How faith helped the monarchy flex

Understanding how the British monarchy has evolved, means understanding its foundation in faith. Ian Bradley explains.

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

an etching shows William and Mary is a classical scene, priests stand to their right while dogs chew bones at their feet.

A broadsheet illustration celebrates William and Mary, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Lambeth Palace Library.

Christian monarchy has played a central part in the history of the British Isles, promoting the rule of order, justice and mercy in conformity with the values of the kingdom of God and cementing a close alliance between the institutions of crown and church.

Both these aspects are well illustrated in the life and deeds of the first English king to convert to Christianity. Aethelbert, who ruled Kent from 587 to 616, seems to have come to faith through a combination of the influence of his wife, Bertha, the daughter of a Frankish Christian king, and the preaching of St Augustine, who arrived in Thanet in 597, having been sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. According to one account, 10,000 of Aethelbert’s subjects followed him in converting and underwent a mass baptism. Among his first actions as a Christian king were to issue the first set of laws in the English language and to grant land to Augustine on which to build an Abbey, which later became Canterbury Cathedral.

Reign responsibly

Exemplified by such figures as Arthur and Alfred, Christian kingship brought new titles as well as new responsibilities for Britain’s rulers. The first to be appropriated was that of ruling through the grace of God, or Deo Gratia, the idea that is still expressed on every coin of the realm through the abbreviation DG. The late eighth-century Anglo-Saxon king Offa described himself as ‘by the divine controlling grace king of the Mercians’. From the mid-tenth century, several English kings also began styling themselves Christ’s Vicar or deputy. Edgar, Alfred’s great grandson who ruled from 957 to 975, so described himself when founding a new monastery at Winchester in 966. Some years later Ethelred II stated that ‘the king must be regarded not only as the head of the church but also as a vicar of Christ among Christian folk’.

Cult kings

The Middle Ages saw the flowering of the cult of Christian monarchy as both splendid and servant-like, pious and chivalrous, full of knightly virtue, gung-ho triumphalism and miraculous powers, as exemplified in the widespread belief that the king’s touch could cure those suffering from scrofula. While Medieval monarchs cultivated magnificent splendour, they also espoused the theme of the servant-king and acknowledged their utter dependence on God’s grace. Both these elements were reflected in the civic triumphs staged around Epiphany or Advent for the entrance of monarchs into the cities of their realms with the king being portrayed as the type of Christ and the queen as the bearer of heavenly glory. Deliberately modelled on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, they served as a reminder of the journey to be undertaken by all souls, including royal ones, towards death and the throne of heaven.

Moderate monarchy

The crown played a crucial part in the English Reformation which was initiated by Henry VIII with the help of his loyal lieutenant Thomas Cranmer. Together they created what was effectively a nationalised state church of a moderately Protestant hue with the monarch at its head, bishops and a conservative liturgy in English. Subsequent sovereigns made their influence felt on the emerging Church of England, with Edward VI steering it in a more Protestant direction and playing a key role in the preparation of the first English Prayer Book of 1549, and Elizabeth steadying it to produce the Anglican via media which has remained one of its distinguishing characteristics to this day.

The monarch's headship of the Church of England was a key part of the Reformation settlement. It was established in the 1534 Supremacy Act which declared King Henry VIII 'the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England' with full authority to intervene in its affairs. Elizabeth I modified the monarch’s title from ‘Supreme Head’ to 'Supreme Governor', which it has remained ever since. Alongside it goes the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’, represented on coins as F.D., originally given to Henry VIII by the Pope in 1521 for his defence of the traditional sacraments of the Catholic Church against the novel teaching of Martin Luther. Although revoked after the Reformation, it has continued to be used by and about all monarchs since, although its meaning has never been precisely defined.

Media monarchy

Stuart monarchs tended to push Christian monarchy in a more absolutist direction, being enamoured of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, although they also did much to forward Christianity in their realms. James VI of Scotland and I of England made a particularly valuable contribution in his patronage of the version of the Bible which still bears his name and is also known as the Authorised Version. He was adamant that it should not be a narrow reflection of a single theological position but rather an irenicon, or instrument of peace, breadth and moderation in the new United Kingdom over which he reigned.

Modified monarchy

The so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, when James II was deposed because of his Catholicism and perceived absolutism and William of Orange invited by Parliament to occupy the vacant throne, effectively signalled the triumph of a covenant theory of monarchy over that of divine right. The constitutional settlement that followed it rested on a concept of limited monarchy and was based on an essentially secular concept of social and civil contract. However, neither the Reformation notion of the godly prince ruling the godly commonwealth nor the close connections between Crown and Church were swept away. Indeed, they were strengthened, with the role of the United Kingdom monarch as protector of Protestantism being expressed in the accession and coronation oaths still taken today.

Modern monarchy

Christian monarchy developed in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain to focus much more on philanthropy, civic duty and spiritual leadership demonstrated through attendance at religious services and public exhortation. The close relationship between the crown and the churches, and especially the Church of England, has remained strong while being extended in recent decades to other faith groups as the monarch has increasingly taken on the role of ‘Defender of Faith’. Television has made the monarch’s Christmas Day broadcast a significant national moment of spiritual reflection.

