Too many Christians in the UK are living with an illusion. Let me tell you plainly: it’s over. The days of being a Christian country have gone, and they are not coming back any time soon. It is imperative that we grasp this. Instead of pretending we are living in a pale imitation of the past, we have to work out how to live in the present and prepare for the future.
I pray (literally) that there might be a recovery of both church and nation, that the Holy Spirit will sweep through the land and we will have godly leaders in church and state. In the meantime, until God does this, we Christians have to get our own house in order. Merely doing what we have always done in the hope that this time it will work is to embrace failure.
Not by Politics True reform of society will not come about by government edict: politics and attempting to transform the state is not the answer. Hungary has a very pro-Christian government which, unfashionable though it may be, I admire, but go to church there on Sunday and you will find very few fellow worshippers. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban once said that as a politician he could provide people with things, by which he meant material help and the creation of a different social structure where people could flourish, but he acknowledged that he could not provide people with meaning.
The thing which should truly worry us is not the future of the Western liberal democracy we are so used to. Political victories and the promotion of policies of which we approve are as nothing without foundational cultural change. The major concern of the Christian should be the future of the faith. Without the faith there will be no hope of recovery and rebuilding that which we have lost.
Those churches which have compromised with and embraced secular culture, especially the LGBTQ-etc ideology and the racialisation of society, are gradually emptying and are mainly sustained by a combination of elderly parishioners and the inherited wealth of earlier years. But are the churches which hold to orthodox biblical beliefs building resilient disciples able to resist the growing pressure against Christianity and counter it with faithful lives?
New Territory – New Tactics Comfortable in our fading position in society we are about to encounter an entirely new situation: we are moving into new territory. Our position is like the Israelites who left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea and travelled through the wilderness before encountering the River Jordan. They had to cross it into new territory, dangerous territory the like of which they had never experienced.
The health and strength of the Christian community should be our main concern
If we are to survive and thrive in this new territory we have to change tactics. Some evangelicals are oriented towards relevance, making the presentation of the gospel ‘seeker sensitive’. Others have a transformational outlook, engaging in the culture wars on behalf of Christian viewpoints. What we need is a third option: we have to become a counter-culture.
This means more than being different from the world; we should be that already. Rather it means that we should be concentrating on building a Christian sub-culture of connected individuals and congregations who are consciously trying to support and encourage each other. We may have to wean ourselves from those institutions we have become accustomed to but which are indifferent, if not opposed, to the faith, and build new Christian institutions in areas such as education. The health and strength of the Christian community should be our main concern as we face the problems to come.
New Mindsets We have to develop at least two new mindsets. First, we have to accept that we are a minority. It is no good telling ourselves that most of the good people in the UK share our basic viewpoints, that it’s just a minority of radical progressives like Stonewall who have infiltrated the institutions and gained control. The reality is that the progressives have gained complete control, and through education and the media they have changed the social outlook of the West. We have to accept that biblically orthodox Christians are in a small minority and that we are on our own.
Then we have to abandon pragmatism and adopt an open mindset. In our churches, whether it is evangelism, influencing society or restructuring our denominations, we try to do the possible. One of the greatest weaknesses of pragmatism is that it doesn’t leave much room for God. We tend to review the situation, make our plans and then ask God to bless what we have put in motion.
We should be practical, but focusing on the possible can produce a failure mindset when our ‘possible’ plans fail to materialise. I am at that stage in life when I can look back over decades of ministry and seeing church bodies producing plan after plan, each of which was going to transform the church and make it ‘vibrant’, ‘exciting’ and ‘relevant’. One by one they have run into the quicksand only to be replaced by another ‘vibrant’ etc plan. This leads inevitably to fatalism.
We have to develop an open mindset, able to trust in God and explore. A couple of centuries ago risk-takers were leaving their comfort zones and going into the unknown, opening up the physical and scientific world. As knowledge grew a managerial mindset took over, a risk-averse mindset focused on control. This is the situation the church knows today. It is the mindset which is failing God’s people today, and it will fail God’s people tomorrow.
