Is Britain a Christian Nation?

A controversial discussion on all sides.

Raising the question

The inspiration for this article was a video posted on X of a 20-minute-long exchange between controversial national treasure Katie Hopkins and a Mohammedan activist with a grudge.

Most of the activist’s conduct was simply intended to prevent Katie from speaking to her audience. Katie was dauntless and continued. But amongst the barbed comments, baseless claims, and attempts to physically intimidate, one little exchange stood out. It is this all-to-brief moment of clarity that I wish to discuss. It went as follows:

Katie: “If Islam is so great, why are you in my country?”

Mo: “This is not a Christian Country, number one, it is a secular country. It is not governed by Christian rules.”

Katie: “This is a Christian country.”

We must first acknowledge that Katie’s question — If Islam is so great, why are you in my country? — went unanswered. What followed was a deflection to avoid discussing either the issue of whose country this is or whether Islam is, in fact, great. The deflection focussed on the nature of Britain. Is it a Christian country or a secular one? I find this a fascinating subject and I now wish to examine the question: Was Katie right? Are we a Christian country?

Looking at Our History

This immediately gets a little tricky, for the foundations of Christianity in Britain have been almost totally obscured by later depositions of belief. It was the third-century Celtic Church that led the charge. This was highly ascetic in character and it derived its beliefs from the early apostolic church. For example, it calculated the date for Passover (Easter) using the biblical method - the fourteenth day of the first month - rather than the method prescribed by Rome. This may seem a technical point but it points to a different worldview from the later Roman church.

The Celtic Church contributed to the conversion of the Picts and the Anglo-Saxons. It was generally replaced by the Roman Church from the 7th Century onwards. It survived in Wales until the 11th century and in Scotland and Ireland until the 12th.

Next came the Roman church, all across the West it proclaimed itself as universal. It was distinctly different from the early apostolic church, to the extent that one wonders whether the church converted Constantine or he converted the Church. It was hierarchical, structured, powerful, and rich. In contrast, the early church was loosely organised and disinterested in material wealth or secular authority. Things had changed fundamentally.

Waves of monastic zeal swept both Scotland and England. The church was endowed with huge lands, and was integral, even central to the political, agricultural, industrial, intellectual, and sometimes even military life of Great Britain.

British thinkers such as John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and John Wycliffe greatly influenced the theology and philosophy of the Church despite it being centred on Rome and on Italian thought to a substantial degree. Wycliffe, who turned to bible translation late in his life, is credited with the first English bible translation and the memorable quote (later stolen by a blood-soaked American politician):

This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Wycliffe was an early portent of the huge disruption that would be the Reformation. Once again, Christianity in Britain changed fundamentally. This time, even more so than when the Roman Church replaced the Celtic, the nations that made up Great Britain followed distinct paths.

In England, the transition was top-down and led by King Henry VIII, for political and financial reasons and to further his search for a male heir. In Scotland, things were quite the opposite and a bottom-up revolution against the established order resulted in the National Covenant in 1638. Out of this maelstrom of rival ideologies came Anglicanism in England and Calvinist Presbyterianism in Scotland. And, all across the land, non-conformists — Anabaptists, Brethren, Puritans, Methodists, Quakers, and Glassites —argued for what they considered authentic Christianity and thus added their unique insights into the mix of ideas that made Britain.

Thus, it’s far from straightforward to establish what “Christian” denotes in the context of this question. But let me, with all humility, try to outline the main characteristics of that most diverse category, the British Christian. He or she sees the world in the following ways:

• God is active in human affairs and his plan for his creation is a work-in-progress.

• God is the Christian God of the bible.

• Human service to God is essential and involves hard work, discipline, and personal excellence. It is manifest as much in individual uprightness and industry as in charity and piousness.

• Extravagance, opulence, and self-indulgence are to be viewed with suspicion and generally shunned.

• Sacrifice for the family and community is hard-wired into the British Christian mindset.

Against this complex and varied past, and in conflict with the worldview summarised above, secularism has risen. My next task is therefore to attempt to explain that transformation.

Considering the rise of Secularism

The origins of British secularism go back to the 17th Century and Deism. Deism views God as a creator who is entirely disinterested in, and uninvolved with, his creation. It is a subversion of Christianity that substitutes human reason in place of God’s revelation. It, in effect, relegated God to a footnote and placed the human intellectual at the centre of the story.

By the 18th Century Deism was the dominant belief of the European educated elite and it formed a key underpinning in the American rebellion. Of the American founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many more, were deists. It could be stated that America was founded by deists, one nation under a clockwork god.

But Deism was a fluid and uncertain belief, whose adherents tended to be obscure, ambiguous, and erratic when describing the main tenets of their faith. They both frequently changed their beliefs and often held inconsistent or even conflicting views. For example, American founding father James Madison was considered to be a deist, yet later in his life he wrote:

Belief in a God All Powerful wise and good is so essential to the moral order of the World and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources.

