Lost Greatness and Moral Decay

Making Britain Christian Again, Part I

By the looks of things, Britain no longer seems to be a great nation, nor a Christian nation. But looks can be deceiving.

Earlier this year, in response to the dual incursions of Islamism and multiculturalism, the British MP, Rupert Lowe, stated publicly that Britain is a Christian nation.

“Britain is a Christian country, built on Christian values, with Christian traditions. We don’t need multiculturalism. We have a culture, and it works just fine”

It’s not the first time that an MP has made this claim. We might quibble with just how “fine” it is working (or whether it is, in fact, “working” at all). But it is undeniable that the nation of Britain is inescapably “Christian” in its moral and institutional norms, many of which—though eroded—remain with us today.

The Decline of “Great” Britain

There was a good insight several weeks ago in a Telegraph article by Allison Pearson on the macabre reality behind our VE Day pageantry, titled “Britain is not worthy of the sacrifice our soldiers made 80 years ago”:

“It would have been far easier to write a piece this week that went along with the nostalgic delusion, which raved uncritically about “how well we do these things”... But I love my country, and I will not lie to her. She deserves the truth. The greatest generation did not make sacrifices barely comprehensible to the modern mind to see Britain reduced to a husk of her former self. They who paid the ultimate price did not expect their homeland to be invaded and altered beyond recognition, their traditions trashed, their culture eroded, while complacent and complicit governments did nothing. “There’ll always be an England,” they sang. Well, it turns out they were wrong; the liberal, globalist, no-borders class had other ideas. As the victors over Nazi Germany pass from this world into the history books, from now on, folks, it’s up to you and me to fight for the freedom they won for us, for the amazing country they saved.”

You don’t need to be a Peter Hitchens—the perpetual pessimist over “the abolition of Britain”—to see there are all sorts of reasons why Pearson’s statement rings tragically true in our time.

Our once-great nation is not what it was. The heroism and nobility of its forebears now appears ever more cacophonous to the weaker inheritors of the estate who are currently occupied in swilling and gambling it all away. It can be difficult to watch at a political level. Christians can and should feel proud of their nation, and I do feel great pride in Britain. It is still a greatly respected nation around the world. I have people come and tell me this when I am in countries beyond the west. Many people around the world, so conscious of Britain’s achievements and impact on their nations (not least through the dissemination of the English language), come and tell me this.

But this becomes harder to square with the socio-political mess it has become today. Most patriotic Britons feel increasingly out of sync with the version of their nation that now exists, helplessly overrun by ideological infiltration, hiding heinous evils like the grooming gangs scandal, legislating the murder of the uneconomic elderly, arresting patriots and street preachers for speaking inconvenient truths, and paying billions of pounds for the virtue-signalling privilege of giving away territories which the men of the previous generation fought for.

Almost everyone knows the political approach of recent decades in modern Britain has been disastrous, leaving the people unable to trust our leaders. We’ve almost become numb to it now. We expect so little honour from our politicians it’s almost a pleasant surprise when they don’t disappoint us with some foolish or untrustworthy deed or policy. Even when they do something good, it’s often in the context of so much bad that the good is easily forgotten.

Insights From a Supermarket

Beyond politics, there are all sorts of signs of the decay at an everyday level too. A few weeks ago I was in a Sainsburys Local in Birmingham and there was a man shouting angrily in the doorway, being handled by three members of staff. He wasn’t an immigrant. He was a white British guy with a distinctive Brummie accent.

He kept shouting “Get your hands off me!” He was irate, indignant. At first I assumed there could be some case of gross injustice. But then after another minute or so, I heard him say, “I'm just trying to steal a few things! Leave me alone!” It was as if the security staff were the offenders for reprimanding him and getting in his way, like they were an inconvenience to his human right to commit crime. You could almost imagine him saying, “What’s happened to this country?! Can’t a guy be left in peace to steal anymore?!”

Of course this is just one incident. But I’ve seen similar things before and I hear of similar things in other contexts across the country too. When a people turns its back on God, the most basic things we take for granted can become inverted and malformed. Behaviours and attitudes which were formerly barely imaginable start to become increasingly “normal”.

I thank God that, relative to other nations, we do still have a relatively functional sense of law and order across most of British society, even with its many problems. There are far more chaotic places to live. However, this societal order only “works” (broadly speaking) because of the remnants of Christian social convention which have been in place and are indirectly understood or observed by the majority. That is now gradually changing.

The “bank balance” of Christian values and morals running through British society for centuries is running low. Christian values are good for a society, but without ongoing deposits of genuine Christian faith and obedience over subsequent generations, these values soon become malformed and lose their effectiveness, eventually becoming more and more like archaic relics which are no longer able to make sense within a radically different society.

This is how decay works. It sets in and does its work over time, undoing the good that was there. If it is not treated, it can slowly erode the foundations and cause long-term problems, even long-term devastation within a culture. Without renewal, without repentance, without a return to Christ Himself, this decay of moral virtue in British society will only continue. And it’s not as if we weren’t warned:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.” (Matt. 5:13)

Think about those words as you reflect upon the state of Christianity in your nation today.

In the next two posts in this series, I will talk more about this concept of “Christian nations” (now a strange idea in the eyes of some Christians), and particularly of Britain as a Christian nation, including what is needed today if we are to see a return to anything like its former greatness.

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Read Part 2 here: