I was recently in touch with a friend from my old church in Essex, which has now grown to over 1,000 weekly attenders. There were only about 80 when I joined in 1987, and it has grown steadily since. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s doing something right – Hillsong and Bethel were bigger, after all, and look what’s happened to them. But in this case it is, and it’s a cause for personal rejoicing.
One significant source of new people mentioned by my friend is young men, who typically start reading their Bible or hearing it online, and arrive at services (he says) almost at the point of conversion. This means that an average service has about 20% not-yet-converted attenders.
This story matches what one hears across the country, and across the denominations (my friend reported the same trend is true of the Baptist Church I previously attended). It doesn’t yet seem to be a major factor in our own significant growth here, apart from the evident increase in spiritual interest generally, but there could be all sorts of demographic reasons for that difference.
But here I want to consider what seems to be the likely cause (leaving aside the sine qua non convicting work of the Holy Spirit), and to raise the question of whether churches are currently in a position to address that cause, as well as its individual effects.
In a nutshell, it seems people are increasingly disillusioned with the moral chaos, deception, and societal breakdown of their country (and I guess much the same may be the case in other Western nations). This disenchantment will take many forms. For some, the loss of personal opportunity for them and their entire generation is a major factor.
This has hit white working class young men particularly hard, with the loss of productive industry to China, and the loss even of unskilled jobs to cheap labour from abroad. But to end up driving a truck after a masters degree in engineering, with a massive student debt, or to find that, as a professional couple, you are unlikely ever to be able even to buy a house, is also deeply distressing. Minimum wage virtue-signalling has priced young people even out of casual jobs, as well as destroying businesses they might have moved into as a career: our local riding stable, zoo, hairdressers and several pubs have already been priced into closure.
For others (or the same folks in different stages of the news cycle) government waste (from all political parties) on “luxury belief” projects like Net Zero or DEI, the obsession with supposed ubiquitous racism and sexual deviance, two tier justice, and uncontrolled mass immigration are the main triggers. Along with the latter, the preferential treatment of Islam, in the face of islamism’s violent depravity across the world as well as in Britain, raises the religious dimension.
All of these lead (at least in the young men under consideration) to the obvious conclusion that things were a whole lot better when this country was governed by Christian values, laws and customs, within the memory of their parents and grandparents, if not their own. Most of those who turn to the Bible, or to church attendance, have joined the dots to realise that what made Christian values work to produce democracy, personal freedom, economic prosperity, high-trust and so on was not simply a thing called “cultural Christianity,” but faith in Christ and his teachings. Somehow, it was Christianity itself, as believed and practised, that made Britain a good place to live, regardless of the revisionist propaganda our youngsters have been fed from infancy – another source of disillusion when the truth becomes known.
Ergo, our young men reason, if the rot at the core of our society is to be reversed, if moral, economic, cultural, military, and metaphysical gloom is to be replaced by a joyful normality, then the place to find the answers is surely among the people who still have that faith in Christ and his teachings. That is the churches.
If they’re fortunate enough they will get to a church that hasn’t sold out, on the one hand, to the very “downgrade” the young man is seeking to remedy (avoid helter-skelters and rainbow flags in the nave is my advice!), or on the other to a hyper-charismatic end-times-revivalist outfit preaching seven-mountain dominionism and five-fold ministry. And if they escape those, they may well hear the gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ, and as an individual they will, following the call of Isaiah and John the divine, “come out of Babylon.”
If your church (or they) are of a Pietistic bent, that will be “job done.” A theology of suffering in the footsteps of Christ is certainly more valid that the Prosperity Gospel, and as things go from bad to worse in England, and our young men still can’t afford to get married or pay their bills, we may point out that it’s much worse for Christians in Iran or China. It’s also true that there has never been a perfect “Christian nation,” and genuine believers could suffer under godless aristocrats or rapacious mill-owners even at the height of revival. So to quote another friend’s satirical comment from the church in Essex, “We can’t be more than guilty worms, so grit your teeth till Christ returns.”
Yet the gospel is not just intended to be a Noah’s ark to survive the Flood, but salt and light to transform society. The truth is that our country was better, and that it got that way, as we concur with the young men, through Christians making it so. So how, in fact, did that happen in practice, so that we can truly say that, for all its faults, England in the 1950s was better than pagan Mercia before Augustine of Canterbury, and Sudan or Eritrea now? Do our churches know, or care enough to strive for national restoration?
