Article
Creed
Nationalism
Politics
6 min read

Love is not an executive order: what Christian Nationalism gets wrong

Fear has never been a motivator of wise, just, and righteous action.

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A protester wearing a Union Jack flag and hat and holding a cross, points while a man looks on.
Far right protesters, Portsmouth.
Tim Sheerman-Chase, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The term “Christian nationalism” means different things to different people. John Stackhouse defines nationalism as “love of one’s nation, identification with it, and special concern for its well-being” and sees nothing wrong with it from a Christian point of view. But this is not the normal way the term is used today. Rather, it means an ideology that seeks political power in order to merge Christian identity with national identity. In other words, it means Christians seeking to impose Christian values on all citizens of a nation by the force of law. 

That’s not as bad as it may sound at first glance. Everyone thinks some values should be imposed for society to function – for example, human rights, private property, democracy. In one sense, there’s nothing unusual about Christians wanting their values to become law. Everyone – Muslim, Secular, pluralist – wants the law to reflect their values. How could anyone have values and not want their nation’s laws and policies to reflect them? 

But for Christians, there’s a catch. “Christian values” include not forcing people to live Christian lifestyles who do not identify as Christian. Christian values are founded on the teaching and example of Jesus, and he was never coercive. He aimed at people’s hearts, seeking willing rather than coerced obedience. His goal was that people should follow him and live by his teachings because they wanted to more than anything else in the world, not because they would be imprisoned or disadvantaged if they don’t. The gospel is an invitation to the most rewarding and fulfilling life imaginable, not an executive order to be obeyed out of fear. 

Jesus explicitly taught that Christian politics should be different to anything else the world has ever seen: 

“The rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”  

With these words (recorded in the gospel of Matthew), Jesus set a political agenda for his followers radically different to that of every other movement, religion, institution, or nation. Where others have always used power to dominate, control, and coerce obedience, Christians are to use power to serve those under them and to pursue their flourishing. With his own life Jesus showed what this looks like. The Jews expected the messiah to be a great military leader who would rally an army under his banner, shake off the Roman oppression, establish Israel as a nation, and rule it with absolute power and authority. Instead, rather than commit any violence, he submitted to death at the hands of the Roman oppressors. 

Jesus did not mean that his followers should not seek power and influence in the world, or that they should lie down and let themselves be trampled on like a doormat. The “Christian difference” is not to be non-political, withdrawn from all engagement in worldly affairs as if God did not care what happens in the world. No: the Christian difference is twofold: (1) never to seize or maintain power through violence, coercion, lies, manipulation, or any means that supposedly justifies the ends, and (2) to use power (when we are freely and willingly given it) in service to everyone regardless of their belief or lifestyle, especially the powerless. 

A truly “Christian” nation would never try to coerce Christian behaviour from anyone. 

Christians have not always done politics this way. In the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, they have often succumbed to the temptation to do politics like the rest of the world: grasping at authority and holding onto it by any means necessary, using it to benefit ourselves and our agenda in ways that harm and oppress others. The treatment of Jews in the late medieval period is a sobering example. Jews were forced to live in ghettos and wear conical hats. They were forbidden to hold public office, to build synagogues higher than any church, or to walk in the street on Sundays. Eventually they were forcibly expelled from several European states in order to leave no impediment to the fashioning of a truly “Christian nation,” i.e., a nation with only Christians living in it. 

Today, many Christians in Western nations are engaging in efforts to fight back against world views they believe are encroaching on them – secularism, Islam, and liberalism. They want to reassert Christianity as the dominant cultural force. It seems to me that these efforts are largely motivated by fear, brought about by the decline of Christian influence. There is a strong urge to self-preservation when one feels oneself increasingly marginalized. They feel that if they don’t regain power, then all the values and lifestyle that held dear will be swept away. They must protect themselves and seek to preserve Christian values by whatever means available. They must take back control, using financial, political, and cultural capital to regain governance and re-establish Christian laws in ‘our land’. 

Yet fear has never been a motivator of wise, just, and righteous action. Fear draws our attention away from the poor and needy towards our own plight. Fear makes us strike back with a self-protective instinct. When we are afraid, we feel justified in putting our own needs and priorities first. Violent behaviour is labelled “self-defence,” cutting aid budgets is labelled prudence, and refusing admission to refugees who have lost everything and are fleeing persecution is seen as the only sane course of action in a world of finite resources. Fear drives us to seek our own advantage, something Jesus never did. Perhaps Jesus knew that fear can be the greatest force to prevent us from living a Christlike life of service. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that “do not be afraid” is the most frequent command in the Bible. 

For Christians, like me, there are better motivators for political action: things like wisdom, justice, and peace. (Dare I say love? Or is that too controversial?) But the best motivation of all is the desire to follow Jesus’ teachings and example not only once we have obtained power, but in how we seek it and how we hold onto it. 

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of a “Christian” nation, if that means a nation that acts towards people – both citizens and non-citizens – the way Jesus did (and supposing the nation was not constituted by violence in the first place – but that is another story). A truly “Christian” nation would never try to coerce Christian behaviour from anyone. It would respect people’s freedom to live and believe what they chose, and would give equal opportunities, equal benefits, and equal rights to Christians, Muslims, atheists, and Jews alike. It would use its power to serve all people, especially the most vulnerable and least able to look after themselves. It would welcome and protect any foreigner who fled there to save their life or freedom, having lost everything at home.  

Such a nation would not be characterised by fear of losing its power. It would not seek to preserve its influence by blocking non-Christians from citizenship or positions of government. If the tide turned against it, it would humbly relinquish power rather than do anything coercive to hold on to it, just as Jesus humbly went to the cross rather than use violence against his oppressors. 

