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.

Obviously there really are hateful people Over There. The problem, however, is that they are not distinguished from those who are not, so the important issues and perspectives tend to get lost in light of the perceived “respectable” views which most people like to be seen to be holding (…views like not typecasting groups of people without merit).

British Christians—especially evangelicals keen to “engage” the culture—tend to imbibe the assumptions of those they have sought to “reach”, inadvertently taking on some of the culture’s primary loves and hates.

The Trump Effect

As we observed in a recent podcast episode, Donald Trump’s eventful and decisive first week in office once again catalysed an extraordinary outcry among British Christians who still seem to think of the inauguration as comparable to the incoming German Chancellor in 1933. Much of this is because we are so unused to political leaders leading decisively in ways we have not seen for some time.

I referred to this effect after the US presidential election last year as “the Anti-Trump cult” (which lost me a few subscribers at the time). As I said then, the point is not to defend everything Trump says and does, but to be aware of the culture around us which seems ludicrously uncharitable towards him and his supporters:

"Anti-Trump hate might well be one of the most ironic cases of bigotry that exists in western society today. Under the ludicrous pretence of moral superiority, liberals appear to be “at liberty” to actively promote the very traits for which they claim to protest against Trump(ism): malice, violence, uncharity, rudeness, incivility, tyranny anti-democracy, and general thoughtlessness, to name just a few of the observable liberal vices on display over the past few months alone.

And because these negative attitudes are the prevalent norm among “well-educated”, “tolerant”, “inclusive”, “sophisticated” types within culture today, the many Christians who have become experts at studying and imitating the ways of those liberal elites (in order to “win” them by their effective “cultural engagement”) tend to start thinking (and even speaking) in a similar way.

Few modern western Christians are willing to admit just how leftward they have drifted. It almost never occurs to them that they might be employing double standards in their political (or officially-non-political-but-actually-still-very-political) opinions. Because of the aforementioned political apathy of recent decades, many Christians believe themselves to be “above politics”; in their utopian minds they are “neither Left nor Right”, sat snugly in the non-committal “Centre”.

There are good Biblical reasons not to be inappropriately partisan in politics, of course. The kingdom does not come unambiguously in and through this or that person, party, or nation. God’s people are a new holy nation unto themselves (1Pet. 2:9), our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and we seek the city that is to come (Heb. 13:14). However, the call for “no tribalism” in politics is often employed as a ruse which keeps Christians from any useful political engagement whatsoever.

Few realise, for example, that the “Centre” is now, in fact, “the Left”. In practice, this means that anything to their socio-political Right is now treated with greater caution and/or fear (even if it is far milder than what most Christians still believed just half a century ago)."

People have long spoken of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” but although Trump has proven an especially catalytic divider in recent years, the issue goes deeper, exposing strongly entrenched beliefs about what is right and wrong, what is to be prioritised or not prioritised, and what is the greatest fear of all.

In the case of British Christianity, downstream from British society, it seems that the greatest danger is always the ever-mystical “Far Right”. As noted above, this is now the catch-all term to throw at anyone who thinks multiculturalism might not be working, that mass uncontrolled immigration is a problem, that Islamism is a bad idea, or that British identity is a good idea.

Regardless of whoever has been in power, we have been fundamentally influenced for decades by a deep-level liberalism, even in how we think and feel. This is the fruit of the stories we’ve told and the policies we’ve observed for several decades. It creates a seemingly inevitable trajectory in one’s mind about what you are or aren’t really “allowed” to say (or even think) if you wish to be seen as a respectable and upright person, even if it means holding uncharitable or untrue perspectives in order to do so.

It’s not just a problem for British Christians, of course. In the US, a pastor from Saddleback Church posted something mildly positive about Trump’s inauguration recently and then had to do a long, caveated public apology. What I find interesting is that such angst-driven responses never seem to be required when an evangelical pastor says something positive about a political view or person on the Left, which happens so often that it is not even noticeable.

You can see why so few evangelical leaders ever say anything positive in a Right-leaning direction. Look at the trouble it causes them. Look at the painstaking explanations they feel required to wade through even for saying or posting something innocuously positive.

But for the pastors and leaders, this problem is mostly of their own making. They are the ones who led the sheep this way. They fed them for decades on Seeker-Sensitive Leftism (or Gospel-Centred Leftism). So they shouldn't be all that surprised when the sheep bite the way they've been taught to.

