Church of England leaders have accepted the need to be “hospitable” to other faiths within any future service at Westminster Abbey, in order to reflect the spiritual diversity of modern Britain.
The Church has resisted calls for a multi-faith service in recent years, preferring to stress that the Christian nature of the coronation is preserved by law.
Senior church figures told this newspaper [t] that it was now accepted that other faiths should be recognised within the coronation service for the first time.
It will not, however, be a “multi-faith” service in the sense of a ceremony that treats all faiths as equal.
Representatives of other religions are likely to be asked to participate in a neutral symbolic act such as the lighting of candles, or to read from a text expressing shared values, rather than praying out loud or reading their own sacred texts.
The Church considers the coronation to be a royal ordination, setting apart the monarch for a sacred purpose under God, and will resist any compromise of that. » | Cole Moreton | Saturday, May 18, 2013
