- Nov 26, 2019
- 15,469
- 8,142
- 50
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Generic Orthodox Christian
- Marital Status
- Celibate
There are other duties as well, but they have shifted a bit over time and I'm not sure exactly what they are now. I think (I may be mistaken) that technically royal assent must be given for the appointment of a bishop. It's generally a formality, but it's still a thing. (That is, in England. Peculiarly, in Scotland, where the Established church is Presbyterian, so is Her Majesty. And outside the UK and churches governed directly from the UK, she has no formal role at all).
Indeed so. In practice, the role of the Queen in appointing bishops has largely been taken over by HM Government insofar as the Queen acts on the advice of the Prime Minister. Interestingly, the Church of Scotland, despite nominally being a state church, enjoys much more autonomy compared to the C of E.
Now I was amused, although not surprised, to learn, that they were not only concurrently Anglican and Presbyterian, but also Lutheran, and Head of the Church of Hannover, prior to Queen Victoria, when Great Britain and later the United Kingdom was in a personal union with the Electorate, later the Kingdom, of Hannover (which of course Queen Victoria could not inherit due to Salic Law, the ancient German law prohibiting women from ascending to the throne of a large swathe of central European monarchies, and which is also responsible for the existence of Luxembourg, which was at one time under Salic Law, and thus became independent of the Netherlands with which it was in a personal union when Queen Wilhelmina ascended to the throne of the Netherlands).
By the way I was also interested to note that from the reign of King Henry VIII through that of Queen Mary I the British monarchs did use the title Supreme Head rather than Supreme Governor, which started under Queen Elizabeth, and indeed the title Supreme Governor strikes me as having a flavor of the Elizabethan Settlement.
Upvote
0