Defender of the Faiths, My Eye

You don’t have to be a mutinous, mulish anti-monarchist (like me) to believe that the late queen, Elizabeth the Good, did her job pretty much perfectly. Neither did you have to have been a rabid fan (also like me) of Princess Diana to have believed that the heir to the throne was an inferior type, who especially following his mother would make a bad fist of a big job.Charles had lots going against him. Ageing but immature. Given to stagey pronouncements about crucial socio-economic issues, in which he invariably placed himself on the side of the Little Man — but so grand that the Queen is once reputed to have remarked that “The amount of kit and servants he takes around is grotesque.”The most suspect thing about him, though, was when he announced that he intended to be “defender of the faiths” whereas his mother had been “Defender of the Faith.” That’s a reference to her unshakeable bond with the Church of England. So particular was QE2’s faith that reliable rumour has it that a new recruit to a royal chapel asked if he might don the Catholic vestment known as a chasuble; the Queen is thought to have answered briskly “If you like, so long as it doesn’t happen while I’m here.”Defenders of faiths, my eye! We all knew what he meant by that — Islam. His Orientalist fascination with the Religion of Peace went way back. A letter to his mentor, Laurens van der Post, in 1986 after a tour of Arab states, suggests that mistrust of Jews may be another reason for Charles’ Islamophilia: “The influx of foreign Jews, especially from Poland, has helped to cause great problems…surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby?” Little wonder that Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, described the note with classic Anglo-Jewish understatement as “unsettling, to put it mildly.” How much of this was the attraction of a not bright man toward a flashy and theatrical religion (before becoming king, Prince Charles had been known to stroll around his “Islamic garden” wearing Arabic robes) and how much was a genuine preference for the way power structures are ordered in the Middle East compared to what a moron might see as the inferior modernism of the West, with its pesky democratic elections, is anyone’s guess.Yet even now King Charles, always backwards in coming forwards when it comes to defending Christianity, finally spoke up in defence of the persecuted Church worldwide at an Advent carol service earlier this month, going as far to mention “areas where it is not easy to live out one’s faith.”Orthodox hymns were sung and the sermon was given by a Catholic cardinal (Heaven forbid, just once, the King might go wild and oversee a completely Anglican service, in honour of his mother if nothing else) who spoke of the ‘massive persecution of Christians in so many places.”A 25-year-old Christian from Pakistan, a major recipient of foreign aid from Britain, spoke of the burning of churches and told of her relief that she could now celebrate Christmas. We live in strange days indeed when an Islam-fan like King Charles is more forthright than the alleged leader of the Church of England when it comes to the persecution of Christians worldwide.The Nigerian Church, with around 20 million members, is, at the hands of Islamists, currently suffering massacres, which have increased in the months leading up to Christmas. Did the Archbishop of Canterbury elect, Sarah Mullally, have anything to say on the matter? Not a peep. It was left to the American air force to take action, conducting Christmas night airstrikes on ISIS militants accused of killing Christians, with a warning that further strikes would follow if the violence continues. It was practically inevitable that the Church of England would elect its first female Archbiship of Canterbury after the last one, Justin Welby, retired in disgrace when it transpired that he had known rather too much about the level of violent child abuse taking place on his watch.It’s a shame that the woman in question appears to hold the usual clapped-out liberal establishment views on the issues of the day, taking the opportunity of her Christmas Day sermon to preach that “our national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us.” In other words; shut it, plebs, and keep quiet when thousands of mainly Muslim immigrants flood by their thousands into a country staggering under a societal structure increasingly incapable of supporting those born here, making another English civil war an ever-looming likelihood.As a feminist, I should be pleased that the Church to which I give my allegiance has finally found it appropriate to elect a female head. Sadly, like the bishops of the Nigerian church who have signalled their disapproval, I fear that, increasingly, weakness and division await our already weak and divided church in the coming year. So in an entirely dismaying way, King Charles will at last make an entirely appropriate head of our national religion. Let the bells ring out.

Defender of the Faiths, My Eye

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