Christian Nations and Secular Revivals

Making Britain Christian Again, part II

How can “a nation” be “Christian”? What does the Bible say about nations? Is Britain Still a Christian Nation? Is secularism still lurking in the shadows of the “Quiet Revival”? How is a Christian culture sustained over the long haul?

In the last post I spoke about the lost greatness and moral decay of contemporary Britain. But even our perception of something “decayed” tells us something about the moral standard of which we have somehow become aware. How do we know Britain has decayed? From what has it decayed? We somehow know what it ought to have been, what it was, what it no longer is. This standard was, of course, Christianity. As many have expressed in recent years, it is Christianity which—however imperfectly expressed—imbued places like Britain with its fundamental moral character as a nation for well over a thousand years.

The Trouble with Christian Nationalism

For some, however, this kind of thinking leads us into somewhat “devilish” territory. Despite the fact that talk of Christian nationalism has been an ongoing conversation in the US for at least the last half-decade now, there are many Christians in Britain today who’ve barely even thought about it. Those who have thought about it seem especially prone to hyperventilated “concern” about the very idea that Britain ever was (or ever could be) a Christian nation.

“Christian nations are unbiblical!” comes the cry. “Christian nations breed compromise!” “Christian nations are idolatrous!” “Isn’t ‘Christian nationalism’ that bad thing I heard about?” Well, who told you it was bad? And why were they telling you? And what did they mean by “Christian nationalism”? No doubt there are things which are called “Christian Nationalism” which may use “Christian” as a moral guarantor for something significantly less-than-Christian. There are some who say that because the term means different things to different people it’s best to avoid it altogether.

It may be one thing to avoid using the term as a label, but it’s not so simple to avoid the concept. One may wish to avoid the connotations of the “ism” if the concern is that the “nationalism” is the real driver (or even a subtle form of racism), with the Christianity more like a back-seat advisor, tending to a situation of naïve compromise at best, or a demonic manipulation of Christianity at worst. But even if you don’t want to associate with the “ism” you still have to deal with what you actually want to happen within your nation, and whatever you believe about that will probably need to be called something.

Many Christians today are so deceived by secularism that they don’t realise that their stern rejection of Christian Nationalism often makes them unwitting advocates of “Secular Nationalism”. They come to believe in the myth of secular neutrality: “Well at least it wouldn’t be a Christian theocracy with Christians telling people how to live. That would be terrible…”. Such an objection often seems to assume it would be better for pagans to tell us how to live instead! The reality is this: if your Christianness does not influence what you want to happen within your nation on any level, do you really believe in the goodness of your Christianity? Do you really believe it can make a difference?

The Bible and the Nations

Why is there any talk of “nations” in the Bible at all? I thought God doesn’t really care about nations anymore? Wasn’t that just “a phase”? Does he still pay any attention to nations? Doesn’t he now want us to think merely in terms of individual souls? If the New Testament calls God’s people “a royal nation” (1Pet. 2:9) doesn’t that make our particular national identities obsolete?

In a word: no. The secular multicultural liberalism of our time wants us to see true patriotism as an unsophisticated vice, not a virtue. Reports emerged recently about the UK government listing a belief in “cultural nationalism” as a potential terrorist threat to the nation (Orwell could hardly do a better job of narrating such a dystopian move!). Christians sadly too often fall in line and do what we’re told by the world, believing it to be “Biblical”. Although forms of nationalism certainly can become idolatrous and sub-Christian, thinking “nationally” is a more important thing for Christians than we’ve often realised. Even without talking about the nation of Israel itself, the state of the nations matter a lot as a Biblical category.

Their significance is obvious throughout the Old Testament, with various detailed speeches concerning specific nations by the prophets Isaiah (13-27), Jeremiah (46-51), and Ezekiel (25-32) especially. Paul in Athens also makes explicit reference to divine providence among the nations: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). Apparently, God is still invested in the lives of nations, not just individual souls.

Talk of nations is also especially plentiful in the Book of Revelation (e.g. 2:26; 7:9; 21:24). This is a point in the Biblical story where you might have thought all this talk of “nations” would drift into irrelevance. Again, apparently not. Of the new heavenly city we hear: “By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.” (Rev. 21:24-26)

This vision of the glory of the Church affecting the nations correlates with how much the nations seem to matter to the resurrected Christ prior to his ascension into glory too. It was Christ, remember, who sent out His disciples into the world at the Great Commission and said these oft-quoted but seldom heeded words:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

The question is: does Jesus want us to go in his authority to disciple “the nations” or does he simply want to make sure there are at least one or two converts from each nation? In calling his disciples to disciple the nations to obey His commandments, is Jesus simply concerned that there be an even spread of divergent peoples from different nations in his kingdom? Is the Great Commission really just some kind of cosmic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity policy? If so, what a depressing thought.