It’s certainly hard, as I pointed out here, to understand the unnuanced position of the Evangelical Alliance and many others in condemning “Christian Nationalism” as an unmitigated evil, citing the preponderance of crosses and tracts at grassroots (and largely working class) rallies protesting against some of the evils mentioned above. This, they say, is divisive. It doesn’t bring peace, but a sword… now who was it first said that?
As some Christian commentators have pointed out, we now know from bitter experience that if a nation is not based on Christian values, it will be based on Communist, Sharia, or some other set of values inimical to human flourishing. We are indeed in a spiritually contested, not a neutral, universe in which what is not of God is opposed to God, and consequently to humanity. The values of fair play, free speech, etc turned out to be Christian values, not a rational default.
Not long ago, the Evangelical movement was not as afraid of political mass action as it seems to be now, though it ultimately proved ineffective in stopping the rot. In 1971 I took part in the Festival of Light rally in London, which the following year became the Festival for Jesus, calling for a general return to Christ as well as campaigning on specific evils of the day like pornography and abortion.
These were the days of Mary Whitehouse, Lord Longford (whose committee on pornography included Cliff Richard, willing to jeopardise his career for his faith), and Parliamentary working parties on single parenthood including folks like Rev Dr Clifford Hill. The elites and the trendsetters despised them – but then they would, wouldn’t they?
My impression is that these initiatives, which were political as well as religious, gradually turned into prayer-marches to displace territorial demons (unsuccessfully as it turned out), before stopping altogether. Pietism won the day, if not the war.
It was different in King Alfred’s day. He saw his role as a Christian king as, firstly, driving out the pagan Danes whose culture threatened that of Christian Wessex, then passing laws combining Mosaic Law with, where appropriate, the longstanding practices of his people – a body of “deemings” that evolved into English Common Law – and promoting education and learning on Christian lines.
1150 years on, the world has changed from the times when converting a pagan king meant, in effect, converting his nation (though we must not minimise the sacrificial preaching of the gospel to the people, which these missionaries gained permission to pursue). But now, as then, the inevitable truth is that the ruling ethos of a country is that imposed by the rulers.
The law of a land can no more convert the souls of its people than can the law of Moses. But it is also true that every law is, at heart, the legislation of someone’s morality. That morality will either be “the State is worthy to be obeyed above all,” or “the Caliph is worthy to be obeyed above all,” or “the teaching of Jesus Christ is worthy to be obeyed above all.” Britain, historically, from Alfred the Great onwards, chose the last, which served it well until Christ was rejected by false shepherds, and then by the sheep.
It would seem that if the nation, as opposed to the “brands saved from the fire,” is to regain what was of value in its culture, then it is the work of the churches to find the way to do it, as Christ’s body on earth. Nobody else will do it. We should certainly start by praying, “O Lord, save the nation.” But that must pretty quickly move to praying, “O Lord, how can you use your church to save the nation?” That, in turn, pretty clearly should lead to doing theoretical and practical work on how to reach the levers of power.
If that sounds sectarian, remember that St Paul was not brought before kings and emperors merely to get him out of jail: the Lord sought to win nations through converted kings as well as slaves through individual evangelism.
I don’t know if any churches are having those conversations (and it will take a lot more than members standing as MPs in a land where MPs are mere voting fodder). But let me put some thoughts out there. We don’t want a theocracy (Alfred the Great never aimed at being a Caliph). But if we don’t have a Christian nation, we will end up with a nation of some equally strong, but less benign, ideology, as is the case now, as so many young men realise.
What would you call the movement that wants to re-establish a Christian nation?
If I can read the signs (though I hope and pray I’m wrong), we also need a theology of ‘crusades’.
Do you still turn the other cheek when Islam is taking over your country? And if not, when and how do you resist when it’s our institutions being taken over under our own rules, not someone you could point a sword or gun at?
Or is there still time for the nation to repent, and for God to withhold judgement/consequences?
Ben
That indeed ought to be the theological issue of the day in the churches.