Make A Small Start There is no panacea which will immediately revitalise the church and open all the doors now closing against us. We start with ourselves, and our reaction to God’s revelation. We cannot impact others until we have been impacted by God personally. Every true church reformation starts at the grass-roots. I’d suggest we start with the Bible and in particular the book of Acts and I Peter, an epistle written specifically to Christians under pressure in a hostile environment. Not trying to replicate the early church but learning lessons for today’s church. We must become individuals growing into unity, prepared to question and support each other, prepared to explore our situation and share our findings.
A Grain of Sand 
Wise advice and long overdue.
Time to give up on the country and focus on the Lord and the fields around us.
We are citizens of heaven first. And strangers in the UK.
Time to openly stand against the current culture
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Agree with what you have written. But not so much ‘stand against’ the culture as wean ourselves from it and develop a new culture, one which does ‘focus on the Lord’. Remember Gal 6:10 and ‘do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers’. We have to get our priorities right.
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Agree…that’s what I mean by stand against….with a new culture…a long time since Christians firmly and openly and gladly stated what they believe, and not cared what the culture thinks of that and them
Too much trying to be nice!
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I confess that I loathe the description ‘nice’ and if it were applied to me I would feel insulted. We can be gracious and loving without being nice.
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Campbell, thank you so much for this. You have made so many good points and raised serious questions that all Christians should be asking.
The first thing to say is that your second sentence is 100% correct. Once we (Christians) accept this we can start to work towards where God wants us to be by doing what he wants us to do.
As you say, the reality is there is no way out of this. At least in human terms. We can not rely on politicians, rich celebrities or billionaire philanthropists to rectify things. After all, they got us into this mess, with a great deal of assistance from the ruler of the power of the air, Satan. Yes, it’s a spiritual war. Something many Christians have forgotten or never knew. All the aforementioned politicians, etc can only promise a utopian future here on earth with diversity, equity and inclusion ensuring everyone is just gaslit enough not to notice the totalitarian regime they are living under which make these deceits seem bearable. Babylon is fallen and we are living in its rubble. The one thing Christians must not do is help the aforementioned shore up Babylon so that it seems tolerable.
The Church has laid down its weapons – the greatest of which is the Word of God. Armed with this Word we can take down Satan’s strongholds. But without the Word the Church is no different from any state approved secular organisation, doomed to failure.
We have the victory of Christ, already won on the Cross. Let’s stop seeing the Cross as a passive, humiliating defeat which we can use as an example for facing adversity but rather as a total victory in which all Christ’s enemies were defeated. Think of the power that was released that day. The same power God used to raise Christ from the dead. And the same power which works in us now to transform us glory by glory into the likeness of of our Lord.
Christ didn’t promise his disciples that they would live in a no-caps welfare state where the state took care of your every need. Instead he told us we would be handed over to rulers and tormentors but still the victory is ours. The early Christians knew this and that is why they sang hymns as they walked into the amphitheatre where they would be torn apart by wild beasts.
We need to see ourselves as resistance fighters. We are in the minority and we cannot expect a knight in shining armour to ride over the horizon to save us. We have Christ.
Your final sentence is so spot on: We must become individuals growing into unity, prepared to question and support each other, prepared to explore our situation and share our findings. I just wonder where we find fellow Christians who are prepared to accept the earthly game is up and we need to adapt our tactics and rediscover our beliefs.
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A beginning would be to share posts like this with others and bringing other’s posts to the attention of the readers of this blog. Although we are a distinct minority in society today there are many Bible believing Christians out there. I am no organiser but I can at least create a blogroll of useful blogs for readers of Grain. Another way is for people like yourself to contribute perceptive comments and for other readers to engage with them.
Building a community doesn’t happen overnight, but we can make a start.
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Down here in the south of England I share your blogs with fellow Christians who I think need to hear what you are saying. As more and more begins to unravel in our country today it is going to be harder for Christians to ignore this reality by sticking their heads in the sand.
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Actually Campbell this is a brilliant article.
I slightly disagree that we should read the bible (which I agree with) and start with Acts and Peter. NO! We need to read the whole bible, Genesis through to Revelation and then repeat and repeat. But not only so, we need to discover that wonderful personal Teacher, The Holy Spirit, and read it with Him and dialogue with Him as we read.
I’m surprised you didn’t quote Romans 12:1 ”offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Also, we need to get to know The Kingdom of God – very useful video by Prof. Gerald McDermott here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Gw6txBcW_C8?si=aVR76Nyczu9Pkmd7
A rather surprising talk by an Anglican Theologian I thought!
