Prince Philip

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'Till we cast our crowns before Thee' -- ties that bind in last rites for Queen Elizabeth II

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'Till we cast our crowns before Thee' -- ties that bind in last rites for Queen Elizabeth II

During the private funeral of her husband, Queen Elizabeth II sat alone near the St. George's Chapel altar, socially distanced from her family and wearing a black pandemic mask.

This searing portrait of grief moved viewers worldwide. And as Prince Philip's casket was lowered into the Windsor Castle vault, singers chanted the Kontakion of the Departed, a tie to his Orthodox roots in Greece.

“Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints," they sang, "where sorrow and pain are no more; neither sighing but life everlasting. … All we go down to the dust; and weeping o'er the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

Only 18 months later, Queen Elizabeth requested the same chant, in the same chapel. This time it marked the start of the committal liturgy which closed a 10-day wave of statecraft, vigils, memorials and processions preceding the majestic state funeral.

The queen's final, intimate Windsor Castle service began where her husband's had ended, as if one rite was flowing into another.

"Queen Elizabeth was one of those people in this mortal life who always thought ahead," said David Lyle Jeffrey, distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for Studies in Religion at Baylor University. When preparing these rites, the queen was "clearly looking for prayers, scriptures and hymns that made connections she wanted to make for her family, her people and the world. … I think she succeeded brilliantly."

An Anglican from Canada, Jeffrey said the events closing the queen's historic 70-year reign were an appropriate time to explore the "essence of her admirable Christian character." Thus, the retired literature professor wrote a poem after her death -- "Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen)" -- saluting her steady, consistent faith. It ended with:


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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

Before wearing the Imperial State Crown, Queen Elizabeth II knelt at the Westminster Abbey altar for a moment of silent, private prayer.

The three-hour coronation in 1953 contained myriad oaths and symbols, but the most ancient rite -- Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher anointing Elizabeth with holy oil -- sought the highest possible blessing on her life's work and eventually her death.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he prayed, "who by his Father was anointed with the oil of gladness … that by the assistance of His heavenly grace you may govern and preserve the people committed to your charge in wealth, peace and godliness; and after a long and glorious course of ruling a temporal kingdom wisely, justly and religiously, you may at last be made partaker of an eternal kingdom."

Televised for the first time, 27 million BBC viewers watched what Oxford don C.S. Lewis called the "tragic splendour" of this drama.

“Over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it," he noted, writing to an American friend.

It was "a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) -- awe -- pity -- pathos -- mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be his vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate."

Few could have imagined that the woman many now call "Elizabeth the Great" would reign for 70 years, striving to lead by example after the suffering of World War II and into an age in which humanity would be united by the Internet, terrorism, pandemics and other challenges.


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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

This week something unexpected happened after I filed my national “On Religion” column, something that I have never seen before in my decades of religion-news work.

What? A retired literature professor responded to my column with a poem.

The topic was easy to predict. Like millions of other people around the world, but especially in Great Britain and the Commonwealth, I have spent many hours watching (primarily on British television) the rites and public drama surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

I will post the column at GetReligion at the usual time this weekend, after it has run in most newspapers linked to the Universal syndicate. But the podcast team decided to go ahead and use it as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” (CLICK HERE to tune that in), since so many people are talking about the death of the queen. Here is a short clip from that column:

Throughout her life, Queen Elizabeth II understood the symbolic importance of kneeling, according to former Durham Bishop N.T. Wright. After one Church of England synod, she privately expressed surprise — disappointment, even — that worshippers in Westminster Abbey simply lined up to receive Holy Communion, instead of kneeling.

“Kneeling was important to her,” said the popular author, in a “Premier Christianity” tribute. In his encounters with her, Wright found the queen “very friendly and clearly a very devout, what we would consider ‘old fashioned’ Church of England Christian. I remember thinking during more than one Christmas broadcast, she has just preached the Gospel to the nation in a way that perhaps nobody else could have done.”

In response to the column, a reader raised in Canada — but best known for his work at Baylor University in Texas and at Peking University — wrote a poem and sent it to me.

David Lyle Jeffrey, now a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies in Religion, noted that he has never considered himself a “royalist,” but the queen’s death is certainly a time to explore the “essence of her admirable Christian character and gracious reign.” The former Baylor provost and literature professor entitled the poem “Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen).” Here is how it ends:


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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

Confession: I am still paying next to zero attention to American telly when it comes to rites linked to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I’m tuned into BBC World and, via YouTube, streaming Sky News.

The few times I’ve flipped over to the major U.S. networks left me with the same impression as before — that the Royal Family is viewed as kind of a cleaned-up version of the Kardashians, with the queen as a sad, nobel celebrity matriarch. See this earlier post: “Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?”

