Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

Whenever I see these descriptions I recall CS Lewis who was, by the by, not a fundamentalist:

” am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell….but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to..”

The thing about "cultural Christianity" is that when people do describe it, all the things they describe rely on certain things being done by other people. Not on the absence of other religions. So of course if you send your children to Sunday School they will grow up with that experience. If you don't, they won't. But Sunday School also relies on other people running it. And all the other things described:

• Visiting Church fetes - requires volunteers running those fetes
• Church weddings and funerals. Requires the vicar but also requires the upkeep of the church for those events

Etc etc. None of those things rely on their not being Muslims. But when some people talk about protecting "cultural Christianity" they don't mean by volunteering at church.

Eg. You have Kemi Badenoch who describes herself as a "cultural Christian" saying
A typical Liberal Democrat will be somebody who is good at fixing their church roof and – you know – people in the community like them
This is meant to be an insult!
And then later she talks about how she is a"cultural Christian" from growing up in Nigeria where people are very religious. But she is also sort of quite disparaging about those people themselves. She gives the impression she thinks she's cleverer than them.

Like I said earlier, there is a kind of superiority from these kinds of people, which is far worse than from a straight up atheist. They rely completely on people who either believe strongly in Christianity or at least are prepared to put the hours in "fixing the church roof"/organising choirs but they want to feel superior to them and they don't seem to want to acknowledge their reliance on them. Instead there is a nagging sense that as church attendance drops they might lose the things they like. But they want to blame Muslims/immigrants for that gradual change in culture. It feels quite dog in a manger. Muslims by and large are not stopping people bringing up their children as Christians or attending church or maintaining church buildings.

There's nothing wrong with being a cultural Christian. But it is a passive position (which is also fine) not everyone needs to be involved in everything. You don't need to believe in Christianity or actively participate to enjoy being part of a culturally Christian country. I think if you want to claim that that passive position is under threat though, then you can't also mock those that fix church roofs etc. And you can't blame immigrants.

It's the same for other stuff too. If noone volunteers for cricket, village cricket will die. If noone shops at the high street the high street will die. The last government smashed funding for libraries so many are only kept open by volunteers. Who are constantly disparaged for being middle class/woke. Neither of those things are true.

It's like me not bothering to change the oil I my car and then, when it breaks down, blaming my neighbour for washing his car every weekend.

I think the nearest thing the UK has to American megachurches is Green Pastures in Ballymena - lots of American evangelical money sloshes through Northern Ireland (or specifically Co Antrim).

https://www.ft.com/content/5df8e43f-846b-43de-80b3-d324639504fd

In an Irish context it would not be described as nationalist.

You're describing a society that has lost trust in its institutions, I'd say. The anti Enlightenment. Looking at some of these institutions, one can hardly blame them. I could make a mirror list from the 'other side' of a polarised, tribal, society who feel exactly as you describe, but with the opposing set of beliefs. I guess one could call it the accepted Orthodoxy or the Omnicause.

• Pro maskers started off clapping the NHS, kneeling at BLM marches in small UK towns, then cheered 'Trans Women are Women', fundraised for teenagers to get their genitals removed, started going on about how we must Be Kind like it was a diktat, said Trump was going to invade Canada, chanted 'From the River to the Sea' when they didnt know which river or which sea they were even talking about, then cheered Hamas, etc.

Note how much of that is.imported politics.

What isn't healthy is the tribalism. I mean, it's human. But its not helpful.

Mostly we are in the middle, muddling along.

It got monetised, basically. Marie has it upthread. Now a fixture in the retail calendar.

I grew up with these American evangelists running every aspect of my life. The whole lot of them are liars and hypocrites in my book.
i first notice this weird Christian crossover in anti vax groups friends added me to during Covid.
I wasn’t into it but was also fascinated who was in the groups, what they were saying and where it was leading, it started off with standard anti vax, not wearing ‘face nappies’ 🤮 then it was not standing near vaccinated due to ‘shedding’, then I noticed a lot of mention of good and evil and then it became god and Satan then as time went on , Katie Hopkins started to get a look in, friends I’d respected started talking about how Hopkins tells it like it is and how she shoots from the hip, then Tommy Robinson, trump, the conservative American Christians, gun enthusiasts, russel brand, the right wing, pro Israel and anti Islam and anti immigration and hatred of boat people all seeemd to conflate and have left me with a society where I don’t feel particularly safe or liked and finding it harder to know who I can talk freely to.

I think the Halloween traditions in the US and Canada actually owe a lot to the Scottish traditions, which have since adapted and changed. North America has adopted holiday traditions from all over Europe.

Yes, this is so important, and I think it's where some people have failed to understand why their arguments aren't working.

The media can say things all they want, call people whatever they want. Tell them, for example, that mass immigration benefits the economy and therefore can't be a way to suppress wages.

If people are seeing their wages being suppressed because of an over-abundance of competition, they won't believe what you tell them, they won't disbelieve their own eyes.

