Essay

Comment

Royalty

5 May 2023

5 min read

Coronation vows and the relationships they make

The coronation contains significant words that are cornerstones for the state and much more. M. Ciftci explores their implications.

M. Ciftci

Mehmet Ciftci has a PhD in political theology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on bioethics, faith and politics.

A painting shows a young Queen Victoria, in her coronation dress, resting one hand on the bible, taking her oaths

Queen Victoria taking the coronation oath, by George Hayter..

George Hayter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What is the point of the coronation ceremony? Many, such as Orwell, have praised the monarchy for absorbing our desire to exult those who rule us, so that we do not fawn over the politicians who hold real power, as they do in some presidential regimes. Instead, we treat politicians with no fanfare, but as mere ministers of the Crown, and hence as ministers of the good of the entire country. But why do we need an explicitly Christian coronation ceremony, taking place in the middle of an Anglican service of Holy Communion?

We can find an answer in The Meaning of the Coronation, an appreciative essay written after the last coronation by two left-leaning sociologists, Edmund Shils and Michael Young. Every society, they claim, relies on an implicit consensus around certain moral values. “What are these moral values which restrain men’s egotism and which enables society to hold itself together? A few can be listed illustratively: generosity, charity, loyalty, justice in the distribution of opportunities and rewards, reasonable respect for authority, the dignity of the individual and his right to freedom.”

The apparently ordinary nature of these values should not deceive us.

“The sacredness of society is at bottom the sacredness of its moral rules, which itself derives from the presumed relationship between these rules in their deepest significance and the forces and agents which men regard as having the power to influence their destiny for better or for worse.”

Our sense that moral rules and values ought to be respected calls us to use all the power of rite and ritual to invest them with the authority of the sacred. The monarchy is eminently suited to serve this purpose, since “the monarchy has its roots in man's beliefs and sentiments about what he regards as sacred,” albeit in a vague, and hence more inclusive, way that can be appreciated without membership of the Church of England (to which I do not belong either), or Christian belief of any defined sort. Therefore, Shils and Young argue, the

“Coronation is exactly this kind of ceremonial in which the society reaffirms the moral values which constitute it as a society and renews its devotion to those values by an act of communion.”

We can better appreciate how the Coronation reaffirms various political and moral principles by considering some key parts of the ceremony. One of them is the taking of the Oath to “solemnly promise and swear to govern … according to their respective laws and customs” the UK and Commonwealth Realms. These words are the cornerstone of our tradition of common-law constitutionalism. As the Queen takes the Oath, according to Shils and Young, she “acknowledges that the moral standards embodied in the laws and customs are superior to her own personal will.” Historically, as H.L. Morton wrote,

“The king’s task was to uphold the law, not to make law, still less to govern by personal will as an autocrat.”

The Oath, then, stands in judgement over the ministers of the Crown: have they acted in accordance with existing laws, or did ministers rule by personal decree? A question always worth asking, as Lord Sumption reminded us during the pandemic.

Another key moment is the presentation of the regalia, the symbols of how the monarch should reign. The most important regalia to be handed to the King by the Archbishop are the Sceptre with Cross and the Sceptre with Dove. The Archbishop will then say a new and somewhat clumsy prayer to ask:

“that you might exercise authority with wisdom, and direct your counsels with grace; that by your service and ministry to all your people, justice and mercy may be seen in all the earth.”

By contrast, in 1953, the Archbishop said:

“Receive the Rod of equity and mercy. Be so merciful that you be not too remiss; so execute justice that you forget not mercy. Punish the wicked, protect and cherish the just, and lead your people in the way wherein they should go.”

This conveys more clearly and artfully the significance of the Sceptre and Rod, which is to circumscribe the purpose of the state, defined simply as that of upholding justice and public order. All those who act in the King’s name, such as parliamentarians, judges, magistrates, and members of the armed forces or police, are thus entrusted with authority to carry out the King’s Oath to “cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed”. By implication, if they do or desire anything that does not strictly serve this purpose, such as gaining power and influence for its own sake, or interfering with society arbitrarily, then they go beyond their commission.

But law is also meant to be tempered with mercy. Hence one of the ceremonial swords, the curtana, carried into the Abbey at the beginning of the ceremony has a blunt tip. The ceremony is embedded with the Christian belief that we must be humbled by knowing we are sinners presuming to judge others. Our sense of justice is imperfect. What fallible judgements we mete out to others should, where possible, be open to reintegrating the wrongdoer back into society.

Finally, there is the anointing itself, the central act following the taking of the Oath and before the presentation of the regalia. This is the most archaic part of the rite, hearkening back to prophets, priests, and kings of Israel who, according to scripture, were anointed with oil to signify that God had dedicated them to perform a role for the good of the whole people.

The anointing was one of two moments in the ceremony that were not televised in 1953, a precedent that will be followed again this year. For the anointing is an act that is really a prayer – and who likes to have people gawping at them when praying? The King removes his Robes of State before the anointing because this is the moment when he asks humbly to be given divine aid to dedicate himself to the service of his people.

There are too many examples of failed and collapsed states to make us doubt that the continued existence of any state is not something we can guarantee by our ingenuity.

The Sovereign’s dedication to public service is one side to the covenant that binds the country together. Rather than a social contract between individuals to protect their self-interest, in our Constitution there is an exchange of vows, binding one to another with rights and obligations. The monarch and those acting on his behalf swear to serve us (and condemn themselves when they fail to do so), and we swear to bear true allegiance in return.

