Consider the crown and who wears it

The Feast of Christ the King prompts Jamie Mulvaney to ask what sort of strong leader we should seek.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

King Charles in a black dinner suit talks and gestures to President Macron who is similarly dressed.

King Charles and President Macron at a September 2023 state visit.

Remember singing 'God Save the King' for the first time and it took a little more effort? Instinctively, we were so used the Queen, and unless you're well into your eighties the concept of a King will still be something a novelty. Slowly the stamps have changed, and new passports are finally being printed. After King Charles' first year on the throne, and having celebrated his 75th birthday this month, we can reflect with a little more perspective about what it means to have a king.

A new king gives us an opportunity to look forward and back. The crown cradles continuity, bringing the past into the present. And whether you've been indulging in the latest series of Netflix's The Crown or venturing further back into royal history, we can also indulge in a little time travel. Maybe not a regal DeLorean, but if you hop inside the state coach there’s quite the ride to be taken. The historian Dominic Sandbrook recently detailed in The Times how in Britain that 'it is remarkable how often monarchs’ opening 12 months have set the tone for the rest of their reign.'

We find ourselves in a liminal space - not quite an airport terminal - but one where we are on our way although not there yet. We see glimpses of this still-coming kingdom, but not yet fully realised.

What if we went back to the future even further, considering Jesus Christ as king? We might be unable to argue with the enduring legacy of this historical figure, but most of us are unfamiliar with Jesus as King. We tend to think of baby Jesus, Jesus feeding the five thousand or Jesus on the cross, but what about Jesus as King? Today the church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King, an interestingly fairly recent tradition. A bit like the John Lewis Christmas ad encouraging us to 'let your traditions grow'. But there is nothing new about Jesus' kingship. The church has always thought of Christ as King. According to the accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible, the topic Jesus taught on more than anything else was 'the Kingdom of God'. And King Charles’ coronation was itself a portal to the life of this king. The service began with the Chapel Royal chorister greeting the new monarch, ‘Your Majesty, as children of the Kingdom of God, we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings.’ His reply? ‘In his name, and after his example, I come not to be served, but to serve.’ It was a useful reminder that the form of servant leadership we have assumed and expected from the Queen and now the King is not a modern invention or interpretation of how monarchs should be.

Much like the arrival of a new king, Christ the King Sunday also enables us to both look back and look forward. We find ourselves in a liminal space - not quite an airport terminal - but one where we are on our way although not there yet. We see glimpses of this still-coming kingdom, but not yet fully realised. The word 'Gospel' was well-known in the ancient world, describing the good news of the rightful king who has returned home to take this throne.

But this king is quite the contrast to the strong leader we're used to. As we look to world leaders today, we see many elder statesmen (you decide whether 'elder' or 'statesmen' should be emphasised!). There are different understandings and projections of what strong leadership looks like.

The historical reality of Jesus, his fingerprints on the world today, and the professed experience of millions of people worldwide continue to subvert.

Jesus is a king who comes in humility. There was speculation of a slimmed-down coronation for King Charles proportionate to the cost-of-living crisis. But in Jesus’ mind must have been more the cost of dying, as he rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, surrounded by a fickle crowd cheering his own coronation before condemnation only a week later. At his execution there was mockery with the sign on his cross ‘King of the Jews’, and of course wearing a crown of thorns. If you travel back to his birth, the magi bring royal gifts, so his life is bookended with rumours of kingship.

What might this mean for us in the twenty-first century? On the one hand, there’s the personal, individual connection to the king. Pope Francis heralds ‘Christ the King who conquers us’. We’re happy for his rule and reign out there, but what about extending into our own lives? For the past few years on the eve of Christ the King I've been to baptism services at Southwark Cathedral. One of the symbols of the water in baptism is that we overwhelm our lives with Christ's life, and ultimately his reign over who we are, how we are, and what we do. Then there’s the broader reality: a king who does not neatly or easily fit into our political paradigms, whose priorities in one way or another will catch us off guard.

Jesus is the king who turns things upside-down. His kingdom is not marked by borders but is still whispered of and spoken about two thousand years later. That is what we sing about at Christmas. The king arriving in vulnerability as a baby and one day - who knows when - Christians believe he returns in power as king. On that day, Christians believe justice, goodness and all that we long for will be ushered in. But until then, the historical reality of Jesus, his fingerprints on the world today, and the professed experience of millions of people worldwide continue to subvert.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian famous for plotting to kill Hitler said, ‘A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a rather strange kingdom.’ The mystery amidst the majesty. Keep looking back. Keep looking forward.

