If you want Christian values in your nation, you must love Christ more than your nation. However, this is not the same thing as loving Christ instead of your nation. If you love your nation more than Christ, your nation will not prosper. However, if you love Christ more than your nation, you will truly be loving your nation and you will become good news to it and for it.

Note: The state of Britain as a nation seems bleak today. But its people have not yet forgotten all that Christ has done in this land in times past. His Name still means something here, even when used as a swear word. Even this tells us something. Christendom continues to haunt the nightmares of secularism and we may dare to hope in the return of Christ’s forgotten kingdom to this green and pleasant land.

In the last post I talked about the idea of Christian nations according to the Bible and the reality of whether Britain can still be classed as one of them in light of the widespread secularism that still pervades this quaint little island that once ruled a quarter of planet earth at a time when a majority of its people went to church every week.

Cultural Crisis and Church-Going

I noted that simply “going to church” out of some vague interest in sacred things would not do any long-lasting good unless people were prepared to commit to Christ. However, this is not to say that we should not be calling people back to church to make use of such a moment. We have to start somewhere. And one thing the average non-Christian still associates with Christianity is indeed, “church”, however unfortunately dull their experience of the church may have been.

British people tend to return to churches in times of personal or national crisis. The state of Britain today cannot really be compared to that of the Second World War or the aftermath of some great natural disaster, but for many there has been a dawning realisation—precipitated by the cultural Marxist cocktail of Covid and high Woke at the start of this decade—that they are living in the rubble of what may be called a teleological disaster. That is, a crisis of meaning and purpose, where neither the beginning nor the end is in sight, a crisis of cultural rootlessness awakening a deep yearning for stability which the technological consumer treats of Seculardom cannot deliver.

Where, in previous decades, secularised Britons have rushed away from the mores of Christianity to incorporate eastern religious practices into their lives (reiki, yoga, etc.) these have ultimately been found wanting. Many have now found within themselves a strange reawakening to a love of their nation, one which they never knew was there until they started to see all they loved about their national heritage being eroded away before their eyes by a socio-political bureau that does not even seem to know that it does not have the nation’s best interests at heart.

They are fed up of being told they must feel guilty even of the great achievements of their forebears. They are fed up of being called evil racists because they care about the peculiarity of their people and don’t want to see their way of life eviscerated by a globalist multiculturalism hellbent on eliminating all concept of borders and distinctions between different cultures and nations altogether.

The Return of Public Christianity

This reawakening is often manifested in the resurgence of the rhetoric of “Britain is a Christian country; let’s keep it that way!” It’s good, for example, even to see a public figure like Tommy Robinson starting to talk this way:

“I’m a Christian. I used to say that I didn’t believe…But as I’ve seen the attacks on Christianity, and I’ve also seen the decay in British society—the fall of Britain has come from the fall of belief…What built Great Britain? Christianity. What built everything about our nation that everyone wants to come to it… was built on Christianity.”

We really shouldn’t take things like this for granted. For most of my life, this is not something public figures have been comfortable speaking about, at least not with any significant meaning beyond vague political platitudes. Christianity was politically “privatised”, it was something to be kept hidden from the public square. “We don’t do God” was the mantra not just of New Labour, but of modern Britain. Active Christianity was an optional lifestyle choice, like a weekend hobby.

The “vibe shift” in public affirmations of Christianity in relation to the nations is a welcome one. Whether people such as Tommy Robinson or MP Rupert Lowe truly know what it means to be Christian, of course, is not always obvious. They may well do, it’s just difficult to know until we see it tested beyond the rhetoric. But the rhetoric still matters. As with public intellectuals like Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson, prominent political figures now clearly recognise the unimaginability of western nations without Christianity, and this increasingly feels “normal” in ways it hasn’t for some time. Broadly speaking, this is a good thing.

Yes, it needs to become more than mere abstract values, of course. It must be imbued with real faith in the real Christ, including a commitment to the living and active Word of God (cf. Heb. 4:12). Adhering to Scriptural truth in such confused times as ours will inevitably be costly in ways few can realise in the abstract until a situation arises where their own preferences and conveniences are specifically challenged by it.

The Christianness of Christian Britain

As I said in the previous post, unless there is a commitment to the Christianness of Christian Britain, any efforts to rebuild the concept of Christian Britain will be mythological and fruitless. As the psalmist once said:

“Unless the LORD builds the house, the labourers labour in vain; unless the LORD builds the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1)

There are many “watchmen” in Britain today who may not realise they will continue to perpetuate the very problem they think they’re addressing unless they get serious about what it really means to make Britain Christian again.

I had a somewhat viral post on this topic fairly recently.

It’s interesting how much enthusiastic engagement this sentiment garnered, including from right wing political leaders, which was interesting because I was not advocating a Christian veneer on patriotism but an unashamedly Christian approach.

Whilst the blame for the state of Britain today is not to be placed entirely at the feet of the not-necessarily-Christian-but-pro-Christian-values types, of course, they have some waking up to do themselves. But it’s also fair to say that such people have too seldom been confronted with genuine, consistent Christian witness in their everyday lives by those who do go to church, so do they really know any better?

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