Whether those promises will be kept is not a matter of effort and skill alone. Just as in a marriage, the weightiness of the promises makes us naturally feel unequal to the task and in need of strength greater than we can muster. There are too many examples of failed and collapsed states to make us doubt that the continued existence of any state is not something we can guarantee by our ingenuity. Hence, at the heart of the Coronation is the unfashionable but humbling idea that to remain faithful to the vows pledged, and for there still to be a United Kingdom in future generations, are gifts given by something above us and beyond our ability to control.

Explainer

Comment

Economics

Leading

Politics

Wisdom

8 May 2025

5 min read

When someone makes a claim, ask yourself these questions

How stories, statistics, and studies exploit our biases.

Alex Edmans

Alex is a professor of finance, and an expert in the use and misuse of data and evidence.

A member of an audience makes a point while gesturing.

On the other hand...

Antenna on Unsplash.

“Check the facts.”

“Examine the evidence.”

“Correlation is not causation.”

We’ve heard these phrases enough times that they should be in our DNA. If true, misinformation would never get out of the starting block. But countless examples abound of misinformation spreading like wildfire.

This is because our internal, often subconscious, biases cause us to accept incorrect statements at face value. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman refers to our rational, slow thought process – which has mastered the above three phrases – as System 2, and our impulsive, fast thought process – distorted by our biases – as System 1. In the cold light of day, we know that we shouldn’t take claims at face value, but when our System 1 is in overdrive, the red mist of anger clouds our vision.

Confirmation bias

One culprit is confirmation bias – the temptation to accept evidence uncritically if it confirms what we’d like to be true, and to reject a claim out of hand if it clashes with our worldview. Importantly, these biases can be subtle; they’re not limited to topics such as immigration or gun control where emotions run high. It’s widely claimed that breastfeeding increases child IQ, even though correlation is not causation because parental factors drive both. But, because many of us would trust natural breastmilk over the artificial formula of a giant corporation, we lap this claim up.

Confirmation bias is hard to shake. In a study, three neuroscientists took students with liberal political views and hooked them up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The researchers read out statements the participants previously said they agreed with, then gave contradictory evidence and measured the students’ brain activity. There was no effect when non-political claims were challenged, but countering political positions triggered their amygdala. That’s the same part of the brain that’s activated when a tiger attacks you, inducing a ‘fight-or-flight’ response. The amygdala drives our System 1, and drowns out the prefrontal cortex which operates our System 2.

Confirmation bias looms large for issues where we have a pre-existing opinion. But for many topics, we have no prior view. If there’s nothing to confirm, there’s no confirmation bias, so we’d hope we can approach these issues with a clear head.

Black-and-white thinking

Unfortunately, another bias can kick in: black-and-white thinking. This bias means that we view the world in binary terms. Something is either always good or always bad, with no shades of grey.

To pen a bestseller, Atkins didn’t need to be right. He just needed to be extreme.

The bestselling weight-loss book in history, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, benefited from this bias. Before Atkins, people may not have had strong views on whether carbs were good or bad. But as long as they think it has to be one or the other, with no middle ground, they’ll latch onto a one-way recommendation. That’s what the Atkins diet did. It had one rule: Avoid all carbs. Not just refined sugar, not just simple carbs, but all carbs. You can decide whether to eat something by looking at the “Carbohydrate” line on the nutrition label, without worrying whether the carbs are complex or simple, natural or processed. This simple rule played into black-and-white thinking and made it easy to follow.

To pen a bestseller, Atkins didn’t need to be right. He just needed to be extreme.

Overcoming Our biases

So, what do we do about it? The first step is to recognize our own biases. If a statement sparks our emotions and we’re raring to share or trash it, or if it’s extreme and gives a one-size-fit-all prescription, we need to proceed with caution.

The second step is to ask questions, particularly if it’s a claim we’re eager to accept. One is to “consider the opposite”. If a study had reached the opposite conclusion, what holes would you poke in it? Then, ask yourself whether these concerns still apply even though it gives you the results you want.

Take the plethora of studies claiming that sustainability improves company performance. What if a paper had found that sustainability worsens performance? Sustainability supporters would throw up a host of objections. First, how did the researchers actually measure sustainability? Was it a company’s sustainability claims rather than its actual delivery? Second, how large a sample did they analyse? If it was a handful of firms over just one year, the underperformance could be due to randomness; there’s not enough data to draw strong conclusions. Third, is it causation or just correlation? Perhaps high sustainability doesn’t cause low performance, but something else, such as heavy regulation, drives both. Now that you’ve opened your eyes to potential problems, ask yourselves if they plague the study you’re eager to trumpet.

A second question is to “consider the authors”. Think about who wrote the study and what their incentives are to make the claim that they did. Many reports are produced by organizations whose goal is advocacy rather than scientific inquiry. Ask “would the authors have published the paper if it had found the opposite result?” — if not, they may have cherry-picked their data or methodology.

In addition to bias, another key attribute is the authors’ expertise in conducting scientific research. Leading CEOs and investors have substantial experience, and there’s nobody more qualified to write an account of the companies they’ve run or the investments they’ve made. However, some move beyond telling war stories to proclaiming a universal set of rules for success – but without scientific research we don’t know whether these principles work in general. A simple question is “If the same study was written by the same authors, with the same credentials, but found the opposite results, would you still believe it?”

Today, anyone can make a claim, start a conspiracy theory or post a statistic. If people want it to be true it will go viral. But we have the tools to combat it. We know how to show discernment, ask questions and conduct due diligence if we don’t like a finding. The trick is to tame our biases and exercise the same scrutiny when we see something we’re raring to accept.

This article is adapted from May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – and What We Can Do About It
(Penguin Random House, 2024)
Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

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