Why British evangelicals don’t do politics

The Benedict Option or the Constantine Option?

The Bible is a political text. This ought to be uncontroversial; how could it not be? Are we to suppose the God of all things will casually ignore the political? Yet somehow, most British evangelicals have been able to pigeonhole a moral vision of the universe into a moral vision of the life of the individual, and in many cases, we are left with little more than ‘be nice’ and ‘don’t do homosexual sex’.

Further, it should be obvious that the Church has political interests. Certainly, the enemies of the church are more than willing to use political means. Yet there is considerable reluctance on our part to push back against this; and moreover, even when evangelicals do try to be political, they usually decide to be entirely insane. There is no attempt to do serious politics; instead, we mutter incoherent proposals about what we would do if only we could. Or if there is a serious suggestion, it tends to require some grand collapse of the entire world order first.

Recently, there have been a number of attempts to establish a socially conservative movement in mainstream British politics. However, none of these new movements have succeeded in capturing the hearts of Britain’s more than two million evangelicals. Indeed, evangelicals have felt strangely absent from what are supposedly Christian (or at least Christian-friendly) political movements. Names like Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger will be known by only the most politically savvy evangelicals, despite Cates and Kruger both being evangelical Christians themselves. At the National Conservatism Conference, we saw a load of people claiming to be Christian, but none of them had any real credibility within the church. Nor does it seem likely that someone who does have credibility among British evangelicals, someone who most evangelicals would trust — say, a church leader — would ever stick their neck out. And without church leaders, the only thing we had to go on was words; and, for better or for worse, we aren’t Americans who will believe that Trump is a Christian because he once held a Bible.

In fact, although evangelicals increasingly dominate Christianity in the United Kingdom — especially in terms of weekly church attendance — as well as (as is poorly understood by most non-Christians) drawing much of their strength from university towns, meaning that popular stereotypes of their lack of education do not apply in Britain — political Christianity still seems to still be strangely centred around ‘High Church’ Anglicans and Catholics. Why is this?

In answering this question, I will draw upon my experiences as an evangelical Christian who is active in right-wing politics to explain the strange absence of evangelicals from British political life.

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The first major problem is one of definition. Evangelicalism isn’t some set of doctrines, it is more of a vibe. When we look at Christianity in Britain, there are many who would identify as ‘evangelicals’ who other than the word share little in common. A frequent occurrence is that someone raised in a conservative evangelical context later becomes disabused of the conservatism, but decides to maintain their ‘evangelical’ identity as a liberal Christian.

However, even within conservative churches, especially charismatic churches, there can be a wide range of beliefs. For example, at a church I used to attend there was a preacher who mentioned abortion. This incited a bunch of left-liberal girls in the congregation to outrage, and yet only one of them left the church. They valued the ‘feel’ and the ‘community’ of the church more than their political convictions. Furthermore, denominational lines are increasingly breaking down. Most conservative Anglicans would happily slip into a FIEC (Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches) church, and a lot of charismatic Anglicans are secretly Baptists.

As such, adherence to a rule of faith, like the Westminster Confessions or the Thirty-nine Articles, has politely been put to one side in favour of vibe. I would hazard a guess that the only statement of faith that most conservative evangelicals care about is the UCCF (Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship) doctrinal basis. Somewhat esoteric denominational divides aside, all this is to say that you could not form a serious political group across evangelicals writ large; there isn’t a singular set of beliefs, theological or otherwise, that a political movement could mobilise around.

Another problem for political action is that evangelicals are far more integrated into British society than their American counterparts. In the United States, you could grow up in a Christian area, go to a Christian school, go to a Christian university, and have the rest of your adult social life organised around a church. This cultivates a far greater sense of a shared identity, and consequently any perceived attack on the faith can be felt as an attack on the group. British evangelicals, by contrast, predominantly identify themselves as Christian rather than evangelical; for example, almost every evangelical student group markets itself as the ‘Christian Union’, despite invariably having a doctrinal basis that rules out anyone with the slightest hint of popery. There is, therefore, generally almost no attempt to establish a cohesive group identity for all evangelicals.

Furthermore, there has been an attempt by many evangelicals to minimise the difference between Christians and non-Christians. A popular phrase among evangelical Christians is the following: ‘It isn’t a religion, it is a relationship’. The intention here is to say that we evangelicals are just like you, except we have a relationship with God; that it isn’t like doing all these rituals and obeying these outdated rules; rather, it is about being in communion with God.

