King pledges to defend freedom of religion
by Archbishop Cranmer:
The media headlines and chatter are wrong. Even the Church Times got it wrong. King Charles III has not pledged “to protect all faiths“. He did not say “I will protect all faiths“. He is not defending a “universal faith“. Nor does he intend to “bring new approach to ‘Defender of the Faith’“.
Addressing religious leaders during a reception at Buckingham Palace, the King pledged quite specifically to protect the space for faith. To be clear, he did not pledge “to protect the multiple faiths of a diverse Britain”, as the Telegraph reports (also calling him the “new head” of the Church of England, which he is not, since the Head is Jesus, and the Monarch hasn’t been Head of the Church of England since 1558). In pledging to defend “the space for faith itself, and its practice”, he committed himself simply to defending freedom of religion.
There is no shift here to being ‘Defender of Faith’ or ‘Defender of faiths’, as is being reported: the King couldn’t have be clearer in affirming his Christian beliefs, with “love at their very heart”, and how that love (of neighbour) demands respect for the diversity of religions, cultures, traditions and beliefs.
“I have always thought of Britain as a ‘community of communities’,” he said, which, of course, it is. But his own foundation of faith is unequivocal:
I am a committed Anglican Christian, and at my Coronation I will take an oath relating to the Settlement of the Church of England. At my Accession, I have already solemnly given – as has every Sovereign over the last 300 years – an Oath which pledges to maintain and preserve the Protestant Faith in Scotland.
So the Coronation Oath will not be amended, as many were hoping and expecting. By reiterating his Accession Oath to “maintain and preserve the Settlement of the true Protestant Religion as established by the Laws made in Scotland”, he has confirmed that he will swear the same Coronation Oath as his late mother, and that will be to “maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law”, which is a faith built on freedom of conscience, as he reminded those gathered:
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