Have you noticed it too? Christianity is back. It keeps turning up in the news and across the media, and celebrities and sports figures are talking about their faith in a way that would have been unusual a few years ago. Much of that is encouraging, but the renewed attention isn’t all good. In some places, politics especially, Christianity is being spoken of less as a message of salvation for all and more as a marker of identity – a way of drawing a line between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
It’s here that we need to be cautious. When Christianity becomes primarily a marker of belonging rather than good news, it changes not only how others see us, but how we see Christ Himself.
I’m all for appreciating Britain’s Christian heritage, and I also think that bringing moral conviction and Judeo-Christian values into public life is a good and necessary thing. But so-called ‘Christian nationalism’, in its more serious form, is something else. It ties national and Christian identity together so tightly that belonging to one is assumed to mean belonging to the other – that to be truly “one of us” you have to be Christian, culturally if not spiritually.
Understanding the Attraction
I can see why the rhetoric of Christian nationalism is landing today. Things are changing quickly, and many people are unsure where it’s all heading. In Britain, some of those feeling it most are people whose families have deep roots in the country’s history and traditions. They describe feeling unheard as the culture shifts around them, and at times openly mocked.
Many Christians have felt something similar for years too. Freedoms we used to take for granted feel less secure, and it can seem as though secular voices and other faiths get a hearing while Christian belief is met with suspicion. Plenty of believers feel the country’s moral framework is being rebuilt with very little room left for historic Christian conviction.
Against this backdrop, when someone says, “We are a Christian country”, it can feel like solid ground. A politician who seems to stand up for Christianity is reassuring, and after years on the margins, hearing public figures speak well of the faith can feel like a correction that was long overdue.
Still, as much as I’d like it to be, good press for Christianity doesn’t prove spiritual renewal, and it doesn’t mean the gospel is advancing either. Our Christian heritage is a gift, but it isn’t the gospel, and once Christianity is being used to prop up a national identity, the gospel usually isn’t what’s shaping us any more. Fear is often doing that work, or nostalgia, and sometimes even resentment – and history has some sobering lessons for us on that.
When Our Loyalties Get Out of Order
The Bible tells us that Jesus is Lord. Evangelicals like me unashamedly believe He is the only way to salvation, that “there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). I don’t say that from any sense of superiority. It’s a confession of grace, because the same Jesus who called Himself “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) also told us to love our neighbour, and then went further: “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:28).
Jesus’ lordship can’t be fenced inside one nation, culture, or political vision. When John is given a glimpse of heaven, he sees a crowd nobody could count, “from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9), standing together before the throne. Whatever held them together, it wasn’t ancestry.
The problems start when national identity begins shaping our picture of Jesus, instead of the other way round. Faith slides into heritage, and before long the Church looks like a club for the like-minded instead of a community of redeemed sinners.
The most immediate cost may be how we see one another. Once Christianity is a political identity, neighbours quickly turn into categories, and people made in the image of God become groups to be managed or resisted. The colleague is now ‘an atheist’, the person next door ‘a Muslim’, and the stranger ‘a threat’.
Jesus never taught us to look at people that way. Treating those who reject the gospel as less than human doesn’t honour its truth; it just makes the gospel harder for them to hear. We honour Christ by holding fast to Him and letting something of His character, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), show in how we speak to the people we disagree with most. Start with the nation instead, and the gospel shrinks to fit our preferences until it no longer confronts anyone – us included.
Jesus kept moving towards people who were different from Him, including those who misunderstood or opposed Him. In His stories the outsider is often the one who shows what love really looks like – a Samaritan, of all people, stopping for the man everyone else walked past. He built His kingdom through sacrifice, and control never came into it. The early Church grew the same way. They had no power to secure and no way of mandating faith, so they loved the poor, endured suffering, told the truth, and preached the gospel – and people noticed.
A Different Response
That calling hasn’t changed. At her best, the Church has never needed cultural dominance to survive, or a romanticised past to cling to. Whatever we make of Britain’s history, this is the era we’ve actually been given, and it’s the one we’re asked to be faithful in.
Public faith can still carry real conviction. Christians should care a great deal about justice and about protecting the vulnerable, and we should be ready to speak into public life and explain what we believe clearly. But we speak as witnesses, and a witness has to win people over honestly or not at all. Faith has to be freely given, which is why religious freedom matters for everyone – the Muslim family down the road and the atheist at work as much as the Christian. Christ is honoured when we seek the good of neighbours who may never agree with us.
I worry about our congregations too. Society keeps getting more polarised, and it would be very easy for churches simply to mirror it. Church ought to be somewhere people who vote differently can still kneel side by side and confess the same Lord. If it becomes just another political tribe, it has very little left to say to anyone outside it.
Some people are drawn to the faith because it offers identity and stability, and that's a reasonable place to start. It just can't be where they stay. They need inviting further in, into repentance and grace and a living relationship with Jesus Christ, which asks a great deal more of us than wearing His name as a badge. Yet if renewed interest in Christianity is bringing people through our doors, we should see that as an opportunity. Our task is not merely to welcome their interest in the faith, but to help them encounter the Christ at its centre.
Ultimately, we have to live differently. Where suspicion and division are the norm, simple acts of love carry real weight – sharing a meal, listening well, welcoming the outsider, telling the truth without being harsh about it. They may look like small things, yet they’re signs of the kingdom of God showing up in ordinary life.
Keeping Christ at the Centre
Christians are citizens, and political engagement certainly has its place – but no policy or party can carry the weight of our ultimate hope. Look to the nation to save us and we’ll end up either disillusioned or hard-hearted. With our eyes on Christ, we’re free to seek the good of our society without being afraid of it. We can disagree hard without hating anyone.
Christian nationalism often feeds on fear and shallow faith, but the kingdom of God doesn’t rise or fall with the fortunes of any nation. When outrage replaces repentance – when “taking the country back” feels more urgent than taking up our cross – something has gone wrong at the root. Protecting Christian values can feel righteous, and sometimes it is. Without discernment, though, it quietly becomes a way of putting our hope in power instead of in Christ.
What we need is discipleship: a more serious commitment to following Christ, which no amount of political volume can substitute for.
Let's worry less about fighting for a Christian culture and more about following Christ faithfully. The Church has always been at its healthiest when Christ Himself was the source of its confidence.