There is a good chance that most of my American friends will never have heard of Barkerville. Barkerville is a town in northern British Columbia which has long since died out (as many towns which began as part of the Gold Rush have done) but which has been preserved as a kind of massive open-air museum. In the words of one website, “The provincial government created Barkerville Historic Provincial Park and reconstructed the town to mirror its appearance during the 1869-1885 period.” Actors dress in clothing of the period and tourists can stroll about and experience the town as it once was. It is rather like Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum except that everyone there is alive. It’s educational and— presumably— profitable.
It also provides a metaphor for the British monarchy currently based in London on the River Thames. That is, the monarch, currently King Charles, looks like a king and embodies the British kingship which has survived there throughout the past thousand years, but it’s all make-believe.
Like Barkerville, tourists come to London and reflect upon its long history and look around at the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, the House of Parliament, Big Ben, and the crown jewels. These things are all radiant with the accumulated weight of history and witness to a time when the King was a father to his people.
Lots of tourism and tourist dollars means that that the British monarchy probably pays for itself so that keeping the monarchy and paying for the Royal Family are not ultimately a significant tax burden on the country. But the history embodied in the Palace and the King’s crown now have no more reality than the actors walking around Barkerville. Preserve the monarchy if you like, but do it recognizing that King Charles is not doing anything remotely like what kings used to do. London has now become Barkerville on the Thames.
It saddens me beyond measure to admit this. As recently as September 2022 I wrote a piece expressing my appreciation for the British monarchy after the passing of the much loved and long reigning Queen Elizabeth. In that piece I wrote, “We need our historical linkage with past days. Tradition provides us with a connection with past, and with the norms enshrined in those days. We may not want to embrace all those norms today, but knowing what they are provides a place for us from which to analyze and judge our modern norms. That is why tradition is so valuable. The British monarchy is one of those traditions, for in embracing that monarchy we seize the end of a chain going back a thousand years. The royal family brings with it more than mere pomp and protocol. It brings with it symbolism and a vision containing realities and sanities fast disappearing from our culture. For that reason alone the monarchy should be retained”.
The piece was written immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth and at the accession of King Charles. His Majesty lacked pizzazz (to put it mildly) but one still hoped for the survival of past traditions to be embodied in the monarchy of which he was the latest incumbent.
Events in England, overrun as it is by Islamists, have shown the hope to have been futile. It is not that one expected the King to step forward, override the elected parliament and say of the offenders “Off with their heads!” As a constitutional monarch, he cannot pass laws or dictate what Parliament should do. But someone who has chosen to retain the ancient title “Defender of the Faith” (ludicrously altered to the meaningless “Defender of faith”—i.e. any old faith) and who is the Head or Governor of the Church of England, should at least say something when all the traditions he embodies are being violently swept away and confess his faith and declare that Britain is a Christian country. Such a personal declaration of faith would serve to inspire and strengthen others. That is the least that a king should do. Instead, Charles is sleepwalking through the 21st century and actually giving support to the gradual Islamification of Britain. It is a pathetic spectacle of failed nerve and moral cowardice.
And it is also unspeakably sad. Britain in general and London in particular during the Blitz survived the onslaught of the Nazis to preserve their freedom and their traditions. Churchill the lion gave the lion’s share of the rhetoric necessary to give the British the courage to fight on. One thinks of his speech containing the splendid and defiant words, “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
But the King and Queen of the day, Charles’ grandparents, did their bit too. When London was being bombed and children were being evacuated to the countryside for their safety, the Queen was asked if their children would be similarly taken to a place of safety such as Canada. To this the Queen famously replied, “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave the King. And the King will never leave.” That was the voice of Britain. It was the voice of courage and defiance and tradition. And it the voice of the father and mother of the nation, giving the courage to ordinary Brits to keep calm and carry on.
It is a voice that is heard no more and that is long overdue, the voice that the British long to hear and need to hear, a voice summoning them to preserve the ancient inheritance for which their fathers bled and died as recently as the last world war. If the man wearing the crown no longer embodies Britain and can find no voice to defend it, then what’s the point? Mere tourist dollars? An old song said, “There will always be an England”. But now, maybe not. Not if London is simply Barkerville on the Thames.
What then is our task and calling as Orthodox Christians? Most people reading this do not live in England and have no stake in events there. Even up here in Canada where King Charles is legally our head of state, we do not emotionally resonate with the occupant of the British throne quite so much as do our English kin. Have we therefore no dog (or bulldog) in this fight, no concern for the overthrow of historic Britain?
I believe we do. In a sense, the West is a single whole and what affects one part affects all. If Great Britain becomes “the Islamic Republic of Britain”, akin to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the threat currently pulsing in Mesopotamia will gather strength from its latest bastion east of the Irish Sea, and this will affect all the West. Even now, at time of writing, Paris is burning just across the English Channel. It seems Europe as a whole is falling, as democratic Iran once fell decades ago. And the playbook is the same.
As Orthodox Christians we are therefore called to pray for Britain and its King. We must pray that Islam may be pushed back from public cultural dominance in that island; pray that the King may at last find his voice and speak as a Christian as his mother and grandmother did.
And we should ask the saints of the British Isles, like Aidan, Columba, Ninian, David of Wales, Brigid and Patrick of Ireland, to intercede for the lands they knew as home. Britain became a Christian land through the prayers and labours of those saints, and surely they still love their land and do not want all their work to be undone as Britain falls again to unbelievers. Let us ask them to intercede for besieged Britain. Through God’s mercy and their prayers, may the cross that is thrice emblazoned on the Union Jack reign in the hearts of the British again.
About Fr. Lawrence Farley
Fr. Lawrence currently attends St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in North Vancouver, BC. He is also author of the Orthodox Bible Companion Series along with a number of other publications.