>The error that we are led towards by making Christianity a central part of our political movement’s identity — and therefore, our vision for a national identity — is assigning an element of universality to the citizenry of the nation.
I think you've hit nail on head. I think the central political objective of the British right should be to reject the logic of universalism wholesale.
As cliche as it is to quote De Maistre, I always have enjoyed this one (from Considerations on France):
“Now, there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him.”
Thank you for this and especially the De Maistre quotation, which clichéd or not I hadn't heard before. I abhor Christianity and rejoice at its variable decline. It is a left-coded and universalist religion, meaningful in certain circles such as the Oxbridge-London echo chambers described here, and good luck to them: but irrelevant to nationalistic rightwing social liberals such as myself (social liberalism itself fissiparous, but that's for another time). I feel disconcerted when I hear rightwing people quacking about the importance of The Pale Galilean. Have they met (m)any African Christians? The author was a little glib about the leftwing humanitarians in the pews: they are the enemies within.
If Christianity is such an inherently left wing religion, why is it that Apartheid South Africa had the Old Testament as part of its ideological foundation? If Christianity is inherently a universalist hippy religion, why was it that the Prime Minister of South Africa who codified Apartheid was a reverend in the Dutch Reformed Church with a doctorate in Divinity? Why is it that the most militant defenders of British nationalism have been the Protestants of Northern Ireland, who have fought against the Soviet backed terrorists of the IRA and against mass immigration? Also, De Maistre was a devout Catholic who believed that political authority should be derived from religion. This is not me making an argument for making Christianity an integral part of the British Right, but more that I take umbrage with historically illiterate gibberish. I may be an atheist who supports a secular Right, but I am still able to recognise that Christianity is not inherently left wing or right wing.
Loyalists/Unionists in Northern Ireland and the tiny Orania cohort are essentially relics from the European religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries with Catholics and Catholicism the only sworn enemy. The IRA received tonnes of weapons from Colonel Gadaffis Libya but their greatest source of political and moral support came from the US Democrats. Republican/Nationalist parties Sinn Fein/SDLP in Northern Ireland support open borders primarily because it's seen as diluting Unionism. While for their counterparts down south because it's an unspoken quid pro quo for their continuing corporate tax haven status. Those political parties in the Republic of Ireland that gleefully displayed to the world how post Catholic they were by voting in referenda in favour of homosexual marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.When Protestants cease voting Unionist/Loyalist they tend to become Alliance party voters the equivalent of Liberal Democrats in NI.
Many of the 17th century Dutch Protestants who emigrated to South Africa could only cope with the black Africans that they encountered by believing that they had been "cursed by god ".
I am not sure why you are saying that Orania is a relic of the European religious wars, given that their main enemy are the ANC and not Catholics. With the Loyalists/Unionists, I agree with you to some extent, but they are also some of the most militant people in the fight against immigration in the UK. There have been numerous riots against immigration across Northern Ireland involving Loyalists or lead by Loyalists. There is also a long history of co-operation between the Loyalists in Northern Ireland and the UK nationalist Right, including Combat 18.
Regarding the OIRA and the PIRA, I think it is also worth noting that they were also part of the international Soviet terrorist network. They received weapons from the Soviets in August 1972 according to the Mitrokhin Archive records. The PIRA also received training at camps in Libya run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine whose operations director, Wadi Haddad, was a KGB agent. They were also receiving training at PLO camps in Syrian-occupied areas of Lebanon. The PLO had effectively become a part of the Soviet terror network as well by the 70’s, and the Syrians were acting as a satellite in the Middle East through which the Soviets could direct their terrorist network. The IRA also helped set up a bomb making school in Luanda for the ANC, where the East German Stasi also trained the ANC in torture techniques.
With the Libyan arms shipments, some of those cases are better described as the Libyans acting as middle-men for the Soviets. For example, the October 1986 shipment of Semtex and other weapons originated from communist Czechoslovakia and Libya acted as a middleman. Libya at the time also needs to be thought of more as a Soviet satellite, since I believe the Soviets had a number of “military advisors” there.
