Theo Hobson
Prince Harry is not a Christian believer, he tells us in his book Spare. Fair enough. Every British person is entitled to choose what religion, if any, to follow. Well, almost every British person. His father has a bit less freedom to decide that traditional religion is not his thing. So does his ‘arch nemesis’.
The point underlines the culture of constraint from which he has freed himself. If William said the same, a constitutional crisis would ensue. It’s a good example of how unreasonable his whole crusade is. His stance only makes sense if he goes all the way and denounces the monarchy entirely. He wants to be fully royal and also fully honest – an edgy and frank royal rather than a yes-man, a square. But the role entails conformity and reticence: conforming to the family’s official religion, and being reticent about it if you don’t believe.
It reflects badly on the Church of England that Harry sees nothing of worth in his native tradition
Harry doesn’t say anything about William’s religious belief or lack of it, but there is an implication. He’s conforming, whereas I have dared to follow my conscience and express my true spiritual hunches – that a mystic can help me to be in touch with my dead mother; that there is sacred wisdom in Eat, Pray, Love.
He declares his detachment from religion in a passage on hunting. When his face was ritually ‘blooded’ after his first kill, it felt ‘baptismal’; he even felt ‘close to God’, which is seemingly the only time he recalls ever having felt such proximity.
There’s an interesting ambiguity here: the experience is on one hand affirmed – the blooding ritual shows respect for the animal, it is ‘an act of communion by the slayer’. And yet there is also a hint that religion is dark and backward. It’s a dark God who haunts traditional religion.
It reflects badly on the Church of England that he sees nothing of worth in his native tradition, despite all the exposure to it. Maybe Richard Chartres, whom Charles commissioned to prepare his sons for confirmation, did his best. Maybe Rowan Williams attempted to dial down the erudition and get through. Maybe Justin Welby tried to make the most of a wedding-prep chat. But my hunch is that the Church barely bothered trying to connect with this young man, assuming he was a just another jolly thicko who would toe the line, not sensing that he was in deep pain, and in serious need of spiritual guidance.
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