Britain is yearning for traditional Christianity
by Madeleine Grant, Telegraph:
Queen Elizabeth II was a great giver of gifts; literal and metaphorical. For the Pope, a basket of whisky and honey from the royal estates. For her family, a smooth transition of power. In her final years she carefully parcelled out appropriate responsibilities to her heirs, deftly laying the groundwork for ‘Queen Camilla’ so that something unthinkable two decades ago felt entirely natural by the time it happened. Even her death at Balmoral proved a gift to the Union, by allowing the first public mourning rituals to begin in her beloved Scotland.
The Church of England received a particularly precious parting legacy, revealing the same careful planning. In her final two decades, the late Queen spoke increasingly openly about her faith, her Christmas messages growing more and more explicitly Christian. She prepared meticulously, one suspects, not just because she was 96 (or, well, the Queen) but also because through her profound faith she had made peace with her own mortality.
Now her death has unlocked a latent appetite for religious ritual, even transcendence – often among avowed atheists and agnostics. Many who rarely set foot in a church have found themselves popping in for a service or to sign the book of condolence. How remarkable that in our age of unbelief, this traditional funeral – an unambiguous statement of Anglican faith – drew one of the biggest audiences in TV history. Cynical secularists usually dominate social media, but this week they’ve sounded vaguely ridiculous. Many viewers reported being more moved by the simpler Windsor committal than the pomp and pageantry of the Abbey service and procession. They were mesmerised by the religious elements, not in spite of them.
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