With the above in mind, I think it is better to say that Sinn Fein and the IRA support open borders more due to an actual deep ideological commitment to socialism than trying to dilute Loyalism.
The Afrikaaner identity which Orania is attempting to preserve developed from the Protestant settlers of the 17th and 18th who were extremely anti Catholic when in their own continent. In the modern Netherlands with the sectarianism removed , Catholic and Protestant Dutch are ultra liberal on sex, immigration and miscegenation. So it's almost Amish like in a way.
Any Sinn Fein/IRA socialism was performative and mouthpiece Danny Morrisson spoke of the armalite (rather than a kalashnikov)in one hand and the ballot box in the other.
With Sinn Fein/IRA support for socialism, it wasn’t performative. The Official IRA were openly Marxist, the Irish National Liberation Army are Marxist Leninist, and Sinn Fein advocate for democratic socialism. Using the Armalite rather than the Kalashnikov does not prove anything, especially given the aforementioned long running relationship between Sinn Fein/PIRA and the Soviets. The preferred firearm does not eliminate the fact that Sinn Fein and the PIRA had been working with the Soviets and their satellites since 1969. It does not override the IRA establishing a bomb making school for the ANC in Luanda. It does not change the fact that the IRA supported the ANC, PFLP, and various other Marxist Leninist groups. If they were not socialists, why does Sinn Fein still advocate for democratic socialism and why were they so willing to work with socialists?
There is a long history of socialist involvement in Irish Republicanism. One of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, issued during the 1916 Easter Rising, was James Connolly, one of the main military commanders and a committed Marxist. The original IRA also established relations with the Soviet Union in 1927, declaring public support for the Soviet Union at its December meeting that year. The IRA sent delegations to help the then Soviet backed Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 against pro-British factions in China, and also sent men to fight for the Soviet controlled Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. The IRA also shared intelligence with OGPU. So whilst not all of the original IRA were socialist, there were clearly a good few socialists among them. Also, why are you trying to defend the IRA and Sinn Fein?
On Orania, what is the relevance of the original anti-Catholic attitudes of the Afrikaaners? Catholics have been largely insignificant in South Africa and the main opponents of the Afrikaaners have historically been the British and the blacks, neither of whom are Catholic. This has not stopped the Afrikaaners being Right wing and did not stop the Afrikaaners creating a nuclear armed White supremacist state with an ideological founding coming from Joshua 9:23.
You also mention that people in the secular Netherlands are quite liberal in their attitudes, yet you do not seem to take into account that 56% of the Dutch population are atheist. If you look at the Bible Belt in the Netherlands, the majority of the inhabitants of that region of the Netherlands oppose euthanasia, pornography, prostitution, gay rights, and abortion. Some of the people in that area even oppose television. This is also the main base of support for the Reformed Political Party (SGP in Dutch), who are a Protestant theocratic party opposed to secularism, Islamic immigration, and women’s suffrage. You can find similar trends elsewhere, with Christians generally being more conservative than the rest of the population. If you want to make some form of argument about sectarian divisions, a better one would be to point out how Catholics and Quakers in Protestant nations are generally more supportive of the left. However, Christians in general are more socially conservative than the general population.
If you’re trying to argue that Christianity is inherently left wing, you are wrong. Christianity is not inherently Right wing or left wing. A large number of historic and current Right wing movements have their politics rooted to some degree in the Christian religion. This is not an argument in favour of making any current Right wing movement dependent upon religion, but it is a recognition that there are Right wing Christians who will join a secular Right. That is what I am arguing. Do you agree or disagree with forming a secular Right wing movement that will tolerate Christians and atheists and involve both in the struggle for state power?
