Holy Smoke: The Queen's powerful Christian faith

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

In this week's Holy Smoke I offer some thoughts on the impressive and distinctive Christian faith of the Queen – impressive because it's so refreshingly direct compared to that of many of her politics-obsessed bishops, and distinctive because Elizabeth II is one of a dwindling band of Low Church but not Evangelical Anglicans whose favourite Sunday service is old-fashioned Matins. Questions of churchmanship aside, however, there is no doubting the intensity of her convictions, about which she has spoken with increasing candour and confidence in recent years. Will she turn out to be the United Kingdom's last robustly Christian monarch?

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator Economic Innovative of the Year awards, sponsored by InvestTech, are open for entries.
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0:29.1	Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.
0:35.3	And today, feeling a bit nervous at the prospect, I want to say something
0:40.3	about the Christian faith of our beloved Queen. It was at Christmas 2000 that Queen
0:48.1	Queen Elizabeth II began to emerge, in my opinion at least, as Britain's most steadfast and quietly impressive Christian leader.
0:57.7	Many of us have forgotten, or are too young to remember, that before 2000, the Queen's Christmas
1:03.6	broadcast steered clear of too much overtly Christian content. So at the time, it was quite a surprise when the Queen said,
1:13.2	to many of us our beliefs are of fundamental importance. For me, the teachings of Christ and my
1:19.2	own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life.
1:25.9	I, like so many of you, have drawn great comfort in difficult
1:29.3	times from Christ's words and example. Since that year, we've come to expect that the Queen
1:35.8	will use her Christmas broadcast to make some sort of declaration of her own Christian faith,
1:40.3	though, as you would expect, she's always very careful not to appear to be proselytizing.
1:45.7	So in 2014, for example, she said, for me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace,
1:52.3	whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A role model of
1:58.3	reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing.
2:04.3	Christ's example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.
2:11.4	That's very nicely judged not to offend anyone, with the possible exception of the most toxic secularists.
2:19.4	But, as I say, that sort of message was largely missing from nearly the first 50 years of the Queen's Christmas broadcasts,
2:25.4	and you can't help wondering what brought about the change. I found a couple of interesting suggestions
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