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Royalty

21 April 2023

8 min read

Fanfare for the familial: what the coronation really showcases

The culmination of family saga or a snapshot of the universal family? John Milbank analyses the wider meaning of the coronation.

John Milbank

John Milbank is a theologian, philosopher and poet. A co-founder of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, he is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Nottingham.

King Charles and Prince William hold a tree sapling upright.

The family tree. King Charles and Prince William with a Queen’s Green Canopy sapling.

The Royal Family.

Nothing rivets our attention more than a family drama played out in public. Currently we are fascinated, either avidly or guiltily, by the tensions surrounding Harry’s attendance and Meghan’s absence at the coronation of King Charles III.

Monarchy is popular and comprehensible in a way that law, finance, mercantile logistics and military strategy are not, just because it involves real persons and their relationships. This translates great matters of state into terms which resonate with the ordinary person - however terrible, besides consoling, those matters may turn out to be.

Yet for many of the more formally educated this is not right at all. We should not be confusing the private with the public, the intimate with the objectively open.

Familiarity, and still more the familial, is thought to contaminate the ethical.

Fairness is, today, supposed to require a lack of association with the parties involved, such that increasingly the interviewers of a candidate for a job are not allowed to have any previous knowledge about her. Familiarity, and still more the familial, is thought to contaminate the ethical, which suggests that ideally appointments should be made by artificial intelligence and all judgements be systematically computed.

Already our individual assessments are no longer trusted, along with the quirkiness of intuition and all tacit knowledge acquired by direct acquaintance. Instead, we are expected to act as much like robots as possible and to reach verdicts only by box-ticking according to pre-assigned criteria.

For such an outlook, monarchy is a supreme anomaly: the subversion of public process by private whim rendered hereditary. It surely enthrones not just a man but corruption and forms the capstone for the continuing operation of a decadent inherited establishment.

Yet there is another way of looking at all this. Is it any accident that King Charles, who has not arrived at his position by following due process or pandering to the needs of faction and fashion, has consistently been able to argue for and to promote more serious long-term concerns of the common good than have most politicians? Our built environment, the stability of nature, the sustaining of craft-skills and the training in disciplined virtue of the young, whatever their class origins, all matter supremely, and yet it is the Crown and not Parliament that has been most freely able to point to these things and to do something about them.

Where do any of us first learn to obey, to share and to sacrifice, besides how to exercise our positive creative talents? Always within the bosom of the family, in whatever conventional or unconventional way this may be constituted.

More fundamentally, there are reasons to doubt the simple association of the private with interested corruption, and the publicly abstract and objective with ethical disinterest. Where do any of us first learn to obey, to share and to sacrifice, besides how to exercise our positive creative talents? Always within the bosom of the family, in whatever conventional or unconventional way this may be constituted. Moreover, within this bosom, rivalry and even competition are actually discouraged, even though they inevitably arise. Our parents want us to succeed, but not at the expense of our siblings. Self-expression and self-realisation are fostered rather than suppressed and yet they are not permitted to overrule cooperation.

Within the family we learn that nothing is possible for us alone and that we have a part to play in a greater whole. School expands this vision and yet to some degree it already undermines it. We are now openly and almost shockingly encouraged to compete and to outperform; the less successful children are effectively abandoned by their new surrogate parents. The Victorians deliberately tried to counteract this by encouraging also house and school loyalty and a genial competition in sports and debating with other schools and colleges.

Yet when we leave school and university and join a workplace of whatever kind this geniality starts to vanish, and the competition becomes more cut-throat. We now need to help undercut rival operations and even systematically to exploit our clients or customers. In consequence, evil gets ever more reduced to crime: we are allowed to do some pretty bad things so long as they stay within the rules and we, and above all our employers, stay out of jail.

Some of us will go on to become politicians or will have pursued that career from the outset. Now things get worse: in the international context even the rule of law becomes patchy and shaky. Even where the international rules are followed, it is understood that national self-interest prevails and is wholly legitimate. It would be beyond shocking for a parent to tell their children that they must pursue selfish family interests at school, and work to sustain that at the expense of all other people, by whatever means possible. It’s just such an attitude that defines the mafiosi or the camorra. And it would still be shocking for a businessperson to tell their employees that they must pursue profit at the expense of their own town or country, even if this is often what covertly pertains.