Are you being sarcastic or openly admitting error? Again, I admit that there are lots of left wing idiots in the various churches who are enabling our ethnic replacement, but these people would be doing the same if they were atheists. Many of those who support ethnic replacement within the church are also those who are openly against key laws of the Bible (e.g. the ban on women priests and the ban against homosexuality). I am not arguing for Christianity to be an essential part of any political platform, but rather that opposition to it is pointless. Whether someone is Christian or not, if they believe in mass deportations, reversing current demographic trends, and enabling economic growth they are fine by me.
You sounded annoyed. I speak as I find. It must be a local matter; I live in a leftwing city. I have never once met a Christian significantly different from Lord Sir E.J. Davey of that ilk on political matters. And were I unlucky enough to run into a rightwing God-botherer, they would probably also bang on, or, worse, become frightfully interesting about homosexuality. Which is important to me. Christians can't win as far as I am concerned; my opposition to them does not, pace your position, feel pointless, though I do not spend much time on the topic of religion and its devotees, who to me speak a strange language. I know something of Wittgenstein and he spoke of religious people having pictures in their heads that he had not. All the best!
I get annoyed when people make blanket statements about a religion being left wing when followers of that faith have a long history of involvement in the political Right and in pro-White political movements (Christian Identity in the US, Orania in South Africa, the Loyalists in Northern Ireland). It’s similar to why comments about neo-paganism being for hippy leftists also causes my eyes to roll. I think we just have to agree to disagree, though it seems as if we both want a secular British Right to gain victory. Let’s leave it on that positive note.
My teen went through a phase of wanting a cross necklace and making the sign of the cross and saying "god bless" I'm pretty sure he was influenced mostly by his Syrian friend who makes a point of wearing a large cross on the outside of his shirt, but I have seen a surge in pro Christian TikToks.
The thing I noticed with his peers was a fad-like, superficial interest in Christianity (and Islam). Donning cross necklaces, putting cross in bio temporarily etc. But that's as far as it went. And it was more trendy last year and at the beginning of the year than it is now, and it's died down. Even become a bit cringe.
Through my son I'm familiar with a slightly older local lad (white, English) who is a bit of a TikTok personality who has become a Muslim but in a similarly surface level way e.g. saying "Inshallah" a lot and comparing non religious girls to good virgin girls (he is adamant he's getting a virgin Muslim girl though I doubt any with a brain will let their daughter near him) and performatively praying outside because it's time to pray now. He comes across as a lost working class soul, has a lot of ghetto mannerisms like walking with a hand down his trousers and makes those gang signs with his hands. My son thinks he's cool for now. For anyone who hasn't got teens or pre-teens they all say "Wallahi" atm, I nearly go insane from the amount of "wallahi bruv" I hear. But I also go insane from hearing about "big batty bunda" and rapping about drug dealing and stabbing people.
The Christian revival feels a little forced like a band-aid solution to the problems caused by mass migration and how it's changing us.
I'm increasingly suspicious when media personalities say Islam is the primary problem. It is a huge problem but to me it isn't the main one. The odd emergence of loads of Christians in media who have gone cuckoo with American style proclamations of Christ is King has, if anything, put me off Christianity. Are they all like this? It irritates me so intensely that I almost want to defend Muslims. They seem to think it's better to be ethnically mixed with African Christians than to protect an English non Christian demographic. If that's the case then the right needs to reconsider its alliances.
When I see things online like brown/black Christians or sikh "Christian allies" on the right take the piss out of English who are skeptical of a Christian revival or who are Muslim converts. It feels like someone is encroaching on my people and I really don't like it, even if I generally agree with the Christian. Again, it drives me away from Christianity. As do all of the "Thank God for Immigrants" posters.
My ultimate concern is that our homeland is being given away to foreigners and if we are atheist, Christian, Buddhist, pagan or whatever is secondary to that concern. But apparently not everyone feels that way and we must return to Christ the King in a multiracial orgy? It all feels very American.
This is true in my experience. I started going to church because I wanted to feel something familiar and homely. However, my closest church is dominated by Indians, Africans and South-east Asians. Brits are 15 - 20% of attendees. So in the end going to church felt more culturally dislocating than not going.
