A Christian Nation?

Assuming the media’s reporting of it is to be taken at face value, why has David Cameron’s remark about Britain being a Christian nation unsettled so many? Probably for two reasons, neither of which have to do with the remark being true or untrue, but both having to do with our ongoing neurosis about the subject of faith in general. The first pertains to fear. When it comes to the place of faith in society, or in specific political agendas, the neurosis is by no means limited to Christianity. There are labels and tags which identify fear with other faiths as well – Islamophobia, anti-semitism and various internalised fears and prejudices which bedevil the Christian Church, as well as the spiritual heartlands of other religions. The second has to do with collective identity. Religions, including Christianity, define who we are because they shape history. Our identity, as it has been shaped by Western Christianity, is not something we can opt out of. 

For the time being, I would like to briefly look at how these two areas of collective neurosis concerning faith and religious identity play out in regard to the Prime Minister’s remark about Britain being a Christian country. I am assuming, for the sake of argument, that his remark was sincere and not a cynical attempt to reclaim the ‘grey vote’, of which a significant number are evangelical Christians.

First, there is the question of fear, specifically with regard to Christianity.  Fear operates on two levels. The first is, ironically, often the result of inadequate Christian teaching and the absence of any kind of balanced Christian formation in early life, including in those families who may describe themselves as nominally Christian. As a result of this vagueness, many people who are seeking a more substantial, and thereby meaningful, Christian faith are drawn to highly vocal fundamentalist churches where they feel secure and clear about their Christian identity. To be a ‘Christian’ in such contexts means having a particular tribal identity which stands over and against any other religious or non-religious way of understanding self and society. These churches have been growing over the past 30 years with the result that Christianity is becoming increasingly equated with fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalism gives rise to sectarianism, in attitude if not in actual practice, so it is not surprising that many people confuse sectarianism with the wider Church and fundamentalism with Christianity itself and are afraid of both. 

One of the things which disturbs many of us is the way Christian fundamentalism understands itself within a largely unacknowledged and distorted notion of judgment. For fundamentalist Christians, judgment is entirely concerned with punishment and retribution, along with an exclusively substitutionary notion of atonement which not only skews the theology of atonement and redemption, but throws into question the morality of Christianity itself (See my Making Sense of God’s Love: Atonement and Redemption SPCK). If we think of a Christian country being governed out of such an ethos, it is understandable that Cameron’s remark might resonate with this kind of thinking and thereby make people afraid. What we need, therefore, is to understand his remarks as pertaining to a different kind of fear, one which is a test of love, as we see it fully revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the Christianity which ought to define us as a nation.

Jesus promises that Christians will be known and judged by the fruits which they bear. This is where we ought to be ‘fearing’, in a healthy way, rather than worrying about an open declaration of our Christian identity causing a major rift in politics by upsetting people of other faiths (many of whom would agree with Cameron, in any case) or of no faith at all. If Cameron’s words are to be taken seriously, it is the governments we elect, and those who hold power over people’s material assets and livelihoods, who need to fear the implication of his words and of the way in which they sit uncomfortably beside the words of Jesus who told his disciples that 'by their fruits you shall know them'. It is by our fruits that we are known as a Christian nation. Those fruits consist in the extent to which governments use the power ceded to them, through democratic process, to alleviate suffering and to protect the weak and the marginalised. Merciless deportations, punitive cuts in benefits and social services set against obscene bonuses, blatant political careerism and (often dishonest) profiteering, are not the fruits of Christian faith. Governments who could have made a difference but chose to look the other way in the face of human need and suffering will surely be held accountable, both in this world and the next. 

To come back to national identity; here, the fear has something to do with being ‘taken over’. In this case one must suppose that, for some people, the signs and symbols of a bygone age and of its religious identity are still around to ‘haunt’ us. It follows that cathedrals  along with Christianity itself, are psychologically manageable as long as they remain museums. The problem comes when the life which identifies cathedrals as Christian, and may still breath into their worship today, becomes a force with which the visitor had not quite reckoned. This is not only true of cathedrals which are, it seems, experiencing something of a spiritual revival. It is perhaps even more true of tiny churches up and down our land. Some of them are centuries old. Their walls seem to ‘breath’ prayer, so that on entering them visitors are instinctively silent or speak only in whispers. 

The visitor cannot treat these ancient churches as monuments to a religion which has long since ceased to be relevant, because something is going on here. These ancient churches make their presence felt in a disturbing way. The visitor feels an irresistible pull, a falling into something like prayer because ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb.10:31) The fall involves a massive letting go of identity, and even of self, in exchange for an identity and a self which is infinitely greater. In the letting go and the falling, the visitor experiences not fear, but gratitude. It is the ‘fear’ engendered by holy places, the ‘pull’ of the Christian faith and holiness itself, a holiness which ought to be shaping our Christian nation.