Your appraisal be for how well Queen Elizabeth II defended the faith?

[Inspecto]

The upcoming coronation is reminding everyone that the monarchy is tasked with defending the faith. New book released ahead of the coronation too: Defenders of the Faith

What would your appraisal be for how well Queen Elizabeth II defended the faith?

Apparently, she had a great personal faith.
But her ‘never complain and never explain’ line was a poor strategy for defending the faith. The faith numbers demonstrably dropped during her 70-year reign. And I don’t yet see any evidence of her doing anything meaningful to defend the faith from the fall in numbers.

It matters because the Crown is the symbol of justice. People need faith in justice. That means a monarch must be able to complain about injustice and explain the complexity of justice. Fair?

She defended it about as well as something increasingly indefensible and irrelevant should have been defended.

OP very few people see justice in the same way as you.

Why not?

It’s Christmas time. Lots of references to Christ around and I’m struck by how few people link the two: Christ and Christmas. It’s like people want their Christmas without the faith that comes with it. There’s a disconnect.

The appraisal idea is that it’s the end of the year. Queen died this year. Got me thinking of her title as defender of the faith. It is normal to question the legacy of historical figures.

@Inspecto

So please put your money where your mouth is, explain to us all what exactly she should have done diffrent and why?

Because if you are going to question some ones abilities and actions you should say what you would have done diffrent and why. Otherwise you do look a tad hypocitical.

But OP your preoccupation on this and other threads is not just something vague and general about Christmas and the Queen it is about an esoteric idea of justice and the monarchy.

Reportedly she wrote her diary every night from the age of 15 - it's a long established royal tradition. I'd imagine that some of them are absolute dynamite.

OP you repeatedly make the point that God and the Crown are the fonts of justice. People have repeatedly said to you that they don’t agree. It is 2022 and people do not see things in that way anymore. Thank goodness.

No, not particularly curious. To me that aspect of her life seems entirely personal, despite the Defender of Faith title. I never looked to the Queen as a spiritual leader or theologian: if she never grappled with the difficult questions of religion and just had what people used to call "simple faith" (making a virtue of that lack of questioning and straightforward acceptance of religious tenets as facts) that's fine with me. I'm not sure she would have been better in any aspect of her role for having had a more complex and questioning approach to religious belief; I rather think she would have been worse, if anything.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no appraisal for someone who spent their career holding the title.

This is genuinely making me laugh. Do tell us how Harry and Meghan’s appraisal on behalf of the County of Sussex or Dumbarton is currently going. 🤣

As people have already pointed out, the title was bestowed by the Catholic pope (after Henry VII wrote a tract in defence of the church that the pope obviously liked). It was a hereditary title, so has been passed down the line of monarchs ever since. In February 1531 however Henry went to parliament and demanded that he be recognised as the head of the church in England rather than the Pope. So it has been an anachronistic title for more than 480 years now.

Why are you commenting? From your other posts you weren’t interested in this topic.

what exactly she should have done diffrent and why?

I would need to read up more about her life, access to her diaries and other information to answer this fully.

A reasonable starting point would be an active role in learning what faith even means. Faith means different things to different people and it’s very interesting to get those insights.

The late Queen was very popular. She could have got involved in the education of asking people throughout society what they think faith means and, where appropriate, sharing what faith meant to her. I don’t think that would have been unreasonable for the defender of the faith.

I somehow feel it’s appropriate if the head of the church and defender of the faith had some theological education of their faith and other faiths. So they know what they’re on about and what their job title entails.

OP, you're taking an incredibly narrow and simplistic view here. Justice and questions of right and wrong have preoccupied thinkers of all faiths and none for literally thousands of years. Take a look at Socratic dialogues or Platonic ideals.

I somehow feel it’s appropriate if the head of the church and defender of the faith had some theological education of their faith and other faiths. So they know what they’re on about and what their job title entails.

She was tutored in the tenets of the Anglican faith by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Justin, if you and the hierarchy need some ideas for getting bums on seats, just say so.

And TBH, considering HM is dead at the age of 96, it's a bit late to be musing about what she should and shouldn't have done when she was alive.

I think it’s a title that needs revisiting. I don’t think the queen was a defender of the faith in any meaningful sense. Nor do I think she should have been. History is replete with monarchs and leaders who were, and with the resultant atrocities and genocides.

I think it’s a good thing that Charles is directly challenging the title itself and modifying it.