I thank you for your article. I was amazed and also unsurprised by the amount of people taken in by this report. It is a sad fact that many social media Christians are grifters who will hype up anything.
I left Cambridge 20 years ago and I know from return visits and from college stuff that it is a lot more diverse nowadays. When I was there, the student union said there were more students with Black and Brown as their surnames than there were black and brown students. Very different now.
Very good article. I was just wondering today if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an outlier or whether there is a larger trend of intellectuals becoming Christians. Bo Winegard and Alex Kaschuta seem newly interested in the social benefits of Christianity and a skepticism towards creating a healthy secular society.
I'd love to know why you are a Christian. Tradition? Belief in the literal truth of the bible? Poetry and myth? Good basis for a healthy society?
The ONS section could be sharpened, though. In particular it is not very convincing to label Moss Side in Birmingham (35%+ Black) as "a Somali community" (<2% Somali).
On that point, the statistic of "2% Somali" refers to people who selected Somali as their primary and only national identity. This differs from the "35% black" statistic which has got to do with ethnic, rather than national, identity. On the 2021 census, one can pick more than one national identity which is specified to the level of (obviously) nations. However, one can only pick one of 4 or 5 ethnic identities (white, black, MENA, east asian, etc.). What the 2% Somali stat indicates is not, therefore, that 2% of people in Moss Side are Somali, but that 2% identify as Somali nationals only. There are likely far more Somalis in Moss Side who identify as Somali + British or just British or English. Nothing is stopping them from doing this. I agree the ONS section was not the most statistically rigorous, however this apparent statistical disparity can be explained in line with the author's argument. The 2% Somali statistic therefore heavily indicates that Moss Side is a majority Somali community.
>The error that we are led towards by making Christianity a central part of our political movement’s identity — and therefore, our vision for a national identity — is assigning an element of universality to the citizenry of the nation.
I think you've hit nail on head. I think the central political objective of the British right should be to reject the logic of universalism wholesale.
As cliche as it is to quote De Maistre, I always have enjoyed this one (from Considerations on France):
“Now, there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him.”
Thank you for this and especially the De Maistre quotation, which clichéd or not I hadn't heard before. I abhor Christianity and rejoice at its variable decline. It is a left-coded and universalist religion, meaningful in certain circles such as the Oxbridge-London echo chambers described here, and good luck to them: but irrelevant to nationalistic rightwing social liberals such as myself (social liberalism itself fissiparous, but that's for another time). I feel disconcerted when I hear rightwing people quacking about the importance of The Pale Galilean. Have they met (m)any African Christians? The author was a little glib about the leftwing humanitarians in the pews: they are the enemies within.
If Christianity is such an inherently left wing religion, why is it that Apartheid South Africa had the Old Testament as part of its ideological foundation? If Christianity is inherently a universalist hippy religion, why was it that the Prime Minister of South Africa who codified Apartheid was a reverend in the Dutch Reformed Church with a doctorate in Divinity? Why is it that the most militant defenders of British nationalism have been the Protestants of Northern Ireland, who have fought against the Soviet backed terrorists of the IRA and against mass immigration? Also, De Maistre was a devout Catholic who believed that political authority should be derived from religion. This is not me making an argument for making Christianity an integral part of the British Right, but more that I take umbrage with historically illiterate gibberish. I may be an atheist who supports a secular Right, but I am still able to recognise that Christianity is not inherently left wing or right wing.
Loyalists/Unionists in Northern Ireland and the tiny Orania cohort are essentially relics from the European religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries with Catholics and Catholicism the only sworn enemy. The IRA received tonnes of weapons from Colonel Gadaffis Libya but their greatest source of political and moral support came from the US Democrats. Republican/Nationalist parties Sinn Fein/SDLP in Northern Ireland support open borders primarily because it's seen as diluting Unionism. While for their counterparts down south because it's an unspoken quid pro quo for their continuing corporate tax haven status. Those political parties in the Republic of Ireland that gleefully displayed to the world how post Catholic they were by voting in referenda in favour of homosexual marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.When Protestants cease voting Unionist/Loyalist they tend to become Alliance party voters the equivalent of Liberal Democrats in NI.