This is even seen in the way that we teach controversial doctrines. For example, every conservative evangelical church will believe that homosexual sex is evil, but the way this will be taught will ordinarily be littered with flowery language to somehow mitigate the offensiveness of this. We know that if people do not know that we think this they won’t treat us as different, and so the winsomeness serves to erase the difference we all know is there. In many cases this is not even to placate gay people, but rather to reaffirm to Christians listening that they are not weird. If evangelicalism is to be a political force, it must be self-consciously weird, and accept the animosity that comes with it.

On a similar note, while it is difficult to define British evangelicalism, we all know what we are not: American. I remember a very well-respected leader in my group of churches wondering whether we should disassociate ourselves from the word ‘evangelical’ altogether. Even though we are as evangelical as they come, he didn’t want us to be associated with the ‘politicised’ American church.

There are several reasons for our disgust at being associated with ‘politicised’ American evangelicals:

1. If Americans are going to be boisterous and annoying, we are going to be as soft as possible. If the Americans are going preach by shouting, we will preach through alliterative lists. In Britain, there is a disdain for churches above a certain size. There is a disdain for celebrity pastors. Even Justin Welby often seems slightly embarrassed by the fact he is an archbishop. We don’t do politics partly because that is far too American. Much of this comes from the instinct towards evangelism; that is, if Britain is supposedly disgusted by American excesses, then so are we.

2. Much of the reason for the apparent softness of English evangelicalism is that we have an established church, unlike the Americans. Bishops would lose their seats in the House of Lords if they are not careful. Further, if the Church of England becomes political in the wrong way, it would not be too difficult for parliament to retaliate. The bishops in the Church of England became very uncomfortable when Wesley was out evangelising the public.

3. A large part of this disdain is the centrality of higher education in British evangelicalism. The strongest evangelical churches are in student cities and tend to be student churches, which in turn gives British evangelicalism a healthy stock of intelligent new leaders. In evangelical Anglicanism, Oxbridge and London are the hives of the entire culture. By contrast, the hives of American evangelicalism are well away from significant cities, hidden in states no one cares about, and in villages and small towns no one has ever heard of. As a result, a lot of British evangelicals regard their American counterparts as stupid.

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I now want to analyse some of the theological issues at play. The first issue is that evangelicals have moved away from a vision of salvation that permeates all creation, and moved towards a vision of individual salvation. It makes sense: the word ‘evangelical’ comes from the Greek for ‘gospel’ — good news — so we are gospel people; and if you ask most evangelicals what the gospel is, it is a message for how to be saved. Sometimes people will even look at the Bible, or the letters of Paul in particular, as an instruction manual of how to be saved. While salvation is a central issue — indeed, for us it is quite literally a life and death issue — that does not prohibit a deeper vision for Christ’s kingdom to touch all aspects of creation, including politics.

Furthermore, the vision of salvation that we preach is justification by faith: the belief that by our faith in Jesus, we are declared righteous before God. Naturally, faith is something that you have as an individual, which among evangelicals often provokes an unwarranted (and theologically unsound) individualism, i.e., the popular notion that because salvation is something that is for the individual, the church is little more than a group of such individuals. I reject this because the New Testament is clear that we are united to Christ by faith, and therefore we are also united in the body of Christ. Moreover, as Calvinists, we also believe that we are saved as a community: the community of the Elect.

This theological individualism has been compounded by the fact that evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic was largely borne out of the First Great Awakening (c.1730-50), and consequently has placed a lot of emphasis on personal experience, especially conversion experiences. Again, our religious experiences are naturally highly individual. Recall our slogan: ‘it is not a religion, it is a relationship’. This is a slogan that is intended to encourage the listener to have a personal, individual relationship with God. We need to emphasise that we need both a personal relationship with, and a communal relationship of the Church to, God.

Another issue at play is a strong scepticism towards our ability to positively affect anything at all on earth more generally. I remember Pastor John MacArthur teaching that ‘We lose down here’. That is to say: everything we do here is inevitably going to fail, but it is alright, because we know that Christ wins in the end. If that is the way you view the world, then there is no reason to do anything other than sit around and wait to go to heaven. Under this view, the only thing that is worth doing at all in life is telling people how to be saved.

There are a number of theological arguments given by adherents to MacArthur’s view. The first is the idea of the complete fallenness of creation; that because of Adam’s sin, God curses the land: ‘…from dust you were taken and to dust you will return’ (Genesis 3:19). From a Christian perspective, the strength of this argument is that it is unambiguously anti-Pelagian: it safeguards our belief that we are totally unable to save ourselves, and magnifies the importance of the finished work of Christ on the cross. However, I find this far too negative a way of viewing the world. It conflates the world being infected by sin, and the world itself becoming sinful in its very nature. Under this view, rather than the goodness of the world being marred by sin and the point of salvation being to rescue and restore what is good in the world, the goodness of the world is utterly destroyed by sin, and simply needs to be replaced by a new one.

