Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

The mistake people made when they complained about "US culture" infecting Britain in the guise of halloween etc was thinking that Britain was a monoculture. We have always been extremely diverse regionally, language wise etc. Even "Christian culture" is extremely diverse. So what looks like an import is actually something already done in other parts of the UK.

I think it's a similar mistake people make when they complain about"multiculturalism". We have always been.multicultural. That's not the problem. The (possible) problem is the slow erasure of local practices and customs. Or the homogeneity of stories/rhymes caused by TV etc. But that's not something that's driven by immigration. It's more the way modern technologies are smooshing everything together into greater and greater local, regional, national and international homogeneity. I can really sympathise with people who say they feel like they are losing their country. I just don't think we are losing it to immigrants.
How many versions of the magpie rhyme do you know?

You have proven my point.

Everyone is a foreigner.

Same, Scotland in the 80s. And we still take the kids out guising.

I'm not seeing much evidence of "Christian nationalism" in notable denominations, including the major UK evangelical movements. "We're a Christian country"-type remarks from Reform types largely seem to have very little to do with actual Christian practice, e.g. regular church attendance.

Humanists UK have always been anti-religious alarmists, who frequently come across as more interested in bashing Christianity than actually presenting the merits of their alternative. And there is a concerted move amongst extremists on both left and right to import American issues into the UK. If Humanists UK want to make Christian nationalism a big topic of debate in this country, that's a goal they share with the Reform hardcore, not a point of opposition to them.

All religion is a threat.

Your timescales make everyone a foreigner. We’ve been here about 12,000 years. We know very little about most of it.

Christianity came from following Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew born in Judea and raised in Nazareth. It was a development of a religion that had already been going for one or two thousand years before that. Of course it started in the Middle East. The Middle East was the one of the areas that didn’t get covered in massive glaciers - most European things start around the Mediterranean because that area had a longer time when plants could grow.

I know a lot about Christianity. I also know how much we know about the paganism of the British Isles before Christianity, with its waves of invasion from the neighbouring continent. Very little. Much less than we know about a religion that has been part of this country for at least 1,400 years and quite possibly longer.

Have you read Ronald Hutton’s books?

Middle Eastern Tin merchants wondering about the place leaving bits of old dinnerware about the place...

I dont think there is anything negative about people wanting to go to church more or an increased interest in religion itself. Its healthier than sitting alone on a computer. It might well be that people are reacting against the trend to spend less time interacting in person. That's a good impulse, and if it grows into a wider trend of people spending more time in pubs, community spaces, real.worldnthird spaces that is a good thing. Like cottage core being an online trend but also about wanting to get back to nature etc.

Yes there is a dark side to some of the way its talked about online. I think its similar to the gym-bro/ultra aesthetic targeted towards men or the cottage core stuff. Some right wing content creators are using interest in those trends/people's natural desire to become more physically healthy, get back to nature, more spiritual, more communal to push their own messages. That's how advertising works. But there isn't anything unhealthy in the activities themselves or the motivation behind it. I just think you have to seperate the two. Most people have apolitical motivations behind these interests.
I would be more concerned about people getting really interested in the idea of religion/Christianity due to feeling isolated/craving spiritual meaning/craving purpose etc but never going to church or talking in person to long-standing Christians or even just reading the Bible (and therefore not getting the things they wanted in the first place). They are quite vulnerable to dodgy online gurus.

Legal definitions aside.

Christianity was still born in the middle east. You can't possibly tell me that it wasn't.

Our islands were populated for thousands of years before Christianity came here. To me it's matter of timescales.

I think Christianity goes both ways on this, as it does with a lot of things. Chesterton claimed this was one of its strengths.

On the one hand it's clearly universalist in the sense that any person is eligible, regardless of origin, sex, race, class, criminal history, wealth, intelligence, or any other category you can think of. And the ideal Christian city is universal, of all nationalities. (This is one reason Catholicism, like Judaism and Freemasonry, have been distrusted by many national authorities.)

On the other hand there is an intense localist element. Parishes are traditionally oriented around the physical place you happen to be, with significant local control - how much will depend on the denomination of course but certainly local control by bishops even in the most centralised versions. Physical space and the natural political organisation of the human community is the real basis for life in community. Universalism is a great ideal but we can't actually live like that.

Catholics have systematised or intellectualised this relationship in the idea of subsidiarity. It's wrong for higher up parts of the hierarchy to interfere inappropriately in more local communities. (What counts as inappropriate is the question then but the principle I think stands.)

Christian nationalism is not just a mistake about those things though, I think it involves wedding religion to a national political agenda that's actually alien to Christianity. You can see it in a big way in Russia now.

One of the main reasons so many people have historically been attracted to Christianity, and particularly the poor, is because so many pagan religions were incredibly harsh. Slavery, torture, witchcraft of the nasty kind, the idea that people had to accept their fate which often meant their place in the social hierarchy, and intense tribalism, were pretty ubiquitous.