Why are you commenting? From your other posts you weren’t interested in this topic.

Your right I have zero intrest in the topic, but I do have an interst in your motivation to question the late queen, who played a large part in many of our lives and gave alot of comfort to many people in times of need Catholic or any other faith. Especially when you say yourself you have done no reaserch yourself in the topic other than quote some deninitions.

OP please can you report back to Charles’ pre coronation religious affairs committee that your public opinion fact finding operation has yielded zero engagement with this? The vast majority of people are/were really not interested in the Queen’s private musings about faith and they make no association whatsoever between the monarchy and justice. Mumsnet really isn’t the forum for this esoteric, anachronistic stuff.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. That, or OP has some very esoteric philosophical and religious interests and is looking for like-minded friends.

But it's like "my government" how do we appraise her for the Boris Johnson stint?

Monarch's are titular heads, but Prime Ministers and Archbishops of Canterbury are the actual leaders. Or not.

And for what it's worth, church attendance was already declining by 1952.

With the idea that “Our sense of justice is imparted to us by our Creator God” I don’t think it means that the judge or whoever has to believe in god themselves. They’re a vehicle through which god works, whether they are aware or oblivious to it themselves.

But I don't believe God exists. And who is to say I am wrong? I love the take that Douglas Adams has on this - using the Babel Fish as an example. If you aren't familiar with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel Fish is a small fish that you put in your ear and it acts as a universal translator (and hence where the current website of the same name got its title!):

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Someone who believes in God believes that my sense of justice is imparted from God regardless of my lack of belief. I believe that my sense of justice comes from the family, community and society in which I was raised. If you cannot prove God's existence, then how can you prove justice? And how can you defend the concept of divine justice when people murder and maim others who are innocent, in the name of God?

We have all inherited our sense of justice from centuries of faith based ideas such as the 10 commandments. It’s hard to say we act without influence from those faith ideas because we don’t.

You can equally say that we are influenced by community folklore. I'm sure you're aware that Christmas as a religious festival was co-opted by the church to discourage paganism. Faith is not the only driver of justice - and justice is not a consistent and universal concept. An evangelical Christian may feel justified in refusing service to someone who is gay. They would argue that they are just in their decision - I would argue that they are not. You are trying to treat 'justice' as if it is a single, fixed and universal point, but that's not the reality. Islamic terrorists feel they are justified in killing non-believers in the name of their cause. Christian far-right terrorists feel they are justified in murdering doctors and blowing up health facilities where abortions are performed. Neither of those circumstances meet my idea of what justice is.

Numbers have dwindled because people are coming to the conclusion that the absolutely ridiculous story of the magic man in the sky isn't true. Not because of anything the Queen did or didn't do.

We as a nation ask questions and listen to science. There is no science or any remote 'proof' whatsoever to support the existence of any deity. THAT is why numbers are dwindling.

So in summary OP, you can tell Charles that it’s fine to drop the defender of the faith stuff. No one will notice.

And the 'defender of faiths' nonsense. Why is something worthy of defence merely because it lacks evidence and therefore requires 'faith'? Certainly nothing which should in any way intersect with a justice system.

If he doesn't like 'Defender of the Faith' then just drop it. I have always thought that it's a bit of a nonsense the Supreme Head of the Anglican church being called that when it was bestowed by a pope.

She was a constitutional monarch, and it is famously difficult to find evidence about what she really thought on a number of issues.

A constitutional monarch does not have many opportunities to make decisions with public impact. The only relevant one I can think of, is where she took into account the Church of England's then teachings on divorce in deciding whether her sister could marry a divorced man and remain what we would now call a working member of the Royal Family.

Otherwise her use of soft power in defending the faith was seen in frequent references to her own faith and that of others in speeches and various messages including her annual Xmas message. That may seem limited to you, but I cannot think of another area of life that was as frequent a theme.

The decline of religion in the UK is part of a much wider trend in western Europe. People who are born after WW2 are just much less likely to have ever been to church. This can be attributed to among other things, a rise in education, increased leisure opportunities outside the church, and in some places horrific abuse scandals.

She might have taken the title "Defender of the Faith" seriously, but I do not. It was acquired through the pamphlet writing skills of Thomas More, and the rising status of England as a European power in the 16th century. It had little to do with religion when it was awarded, and most of us have little to do with religion now.

Well, she certainly became defender of the fat during her lifetime what with the spiraling obesity rates in our population during her reign 😀