Monarchy, religion and the state: Civil religion in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the Commonwealth

By Norman Bonney

This most thorough and contemporary examination of the religious features of the UK state and its monarchy argues that the long reign of Elizabeth has led to a widespread lack of awareness of the centuries old religious features of the state that are revealed at the accession and coronation of a new monarch. It is suggested that the next succession to the throne will require major national debates in each realm of the monarch to judge whether the traditional rituals which require professions of Christianity and Protestantism by the new monarch are appropriate, or whether they might be replaced by alternative secular or interfaith ceremonies.

It will be required reading for those who study the government and politics of the UK, Canada, Australia and the other 13 realms of the monarch. It will also appeal to as well as students and lecturers in history, sociology and religious studies and citizens interested in the monarchy and contemporary religious issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781526111548

Norman Bonney

Norman Bonney is Emeritus Professor at Edinburgh Napier University

Book preview

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Secularisation, religion and the state

This chapter introduces a discussion of a fundamental paradox concerning contemporary society and government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) – that while there is strong evidence of continuing trends towards a more secular and less religious society and pattern of social behaviour, at the same time, religious doctrines, rituals and institutions are central to the legitimacy, stability and continuity of key elements of the constitutional and political system. In exploring this paradox, the chapter begins by outlining the thesis of secularisation and the apparently strong evidence in its favour in relation to the personal behaviour of individuals and the culture of society. Then, following a preliminary account of the continuing key features of the religious dimensions of the contemporary UK state, the argument attempts to account for the failure of secularisation theory, which seems convincing in many areas of contemporary social and political life, to explain the continuation in the early twenty-first century of the religious dimensions of the state, by examining the evidence concerning popular attitudes towards religion. The findings suggest that secularisation processes still have a long way to go to eliminate supportive religious ideas from the popular consciousness. So long as there are these substantial reservoirs of support for religious ideas and practices among the population, advocates and proponents of the ‘sacred’ dimensions to the state and the interests embedded in them are thus able to mobilise support for their maintenance, continuation or possible expansion against the counter-availing active forces of secularism and the more autonomous inbuilt social trends of secularisation.

It is also suggested that the power of religious interests in an increasingly secular society can be understood through Grace Davie’s concept of ‘vicarious religion’ – the proposition that religious elites articulate religious ideas and practices on behalf of the wider population, large sections of whom share them to modest and varying degrees and, at least occasionally, engage in them. This concept also helps explain how religious ideas and institutions are kept alive by religious elites and occasionally deployed, sometimes with extensive public involvement, in state religious and ritual occasions even in apparently more secular times. The focus of the idea of vicarious religion on the role of elites leads to a wider discussion of their role more generally in supporting, maintaining and, in some cases, contesting the role of religious ritual in state affairs. State religious beliefs and rituals, it is suggested, can be explained, following sociologists such as Durkheim (2001, [1915]) and Lukes (1977, 1994), as being not only symbolic expressions of meaning but also indications of power relations and power contests among elites concerning the expression of desired images of state, society and the purportedly divine in the public arena. Through such devices, competing elites seek to project varying visions of the contemporary and desired images of society, religion, the monarchy and the state to the wider population. Once state religious rituals can be perceived from this perspective as potentially contestable rather than being handed down by immemorial tradition, it becomes possible to see that they are socially constructed institutions that can be the subject of disputation and change as rival elites compete for power by conveying differing values and images of the desirable state and society with which they seek to gain support from, and/or control of, the wider populace.

With this perspective, it becomes possible to understand the established religious denominations, the Churches of England and Scotland, as forms of civil religion – religion in the service of the state – which, in the UK, privilege these two Christian denominations as officially recognised expressions of the relation between the state and the ‘divine’ and ‘spiritual’ spheres and as the authorised media of official state religious expression. These established denominations project official religious state doctrines about the relationship between the state and the ‘divine’ and perform rituals and ceremonies that support and propagate these interpretations. The chapter concludes by posing the core issues of the subsequent argument – whether secularisation has proceeded so far that it undermines the continuation of the centuries old religious doctrines and rituals that still currently legitimate the UK monarchy and established religion or whether religion, in traditional or modified form, remains sufficiently strong, despite processes of secularisation, that it can defend and perpetuate future re-enactments, in received or modified form, of the ancient traditional rituals of monarchical succession which are the most prominent manifestations of the currently prevailing doctrines and practices of UK state civil religion.

