Northmoor Team Ministry Flower Festival
(Themed 'The Queen's Commonwealth')
Bridestowe, 1/7/2012
When Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 she ruled an Empire. In this Diamond Jubilee year Queen Elizabeth heads a Commonwealth.
It is one of the most remarkable differences between these two great monarchs, and one of the most significant changes in the life of the world: that between these two reigns we have moved from Empire to Commonwealth.
Prime Minister Disraeli gave Victoria the title of empress in 1876, as Britannia ruled the waves. One Basuto king is said to have told Victoria: “My country is your blanket, O Queen, and my people the lice upon it.” Across the world, cities, provinces, lakes, mountains, gardens, parks, highways, stations, puddings and flowers were named after Victoria. [1] The reach of the British Empire peaked long after her death - by 1922 the British Empire dominated over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world's population at the time, in an area covering almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. Its span across the globe ensured that ‘The sun never set on the British Empire’. [2]
In his book and TV series about the British Empire, Jeremy Paxman said that whilst Queen Victoria was lucky to rule an expanding Empire, Queen Elizabeth II was unlucky. He says that
[Elizabeth’s] role has been to preside over the disappearance of empire, as the number of British possessions has shrunk to a few curious dots in the seas and oceans of the world. But, just as lands were claimed in the name of a British queen, so their independence required a royal witness, with Elizabeth or one of her family on hand to watch as the British flag was lowered and the flag of the new state raised. Look at any photograph of Commonwealth leaders since the early 1950s and the one face you can almost guarantee to find there is that of Elizabeth II – and it is largely due to her that the institution ... survives. [3]
The move from Empire to Commonwealth can be viewed, in a very understated English way, as ‘unlucky’ - the loss of power, the loss of wealth, the loss of influence and status in the world. Just not cricket, an old colonial might say. But the move from Empire to Commonwealth can be equally viewed very positively.
Elizabeth II became Head of the Commonwealth when she ascended to the throne in 1952. On her accession Elizabeth made a statement which acknowledged that the Empire’s power, wealth and influence had been gained at the expense of the lives and well-being of many thousands of people, through acts of piracy and colonial wars. She announced that "The Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty, and the desire for freedom and peace." [4]
From Empire to Commonwealth. From domination to co-operation. Elizabeth will be remembered as the monarch who successfully turned a loss of position into an influence for good. It is another mark of her Christian character, a sign that she has truly embraced the significance of what Jesus taught and lived. For the meaning and message of Jesus is a move from Empire to Commonwealth. Jesus spent his entire ministry challenging the Empire’s violent and oppressive ways. The Empire crucified him. Empires are built on death and the threat of death; when Jesus defeated death then the Roman and every subsequent Empire faltered.
Jesus’ resurrection brought a new kind of power into play in the world: the power of grace, of generous, absolute love. His first followers, the early Christians, showed how absolutely they had embraced that power when they sold their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds between them, according to their need. ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common,’ we read in the Acts of the Apostles (2.43-47). ‘Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.’
Commonwealth attracts those who turn their backs on the power of violence, but who want to live lives turned outward, towards others, believing this to be the better way.
Commonwealth stands against peoples dividing in defence of their selfish interests and instead enables creative ‘free association’ between them.
The Queen’s Commonwealth is a formal organisation enshrining these values into practical co-operation between nations.
We might also regard Commonwealth as a notion we can embrace in our own lives, our own families, our own churches. The Common Good - a deliberate move away from violent self-defence towards friendship, loyalty, and the desire for freedom and peace with others.
The sad truth about the early Church is that it soon moved backwards from Commonwealth towards Empire, and that when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the year 313 the connection between the faith and Empire was cemented. And the reality is that most of us - nations and individuals, in our attitudes and everyday dealings with others - are usually moving backwards and forwards somewhere inbetween Empire and Commonwealth.
In this year of Jubilee, in celebration of a very Christian monarch, we might do well to acknowledge these things, and warmly re-commit ourselves to the life and work of the Commonwealth, seeking out and living for the Common Good.
Notes
[1] Jeremy Paxman: What empire did for Britain, Telegraph.
[2] Wikipedia, British Empire.
[3] Paxman, as above
[4] Wikipedia, Head of the Commonwealth.
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