The whole idea of gentle natury paganism is largely modern romantic myth. It's more, nature red in tooth and claw, the strongest are at the top.

I am with you on the explicit politics.

However, I will say that my experience of US evangelist churches is that many of them are also involved in work taking care of the vulnerable - food banks, soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, and work with refugees and newcomers, women in crises, etc.

Their sense of these things needing to be done is separate from the idea that the state should be the body doing them, which I think many people in the UK don't quite understand.

::sigh::

The legal definition ‘of time immemorial’ in English law is anything dating before the accession of King Richard the First. Other jurisdictions don’t use a specific legal date but have a similar principle - anything existing before about a thousand years ago is indeed a British custom, or right, or claim.

We are a historically Christian country because we have been a Christian country since before the Normans invaded. And English common law would back me up.

If you want to argue that women were far more respected before Christianity, you need to explain how so many accounts have men converted by their wife or mother. If paganism was so great for women, why were the women usually converting first?

I might also point out that your argument also makes anyone of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking or Norman descent ‘born of a land far away from ours’. Certainly the Normans. If you think they bore any resemblance to our indigenous origins and way of life, then the ghosts of my Welsh ancestors would like a word…

(Mind you, they’d like a word with the Anglo-Saxons, as well. Bloody Anglo-Saxons, coming over here, stealing our land…).

Although probably getting that judgemental doesn't reflect particularly well on me.

I think the attraction for many of these people is an interest in the institution of "Christianity" than in the ideas of Christ.
The way the word "cultural Christianity" gets thrown around makes me feel slightly ill. It's feels like a way to try to add Christian moral authority to their own arguments without being behoeven in any way to follow Christian teachings that dont appeal. Its got the feeling of someone who thinks religious belief is useful, but they are far too smart themselves to believe. Hence JD Vance's disagreements with the pope. Or people shocked /annoyed that they went to a church and people there were talking Palestinians. (I know there are so many different opinions you could have on that conflict and it's causes, but praying for the victims in war/children/hostages feels like quite a normal Christian thing to do.)

I don't think this is strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s in rural Scotland we used to go out 'guising' or busking on Halloween: going round all the neighbours' houses in fancy dress and performing a song, poem etc and being rewarded with sweets, monkey nuts or money - a tradition which I think was taken to the US and was the origin of trick and treating. As for proms - we didn't call them that but there were end of term school dances where we dressed up to the nines and did lots of very energetic Scottish country dancing (at a comprehensive state school).

Yes the Romans persecuted everyone.

Our Islands were pagan.

No matter what dates.

My main point is that we are not a "historically Christian country"

And that Jews, Christians, Muslims are all born of a land far away from ours. All Abrahamic and bear no resemblance to our indigenous origins and way of life.

Also, before those middle east religious patriarchal chaps came here , Women were far more respected. Even held high.

I will never understand how people were fooled into thinking that we weren't.

Trump has ALOT in common with televangelists.

I'm not 100% sure how sending money to people for their personal enrichment relates to Christianity, but on the other hand there is a long tradition of people profiting from the church that long predates the pilgrims, so I don't think we can entirely blame America for dodgy religious practices.

Umm.. what version of history have you read? The Romans who chased the Druids out were pagans. It was in 77AD. The Romans were also persecuting the Christians!

The only thing we can say about Christianity in Roman Britain is that it existed. Christianity only became the official religion of the Roman Empire about 80 years before the Romans left, so I really doubt they had much time to force mass conversions.

The conversion of Southern England happened in the 600s and initially consisted of about 40 people. The conversion of Northern England, Wales and Scotland did involve small boats … from Ireland.

There are modern Druids, but they’re a pale version of the original. For some reason modern people tend to frown on having their entrails wound about an oak tree or being knocked on the head and dumped into a bog.

( I can see why the church have embraced Trans as it suggests believers think your soul and body are separate entities)

Most churches do NOT encourage Dualist heresy of any stripe.

I quite agree. Absolute misogynist nonsense. I expect nothing else from this poster tbh.

I don't think that in this country the threat to women comes from politicians or religious groups of any kind.

But on the internet young men are encountering some very regressive attitudes to women and sadly it will be younger women who feel the effects of this. This hidden radicalisation is much more frightening to me and it is still very much under the radar.

I'm not just talking about the Andrew Tate effect but also about the Catholic 'rad trads' whose message can be very seductive to young men and who are beginning to have influence here in the UK.

I could get all philosophical here but I'll restrain myself and just say -

the version of Christianity I was brought up with, in a very observant family, was about my neighbour is all mankind; about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; about inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me; about for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in.

I don't recognise the Christian part of a lot of this 'Christian Nationalism'..

Shame on you.