Is Britain a ‘Christian nation’? Of course, it all depends on what we mean by the phrase. We could mean it in a constitutional sense. The fact that we have bishops in the House of Lords, Anglican Chaplains in every prison in the country by legal statute, a monarch who is supreme Governor of the Church of England, and numerous other legacies of the Christian past all show how Christianity is baked into the constitutional and legal framework of the UK in unique ways.
Then there is the cultural aspect. If even Richard Dawkins can call himself a ‘cultural Christian’, enjoying a Christmas Carol or two, hot cross buns and Handel’s Messiah, surely that is further evidence of the pervasiveness of Christianity in our cultural heritage.
Then there's the social aspect, that we as a society are broadly shaped by Christian norms and ideals as many recent authors from Tom Holland to Bijan Omrani have argued. According to them, whether atheist, Muslim, agnostic or Christian, if we live in the UK, we are all basically fish swimming in Christian seas.
And last, of course, there's the numerical argument. At the 2021 census, 46.3% of people in the UK still identified as Christian which, while no longer a majority, remains the largest religious grouping in the country (the next largest is ‘no religion’ which came in at 37.2%, with Muslims at 6.5% and Hindus at 1.7%.)
Now all of this would suggest those who claim Britain is a Christian country have a point. And yet in my view it's a category mistake to call it that in an uncritical way.
In the New Testament, the people that gather to worship Jesus are called “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation…” So, strictly speaking, the only truly ‘Christian nation’ is the Church. The Church, as grafted onto Israel, the people of God in the Old Testament, is the true ‘holy nation’, in other words a nation set apart for the purposes of God from within the entire human race. No other people can claim such a place or role.
It seems to me that both sides of this debate are tempted to confuse the vital relationship between the church and the state.
Some think that both church and state must both be equally exclusive and ‘Christian’. However, when it comes to its core identity, when you have to define what it is, the church must be exclusive whereas the nation has to be inclusive. The Church is made up of those who believe in Christ, who confess Christian faith and are baptised into Christ – in that way it has to be exclusive. Britain as a nation, however, has to include citizens of many faiths and none. It's impossible to be a devotee of Islam and Christianity at the same time, or an atheist Christian for that matter, without stretching the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. It is perfectly possible, however, to be a Muslim Briton, a Jewish Briton, or an atheist Briton.
Yet others make a different kind of mistake, thinking that when it comes to its stance towards others, both church and state have to be indiscriminately inclusive, welcoming all. Although the church may be exclusive in its nature, it has to be inclusive in its welcome. Anyone is welcome to come along to a service at their local church. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, Hindu, atheist or Rastafarian, if you turn up wanting to come, you are welcome - the doors are open. However, the state cannot be quite so accommodating. When someone turns up on our shores wanting to come in, the state has to make distinctions as to who is or is not allowed to enter. We have immigration rules and citizenship tests. They are perhaps not as strict as some would like, but any state has to be discriminating as to who it allows to enter and start living there and those to whom it refuses entry.
The point is that the Church and the State play different roles in our corporate life. Where the church needs to be exclusive, the state needs to be inclusive. And where the church needs to be inclusive, the state needs to be exclusive. And when we confuse these roles, we get into a muddle.
Having said all that, to return to our early discussion of the Christian heritage of the nation, whether you look at it constitutionally, culturally, socially or even numerically it's hard to dispute the deep impact and ongoing influence of Christianity on our national life. Although on the surface, the majority of the country seems pretty secular, you don't have to dig very deep to uncover the profound impact Christian faith has had upon this country.
When the Queen died in 2022 and we had to look into the nation’s historical playbook on how to mourn a past monarch and enthrone a new one, it was Christian to the core. Yes, there was a right and proper nod in the direction of other faiths in the coronation service, but you could not dispute the profoundly Christian character of a service which involved readings from the Bible, a Holy Eucharist, Christian anointing with oil, and an Archbishop performing the act of crowning.
Tom Holland’s Dominion, surely one of the most influential books to have been published in recent years, pointed out: “That human beings have rights; that they are born equal; that they are owed sustenance and shelter, and refuge from persecution; these were never self-evident truths.” All of these ideas that we take for granted are, he argues, deeply Christian in origin.
So what are we? To say we are a ‘Christian nation’ is theologically confused and exclusive towards Britons who have all the rights and privileges of citizenship but yet who do not happen to be Christian.
At the same time, we are a nation that has been influenced by Christianity more than any other philosophy, religion or way of life. Understanding that distinction won’t solve all our problems, but it may help to clarify our debates.
Graham Tomlin is Editor-in-Chief of SeenandUnseen.com, and a former Bishop of Kensington