All that will happen is they will now believe you are stupid or dishonest.

This is what has happened to the mainstream media.

If people want more fundamentalism from the US, a good way of going about getting it would be to encourage the marginalisation of broad denominations like the CofE and Methodists. Once the US fundamentalists see the UK as an atheist state, they will want to come and evangelise us heathens to their version of Christianity. In the past, they have generally seen us as allies in need of encouraging towards a "purer" faith, rather than atheists in need of conversion. So US fundamentalism has attempted to influence UK churches rather than see the UK as a mission field for direct evangelism bypassing our existing churches.

Sorry, but does it really matter what culturally christian means?

Given that until very recently people were being killed in the UK because they were the wrong kind of 'cultural Christian', yes.

Also, I'm really not sure what mega church tele evangelist style Christianity has to do with anything I have come across in my experience of institutional British Christianity, which derives from weddings, funerals and christenings and assemblies and carol services.

Uh, you were talking about ‘our indigenous culture’ at the start of this discussion, so do you even know what your point is?

I remember it well @MarieDeGournay any apples or nuts ! The brack and a few ghost stories. One of our playmates was - gasp - a Protestant and he would visit family in the North and bring back squibs and rockets.

Then I went to England for secondary school. Asking my new classmates about their plans for Halloween brought blank looks of complete incomprehension. This was in the south East and might not apply to other parts btw. Blue Peter would have a segment every year , basically ' what is Halloween?' but nobody much cared. Then all those movies came out in the USA. And the rest is noise....lots of it.

It might have been better for the planet if we have never even crawled out of the water 🤣

Bobbing for apples was shit, I'm sorry. Basically waterboarding for primary school kids, with a bruised and woolly apple as a meagre reward.

I'm not happy at the way the dinosaurs dominated the UK 200 million years ago. They never had the right to take over from the archosaurs.

Sorry, but does it really matter what culturally christian means?

If it doesn't have anything to do with the idea that we have a culture that has a fair bit to do with christianity and that culture needs protecting from (amongst other things) immigrants from different cultures and with different religions, then that changes little or nothing. We still need a word for the idea that we have a culture that has a fair bit to do with christianity and that culture needs protecting from (amongst other things) immigrants from different cultures and with different religions.

Secondly, it is perfectly reasonable to say "I am not a christian but I like the culture that is based on a long hsitory of christianity, especially in comparison to the cultures I see in Syria and Saudi and Afghanistan and Iran. I am not going to go to church, but I am going to support minimimizing the immigration we get from places with very different cultures."

Are you a bot? Surely no real person can be this daft.

Exactly

That's what the word originally meant. It's not how it is used now.
The thing is, if you aren't sending your own children to Sunday school when you go to church etc they will have a different experience you did and might be less "culturally Christian" than you (at least by the examples you gave). Which is fine. But a lot of people link "culturally Christian" to ideas of a culture that needs to be protected. Usually from immigrants of another culture/religion. It just doesn't make.much sense for people who themselves aren't actively involved in going to church, sending their kids to Sunday School etc to worry about the fact the country is becoming less Christian in terms of culture and then blame immigration for that. It's just natural change (that might reverse on its own accord). The only way to stop it is to force parents to send their kids to Sunday school/go to church regularly. And we don't do that.

It's not you I'm criticising!

I would describe myself as 'culturally Christian'.

To me it means that I don't have christian beliefs but I was sent to a C of E school, was sent to sunday school, know quite a few hymns and biblical quotations, can more or less recite the lords prayer, celebrate christmas and easter, appreciate a nice bit of church architecture and the nine lessons and carols on christmas eve, know how to behave at a church wedding, baptism or funeral, enjoy a church fete ... Basically that I'm not a christian but I recognise that christianity runs very deep in the culture in which I grew up.

Nothing to do with moral authority.

No country on this earth is historically Christian then. Jesus wasn't born before the Druids etc And no country is historically Muslim or Buddhist.

Sorry about how long that post was.

A long time ago I started noticing that when I saw a news story about something I knew a lot about I very often perceived the reporting to be appalling. This made me think "hang on, what if they're as appalling with regards the issues I don't know about". I think that C4 piece was a perfect example, and I think that people like me who watch auditors and citizen journalists

I'd like the see them do a follow-up piece where they scrutinize the work of the "lesbian cartel" (mkr audits and mybrakesdontwork - a lesbian couple from, I believe, Manchester) in particular their work documenting the provacation and violence of antifa / trantifa / pro-palestine hard left protestors.

I have just watched that Channel 4 piece. I have heard of AY Audits I think, but never watched him.

First things first, citizen journalism is UNDOUBTEDLY a fantastic thing, IMHO, not least when it is hours of unedited footage. It is entirely reasonable for citizen jourmists to seek to monetize their content to cover their costs and money to live on if they're doing it full time. If they get rich due to popularity and the way tiktok and youtube are monetized that's not their fault.

