Sunak’s Coronation reading and the battle against wokery
by Julian Mann, TCW:
THE New Testament passage Prime Minister Rishi Sunak read at the King’s Coronation yesterday could not have been clearer about the spiritual supremacy of Jesus Christ.
The extract from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in 1st century Colossae, in Roman Asia, includes part of what many New Testament scholars believe was an early hymn to Christ: ‘Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities or powers: all things were created by him and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist’ (Colossians 1v19-17 – King James Version).
Paul goes on to affirm in his letter to the Colossians that because Jesus Christ is the supreme divine Son of the one true God, his death on the Cross was indispensable to the forgiveness of sins without which nothing in creation can be reconciled to God the Father: ‘For it pleased the Father that in him (Christ) shall all fulness dwell; and, having made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself: by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
‘And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciledin the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister’ (Colossians 1v19-23).
The Coronation liturgy did not include the Book of Common Prayer’s intercession at Holy Communion for ‘all Christian kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy (Almighty God’s) servant Charles our King; that under him we may be godly and quietly governed’. That was a pity because it superbly summarises the God-given purpose of government: ‘And grant unto his (the King’s) whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under him, that they may truly and indifferently (impartially) minister justice, to punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue.’
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