If you tell a generation of Christians that this or that political opinion doesn't matter “because it’s really about Jesus”, you might think that when a pastor posted something about politics, it wouldn't matter. Evidently, it does matter and always has done. It just needed to be “the right kind” of politics: the Left kind.

Ordered Love and Accidental Nationalism

It’s always interesting to note the way that avowed “anti- Christian Nationalist” evangelicals often end up becoming accidental Christian Nationalists whenever a government policy comes up which does not fit with their understanding of Christianity.

For example, Krish Kandiah (Christian charity leader and former Principal of London School of Theology) put out a video in response to the Vice President, J. D. Vance’s claim that Trump’s tougher immigration enforcement policy—which prioritises American citizens above illegal immigrants—is grounded in Christian principles. The idea here was an Augustinian (and Thomist) concept called ordered loves (Ordo Amoris), such as prioritising care for one’s family ahead of care for strangers on the other side of the world.

Kandiah responded to this, apparently aghast that such an idea could be uttered as “Christian”, pointing to the obvious Christian emphases upon charity, loving the poor, and caring for the weak. Such moments are fascinating because show that evangelicals like Kandiah cannot help but want to see Christian virtue directly affect governmental policy. This is unavoidable if they really do believe that Christianity is good, even if they only emphasise the virtues that sync with their existing leftward politics.

Of course, even the very New Testament examples Kandiah cites (e.g. care for widows/orphans) in the hope of challenging the idea that Christianity does not want you to "love your own" before others, actually suggests that very thing:

“But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God.” (1Tim. 5:4).

Why would this be “pleasing in the sight of God” if it was just the same as what all other pagans and tribes were doing? The distinctiveness of Christianity is not that it neglects the importance of the family in order to love those “not our own” but that it calls us to love enemies, strangers, and neighbours without destroying the primary order of and love for one's family.

God is love. He is also Father, and a loving one. It pleases God to see the family upheld because He is ultimately the father of all families, and of family itself (Eph. 3:15). In our politically skewed contemporary culture, of course, it’s very easy for Christians who are already influenced by one political outlook (e.g. Leftism; or anti-Rightism!) to begin overlooking or rejecting Biblical truths or Christian virtues (such as the perennial significance of the family unit) because they associate them with their political enemy.

It’s true, of course, that a similar problem could also emerge for Christians on the Right (e.g. caring for the poor might become associated with Leftist political policies of high taxation and soft immigration).

But the issue in Britain is that, even with the changing political tide in the US, and even with a decade and a half of recent “Conservative” government here, the cultural power remains very much to the Left. Thus, the critical mass of middle class evangelicals—still keen on “missional” cultural engagement—will lean very much to the Left socio-politically, even without realising it. As such, some of their Biblical emphases and applications on contentious issues that seem amenable to the Further Right are more likely to become “adjusted” accordingly over time so that they fall in line.

A Lesson in Biblical Interpretation

Another theological figure, Pete Phillips of Spurgeon’s College, also chimed in when I posted something positive about Elon Musk on Facebook around the same time:

Musk and Trump distort the Gospel every day. Look at their attack on Bishop Budde’s call for mercy. Look at Vance’s call for family centric love circles…The Bible clearly says to care for the marginal wherever they are. Musk seems to be fomenting hard right divisions within Europe.

I asked him a few questions in response: Do you not love your own children more than the children of people you will never meet? Do you not care for them in a disproportionately ordered way, and does it not honour the Lord when you do? Are you not commanded to provide for your own household as a priority, lest you be worse than an unbeliever? (cf. 1Tim. 5:8). Are (marginalised) widows not called to be shown godliness by their own household before they are provided for by the Church?

My point was, it's not a zero sum game. Loves of neighbour and the marginalised are not in competition with love of family. They can mutually inform one another. God does not challenge your love of family, otherwise Paul could not have said you should provide for your own family as a priority. There is also an analogy to be made here with the Pharisees who make a “religious” excuse for not providing for their parents in older age (cf. Matt. 7:9-13).

We can heed all this whilst continuing to love the poor and the marginalised and whilst also heeding Jesus' call to put him before family ties if they come between you and Him (cf. Luke 14:26). There really is such a thing as the Christian family in Scripture and there are attendant values and duties which come with it.

After relaying much of the above to him, he largely ignored the questions and the arguments and concluded: “I see that you have already decided what is right and wrong. In other words your (and Project 2025’s) interpretation of scripture is the only valid one. So end of discussion right there.” I found this utterly bizarre. Remember, this is not some random person on the internet but a respected Biblical scholar and lecturer, who cannot see beyond the political partisan categories on a fairly straightforward debate about whether something is or isn’t in the Bible.

