A Guardian column looks at the coming constitutional crisis in England

What is often missed out of the puzzling phenomenon of this woman’s life is her religious faith. It is what makes her devotion to duty and self-sacrifice explicable. While the church over which she presides has faced dwindling congregations, her Christmas Day speeches and addresses to the Church of England Synod have often been remarkably religious. It’s hard to think of a recent predecessor – let alone a likely successor – of a comparable sincerity of belief, and it has been vital in sustaining the establishment of the Church of England. It would be quite possible to make the claim that Elizabeth Windsor has become one of the nation’s most articulate religious leaders – but that says as much about the timidity of the competition as it does about her.

Her belief explains much about how she has understood her position and her responsibilities, and about how she has developed a contemporary monarchy; it helps explain the ultimately ill-fated invention of the royal family just as the permissive 60s gathered pace – an alternative model of conjugal commitment and family responsibility – which foundered in the marital troubles of her offspring. It also helps explain why this is a woman who is extremely unlikely to abdicate, rather as Pope John Paul II soldiered on to the bitter end, driven by a sense that he had been chosen and consecrated by God to fulfil his earthly role.

If this sounds a bit far-fetched applied to the Queen, look at the order of service of the 1953 coronation: it makes explicit that she was chosen by God to be queen of England and anointed by the Holy Spirit with the wisdom and other blessings required for the job. If you believe that, retirement is not really an option.

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Eternal life, divine grace, sacrament, anointing: it’s hard to imagine, come the next coronation, a BBC commentator like Andrew Marr providing explanations that could satisfy secular Britain. Will a coronation be justified as a "heritage opportunity" marketed to tourists to enjoy some British pomp, or will this Charlemagne-derived event finally prompt the determination to update Britain’s quaint constitution? It’s hard to head off the latter with a discreet revamp of the ceremony ahead of time. That leaves a constitutional crisis waiting to happen: the relationship between sovereign, church and state, which the Queen has managed to largely steer clear of public debate, would come under the bewildered glare of the global media, and who knows how it would fall apart under that kind of scrutiny?

For you Anglophiles…and I know you’re out there…