We are coming into a situation similar to that of the first Jewish believers who must have found it very hard to be told “Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come“ Up until then they had always worshiped in the Temple in Jerusalem and now they were being told they would have to give that up and become orphans! (yet not orphans because Jesus promised He would not leave us orphans)
It is clear that the end of all things is coming: we can see many of the signs given us in the Bible. But two of those signs that Jesus gave, that must occur before the time of the end, are 1) “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” and 2) “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” And note the phrase: “Gospel of the Kingdom”! God has not saved the present world-order, and indeed He has condemned it. It’s ready to be destroyed by the Wrath of the Lamb. So we need to share the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, telling people how to escape that wrath and find a place in that Kingdom before it’s too late. The present world-order is like the Titanic in so many ways!
We have been used to preaching the Gospel via human organisation and campaigns. But I firmly believe that a final push of the Gospel into the whole world will be coming, (“The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against her” and that no stronghold will be left untouched by that Gospel, but it will require Martyrdom. The Greek word “Martyr” means witness. That final preaching of the Gospel will coincide with the final martyrdom of huge numbers of Christians. It will be The Holy Spirit working in each individual. Just as in the days of the Roman persecutions. That time will come around again.
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Of course we should be assiduous in Bible reading. It is good to develop a personal practice which takes us through the Bible every year, I also use a different translation year by year which makes me question my too easily assumed viewpoints. But as well as this I also believe it is useful to conduct an in depth study, as far as we are able, of a particular portion or theme of Scripture. It was in this part of one’s personal spiritual health plan that I recommended a study of Acts and I Peter. Whilst we await the final resolution of all things we must equip ourselves for service in the here and now, however difficult that may be.
Thank you for the link, I shall look forward to watching.
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Perhaps what we’re witnessing is a “putting to rights” for Christianity. Too often in past eras, Christianity was something the State chose for you. Most ordinary folk didn’t have much of a choice, so just went along with it. In the 17th century, church attendance was compulsory by law. In the 19th, you couldn’t graduate from Oxford without first signing your assent to the Articles of Faith of the Church of England. In some professions – doctor, teacher, member of parliament – Chrisitianity (and hence church attendance) was mandatory. And they checked.
All that has gone. The world we live in now is too open, free and communicative, for the old way of things to even be a possibility. Christianity now has to be rooted in personal choice and commitment. Which is how it should have been all along.
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The Constantinian Settlement has been very much a mixed blessing. Perhaps now that in the West we are forced to greater clarity about the nature of the church we will be able to work out something more appropriate to both the biblical revelation and our changed circumstances.
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Something else that British Christians might want to brace themselves for; the increasing presence of Islam in Britain and what that usually results in for Christians. When you read how Muslims groups are targeting British schools (https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/23/islamists-are-wreaking-havoc-in-british-schools/) you know they now have much clout and that’s only going to increase as time goes on.
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Well, perhaps Christians should be targeting British Schools!
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Are any Christians staunch enough to take such action?
Apart from the school actions, another sign of Islamic rise is the city of Birmingham. As of the 2021 British national census, the Christian population is 34% of the city’s population, down from 59.1% in 2001. The Muslim population during the same period rose from 14.3% in 2001 to 29.9% in 2021 (almost equal to the Christians) whilst the non-religious rose from 12.4% to 24.1% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham).
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Don’t always want to be the odd one out, even if I do feel like a coward at times. But that’s with my demographic (and bookclub!). Another age group, particularly 18-30, smell something off and start digging around. After all, this mess is their inheritance. Some more digging and they bump into the gospel. Then the thousands years of writings, thoughts and deeds built upon it. They like clear, unafraid, open hearted, and Bible based sort of talk. Some meaningful podcasts, spot on sermons and a little mentorship, and they form a community. They are growing. For me, it’s a joy to see.
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You are of course quite right. Isn’t that how it should happen, people beginning to feel uneasy about society today who then begin to look around, explore and encounter something better and other people who are moving in the same direction? Gradually things begin to build up. Let us pray that we are seeing a re-enactment of the parables of the mustard seed and yeast (Luke 13).
I totally agree with your point that people want ‘clear, unafraid, open hearted, and Bible based’ talk. When people are hungry they want something more than spiritual junk food.
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