Many of the 17th century Dutch Protestants who emigrated to South Africa could only cope with the black Africans that they encountered by believing that they had been "cursed by god ".
I am not sure why you are saying that Orania is a relic of the European religious wars, given that their main enemy are the ANC and not Catholics. With the Loyalists/Unionists, I agree with you to some extent, but they are also some of the most militant people in the fight against immigration in the UK. There have been numerous riots against immigration across Northern Ireland involving Loyalists or lead by Loyalists. There is also a long history of co-operation between the Loyalists in Northern Ireland and the UK nationalist Right, including Combat 18.
Regarding the OIRA and the PIRA, I think it is also worth noting that they were also part of the international Soviet terrorist network. They received weapons from the Soviets in August 1972 according to the Mitrokhin Archive records. The PIRA also received training at camps in Libya run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine whose operations director, Wadi Haddad, was a KGB agent. They were also receiving training at PLO camps in Syrian-occupied areas of Lebanon. The PLO had effectively become a part of the Soviet terror network as well by the 70’s, and the Syrians were acting as a satellite in the Middle East through which the Soviets could direct their terrorist network. The IRA also helped set up a bomb making school in Luanda for the ANC, where the East German Stasi also trained the ANC in torture techniques.
With the Libyan arms shipments, some of those cases are better described as the Libyans acting as middle-men for the Soviets. For example, the October 1986 shipment of Semtex and other weapons originated from communist Czechoslovakia and Libya acted as a middleman. Libya at the time also needs to be thought of more as a Soviet satellite, since I believe the Soviets had a number of “military advisors” there.
With the above in mind, I think it is better to say that Sinn Fein and the IRA support open borders more due to an actual deep ideological commitment to socialism than trying to dilute Loyalism.
The Afrikaaner identity which Orania is attempting to preserve developed from the Protestant settlers of the 17th and 18th who were extremely anti Catholic when in their own continent. In the modern Netherlands with the sectarianism removed , Catholic and Protestant Dutch are ultra liberal on sex, immigration and miscegenation. So it's almost Amish like in a way.
Any Sinn Fein/IRA socialism was performative and mouthpiece Danny Morrisson spoke of the armalite (rather than a kalashnikov)in one hand and the ballot box in the other.
With Sinn Fein/IRA support for socialism, it wasn’t performative. The Official IRA were openly Marxist, the Irish National Liberation Army are Marxist Leninist, and Sinn Fein advocate for democratic socialism. Using the Armalite rather than the Kalashnikov does not prove anything, especially given the aforementioned long running relationship between Sinn Fein/PIRA and the Soviets. The preferred firearm does not eliminate the fact that Sinn Fein and the PIRA had been working with the Soviets and their satellites since 1969. It does not override the IRA establishing a bomb making school for the ANC in Luanda. It does not change the fact that the IRA supported the ANC, PFLP, and various other Marxist Leninist groups. If they were not socialists, why does Sinn Fein still advocate for democratic socialism and why were they so willing to work with socialists?
There is a long history of socialist involvement in Irish Republicanism. One of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, issued during the 1916 Easter Rising, was James Connolly, one of the main military commanders and a committed Marxist. The original IRA also established relations with the Soviet Union in 1927, declaring public support for the Soviet Union at its December meeting that year. The IRA sent delegations to help the then Soviet backed Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 against pro-British factions in China, and also sent men to fight for the Soviet controlled Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. The IRA also shared intelligence with OGPU. So whilst not all of the original IRA were socialist, there were clearly a good few socialists among them. Also, why are you trying to defend the IRA and Sinn Fein?
