected, disappointingly, by George V’s… Read more »
I should add that these are also useful discussions summarising the history of adjustments to the coronation oaths: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/coronation-oath/F83079759125218B8D97BA1722954CBC and https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2022/10/27/david-torrance-constitutional-mirrors-coronations-and-the-territorial-constitution/.
Yes, you are quite right. Thanks for the clarification.
Their Majesties are both nearly 80 years of age, I hope that the rite takes account of that and accommodates the rigours of old age.
To some of us 74 is a way off being nearly 80!!
Both the king and queen will get to 80 before you as Charles will be 75 on14th November and Camilla 76 on 17th July – so both most senior royals will be half way to 80 in the not too distant future.
Half way is not nearly if you are 74 and hoping!!!!!
I agree. I can’t imagine what it is like to have waited for one’s whole life for a job. and having to start work aged 74! Most people have spent around a decade in retirement before they reach the age of the poor King.
You know, I find it very dispiriting that there is so much more involvement in discussion of liturgical niceties than in ensuring justice for those the Church has grievously wronged.
I’ve no problem with liturgical debate – I’ve contributed above myself – but I’d like to see a similar amount of passion and conviction deployed on behalf of victims, survivors, and those falsely accused.
I’m delighted to have been invited to a wedding on Saturday 6 May, and my focus will be on supporting the couple in question. Whether we shall have wide screen TVs in the margins I don’t know. Of course we must pray for the King and for the soon to be Queen, Queen Consort, but this is 2023 and not 1953. It will be radically different. There was massive support for the young Queen; indeed being a Coronation baby myself, I cannot recall any criticism of TLHMTQ during her long reign, except perhaps around the death of Diana, Princess of… Read more »