No Kings: Now That's Mostly Peaceful

No Kings march on Market Street (Orbegozo/Chronicle)

Hundreds of thousands of people joined "No Kings" rallies across the country to protest what they view as authoritarian behavior of the Trump Administration. The Bay Area, one of the centers of liberal politics, was no exception.

Protest organizers in San Francisco, Oakland, Marin County and other Bay Area communities said turnout surpassed their initial projections, in many cases exceeding the participation in the first No Kings protest. That event was held on June 14 to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday and a parade he orchestrated for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary.

Although your humble blogger doesn't see the President as a would be or actual monarch, it would be foolish to dismiss rally-goers as leftist extremists, i.e., Hamas members, gender reassignment advocates, and Socialists. The marchers seemed sincere, and demonstrations were peaceful. No Kings was a time for feelings to be let out, not lengthy policy discussions.

Republicans would be wise to respect the passions that were on display. Mocking or silencing the Tea Party movement arguably gave rise to Trumpism and the resurgence of modern conservatism. Conservatives shouldn't do the same to No Kings and give leftist opposition the oxygen that it needs.

The Bread of Life

Today's Gospel was from John 6:

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The lady minister discussed Holy Communion, the sacrament in which Christians partake of bread and wine that represent the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Then she gave a quick overview of transubstantiation and consubstantiation, doctrines that Christians have argued about for centuries. The former is the Catholic tenet that the bread and wine are actually transformed into Jesus' body and blood, while the latter is a belief that the bread and wine remain intact but are joined with Jesus' body and blood during the mass.

Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I (1533-1603), before she became Queen of England, rejected both doctrines and accepted the Calvinist principle that the bread and wine were but symbols; Jesus Himself wasn't physically present during Communion, though God was. She wrote:

Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what that Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

Elizabeth I of England, along with Isabella of Spain, were among the greatest--and keenest--monarchs in European history. Their actions (financing Columbus' expeditions, driving the Moors out of Iberia during the Spanish Inquisition, defeating the Spanish armada and keeping England independent from Spain) shaped the world today.

Four centuries before women's rights, these powerful women didn't understand that they should have stepped aside to let white males control everything.

The Golden Spoon

The new king's official title is:

Charles III, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

The last phrase, Defender of the Faith, sounds quaint, but it is steeped in history.

Though the English dispensed with the divine right of kings when they deposed Charles I in 1649, they haven’t done away with the ideas of divinity, right and kingship. Consecrated, this mild-mannered constitutional monarch emerged from the abbey as one of the world’s few priest-kings. Charles is the head of the state and its church. He symbolically fuses the secular and spiritual, like the pharaohs of Egypt, the despots of Assyria and his late mother.

...Though Charles swore to serve his people, an anointed monarch’s first duty is to God. Charles is the fidei defensor—defender of the faith—in this case the Anglican confession.

The golden coronation spoon is 800-1000 years old

A world-wide audience viewed the coronation, but Charles' anointment as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England was hidden from the cameras:

Behind a hand-woven screen in Westminster Abbey, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, took up the oldest item in the coronation regalia—a golden spoon—and anointed the king’s hands, chest and head with holy oil...

The crowning was the style, but the Christian rite was the symbolic content. Anointing with chrism reaches back to the prophet Samuel’s anointing of Saul as the first king of ancient Israel, and further back, to the origins of political and religious authority in the kingdoms of the early Bronze Age.

The American founders gave great consideration to how the government they were creating would differ from England's. One obvious change is the omission of the monarchy. The second difference is the prohibition of an "establishment of religion," aka a "wall of separation" between "church and state." The union of the two most powerful institutions in Great Britain, according to American observers at the time, made errors impossible to rectify.

Over two centuries later the passions have subsided. The British monarchy is now largely ceremonial, and the Anglican church is but a shadow of its former self ("UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 5.5 Million in 2010, or as a percentage of the population; from about 30% to 11.2%.")

We can admire without reservation the relics of power, like the golden spoon, knowing that their power has dissipated.