Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot
Readings – Joshua 1: 1–9; Romans 13: 1–10
“For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was the high-water mark of British imperialist triumphalism. Seventeen carriages, let by Victoria’s open-air affair, processed from Buckingham Palace through to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving. Eleven colonial prime ministers and the representatives of more than a dozen overseas monarchies were present, from as far away as Iran, Japan, and Thailand. But the spirit of the day was incarnated by the partying throngs on the streets, enjoying a celebratory special Bank Holiday at a time when workers’ rights were much fewer than they are today. Edward Elgar’s wonderful Cockaigne Overture is perhaps that day’s most enduring legacy, with its rambunctious major-key crescendos capturing the boisterous fun of Cockney celebrations.
One cultural figure we might have expected to join in the mood of artistic imperialist triumphalism was the chief propagandist of Empire, Rudyard Kipling. Yet he only wrote towards the end of the festivities, and even then solely in the form of a poetic commentary on them, sounding a warning note that was particularly surprising from a man only marginally religious.
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
[…]
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!”
All of our blessings as individuals, as nations, as the human race, flow only from God. All of us forget this from time to time. Certainly the policy-makers of Victorian imperialism at their worst often forgot in whose name they held that dominion over palm and pine, forgetting too often also the care for the outsider and the poor that He commanded His followers to bear always in mind.
We should not damn the Victorians entirely for their worst faults, which were real but not the whole story. From the factory acts to universal free schooling to the final suppression of the slave trade, they sincerely believed in bettering the lot of all. Yet it is hard to see the spirit of the carpenter’s son from Nazareth in the deliberate suffocation of indigenous leadership in the emerging Church of Black Africa, or the many famines of Victorian India, or the big famine in Victorian Ireland.