In his mind it could not possibly be the case that the Apostle Paul might really be saying something which coheres with “Right Wing” thinking because it appears that Right-Wing thinking is inherently predetermined as “evil”). Thus, the only explanation must apparently be that the people who quote those parts of Paul’s writings are “interpreting” him according to their “hard right” party-political biases, nothing more.

The irony should be evident by now that such a political interpretation of someone else’s Biblical interpretations is itself influenced by their own political presuppositions, not the presuppositions of Scripture.

Elsewhere, a post-evangelical reverend, speaking of me, echoed a similarly myopic way of seeing the kinds of perspectives they are not used to seeing under the label “Christian” or “Biblical”:

“[In my humble opinion] 'Biblical' is doing a lot of heavy lifting on accounts that say 'shamelessly biblical'; it just seems to be a collection of aggressive, misogynistic men, striving to be as snarky as possible & edging towards a kind of politics that used to be off limits to Christians.”

When liberal Christians like this become aggressively worried about “a kind of politics that used to be off limits to Christians” I think what they really mean to say is that they're worried that some of us finally found those parts of the Bible that used to be off limits to Christians. Just as God determined the boundaries between man and woman and between nation and nation, he determines the boundaries of our politics.

The Shame of Evangelising the Right

I have long believed that British evangelicals need to do more to reach people on the Right (even the dreaded “Far Right”).

There will at some point be a turning of the tide on this side of the Atlantic Ocean too. When that happens, how many of the respectable anti-Right-Wing Christians will find themselves subtly changing their emphases again, I wonder? But what if the reaction is stronger than just a harder lean from the Centre-Right? What if there were to be a resurgence of strong, young, angry men who are fed up of being demonised? What will their attitude be to Christians and churches? Will they be shaped by Christian faith and virtue? More likely, they will look elsewhere for discipleship because too few sought to reach them.

This is why I was delighted to hear that my Australian friend, Rev. Brett Murphy, was invited to speak at the Tommy Robinson rally in London recently, where he also gave away dozens of Bibles and tracts, which were gladly received by the crowds. What a unique Gospel opportunity.

But how was this mission received by fellow evangelical brothers in Christ? With scorn and derision, naturally. Why? Because Brett had done the unthinkable by supporting a “Right Wing” cause, by saying things that are ostensibly “Right Wing”.

When I posted it on Facebook, one churchgoer said: “I listened to Brett Murphy’s speech and it was truly shameful.” What can he have said, you may wonder? Racist hate? Anti-Semitic slander? Xenophobic hysteria? None of the above. He did, however, talk about the importance of courage and patriotism and the need for truth-tellers like Tommy Robinson to no longer be silenced. This was enough to earn a description by one fellow brother in Christ of “shameful”.

Such a response once again highlights the fundamental dubiousness of the evangelical mantra: it’s about Jesus, not politics. Once again, if being an evangelical has no bearing upon your politics, then why do so many evangelicals only seem to make such a fuss about “Right Wing” politics? Indeed, if it’s about Jesus not politics, why not let the Neo-Nazis take over? What difference would it make, if Christians are not really supposed to have a political opinion anyway?

Obviously, every Christian has a political opinion, regardless of how little they may know or admit it. At root here, it seems that many evangelicals have forgotten what it means to be an evangelical. Where they have been happy to be all too open-handed when it comes to reaching LGBT people, they soon become judgemental legalists when it comes to dealing with the Right.

The person who saw Brett’s conduct as “shameful” did so because Brett had said that Tommy Robinson “does not bow down to evil” (in reference to Robinson’s stand to expose the Rotherham grooming gangs, the details of which were covered up by authorities in order to avoid “a race war”). In response, this commentator said:

“Contrary to [Brett’s] ridiculous claim, Tommy Robinson does “bow down to evil”. A court found that he had spread lies about a teenage Syrian refugee who was attacked in a school playground, and when the court made an injunction against repeating these lies, he defied that injunction. That is why he is in prison. He is not a political prisoner, nor is he in prison for criticizing Islam. He is in prison because he is a criminal who bows down to evil. His offence is one that is condemned by God in the Ten Commandments.

But perhaps Brett Murphy has decided that it’s okay to bear false testimony against our neighbours if they happen to be Syrian or Muslim.”