Column

Belief

Creed

6 January 2025

4 min read

Let 2025 be a year of cultural Christianity - celebs and all

New epiphanies challenge traditional authority.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A man in a suit stands in front of a orchestra, by a lectern, gesturing while talking.

Tom Holland.

x.com/TheRestHistory.

Monday is the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the end of the 12 days of Christmas. It’s rather good when Christmas falls on a Wednesday, so that Epiphany is on a Monday – the start of a new working week. No need to have returned from holiday during this previous week, for me at least, the only “work” I’m doing before Epiphany being the writing of this column.

Epiphany celebrated the nativity and/or baptism of the Christ historically, but in the western Church we’ve moved those festivals, not least to mark the birth of the Christ child at Christmas. The Greek root of Epiphany means “manifestation” and in popular, polytheistic religions nature is of full of local manifestations of the gods.

A deity might manifest in a divine human, a monarchical figure or a miracle worker. In ancient Greek philosophy, epiphany-religion is the foundation of a natural theology discerning these manifestations of the divine in all things, which we might call pantheism.

We’re more reticent about direct epiphanies of God in our biblical religion, but they do occur, notably for Moses in his witness of the burning bush (and thereafter in his regular audiences with the Godhead as he leads his people from Egypt).

Such manifestations invariably come by way of a promise, supremely in Christianity in the incarnation at Christmas. Our theology might hold that not until the epiphany of the Christ at the end of history can we speak of the Feast of the Epiphany in any fulfilled sense.

But there is another, more immediate side to the Epiphany. The coming of the magi – or sages – from the East to pay homage to the Christ child has long been interpreted as the manifestation of God to the Gentiles in the poverty of a Judean stable.

There is nothing actually in the scriptural story to indicate that these grandees are not Jews of the Diaspora, journeying back to their homeland to witness the Christ. But, importantly, this has come to represent the gift of a new covenant to the world, rather than the Mosaic covenant exclusive to the Jews.

And it’s with that idea that I suggest our Epiphany has very current cultural implications. The point of Epiphany is that it’s not ours, it’s everyone’s. It’s not owned here, it’s out there. It’s not multicultural, it’s transcultural, even supercultural.

So the Christian faith defies ownership, as the magi demonstrate. That’s a vital notion at a time when the phrase “cultural Christianity” has gained fresh traction. It’s customary at this point to list who most famously identifies as culturally Christian. So, briefly, here goes.

The professional atheist (he has earned a living from it) Richard Dawkins claims such status; former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has moved from Islam to atheism to Christian faith, claiming it as a bulwark against cultures that threaten us and the historian Tom Holland has expended a substantial proportion of his scholarship demonstrating that western civilisation is built on Christian foundations. Elon Musk has chimed in as a cultural Christian. So has rocker Nick Cave. There are many more.

The response from what might be called pro-am Christians isn’t always edifying. At best, it’s condescending – these starlets really don’t get it and need to study and qualify properly as card-carrying Christians. At worst, it’s belligerent – these charlatans want the fruit from our tree, but attack its roots.

It’s fair to observe that Christianity has always been cultural, not just through its initial and expedient spread through the trade routes of the Mediterranean until its adoption under Roman emperor Constantine, but in its very genesis in Jerusalem. The insurgent Nazarene movement showed far more interest in the lived experience of the new faith than in establishing an alternative Temple authority with it.

It’s a saying misattributed to St Francis of Assisi that evangelists are to go out into the world and spread the gospel and, if we have to, to use words. It’s about actions in the Christian life, not words of intent. In that, the former US president Jimmy Carter, who has just died aged 100, is a worthy exemplar.

By contrast, we have the modern versions of the corrupt and self-serving Temple of Jerusalem in our Christian Churches. Elites who believe in a primacy of status, marching around with sticks, bear as much fruit as the withered fig tree of the gospel. More than arguably, it must be worth turning away from them and towards the cultural Christians mentioned above.

For I’m finding that I may have more in common with them than with archbishops and priests, endlessly debating how to improve their woeful their Church. This is my epiphany.

So, for me, let 2025 be a year of cultural Christianity. Let them say we pick the fruit and ignore the roots. Because perhaps that’s preferable to sticking with a thick trunk that despises those fruits.

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