20 years ago, and certainly 25, the English regarded the Union Flag as their national flag without any complication. It was not even a question.
Now, though, just as they have given up on a Unionist flag, so they seem to want to give up on a Unionist and monarchist anthem.
Do not believe for one second that the singing of Jerusalem, which it is bound to be and which it ought to be, would be confined to sporting fixtures against other parts of the United Kingdom. Has that proved to be the case with the waving of the revived St George's Flag?
It will be no small matter to move from an anthem that mentioned the monarchy, to one that did not.
Moreover, has the move from God Save the Queen to Flower of Scotland been unrelated to the loosening of a sense of British civic and political identity and allegiance among those who have made that move? The same will apply here.
For several centuries, until the final decade of the twentieth, St George's Flag was confined to ecclesiastical use.
That use was almost entirely within a body that has never, since the middle of the nineteenth century when anyone first checked, commanded anything more than 50 per cent allegiance in England, with other things always massively predominating across great swaths of the country.
But someone has to host national events, and the Church of England is really rather good at all of that.
After the last 36 hours, however, it is in precisely the category of those denominations, and there are hundreds in London alone, which are directly controlled from Africa, and especially from Nigeria, in order to preserve their orthodoxy from the corrupting wickedness of English culture.
That is what the Church of England has just become: directly controlled from Africa, and especially from Nigeria, in order to preserve its orthodoxy from the corrupting wickedness of English culture.
Rome is vastly less hands-on in relation to English Catholicism, and somehow there manage not to be same-sex marriages in English Catholic churches.
But the dear old C of E needs intimate babysitting from, in every sense, an awful lot further away than Rome.
But the dear old C of E needs intimate babysitting from, in every sense, an awful lot further away than Rome.
Yet, apart from the sports teams, no institution other than the Church of England covers the whole of England and nowhere else.
Think on.
I'm 31, so I remember the nineties and I definitely remember the St George's flag being pretty well-known and commonly seen.
ReplyDeleteIt was during that decade that it started to be used to sell overpriced beer to middle-class football supporters. They had to be told what it was.
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