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Article
Assisted dying
Comment
Freedom of Belief
Politics
5 min read

Holding an opposing view is not 'imposing' belief on the assisted dying debate

Opposing interventions from believers on dishonesty grounds is a sinister development in public debate

Nick is an author and Senior Fellow at Theos,a think tank.

A graphic shows a gallery of people with religious symbols on their clothing.

“There are some who oppose this crucial reform,” Esther Rantzen wrote recently of MPs who dared to opposed Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life private member’s bill. “Many of them have undeclared personal religious beliefs…  [do] they have the right to impose them on patients like me, who do not share them?” 

This is a peculiarly common argument for those who support the right to Assisted Dying, which is surprising as it would be hard to come up with a less coherent case against religion in public life. The idea that elected MPs engaged in parliamentary debate are “imposing” their will on other people is odd. The idea that MPs have undeclared personal religious beliefs is strange too. I think it’s fair to say that most people know that Shabana Mahmood is a Muslim or Tim Farron is a Christian, and for those that don’t know that but do have access to Google, it takes less than five seconds to find out the religious beliefs of an MP. 

Perhaps most tellingly, however, why is it that we should be alert to – read wary of – MPs religious beliefs? Do the non-religious not have beliefs of which we should be cognizant? If my MP is motivated by a philosophy of relentless, Peter Singer-like utilitarianism or vague, incoherent secular humanism I’d like to know. 

In truth, Rantzen’s intervention in this debate, like that of a number of others – Lord Falconer, Simon Jenkins, Humanists UK, etc. – is part of a recent and rather dispiriting attempt to de facto exclude religious contribution to public debates by accusing them of being dishonest. 

To be clear, secular voices have long tried to exclude religious ones, but the tactics change. Back in the New Atheist heyday of the early twenty first century, all you needed to do was splutter something about sky fairies or Bronze Age beliefs or mind viruses to close down any sort of religious intervention. If, as Richard Dawkins famously put it, faith was one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus only harder to eradicate, no sensible parliament could possibly want to heed what faith had to say. 

Even back then, however, there were subtler arguments against faith, which usually came in the form of semi-digested Rawslian political liberalism, and demanded the religious participation in public debate had to obey the strictures of “public reasoning”, using logic and language that “all reasonable people” will understand. 

There are quite a few holes in this particular away of thinking (who are “reasonable people” anyway?) but as a rule of thumb, it’s not a bad one to follow. It is quite right and proper, if only as a matter of pragmatism, to speak in terms that your opponents will get, just as it is right and proper, as a matter of courtesy, to be open about what ultimately motivates you. 

And so that is what religious figures – MPs, leaders, institutions – do. Having read through pretty much all their contributions to the assisted dying debate, in parliament and beyond, I can testify that not many people, on either side of the debate, quote scripture or invoke papal teaching as a way of persuading, let alone commanding, others. (As it happens, parliamentarians haven’t really done that since the 1650s, but that’s another story).  

Rather, they argue in terms of policy and principles. They talk about the risk of legislative slippage, of changing attitudes to the vulnerable, of the need for better palliative care, of existing pressures on the NHS, etc. This is quite right and proper. As James Cleverly remarked in the Common debate in November, “We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill”. And so that is what they did. 

Does anyone seriously think it is a good idea to compel a believing Jew to stand up in parliament and declare her faith before she were allowed to speak? 

In effect, religious public figures, whether or not their beliefs are “declared”, do what they have (rightly) been asked to do by those who have appointed themselves as gatekeepers for our public debate. And so this has forced the usual suspects to pivot in their argument. No longer able to dismiss religious contributions for what they say (“don’t quote the Bible at me!”) they are now compelled to dismiss them for what they don’t say. Hence, the trope that has become popular among such campaigners – “you are not being honest about your real motivations”. 

A new report from the think tank Theos, entitled, How much have your religious views influenced your decision?”: religion and the assisted dying debate, unpacks the various objections that have been levelled at the religious contribution to the debate, and then systematically dismantles them.

Some of these objections are old school in the extreme.  

Religious belief is too intellectually inadequate or disfiguring for debates of this nature. 

Religion is insufficiently willing to adapt and compromise for politics.  

Faith is ill-fitted or even inadmissible in a secular polity or culture.  

But the report majors on the newer objection, so clearly displayed by Esther Rantzen, what we might call “dishonesty” objection, that religious contributors are fundamentally dishonest about their motivations and objectives. 

In truth, this is no stronger than the more tried and tested objections, and it displays a serious, possibly intentional, misunderstanding of what a religious argument actually is. To quote the political philosopher Jeremy Waldron, such secular campaigners “present it as a crude prescription from God, backed up with threat of hellfire, derived from general or particular revelation, and they contrast it with the elegant simplicity of a philosophical argument by Rawls (say) or Dworkin [and] with this image in mind, they think it obvious that religious argument should be excluded from public life.” 

Contemporary arguments against religion in public life are slightly more sophisticated than Waldron’s caricature here, but not much. The idea that religio should be “declared” as a competing interest, so as to stop religious participants in debate from being “dishonest” is every bit as sinister, against both the letter and the spirit of plural, liberal democracy. Does anyone seriously think it is a good idea to compel a believing Jew to stand up in parliament and declare her faith before she were allowed to speak?  

As the assisted dying debate returns to parliament for the final push, there will be much animated debate. That is quite right and proper. A democracy needs vigorous and honest argument. But part of that honesty involves opening the doors of debate to everyone, and not subtly trying to exclude those with whom you disagree on the spurious grounds that they are being dishonest.

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Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
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If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

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