LORD CAREY, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has surprised senior clerics by calling for a “multi-faith” coronation when the Prince of Wales succeeds to the throne.

Carey is to argue for a revision of the Christian oath taken by the monarch and for changes to the exclusively Anglican coronation service.

He makes his appeal in a television documentary to be broadcast on Five later this month. It puts him at odds with Rowan Williams, his successor, — and with most Anglican bishops.

In Carey’s broadcast, he will say: “When the time comes for the next coronation, there will have to be very significant changes. The Queen came to the throne at a time when there were no Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus . . . in the life of the country and now it’s a completely different world so the coronation oath will have to be looked at more critically.”

A number of Carey’s former bishops disagree. Last week, Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, maintained such a proposal was untenable. “You can’t defend every faith, because there are very serious differences among them,” he said.

The present Archbishop of Canterbury, who succeeded Carey in 2002, made it clear the following year that if a coronation happened during his tenure its character would remain unchanged. He said: “As long as the constitutional relationship between monarch and church is there, the coronation needs to be within a Christian framework.”

At her coronation in 1953, the Queen swore to uphold “the laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel, maintain the Protestant reformed religion established by law and maintain and reserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England”.

The debate over the wording of the coronation oath began in 1994 when Prince Charles expressed a wish to be seen as a defender “of faith” rather than of “the faith”.

While Charles clearly wishes to support other religions and has done so particularly in the case of Islam, he also takes seriously his future role as supreme governor of the Church of England and has never indicated that he would want to see the oath changed.

The majority position of the House of Bishops of the Church of England is that the next coronation ceremony should remain essentially Christian in content but attended by the leaders of Britain’s main non-Christian religions.

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