It seems to me ENTIRELY reasonable for a journalist covering a protest to share with his audience the messages that the protestors are pushing. Not least because if people are putting out despicable messages it is good if the police and wider society is aware so we can fight back.

"Auditing" is not just about entering places, it can be done in public. 3 or 4 years of "Auditing" is precisely why, as of now, the police are much less likely to illegally infringe on people's rights of free expression including filming in public. Auditors spent years gettting illegally arrested and suing the police, and winning payouts for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment and assault. The police have finally started to get an insight into the law of the land that they are required to follow, the public have been educated on their rights, and we are freer as a result of people I regard as somewhat heroic.

5.50 - he got arrested... it would be very interesting to know the end result of that... he might be one of the more idiotic auditors, I don't know, but the good ones very rarely get arrested unless by a police officer who has made a mistake and exceeded his powers.

6.30 - I think the guy is wrong. The best auditors strike a balance. The real idiot auditors who just wind up the police unnecessarily tend not to be the most popular or long lasting (not least if they're like one guy whose name I forget now who had a habit of taking it far too far when winding up police, whilst selling drugs on the side. End result : unsurprisingly involved a prison sentence). Obviously if nothing happens the content is boring. The best auditors might gently provoke, but are not wind-up merchants. They make videos where great policing is highlighted (and celebrated by their viewers), as well as of bad cops.

There is definitely an issue with the fact that citizen journalists are often aligned to one side of an issue to a greater or lesser extent. I wish more really did do nothing more than document / and ask neutral questions. But I also think that all media is highly biased and politicized - some outfits so captured they say men can have vaginas - so I can hardly have a go at a citizen jourlist for taking a "no mass immigration" position.

Obviously if "auditors" are suspected of breaking and entry or harassment they should be investigate and (potentially) prosecuted.

Obviously I don't support filming and harassing ethnic minority kids leaving a campsite... but that seems to be an entirely separate issue - not citizen journalist or auditors, rather local people who are anti-immigration seeking to film in public (as is their right) people who they perceived to be immigrants.

9.25 - a bloke talking about auditors "setting a narrative". Sorry, but people have a right to film what they see and a right to comment on what they see. If the reality of what is happening on the streets is making people more anti-immigrant or more racist then we need to consider how to change what is happening on the streets. Censoring people (as the MSM has done for 20 plus years in terms of trying to shame, insult and silence people who are anti-immigrant) has utterly failed, because people perceive the truth to be what their eyes tell them, not what a politician or BBC journalist tells them. Trying to hide the truth will not work long term, all it will do is ensure that the explosion of anger that happens when people see what has been hidden from them will be much larger than if they'd been told the truth from day 1.

10.00 I feel sorry for her... but on the other hand if you put yourself forward for a position of power you can expect the public to challenge you when you are in public.

11.00 I am sure that policeman is right... a lot is probably misleading. But loads isn't. Unfortunately for the MSM and the police the sorts of people who watch an hour and a half of unedited footage from a protest are almost all going to trust what they have seen more than they trust the MSM or the police's account of what happened. This is just fact. I think a lot of this whole video is basically a Channel 4 hitjob on people who have big audience who trust them.

11.20 Get lost C4 - obviously incitement to violence is wrong, but so is the way the MSM have lied for years that everyone who would like a bit less immigration is a white ethno-nationalist, fascist or literal nazi, whilst women can have penises. If the likes of C4 hadn;t been so stupid and hateful themselves there would be much less of a market for alternative sources.

If the Church of England had supported Parishes better and therefor remained closer to the general population there would be fewer recruits to these more extreme sects.
We have had some dim Bishops and Archbishops. Including the nonsensical Rowan Williams who openly suggested that some of Sharia Law was a good thing for UK.
A Bishop of York not sure about the Trinity. Justin Welby the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury who tried to make a name for himself in Politics and failed to control various abusive clergy.

Yes, the old traditions lived on in Scotland and Ireland - Wales? I don't know.

Halloween derives from the Celtic festival of Samhain. It is the turning of the year, the celebration of the harvest [hence the importance of apples and nuts in traditional Halloween celebrations], the preparation for the quiet dark time of winter, and remembrance of and closeness to people we have lost through death.

That's what the traditional Halloween festivities were about in Ireland up to recently - fun and games and dressing up and going from house to house asking 'Any apples or nuts?' and then apple bobbing and eating nuts and barm brack and having a laugh about who got the 'favours', the coin or the ring or the piece of cloth or the pea, and some light-hearted 'divination' by putting hazel nuts next to the fire and seeing which one 'popped' first.
Later on there were ghost stories for the older children and the grown-ups, but that was a separate part of the Halloween celebration, it was mostly fun for the little ones.

Halloween has nothing to do with zombies, severed heads, bats, pumpkins, spiders, witches, or Wicca for that matter, cobwebs, Dracula, skeletons and all that imported stuff that increases the sale of tasteless, non-biodegradable plastic tat a hundredfold at this time of year.🙄