THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
King Charles sent a personal video message for Eid — filmed inside a Royal palace — then stayed silent for Easter. As abdication calls grow louder, a monarchy that cannot defend its own faith has lost its reason to exist.
“He swore before God and this nation to be Defender of the Faith. That oath is not a formality. It is the very contract between Crown and country.”
Let us be completely clear about what happened this Easter. King Charles III — Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith, head of a Christian monarchy stretching back a thousand years — could not find five minutes to record an Easter message for his Christian subjects. He had the time, the cameras, and the palaces ready when it came to wishing Muslims a blessed Ramadan and a joyous Eid. But for the most important day in the Christian calendar? Silence. A social media post. A few words typed by someone in an office, unsigned, impersonal, and utterly inadequate.
This is not a small misstep. This is not an administrative oversight. This is a profound, damaging, and deeply insulting failure — one that strikes at the very heart of what the British monarchy is supposed to stand for.
A Video for Eid, a Tweet for Easter
Let the contrast sink in. For Ramadan, the King recorded a warm personal video, filmed inside a Royal palace, directed personally at Britain’s Muslim community. For Eid, another personal greeting. Then Lent began — the Christian season of reflection that runs in direct parallel to Ramadan — and the King said nothing. Easter arrived — the resurrection of Christ, the foundation of the Christian faith, the cornerstone of this nation’s entire spiritual identity — and the Palace’s response was a generic social media post that didn’t even make clear who had written it.
Royalists have bent over backwards trying to defend the King. We are told that an Easter message is not an annual royal tradition. We are told Queen Elizabeth rarely issued one. But Queen Elizabeth never sent personal video messages for Eid either. The rules of comparison have changed — because the King himself changed them. The moment he chose to record a personal filmed message for one faith, he created an obligation to do the same for all. Especially for the faith he is constitutionally sworn to defend.
A Nation Already on Edge
And this did not happen in a vacuum. Just weeks before Easter, Britain was convulsed by the controversy over mass Muslim prayers at Trafalgar Square — one of the most iconic Christian and national spaces in the country. Conservative MP Nick Timothy called it an act of domination. Reform’s Danny Kruger warned it was undermining Britain’s Christian heritage. The debate was raw, angry, and deeply felt by millions of people who believe they are watching their country’s identity being quietly dismantled.
Into that charged atmosphere stepped the King — not to reassure his Christian subjects, not to reaffirm the nation’s Christian foundations, but to send a personal Eid video. The timing was, to put it charitably, catastrophically misjudged. To put it bluntly: it was a slap in the face to millions of people who were already feeling marginalised, ignored, and abandoned by the very institutions meant to represent them.
Bishop Ceirion Dewar, one of the few Church of England voices willing to speak plainly, put it exactly right. At a pivotal moment when many across the United Kingdom feel their Christian identity is being stripped away, the silence of the Crown is not neutrality. It is absence. Deafening, inexcusable absence.
An Oath Is Not a Decoration
At his Coronation, King Charles swore a solemn oath before God, before the Church, and before the people of this nation. He swore to maintain the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law. He swore to defend the faith. These are not ceremonial words. They are not window dressing for a televised spectacle. They are a sacred constitutional contract — the fundamental bargain between the Crown and the country it serves.
That contract has been broken. Not by accident, not through ignorance, but through a series of deliberate choices that consistently place other faiths above the one the King is bound by oath to champion.
Former Queen’s chaplain Gavin Ashenden said it plainly: the King gives the impression he favours Islam. Former MEP Godfrey Bloom went further, quoting Oliver Cromwell directly at the King: “In the name of God, go.” These are not the words of fringe cranks. They are the words of people who have watched the slow erosion of Christian Britain with mounting horror, and who have finally had enough.
And Then There Is William
If Charles is the immediate crisis, William is the long-term catastrophe waiting to happen. The future King — the man who will one day take the same coronation oath, who will one day swear before God to be Defender of the Faith — has described his Christianity as a “quiet faith.” Royal biographers have been blunter: William is reportedly not comfortable in faith environments. He attends church at Christmas and Easter. That is broadly it.
The Queen’s former chaplain called William’s approach “insulting” to passionate Christians. Commentator Peter Hitchens was even more direct: if William cannot be bothered with the Church, he cannot be bothered with monarchy. Because the two are inseparable. Remove the Christian foundation from the British monarchy and you do not have a reformed, modern institution. You have a celebrity family living in palaces at public expense, with no spiritual justification for their existence whatsoever.
William has tried recently to signal his commitment to the Church, meeting the new Archbishop of Canterbury, describing himself as believing in the institution. But his own aides describe his commitment as “quieter than expected.” Church leaders who tried for years to get meetings with him were met with a wall of silence. The Church of England is, by his own aides’ admission, not somewhere he is instinctively comfortable.
The Abdication Calls Are Getting Louder — And They Are Justified
“The abdication calls are not fringe hysteria. They are the sound of a people who feel genuinely, profoundly betrayed.”
The Palace will dismiss the abdication calls as the noise of social media extremists. They are not. They are the sound of a people who feel genuinely, profoundly betrayed. Christians who look at their King and see a man who will film a personal video message for Eid but cannot be troubled to speak personally at Easter. Who look at their future King and see a man who finds their church uncomfortable. Who look at a Trafalgar Square filled with mass Islamic prayer and hear their own institutions say nothing in defence of the Christian tradition that built that square, that city, and that nation.
The monarchy has survived for a thousand years because it has been the living embodiment of this nation’s Christian soul. Every coronation, every service at Westminster Abbey, every prayer at St George’s Chapel — all of it rests on that foundation. The moment the monarchy treats Christianity as just another faith to be balanced against others in a multicultural spreadsheet, it has severed the one tie that justifies its existence.
Charles has not just hurt feelings this Easter. He has shaken the foundations of an institution that was already under enormous pressure. He has handed republicans their most powerful argument in a generation. And he has left millions of British Christians — the majority of his subjects — feeling not merely overlooked, but actively abandoned by their own King.
The Verdict
The Royal Family has scored a catastrophic own goal at the worst possible moment. A King who swore to be Defender of the Faith has chosen silence at Easter and a personal video at Eid. A future King who finds his own church uncomfortable. An institution that has lost its nerve, lost its compass, and — if it does not change course urgently — risks losing the one thing no palace can replace: the loyalty of the people. The abdication calls will grow louder. They will keep growing until this King, or the next, remembers what they are actually there for.
References
1.https://www.christiantoday.com/news/king-charles-faces-criticism-for-declining-to-issue-easter-message
2.https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/king-charles-sparks-backlash-uk-christians-delivering-easter-message-year
3.https://www.christianpost.com/news/king-charles-iii-stirs-outrage-for-neglecting-easter-message.html
4.https://www.newsweek.com/prince-william-church-england-abdicate-1861430
5.https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/prince-william-struggles-with-the-church-of-england-says-royal-insider
6.https://www.geo.tv/latest/656505-king-charles-says-eid-mubarak-to-muslims-in-delightful-message
7.https://www.theroyalobserver.com/p/the-truth-about-prince-williams-quiet-faith-and-why-he-will-never-adopt-trump-level-rhetoric
8.https://britbrief.co.uk/politics/westminster/shadow-justice-secretary-criticises-muslim-prayer-in-trafalgar-square.html
9.https://www.newsweek.com/prince-william-christianity-insulting-queen-chaplain-archbishop-canterbury-11718905
10.https://www.themonastery.org/blog/islamic-prayers-in-trafalgar-square-divide-britain
