Broadcasting Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. BBC Archive.
Broadcasting Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. BBC Archive.
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Leap of faith
The first televised service from the Abbey was Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. Since then, and particularly during COVID, digital worship has accelerated. Tim Wyatt asks: is this step into a ‘brave new world’ a positive one?
5 minute read
To get to what Abbey staff are beginning to call the ‘Starship Enterprise’, first you must locate a truly ancient set of keys. Then, dodging tourists, you slip through a side entrance and find the door to a spiral staircase. A minute later, out of breath, you arrive in the triforium, high above the echoing sounds of the visitors clattering about on the floor below. No Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries in this section, just unadorned 13th-century wooden rafters and dust.
Our path leads past piles of storage boxes, including the annual Christmas crib scene. I spot one marked ‘Sheep – horned’ next to another labelled ‘Sheep – eating’. And then, perched high in the rafters, is a more modern addition. Blinking green, yellow and red lights wink out of the darkness of a cabin. Banks of computer servers hum quietly, connected by neatly coiled cables to an entire wall of monitors. There are joysticks, mixing desks, keyboards and more. The entire panoply of a modern TV editing suite, directly controlling the 10 ultra-high-definition cameras installed discreetly throughout the Abbey, providing a livestream straight to YouTube.
Early breakthroughs
For all that this represents a leap into the future, broadcasting from the Abbey has a long history. Over a century ago, a new way to record sound electronically was pioneered to capture some of the hymns sung at the service to inter the Unknown Warrior in 1920. Six years later, the nascent BBC broadcast its first choral evensong from the Abbey, beginning a weekly tradition that has continued almost uninterrupted to this day. Later that year, an Abbey choir was recorded commercially for the first time. Newspaper ads from the era describe the ‘remarkable’ illusion the gramophone records delivered of ‘being actually present in the Abbey; heightened by the presence of the slight echo produced by the voices in the vast space of this famous building’. Yours for just four shillings and sixpence.
But it was the coronation in 1953 which marked the biggest milestone, for it was the first ever televised service from Westminster Abbey. An internal BBC book documenting the years of labour which went into this notes that at the outset there was still nervousness about bringing in the cameras: ‘Might there even be something unseemly in the chance that a viewer could watch this solemn and significant service with a cup of tea at his elbow?’
These doubts were overcome, partly thanks to the trenchant backing from the Archbishop of Canterbury for the innovation of TV being in the Abbey, and the coronation broadcast was a stunning success.
The edit suite directly controls 10 ultra-high-definition cameras installed in the Abbey. Photography by Simon Dutson.
The edit suite directly controls 10 ultra-high-definition cameras installed in the Abbey. Photography by Simon Dutson.
The BBC has started making use of some of the Abbey’s new cameras when broadcasting special services. Since Easter 2025, one service a week has been livestreamed on YouTube. This increased to two services from September 2025. Adrian Harris, Head of Communications and Digital, said he expects the broadcasts will make the Abbey’s rich tradition of worship and liturgy available to those who’ve never been to church before, as well as to Christians from around the world. Teams across the Abbey worked with Whitwam – audio video experts – to bring the project to life.
While new for the Abbey (which spent the COVID lockdowns producing an audio-only podcast), the wider church has been grappling with livestreaming since the pandemic. Dr Pete Phillips, Head of Digital Theology for Premier Digital, said lockdown had prompted an enormous surge of experimentation with online worship.
Research showed that, while as many as 71 per cent of churches had some sort of digital expression at the height of COVID, today that number is about 31 per cent.
Although many churches abandoned their livestreams once congregations were permitted back in the building, the COVID shock accelerated a wave of innovation, and many never turned off their cameras. Charlie Allen, Canon Chancellor at Durham Cathedral, has overseen a new online congregation which began gathering in 2020 and never stopped. Today, more than 1,000 people log in from all over the world to broadcasts of morning and evening prayer, and over 500 are also part of the cathedral’s internet-based prayer community.
‘We had an amazing moment not that long ago when a lady who was housebound and lived in a former mining village not too far from Durham, was in a discussion group with an archdeacon from London, a banker from Abu Dhabi and a farmer from Sweden, all talking about St Hild of Whitby’, she recalled with a laugh. ‘This is just surreal, but in a fabulous way’.
Global reach
Just across Parliament Square from the Abbey, Methodist Central Hall (MCH) also maintained its global online congregation. Indeed, when its in-person 11:00am service resumed as the pandemic receded, the church carried on with a separate 9:30am online-only service which today still gets between 600 and 800 viewers every week. Dan Forshaw, Digital Outreach Co-ordinator at MCH, said the online service was a ‘lifeline’, particularly for those who were housebound.
But amidst this brave new world, questions abound. Are online congregants truly participating in worship? Does broadcasting a service change how those leading it approach their worship, knowing they are now speaking not just to a few hundred visible in the pews, but potentially thousands in dozens of time zones across the world? And is Christian worship intrinsically embodied anyway, requiring physical presence and the bread and wine of the Eucharist?
Phillips is dismissive of the naysayers, insisting there are plenty of ways to include online worshippers in any service (when he leads at his Methodist church, he often invites those watching online to text him with their prayer requests) and hopes slower-moving church authorities will even open up communion at home soon. Could not those joining a service online be part of that ‘cloud of witnesses’ we read of in Hebrews, he wonders; reminding those physically present that their worship is one small part of the universal church, stretching across time and space?
Some have also worried that the emergence of livestreamed church services could foster a consumerist, arms-length approach to worship. Harris said the Abbey had largely refrained from streaming services previously because they needed to ensure the quality remained high (a partnership has been struck with the Royal College of Music, who are overseeing the production using the new equipment).
At Durham Cathedral, an organic, informal approach to broadcasting has proved successful. Allen said their lowest figures always came on a Sunday, which she took great pride in as it suggested the cathedral’s online congregation were primarily coming for morning prayer or compline, and remained plugged into ordinary Sunday worship in their parishes.
Back in the Starship Enterprise, Harris was enthusing about the opportunities from opening up the joys of evensong to a global audience via YouTube. And yet, despite the breadth of technology and all it makes possible, his team was determined to hold onto the ‘timelessness and consistency of what has been happening for centuries here’. He added: ‘We’re not producing for broadcast; we are producing worship for the glory of God.’
Tim Wyatt is a freelance religion journalist specialising in church news. He also writes the weekly newsletter The Critical Friend on Substack.
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It’s very hard not to be enthusiastic working at the Abbey. If this place doesn’t make you smile I don’t know what will.