Article

Culture

Identity

Psychology

Work

7 February 2025

5 min read

Even the office can be a place for self-discovery

What the office makes us feel about ourselves

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A model of an office desk and shelves, at which a green plastic person sits leaning into the desk.

Igor Omilaev on Unsplash.

The realisation strikes me as I wrestle to fit my key into the lock on my office door: today I have no memory whatsoever of my journey into work. At my usual time I left the house and got in my car. I drove my usual route to my usual parking space and hopefully I stopped for all the red lights – but in truth I can’t remember any of them. Nor can I remember getting out of my car, locking my car (I hope I did that too) or walking from my parking space to this door, the lock of which is still failing to yield. This, I then realise, is because I am absent-mindedly trying to unlock it with my car key. Rolling my eyes, I reach into my pocket for the correct key… and it is not there.

Now I’m awake, glancing at my watch; 50 minutes until my first meeting of the day (online). This is enough to drive home again, but not enough to drive home, collect my key, and return to this frustrating door. By now I have established that both coat pockets are empty, so I drop to my knees and start to rummage through my bag.

It’s not a disaster if I do have to drive home, I can simply stay there and have a WFH day. I am fortunate, in my current job, to have the privilege of deciding this on a day-by-day basis. Many, I know, would love to work from home but do not have the option, but I prefer the office. The smell of black coffee, seagulls yakking on the roof. Doors open and close as colleagues come and go, keyboards tap, and on and off there is distant hum of student voices emanating from a classroom downstairs. In the hive of activity, I hum too, and I definitely get my work done more efficiently.

I’m interested to analyse this phenomenon through the lens of place attachment. There is a considerable body of research that investigates the way people feel about the spaces that they inhabit – that certain places become meaningful places to be in. Place attachment theorists explore how we can have relationships to places in much the same way that we have relationships to people – feeling a strong pull to return to the familiar, disliking change, and feeling ‘homesick’ for places where we have a strong emotional attachment. Of course, this is usually discussed in relation to the natural world, or to one’s childhood home, or ancestral lands… but why not of the office? Because the heart of place attachment is not really how we feel about places, but how places make us feel about ourselves.

Either for good or for bad, in the office one inhabits a certain sense of self – maybe not a different self to the one that we are at home – but at work, different aspects of that self are valued differently and are allowed to come to the fore. Perhaps I feel this especially because I am a working mum – it can be a relief to leave the home each day and come to inhabit a space where I am valued for more than my ability to know whether or not it’s PE today, or if there’s milk in the fridge. In the office, I can dwell in a version of myself that I enjoy – one that is paid to think and to write and to teach, a part of the university hum.

George Pitcher, in his recent article for Seen & Unseen, challenges managers to ask themselves why they are opposing more junior staff working from home. His discussion hints at this same phenomenon of places shaping identities, and Pitcher proposes that managers might resent junior staff working from home, at least in part, because they feel like their identity as a manager is compromised when they cannot sit in their glass-walled office, gazing out over the rows of worker bees, queen of all they survey. As Pitcher puts it, “…if staff aren’t in the office, then what’s the point of being a boss?”

The Bible too engages with the interplay between one’s sense of self and one’s sense of place. In the Old Testament, before the birth of Jesus, prophets and hymn writers spoke longingly of their homelands, and especially of the temple where they gathered to be assured of their identity as the people of God. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in strange land?” cries one hymnwriter, exiled far from home, while another writes of how he longs to dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of his life. With this sentiment I can empathise; just as I feel like more of a worker-bee when I am within the hive of the university, I feel I am much more of a Christian when belting out hymns among the Sunday throng than I am among my colleagues at a Monday morning meeting.

And yet the Bible issues a challenge to me here. Because after the Old Testament comes the New, written after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and largely after the destruction of the great “Second Temple” that Herod the Great had built in Jerusalem. With the temple gone, and the region subdued under Roman overlords, the New Testament writers make frequent allusions to Christian believers themselves being temples – temples of the Holy Spirit. This means that, as a Christian, I am urged to think of myself as a “place” of God’s presence in the world – and not just for my own sake but for the sake of others. I am not just part of the hum; I change the hum by being in it. The challenge is to gently bring the notes of my Sunday morning hymn to my Monday morning meeting.

A long time ago, when I was a little Brownie-Guide, we used to sing a campfire song called “Bees of Paradise.” It was very short and simple:

Bees of paradise, do the work of Jesus Christ

Do the work that no one can.

As a child, I never understood the words, although I enjoyed the pretty little tune that we sang it to, in the round. It comes back to me now, as I rummage in my bag for a key that I know I’m not going to find, and I return to my childhood habit of pondering the lyrics.

I’ve only got 40 minutes now until my first meeting of the day, it’s time to give up and drive home. Turning resignedly back down the stairs, I resolve to be no less a worker-bee at home than I would have been at the office today. And no less of a Christian either.

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