Maybe we need a monarch, a Constitutional Monarch, with no political authority or power but who reflects the nation’s highest ideals and values and reminds the people of their better selves, I.e., a monarch like Great Britain’s.

That thought kept occurring to me as I sat in front of the television watching Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and attending ceremonies. The British, of course, are experts at ceremony, tradition and ritual. I loved all of it: William and Harry walking in solidarity with each other; nine-year-old Prince George and little sister Princess Charlotte, both impeccably dressed, sitting and standing through the long day’s activities with no melt-downs or impatient fidgeting; the military bands; the dignified walk behind the Queen’s hearse as it made its way from Westminster Abbey to the Wellington Arch. The funeral service itself, from the Secretary General of the Commonwealth and the new Prime Minister, both women, doing the readings, to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s succinct and powerful homily, to the beauty of the music and the incomparable majesty of Westminster Abbey – it was so rich I watched it two more times. It all appealed to the secret Anglophile I am which I inherited from my mother who loved all things British and kept pictures of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth displayed prominently in our Pennsylvania home. She admired them for their brave devotion during WWII and the Blitz, and their refusal to leave Buckingham Palace for a safer location. She told me about their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret and how they were sent to the relative safety of Windsor and how Elizabeth served in the army as a truck driver. Years later I modified my admiration when I learned about the fraught relationship between England and Scotland from where my Buchanan ancestors came to America.

Elizabeth II’s seventy year reign, her promise as a twenty-one year old to devote her life to serving her people, serving as monarch as the British Empire evolved into the Commonwealth made her death at ninety-six even more poignant.

Days before the funeral I watched and was deeply moved by the Memorial Service for the Queen at St. Giles Cathedral, the High Kirk of Edinburgh and the birthplace of Presbyterianism, where John Knox was the minister and where former colleague and dear friend, Calum MacLeod, is the minister. Calum presided at a classic Reformed Presbyterian liturgy with dignity and authenticity.

I found myself feeling pride, even in the middle of a memorial service, of Calum and our Presbyterianism.

It was to the crowds of British people that my attention continued to return: the Scottish farmers lined up on their tractors to watch the Queen’s hearse on the way from Balmoral Castle, the Queen’s favorite retreat in rural Scotland, on the way to Holyrood House, Edinburgh, her official residence in Scotland and to which Calum and wife Missy were invited to annual garden parties, on to St. Giles; the hundreds of thousands in London who stood in a five-mile-long line for up to twenty-four hours, to walk past the Queen’s coffin lying in state in Westminster Hall; crowds ten to fifteen deep waiting to view the hearse carrying her coffin from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle for another Memorial Service, committal and final internment.

It was the quiet dignity, the sense of national unity throughout that so impressed me and I simply could not help comparing it to the fractious, noisy, suspicious and mean spirited mood in the body politic at the moment in my own nation. There are 195 Republican election deniers running for office in the upcoming midterm election. In recent rallies Donald Trump is braying even more loudly that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though there is no evidence of significant election fraud. A stunning percentage of Republican voters believe him. At recent rallies in Ohio and Pennsylvania Trump went even further, coming close to repeating QAnon lies about a cabal of deep state pedophiles as music associated with QAnon played over the crowd, many with raised right arms and index fingers, the QAnon salute, so similar to the classic Nazi salute. It was chilling to see.

I have no romanticized illusions about Great Britain and the British people. I know that 
Parliament can be every bit as messy as Congress. But I couldn’t help but wonder if things would be a little bit better here if we had a Constitutional Monarch.

God save the king.