Another reason for this pessimism is eschatological: many evangelicals are premillennial — that is to say, they believe that Christ will come back in the future and reign for a thousand years, and until then things will keep getting worse and worse. Now I am not interested in debating eschatology here, but if our eschatology justifies not doing any good thing because it will ultimately fail, we might want to rethink our theology. However, even if things on earth will ultimately get worse and our efforts will come to naught, that does not mean that trying to redeem politics is bad. In fact, Jesus teaches us to do good even if that good will ultimately fail, for God will reward us for it. But I think even given such bizarre theological opinions, we cannot be too pessimistic about politics: why can’t God redeem politics?

The final theological question concerns how evangelicals can engage with society. Although it may be fun to quote Leviticus at LGBT activists, it is not particularly effective. In the twentieth century, there was a move towards seeing Revelation as set directly against Reason. Karl Barth (1886-1968), writing his Epistle to the Romans (first ed. 1919) during and in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, draws heavily upon the image of artillery — revelation is explosive, and entirely cuts through reason. Dutch-American theologian Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) took the view that rather than rationally defending the faith, Reformed Christians should just accept the Bible as a presupposition and argue that everyone else has an inconsistent worldview.

Short of getting everyone to accept that their worldview is stupid, this does not give us much of a way to engage with people that don’t care for the Bible. Personally, I think that a better analogy for the interaction of Revelation and Reason is this: if we were in a dark room, we would be able to use our Reason to figure some things out by fumbling around, but Revelation is like turning the light on so that we can see. Under this view, we now have a framework for engaging with people: we can use Revelation to guide our Reason.

Another question is the following: if we are to engage with society, what is the church’s role in that? An influential figure in conservative evangelical thought is Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), who argued that local churches only serve to equip the faithful for good works. However, many churches abuse this notion — ignoring the fact that Kuyper himself was also a politician, founding the Anti-Revolutionary Party and serving as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905 — to justify not doing anything but preaching. Given that church is where Christians meet, Christian action is always going to mediated through churches, but we have given ourselves permission to do nothing at all.

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So, we lack a serious political theology, and partially as a result of this, British evangelicals now have a wide variety of political beliefs. We evangelicals could resolve this if we were willing to have the right conversations, but in general, people are unwilling. Much of this is due to disgust towards politics in general: we don’t want to cause division, we don’t want to be influenced by politics, we don’t want to have to work with slimy people. No political parties precisely represent what we are all about. People will point to the troubles of evangelical politicians like Kate Forbes and Tim Farron, and argue that if we involve ourselves in politics, we will just get bullied and become everyone’s enemy — and that cannot be good for evangelism, right? However, I think we should stand up politically for what is good. If people hate us for that, then so be it. Wouldn’t we rather people be evangelised by the good that we do rather than the ‘bad’ that we hide?

Much of this disgust towards politics is exemplified by Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’. Dreher argues — as do many Christians — that our culture is in an inexorable state of decline, or perhaps will imminently collapse in its entirety. Dreher argues that what we need to do as Christians is separate ourselves from the national culture, and restore it from among the ruins. There is a delightful purity to this view: never are we in need of fighting or engaging with people we don’t like; nor is it ever necessary to be disliked by anyone; nor is it ever necessary for us to risk political defeat. Instead, we should just live out Christian lives in the obscurity that we desire, doing only what is wholesome — praying and singing and arguing over increasingly obscure theological quandaries.

Dreher is right to recognise the potential danger of becoming too ‘political’, ultimately to the detriment of our faith. Despite the fact such an approach might be a useful addition to the American political dialogue, in Britain it is only giving Christians yet another excuse not to engage in a fight that they are already not fighting. Somehow, we are to suppose that if we continue to not fight, we will end up vindicated in the end. British evangelicals are a useful test case: has evangelicalism become stronger by stepping away from politics and the culture? No: by letting our enemies win, not only have we lost, but we have given over our culture to the dogs.

However, there is another issue at play here: despite the rude health of evangelicalism in university towns, we still lack real evangelical elites. Much of this is due to the aforementioned disgust: why would you embed yourself within an elite institution and work with people you don’t like? On top of that, there is a general pessimism about all institutions. Many evangelicals have a belief that all these institutions will all eventually collapse — hopefully as soon as possible.

