Why the Palace’s new message on Prince William’s faith looks more like constitutional stage-management than spiritual conviction

Sources in Buckingham Palace have made an announcement about Prince William’s faith.

They have told us that his original well publicised agnosticism has experienced a slight warming and he is more comfortable with the idea of the Church of England as the Established Church. Let’s look at what this might mean and whether it is a help or a hindrance in the present circumstances.

The impression he has given about Christianity since becoming an adult has been one of uninterested, or perhaps disinterested, agnosticism.

The way this entered the public arena was through the royal author Robert Hardman, who quoted William in his 2024 book. He says, in substance, that in royal circles it is well known William does not share King Charles’s spiritual instincts, nor his grandmother’s settled Anglican devotion.

William respects the institution of religion more than he is personally at ease in a setting of faith. Hardman used a fairly distinctive phrase, saying that William is “not instinctively comfortable in a faith environment.”

This week, however, sees the installation of the new female Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, and William is due to attend.

His PR machine has chosen this moment to put out a new and very different message in its bulletin.

Referring to the prince, a source told The Sunday Times:

They added:

It is always good, in a game of chess, to be able to think several moves ahead. That lesson applies to political life as well.

When Queen Elizabeth II died, it was evident that there was going to be a change in the way the monarchy expressed its religious commitment to the constitutional settlement founded in 1688. King Charles III was uncomfortable with restricting himself to Christianity, and wanted instead to express his interest in faith as a general principle. He had already warned us that this was how he intended to embody monarchy.

From a Christian point of view, there is a serious criticism to be made here. If one follows Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, that does not easily permit a relativistic adaptation into some universalised religion of faith-in-general.

People have of course tried it. But it has always turned out to be incompatible with the real thing.

In time, I suspect we shall look back on Charles’s multi-faith spirituality as a dreadful mistake of judgement. But as we look forward, another difficulty presents itself. Charles became king at the very end of his life and, already suffering from cancer, may not have many years left.

The problem facing the House of Windsor is that Prince William was, in one sense, too honest about his spiritual vacancy. It became known — particularly through conversations recorded by the royal biographer Robert Hardman — that he was at best vague about faith, and not at all comfortable with inheriting the role of Defender of the Faith.

This was short-sighted, both on William’s part and on that of the Royal Family, because many people felt a serious discomfort at the gap between having little or no Christian conviction and yet being required, at a coronation, to make solemn acts of identification, protection, and endorsement in relation to the Christian faith.

So, there was a problem. The question was: when was the Establishment going to try to fix it?

I found myself being interviewed twice on LBC about this recently by the perceptive Clare Foges and the following day by Sheila Fogarty.

Clare first asked, quite rightly, whether we should not simply welcome any movement in any person from vague agnosticism towards a clearer articulation of faith and belief.

The answer is that of course we can — and should. Not everyone has a dramatic conversion to the reality and vividness of the existence of God, or to the resurrection and presence of Christ. William James wrote particularly perceptively about the difference between instant and gradual conversion.

There is nothing less honourable, nor less ultimately powerful, about gradual conversion simply because it is less dramatic.

But is that what William was expressing?

The thing about an experience of faith, or of God, is that when somebody moves from nothing to something, they can usually explain what has happened in a way that reflects its authenticity and its effect upon them.

The difficulty with the bulletin announcing this supposed shift in William’s religious outlook was that it sounded less like testimony and more like strategy. It had the unmistakable tone of institutional positioning. Real faith may grow gradually and quietly; but even then, it usually carries some note of personal reality. What was presented here sounded instead like a line being managed.

Essentially, we find ourselves facing two problems, one more urgent than the other.

The first is the extent to which mild religious interest is sufficient to bridge the gap between the demands made by the office of the monarch and William’s personal state of mind.

In a more neutral political and religious context, it might be possible to build a bridge between a certain kind of private religious agnosticism and the overt demands created by the relationship between the state and the monarchy, which requires the monarch to be Supreme Governor of the Church and Defender of the Faith.

But these are not ordinary times.

Elsewhere, I have written that if King Charles were truly to act responsibly for his subjects, he would intervene politically to address the mass grooming and rape of white girls in his realm at the hands of largely Pakistani Muslim men.

One might also have expected intervention in order to resist the erosion of free speech by a far-left government increasingly inclined to demonise freedom of speech and opinion by redefining disagreement as one phobia or another, and then criminalising it.

Despite the fact that King Charles wishes to present himself as a defender of faiths in general, he has given no indication that he has any intention of stepping into an increasingly deteriorating and contested religious arena in order to do what his office ostensibly requires: to defend the Christian faith.

A sober assessment of the timing of Prince William’s announcement might take into account the possibility that King Charles’s health is not at its best in the aftermath of his cancer diagnosis, and that the political establishment knows it may need to prepare the way for a coronation sooner rather than later. The gap between William’s rather vacant personal agnosticism and the demands of a coronation settlement is too wide to be bridged without some kind of interim development.

The difficulty with a Palace source speaking on William’s behalf is that there is nothing personal in the detail of the announcement at all.

When people find themselves moving on a spiritual journey from agnosticism to commitment, they are often able to point to times, places, books, crises, or people that have acted as catalysts for a deeper clarification of their own perception.

There is nothing of that kind in the public statement relating to William’s slight warming towards the institution of the Church of England.

One can easily imagine a group of civil servants looking at the problem and deciding that if William had to turn up, as duty requires, at the installation of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, this would be an opportune moment to issue some sort of statement about his growing appreciation of the institution.

The wider context, of course, is that the monarchy itself is in an increasingly fragile state. The Andrew scandal within the House of Windsor has seriously compromised its capacity to act as a moral example for the country. The Royal Family has long presented itself as a model of family duty and commitment, and the damage done by Andrew is incalculable.

The problem with King Charles’s idea of defending all faiths is that multiculturalism and multi-faith environments do not, in the end, provide the cohesion they promise.

The crisis the country is facing is one of intensifying Islamic ambition on the one hand, and growing pressure on Christianity from the far left on the other, with its hostility to religion and religious conscience.

At some point these stresses will break through to the surface. And if the monarchy has any role at all in such a moment, vague agnosticism will offer nothing to the crisis.

What, then, might the Christian community of this country reasonably ask from the monarchy?

The answer must be: something more than vague agnosticism and a general recognition of the social importance of an established Church.

Agnostics and free-thinkers may be impressed by the slight warming of William’s attitude towards religion in general and the established Church in particular.

But Christians are unlikely to be.

At a time when their faith is under enormous pressure, and when the expression of some of its core moral beliefs — such as the conviction that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that sex belongs properly within marriage — has become so contentious that it can place employment itself at risk, the Church is in need of defence.

If ever there were a time for a Defender of the Faith, this is such a time.

Is it really too much, in circumstances where the faith is being placed under growing pressure, to look to the monarch and ask for a greater proximity between the monarch’s personal commitment and the oaths taken at the coronation?

As the political, religious, and cultural pressures bearing down on Britain continue to intensify, it may turn out that tepid agnosticism dressed up as institutional sympathy is not enough. In quieter times, perhaps it might have sufficed. But these are not quiet times. If the monarchy is to ask Christians to take seriously the language of coronation, oath, defence and vocation, then Christians may reasonably ask in return for something more than a carefully managed warmth towards religion. They may ask for conviction.