IT’S NO secret that Prince William sought to define the parameters of his Christian faith in a recent Sunday Times interview. A royal aide reportedly told the newspaper that he has a ‘personal faith, but it’s not always expressed publicly’ and that his ‘commitment to the Church of England is sometimes quieter than people expect’.
This has, so far, been met with cynicism and generally summed up as the Prince not really believing in God, but duty-bound by the installation of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and the prospect of becoming king one day, he felt compelled to make a statement. After all, his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was staunchly religious, while the young Prince William has largely remained dumb on the subject, leading many to believe that he has no faith at all.
Perhaps the critics are being rather harsh, considering that the heir to the throne and future champion of the Church of England is a product of the same secular milieu as many other millennial men his age.
It’s common knowledge that religiosity rates in the UK have been declining rapidly since the 1960s, with the most recent census data revealing that Christians are now a minority, and only 46.2 per cent of the population identifies this way. Of course, it wasn’t always like this. The average Boomer – born between 1946 and 1964 – had the privilege of growing up with religious parents, the Silent Generation. Coming of age in the full swing of the sexual revolution, the Boomers were the first generation to buck the trend. While many would continue to identify themselves as ‘Christian’, this did not always entail consistent church attendance or adherence to any particular denomination. Many still prefer to label themselves in looser terms, as culturally Christian or ‘spiritual’.
Well, what’s wrong with that? Plainly, the farther one steps away from institutionalised doctrine, the less serious and strongly-held their beliefs tend to become. Prince William’s inheritance, the Church of England, has been much maligned in recent years over its evident mission to bend eternal truth to the times rather than vice versa. Its reputation is largely for progressivism, owing to its various resolutions, including the ordination of women in the 1990s, its repeated pledges to pay slavery reparations (in spite of some Anglicans driving its abolition), and promoting environmentalism to such an extent that any message about God seems to have been lost in the weeds.
On traditional morality, it seems that the church has been cast adrift by its own apathy, as shown by the recent Parliamentary vote to legalise abortion up until birth (i.e. the mother would not be prosecuted for ending a pregnancy even in the ninth month). Out of 26 bishops, only 11 thought it appropriate to attend and oppose one of the most spiritually damning legal decisions in modern history.
To borrow from Dostoevsky, it appears the church’s worst sin is that it has destroyed and betrayed itself for nothing, considering that fewer people from every generation after the Boomers identify as ‘Christian’ and Sunday attendance has decelerated to such an extent that the Church of England is threatened with extinction.
The Bible tasks parents with bringing up children in the ‘discipline and instruction of the Lord’ (Ephesians 6:4). Yet it appears that for most of Prince William’s life, his father did not have a firm grasp on what this was. The King’s comments over the years regarding his faith have been far and wide, ranging from a passing interest in Greek Orthodoxy to a desire to be the ‘Defender of Faiths’ so as not to deny representation to anyone in modern Britain.
The religious-facing role of the monarch has never been altered in any meaningful way – he retains the titles of the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. However, this statement was so stark, controversial, and repeated by the media so often that even journalist Rachel Johnson admitted on a recent episode of the Daily Telegraph podcast, The Daily T, that she was under the impression that this was now the King’s official title. Following correction, she noted that it would indeed be ‘symbolic’ if it were.
Please don’t mistake this as constituting disrespect towards the King. I consider myself a monarchist and, like many others around the globe, was transfixed by the overt religiosity and pageantry of his Coronation in 2024. But I do sympathise with the poor religious inculcation that his son has clearly received up until this point. While Charles and his siblings had their late mother’s steadfast traditionalism as a bulwark against the secularisation of the age, William endured an even more watered-down version of this. Not to put the point too bluntly, but our future monarch is also the product of a divorce, and research indicates this often results in lower religious retention among children. No wonder all William can muster is a ‘quiet faith’.
Some have made out that the Prince’s reticent belief could even shake the foundations of constitutional royalty, as, after all, how can a non-believer be at the helm of a 500-year-old church? I wouldn’t be so pessimistic. I spent a good four years with ‘quiet faith’ before finally being drawn back into communion with the Church (of the Roman Catholic variety). But I know what it is to discover the truth in a world that does everything to convince one of the contrary.
As William looks ever more like a king-in-waiting, especially considering reports of him assuming a leadership role during royal crises (pointing not-so-subtly to a certain wayward brother and uncle), he must be naturally thinking more about his own mortality. This doesn’t even consider the suffering endured following his wife’s cancer diagnosis, and her own reported increased interest in religion. In short, ‘quiet faith’ doesn’t mean absent faith. I just hope that one day the volume will be turned up.
