TIMESONLINE: As he approaches his 60th birthday the Prince of Wales is knowledgeable and at ease in his self-proclaimed role as the ‘Defender of Faith’
He has, famously, declared that he wants to be “Defender of Faith”, rather than defender simply of the established Christian faith. His interest in other religions and denominations is unparalleled in a man born to be king, and his knowledge is extensive. No other heir to the throne has been awarded one of Islam’s highest accolades, spent nights in a Greek Orthodox monk’s cell or insisted that Roman Catholics, Hindus, Jews, Zoroastrians and Sikhs are as important subjects of the sovereign as Protestants.
When the Prince of Wales celebrates his 60th birthday next week he can therefore expect warm tributes from religious leaders across the country as well as from those overseas. They know that when he is crowned king, he will insist — as he has on other state occasions — that all the faith groups now living in Britain are represented in the abbey to accord him the blessings of all his subjects in today’s multicultural Britain.
An interest in religion is almost a prerequisite for the job of king. The British sovereign is, after all, the head of the Church of England and for almost 500 years this has been a defining constitutional function. But no monarch since the Stuarts has taken an intellectual interest in religion, and none has devoted time and respect to other faiths. The Prince, however, counts bishops and moral philosophers, rabbis, priests and Islamic scholars among those whom he regularly meets and with whom he discusses the spiritual dimensions of life in Britain today.
For him, the concept of faith — any faith — is important in the crusade against the rising tide of secular materialism and scientific reductionism, both of which he detests. As Ian Bradley, reader in practical theology and church history at the University of St Andrews, has written: “Prince Charles harks back to a primal understanding of the monarch, as representing order and taking on the forces of chaos, and to the sacrifical dimension of royalty found in primal religion and the Bible. A major theme of speeches and conversation by this ‘heir of sorrows’ is the disintegration of the modern world and the need for it to be rebalanced and reordered”.
The religion that has probably engaged him most is Islam. He has long admired the art and architecture of the golden age of Islam; he has also been fascinated by the totality of Muslim belief — the way it permeates all aspects of life — and has contrasted this with what he sees as the regrettable materialism of Western life that compartmentalises faith and excludes it from the mainstream of daily life. As he said in 1996: “In my view a more holistic approach is needed now.”
As Islam has grown in Britain with the influx of Muslims from the subcontinent, so too has the Prince’s interest. He was an early supporter of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, a new centre that funds scholars to research into Islam. He has spoken of Islam’s respect for the natural order, insisting that: “We need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to learn with our hearts, as well as with our head.” And he has made a point, during tours of the Middle East, of meeting Muslims scholars and clerics. A God-fearing Man with a Taste for Tradition >>> Michael Binyon | November 7, 2008
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