Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

[IwantToRetire]

Article by Humanist UK, so doesn't really reflect on the impact on women although does mention abortion rights.

But I do think that our politics are far more influenced by the US, not for any deep reasons, but so much of our TV is now americanised.

And some of the fundamentalist UD christian groups have very regressive attitude towards women.

https://humanists.uk/2025/09/17/rising-christian-nationalism-a-threat-to-us-all/

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

-Christmas/Easter - the same -Carol services. Huge amount of work behind the scenes- regular practicing, parents taking their children to practice

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.

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..”

I don't think you need to live a life like Jesus. In fact, the whole point is he did some things (died for our sins) so we don't have to. But surely it's important (if you are Christian) to (at least try) to live a life according to the things he said people should do. Sure that's sort of impossible because we are all flawed. And there's different interpretations of different things he said which can contradict. But stories like the Good Samaritan, and analogies like the camel and the needle are meant to be lessons for people. And even the anecdotes about e.g. washing the feet of his friends are probably meant to be teaching by example. It's not that everyone needs to be the "son" of a humble carpenter. But there is a reason the son of god was born into a simple family not the family of a king.

So, I do think Trump, Vance et al are probably being hypocritical.

persephonia

I don't think "cultural christianity" even really need churches to exist. It doesn't need people to believe in God.

To me it is about the UK as it developed over the last 1000 years (perhaps up until post-modernism and queer theory started deliberately trying to destroy it.)

It is about queuing (if you don't treat others like you would wish to be treated why would you queue?) It is about allowing free speech even when it is offensive (turning the other cheek). It's about democracy (I would argue that the overall ethos of Jesus' alleged key messages is much more compatible with everyone getting a say than a dictator ruling by force). It's about a sense of fair play. It's about being polite.

Now whether cultural christianity could survive indefinitely with no actual christianity is another matter.

And another thing "cultural christianity in the UK is a British Christianity". A stereotypical loud and bright African Church is perfectly compatibly with British cultural christianity (whereas Islamism - extremist islam - is not), but it is not representative of British culture in the way the CoE is.

But without the moral teaching - if Christianity is just a quid pro quo were you get to heaven in return for doing x y z - its authority is completely undermined.

It loses its power through all that tacky monetisation. It was genuinely spooky before . One of my grandas was born on Halloween. He used to pretend it was Nov 1st ! I was checking other cultures names for it and there is no pagan connection in eg German speaking lands. There is no equivalent to Samhain as far as I can see. It is simply ' Allerheiligen ' or All Hallows.

They do all the witchy stuff now of course. Previously this was on May Eve in Germany.
There are still odd superstitions about May Eve here in the south west of Ireland but mostly only old people know about them. Cue Hollywood mangling of old myths.....

May Eve and May Day are still the really spooky and scary days in rural Ireland. Heard yesterday about someone who got a boundary egg curse left within the last couple of years, and someone else whose dying father held on for an extra two days until May 2nd, grimly determined but also afraid to die on the 30th or the 1st.

And Jesus wasn't just about telling people to be good. He was steeped in the Jewish scriptures and determined to literally as well as metaphorically overturn the Temple animal sacrifice system. Very much focussed on God.

But for some Fundamentalists you don't even need to do xyz to get into the Kingdom of heaven. X alone will suffice - where X = faith.

This is why it is so appealing to the far right types who think empathy is a dirty word and charity just encourages laziness.

Egg curse ! The mind boggles.

Btw @DeanElderberry if you find a dead animal on your land and suspect a curse , you must leave it at a ' meering' , that being a place where several lands adjoin. That way the curse rebounds on the evildoer. So said my grandmother anyway. Very important life hacks eh.

This. Abortion doesn’t sit right with you. Fine. Don’t have one. How dare you tell other woman what they can and can’t do? The arrogance is mind blowing.

There is nothing “evil” about abortion. What is evil are people who think like you and would rather see a woman die.

This is similar to what I said in an earlier post about the kind of Christianity I got from my very observant family- their kind of Christianity 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.

...not words that I hear springing to the lips of some high-profile Christians proclaiming their Judeo-Christian ethos.

For the record, I am now an atheist, but I still value the elements of my religious upbringing that taught me to respect other people, regardless of who and what they are.

What I learnt was that those admirable facets of Christianity are not peculiar to Christianity and are at the core of many older value systems.

For instance, in Ireland, which escaped being occupied by the Romans, a sophisticated system of social and legal structures developed which, for instance, gave rights to women which it took us millennia to get back, established rules for the care and protection of vulnerable older people and mentally ill people, and used fines restorative justice to settle disputes instead of violence.

It even had a rule to say that
If a pregnant woman craves a morsel of food and her husband withholds it through stinginess or neglect he must pay a fine.

So the ideas of justice and empathy and humanity were not brought here by Judeo-Christian religion - and let's face it they haven't been shining examples of justice and empathy and humanity themselves. These were concepts already in existence in Celtic societies, which, left to their own devices, without the intervention of the Roman Empire and Christianity, could have developed into modern, just, egalitarian societies.

We'll never know, but at least let's not continue the myth that the people living on these Islands had no morality, justice or social structures until the Romans, and then Christianity, came along and 'civilised' them.

Agree!
I think empathy is what makes us human (as opposed to machines for example). The need to disavow it is quite disturbing.

I agree. Basically I think the roots of our culture is soaked in Christianity including the questioning of it. We're part of a global Christian history. Debates have raged since it's inception. It's the back bone of who we are. It led us to the Enlightenment.

I'm an atheist but recognise religions as a 'philosophical strand'
important in the how we live question. So not a militant atheist.
I'm disturbed by the growing antagonism towards Christianity: police harassment of street preachers, what has happened to politicians like Tim Farron.
I can't remember who said it
'Humanism is Christianity with nothing upstairs' that's what make us a Christian country', the values found in the New Testament which have held communities together.