Secularisation and its limits

Secularisation theory has had a number of well-argued and apparently convincing expositions supported by a range of empirical data, but as will be shown, there are some major difficulties with its application in contemporary UK society and government. Key contemporary exponents of the secularisation thesis such as Brown (2001, 2009), Bruce (2002, 2011) and Wilson (1982) argue that personal religiosity has declined, public expressions of it have diminished and that religion has increasingly become a private rather than a public matter. Callum G. Brown, in The Death of Christian Britain (2001), argues that in the second half of the twentieth century, there was a fundamental secularisation of British society, not only in terms of obvious indicators of religious commitment such as numbers of attending or being members of churches, or the relative frequency of religious marriage services, baptisms or Sunday school attendances but also in terms of profound religious belief and personal conduct with, for instance, the rise of cohabitation and the lessening of commercial and leisure restrictions on Sundays. Religious marriages, for instance, reduced from 85 per cent of all in England and Wales and 94 per cent in Scotland in 1900 to 39 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively, in 1997. Religious marriages were only one-third of all marriages in England and Wales in 2007 (ONS 2010: Table 2.12) and one half of those in Scotland three years later (GROS 2011). So profound have these changes been that Brown argues that there was a ‘spectacular collapse of Christianity in the 1960s’ and that the ‘culture of Christianity in everyday life has died’ making Britain one of the most secular countries in the world. In a second edition of the book, Brown (2009) argues that these changes have been so profound that Christianity has ceased to become the dominant discourse in the country and just become one of among a number of competing voices. Bruce (2002) shares Brown’s views about the strong and persistent twentieth-century trend in Britain to ‘declining involvement with religious organisation and declining commitment to religious ideas’. He approvingly quotes the arguments of Wilson (1975, 1982) that ‘once society was more preoccupied with supernatural beliefs and practices and accorded them more significance than it does now’ (1975: 79) and that increasingly ‘religion ceases to be significant in the workings of the social system’ (1982: 149). Bruce argues further that ‘the proportion of the people who are largely indifferent to religious ideas … increases and the seriously religious … become a small minority’ (2002: 43). In more recent work, the same author has argued that the ‘once hegemonic churches’ of eastern and western Europe have lost significant power, prestige and popularity and that ‘characteristically Christian beliefs have been in decline and are now held by a minority’ (2011: 14, 19).

There is, however, a paradox that while the evidence for the secularisation thesis seems largely plausible in terms of the systematic statistical and survey evidence on trends in mass behaviour and belief in the UK in the last half century or so, the institutional structure of society predicated on past patterns of belief and commitment has not correspondingly changed. Indeed, in England in the early twenty-first century, successive governments, despite the evident continuation of secularisation trends surveyed by both Brown and Bruce, have been encouraging religious organisations, for instance, to take a greater role in providing state-funded primary and secondary education, and the number of schools and school places provided under such auspices has been expanding (Hemming 2011). In Scotland, the state system of primary and secondary education, far from being secularised as proposed by Bruce (1990, 2002) because decades previously the two main churches transferred the management of their extensive educational provision to the state, remains divided between state Protestant schools serviced by Church of Scotland ministers and those state schools imbued with a Roman Catholic ethos – a process which Bruce also observes has somewhat lessened the erosion of membership in the latter church. The two largest Scottish Christian churches may well have given up the direct management of schooling, but they did so in ways that enabled them to continue to exercise considerable influence on the curriculum, ethos and religious practices to be found in the two types of state-funded schooling – the explicitly Roman Catholic schools and the ostensibly ‘non-denominational’ schools serviced by Church of Scotland chaplains. Although there are some groups and individuals that challenge this form of religiously divided schooling in Scotland, such as the Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) and the Scottish Legal Action Group (SCOLAG), their activities appear to have had limited impact, and the prevailing institutional arrangements are not openly challenged by members of the Scottish or UK Parliaments, many of whom indicate informally that they regard the existing arrangements as a compact with the Roman Catholic community in Scotland that should have enduring application. Far from being an indication of secularisation, this acceptance and the ‘non-controversy’ of religiously divided and religiously influenced state schooling is an indication of the power of the two churches to obtain public funding for arrangements that allow them to influence the education of children and young people in Scotland as part of a compact with the state.

There is thus another paradox in the apparent contrast between an increasingly secular society with falling church attendance and generally decreasingly religiously influenced personal behaviour accompanied by a continuing and, in some ways, an increasing emphasis upon religious institutions contributing not only to state education provision but also in other fields of social welfare.

