Reawakening the Nation

Making Britain Christian Again, Part III

The state of Britain as a nation seems bleak today. But its people have not yet forgotten all that Christ has done in this land in times past. His Name still means something here, even when used as a swear word. Even this tells us something. Christendom continues to haunt the nightmares of secularism and we may dare to hope in the return of Christ’s forgotten kingdom to this green and pleasant land.

In the last post I talked about the idea of Christian nations according to the Bible and the reality of whether Britain can still be classed as one of them in light of the widespread secularism that still pervades this quaint little island that once ruled a quarter of planet earth at a time when a majority of its people went to church every week.

Cultural Crisis and Church-Going

I noted that simply “going to church” out of some vague interest in sacred things would not do any long-lasting good unless people were prepared to commit to Christ. However, this is not to say that we should not be calling people back to church to make use of such a moment. We have to start somewhere. And one thing the average non-Christian still associates with Christianity is indeed, “church”, however unfortunately dull their experience of the church may have been.

British people tend to return to churches in times of personal or national crisis. The state of Britain today cannot really be compared to that of the Second World War or the aftermath of some great natural disaster, but for many there has been a dawning realisation—precipitated by the cultural Marxist cocktail of Covid and high Woke at the start of this decade—that they are living in the rubble of what may be called a teleological disaster. That is, a crisis of meaning and purpose, where neither the beginning nor the end is in sight, a crisis of cultural rootlessness awakening a deep yearning for stability which the technological consumer treats of Seculardom cannot deliver.

Where, in previous decades, secularised Britons have rushed away from the mores of Christianity to incorporate eastern religious practices into their lives (reiki, yoga, etc.) these have ultimately been found wanting. Many have now found within themselves a strange reawakening to a love of their nation, one which they never knew was there until they started to see all they loved about their national heritage being eroded away before their eyes by a socio-political bureau that does not even seem to know that it does not have the nation’s best interests at heart.

They are fed up of being told they must feel guilty even of the great achievements of their forebears. They are fed up of being called evil racists because they care about the peculiarity of their people and don’t want to see their way of life eviscerated by a globalist multiculturalism hellbent on eliminating all concept of borders and distinctions between different cultures and nations altogether.

The Return of Public Christianity

This reawakening is often manifested in the resurgence of the rhetoric of “Britain is a Christian country; let’s keep it that way!” It’s good, for example, even to see a public figure like Tommy Robinson starting to talk this way:

“I’m a Christian. I used to say that I didn’t believe…But as I’ve seen the attacks on Christianity, and I’ve also seen the decay in British society—the fall of Britain has come from the fall of belief…What built Great Britain? Christianity. What built everything about our nation that everyone wants to come to it… was built on Christianity.”

We really shouldn’t take things like this for granted. For most of my life, this is not something public figures have been comfortable speaking about, at least not with any significant meaning beyond vague political platitudes. Christianity was politically “privatised”, it was something to be kept hidden from the public square. “We don’t do God” was the mantra not just of New Labour, but of modern Britain. Active Christianity was an optional lifestyle choice, like a weekend hobby.

The “vibe shift” in public affirmations of Christianity in relation to the nations is a welcome one. Whether people such as Tommy Robinson or MP Rupert Lowe truly know what it means to be Christian, of course, is not always obvious. They may well do, it’s just difficult to know until we see it tested beyond the rhetoric. But the rhetoric still matters. As with public intellectuals like Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson, prominent political figures now clearly recognise the unimaginability of western nations without Christianity, and this increasingly feels “normal” in ways it hasn’t for some time. Broadly speaking, this is a good thing.

Yes, it needs to become more than mere abstract values, of course. It must be imbued with real faith in the real Christ, including a commitment to the living and active Word of God (cf. Heb. 4:12). Adhering to Scriptural truth in such confused times as ours will inevitably be costly in ways few can realise in the abstract until a situation arises where their own preferences and conveniences are specifically challenged by it.

The Christianness of Christian Britain

As I said in the previous post, unless there is a commitment to the Christianness of Christian Britain, any efforts to rebuild the concept of Christian Britain will be mythological and fruitless. As the psalmist once said:

“Unless the LORD builds the house, the labourers labour in vain; unless the LORD builds the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1)

There are many “watchmen” in Britain today who may not realise they will continue to perpetuate the very problem they think they’re addressing unless they get serious about what it really means to make Britain Christian again.

I had a somewhat viral post on this topic fairly recently:

It’s interesting how much enthusiastic engagement this sentiment garnered, including from right wing political leaders, which was interesting because I was not advocating a Christian veneer on patriotism but an unashamedly Christian approach.

Whilst the blame for the state of Britain today is not to be placed entirely at the feet of the not-necessarily-Christian-but-pro-Christian-values types, of course, they have some waking up to do themselves. But it’s also fair to say that such people have too seldom been confronted with genuine, consistent Christian witness in their everyday lives by those who do go to church, so do they really know any better? It’s unlikely that a significant number of them have ever seen or heard what it really means to be a Christian. This is to the Church’s shame.

