Prince William and Kate Middleton will be married at Westminster Abbey on Friday, April 29, 2011.
A columnist writing in the British newspaper The Independent recently exclaimed, “Having gone to such lengths to break free from a British monarch 235 years ago, why are Americans so besotted now by the marriage of one of his distant descendants?” In fact, as the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey approaches, a majority of Americans are (gasp!) largely uninterested, though our Canadian neighbors to the north still recognize Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. I’m willing to bet most of us in Houston will be reaching for the snooze button rather than the remote control when the wedding starts at 5:00 on Friday morning.
Still, the royal nuptials are a clear reminder of what the American Revolution overturned.
America’s former colonial masters remain wedded both to a constitutional monarchy and an established Church of England that once held a privileged position in many of the Thirteen Colonies. In the new United States, the break with the Crown during the American Revolution led to the formation of the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Today, Britain’s monarch is “supreme governor” of the Church of England and bound by law against marrying a Roman Catholic (but not necessarily other people of faith, or even none at all). Changing these rules would ultimately be the responsibility of the British Parliament that enacted them.
While this tying together of church and state probably is anachronistic to most Americans, a few U.S. states continued to have established churches in various forms following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, including South Carolina (until 1790), Connecticut (until 1818) and Massachusetts (until 1833). Nor is England alone in having an official religion or a religious institution backed by the state. So have Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Norway, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sweden (until 2000) and Vatican City, to name a few. Anglican churches in Ireland and Wales were disestablished in 1871 and 1920.
Despite an official religious establishment, English churchgoing rates are anemic. “Only 1.1m people, some 2 per cent of the population, attend church on a weekly basis, and only 1.7m, or 3 per cent, once a month. This in spite of the fact that around half the population still profess themselves Anglicans.” Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that as Britain’s population has grown increasingly diverse — one out of every three Londoners is foreign-born — Prince Charles has suggested that he would change one of the monarch’s titles to “Defender of Faith” rather than the original “Defender of the Faith” (itself a papal title first bestowed upon the English king before the Protestant Reformation). By comparison, Gallup polling (2010) found that “43.1% of Americans [reported] weekly or almost weekly [church] attendance.” Clearly, a free marketplace for the competition of faiths in a secular state has not diminished Americans’ religious expression.
How a future King William and Queen Catherine will respond to calls to undo Britain’s establishment of religion is unclear. It is likely, though, that Americans won’t be paying much attention. For the most part, we settled the matter a long time ago. But I might just turn on the TV tomorrow morning.
Matthew Chen is policy assistant to the founding director of the Baker Institute. An Episcopalian, he lived in London and studied at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 2002 and 2003.