British Christian Nationalists will hold a conference this weekend under the title ‘Make Great Britain Christian Again’.

I do not think they can make Britain Christian again – because Britain has never been a Christian country, in the sense of a country based on the teachings of Jesus. Nor has anywhere else.

Racist speakers

The conference is not merely conservative, either in a theological or political sense. It is a solidly far-right event, with speakers who are out-and-out racists with views bordering on Fascism.

Speakers include clergy from fringe right-wing denominations such as the Confessing Anglican Church. Organisers include Brett Muphy, the priest of the church at which the conference will take place – Emmanuel Church in Morecambe. Murphy says that he takes being called “far-right” as a “badge of honour”. He wants an authoritarian government that will ban LGBTQ Pride marches and the wearing of hijabs.

Other speakers include Pentecostal minister Chris Wickland, an ally of racist hatemonger Tommy Robinson. Wickland argued recently that white people are being “ethnically cleansed” in the UK. A last-minute addition to the speakers’ list is ‘Young Bob’, an infamously far-right social media influencer.

Christian heritage

When do these people think that Britain was Christian? When it was the world’s leading participant in the transatlantic slave trade? When England was conducting pogroms against Jews? When crusaders were killing innocent people in the name of Christianity, or imperial forces were stealing land while millions lived in poverty back home?

Christianity inspired many people to resist such things. Jesus was an inspiration for many people in Britain’s history who opposed the rich and powerful and brought about change.

There are many aspects of Britain of which I am proud. We are fortunate to have a degree of democracy and relative freedom of speech and religious liberty. We have these things because our ancestors campaigned for them, not because the rich and powerful kindly handed them down to us. In many cases, Jesus’ teachings have influenced British history not by forming the basis of the establishment but by encouraging grassroots movements for change.

No such thing as a Christian country

People at the conference this weekend can search their Bibles in vain for any reference to a Christan country. The Hebrew Bible – which Christians tend to call the Old Testament – includes God’s guidance to the ancient Israelites on running their country. To try to transfer this across to a “Christian country” is historically nonsensical and deeply anti-Semitic.

The New Testament tells the story of how Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God – a very different sort of kingdom to all the powers of this world. The authorities of the Roman Empire, who crucified Jesus, were defeated when God raised him from the dead, showing that all the powers of violence and sin and oppression cannot defeat the power of God’s love and grace. 

A different message

I am pleased to be one of a group of concerned Christians who will be praying outside the far-right conference in Morecambe at the weekend. Some will engage in conversation with those attending, as well as with passers-by. We will seek not to dehumanise anyone, and to remember that Jesus urges us to love our enemies. We will be on social media, to ensure that the far-right distortion of Christianity is not the only message that is heard.

In one of the earliest books of the New Testament, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3,28).

It is that message of God’s inclusive, liberating love that we will be proclaiming outside this far-right conference this weekend.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Please feel free to add a comment or contact me if you would like more information about the issues or events mentioned above.

My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.