A former Christian advisor to the late Queen Elizabeth II has voiced his concern about the future of the monarchy under King Charles III.
Gavin Ashenden who served as the Queen’s chaplain for nine years expressed alarm over the King’s references to multi-faith and multi-culturalism in his Christmas message.
Mr. Ashenden compared the monarchy to a wonderful ship that’s slowly sinking as it slips from being a dedicated Christian institution.
He doesn’t believe it can float if it becomes a multi-faith, multi-cultural monarchy.
He told GB News that the problem is “that you’re either a defender of the faith or you’re not.”
He noted that each British monarch must publicly promise to maintain the Protestant Reformed Religion.
CBN News points to some of the questions King Charles will be asked while giving the oath at his coronation in May:
Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?
Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?
Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?
Will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights, and privileges, as by law do or shall pertain to them or any of them?
At her coronation in 1953, Queen Elizabeth answered, “All this I promise to do.”
The former royal chaplain explained: “The problem that we’re having at the moment is that Christianity is under assault. Now the question is, what does a Christian king do about that? Does a Christian king save Christianity? Does he become defender of the faith, which is what his title really is? Or, as Charles has done with a sleight-of-hand, say, ‘No, I’m defender of all faiths, which means I don’t have to defend Christianity.'”
“If you don’t defend Christianity today, we’ll lose it from this country,” he postulated.
CBN News reports Mr. Ashenden left his position as the Queen’s chaplain in 2017 after being confronted by officials for speaking out against prayers sung from the Koran during an Epiphany service.
The reading was part of jan effort to improve interfaith relations in the city of Glasgow.
However, Mr. Ashenden called the reading “blasphemy” and a “serious offense” because it denied the deity of Jesus Christ.
“The problem with what happened in Glasgow was that, although it was presented as a way of building bridges and a way of educating people, it was done badly, in the wrong way, in the wrong place, in the wrong context,” he explained at the time.
In a recent op-ed for the Catholic Herald, the former Queen’s chaplain wrote that if King Charles does not stand up for the historic Christian faith “that conceived, defined and sustained the concept of monarchy, he may have sowed the seeds of the destruction of the House of Windsor.”