There is certainly more to the case than Tommy Robinson lying, abusing the court system, and pretending to be a political prisoner (see here from his own perspective on why the media and legal system have often been weaponised against him and others like him). Again, what I found most interesting about the aforementioned response was that it put Robinson’s (relatively minor) offence in the worst light, as though it were equivalent to the unspeakably heinous offences for which Robinson was challenging the establishment.

The selectivity of approach here is especially intriguing. How often do you see evangelicals quoting the Ten Commandments against non-Christians today? How many ever go up to a gay colleague at work and say, "Stop bowing down to evil; you’re in contempt of God's Holy Law; You’re practising abomination and will be condemned"? Perhaps we should be citing the Law more in evangelism. The point is, in the present state of evangelical softness, most will do all they can to avoid citing Old Testament Law because it sounds "judgemental" to their liberal friends. This is why it’s curious that condemnation is often straight back on the menu as soon as it decided that someone on the other side of the socio-political fence whom they wish to chastise.

What Brings Them Out to Fight?

Another commenter brought a similar note of legal technicality which missed the primary point:

Yeah come on, Aaron Edwards how can you champion a pastor who champions Tommy Robinson in this way? Whatever one's Christian perspectives might be concerning right wing ideology, the plain fact is that Tommy Robinson is serving time for acting in Contempt of Court. It's a prisonable offence because defying a court order undermines the rule of law, which I should have thought you would see as a cornerstone of the Christian foundations on which the UK has stood for all these centuries?

This is about a much larger issue than Robinson’s case, of course. Saying “whatever one's Christian perspectives might be concerning right wing ideology...” suggests that what one believes is irrelevant to the matter at hand. But it's not that open-ended. The interpretation to view the entire event—and thus a Christian’s support of another Christian’s support of it—through a more cynical lens is predetermined by their having been trained over decades to see “the Right” as the worst threat that will have inevitably gangrenous effects.

This is why such people do virtually nothing to reach the swathes of Right-Wing people in Britain today, the kind of people who support Tommy Robinson and who also gladly accepted those Bibles and evangelistic tracts from Brett Murphy at that rally. Where were all the evangelicals who like to talk about building bridges for the Gospel to different kinds of people, playing their “long game” evangelism? It is more than a little suspicious that such bridges are usually only ever to the “right kind” of people, the kind who play nice.

Instead of supporting someone like Brett, most evangelicals see him as “the problem” because it's as though he's compromising on the Gospel by supporting a political cause. But he’s not saying, “Oh great, we're politically aligned, let's baptise all this and pretend you’re all Christians now...”. He was actually proclaiming Christ to them, recognising there are common themes of connection with them, including values like courage, truth-telling, patriotism, and—yes—caring for the marginalised, such as the thousands of girls subjected to horrific abuse whose cause was not brought to justice.

The “tell” is that one rarely sees equivalent reactions from the same Guardian-reading Christians when there's genuine compromise on the Left. Such people only ever “come out to fight” when they worry that there might be something happening on their Further Right, wherever they happen to be standing. That’s what brings the most energetic and passionate responses from respectable middle class Christians. That’s what makes people avoid you and dissociate from you. I've witnessed this dynamic so many times it's become like clockwork. Indeed, as Brett said in a recent post:

My fourth former friend has now slandered me, sent an abusive message or blocked me because I spoke at the T.R. rally last week. Well, so be it! I'd rather stand for truth and lose some friendships than bow down to lies in exchange for a peaceful life.

We should come out to fight wherever there is compromise, wherever there is truth to be told, especially when and where it really needs to be told. Christians should not be too proud to reach the deplorable Right, nor to give praise where virtue or nobility may be found (cf. Phil. 4:8).

The Right will need chastising too, just as the Left do. But in a time in which Christian virtues seem to have been bent every which way in order to fit the socio-political assumptions of the Left, British Christians should not be surprised to see a sustained recovery of Christian virtues and issues in the coming years which are more clearly identifiable with the Right. They need not clutch their handbags and lament over this. They should instead continue to pray in faith at what God may be doing, and continue to read their Bibles “to see if these things are so” (Acts 17:11).

Above all, they they must not be like those who so guard our own reputations that they place them above the reputation of their Saviour, saying, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men...troublemakers, nationalists, anti-Islamists, extremists, Right-Wingers...” (cf. Luke 18:11).

May God awaken many more to join this burgeoning harvest field that they may proclaim Christ with faithfulness, boldness, salt, and light to those with ears to hear in our time. May there be many more Christian missionaries in Britain who still believe in mission and still believe in Britain.

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