On Orania, what is the relevance of the original anti-Catholic attitudes of the Afrikaaners? Catholics have been largely insignificant in South Africa and the main opponents of the Afrikaaners have historically been the British and the blacks, neither of whom are Catholic. This has not stopped the Afrikaaners being Right wing and did not stop the Afrikaaners creating a nuclear armed White supremacist state with an ideological founding coming from Joshua 9:23.
You also mention that people in the secular Netherlands are quite liberal in their attitudes, yet you do not seem to take into account that 56% of the Dutch population are atheist. If you look at the Bible Belt in the Netherlands, the majority of the inhabitants of that region of the Netherlands oppose euthanasia, pornography, prostitution, gay rights, and abortion. Some of the people in that area even oppose television. This is also the main base of support for the Reformed Political Party (SGP in Dutch), who are a Protestant theocratic party opposed to secularism, Islamic immigration, and women’s suffrage. You can find similar trends elsewhere, with Christians generally being more conservative than the rest of the population. If you want to make some form of argument about sectarian divisions, a better one would be to point out how Catholics and Quakers in Protestant nations are generally more supportive of the left. However, Christians in general are more socially conservative than the general population.
If you’re trying to argue that Christianity is inherently left wing, you are wrong. Christianity is not inherently Right wing or left wing. A large number of historic and current Right wing movements have their politics rooted to some degree in the Christian religion. This is not an argument in favour of making any current Right wing movement dependent upon religion, but it is a recognition that there are Right wing Christians who will join a secular Right. That is what I am arguing. Do you agree or disagree with forming a secular Right wing movement that will tolerate Christians and atheists and involve both in the struggle for state power?
That's me told.
Are you being sarcastic or openly admitting error? Again, I admit that there are lots of left wing idiots in the various churches who are enabling our ethnic replacement, but these people would be doing the same if they were atheists. Many of those who support ethnic replacement within the church are also those who are openly against key laws of the Bible (e.g. the ban on women priests and the ban against homosexuality). I am not arguing for Christianity to be an essential part of any political platform, but rather that opposition to it is pointless. Whether someone is Christian or not, if they believe in mass deportations, reversing current demographic trends, and enabling economic growth they are fine by me.
You sounded annoyed. I speak as I find. It must be a local matter; I live in a leftwing city. I have never once met a Christian significantly different from Lord Sir E.J. Davey of that ilk on political matters. And were I unlucky enough to run into a rightwing God-botherer, they would probably also bang on, or, worse, become frightfully interesting about homosexuality. Which is important to me. Christians can't win as far as I am concerned; my opposition to them does not, pace your position, feel pointless, though I do not spend much time on the topic of religion and its devotees, who to me speak a strange language. I know something of Wittgenstein and he spoke of religious people having pictures in their heads that he had not. All the best!
I get annoyed when people make blanket statements about a religion being left wing when followers of that faith have a long history of involvement in the political Right and in pro-White political movements (Christian Identity in the US, Orania in South Africa, the Loyalists in Northern Ireland). It’s similar to why comments about neo-paganism being for hippy leftists also causes my eyes to roll. I think we just have to agree to disagree, though it seems as if we both want a secular British Right to gain victory. Let’s leave it on that positive note.
My teen went through a phase of wanting a cross necklace and making the sign of the cross and saying "god bless" I'm pretty sure he was influenced mostly by his Syrian friend who makes a point of wearing a large cross on the outside of his shirt, but I have seen a surge in pro Christian TikToks.
The thing I noticed with his peers was a fad-like, superficial interest in Christianity (and Islam). Donning cross necklaces, putting cross in bio temporarily etc. But that's as far as it went. And it was more trendy last year and at the beginning of the year than it is now, and it's died down. Even become a bit cringe.
