The Enchanted Crown: Rediscovering God While Watching Netflix

by Seth Drayer

The Enchanted Crown

Rediscovering God While Watching Netflix

by Seth Drayer

Netflix’s hit series The Crown has reignited interest in the British monarchy, but an episode of the latest season points to a higher throne.[1] Through the eyes of Prince Philip, husband of Elizabeth II, viewers observe an intimate arc of spiritual crisis and renewal, presenting both a powerful illustration of philosopher Paul Gould’s cultural apologetic and a high-profile launchpad for worldview dialogue.[2]

Philip’s role as a stand-in for modern man is evident in an early scene of “Moondust” when he questions the utility of attending church. While the priest blusters through an uninspired message, Philip quips, “It’s not a sermon. It’s a general anesthetic.” Philip wants his life to matter, and religion is a hindrance to this pursuit which must be shirked off.

Seeking meaning elsewhere, Philip exchanges the dusty savior of historical Christianity for a gleaming new metal one. The year is 1969, and Philip, along with the rest of the world, watches gods among men ascend to the heavens to walk the surface of the moon. Philip is transfixed, convinced that the achievement of man and his shiny new toys provide the answer to his longing for meaning.

Thus far, Philip and The Crown tread ground familiar to modern sensibilities—God is dead or irrelevant, and man must make his own meaning. But then Netflix allows the series to explore taboo terrain, revealing the disenchantment of a world stripped of God.

In Cultural Apologetics, Gould distinguishes our world from that of the ancients, in which gods and goddesses, monsters and spirits were presumed to dwell in abundance.[3] Today we not only reject such beings but, like Philip, we have swapped traditional religious beliefs for a thoroughgoing scientific naturalism leaving no room for anything beyond the natural order.

But while this may allow temporary euphoria—such as Philip feels watching astronauts stroll the moon—there is an unwelcome edge to this brave new sanitized world. Gould writes, “As the world was emptied of the divine, space and time were drained of significance.”[4] A world without God is a world without meaning. Humans become aimless biological machines. The moon becomes a meaningless mound of dust.

Philip discovers this at what should have been the climax of his newfound humanism. Granted a private audience with the astronauts soon after their descent back to the commoners on earth, Philip prepares big questions of perspective. But he is distressed to find these men ravaged by the common cold and incapable of giving him enlightened answers. “I expected them to be giants, gods,” Philip reflects. “In reality, they are just three little men.”

Little men cannot shoulder a burden intended for a big God, and Philip realizes his mistake in confession to a cadre of clergy near the end of the episode. After admitting he has lost his faith, Philip declares,

And without it, what is there? The loneliness and emptiness and anticlimax of going all that way to the moon to find nothing but haunting desolation, ghostly silence, gloom. That is what faithlessness is. As opposed to finding wonder, ecstasy, the miracle of divine creation, God’s design and purpose.

Philip presents a sharp contrast of worldviews. Two people may behold the same moon, but while a believer finds the wonder of God’s creative power, the unbeliever observes meaningless dust. This is the great difference between an enchanted and disenchanted worldview.

But Philip’s journey does not end with disenchantment, and herein lies the apologetic power of this episode. Still longing for meaning, Philip says, “The solution to our problems is not in the ingenuity of the rocket, or the science, or the technology, or even the bravery.” He then gestures to his head and heart, concluding: “No, the answer is in here, or here, or wherever it is that faith resides.”

Philip may be early in the journey, but he has set a course for re-enchantment—wherein his yearning for purpose is not thwarted by, but finds ultimate satisfaction in, God. While he may not conclude the episode with an overt confession of Christ, his spiritual arc remains distinctly out of step with modern man’s interminable pursuit of self-actualization.

This episode of The Crown, therefore, is a fruitful launchpad for worldview discussion. It points beyond our empty world, beyond us. Indeed, this episode may allow us to point viewers beyond the Queen to the King of Kings.

— Seth Drayer is Vice President of Created Equal, an applied pro-life apologetics organization, and a student in Biola University’s Christian apologetics MA program. 

Notes

[1]The Crown, season 3, episode 7, “Moondust,” released November 17, 2019, on Netflix.

[2] Paul M. Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019).

[3] Paul M. Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), 46.

[4] Ibid., 47.