It is not the intention here to go deeply into the argument about the role of religious organisations in the provision of state education and welfare services in these cases but simply to point out that secularisation in personal behaviour and religious views does not necessarily correspond with the diminution of the influence of religious organisations in public policy decisions, in the provision of public services or more generally in the public realm. The discussion does, however, suggest that the trend of mass attitudes, individual behaviour and cultural change may not be a sufficient cause in themselves to result in institutional change and that there is a need to be alert to the role of elites and governmental decision-making in shaping or resisting possibilities of institutional change at the national level. Social institutions may not change in conformity with broad social trends but may continue to act independently of them. There may be a process of ‘cultural lag’ or even a more profound disjunction between the attitudes and behaviour of the population and the institutions that govern them with their passive or active assent. And because as Bruce points out (1985: 244), perhaps in a slightly exaggerated way, that the ‘churches are the preserve of the middle classes in Britain’, this means that they have a disproportionately favourable educational and professional resource base from which to attempt to influence the policy process in favour of their religious aims and objectives.

The sacred monarchy and established churches

If secularisation was such a powerful force that it shaped the whole society and diminished the significance accorded to ‘supernatural beliefs and practices’ with the result that religion ceased ‘to be significant in the workings of the social system’, it ought to be suspected that it would have resulted in major transformations in the character of other core institutions of the UK state – in particular the religiously legitimated monarchy and established religion. In fact, the centuries old religious arrangements governing these institutions continue largely unchallenged in the twenty-first century. Religious ideas and practices, dating back over the centuries, surround the institution of the UK monarchy and constitution and have not been supplanted. A new monarch qualifies for office through the Act of Settlement of 1701 by being an offspring of the preferred line of descent from the Electress Sophia of Hanover of 1701 and by religious criteria which require her or him to be in communion with the Church of England; he or she is proclaimed at an Accession Council in which religious leaders play a prominent role and is crowned by an archbishop at one of the most elaborate religious and political rituals known to any existing state. He or she has the title of ‘Supreme Governor of the Church of England’ – the established state religious denomination, in addition to being head of state of the UK and fifteen other realms. As will be explored in detail in the following chapters, he or she swears one religious oath rejecting the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, another one administered by one state church to uphold the Protestant religion in the UK and a further oath to uphold the ‘true Protestant religion’ and ‘the Presbyterian form of church government’ in Scotland. And twenty-six bishops of the established Church of England sit in the House of Lords and contribute to the making of laws for the whole of the UK.

It might have been expected that if secularisation was such a profound force, it would have brought about a change in these institutional arrangements, but they seem to be as strongly embedded as ever with there being no signs at the time of writing of any major changes with respect to them. It should, however, be noted that in 2012 the UK government issued proposals for the reform of the House of Lords that would reduce the number of Church of England bishops in the House from twenty-six to twelve – in line with a general reduction in the overall size of the non-elected House. But there are also recommendations in a joint House of Lords/House of Commons committee report that could lead to the appointment of representatives of other religions as members of the House of Lords – possibly leading to an enhancement of religious representation in the House (UK Parliament 2012). Thus while exclusive Christian dominance of the UK public sphere may be, as Brown has suggested, increasingly challenged, Anglican doctrines and rituals still remain at the core of the state and monarchy, and religious influences are clearly major forces in UK politics.

The resilience of the core institutions of UK state religion is despite predictions from a variety of sources of the contemporary eclipse of the religious beliefs, practices and institutions. Some commentators have regarded the caesaro-papist monarchy (combining the roles of head of state and head of the state church) and the established state religious denominations in the UK as being residual and anachronistic – historical survivals of past practices, institutions and values. Freidrichs (1968: 414) proposed that ‘the traditional monarchy legitimised in terms of blood descent and ecclesiastical unction, is becoming extinct’ and that ‘only a few largely ceremonial monarchs remain in Europe. The decline of monarchy is a world-wide trend’. Casanova, who proposes and analyses three theories of secularisation – the differentiation of religion from the political sphere, the decline of religious beliefs and the marginalisation of religion to the private sphere – argues (1994: 23) that ‘established churches are incompatible with modern differentiated states and that the fusion of the religious and the political community is incompatible with modern principles of citizenship’. He suggests, on the basis of a number of major national examples, that the trend towards differentiation of these two spheres is ‘irresistible’ and the more resistance that established churches give to this trend, the more those religions decline. ‘British monarchs’, he claims, ‘as head of the caesaropapist Church of England … like the established Scandinavian churches … are residual anachronisms’ (p. 219). Charles Taylor, too, defines the secular state as one where the state cannot be officially linked to some religious confession, ‘except in a vestigial and largely symbolic sense, as in England and Scandinavia’ (2009).