Through my son I'm familiar with a slightly older local lad (white, English) who is a bit of a TikTok personality who has become a Muslim but in a similarly surface level way e.g. saying "Inshallah" a lot and comparing non religious girls to good virgin girls (he is adamant he's getting a virgin Muslim girl though I doubt any with a brain will let their daughter near him) and performatively praying outside because it's time to pray now. He comes across as a lost working class soul, has a lot of ghetto mannerisms like walking with a hand down his trousers and makes those gang signs with his hands. My son thinks he's cool for now. For anyone who hasn't got teens or pre-teens they all say "Wallahi" atm, I nearly go insane from the amount of "wallahi bruv" I hear. But I also go insane from hearing about "big batty bunda" and rapping about drug dealing and stabbing people.
The Christian revival feels a little forced like a band-aid solution to the problems caused by mass migration and how it's changing us.
I'm increasingly suspicious when media personalities say Islam is the primary problem. It is a huge problem but to me it isn't the main one. The odd emergence of loads of Christians in media who have gone cuckoo with American style proclamations of Christ is King has, if anything, put me off Christianity. Are they all like this? It irritates me so intensely that I almost want to defend Muslims. They seem to think it's better to be ethnically mixed with African Christians than to protect an English non Christian demographic. If that's the case then the right needs to reconsider its alliances.
When I see things online like brown/black Christians or sikh "Christian allies" on the right take the piss out of English who are skeptical of a Christian revival or who are Muslim converts. It feels like someone is encroaching on my people and I really don't like it, even if I generally agree with the Christian. Again, it drives me away from Christianity. As do all of the "Thank God for Immigrants" posters.
My ultimate concern is that our homeland is being given away to foreigners and if we are atheist, Christian, Buddhist, pagan or whatever is secondary to that concern. But apparently not everyone feels that way and we must return to Christ the King in a multiracial orgy? It all feels very American.
This is true in my experience. I started going to church because I wanted to feel something familiar and homely. However, my closest church is dominated by Indians, Africans and South-east Asians. Brits are 15 - 20% of attendees. So in the end going to church felt more culturally dislocating than not going.
I experienced similar.
I thank you for your article. I was amazed and also unsurprised by the amount of people taken in by this report. It is a sad fact that many social media Christians are grifters who will hype up anything.
I left Cambridge 20 years ago and I know from return visits and from college stuff that it is a lot more diverse nowadays. When I was there, the student union said there were more students with Black and Brown as their surnames than there were black and brown students. Very different now.
Very good article. I was just wondering today if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an outlier or whether there is a larger trend of intellectuals becoming Christians. Bo Winegard and Alex Kaschuta seem newly interested in the social benefits of Christianity and a skepticism towards creating a healthy secular society.
I'd love to know why you are a Christian. Tradition? Belief in the literal truth of the bible? Poetry and myth? Good basis for a healthy society?
I am because it’s true. Hylomorphism and classical theism solve all the problems of philosophy
I don't know what hylomorphism is. I'm not even sure how classical theism differs from what I suppose must be different kinds of theism.
Why do philosophers still debate philosophy if Christianity has already cleared up all philosophical problems? Might they, perhaps, disagree with you?
Thank you for this, a thought-provoking post.
The ONS section could be sharpened, though. In particular it is not very convincing to label Moss Side in Birmingham (35%+ Black) as "a Somali community" (<2% Somali).
On that point, the statistic of "2% Somali" refers to people who selected Somali as their primary and only national identity. This differs from the "35% black" statistic which has got to do with ethnic, rather than national, identity. On the 2021 census, one can pick more than one national identity which is specified to the level of (obviously) nations. However, one can only pick one of 4 or 5 ethnic identities (white, black, MENA, east asian, etc.). What the 2% Somali stat indicates is not, therefore, that 2% of people in Moss Side are Somali, but that 2% identify as Somali nationals only. There are likely far more Somalis in Moss Side who identify as Somali + British or just British or English. Nothing is stopping them from doing this. I agree the ONS section was not the most statistically rigorous, however this apparent statistical disparity can be explained in line with the author's argument. The 2% Somali statistic therefore heavily indicates that Moss Side is a majority Somali community.
This Catholic Truth Society event hints at the same trend, praising the diversity that immigrants are bringing in. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09dMGpmQVow