Charles III

The title Supreme Governor of the Church of England was settled in the Elizabethan legislation of 1559 and every subsequent monarch has held it. In practice it is an office of constitutional form rather than of doctrinal authority. The monarch formally appoints archbishops, bishops and deans, acting on advice; the Church of England makes its own decisions through its General Synod, whose measures then require parliamentary approval; and no part of the arrangement gives the holder a say in what is taught.

The relationship with Scotland is different in kind and is often assumed to be the same. There the monarch is not governor of anything but is a member of the Church of Scotland, which is presbyterian and holds that Christ is its only head, and the accession declaration includes a separate undertaking to preserve its settlement. Charles III made the accession declaration in September 2022 at the Accession Council, in the form the statutes require, including the promise to maintain the Protestant succession and the security of the Church of Scotland. The coronation oath, taken at the service the following year, is a further and separate set of promises, and the two are frequently confused in reporting.

In a television interview in 1994, while Prince of Wales, he said he would rather be seen as a defender of faith than as Defender of the Faith, and the remark has been discussed ever since as a question about what an established church can mean in a country where most people belong to no church and a substantial minority belong to other religions. He returned to the subject on later occasions, describing the role as protecting the space in which all faiths may be practised freely rather than as standing at a distance from his own, and in his first address after the accession he said he would maintain the constitutional position of the Church of England while holding a duty to protect the diversity of the country.

The coronation in May 2023 was conducted along those lines. The service kept the Christian rite substantially intact, with the anointing, the presentation of the regalia and the crowning performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archbishop introduced the oath with a preface describing the established church as seeking to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely. Leaders of the Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Buddhist communities took part, delivering a spoken greeting to the King as he left the sanctuary, which had not been done at a British coronation before.

Sources The Prince of Wales: A BiographyJonathan Dimbleby with The Authorised Liturgy for the Coronation Rite of His Majesty King Charles IIIThe Royal Household and the Church of England