We need to make distinctions.
Is England a ‘Christian Nation?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, it really depends what you mean by the question. There are reasonable definitions of ‘Christian Nation’ where England, and the UK, or one of the two, fit it, and there are reasonable definitions where they do not.
This post is my attempt to very briefly explore seven different things the term could reasonably mean, and give a yes, no, or ‘it’s complicated,’ answer to the question of whether we can describe England as that. I appreciate that even choosing ‘England’ rather than the UK is potentially pejorative. I’m English, people with my family name have lived on this specific piece of rock in the sea since at least the Norman Conquest (I can track it to the Domesday book, though specific relations past the 1700s is hard) and I have a notably Saxon surname. I’m also British, but that identity is the Jonny-come-lately.
7 things we can mean by ‘Christian Nation’:
Most people in England would claim to be Christian
This was true until some point in the last decade and is not true now.
Most people in England are Church-goers
This was true until (probably) the first World War. It is not true now.
Most people in England know Jesus personally.
Stats on this are unavailable and your guess depends more on your eschatology and your view of the Medieval period than anything else. It is not true now.
It will be true one day.
England’s state religion is Christianity.
This is the case. It has been the case for over 1000 years.
England’s head of state is the head of the church.
This is the case and has been for just over 400 years. Of course, as a non-conformist, this is not a definition of ‘Christian nation’ that makes me particularly warm and fuzzy, but it clearly is true.
England has historically been Christian such that our history and customs are founded on Christianity to such an extent that those history and customs can be called ‘Christian’.
This is the one that people are arguing about now. I think, as Bijan Omrani’s barnstormer God is an Englishman has demonstrated, it’s indisputable that England has Christianity woven into every feature of our common culture and history. The foundation of the English conception of kingship arrived with Augustine of Canterbury, English laws were founded on the Bible for centuries and we still build from those foundations, our innate ‘western’ senses of what is fair and just and good are all built on and fuelled by Christianity. Everything that’s English has sprung from a Christian tree.
Of course, if you ask most English people what being English is about, they aren’t going to give you the ‘right’ answer (start talking about King Athelstan, of course), they’re going to reference something from the last hundred years that has a vague, at best, connection to Christianity. What I’m saying is that my claim that Englishness is Christian in its foundation is historically true, but the ‘felt’ Englishness of the average English person may not have much continuity with what I mean when I claim that.
England has historically been Christian such that our history and customs are inextricably linked with Christianity.
This is the question that the ‘Christian Nationalists’ (whatever that means) are putting to us: is that historical link inextricable? I wonder if this is the most meaningful definition of being a ‘Christian Nation,’ so that not to be ‘Christian’ causes you to cease to be that nation in a meaningful way.
For my sense of my Englishness, which is as tied up in the warring Heptarchy and later the unification of the ‘English’ by King Athelstan as anything that’s happened in the last thousand years, that link is inextricable. For people that live in the real world, I think that’s the big question. Is Christianity required for us to have a mooring to some kind of national identity? This is also the question that most concerns some Pastors I know, because they’re worried—with some warrant—that people who take the Bible seriously will be subsumed into a particular right wing political movement.
The thing is, I suspect we do need the faith to be authentically English, because I think everything is theological and all peoples are bound by social imaginaries. A social imaginary is the set of beliefs, customs, myths, and stories that we use to understand and describe ourselves in a communal way. That’s a fundamentally religious thing to do. Shared identity is religious. In this sense, nations can be ‘Christian’ because they can be united around a meaning-making set of narratives, theologies, and practices that are what I often just call ‘the stories we live by.’
Inasmuch as I do think a nation (or city, or tribe, or Empire) can be ‘Christian’ in this specific way, England is not Christian. She was, she will be again I hope, but the set of stories that we persist on have much Christian shape without any Christian content. In this sense England, and the UK, are ‘post-Christian’ nations. I think that’s true, though in different ways, for Wales and Scotland too. I’m not so sure about Northern Ireland, but others would have to speak with precision.
Should we be trying to be a Christian nation?
It is the inevitable result of significant numbers of people being Christians. Which is not a ‘yes.’ I’m unconvinced by attempts to attain this sort of thing politically, because what I just described a Christian nation as is not something that can be attained politically. It is attained by the telling of stories, and the living in the vein of them as they renarrate our lives.
That isn’t the same as ‘Christians shouldn’t engage in political activity,’ of course they should, we’re to ‘seek the good of the city,’ (Jeremiah 29); though we could have a good old argument about which engagements are and aren’t constructive to that end, I’m sure. We should attempt to engage politically to bring about laws that encourage human flourishing.
I think we don’t aim for Christian nations, but we do expect them to be the result of particularly fruitful long-term evangelistic success of the church. We aim to make our churches strong disciple-making outposts of the kingdom of God. That will, with mixed success, alter the imaginary in our towns and cities over the long haul. Most people don’t need to be Christians to change things, and this sort of shift has happened in England multiple times in the past. It isn’t on the immediate horizon; only the Lord knows what’s just over it.
We Distinguish
I know it’s dull, but before we get into an argument with someone online, or in your church, it’s helpful to ask enough questions to figure out if you’re talking about the same thing. You can find common ground with people you strongly disagree with about other things. It’s worth doing so.
I suspect I’ve managed to upset most people in some way in the above, but at least you know what I’m arguing for, and against.
Photo by Adrian Raudaschl on Unsplash
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