A good article by Rev. Julian Mann below. We will probably write Her Majesty on the same issues.
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15737
HER MAJESTY MUST SPEAK HER CHRISTIAN MIND
By Julian Mann
Special to Virtueonlinewww.virtueonline.org
March 24, 2012
As Defender of the Faith and a communicant member of the Church of England, Her Majesty the Queen has a spiritual and moral duty to speak her Christian mind on two pressing matters.
First, she must speak up for the supremacy and uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate God the Son, in the teeth of the multi-faith agenda. The Faith Her Majesty promised to defend at her Coronation is not faith in a general sense, but the biblical faith expressed within our national life in the historic formularies of the Church of England.
Article XVIII of our XXXIX - Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ - is very clear in relation to philosophical pluralism. Conscious faith in the divine Jesus Christ is required for salvation in the eternal Kingdom of the one true God. Islam for example mentions the name of Jesus, but in the Koran he is not the saving Name. The Faith Her Majesty promised to defend is unequivocal that 'holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved'.
Fidelity to the British Monarch's Coronation oath to defend the Faith, not religious faith in general, therefore requires that she denounce any non-Christian religious artefacts she may encounter in the course of her various visitations as idolatrous objects.
Secondly, Her Majesty must speak up for the God-created institution of heterosexual marriage against politically correct attempts to redefine it. The Book of Common Prayer in its Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, the rite according to which the Queen herself was married, declares that the 'honourable estate' of man-woman marriage signifies the 'mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church'.
The Faith the Queen promised to defend thus establishes a nexus between the temporal ordinance of heterosexual marriage and the eternal and immutable reality of the New Creation that the Lord God Almighty has decreed in and through his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. It is the redeemed Church of Jesus Christ who, according to the New Testament, will people the new heaven and the new earth that the Lord will establish upon his triumphant return.
This transcendent, eschatological decree emphatically rules out any attempt based in post-modern, deconstructionist philosophy to change the intrinsic heterosexual nature of marriage.
The vows the Queen made at her own marriage according to the Book of Common Prayer, rooted in her created humanity, combined with her Coronation oath, rooted in her God-ordained vocation, are the fundamental reason why she should in Christian conscience withhold the Royal Assent once, as is inevitable given the current ideological composition of the House of Commons, a bill to redefine marriage is passed with a substantial majority.
En passant, a courteous resignation call on the current Speaker of the House of Commons, highly able and personable though he is, would not be theologically inappropriate.
Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire.
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15737
HER MAJESTY MUST SPEAK HER CHRISTIAN MIND
By Julian Mann
Special to Virtueonlinewww.virtueonline.org
March 24, 2012
As Defender of the Faith and a communicant member of the Church of England, Her Majesty the Queen has a spiritual and moral duty to speak her Christian mind on two pressing matters. First, she must speak up for the supremacy and uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate God the Son, in the teeth of the multi-faith agenda. The Faith Her Majesty promised to defend at her Coronation is not faith in a general sense, but the biblical faith expressed within our national life in the historic formularies of the Church of England.
Article XVIII of our XXXIX - Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ - is very clear in relation to philosophical pluralism. Conscious faith in the divine Jesus Christ is required for salvation in the eternal Kingdom of the one true God. Islam for example mentions the name of Jesus, but in the Koran he is not the saving Name. The Faith Her Majesty promised to defend is unequivocal that 'holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved'.
Fidelity to the British Monarch's Coronation oath to defend the Faith, not religious faith in general, therefore requires that she denounce any non-Christian religious artefacts she may encounter in the course of her various visitations as idolatrous objects.
Secondly, Her Majesty must speak up for the God-created institution of heterosexual marriage against politically correct attempts to redefine it. The Book of Common Prayer in its Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, the rite according to which the Queen herself was married, declares that the 'honourable estate' of man-woman marriage signifies the 'mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church'.
The Faith the Queen promised to defend thus establishes a nexus between the temporal ordinance of heterosexual marriage and the eternal and immutable reality of the New Creation that the Lord God Almighty has decreed in and through his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. It is the redeemed Church of Jesus Christ who, according to the New Testament, will people the new heaven and the new earth that the Lord will establish upon his triumphant return.
This transcendent, eschatological decree emphatically rules out any attempt based in post-modern, deconstructionist philosophy to change the intrinsic heterosexual nature of marriage.
The vows the Queen made at her own marriage according to the Book of Common Prayer, rooted in her created humanity, combined with her Coronation oath, rooted in her God-ordained vocation, are the fundamental reason why she should in Christian conscience withhold the Royal Assent once, as is inevitable given the current ideological composition of the House of Commons, a bill to redefine marriage is passed with a substantial majority.
En passant, a courteous resignation call on the current Speaker of the House of Commons, highly able and personable though he is, would not be theologically inappropriate.
Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire.
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