Lhe British model of religious management in the public space, far removed from French secularism, is embodied in the person of the sovereign. In a country where there is no separation between Church and State, Charles III inherits from his mother the titles of defender of the faith and supreme governor of the Church of England, titles which do not correspond to no personal power of the sovereign over the Church, but which symbolize the visibility and the role that the State gives to religion in the public space.
When he was still Prince of Wales, Charles’s remarks in 1994 on the title of defender of the faith which he would have liked to see changed to defender of all faith (Defender of Faith rather than Defender of the Faith) sparked discussion and questions about how he would fulfill his role as supreme governor of the Church once on the throne.
Her statements, in a 2015 BBC interview, about her vision of the monarchy as protector of all religions, combined with what is known of her personal interest in other religions such as Judaism and Islam (a religion which, in his view, has been able to preserve a holistic vision of the world, which Christian modernity has lost and which it should regain, as he affirmed in a speech in 1993 at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies), have been able to bring some commentators to imagine that Charles would change the religious role of the monarchy.
A very old religious pluralism
In fact, as Charles himself recalled in the 2015 interview, this evolution is already well underway. The monarchy has already adapted to the growing religious diversity of British society, as indeed to the decline of the practice among the white population of Christian origin.
To be supreme governor of the Church is not to defend the privileges of a State Church against other religions or against the British without religious affiliation. It should be noted that the monarchy already incorporates in itself a very ancient religious pluralism: if, in his relationship with England, the sovereign is Anglican, he is Presbyterian in his relationship with Scotland, and this since the end of the XVIIe century, regardless of the personal beliefs of the monarch.
To be supreme governor of the Church is not to defend one’s privileges against other religions
Since this period, the notion of Protestant succession, by which Catholics cannot accede to the throne, allied to that of religious tolerance, has shaped a British State whose identity was based on a generic Protestantism. The Anglican Church was only its official representative, alongside the Church of Scotland, in a national landscape where the Protestant Churches separated from the State prospered, such as, for example, the Quaker or Methodist assemblies.
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