Like contemporary “Cultural Christians”, the deists of old saw the huge benefits of Christian belief whilst considering that belief beneath their dignity.

The next step in secularising the country came from another wayward child of Christianity — The Enlightenment. And, from the vast and mixed inheritance we have from enlightenment thought, I here intend to cherry-pick one particular strand that was most essential to the rise of secularism. That begins with the geology developed by Hutton and Lyell.

James Hutton first attacked the biblical scope of time, stating:

The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.

Building on his work, fellow Scot, Charles Lyell wrote his three-volume “Principles of Geology” in the early 1830s. This succeeded in establishing the doctrine of uniformitarianism — the assumption that the slow gradual processes observable today applied at all times in the past. It contrasts with catastrophism, which maintains that the earth is largely shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events.

In brief, Lyell maintained that

The present is the key to the past

… whereas the adherents of catastrophism held the opposite, that the past is the key to the present. Lyell’s book received a lot of criticism at the time for its a priori approach, and since for its incompatibility with the geological record, but it was, and remains, the dominant mainstream idea in geology. And, it had a huge influence on the ideas of the next link in the chain, Englishman Charles Darwin.

Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” was first published in 1859. It took the long ages of Hutton, the uniformitarianism of Lyell, and added natural selection to explain the complex and varied natural world in a manner that was entirely materialistic and had no need for a creator God. Hugely controversial then and now, it is viewed as folly by some and genius by others. The pros and cons of his position are a matter for another article. The salient point here is that Darwin’s ideas, and the acceptance of those ideas by the educated elite, changed the culture. As, atheist, Richard Dawkins later said:

Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

But through all this intellectual turmoil, the country remained essentially Christian in character. The church and churchmen were at the heart of the Enlightenment enterprise. In Scotland, the two major factions — the Evangelical Party and the Moderate Party — were both orthodox Christian in their views. Nevertheless, a basis had been established for a later transformation of British society. And that basis was twofold: the undermining of confidence in the historical accuracy of the biblical record and the adoption of an epistemology that specifically excludes revelation from the Lord.

The change took time to manifest. Two world wars were endured, and the empire passed into history, all before the dam broke. Let us take membership of the Kirk, the Church of Scotland, as a proxy. It reached 25% of the entire population by 1880, long after Hutton, Lyell, and Darwin, and stayed at this level until 1960. Since 1960 the decline has been relentless and linear. In around 2041, given the current trajectory, the membership will reach zero. It has been a great falling away.

This is mirrored by a similar decline in the role Christianity plays in the cultural and political life of the nation. In my lifetime the experience of children in school has been massively secularised; there are no more prayers and hymns in class. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has gone from being televised to being ignored and irrelevant to most. A creeping secular assumption has taken hold of public life.

And, just like the deists, this new ideology is confused and confusing. Whilst holding itself to be scientific, it has moved against scientific empiricism - replacing such immutable characteristics as sex with fluid and vague concepts like gender. It has embraced the gnostic religion of Woke Marxism whilst opposing religion (Christianity) as a mere superstition. It has allied itself with political Islam, in the name of diversity, while simultaneously imposing totalitarian thought control in our Universities and public institutions, crushing diversity of thought. It is dominant in our democracy and yet unpopular. It claims to be enlightened but topples the symbols of the Enlightenment.

Secularism’s confession of faith is the communist manifesto and its apostles are green-haired activists. It claims to usher in utopia but acts only to destroy our national heritage. As American Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly said, it seeks to imagine

What can be, unburdened by what has been.

It is will-o'-the-wisp. Everything and nothing. Always unclear, always moving, often deceptive. Thus, the following is my personal and current brief summary of British Secularism, yours may be very different.

The mainstream view in secularism holds that:

• An atheist worldview must be employed in the public square, but almost any form of spiritual belief is allowable in private.

• Organised Christianity must be reduced to a form of social work. Anything more is judgemental and hateful.

• The state grants rights and entitlements. In return, personal compliance with the state’s edicts must be total.

• Self-indulgence is to be celebrated.

• Victimhood is to be prized and failure must be rewarded with stolen wealth and influence in the name of equity.

Comparing it all to the Biblical View

The Bible is a unique book, or rather 66 unique books, and it communicates in ways that are not to be found in any other manuscript. It is inspired by an intelligence beyond human understanding and the ultimate author is not bound by the constraints of time. It should therefore not be a surprise that the biblical view of the idea of a Christian nation differs very greatly from any idea presently circulating in the common culture of the British Isles. It is this unique perspective that I now wish to examine as a scale against which we can rate our present national condition.

The broad sweep of the biblical chronicle concerns the fall and subsequent redemption of mankind. The nation plays a vital role in all of this, but it is a troubled story, full of missteps and human failings. Nothing about it is simple or straightforward.

