In Defence of Christian Britain

The Lordship of Christ and the Christianisation of Culture

"I am Christian and by default I believe that Muhammad is a false prophet. I should be allowed to say that in the UK without being stabbed or repeatedly arrested."

Think about these words. Is it not absurd that something like this needs to be said in Britain? Do you hear, Britons? Do you see, Christians? Are you ready to wake up?

The quoted words above are those of the now-infamous Hatun Tash, a prominent Christian evangelist to Muslims on Speaker’s Corner in London.

Listen, in the video below, to the manner in which she is howled at by Christ-hating Muslims, berated with idolatrous chants, dragged and frog-marched out by the very police who ought to have been protecting her.

There are numerous ways in which this entire scene is quite simply an embarrassment upon the nation of “Great” Britain.

I shall largely leave aside for now the question of whether it’s a good idea for women to be in the front lines of battle like this in general (short answer: no). Hatun Tash in particular has undoubtedly been an exemplary voice for Christ against Islam in Britain. The lord may raise his Deborahs as he sees fit, even if they serve not to create new norms but to indirectly rouse the gentlemen to action.

What is most striking about this story, however, is that its starkness, its absurdity, highlights something important about the degradation of what is (or was) known as “Christian Britain”.

How did it get to the point in “Christian” Britain that these words were ever necessary to be spoken?

"I am Christian and by default I believe that Muhammad is a false prophet. I should be allowed to say that in the UK without being stabbed or repeatedly arrested."

There are complexities to the decline of Christian Britain. I have lectured on these often. But in essence, the Church in this nation—the people God has called as his embassies here—allowed this to happen. They may not condone it, they may not support it, but they have very much allowed it. This is to their shame—our shame.

Christians in Britain must pray for the boldness we need to stand up and speak out in and for our nation. Whilst those who fight the good fight at Speaker’s Corner will get very obvious backlash from unbelievers, the backlash that hinders most Christians from speaking out more often comes from other Christians.

Heavenly Kingdoms and Earthly Nations

The defence of your nation is not in itself the purpose of your faith. If you are a Christian, your true citizenship is indeed in heaven (Phil. 3:20). You belong to a heavenly kingdom which operates differently to the kingdoms of this world (John 18:36).

And yet… God has placed you not "somewhere" but here, in this land, among this people, with this history. The Lord God of heaven quite literally “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [your] dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). This was not for nothing. You are here for a reason, and you are here now for a reason.

This "here" is not only your God-given mission field but your God-given home on earth, until He calls you elsewhere or to your eternal home. You have a duty to care about it not because you idolise it above your heavenly kingdom but precisely because of your allegiance to that heavenly kingdom (Heb. 13:14). Unless God calls you elsewhere, it is your heavenly assignment to be here, to live and love and work and build the foundations of that kingdom where He has placed you, in this little part of God's green earth.

Many have gone before us in Britain who indeed shed “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” in order to make (and keep) this country Christian. Many of you act as though you are indifferent that they did this, as if it didn't matter either way what rulers we had here, what language we spoke here, what values we honoured here. But you know that's not true. You know it’s not a matter of indifference. You know it really is better when Christians live as Christians within a nation and affect that nation by how they live.

Many of those Britons who went before us perhaps did not even know they were fighting for "Christian" foundations when they were doing so. They were just fighting and building for what they cherished. The Second World War was not necessarily a high point of Christian Britain, even if it may have awakened a desire to not lose those values they felt were being uprooted.

What was ultimately needed after the war was a new great awakening, a new reformation. Instead, Britain walked blindly into the cultural decadence of the 1960s and has never looked back. What those prior generations once cherished, built, and fought for—not only during the War but for centuries—is now disintegrating before our eyes as though it were a meaningless sandcastle to be washed away with the progressive shores.

A Squandered Inheritance

The Christian descendants of those who went before us in Britain now squander the inheritance that was bequeathed to them at such a costly price.

They watch as this inheritance is trampled before their eyes, and they pat themselves on the back for "avoiding the culture war". They fail to realise the war is happening regardless, and they have already been losing for some time.

Even ten years ago, you could read articles on influential platforms by academics, entitled “Christian Britain has always been imaginary – it’s time to teach children that”. This claim is literally a lie, but it can be made to sound ever so sensible when written by an academic.

Those in cultural power long realised they no longer even needed to hide their indoctrinating intentions anymore: “it’s time to teach the children”. The author of the article quotes (disagreeably) from a Times article from 17th February 1940:

“It will be of little use to fight, as we are fighting today, for the preservation of Christian principles, if Christianity itself is to have no future, or at immense cost to safeguard religion against attack from without if we allow it by neglect to be from within.”

To this quote, our response should only be an “amen!” tinged with no small amount of lament. What the author of the article who critiques this quote failed to note is that their own article was itself evidence of the neglect of Christian principles “from within”. He is, after all, a prominent professor of history and education at a British university, teaching the next generation of cultural leaders in this nation that the Christian history of their nation is not the history of their nation.

This is just one tiny example of the flagrant erasure of the very principles for which that author’s own parents and grandparents literally fought, as if they needn’t have bothered at all. There are many such grandchildren in our midst.

Christian foundations in a culture are not the same as a personal Christian faith or a faithful church. But churches in Britain have been free to flourish because of those foundations which are now increasingly seen as "foreign" within the Christian land we neglected to maintain. The failure to be salt and light has consequences not just “out there” but for churches too.

Make the Gospel Great Again

Christians must stop pretending that "multiculturalism" is the Gospel. It's not. The Gospel proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord of all people, cultures, nations. This inevitably denounces and offends any cultures, traditions, and practices that are disobedient to Him. Simply put (with with appropriate caveats aside), there are ways to be (or not be) a Christian culture.

We must pray for courage to not merely proclaim the Gospel in the air, but to apply the Gospel on the ground. Christianity "in the air" is no trouble at all. It can often be received quite amicably as a harmless "opinion" or "idea". It's when people realise it might change their life on the ground that the trouble starts.

We must pray that God would raise up bolder brothers and sisters to live, speak, and love as Christ called us to in this land. We can rightly expect suffering and persecution in this world, and indeed we can rejoice when persecuted for Christ’s sake. But we are not to allow this to excuse our cowardice to go into all the nations, teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commandments (Matt. 28:20).

Pray, then, that we would see the days again where the very idea of a Christian being hauled through the streets for proclaiming Christ as Lord in a Christian nation would be as absurd as it truly is.