For Accession Day: We praise thee, O God

Perhaps the most striking part of the 'Forms of Prayers with Thanksgiving to Almighty God' appointed for Accession Day, 6th February, is the Te Deum which opens the service which "may also be used on the same day at any convenient time".  This ancient, solemn Christian hymn of thanksgiving, centred around the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, is used to give thanks on the anniversary of the monarch's accession to the throne.  Contrary to what some might suggest, this is an appropriate use of the Te Deum, a reminder that the doctrines which it celebrates - of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation - have significance and meaning beyond a narrowly ecclesial frame of reference.

The first section of the Te Deum is a celebration of the Holy Trinity as Creator: "all the earth doth worship thee ... Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty: of thy glory".  Common life in the polity is part of this created order.  Hooker reminds us that "the cause of men's uniting themselves at the first into politique societies" was "a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship". The ordering of the polity, therefore, is a means of ensuring a flourishing of the created order:

law of a common weal, the very soul of a politique society, the parts whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on work in such actions as the common good requireth (LEP I.10.1).

As such, thanksgiving for the polity is meet and right, part of what it is to "bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life".  Much flows from such thanksgiving.  Life in the polity is a gift, for our good, and is to be reverenced as such.  Words, actions, and ideologies which tear at this common life are a refusal to receive the gift with thanksgiving: as the 'Prayer for Unity' in the Accession Service states, "Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions". Accounts of the polity which promote narratives of supposed racial genius or national exceptionalism, displace gratitude and are therefore forms of idolatry.  Cynicism about life in the polity can be a turning away from the One who bestows "every good gift".  

We might also note that, with moderation and sobriety, we give thanks for this polity, rather than being deluded into seeking the vain, imaginary orders of Integralists or ideologues.  As C.S. Lewis said in his description of the caution and moderation defended by Hooker's Laws:

He also provided a model for all who in any age have to answer similar ready-made recipes for setting the world right in five weeks. (Travers is dead: the type is perennial.)

And so to give thanks for this polity is to give thanks for this liberal constitutional order and its recognition of the need to heed the other, to forsake the desire to dominate, to exercise moderation, and for checks on power because of human fallenness.

When the second part of the Te Deum turns to the Incarnation, we see the nature and vocation of the polity manifested.  Beholding "the King of Glory", the polity is revealed as 'secular', as defined by O'Donovan:

The passage age of the principalities and powers has overlapped with with coming age of God's Kingdom ... The term 'secular' is defined by this mise en scène. Secular institutions have a role confined to this passing age (saeculum).  

Thus the polity is seen to be limited in its claims and authority.  As O'Donovan continues to say:

Rulers, overcome by Christ's victory, exist provisionally and on sufferance for specific purposes.  In the church they have to confront a society which witnesses to the Kingdom under which they stand and before which they must disappear.  

What is more, the responsibilities of the polity are also made manifest in the Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Lord.  In Dominion, Tom Holland has superbly illustrated the radical implications of the Cross for the polity:

That the Son of God, born of a woman, and sentenced to the death of a slave, had perished unrecognised by his judges, was a reflection fit to give pause to even the haughtiest monarch ... This ... could not help but lodge ... a visceral and momentous suspicion: that God was closer to the weak than the mighty, to the poor than to the rich.  Any beggar, any criminal, might be Christ.

When we give thanks for life in the polity by celebrating the Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Lord - "Thou sittest at the right hand of God: in the glory of the Father" - the polity is recalled to its duties and obligations to uphold the human dignity manifested in Christ.  The One now "at the right hand of God", is the Incarnate Word who "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor", who stooped as a slave to wash the feet of others. In Him we see behold the call to a just ordering of common life in the polity, embracing the poor, the excluded, the marginalised.

That the Te Deum concludes with petitions is particularly appropriate.  We have given thanks for the gift of common life in the polity.  We have recalled that this common life is to be shaped by the grace and charity made manifest in Jesus Christ.  In a recognition that the polity should be formed by a politics of human frailty, we pray in the final section of the Te Deum to the God who is wisdom, love, righteousness, grace: "save ... bless ... govern ... keep us ... mercy".  Such petitions can be seen, to use the words of Christopher Insole, as "respect for frailty and an acknowledgement of our ... limitations".  This, he says, points to how the liberal constitutional tradition is informed by "a theological tradition of reckoning with our status as creatures".

The use of the Te Deum on Accession Day is profoundly appropriate, offering a rich alternative to both Integralist fantasy and a bland secularism, showing how a liberal constitutional order can be a cause for gratitude, the manner in which that order is to be oriented towards justice, and how it embodies a politics of human frailty which accords with deeply Pauline and Augustinian insights.