The Crusades were initiated on Augustinian “just war” principles, if not always adhering to them, usually from inadequate discipline. But they were from the start unlikely to succeed long-term – relatively small Christian forces with ultra-long supply-lines invading an entrenched Muslim empire. It would not have been so had the Eastern Roman Empire, at the time of the conquests in the 7th-8th centuries, not been weak, and apparently thoroughly corrupt.
In practice, though, liberation from Islamic rule has always been by force of arms, whether we think of Spain, southern France, Mediterranean islands, Greece or the other Ottoman territories. The original Patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople remain Muslim and almost Christian-free. Jerusalem now belongs to Israel, under pressure from all sides. Rome alone survived by fighting back, and the Protestant churches are the beneficiaries of that, like it or not.
Our problem is, rather, an unprecedented betrayal from within, which could still be remediable through a government committed to defending our people, one which “does not bear the sword in vain.” That returns me to the theme of the OP.
Of course, we can be praying for the collapse of Islam, which as David Wood, etc, say, is an eminently realistic prospect in disillusioned populations under Sharia, with access to critical examination of Islam’s claims on the internet. But again, how many churches are backing up such prayer with a programme of education in Islam, or at least the support for apologists to Muslims?
I vaguely hoped you might be seeing different tea leaves to me.
At the rate we’re going, the C of E will have managed to self-destruct over a “theology of sex” (of all things) just in time for the imams to take over the abandoned churches.
It could, of course, be the case that the best programme for churches is prayer that God will raise up the man/men for the hour from among the faithful. When such a figure arises, then the prayer and support could become more intense.
But don’t you find the tendency is for prayers to follow the Guardian’s agenda of wishing for the removal of (evil) Trump and Putin, neither of which would seem to offer a solution to the state of our nation?
Have you seen that John Cleese has joined the ranks of “Christianity as pragmatic truth on a national level”? (no relation to your latest comment).
No, but I’m not surprised after Richard Dawkins “came out.” One just prays that these guys realise that Britain did not gain its “pragmatic truth at a national level” because people liked the ideas, but because they loved Christ.
Back to the original subject:
https://x.com/DanBurmawy/status/2034479849734037623
“Islam in the West is the ring of power in The Lord of the Rings.
Everyone thinks they can handle it. They think they can use it, moderate it, integrate it, tame it, or negotiate with it.
The Ring serves only one master, and it is not the one wearing it. As long as the West thinks it can use Islam, Islam ends up using the West.
…”
Indeed… or else they simply don’t understand the ring’s true character. For example, Keir Starmer going apoplectically defensive of Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square is, at his atheist heart, simply unable to understand Islam as a system of political power motivated by religion.
To him (more than most, as he self-confessedly doesn’t read books) religion is about delusional personal conviction (following Marx’s diagnosis of Christianity), so quite apart from vote-seeking he simply can’t conceive that people would lie, rape or occupy territory for religious motivations. So he thinks he can afford to make platitudes about religious toleration and never even suspect he’s being blind-sided.
Back here again, still gnawing on the “even Christians shouldn’t be ‘nice’ where evil is concerned”.
Just came across this interesting excerpt of a speech by Netanyahu on Jesus Christ & Genghis Khan:
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/2034790981149614251?s=20
(I saw you’ve posted since, but didn’t want to rehash this subject on your new post).
Netanyahu’s assumption is, I guess, that Jesus is the archetypal Quaker pacifist. There are certainly difficulties in reconciling political violence (as in “the magistrate does not wield the sword in vain”) with “Turn the other cheek.”
But on the specific issue (and relating to Jewish biblical Messianism), Jesus first came as the Suffering Servant, the Messiah-like-Joseph (to cite David C Mitchell), whose sacrifice atones for sin and whose example Christians classically follow. Like Joseph in Egypt, he rises from the pit and from suffering to be elevated to the highest position (in this case at God’s right hand).
But his return is as the Davidic Messiah, the conquering king, routing the enemies of his people in judgement.
I read the difference as both submission to suffering, and warfare, as having their place in God’s salvation plan. We are to be willing to suffer, but that does not mean making it a masochistic way of life.
Netanyahu should remember that it was in the name of Christ that thousands risked all in the 12th century to liberate Jerusalem from the “Saracens.” Though to be sure, the Jewish population may not have been the main beneficiaries of that!