In the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the international community mourns the loss of a beloved mother and family member, Sovereign of the member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, and an active woman of Christian faith whose steadfast devotion to duty arose from her deep Christian conviction and commitment.
Her role as Defender of the Faith, which, from the political union forged in the early 1700s, has included support for the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, involved a personal commitment to spread the gospel.
Well-versed in questions of Christian unity, when in 2001 my husband the Rev. Prof. James Haire AC, who was then president Uniting Church in Australia, met the Queen at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, she could talk intelligently and with interest about the relatively recently-established Uniting Church in 1977.
Her favourite text was the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in 2016 with the Bible Society she published a gift book entitled, The Servant Queen and the King She Serves, and through her Christmas messages broadcast throughout the world she gave explicit personal testimony of the role of faith in her life thus living out the Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28: ‘go and make disciples of all nations.’
History may record that, during a time of secularisation, of retreat of the voice of the Church from the public sphere, it was a woman and a lay person, who personally studied the Bible, attended church regularly, and sought to express faith in action in daily life, who served the world as one of the greatest evangelists of the C20th and C21st centuries.
In her first Christmas broadcast in 1952 she called for prayer for wisdom and strength, and her Christmas message for 2008 included the reflection: ‘I hope that, like me, you will be comforted by the example of Jesus of Nazareth who, often in circumstances of great adversity, managed to live an outgoing, unselfish and sacrificial life…He makes it clear that genuine human happiness and satisfaction lie more in giving than receiving; more in serving than in being served.’
REV. DR JULIA PITMAN
ST PAUL’S UNITING CHURCH
