I just watched the Royal Wedding live streamed from St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace in England. I thought I was in for just another remarkable exercise in Anglophile pomp and circumstance. Such was not the case.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle tied the knot it was surrounded by the traditions of the English Anglican Church, the chapel’s boys choir, an American Gospel choir, a Black American Anglican preacher, and blessings from the ecumenical community.
This was an expression, of course, of the royal couple’s identity itself – the British prince wedding an American, a woman born of a white father and African American mother.
I cannot adequately express the subtle and powerful shift this has engendered at the place of highest symbolic ritual – a royal wedding and marriage. This was instantaneously broadcasted to the entire world. And if there is a sign that unity may take form in ways we have not yet imagined or even allowed, this was it.