However, these cases would seem to be a substantial subset of states that do not currently conform to the overall international trend that these writers discern and they seem, at present, to have a much greater durability than their arguments propose. The description of the religious practices and ideas surrounding the monarchy in the UK as nearing ‘extinction’ (Friedrichs), being ‘residual anachronisms’ (Casanova) or being ‘vestigial’ and ‘symbolic’ (Taylor) somehow underestimates their resilience and significance for the overall operation of the constitutional and political systems. Madeley (2010) offers a contrary view and argues that most European states are still in the shadow of the confessional state that dominated Europe until 1789 and still have substantial ‘de jure and non-trivial elements of their constitutions’ identified with, and promoting, a contemporary version of a traditionally dominant religion. Madeley and Enyedi (2003: 13) also noted that in 1980, only five states out of thirty-five in Europe were completely secular in constitutional terms or not officially atheistic – Turkey, France, Austria and the Netherlands among them.

David Martin, who has analysed successive waves of secularisation and Christian religious revivalism in the course of European history, perceives Europe, in a global survey, to be one of the world’s most secular regions and sees little evidence of ‘God is back or post-secularity in West or Central Europe’. Religion in Britain, he writes, is a serious reference group, but one with greatly reduced size. In a generalisation that applies to Western Europe, he argues that ‘the vines of faith twine around crumbling and centralised establishment’ (2011: 31, 91, 93). However, there are grounds for arguing, as will be shown, that there is more vitality and potential for renewal in the continuing institutions of establishment in the UK than this analysis suggests, particularly when a change of sovereign requires the initiation of ancient rituals and ceremonies and new opportunities arise for public participation in state religious ritual.

The evidence suggests, then, that while secularisation may be proceeding in UK with respect to personal beliefs and behaviour, it is not appearing to have the consequence of resulting in major changes in the central institutions of state religion, the religious dimensions of the monarchy or the reduction of the significance of religious organisations in the public sphere. Secularisation of personal behaviour appears to be a continuing process, but society has not become completely secular. The significance of the theory of secularisation may, then, only relate to the sphere of private and personal behaviour without having major consequences for the public sphere – a complete reversal of the situation proposed by secularisation theory whereby religion is seen as becoming an exclusively private matter and not an issue of public concern. For despite the evident trends of secularisation, the political order still remains, despite the propositions of Wilson, Bruce, Brown and others, fundamentally grounded in ‘supernatural beliefs and practices’ with religion continuing to be ‘significant in the workings of the social and political system’ and necessary for the continuation of the key institution of the monarchy and the ongoing persistence of established churches and the rituals of the state.

The continuation of official state religion and the caesaro-papist monarchy in the UK does not, then, appear to have been threatened by secularisation, nor to be in jeopardy in the foreseeable future. The persistence of these institutions as historical survivals, despite common prognostications of their termination, suggests that they play a continuing role of some significance in UK society and politics and that they have sufficient support, or at least insufficient opposition, for their continuation. What, then, is the evidence concerning patterns of popular belief that might contribute towards explaining why apparently archaic institutions of sacred monarchy and established religion continue to exist in an environment of personal attitudes and behaviour that would seem antagonistic towards them?

Popular belief and religiosity

While secularisation theories rightly point to changing and declining patterns of religious behaviour and belief in the UK, this does not mean the elimination of these phenomena among the population as a whole. There remain substantial reservoirs of support that can be mobilised by religious and political elites in favour of religious institutions, policies and practices that they favour.

Depending on how the question is asked, over two-thirds to under a half of UK respondents reply to surveys that they are Christian and a further 5–6 per cent identify with other religions. The 2001 census indicated that 71.8 per cent of the British population was Christian (Morris 2009: 154). In England, the voluntary census question ‘What is your religion?’ provided pre-coded answer options of ‘none’, ‘Christian’ or several other listed religions to obtain this response. According to a Scottish Executive report (2005: 1), UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) investigations indicated that these responses were influenced by religion of upbringing more than by current practice of the faith. A 2010 survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) which asked ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion, and if yes which?’, 50 per cent said ‘no’, 44 per cent gave Christian affiliations (20 per cent Church of England, 9 per cent Roman Catholic) and 6 per cent said non-Christian religions.