Is Christ’s vision not far more ambitious than this: to win all nations so that every knee may bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (cf. Phil. 2:9-11)? Is it not the Church’s job to bring this Good News to the nations, that the nations may be glad and sing for joy (Ps. 67:4)?

It would seem that many Christians in our time simply do not believe Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 28. Far more Christians before our time did believe Him, however, including the evangelical missionaries in bygone centuries who left Britain’s shores to convert the other nations of the world beyond their own European cultures. Men like William Carey are beloved by evangelical Baptists today—the kind who often think “Christian nations” are a bad idea. But Carey believed unequivocally that Britain was a Christian nation. That’s why he believed he was called to other nations like India with the providentially blessed nation of Britain behind him, that he might help make India Christian too. He did a great deal of good in the process to that end which still bears fruit in that nation today (whether or not the Hindu nationalists recognise its source!).

The evangelical missionaries who inspired that national vision had no qualms about it. It was obvious to them. They had read Matthew 28. Broadly speaking, they saw Britain as having already been “discipled” in Christianity, hence why they sought to take the message of Christ further afield to the other nations who had not yet heard. As the missiologist Brian Stanley noted, in The Bible and the Flag: Protestant missions and British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1990):

“Evangelical missionaries were primarily concerned with the advance of the gospel and the moral responsibility of the nations before God.”

Such a concern already assumes that they did not see Christian nations as a “problem” like our generation does. Most of our missionary forebears would not have understood our concerns on this score. Some might even have scolded us. “If you’re not actively trying to Christianise the nations, what on earth are you doing?! Haven’t you read the Bible…? Do ‘evangelicals’ no longer even understand the Great Commission…?”

Can a Nation be Christian?

How can a nation actually be “Christian” though? So says the contemporary secularised Christian. “After all, a nation does not have a heart that can receive Christ into it by faith, does it?” This is a common objection, and one that stops many Christians from even contemplating the wider Christendomian influence in society which a focus on nations gives.

I believe at least some of the problem here is simply bound up in semantics. We evangelicals tend to get precious about the word “Christian” because we are concerned it might be sullied when used for anything other than an individual person who follows Christ. However, we happily use the term, “Christian family”, “Christian school” or “Christian value”; and the last time I checked, Christian families, schools, and values did not have “hearts” which can be strangely warmed by Jesus. So why can’t a nation be called Christian too?

Calling a nation “Christian” does not mean that all the individuals within that nation are Christians any more than the members of a Christian family or a Christian school are automatically all Christians. Simply put: if there can be no such thing as a Christian nation then neither can there be such a thing as a Christian idea, or a Christian moral, or a Christian anything. But let’s not be silly. If things like schools, families, colleges, and ideas can meaningfully be labelled “Christian” with regard to the norms they embody, then so can a nation. The term “Christian” here is obviously used differently to an individual human being who expresses faith in Christ.

Most people ignore the Biblical significance of “nations” precisely because of this category error, leading them to overlook swathes of important Biblical teaching which needs recovering in our time. They assume the idea of a Christian nation to be an esoteric and strange thing, a “new idea” dreamt up by very-online types within the last five years. In reality, it’s the category which most Christians in history have used quite happily to describe the broad cultural effects of a broadly converted people. It has usually been the aspiration of the Christians within a nation for their nation to be a Christian nation, and they have actively worked to make it so.

If nations can be Christian, then, is Britain one of them? Certainly it has been. Ever since the days of King Alfred the laws, morals, culture, and education of England has run along Christian lines. Alfred was not adding something “foreign” to Britain in the ninth century. Christianity had already been influential before his time for centuries through the Celts and Romans, but he did institute significant reforms which worked to undo the resurgent paganism from numerous Viking invasions. Since Alfred’s time, Britain has been “officially speaking” a Christian nation. To this day, it remains “officially” a Christian nation.

But is Britain still functionally a Christian nation? Well, we still have Christian institutions, laws, traditions, monarchy, and cultural infrastructure, which does mean something and does still have a kind of “soft power”. But on a day to day level, actual overt expressions of Christianity now feel “foreign” to this society in ways they once were not. particularly among non-migrant British people. Although we can and should still use the term “Christian nation” for Britain for as long as the remnants of this culture hold out, we should recognise the reality of the decay and seek to undo its effects.

Insights from an Uber Driver

I had an interesting chat with an Uber driver several weeks ago. He was from Ghana.