On June 2, 1953, just five days short of my fifth birthday, I saw this image on a black and white TV my father had rented or secured for a “test drive” from a local store. He was a Bible prof at Belmont College (now University) in Nashville, and we were living in a former sorority house, just down the street from empty riding stables. Those buildings were vestiges of Ward-Belmont College, whom Tennessee Baptists acquired and renamed in 1951. (It had been a prep-school for women, and that mission continued with a move about four miles west to what is now Harpeth Hall Academy.) 

When, in 1948, I was born in Lebanon, Tennessee, some thirty miles east of Nashville, dad was teaching at Cumberland University, which was the Tennessee Baptist (SBC) school in Middle Tennessee. (Its West and East Tennessee counterparts were Union University in Jackson and Carson-Newman in Jefferson City.) Cumberland is no longer a Baptist college, except in the sense that, since 1961, its venerable law school now appears as Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham. (Samford is now independent of the state convention, though it still identifies with its Baptist tradition.)

My parents were especially keen to see the coronation since they’d been residents of Great Britain just after WWII, when dad was a residential PhD student in Edinburgh. (While there, he traveled down to Oxford for research on his dissertation subject, Abraham Booth, and, while there, he had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation by C. S. Lewis.) Back in Nashville in 1953, things were lean and TVs were rare. (I do recall marveling at one with a round screen in a neighbor’s house.) So we had to get a loaner for the occasion.

At the time, I didn’t grasp the content and weight of her coronation oath, administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, pledged upon the Bible.

Archbishop. Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?

Queen. All this I promise to do.

And she gained the title, “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.” In that connection, the new King Charles III stirred the pot when, as Prince of Wales, he said he preferred the title “Defender of Faith” (dropping the definite article). Subsequently, he had to “clarify” this by saying he only meant he would protect other religious practices while giving special allegiance and stewardship to the Church of England. (Uh, right.) 

He picked up this theme in his first address to the nation when he said,

The role and the duties of Monarchy also remain, as does the Sovereign's particular relationship and responsibility towards the Church of England—the Church in which my own faith is so deeply rooted.

In that faith, and the values it inspires, I have been brought up to cherish a sense of duty to others, and to hold in the greatest respect the precious traditions, freedoms and responsibilities of our unique history and our system of parliamentary government.

It’ll be interesting to see how things are worded in his own coronation. Of course, fine words are uplifting, but it’s hard to detect a deeply rooted faith in the life of an unrepentant adulterer, who went on to marry the adulteress when his former wife (also unfaithful in their married days) died in a car wreck in Paris. 

I’m basically an admirer of Queen Elizabeth II, but I have to say the Anglican church has lost focus and power during her reign, and her kids and grandkids have been less than spiritually gratifying. But she’s had to cope with a lot of social and political madness, and I’m not convinced she had the power to do much in the service of doctrinal integrity. Still, I think she could have done more. I should note that my British friends on the KairosJournal/BibleMesh team took her to be a genuine Christian, and I’m inclined to agree, in part because of her strong appreciation for Billy Graham.

In the early 2000s, the KJ crew headed to London for a meeting of the Evangelical Ministry Assembly in St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate. Mr. Kampouris and I got to say a brief word commending our site, and we had a booth in the exhibit hall. As I recall, the UK Anglicans were a mix of Anglo-Catholic, standard mainline liberal, standard evangelical, and New Wine (charismatic) evangelical. And I’ve had the privilege with working with some of their best, including a few days with our English writers at Oak Hill College, the conservative Anglican school in Southgate. (It would be interesting to get their take on the new king.) 

Back in 1953, the Archbishop of Canterbury was Geoffrey Fisher, identified to some extent with the evangelical wing of the church. Not long after the coronation, he caught heat for pressing Elizabeth’s younger sister Margaret to not marry a divorcé, Peter Townsend. The current Archbishop, Justin Welby, is also associated somewhat with the evangelical wing, in its charismatic vein. (He says he prays in tongues.) He’s been something of a disappointment to conservatives in his support of female bishops and his squishiness on homosexuality. But on this latter issue, he is an improvement over his predecessor, Rowan Williams who, with his enablement of the gay agenda in the church, presided over a split in the global Anglican communion. (I helped edit a book on this eventuality, one focused on the Bible-based leadership of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola in resisting this movement.)

Well, it doesn’t seem that Justin Welby is a Geoffrey Fisher, nor Charles III an Elizabeth II. It’ll be interesting to see how they interface in the coming days, coronation included. Or maybe it’ll be depressing. Or appalling. Hope not.