Everyone just runs away from bad churches and sets up their own, and it is the same with institutions. For example, Doug Wilson in America is currently setting up new ‘institutions’ under the belief that once the current institutions collapse, his will be the ones with prestige. But until then, no one cares about some silly Christian university in Idaho, and everyone cares about Harvard. There is also a danger of silent Christianity: we don’t want to distinguish ourselves with our faith. If we had a movement on the ground, it may be easier to be Christian as an elite.

Finally, an excess of the message of individual salvation makes it so that the aim is to be a good Christian whatever institution we are in. We do not emphasise the aim of trying to shape institutions to better suit our interests. So when a Christian is in an institution, they tend to be silent and conform. I think many Christians feel dirty about being elite — we want to be amicable and serve everyone, rather than acting in ways that serve our interests. However, we should not believe that we are acting in our own interests, but in the interest of everyone by the redemption of politics, so long as we remain prayerful and self-reflective.

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By way of a conclusion, allow me to put forward a proposal for those readers who are evangelicals: the Constantine Option.

Firstly, we would need to emphasise evangelicals as a unique unit within British society. This would involve tightening doctrinal restrictions; being more direct, and telling people that their theology is simply wrong. One suggestion could be to enforce the view that communion is for Christians only — as is clearly affirmed in scripture — and actively turn people away from the table in order to cement a unique identity. We should more be willing to preach on doctrinal issues that are considered politically controversial: no one should be surprised that we are not LGBT-affirming, or that we are pro-life. Further, we should foster connections between churches, so that evangelicals at other churches can feel like they are part of the same community even if they aren’t in the same church.

Next, we would need to convince evangelicals that political engagement is good. This change would have to start on a theological level: that is to say, developing a theology of engagement in society; thinking about how salvation touches all aspects of the world, including the redemption of politics and culture. Hopefully, this could become standard fare in our preaching and our prayers. 1 Timothy speaks of praying for all people including kings and rulers — would it be too far to regularly pray for good Christian rulers? This would hopefully lead to irenic conversations between fellow Christians about politics and theology and their connection, with pastors promoting gentle political disagreement — instead of quiet division, the current norm — over political issues. This is actually rather serious: lots of right-wing Christians squirm at the idea of speaking about politics, whereas many left-wing Christians feel justified in declaring their views to somehow be the definitive Christian approach. This quietly divides the church. If we cannot be honest with one another, then the Church is already torn asunder, to which the only remedy is reconciliation on the basis of serious, potentially offensive, but hopefully charitable conversations.

Following a change in culture, there would need to be a change in our approach to political engagement. A simple matter would be to have evangelicals actually engaged in local politics as evangelicals. This tends to be an area where agreement would be far easier to come by, and positive results could be seen far more easily. Another matter would be to have evangelicals engaged in political parties. Of course, there are already evangelicals involved in all major political parties in Britain, and there are groups within these parties for these people to join. However, members of these groups seem to view their role as nothing more than evangelising and supporting one another — party members who just so happen to be Christian, rather than Christian party members. They do not attempt to establish a distinctly evangelical voice within these parties. Christians in the Conservative Party or in the Labour Party should view themselves as a Christian voice within the party, actively trying to influence the party in the direction of the good and the virtuous. And we, as the Church, need to support them. We should not gawk at the fact that people take their faith seriously, and quite naturally bring that into their politics, or worry that they may bring us into disrepute. Church leaders ought to help guide those under their care who engage politically.

A further push would be to get evangelicals to seriously consider a career in positions of influence. Today, evangelicalism suffers from the fact that on a Sunday morning for about forty minutes, a church leader preaches through a section of scripture; implicitly, the preacher or the pastor is the gold standard of Christian life. We can end up giving the impression that if you want to take your faith seriously and influence the world, the best way to do that is to pursue a role in church leadership, when in fact the political world needs more people who are actively Christian. Often we will distinguish between our careers and our ministries; our ‘real’ jobs versus how we serve the church. So someone in politics may be tempted to think that their job in politics is not a ministry; that it is not actively serving the church. Perhaps as a consequence, these people are not bold in their evangelical convictions in their role, out of some assumption that they are already fighting the good fight at church. Again, the church needs to put itself behind such people.

Therefore, let us be bold and courageous, assured in the knowledge of our salvation and of the final victory of Christ. Let us not be ashamed for the sake of Christ and his Gospel, or to be associated as one Church. Let us not hide in obscurity, as though we are just like the heathen who seek only to poison and destroy. Save yourself from this wicked generation and save your brothers too. Pray for our leaders, and fight for the redemption of the establishment. Then maybe, in God’s good time, we may see a new Constantine, for the glory of God and the good of those who love him. Amen.