Liturgical reflections on the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II: mass participation and mass detachment

ABSTRACT The funeral of the late Queen raises questions for liturgists and for the associated disciplines of ethnography and ritual studies. It followed a rite little used for Christian funerals, framed in language now deemed archaic and unintelligible. Yet promoters of modern language liturgy who might have been expected to be critical remained silent. For a wider public, the language choice at the funeral was consistent with an image of a figure who embodied tradition. This article considers the funeral liturgy in three movements – outdoor, transitional, and indoor. It concludes that this was a funeral in keeping with the liturgical formation of the deceased and her sense of her symbolic role in the Church of England. But it also asks how the contemporary language rites of the Church of England could be shown to be capable of supporting the kind of pageantry and ceremonial expected of royal occasions.