Totem and Taboo: Religious Features of the British Public Support for Monarchy

Abstract

As Christopher Hitchens remarked in his book about the British monarchy, the cult of the Windsor family, with its periodic rituals and the fetishizing of the most senior royals resembles a secular religion. The British monarchy is surrounded by secrecy, as many actions of the sovereign and senior royals, including those having a public or political impact are not transparent, nor are most records from the royal archives available to the public or to historians. This paper will first examine the religious features of the public support for the British monarchy. Then, it will advance a hypothetical explanation of the enduring nature of this institution through its mysterious/religious nature. It will also consider the fact that in recent decades the image of the Windsor family has been harmed by numerous scandals related to adultery, divorce, sexual abuse and even racism. Notwithstanding this ignominious behavior, the royal mystique has been preserved with the aid of a press that seems profitably interested in rousing public devotion to the monarch and in demonizing scapegoats. The proestablishment media, including the tabloids that combine the sacred with the profane, is thus similar to a secular clergy. Republican dissenters who advocate the abolition of monarchy play the role of heretics. They are often persecuted, arrested and derided. There is also the “religiously indifferent” population that is uninterested in the Royal Family. British “public religion” is thus a peculiar kind of pre-modern cult that strangely survived the Enlightenment and the challenges of liberal democracy. Such values are promoted within civil society especially by the British pressure group Republic, whose campaign for changing the form of government has gained more visibility and support in recent years.