A new frontline has emerged in the fight for Christian Britain. Will the Right be outflanked? - Emma Trimble

It upsets people, not because they are ‘Islamophobic’, but because the loss of our churches inflicts a spiritual wound on us as a people.

As Fr Marcus Walker explained on X ‘Place matters for Christians because Christ became a human being with all the interconnected realities that implies […]

'The places where we worship matter because they provide the threads which bind us to our neighbours and friends and forebears and all the generations to come.

'They matter because they reflect the love & prayer, hopes & fears of generations’.

Once such places are lost, they are not likely to be regained. Materially, this loss represents the gradual erosion of the Christian heritage that forms the bedrock of our society – our freedoms, laws, institutions, and culture. It represents the subsidence of – to use a word that has fallen out of usage in polite circles – our civilisation.

What happens when foundations crumble? The whole edifice collapses. After decades of secularisation and anti-Christian sentiment, Britain is struggling to regain the forgotten language of Christianity in public life and politics.

By this, I don’t mean the woolly, progressive woo-woo that has become typical of Anglican forays into public debates. I am talking about the resurrection of a full-fat Christian political tradition that was once the common currency of English public life. After being waterboarded with multiculturalism for over thirty years, it isn’t easy to shake off the amnesia.

Inevitably, the attempt to do so has led to some clumsy back and forth over whether Britain is still a Christian country.

Reform Mayoral Candidate Laila Cunningham wrote on Twitter: ‘The opposite of secular is theocratic, and Britain is not that. We have an established faith, but we are not governed by religion. Constitutionally Christian. Governed by secular law.’ She was not quite right, but nor were her detractors.

Muslim pundits immediately pitched in, betraying their complete misunderstanding of Christianity. Roshan Salih, the editor of 5Pillars, wrote on X that to be a Christian country would mean ‘following Biblical law.

So ban homosexuality, fornication, usury, gambling etc’. Dilly Hussain wrote an extended response to Cunningham’s comments in which he – ironically – criticised the discussion for lacking ‘depth, clarity and basic political literacy.’ Like Salih, Hussain argued that the majority of ‘Christian’ countries are in fact secular, because ‘none of them govern by Biblical law.

None of them derives their legislation from Christian theology. The source of authority is parliamentary, constitutional and civil.’

This is wrong and ignorant of how Christianity views the role of government. Muslim pundits make the mistake of expecting that a Christian state must look something like a Muslim State implementing Sharia Law, but this is not the case.

Of course, there have been times in British history when Christian groups wanted to theocratically implement biblical law – like the Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the dominant line of Christian political thought in England came to reject this view.

There were two main theological reasons for this. The first is that human beings were understood as sinful, fallen creatures who were incapable of achieving perfection through their own efforts.

The second was that, while they were awaiting the coming of the Kingdom of God, in the meantime, human beings lived in a period of time called the ‘saeculum’ – the origin of secularism. Together, this amounted to the conclusion that the government should not attempt to save men’s souls.

This cleared space for the English liberties that we take for granted. It fostered a limited view of government, staving off authoritarian impulses – seen so horribly in the twentieth century – that raised hell while trying to create heaven on earth, here and now.

In other words, Dilly Hussain is completely wrong. Our law and liberties flowered from a particular theological soil. They are derived from the humility of Christian theology. Constitutionally, the authority of our parliament comes from the King, whose authority comes from God.

Traditionally, the Christian English political set-up was neither secular nor was it theocratic. Christian theology hollowed out secular space that, over time, cultivated freedom of religion and speech.

But this was distinctively Christian. What these Muslim commentators do get right, however, is that if you don’t use it, you lose it. Each of us needs to take responsibility.

To use a turn of phrase normally reserved for progressives – we need to ‘educate ourselves’. The stakes are high. Go to church!