Yet a politician can readily get up and say that the interests of Britain or whatever other country come, for her, first and last. Even the claim to be fighting for freedom and democracy (or some such) cannot survive if it is seen to clash with the interests of the nation: despite everything Biden has had to concede to Trump on this one.

The very selfishness and ruthlessness that is excoriated at the domestic hearth is ultimately encouraged in the public citadel.

There thus results something that has perplexed me ever since I was a child. The very selfishness and ruthlessness that is excoriated at the domestic hearth is ultimately encouraged in the public citadel. Does this mean, as the French philosopher Henri Bergson suggested, that most ethics really exists just to ensure the solidarity and efficiency of a war-machine; that what we take to be ‘moral’ is little more than an ethnic survival mechanism?

Bergson accordingly suggested that real ethics must be global and universal. But as we are discovering today, that seems too abstract and unrooted for most people. We cannot really love everyone effectively and equally. That is why Augustine suggested instead an ‘order of love’ whereby we extend our love in ever-widening circles from the closest to the most far-off, while allowing that our sympathy with remote people has to take the form of some support for those who are truly close to them.

The only way, therefore, to counteract the tendency of morality to mutate into disguised crime the nearer one reaches the boundaries and the margin of society is to extend the familial principle, such that all are variously sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons (as indeed we truly are as constituting a single race). At the same time, one big human family can only be an effective family if it is also a family of cooperating families – a vast extended family if you like, on a principle of covenanting cousinship.

The world religions, and especially the Christian religion, have exactly operated this principle of an extension of the familial across all borders which can alone ensure that ethical action is both immediate and real, and yet not the mask of a collective egoism. Beyond the merely political community, the Church like the family is all-inclusive in its purpose: it offers at once citizenship, educational formation, reconciling process and collective cult, linking us to the divine.

At the most ultimate boundary of the human race it can also ensure that humans respect other natural creatures. And at the most ultimate boundary of all, that of finite reality as such, it can ensure that the principle that reigns is not mere utility or survival but our love of God who is in himself inner loving relation.

The aim of the ethical as love is itself relational connection and it is only the latter that puts a break on our worst instincts which we cannot always for ourselves override.

Such covenanting cousinship, or dividing only in order to link, always puts relationality at the centre, instead of mere self or collectivity. The aim of the ethical as love is itself relational connection and it is only the latter that puts a break on our worst instincts which we cannot always for ourselves override. Family members check each other, as do citizens, and as also should corporate bodies, if they seek finally organic cooperation rather than unlimited competition.

It not only should be but also actually is the same with nations. As the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling declared, it is in the end nations interacting with other nations that put a brake on tyranny arising within nations -- something that no mere constitution or inner balance of power can curb forever. For a nation thinking of itself alone always risks descending into a shared ruthlessness that will typically be exercised both within and without.

The Church as an extended family is not a democracy but a ‘mixed constitution’ involving single headship, the wise advice of a few and the popular consent and modification of proffered norms by the many. From a Christian perspective a good social order, as familial, should echo this, and that is why constitutional monarchy would appear to be a suitable, though by no means the only possible form, for a Christian country to take.

An aristocracy ought in theory to be the opposite of a mafia: not the subordination of public interest to family but a particularly strong and sacrificial association of person and family with public interest

Its mixed constitution involves some role for ‘aristocracy’ or wise leadership in the widest sense. An aristocracy ought in theory to be the opposite of a mafia: not the subordination of public interest to family but a particularly strong and sacrificial association of person and family with public interest. This is one crucial and political way in which the familial principle of the order of love can be constituted and rendered real. Of course, today, what we have instead is rather the covert extension of the rule of the mafiosi as big moneyed crime undercuts law and even operates outside its sway altogether.

As a seeming anachronism, monarchy stands at the apex of the aristocracy and yet also transcends its concerns by a more direct linkage to the whole population, to whose attitudes and needs it needs to be especially alert. I have already mentioned just why and how King Charles performs this role effectively and in such a way as to counteract existing trends which more and more make a mockery of ordinary morality and decency, reducing it indeed to discipline for the mass troops, corralled into the service of armed power.

Charles instead continues to serve the religious (and not just Christian) principles of the extended familial, of the order of love and covenanted cousinship, upon which alone the survival of ethics depends. Not only is there no salvation outside the Church (thus understood) -- there can be no genuine moral life either.

