RIP Christian Britain (596-2024AD)

Saint Augustine of Canterbury landed on British soil in 596AD with the commission to bring the island to the Christian faith. Preceded by numerous earlier ventures and complemented by the mission efforts of monks from the Celtic tradition reaching down from the north to eventually meet Augustine’s endeavors from the south, England was successfully converted by the end of the seventh century. So quickly did the faith take deep root in the culture that when the Danes began to invade in the late 800s AD, it was they who converted from Norse paganism to Christianity, rather than the other way around. From that time on England, and with it the whole of Britain, has arguably been the world’s preeminent Christian nation. From Alfred the Great and Richard the Lionheart to Wycliffe and Tyndall, from a messy Reformation to the Puritan reformers, from Knox and the Scots Worthies to Whitefield, Wesley, and the Methodist revivals, from the Salvation Army to the commencement of the modern missions movement spanning an Empire on which the sun never set, Britannia didn’t just rule the waves of the sea, it controlled the tides of the global religious climate. Even the USA, today’s epicentre of Christianity, is the child not of a vague ‘European’ Christian history, but of an explicitly British one.

The demise of Christian Britain has been of the long, slow, rattling kind, caused by multiple illnesses and injuries over the course of a century, and as such determining an exact time of death is a challenge. But yesterday’s election seems like as good a time as any. 

Not that the result did the killing. Many Americans bemoan the two party system as lacking sufficient alternatives, but Britain has no alternative at all. 

When the ‘Conservative’ party came to power almost fifteen years ago, Britain had no same-sex ‘marriage’, Blair and Thatcher had professed what appeared to be sincere Christian faith (Blair’s being far more questionable due to his overt Marxist tendencies), a devout monarch in Queen Elizabeth, and a Muslim population only half the size it is today. Even when David Cameron stepped aside following Brexit in 2016, the potential leadership candidates included numerous apparent Christians such as Andrea Leadsom, Stephen Crabb and, the eventual victor, Theresa May. At this point, many believers perhaps may have felt that their interests would no longer be trampled underfoot as they had been by recent administrations. But they were wrong, and soon May was ousted in favour of notorious philanderer Boris Johnson, who was similarly elected with the promise of a more conservative direction and similarly failed, before being removed in a party coup and replaced by outsider Liz Truss. Truss did in fact attempt to be slightly conservative, offering a minuscule tax reduction for the first time in living memory, and was therefore immediately also ejected in another coup, this time orchestrated by the Bank Of England, and replaced with the hugely unpopular establishment pick, Rishi Sunak. Now in 2024, Britain finds itself captive to woke ideology as much as anywhere in the world, with its highest tax burden since the Second World War, having entire cities dominated by increasingly radical Islam, under a King beholden to Davos and who wanted to call himself the ‘protector of faith’ (in general) as opposed to ‘the Faith’, and with no political alternative to call on.  

Indeed the new Labour government will only do actively and by design what the Conservatives did passively by allowing the Blair-formed quangos and corrupt civil service to continue to hold all the actual power. The fact that this election was not an endorsement of Labour was demonstrated by the appallingly low turnout. New Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, is a ‘grey man’ in a grey suit, someone whom nobody has ever heard say anything interesting and inspiring the love and trust of absolutely no-one including in his own party; though he is clearly an adept political operator to have risen to such heights despite possessing zero talent or charisma. But he needed neither to win this election; Labour’s crushing victory is simply a judgement on the Tories for failing to do what they were elected to: save the British economy and culture. Pride, greed and incompetence caused them to do the exact opposite, and their destruction is long overdue.

From a religious perspective, the choice in this election was between a Hindu and an atheist Prime Minister, with neither party even mentioning the Christian history and culture of the nation, never mind promising to defend or restore it. Considering that the mayor of London is a Muslim, as was the First Minister of Scotland until his resignation just a few weeks ago, and the streets of London have been rammed with pro-Hamas demonstrations with regularity for months, and the end of any semblance of Christian rule was already a done deal prior to yesterday. The axe was already falling, and whether it was in a hand wearing a blue glove or a red one would have made no difference. 

So what can British believers expect over the next five years of Labour leadership? Well, more of the same, but quicker. Expect abortion up until birth, euthanasia to be introduced, ‘conversion therapy’ and ‘hate speech’ to be prosecuted, greater drug legalisation, laxer penalties for criminals, increased Islamic immigration and special status granted to this religious sect, and further anti-white and anti-Christian discrimination. All of this will be endorsed as ‘compassionate’ by the abominable Church Of England establishment under the leadership of Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, whose denomination and those like it will continue to slide into oblivion.

(Of course, decades of moral decay and church decline had placed Christian Britain on life-support, something we could unpack at length, but at this point we’re just figuring out who pulled out the plug.)

Are there any signs of life in all of this?

Not really. Nigel Farage represents a Trumpian figure, but without the strong evangelical base to hold him to any sort of account. He mentioned Christian culture during his campaign, but his argument against Islamic immigration is based on LGBT rights, and though his rhetoric led to Brexit, he is a disorganised politician who only entered the electoral fray with a few weeks to go, and he is overseeing a disorganised party, as a result of which he and they have repeatedly proven themselves incapable of making a big impact in a general election. 

Northern Ireland, my homeland, remains the most solidly Christian province not only in the United Kingdom, but arguably in the whole of Western Europe. More than half of its inhabitants claim to be practising Christians, and regular church attendance is roughly triple that of England, Scotland and Wales. Furthermore, in my experience, our pulpits are much stronger than the Mainland, and we lack the deeply ingrained British need to be polite which prevents many Christians across the Irish Sea from standing up on anything perceived to be controversial. But we remain under the thumb of Westminster, with a population of less than 2 million and with our own political monsters in the Marxist Sinn Fein party and the woke progressive Alliance party uniting to introduce all of the above ailments to the province. As an Ulster separatist, I believe Northern Ireland’s best chances lie outside of both the United Kingdom or a United Ireland, and if some believing British (and Irish) Christians moved here to help us fight our battles, reach the lost, and extricate ourselves from the godless leadership both across the water and to the south, we could perhaps carve out a small area in the region where the light of the world is still somewhat visible. Nonetheless, the chances of ‘Our Wee Country’ making much of a political dent on the UK as a whole are slim-to-none. 

However, I hold to an optimistic eschatology, and believe this will somehow be resolved in the long term. To quote the TV series ‘New Girl’, “Without ash to rise from, the phoenix would just be a bird getting up.” There is a great story to be told here, and it is my conviction that in generations to come, Brits will look back on this era in their history as a darkness overcome by great heroes of the faith, many of whom are perhaps yet to be born. 

Nonetheless, the next few years are set to be a bumpy ride for Christians on these islands. We’d best strap in.