Why did the king choose to highlight Ramadan while ignoring Lent?

Ash Wednesday is intended to be an annual crossroads in the life of the Christian. This year it may also have acted as a crossroads in the life of the monarchy and of the British establishment.

For the Christian, lent operates as a moment to renew the choice to be a disciple. The ministry of Jesus begins in the early part of the Gospels with an overt confrontation with the devil. Three archetypal temptations are played out. Jesus exposes the pattern of  temptation, overcoming and rejecting it. He leads the way through the blandishments of evil, through death, and towards eternal life; and the Christian, on Ash Wednesday, renews their commitment to follow him. 

But the second temptation might have caught the eye of the establishment this year in particular. It warns that political power and influence must not be gained at the expense of spiritual integrity, and that seems to have posed a dilemma to the King that he may had failed to understand.

When King Charles was crowned, there was a great deal of interest in the way in which he intended to exercise his constitutional role as supreme governor of the state church. 

He had already, over the years, expressed an interest in the rights of all religions. He spoke of being a defender of faith in general, which, at first sight, seemed a noble and wise cause. But having made the choice to defend faith in general, a second choice then appeared swiftly on its heels.

Despite the relativism of our culture, it is clear to any reasonably well-read observer that the different religions present different gods with different goals and different ethics. And while they do share some universal values in common, at certain points they stand against and contradict one another, and the would-be pilgrim is forced to choose between them.

It is deeply unpopular to point out that Mohammed and Jesus present two different gods, with two different sets of ethics, requiring two different modes of surrender. 

The saviour and the warlord do not follow the same road. Indeed, the warlord claims that the records describing the saviour and his work have been falsified. The warlord claims the saviour did not overcome death, nor does he have the right to forgive sins. 

The warlord tells the followers of the saviour that they have been mislead by their documents and they are to revoke them and to submit to him and his different God. The warlord declares that the saviour was wrong in offering a relationship with God as a tender father. God is instead beyond reach and unknowable; a fierce ethical power that requires submission as the response to an encounter with his warlord prophet.

This presents a serious conundrum to anyone promoting a multicultural society. The essential problem is that the religions founded by Mohammed and Jesus are antithetical to one another. The History of Islam is one of conquest and control. When it constitutes a majority in society, it will tolerate the followers of Jesus only in very strict and humiliating conditions.

Christianity is more generous. It is more confident that when faced with a choice between the warlord and the saviour, the human heart is more vulnerable to love and forgiveness than it is to the presentation of power and control.

Given such a confidence, there is much to be said for being generous in a Christian society to the followers of Islam. In a secular society it might be sensible to ensure a level playing field between the two contraction religions. But the United Kingdom is not only a secular society. It is a complex hybrid between the secular and the Christian. Downing Street may be secular, but the Palace at least is Christian.

So the arrival of Ramadan and Lent at almost the same time offered an opportunity to take the temperature, so to speak, of the positions of both the political government on one hand, and the constitutional monarchy on the other. 

It was no surprise when Keir Starmer offered his best wishes for Ramadan to the 6 million Muslims in this country, but it seemed a little awkward and ungenerous to completely ignore the 45 per cent of society who identify in some form or other as Christians. 

But no doubt we could have expected that his most Christian Majesty the King could be relied upon to respect and encourage his subjects with good wishes for Lent, while at the same time offering his courteous acknowledgment of Ramadan. 

Apparently not. It came as something of a shock when the King ignored the Christian community at the beginning of Lent. In fact, not a single member of the Royal Family appeared to have had any Lenten engagement with the Christian Church, state or otherwise on Ash Wednesday. 

The King not only published his warmest good wishes for Ramadan, but followed it up with an extraordinary act of symbolic hospitality to the Islamic community by opening St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle to a celebration of the Iftar meal, which is taken after the call to Maghreb prayer announcing sunset. 

Simon Maples, visitor operations director at Windsor Castle, justified this unusual event by explaining that the King had been “championing religious diversity and encouraging interfaith conversation” for many years.

St George’s Hall is more than a useful space. It has a symbolic role as representing the heart of the monarchical identity. It is normally used to entertain heads of state and for special banquets. But on the Sunday before Lent, the call to Islamic prayer echoed throughout the building to signal the time to break the fast.

“It’s very kind of the Royal Family to open their home to us,” one woman told the BBC. Another added: “We never thought we’d be here breaking Iftar. We’ve come a long way.”

Islam and Christianity are in competition with each other. Both are required to evangelise and both set out to build the society around them on the ethical values each embodies. The veiling of women, the imposition of Sharia law and the marriage of first cousins are some of the more contentious ambitions of Islam’s influence in a post-Christian Europe.

The only way Christianity can survive in Europe and the only way to make Europe Christian again is through a renewal of evangelisation on behalf of the Church. 

The priorities of King Charles in placing multicultural hospitality before fidelity to his vows to be Defender of the Faith may signal an abandonment of that aspiration by the monarchy and perhaps a de facto renunciation of its exclusively Christian allegiance.

If that is the case and the Protestant state church project has chosen the political attractions of multiculturalism before the teaching and requirements of Jesus, it places an even greater responsibility on the shoulders of the Catholic Church, whose commitment to the Church and the Gospel brought the faith to these islands originally. It may have to convert them all over again. At least we know it can. It only remains for it to discover it must.

(LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 26: King Charles III and Queen Camilla meet British Muslim women at a female led restaurant and help pack donation boxes ahead of Ramadan, at Darjeeling Express, Kingly Court, Carnaby Street on February 26, 2025 in London, England | Photo by Eddie Mulholland – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The post Why did the king choose to highlight Ramadan while ignoring Lent? first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Why did the king choose to highlight Ramadan while ignoring Lent? appeared first on Catholic Herald.