Is This Why the King won't celebrate the Faith that he has Sworn to Defend with the Greeting 'Christ has Risen"?
Behind our constitutional crisis lies the responsibility to 'discern the spirits.'
Christ is Risen — A Constitutional Crisis
Easter 2026 and the clash of two revelations
“Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Allelujah.”
I once had a line manager who was the Vice Chancellor of the university I taught at; and as it happened, he was, by intellectual trade, an economist. When he came across a problem that he didn’t want to deal with, or he thought was nonsensical, he would dismiss it and say,
“No matter,- it’s just ‘theological’.”
Since I am not convinced that economists really know what they are talking about, and since economic reality and the theory they claim to practice are often at odds, I suspect they are poor predictors of reality. They don’t even seem to be able to agree with each other, so I wasn’t greatly offended.
“Theological” became his way of saying it didn’t matter. It was of such light theoretical importance he didn’t need to pay attention to it.
In fact, ‘theological’ describes the nature of God, and of all the reality that flows from who God is. So it matters greatly.
We have come to a moment of what appears to be a theological and therefore, it is no surprise that it is also a civilizational, and even constitutional, crisis.
It’s theological.
A Crisis No One Expected
Who would have guessed that Easter 2026 would bring us to—if not a constitutional crisis—then at least a moment of serious constitutional and cultural tension?
Nor would it be obvious that lying behind this tension is a verse from the Quran that has brought matters to a head.
However, if you ask people what Surah 4:157 says, most of them—if they’re not Islamic (and often even if they are ) will not have the faintest idea.
But this is what the surah says: describing Jesus ‘ crucifixion, …
“They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them.”
This is the foundational text in the Quran that denies the crucifixion, and so therefore, the resurrection, of Jesus.
Essentially, it follows that if you accept this, that the Gospels are not telling the truth about the death and resurrection of Jesus. In that scenario, he never rose from the dead because he never died. He never died because the Romans failed to execute him—either in a moment of uncharacteristic incompetence, or because, by some cosmic sleight of hand, somebody was crucified in his place. (Later Islamic theology takes a number of different views.)
But whoever it was, it wasn’t Jesus.
He didn’t die.
He didn’t rise again.
He is not God. We are not saved.
The Problem This Creates
The difficulty with this is that Jesus is therefore, by implication, proved to be a false prophet, at best, or a liar at worst.
Because Jesus foretold that he would be crucified and rise from the dead. Prophets have to tell the truth. That’s how you know that they are authentic prophets. So who was telling the truth? Jesus or Muhammed?
The Quran says Jesus was wrong.
When we say the Quran, of course, what we mean is Muhammad. And when we say Muhammad, what we mean is the angel Gabriel—or, to be clear, a spirit ‘Jibril’ who presented himself to Muhammad as the angel Gabriel.
So to be clear.
Muhammad was visited by an angel who identified himself as ‘Jibril’, Gabriel. He told Muhammad Jesus didn’t die on the cross, and that Christianity was, in effect, based upon, well, you might politely say a misunderstanding, but really a ‘deception’.
Muhammad received and proclaimed this revelation about 570 years after the resurrection, and about 770 miles away from Jerusalem, in Mecca. You might ask what did he know and how did he know it? And the answer is that it all came from this visiting spirit.
As a result, he was entirely dependent, for this revelation, upon the ‘angel’ that appeared to him.
It ought to come as no surprise that from time to time, Muhammed himself entertained doubts as to whether or not he could wholly depend on the authenticity of the angel. The history of the last one and a half thousand years has been shaped by this act of discernment, The stakes are high. Estimating total deaths caused by Islamic expansion and conflicts over 1,400 years is historically impossible, as there is insufficient reliable data. But, as an example, modern data suggests over 249,000 deaths from Islamist terrorist attacks between 1979 and 2024.
The historical death toll estimates for pre-modern conflicts range from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions.
The stakes are high in discerning the metaphysical origins of ‘the Religion of Peace.’
The King and the Question of Easter
Let’s now go to King Charles and the question of Easter.
Why did the King decline to give an Easter greeting to his people?
It is perfectly true that there is no established tradition of an Easter message from the monarch. Everyone knows the late Queen gave a Christian message, and the King gives a Christmas message. But, as yet, there is no precedent for an Easter one,
However, things evolve. We have also seen how the King uses his Christian message to reach out across all faiths. In other words, the Christmas message is not exclusive to Christians, he has diluted it, one might say, so that he uses it to include a great range of religions.
But when he reaches out to Islam, that he makes, exclusive - particular to Islam.
In other words, this “defender of faiths” treats all faiths as part of a kind of global spirituality—unless they are Muslims, in which case he offers something exclusive and specific.
He did this in 2025 when he wished Muslims in his kingdom Eid Mubarak, a happy end to Ramadan.
And he did it again in 2026, offering greetings at the beginning of Ramadan.
It is precisely these greetings to the Islamic community that raised expectations.
If the King is going to exercise a ministry of encouragement to different religious groups, then surely, as defender of the faiths, thought many Christians, he must treat them with even-handedness.
They were mistaken.
