The ‘special relationships’ built on pretense

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 28, 2026

As I write, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England is addressing a joint session of the US Congress. But don’t expect any uproar about unconstitutional efforts to establish a state religion.

King Charles has not come to our shores to establish a religion. Any questions about his authority to establish anything in these former colonies was settled 250 years ago, and he has shown no interest in relitigating the matter. Instead he has come to remind our legislators of the “special relationship” that exists between the US and the UK.

What is the nature of that special relationship? Don’t ask me. My own ancestry is Irish, and although I have immense respect for our heritage of Anglo-American law, I have never had trouble distinguishing between that heritage, as we enjoy it today, and the political realities of Anglo-American political ties today.

George Bernard Shaw famously said that “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” We use the same words, but don’t always mean the same things, and the misunderstandings can cause new divisions. Maybe that is the real nature of the “special relationship”—the capacity for annoying each other by saying things that look so harmless on paper.

For a few years, in my work at a DC think-tank, I regularly hosted lectures by visiting British politicians, who would suggest how the US could improve its constitution. It evidently did not trouble these orators that the UK does not have a written constitution, and perhaps before suggesting amendments to our document, they might draft one of their own. You see, the word “constitution” itself means different things on different sides of the Atlantic.

But in the years since Bernard Shaw delivered that perceptive mot (I import a French word to avoid fresh misunderstandings), another important development has changed the fundamental nature of political dialogue between the US and the UK. A century ago, England was unquestionably a major world power—prior to World War I, probably the major world power. That is no longer the case. When Winston Churchill addressed the US Congress, he spoke as the most consequential politician of the 20th-century world. Today King Charles is—what?—the figurehead leader of a country in decline, a country that cannot and will not defend its own proud traditions.

Yet the British have a wonderful capacity for keeping up appearances: for maintaining stiff upper lips and pretending that they still are what they once were. No one (at least no one who is taken seriously) denies that King Charles is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Yet no one—least of all Charles himself, who instructs us to learn from Islam—expects that title to have any practical bearing on his actions and utterances. So again, I anticipate no disputes about church-state matters in the wake of his appearance on Capitol Hill.

That appearance comes, of course, just a few days after the newly installed Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, was received with honors at the Vatican, where she warmly greeted by Pope Leo and, separately, gave her blessing to the faithful at a service in St. Peter’s basilica. Anglican observers saw the friendly visit—which was thoroughly covered by the world’s news media—as a reaffirmation of the special relationship between Canterbury and Rome. Once again I beg to differ.

In the interests of ecumenical progress, the Vatican frequently welcomes the leaders of other Christian and even non-Christian ecclesiastical bodies. These visiting clerics are treated with respect, as they should be. But the niceties of ecumenical protocol can camouflage realities, in the same way that the shared English language can camouflage Anglo-American differences.

The Vatican’s guests should be treated with courtesy, certainly. But they should not be treated as something that they are not. Sarah Mullally is not an archbishop. This is not because she is female; her predecessor was not an archbishop either. But the presence of a woman atop the Anglican hierarchy underlines the vast difference that has opened between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. Why pretend otherwise? Cui bono?

For that matter, the Church of England is not really the church of England. Whether the UK remains a Christian nation is debatable. But insofar as it is Christian, it is not primarily Anglican. On the day that the new Archbishop of Canterbury was installed—with great splendor, bespeaking the heritage of long ago—there were more Roman Catholics at worship in parishes in England than Anglicans.

The Church of England claims to be an international body. But the liveliest parts of that body are thoroughly alienated from the arthritic UK branch, and remain affiliated with Canterbury only by mutual forbearance: an agreement to disagree. Here too is a “special relationship” based on pretense.

Ecumenical friendship, seen as a road to the restoration of Christian unity, is more than a duty; it is our obligation. But true friends do not encourage their friends to live out fantasies. The Church of England today is a sclerotic institution, barely held together by fond memories of past glory. Those memories cannot be recaptured, and the effort to retain them—in spite of dreary everyday realities—is ever more exhausting. We Catholics should not be rude to our Anglican friends, but we should not indulge their fantasies.