The Prince to the Rescue

The Prince to the Rescue August 26, 2016

Chris Deliso reports in the current issue of The National Interest on the “global network of aristocrats, oligarchs, NGOs and leaders comprising a shadow network of influencers with access to senior religious and political leaders. This network function is becoming increasingly significant now that symbolic religious events are unfolding against the backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, European political division over migration and Islam, and seemingly never-ending spasms of murderous terrorism.”

The U.S. has no “world-renowned clerical figureheads. No one ever replaced Billy Graham.”

Surprisingly, Britain has a religious figurehead of stature. More surprisingly, it’s not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Deliso says it’s Prince Charles.

Charles’s position is partly a matter of family heritage. Son of an Anglican mother (of course!) and a father who converted from Orthodoxy to become Prince, “Charles knows his roots, and his well-publicized fascination with world religions and advocacy for interreligious harmony have advanced British interests. Particularly close to Greek Orthodoxy, often visiting the secluded Mount Athos monasteries (which Vladimir Putin also visited in May), Charles is among today’s major Christian influencers. ‘Charles is a deeply religious man,’ reported the Catholic Herald this past March. ‘When he ascends to the throne he will be arguably England’s most theologically literate monarch since the union.’”

Charles is especially concerned for Syria and Coptic Christians, and the Herald went so far as to say “if any single figure can help to save Middle Eastern Christianity, it is surely the Prince.”

Deliso argues that “Prince Charles has the cachet and active interest to engage religious communities, and thus influence religious trends and decisions. . . . Prince Charles’s [recent] Kosovo visit included another interfaith conference, again consonant with British policy: The organizer cited above admits that ‘generally, the [government] would see it as one way of many ways to counter violent extremism.’”

Being Prince of a former empire has its advantages.


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