But it was this expectation of even-handedness, which the King himself sowed, that made Christians feel they might receive from him some form of Lenten—or more appropriately, Easter—greeting.
It didn’t happen.
Protocol or Choice?
Was this protocol—or choice?
It is easy to take refuge behind historic protocol and say, “Well, this has never been done before.”
But Charles has already altered protocol by providing greetings specifically to Muslims.
He could just as easily have reached out to Christians—especially given that Easter is the most important moment in the Christian year.
We can debate whether Easter is more important than Christmas. Both reveal something about who God is and how he acts.
But Easter offers something more.
It offers proof.
We cannot prove that Jesus was the eternal Logos, born of a virgin.
But Easter offers us the opportunity to test Jesus’s claims. Beyond the astonishing words, the unique teaching, the exorcisms, the healings, the raising of others from the dead, his own death was the supreme test. We have ‘proof’ that Jesus was who he said he was, because he overcame death and rose from the dead. And any other explanation falls short as being less convincing or more unsatisfactory to the enquiring open mind.
The Clash of Revelations
But here is the difficulty.
If you affirm that Jesus rose from the dead, you thereby repudiate Muhammad, Surah 4:157, and the ‘Jibril’, the spirit that spoke to him and dictated the Koran.
We are dealing here with nothing less than a direct clash of opposing revelations.
If Muhammad is a prophet, then either he was mistaken, misled, or, more bluntly, a false prophet.
The New Testament does not hesitate to speak clearly about such matters. The first letter of St John tells us:
“Test the spirits.”
Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
Christians are entitled to ask questions about the spirit that came to Muhammad and dictated the Quran.
That spirit did not confess that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh.
And so, from a Christian point of view, it did not come from God.
St Paul puts it even more strongly in Galatians:
“Even if an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel, let him be accursed.”
You cannot believe in both Muhammad and Jesus.
One of them is wrong.
We all have to choose.
A Theological Choice at the Heart of the State
In an unexpected way, Easter 2026 presented King Charles with a choice, a theological choice.
There are two revelations, and they are not compatible.
One says: Christ is risen.
If we say, “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed”, we reject the authority of the Quran.
If we affirm the Quran, we deny the resurrection.
There is no neutral ground. No compromise. No syncretism.
The Appearance of Preference
Some have quietly asked whether the King has privately converted to Islam. We cannot know that.
But we can say this:
By publicly affirming Islamic festivals while declining to affirm Easter, the King has created the impression of preference.
And so we come to what may be the. heart of the matter. Is this the explanation?
It is even possible he avoided saying “Christ is risen”
because he did not want to offend Islam.
But that raises the question:
Has he not, in effect, preferred Islam by refusing the Christian Easter greeting?
Because you cannot have both.
Two Visions of God
This is not just abstract theology.
It produces two entirely different civilisations.
Two different anthropologies. Two different moral visions.
At the deepest level, it is about the nature of God.
Allah—Muhammad’s God—is not the same as the God who revealed himself to Moses.
St John of Damascus was an outstanding theologian. He grew up under Islamic rule. He served as a financier in Damascus, before resigning and leaving for a Christian monastery near Jerusalem. He was writing in the 8th century under Islamic rule and recognised the opposing claims of each revelation = clearly. He treated Islam as a Christian heresy, a complete mangling and misunderstanding of the Gospel narrative.
At the heart of the difference he suggested lies this:
Islam believes God is ultimate power, and cannot suffer. cannot accept a God who
Christianity believes God is ultimate Love and insists that God redeems through suffering.
We are dealing with two fundamental realities:
Power and love - set against each other,
Power or Love
Gregory the Great, rather beautifully writes that God did not defeat evil by overwhelming it with force—but by something more subtle and more powerful.
Love enters into suffering and transforms it from within.
This is not weakness.
It is a higher form of power.
Thomas Aquinas develops this further.
Islam emphasises divine power—authority, and, where necessary, force.
Christianity spreads through witness, suffering, martyrdom, and love.
We must decide:
Are we more fully human, and closer to God, when we live by love, or by power?
Civilizational Consequences
This is not abstract.
It shapes societies.
Christianity permits force only in defence.
Islam, historically, condones expansion through force.
These differences produce entirely different cultures.
Entirely different expectations.
Entirely different visions of human life.
The Moment We Face
What we are witnessing is a civilizational and constitutional crossroads.
This is not primarily about immigration—though it touches it.
Not primarily about culture—though it includes it.
It is about something deeper:
Truth
Authority
The nature of God
The structure of reality
It is a choice between:
Power and love
Coercion and redemption
Command and gift
The King’s Responsibility
It is a sadness that King Charles appears insufficiently theologically informed to recognise what is at stake.
In attempting to practice multicultural hospitality, he has stepped into a theological contradiction.
He has affirmed one revelation while failing to affirm another.
And in doing so, he has created confusion about the very identity of the monarchy.
What Must Now Be Asked
Some are calling for abdication.
That may sound extreme, but the underlying concern is the question of whether he is fit to be a Christian monarch. Many now believe he is not.
If the monarch no longer clearly represents the faith that gave rise to the monarchy, something of great profundity and significance for us all has been weakened.