Despite all the talk of religious diversity, it might be noted that the percentage of the population identifying with non-Christian religions is quite low. A survey by YouGov (2012) indicated that 55 per cent of their respondents said that they were Christian. Adherents of non-Christian religions were outnumbered by ten to one in this survey and by at least seven to one in the NatCen survey by those who identified as Christian. Despite the evident decline in Christian belief and participation, people who identify as Christian are by far the most numerous religious group in the UK, and although they may not completely dominate discourse, and from some perspectives they constitute less than half the population, they are still an actual and potentially powerful force within the public sphere.

The YouGov survey data suggests, in line with the Scottish Executive observations, that there is a continuing process of secularisation underway in that nearly all respondents say they were brought up in a religion, but only 60 per cent now identify with one. In Scotland, the 2001 census results also indicate that 10 per cent of those brought up in the Church of Scotland have deserted the denomination, compared to the respective figures of 6 per cent for the Roman Catholic Church and 18 per cent for other Christian denominations (Scottish Executive 2005: Table 1.2). As to degrees of religiosity, 7 per cent of respondents in the YouGov survey indicated that they were very religious, and 32 per cent said that they were fairly religious. A large straddling middle section of 43 per cent said that they were not very religious, and 17 per cent said that they were not religious at all. Thirty-seven per cent said they believed in God. Another 10 per cent did not believe in God but in some higher spiritual power. Nineteen per cent indicated that they do not believe in God or any other higher spiritual power.

Further evidence that religion is still a major force in peoples’ lives comes from research by the NatCen which found that 79 per cent believe that religion provides comfort in time of trouble. According to this research, 37 per cent of the population claims to be atheists or agnostics. Overall, the NatCen research suggests that 31 per cent of the population can be claimed to be non-religious in that ‘they do not identify with a religion, don’t believe in God and don’t attend religious services’. Voas (2012) reaches a similar estimate of 28 per cent of the population as non-religious and is quoted by Bruce (2011: 22) as arguing, on the basis of survey evidence, that religion is not important for about 40–60 per cent of the British population. Voas argues that this sector of the population can be characterised by ‘vague supernaturalism and occasional involvement in organisations that worship God on our behalf’. Such attachment to religious ideas and organisations may, however, not be important in regular everyday life, but it is not absent and may, at times, be available to be mobilised for religious purposes.

While the precise figures and interpretations vary, there is no doubt that there exists a base bedrock of Christian identity and belief and a weaker but fluid middle sector, which religious organisations, particularly Christian ones, can call upon for support and also a substantial, if less numerous, set of individuals, who explicitly disavow, reject or ignore religion of whatever variety. Secularisation theorists have characterised mass attitudes to religion as being one of indifference. The current argument suggests that it is less indifference but rather uncertainty in the middle of the spectrum – opinion which can be pulled in the direction of belief rather than in the direction of non-belief and thus, along with the more committed believers, be supportive of the maintenance of existing religious attitudes and institutions inherited from the past as well as possible new public religious initiatives. Secularisation as a long-run trend and process in relation to personal beliefs and behaviour may well be continuing, but the complete secularisation of society and social institutions has not occurred as an outcome. The struggle between the social forces of secularisation and those of religion, both embedded in certain institutions and social groups, is set to continue with no inevitable outcome, with substantial potential resources to be deployed on each side but with the balance of power tilted towards the default position of established institutions since secularism, as will be shown, seems to lack a strong organisational focus and momentum.

Vicarious religion

Sociologists of religion who have been dissatisfied with the explanatory adequacy of theories of secularisation have tried to redeem the role of religion in modern society by invoking the concept of ‘vicarious religion’. Grace Davie, in particular, has argued that a small minority of religiously committed individuals continue, in an environment of decreasing religious belonging, to work hard to maintain, support and develop religious institutions, which are resorted to episodically by the wider population for rites of passage, personal religious and spiritual reassurance and comfort at times of personal stress and at times of national crisis, ceremonial and celebration. She claims that this active minority, which is disproportionately older, more highly educated, female and from professional backgrounds, constitutes a significant element of the voluntary workforce of civil society and works on behalf of ‘a large number … who understand and approve of what a minority are doing’ (2007a: 141).

Davies’s notion of ‘vicarious religion’ has a particular application to the role of the two state churches in the UK – the Church of England and the Church of Scotland – where state recognition grants a special official status, although it can be extended more generally to all those who volunteer or offer paid service to any religious organisation. The concept is not, however, without its difficulties since it seems to have evolved from a church perspective as an ideology of religious professionals and activists which justifies their activities amidst what is regarded as