I think the big gaps (other than details about her faith) have been any sense of (a) the gravitas added by her World War II service, including her work driving an Army ambulance. Also, it’s poignant that, (b) until the stunning abdication of King Edward VIII, she was raised with zero expectation of becoming queen. This relatively normal childhood (until age 10) created tight ties to her parents and shaped her views on family.

Yes, the BBC has had a very heavy emphasis on the admiration for the queen seen in mainline, establishment churches and minority faiths. At some point I would like to know if the admiration for Elizabeth II common among American evangelicals also exists in the UK. Click here for a roundup of that, including these typical remarks from Bishop Andrew Forster of the Church of Ireland:

"Throughout her life she set Christ, and his message and his teaching, as the primary thing that has helped her and blessed her and I think made her into the incredible monarch, sovereign that she was."

Bishop Forster described the late Queen as the "grandmother of the nation".

"Maybe it was because people understood that she had an understanding of some of the issues that we might face behind closed doors, some of the issues of increased frailty, of family strife — there was that sense of a grandmotherly figure who understood the challenges of life," he said.

In my previous post, I noted that a Washington Post feature about the queen’s “most memorable remarks” that said her public appearances were “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections.” There was content about her Christmas messages, while omitting any faith content.

However, the religion desk — veteran Sarah Pulliam Bailey (a former GetReligion contributor) — went in depth on one of the most interesting religion-news angles from the queen’s long life: “Fact checking ‘The Crown’: Queen Elizabeth’s faith and her close relationship with preacher Billy Graham.”


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The complicated, often painful, Orthodox roots of Prince Philip's faith journey

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The complicated, often painful, Orthodox roots of Prince Philip's faith journey

The first nun the Bolsheviks threw into the abandoned mineshaft was best known as the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of the Russian Empress Alexandra.

After the 1905 assassination of her Grand Duke husband, Elizabeth became an Orthodox nun, giving away her wealth to build hospitals and orphanages. She was executed, in 1918, along with others linked to her doomed brother-in-law, Tsar Nicholas II.

When the nuns didn't drown, a soldier used a grenade. He later testified that "we heard talking and a barely audible groan. I threw another grenade. And what do you think -- from beneath the ground we heard singing! … They were singing the prayer: 'Lord, save your people!' "

Finally, there was silence. The body of St. Elizabeth the New Martyr was buried in 1920 at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Her life inspired many, including her grieving niece, the Greek Princess Alice of Battenberg. Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England and the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and for 73 years the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

The complicated history of the royals, past and present, loomed over the short, dignified funeral for Prince Philip in St. George's Chapel, Windsor -- with only 30 mourners due to COVID restrictions. The prince's liturgical choices shaped an Anglican rite that stressed images of service, eternal hope and the beauties of God's creation.

The man many Brits called the "grandfather of the nation," was born on the Greek island of Corfu in 1921, the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice. He was baptized Greek Orthodox, before his life was rocked by wars and revolutions that shattered his family.


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New podcast: The long, complex and mysterious life (and faith) of Prince Philip of Greece

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New podcast: The long, complex and mysterious life (and faith) of Prince Philip of Greece

It’s a short scene from second season of “The Crown,” but certainly one the illustrates what the creators of the Netflix series thought of Prince Philip Mountbatten-Windsor — at least at one stage of his dramatic life.

In 1955, while the Rev. Billy Graham was in Scotland leading a crusade in Glasgow, the evangelist received a note from Buckingham Palace inviting him to preach on Easter morning in the private chapel at the Royal Lodge. It’s a poignant scene, especially when paired with another in which Graham visits the queen to discuss an important subject — the need to forgive others.

In the chapel, Graham discusses Christian faith in highly evangelical language, describing the need to have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Queen Elizabeth listens attentively. Prince Philip is clearly bored, upset, disturbed, offended, embarrassed or all of the above.

Was Prince Philip struggling with guilt linked to his rumored infidelities? What is happening in his head and heart? That was the starting point for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focused on the mainstream press coverage of the prince after his recent death (click here to tune that in).

For millions of people, “The Crown” offered the dominant image of Prince Philip — the tall, handsome consort of the queen best known for his faults and weaknesses. He was an old-guard British man who went to war, who was known for blunt remarks many considered racist or sexist. Eventually, some would respect his progressive views on the environment.

But it was also obvious that something important happened during this royal couple’s 73 years of marriage. Somehow, they grew together, doing the best they could to handle the pressures of royal life and the searing spotlight on their four children and, eventually, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

News consumers who dug into the fine details learned that Prince Philip was, in many ways, an outsider from the Greek wing of Europe’s complicated world of interlinked royal families. He was an Orthodox Christian, at least until he married Elizabeth and, on bended knee, honored her as the leader of the Church of England. He befriended Anglican clergy and was known to confront priests for intense discussions after their sermons.

Something else was going on as the prince aged and matured. There were signs that, spiritually, he was seeking the roots of his faith and his family.


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