A short step from queen’s funeral to Boebert

Having witnessed numerous funerals, I think it’s safe to say that the recent funeral of Queen Elizabeth was unlike any seen in living memory. I watched the edited BBC version rather in awe and not only because of the impressive pageantry and solemnity. As a writer, I’m a sucker for liturgy, and it is hard to beat the Anglican Book of Common Prayer for its beautiful liturgical language.

It was only later that I realized I should have exercised some critical judgment. I imagine that a good many Americans watched the pomp of the queen’s state funeral with some envy that we don’t have anything like it. But as Americans we shouldn’t be envious for constitutional reasons, and I can hear one of my former teachers whispering in my ear that Christians definitely shouldn’t be, because it is a shorter step than we realize from the magnificent funeral we just witnessed to the near-fascist Christian nationalism of people like U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

The queen’s funeral was conducted by the Church of England, which is established by law and tradition as the official religion of the United Kingdom. It is essentially the religious arm of the British state. Its clergy are paid out of the royal treasury’s tax revenue, and its bishops are nominally the equivalent of aristocracy. The “instruments of state,” the crown, orb and scepter, were taken from the queen’s coffin and placed on the church’s altar. That’s the way it has worked in many Christian-majority countries ever since Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

The result often is a fusion of religious and national identity. To be British is to be Anglican. To be French, Catholic, etc. If you’re not part of the established religion, you’re viewed as an outsider.

The writers of the Constitution, appalled at the wars of previous centuries that were driven by religious fervor, rejected that arrangement. In America, religion is “disestablished.” There is no state religion, no official coercion to join a particular sect, and support for all religious groups – financial or otherwise – is strictly voluntary.

It's a system that has worked for us, with occasional glitches, and American Protestants especially over the years have been among its biggest fans. Why? Because it means that religions are not beholden to the government for their existence. They are free to worship as they please, criticize the government if they wish and not worry about biting the hand that feeds them. They remain independent of the halls of power, uncompromised.

That’s the theory. In practice, it’s awfully hard to resist the siren call of power and influence. Until the 1960s, Protestants were comfortably cozy with the leaders of government, and they were used to basking in the glow of power. When that began to change and they found they were just one more voice demanding their point of view be heard, alongside Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, pagans, you name it, there was a lot of angst.

And pushback. What was the Moral Majority of the 1980s and 1990s if not an attempt by conservative Protestants to muscle their way into positions of power and “take back” the influence they believed they had lost?

Now we are seeing the logical endpoint of that trajectory in the so-called Christian nationalism that claims America always has been and should be a “Christian nation.” It was most painfully evident at the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, where God, fanatic nationalism and violence were stirred together in a toxic brew. Even after the riot was quelled and condemned, its participants arrested and convicted, we still have public figures like Lauren Boebert openly rejecting the disestablishment of religion and implying that Christianity (the conservative Protestant variety, presumably) should be the official religion of America. All other beliefs, eh, to hell with them.

Admiring the grandmotherly figure of Queen Elizabeth, it's easy to forget that a more genteel version of Boebert’s philosophy was precisely that of Elizabeth’s recent ancestors. The establishment of a state religion isn’t just a bad political idea. It’s a very bad idea for that religion’s followers as well, because as was said of the medieval popes, power corrupts.

Cary McMullen is a retired journalist and the former religion editor of The Ledger.