And so on my return from a family gathering last Saturday, I flicked through the YouTube footage of the Whitehall Carol Concert, as organised by Tommy Robinson, real name unknown to all but himself since his conversion in prison (see Revelation 2:17).
I found the event to be full of sound preaching of the Name of Jesus, heartfelt testimonies to his saving grace, and doctrinally solid carols. A classic evangelistic Christmas service, no less. From which news-sources St Paul would be gaining his opinions on the participants’ motives, were he present today, I don’t know. But unlike so many of those esteemed signatories mentioned in my previous post, he would undoubtedly have concluded:
But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice (Philippians 1:18).
Given that the crowd was large, but not huge (I heard a figure of around five thousand) it is likely that it consisted not of a far-right ethno-nationalist movement hi-jacking the cross of Christ for racism, but of that decent minority of genuine Christians within a larger popular movement for legitimate change. But committed Christian witness has a habit of spreading, as witnessed by four baptisms and twenty-five new members in my own fellowship this last month. Revival is happening, if you stop looking for a re-run Great Awakening.
So was the event associated with a political movement? Undoubtedly, for Christ has been made Lord of all by the Father, including the political realm. But was it a political stunt, as its accusers, especially in the churches, claimed? By no means, despite the BBC’s concerted attempts to make it so. As for the critics, perhaps it would have been better had they spoken to Tommy Robinson before dismissing his conversion as “cynical.” The gifted apologist “Bob of Speakers Corner” did, and consequently spoke at the service.
However, the same freedom from politics cannot be said of the “Christian counter demonstration” (!!) to the carol service, outside St Paul’s Cathedral, which apparently featured an effigy of the Holy Family in orange life-jackets in a rubber dinghy. I shouldn’t need to point out how this was a political stunt, associating Jesus directly with a controversial breakdown of national law and order opposed by the great majority or ordinary Britons. We are, presumably, to conclude that Joseph threw their documents, including Jesus’s Davidic genealogy, overboard as they sought to live permanently on benefits in Egypt…
The evidence from the open letter mentioned in my last post unfortunately seems to support the view that a majority of established church leaders here are content to live in a post-christian culture, and to make abject apologies for a post-christian Christ. The grassroots revival, however, never got the message about that, and ordinary people are increasingly open to the claims of the biblical Jesus on their lives and on their nation.
I have mentioned before, I believe, how the entire New Testament was completed before there was any possibility of Christians gaining political power, though it was inevitable as rulers of nations turned from being Pontifices Maximi of the pagan gods to protectors of the gospel of Christ. And so there is legitimate room for theological differences, from those who eschew all involvement in secular politics to those who want to maximise Christ’s rule on earth.
A majority of the Church, though, has always opted for a Christian State with separate powers from the discipline of the Church. There is therefore a deep irony in any Anglican decrying “Christian Nationalism” from within an institution headed by King Charles II and having seats in the House of Lords. And are those St George’s crosses I see flying above many a church tower, now that the Ukrainian flags have been quietly taken down?
The first century position of the church as a politically weak minority, then, neither directly confirms, nor denies, the concept of a “Christian State.” One must remember, though, that Jesus stood before the king, governor, and council of his own nation, the apostles defied the rulings of their Sanhedrin, and Paul took the case for the political liberty of the Church before both King Agrippa and the Emperor.
But the opponents of last Saturday’s service, and of the movement from which it arose, whilst very animated about making the Cross political, were very big on the role of Christianity in serving and upholding community (and diversity, and inclusion, of course). But if the New Testament Church had not yet expanded to become involved in the apparatus of the State, neither had it expanded to become an organ, still less a pillar, of “community.” The Church then was predominantly concerned with its own community, simply because it was hated and marginalised by both the Jewish and gentile communities outside.
Like national politics, the role of organised Christianity within a secular culture had to be worked out later from theological principles. From the start, I’m sure, Christians did good to outsiders as the apostles taught, but it was only in later centuries, as their numbers grew, that a pagan emperor could complain that the Christians helped non-believers more than fellow-pagans did. And it is only within a Christian State that the concept of the Church as the “heart of the community” could have arisen, and then only by losing the biblical priority on the Christian assembly. Churches don’t get to lead communities in Islamic or Socialist nations.
For not only have the critics misrepresented Unite The Kingdom as racist, ethno-nationalist and Dominionist (and they might do well to listen to Robinson himself on all that):
But they have even misrepresented their own position, by deliberately blurring the distinction between genuine asylum seekers and Islamist opportunists and criminal gangs. More fundamentally they have misrepresented the faith by denying that the primary concern of the Church is not “the Community” but the body of Christ, which is inclusive of all who seek salvation and righteousness, but exclusive of all who would oppose his reign.
The communion of saints, to use the phrase these guys should have learned from the Apostles’ Creed, is the community of sinners washed in the blood of the Lamb (a concept aired more than once at Saturday’s event), and being discipled in the Apostles’ teaching. Surprisingly, that teaching says precious little about Islamophobia, unconscious racism or LGBTQ+ rights.