The narrative starts when the Lord calls out a nation as an exemplar, a holy nation, a bridgehead where he will start to overturn deception, lies, and evil on a grand, worldwide scale. This occurs in the wilderness and concerns a nation that he has rescued from bondage. It is recorded in the book of Exodus as follows:

And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;

Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:

And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the LORD commanded him.

And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD.

Exo 19:3-8

God called a people descended from one man: Israel. He made an offer; it was conditional: “if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant”. It also required consent — the express, voluntary, informed consent of the governed. No deception; no coercion was involved. The people agreed to be God’s nation and to follow his voice and keep his covenant. They agreed, and almost immediately betrayed that commitment, making for themselves a false god; an idol; a golden calf. God had called out a nation but they were backsliding and insincere.

God said…

This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.

Isa:43:21

But, in the short-term at least, it seemed that his nation would forever fail to live up to their commitment to the Lord and his prediction of their worth.

The children of Israel at this time were governed by the Lord via judges. It was a very minimal government indeed and often involved the people being inspired to cast off their sins, reject evil, and straighten-up. For a generation or so this would work and then the next falling away would occur. The very people the Lord chose as his nation continually failed to follow the path he set for them.

Clearly, that nation concluded, it was the system that was to blame. If only they had a human ruler like other nations, then they themselves would not need to discern right from wrong. Instead, they could just obey orders — that would fix things. So the people demanded a King.

…now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

1 Sam 8:6

The prophet Samuel saw that this was folly.

And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

1 Sam 8:6-7

And the Lord warned them what a King — human government — would mean. Theft of property via taxes, forced labour, exploitation, war, and loss of freedom, in short, the Road to Serfdom. The people were warned what would happen. But they ignored the warning.

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;

That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

1 Sam 8:19-20

In a previous article “Fear Not” I described this decision as follows:

They rejected rule by God and by God's law, not because this made them free, but because they could not shoulder the responsibility that it places on every man and woman: to make judgements, decisions and commitments; to stand—alone, if necessary—for the truth and for justice. They rejected God because being ruled by a man, and being told what to do, was easier. They did not want the law of God, a law that they would need to place in their hearts and to defend. Instead, they wanted a ruler to think for them and to fight their battles. Slaves they had been, and slaves they still were in their hearts.

It is noticeable that God respected their decision, even though he knew it was one they would later regret. Consent, and voluntaryism, is at the heart of this relationship. Not coercion or force. And He warned them. Once again they had full information before they made their decision.

The kingly line of rulers that Israel got was a mixed bunch. Some were (mostly) good, some turned from evil when adversity struck, and some were entirely hostile to God and warred against His servants. All taxed and exploited the people to a greater or lesser extent, usually greater. The most famous of all, Solomon, taxed to the max. So much so that, when he died, the people sought a lighter burden. The nation split apart when Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, puffed up by pride, and by the advice of ‘experts’, decided that more, not less tax was what he would impose. The tax revolt saw ten of the twelve tribes leave and form a separate nation called Israel. Only two tribes remained and this tiny rump nation was named after one of these; Judah, and was known by the contraction “Jews”.

The first time the word Jews is mentioned in the King James Bible, the Jews are at war against Israel. They became two distinct nations and their histories from this point onwards are divergent and distinct. Although mainstream culture considers them one and the same, the biblical record does not.

The House of Israel was conquered in 720’s BC after a long siege by the Assyrian Empire. They were transported north and later continued further into unoccupied lands. They became known as the Scythians and the Parthians amongst other names.

750 years later, historian Josephus described their condition:

There are but two tribes in Europe and Asia subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, not to be estimated by numbers.

History knows this immense multitude as the Scythians. They formed the core of the Germanic tribes which flooded into Europe and which formed the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Scots, the English Saxons, the Normans, and the Picts all trace their ancestry back to the Scythians

The declaration of Arbroath records the national Origin of the Scots as follows:

…we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. It journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage peoples, but nowhere could it be subdued by any people, however barbarous. Thence it came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to its home in the west where it still lives today.

Now, all of this is very controversial and is disputed by many, including many Christians. The attacks on this position are generally unscholarly and abusive, like so many attacks upon Christianity, and we do not have time to explore or defend the case here. Rather, we must simply recognise that the biblical record is that the ten-tribed nation of Israel, who received God’s promises of great national wealth, were removed towards the north, to the areas from where the Scythians then arose.

So, if the British are indeed the Scythians, and the Scythians are indeed Israel, then this makes us one of the original nations chosen by the Lord. It means that our ancestors also rejected God’s government, laws, and covenants. It is an interesting angle on our current backsliding to conclude that it is merely one in a long line of such national follies.

But however wayward and unreliable our nation might be, the Lord’s word has not abandoned us.

Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.

Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the LORD.

Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion:

And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.

Jer 3:12-15

Forgiveness following repentance is on offer to the nation just as it is on offer to the individual Christian. And the description of Israel as a wife to the Lord is an exact repeat of the relationship between Christ and the Church. More on this later, but now back to biblical history:

Despite having the example of her sister nation’s national defeat, Judah also abandoned the Lord and met with similar defeat and exile. In her case, it was to Babylon in around 598BC. This exile would last 70 years.

Judah was restored to her lands and to Jerusalem by the conquering Babylonian King Cyrus the Great and rebuilt the Temple originally constructed by Solomon. This was the temple where Jesus taught and where he clashed with the religious establishment.

Around 40 years after Christ had prophesied that…

And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

Mat 24:1-2

…the temple was destroyed utterly by the besieging Roman army. The whole city was destroyed and Rome celebrated its destruction by erecting the triumphal Arch of Titus.

Christ called individuals to repentance. They became the called-out ones, the Church. These people were loyal to the Lord unto death. At first, they were all from the nation of Judah, but soon they came from all the nations. Just as in the case of the nations of Judah and Israel, the relationship between the Lord and the Church was that of a husband and a wife, joined by a covenant.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Eph 5:22-25

Why the similarity? The answer is that those in the church who are not also descended from the nations of Israel and Judah are joined to Israel, adopted if you will. In the Bible, a tree is a metaphor for a nation and olive oil is a symbol of anointing with the holy spirit. Thus the apostle Paul uses the metaphor of the olive tree for Israel, God’s chosen nation. Speaking to believers from other nations, he used the gardening analogy of grafting-in.

For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.

And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;

Rom 11:16-17

And what of those in Israel who did not believe and who were broken off from the nation? They are those who “say they are Jews and are not”. What is shown here is that it takes more than lineage to be part of God’s nation. It takes commitment to the truth and a willingness to follow the Lord’s commandments and example. What happens to those who were born into Israel or Judah and who reject God?

And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.

For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?

Rom 11:23-24

Thus, there is a path to national repentance available to our wayward nation. This is the path that biblical prophesy foretells that our people will follow, but only after great trouble and distress (a Great Tribulation) and the return of Christ. The biblical term for this is atonement, and it has been predicted in the observance of an annual sacred day for as long as there has been a people of God. The turn-around in our people’s relationship with God will be spectacular:

And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob

Rom 11:26

As the prophet Hosea accepted his whore of a wife when she repented and returned to him, so shall it be with Israel, the wife of the Lord:

And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.

Rom 9:26

At the very end of the prophetic narrative, a New Jerusalem is created, the magnificent seat of God’s restored government on earth. What is striking is that the nation of God remains central even then:

And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;

And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.

And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Rev 21:10-14

So foundations of the government shall be the Gospel, but the gates through which all the nations of the earth shall enter will be the twelve tribes of Israel, God’s nation of priests. At long last our people will be that Christian nation that our ancestors promised they would be and the Lord predicted they would be.

An inescapable conclusion

Britain has for centuries had the Christian Gospel as a central foundation of our national experience and national dialogue. Despite this, we have, like Israel of old, been a backsliding nation, prone to waywardness and wantonness.

The most recent flirtation with false Gods in groves and woods has been what we call the secular state. It has sought to replace Christianity with an uncertain amalgam of deism, atheism, scientism, and socialism. Such confusion cannot stand and the Islamic activist who opposed Katie Hopkins knew this. He referred to the triumph of secularism as his means of moving the conversation off the rock that is Christ. He instinctively knew that in any discussion on religious matters, Islam could not prevail against genuine Christian faith, but could easily overcome the conflicted and insincere mess that is secularism. The deflection visible in the conversation was not cleverness but fear.

So, then, is Britain a Christian nation? Historically yes, we were called out for a special and holy purpose. We have fluctuated over the centuries between forgetting God and remembering our first love. Through much of our recent history, the Christian Gospel infused our national life and inspired and directed much of our national greatness. More recently, we have entered into one of our (all-too-common) interregnums when backsliding and wantonness have ruled in place of Christ.

But the future, as laid out in God’s word, is clear. We will be, once and for all, reunited with our Lord. We shall be a nation specially set aside for a holy purpose. Through our nation shall the knowledge of the Lord be spread across the globe, we shall be willingly engaged in that great work that will see all nations come to know God. So significant is the role laid out for our nation, that the gates to God’s seat of government, New Jerusalem, will bear the names of our tribes, just as its foundations bear the names of the apostles.

Are we a Christian nation today? We are a fallen nation today, but our Lord has not abandoned us, With great tenderness he will gather us in. We will, at his return, become reunited with him. It is, as the final line of the 23rd Psalm says:

… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Although I prefer this rendered in Scots:

And at the hither end, I will dwell butt and ben wi the Lord, aye and for aye