A huge part of the problem is that the average British person today can't tell the Christians apart from the non-Christians in everyday life because our lives look almost identical. One simple way that Christians in Britain can grow in boldness and show the reality of their faith to the world is by doing entirely normal Christian things in public again. Like my Uber driver friend noticed (see the anecdote in the second half of the article on Christian Nations and Secular Revivals) I was the first person he’d picked up in a long time (or perhaps ever) who had voluntarily spoken to him about my Christian faith. This is crazy. If we have the words of life, if Jesus really is our Lord, why are Christians so reluctant to say so? Why are we so easily embarrassed by what complete strangers might think of us?

From Fear to Faith

We need not marinate in shame, of course. There is hope. We can all repent of our ecclesial cowardice. Small steps can be taken to step out in faith. It could be as simple as offering to pray for someone in a public place; offering help whilst talking about Jesus; singing psalms or hymns; or openly encouraging someone to come to church with you. But it can even be as simple as privately reading a physical Bible whilst sitting on a bus, a tube, a park bench, or while walking along the street.

Nine times out of ten if I'm reading my Bible on a busy train, for example, a few people will end up staring at me, and occasionally someone will ask me about it. That's because they're not used to seeing it. It shouldn't be weird to see someone reading a Bible in a Christian country. It should be commonplace. And when more Christians see other Christians acting like Christians in public, they should take note and imitate them as they imitate Christ (cf. 1Cor. 11:1). Christ called us not to hide our light under a bushel but to shine it before the world (Matt. 5:15-16). If you truly believe that, at some point you will actually have to say and do things to show it.

We must take up the mantle given to the ancient Israelites which exhorted them against failing to pass on the tenets of their living faith to future generations.

“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land” (Deut. 19:18-21)

There are still some old houses in Britain that literally did this, that enscribed Bible verses onto the beams of their houses for all to see. But all too few of such houses remain today. This itself is a symbol of how faint the Christian witness has become across British society over the last century or so.

Many feel too fearful to display their faith so openly, forgetting that we don’t worship a dead idol or ideology but a living and lively God who asks us to ask him for help without doubting, expectant that we will receive from him (Jam. 1:5-8). This God is well versed in turning our timid fear into bold courage in the making of great nations, as Israel knew only too well:

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:8-9)

I am convinced that fear and cowardice remain the greatest hindrances to the Church in our time, and that all it might take to make Britain Christian again would be for the existing Christians in Britain to hear and apply those two verses from Joshua without flinching.

The Nations and the Kingdom

If you want Christian values in your nation, you must love Christ more than your nation. However, this is not the same thing as loving Christ instead of your nation. If you love your nation more than Christ, your nation will not prosper. However, if you love Christ more than your nation, you will truly be loving your nation and you will become good news to it and for it.

As I argued previously, the goal of Christian mission is not only to produce individual Christian converts, but Christian nations, whose culture, laws, politics, and morals are trained to adhere to Christ's teachings, like a plant on a trellis. This is what Christ told His first disciples to do at the Great Commission: not simply to make converts but to disciple nations that submit to His Lordship and obey His Word (Matt. 28:18-20).

You cannot superglue a set of values onto a culture without the seed of the Gospel taking root within that nation or else the plant will not survive. The soil must be fertile for the good fruit to grow and produce over different seasons, as a prophet once said:

Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

—Jer. 17:5-8

What holds true for individuals may also hold true for the fruitful prosperity (or barren decay) of nations too. There have been many Christians in Britain’s history who believed so, including the Puritans of the 17th century, the Great Awakeners of the 18th century, and the Victorian evangelicals of the 19th century. While emphases differed, it would not have been strange to most of them to think of Britain as a Christian nation, and to work to keep it that way.

Decline and Hope

Yet Britain once sent Christian missionaries around the world in the 19th century only to abandon the faith back home in the 20th century. Ravaged by a smug secularism (which in fact had already been incubating within for some time), our nation grew cold to the Word of God, believing we could pick and choose what parts we wanted to obey, believing ourselves evermore “enlightened” without it, looking down on those who still believed all of it as “fanatics”. Over time, we gradually stopped believing the very beliefs which we once so zealously exported elsewhere. In the end, we even stopped believing in our own nation, wracked with debilitating guilt and infiltrated by dystopian ideological decay.

Christians in Britain must take up the mantle we abandoned long ago by actively seeking to disciple our nation once again, calling our people back not merely to Christian values but to Christ Himself. Britain not only still has the seeds of the Gospel in our land but also many great oak trees. Many of these trees still bear fruit many years later, even among those who are actively eroding Christian values in their midst, who know not what they do.

“What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” (Luke 13:18-19)

This parable is true in more ways than we will ever see in this lifetime. As I’ve been arguing in this mini-series, the advance of the kingdom of God, in tandem with the Word of God, is powerful and effective if we have ears to hear, eyes to see, and hands and feet to obey. It’s always easier said than done, but I am convinced there is an unusual harvest out there for Christ if we are willing to go out and get it.

The nation of Britain may seem bleak in many ways today, but its people have not yet forgotten all that Christ has done in this land in times past. His Name still means something significant, even when used as a swear word. Even this tells us something. The influence of Christianity continues to haunt secular Britain in ways many of its people never realised until what they held dear about their nation started to crumble in front of their eyes.

Pray that many Britons find their roots again in Christ, and that the kingdom of God again bears the kind of good fruit in this land that will outlast us all.