On Refusing to Reach the Right

British Evangelicals and the Dubious Fear of Right-Wing Views

Evangelical Christians in Britain seem to think the greatest threat to their faith, their church and civilization itself, is anything that sounds a little too “Right Wing”.

The funny thing about convictions is that people don’t always know how deep they go until something happens that brings them out. In the last few weeks I’ve observed a number of conversations which remind me of just how entrenched the pattern of default-anti-Right thinking is among evangelicals in Britain, and how it clouds so many from seeing the reality before their eyes, and the mission before their feet.

There are numerous reasons for this trend, some of which go back to the infamous “post-war consensus” after WWII, as has been discussed before. This essentially meant there was a default cultural trajectory in place to move in the opposite direction from the cultural perspective of our wartime enemies. In Britain, this meant that over the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, there was an effective silencing and/or demonising of Rightward parties and projects within the media.

Where figures were rolled out before the public, it was usually to be shouted down or ridiculed. This built an expectation among the conventional middle classes in particular, that to be “Right Wing” was to be perhaps fanatically committed to an ideology, and unable to defend it against critical counterpoints.

In British culture over the last half-century there has rarely been consistent media coverage of Right Wing talking points, unless they can be framed or controlled by the dominant liberal narrative. On some level, this may be understandable for the sake of wanting to discourage, say, Neo-fascist revivals. What this created, however, was an inevitably Leftward momentum in culture.

Over time, it created an assumption in people’s minds that typical Further Right concerns—such as immigration control, abortion opposition, heteronormativity, national identity, family, limited government, etc.—were equated with hatred of other people. Thus, the term “Right-Wing” came to stand for someone who is less compassionate or considerate of others, and the term “Far Right” essentially came to mean a full-on hateful and/or deranged person.