At the mystical heart of the Coronation is the intimate moment when the king is anointed with Holy oil, sourced from the Mount of Olives, before being prepared and blessed by the Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem.
In fact the ritual predates the crowning of King Solomon, to which it is often attributed. It was carried out two reigns previously, over 3000 years ago, when the Prophet Samuel anointed Saul as Israel’s first King, then subsequently, when Saul proved something of a dud, Samuel sought out the youngest son of Jesse, and anointed David, as King instead.
Though instrumental, Samuel was a somewhat reluctant participant. He didn’t rate the prospects of monarchy and he warned the people of Israel that, by demanding a King like other nations, they were making a rod for their own back, with taxes and other oppressive impositions. His greatest fear was that kings would wander from proper devotion to the one true God. His fears were not misplaced. To put it mildly Israel’s experience of monarchy might be, at best, described as ‘mixed’.
A fellow from the Plymouth Brethren used to come campaigning with me at elections. He was happy to deliver leaflets and canvass voters, but he wouldn’t vote himself. When I challenged him about this, he told me it was because he believed in the principle of Biblical Monarchy.
Well, good luck with that! As we went through the reigns described in the Bible there was perhaps only one paragon, Josiah 640 -609 BC (to whom our own Edward VI was compared by contemporaries as ‘the new Josiah’ in 1547). Many of the others were pretty dreadful.
Of course, our own experience of monarchy has also been mixed. We’ve had both saints and monsters. Nevertheless, we had a very unsuccessful, and not to be repeated experiment of doing without a monarch from 1649 to 1660.
Undoubtedly, what has saved our monarchy was the wisdom of separating the institution from political power so that it could become what it is to-day: the focus of unity, majesty and awe.
The thought of replacing our Head of State with an elected politician is just grotesque. Think about it! Which one of us would you vote to have instead?