James Orr, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity, was last month named as an advisor to Nigel Farage (US Vice-President, J D Vance regards Orr as his “British sherpa”).
This follows the defection to Reform by Danny Kruger, perhaps Parliament’s most committed Christian thinker .
Christian nationalism, Christian faith with national identity and national purpose, appears to be creeping ever so slightly into Britain. These ideas are almost all imported from the USA, where Christianity is used widely as the source and justification for much of the current political agenda. The worry, or hope, depending on your point of view, is that similar developments will follow here too.
I disagree with this Christian nationalist approach -I’m not sure one can call it a philosophy.
I consider JD Vance’s endorsement of Ordo Amoris – the concept of ordered love which justifies putting self, family and friends before others, -to be incompatible with biblical teaching (the good Samaritan immediately comes to mind). This ‘ordering’ justifies the America First foreign policy, which has seen severe aid cuts to some of the world’s most vulnerable, and threats of abandonment to some of America’s closest democratic allies.
That said, I’m not too concerned: Religion no longer has the same political resonance in Britain as it retains in the USA. I just don’t see it catching-on here.
In my experience voters are simply not swayed by political offerings presented as Christian and are not attracted to parties or candidates who make their explicit Christianity central to their campaigns. When Ram Gidoomal ran for Mayor of London for the Christian People’s Alliance in 2000, he achieved a share of just 2.4% of the total votes cast. The party’s share only decreased further in the two subsequent London mayoral elections, before they ceased standing.
Christian politicians would need to be united to be able to affect change in any way, but I’d be hard-pressed to recall a division in the Commons on moral issues, let alone on legislation more broadly, where Christian members of Parliament haven’t divided almost equally on either side.
My advice to Christians who are interested in entering politics has always been to join the party which best matches their outlook, and to use their Christian influence within it.
I meet for a weekly Bible study with parliamentary colleagues, irrespective of party, and we get along just fine. Were religion to have a more prominent role in defining our politics, I doubt that such meetings would remain so good tempered. There is something very unpleasant and divisive about politics currently in the USA.
The Labour Party owes much more to Methodism than it does to Marxism, and I consider myself a ‘Church and King Tory’: If a Christian nationalist movement did rear its head in the UK, it won’t encompass a majority of Christians, and I am not convinced that it would really be Christian at all.