For these reasons the coronation, which we eagerly await, will be indeed a truly Christian event and sacrament: an influx of grace in these unprecedentedly darkening times.

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Leading

19 August 2024

9 min read

Canada’s long hot summer of decline

Courage is needed when a country starts to fall apart.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

An aerial photography of a huge plume of smoke from a forest fire.

Jasper National Park on fire.

National Parks Canada.

In July 2024, wildfires blazed across large swathes of Alberta, engulfing much of the town of Jasper. As the smoke drifted to the City of Edmonton, air quality worsened considerably, reaching 10+ out of 10, or “very high risk,” on the air quality health index.

The smoke confined much of the city of one million inhabitants to their homes – keeping stoves, television sets and other electrical appliances off to deal with the mid-thirties Celsius heat. Many wore masks when daring to venture outside. Scenes were, as in the past, apocalyptic – imagine the movie Bladerunner 2049.

In 2016, the first major fire occurred in Fort McMurray, which led to a successful evacuation of 90,000 residents with photographs depicting what looked like hell on earth. This fire, covered by the international press, was at the time a one-off. It has since become the norm during Canadian summers.

The fires are emblematic of the state of Canada.

Now, metaphorical fires of all sorts – breaking of the healthcare system, surging housing costs, immigration without a plan, and decreasing civility in political debate – are spreading across Canada.

It is noteworthy to witness just how rapidly Canada’s situation has degraded. It is a testament to the quickness – not unlike the spreading of a forest fire, ignited by an errant cigarette – with which a small group of individuals within a government can inflict lasting damage on a country.

Indeed, the last decade for Canada has represented a backward turn. It is a regression from earlier domestic and international success, in which many across the world looked to Canada as a beacon of hope. Our international standing has diminished noticeably.

This unexpected looking back to better times is well captured in the song “The Boys of Summer.” I often listened to The Ataris cover of the Don Henley classic when playing travel baseball across Canada and the US in my teens.

The narrator reflects nostalgically on a summer romance. What was once present is now gone:

“Don’t look back, you can never look back/I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?/ Those days are gone forever/I should just let them go but…”.

The story is much the same for Canada. What appeared so promising as recently as the early 2010s – the country on the rise economically and with a solid reputation internationally – has given way to decline and crumbling of vital social services. For example, healthcare median appointment waiting times now average 27.7 weeks (about 6 and a half months), though higher in the provinces of the Maritimes and Alberta.

Internationally, Canada no longer enjoys a privileged relationship with the United States. The relationship will become even more fraught should former President Trump re-assume the role of President while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in power.

Looking to China, Canada suggests the need for “dialogue,” a foreign policy nevertheless ten years out-of-date, and despite Canada serving as China’s international punching-bag.

We have become afraid to not be invited, rather than to step forward with courage.

We are, of course, in a darkening period in world history. Evil appears to be more strongly at work in the world now than in recent memory.

The coronavirus pandemic was a turning-point, in which American and Chinese relations began to fracture. This was followed two years later by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and close to two years after this, the 7 October massacre of Jews by the terrorist group Hamas.

In the United Kingdom, the murder of three girls in Southport has given way to nationwide riots, spreading through social media and its network effects.

The dividing lines between identity-based groups domestically, and alliances internationally, are becoming clearer and more rigid. This is the trend since the pandemic crisis. Earlier tolerance of “grey” areas of difference is giving way to “black and white” division between nations and groups within them.

Canada is therefore no exception to the crises facing democracies in the political West. Yet Canada’s failures are notable, given the shining light of political moderation, of government effectiveness, and of international collaboration that Canada historically is.

Most notable and concerning within Canada is the lack of courage among political leadership. Canadian leadership fails to speak and act boldly domestically or internationally. Prime Minister Trudeau reportedly avoids cabinet meetings and one-on-one meetings with ministers, hiding whenever problems emerge. This is the opposite of courage.

Courage, a distinctive Canadian virtue so well proven in WWI Battles of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and The Somme, or the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII, is in short supply. Yet, if there was ever a distinctive Canadian quality, it is courage, often in times of crisis.

In my time abroad, I have been struck by an increasing Canadian refrain on just wanting to “be at the table,” but without considering what our contributions at the table will be. We have become afraid to not be invited, rather than to step forward with courage.

What are individuals to do when they see their country falling apart? And what are they to do when looking at their country’s regression from some distance, as members of the global Canadian diaspora?

