TOM EATON | King Charles’ ‘betrayal’ of Christians needs no defending ― history backs him

I don’t normally encourage adults to pay any attention to news involving the British royal family. After all, if you enjoy extremely badly written fairy tales featuring stupidly rich Germans with magic blood and no chins, possessing the power to turn conveniently blind when family members are friends with international paedophiles, there are B-list romantasy series that will more than scratch that itch.

Still, there’s an outbreak of yelling currently taking place in the UK that might be worth watching and learning from as we South Africans wrestle with issues of tradition, culture, belief and history.

The backstory, in brief, is this.

British monarchs receive a number of formal titles when ascending to the throne, for example, Duke of Lancaster and Normandy, Head of the Commonwealth and Supreme Overlord of the Corgi Horde.

One of the oldest titles, however, is ‘Defender of the Faith’, a role they vow to take on the moment they are crowned.

This week that 500-year run came to an end, as King Charles announced that he was changing his title from ‘Defender of the Faith’ to ‘Protector of the Space for Faith Within the Multi-Faith Nation’. (I’m not making up that name, by the way: this really happened.)

For many conservatives and Christians this was a bridge too far, with many accusing Charles of betraying Christianity, the monarchy and Britishness in general, to say nothing of how badly Charles was letting down the ancient Canaanite god of war and weather, Yahweh.

To be fair, I understand why British Christians feel their faith needs to be defended: in the last census, only 47% of Brits identified as Christians, clear evidence that British Christianity is being overrun and swamped by a wave of British parents not teaching their British children what to believe ― in the same census, a whopping 38% said that they follow no religion.

(For those readers who were sure that I was going to tell you that British Christianity is being overrun and swamped by a wave of immigrants, I have disappointing facts: the combined number of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs accounts for just over 8%.)

The trouble with the conservative pushback, however, is that it’s a castle built on some radical and fairly hilarious historical hypocrisy.

The trouble with the conservative pushback, however, is that it’s a castle built on some radical and fairly hilarious historical hypocrisy.

You see, back in 1519, as Martin Luther’s Protestant revolution was spreading across Europe, England’s King Henry VIII sat down to write a sturdy defence of Catholicism.

What he produced (possibly with lots of help from the brilliant) was a treatise called ‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’, in which he first defended the fundamental tenets of Catholicism (including the holiness of marriage and the evil of divorce) before refuting, or at least rebutting, some of Luther’s most stringent criticisms.

The pope at the time was the charming, affable, enormously corrupt Leo X, a member of the Medici crime family and a man on whose watch the corruption of the Catholic church had plumbed such depths that it had inspired Martin Luther to nail his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Germany and launch the Reformation.

To this pope King Henry dedicated his treatise, a gesture that warmed the no doubt enlarged and plaque-filled heart of the bon vivant Leo, who duly thanked Henry by bestowing on him in 1521 a new title: Fidel Defensor, or Defender of the Faith.

So far, so holy. But Henry needed a male heir and his wife of 18 years, Catherine of Aragon, had produced only daughters. This fact had convinced Henry that their marriage was ‘blighted in the eyes of God’, something he no doubt fretted about as he had sex with his mistress, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, Mary Boleyn, and gazed lecherously at Mary’s sister, Anne.

The rest is bloody history: Henry invented the Church of England so that he could divorce Catherine and marry Anne, then had Anne executed before marrying and executing a few more wives (ah, the sanctity of holy matrimony!), finally ordering the destruction of Catholic shrines and monasteries across England, and stealing Catholics’ wealth.

The papacy might have been rotten to the core, but even it had its limits, and Henry was excommunicated in 1538, losing his title of ‘Defender of the Faith’. But there’s not much point in being king if you can’t make up your own rules, and so, having founded his own religion, Henry got his parliament to re-instate his title in 1543, a blood-soaked, absurdly hypocritical appellation that was dutifully and piously passed down through the centuries until last week.

I understand the desire to preserve traditions. I understand the power and pleasure of continuity and a shared sense of history. But ‘Defender of the Faith’ was never about preserving the piety and goodness of Christ: it’s a 500-year-old booty call forced into law by a lecherous warlord. It’s a lie, no matter how nicely you dress it up.

Which is why it’s also a reminder for the rest of us, always to be alert to the self-serving lies of powerful men; men who dress their personal lusts and petty grievances in the mink and ermine of state and tradition and faith; who tell us that that they are serving us, serving the nation, when all they’re doing is serving themselves.