A compelling example is given by the philosopher Robert Adams in his retelling of the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, left for New York on 7 July 1939, where he was received by American friends providing safety from Nazism.

Yet, within days Bonhoeffer found his time in New York “almost unbearable,” noting that “If trouble comes now, I shall go right back to Germany. I cannot stay out here alone; I am quite clear about this, for after all, over there is where I live.”

Bonhoeffer later reflects “I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”

Adams uses Bonhoeffer as an example of vocation, highlighting belonging, caring and participation in social processes as key elements of a vocation. Returning to Germany was not necessarily what was best for Bonhoeffer (he would later die in the waning period of the war in Germany, while he would have carved out a prestigious academic career in America). But Adams notes that Bonhoeffer would have felt it wrong had he not returned.

In short, Bonhoeffer belonged with his democratically minded neighbours in Germany. He cared about the restoration of his country. And he knew that he must participate in the fight against evil enveloping Europe.

It often takes leaving your own country to understand it more clearly. I have learned during my time abroad that Canadians are understated and yet highly competent, open-minded and hopeful.

Canada has a powerful diaspora, whose global influence is well captured by former Globe & Mail newspaper editor John Stackhouse in his book Planet Canada. Years ago, the “Canadian Mafia” was the tongue-in-cheek name given to Canadians who simultaneously led multiple major British institutions such as the Bank of England, University of Cambridge, Royal Mail, Wimbledon, Associated British Ports, UK National Lottery, Heathrow Airport, and Canary Wharf, not to mention leading the BBC’s International reporting.

In recent years, many age-mates and friends served in leading roles in top think tanks and UK institutions such as No 10 Downing Street, helping to design and implement UK technology innovation policy, or crafting health and social care policy while helping spearhead the UK vaccination campaign to hard-to-reach minority groups.

The senior-level of Canadian leadership in the UK was followed by many early or mid-career Canadians serving in influential UK leadership roles.

But just as Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, or as Israelis returned immediately from jobs in technology, finance, academia and other sectors in America and the UK to serve their country in the fight against terrorism, now is the time for many within the Canadian diaspora to return to Canada.

Such is the damage that has been inflicted on the country over the last decade, and the future plight, should Canada’s brightest not dedicate themselves fully to the Canadian cause as part of defending the long-term good in the wider world.

It often takes leaving your own country to understand it more clearly. I have learned during my time abroad that Canadians are understated and yet highly competent, open-minded and hopeful. There is a palpable energy and desire to contribute meaningfully – not apathetically – among Canada’s Gen Zers.

Canada’s young people balance their own diverse ethnic origins with an abiding love of Canada. They want to make Canada better.

Canadians must not only show up at the table but contribute – with confidence – when at the table. The focus must be to participate, and then win the prize.

Just as the narrator ends on a high in “The Boys of Summer” – saying “I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong/After the boys of summer have gone” – there remains considerable hope for Canada.

But this hope must translate into critically minded participation in Canadian life. This critical spirit toward leadership and institutions is one part of courageous, confident and sometimes even assertive action in the world.

On assertiveness, Canada can learn from its ally Israel. In his recent speech to U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke boldly on behalf of the rising scourge of antisemitism facing the Jewish people. He highlighted the nefarious influence of totalitarianism.

Most importantly, he highlighted our shared democratic struggle. Indeed, Israel’s success in the fight against evil in the form of totalitarianism is a precursor to the success of other democracies such as the United States, Canada and the UK in the same fight: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu, he stood up forcefully for his nation and for the Jewish people in the face of evil seeking to undo the values underpinning our democracies.

While likely to be more moderate in tone, Canadians must nevertheless participate boldly in the world, regaining our characteristic courage.

In reflecting on his tenacious service, St Paul asks “Do you know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.”

Canadians must not only show up at the table but contribute – with confidence – when at the table. The focus must be to participate, and then win the prize.

Canadian renewal is possible, but this demands that Canadians abroad return home – like Bonhoeffer – bringing their experiences, learnings and networks acquired as members of the Canadian diaspora with them. Indeed, these help form the basis for courage.

This return is one key step in Canadians contributing to victory – along with British, American, French, German, Israeli and other allies – in the fight against darkness. We must light our lamps within the darkness, keeping awake at home in readiness to put out the fires coming our way from over the foothills.