Against the theological despisers of cultural Christians

The backlash against New Theism has been swift. And, strangely, most of it hasn’t come from humanists and atheists, but from what one might call established Christians.

George Pitcher's comment on the recent flurry of articles on 'cultural Christians' in the United Kingdom highlights the oddest feature of this phenomenon: the most intense opposition to the very idea of 'cultural Christians' comes from Christians. It is almost as if the failure of the New Atheist movement - and this is what 'cultural Christians' at least partly represent - comes as a disappointment to some of the theological despisers of cultural Christians. Perhaps this emerges from a desire for a combative, confrontational relationship between Church and Culture, rather contrary to the Apostolic exhortation that "we may lead a quiet and peaceable life". Sectarian existence, after all, can be a rather more heady experience than the quiet, peaceable, modest Anglican (or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic) life.

An undercurrent in much of the criticism of cultural Christians is that they actually represent a threat to the Church's mission. Alison Milbank, by contrast, has reminded us in The Once and Future Parish that cultural Christians represent an opportunity for the Church's mission:

Given the dominance of secular propaganda and the surprising ways in the Church of England has engineered its own demise ... it is astonishing that nearly half the population still claims Christian allegiance. The world is ours to win for Christ and current circumstances demand more and not less of the distinctively integral mission and care that the parish system alone can offer.

It does seem to be obvious: why wouldn't the Church of England consider such cultural Christians to be those most likely to be reached by the Church's witness and called into the church's life? Cultural Christians, after all, are not shaped by the hostility to Christianity of - as excellent Theos research has indicated - the 'Campaigning Nones', the 34% of the UK 'Nones' who are "extremely hostile to religion". Why not seek to craft messages and events which resonate with cultural Christians?

Part of the problem may be that cultural Christians are the wrong sort of people. They will tend to be culturally conservative - even while a clear majority will be socially liberal, supporting, for example, equal marriage and unwilling to repeal the 1967 Abortion Act. They are more likely than not to be quietly, unashamedly patriotic. They are much more likely than not to be supportive of the Crown and the armed forces. They are more likely than not to be critical of current levels of immigration. They are more likely than not to be sceptical of the progressive orthodoxy regarding gender. And, as opinion polls have consistently indicated over the years, they are more likely than not to have voted Conservative in recent decades. (We might note, by the way, that a good case could be made that Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party is doing a rather better job than the Church of England in crafting messages to address cultural Christians.)

It is difficult to shake the suspicion that this is not what a significant stream of opinion in the Church of England wants to see in church: do we really want these sort of people in the pews? When the Kingdom of God is neatly aligned with progressive views, there is an evangelistic imperative to rejecting cultural Christians. By contrast, Anglican churches are inherently called to be national churches, whether established or not. John Hughes stated of the Church of England - and this is to be applied to any Anglican Church - "As the name indicates, we are not a Church defined by a confession or founder, but by geography and culture". Such a church cannot be refusing to incorporate and gather up into Christ (always, of course, a process of conversion) political allegiances and cultural identities which are significant and formative in national life.

Then there is the distinctly fuzzy beliefs of cultural Christians: enjoying carols at Christmas, popping into Choral Evensong, valuing christenings and church weddings but hesitant - at best - about the Creed. It would seem to be a minority of cultural Christians who are in the 'Dawkins camp': that is, explicitly renouncing the Creed. Much more numerous are those cultural Christians who might vaguely affirm the opening phrase of the Creed, together with some imprecise sense of Jesus being important to the Christian tradition. To state the very obvious, this is not what the Book of Common Prayer means by "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son". Acknowledging this, however, does not require us to entirely dismiss cultural Christians or, as one commentator has declared, simply disregard the term:

Richard Dawkins’ term of ‘cultural Christian’ is really a misnomer. One’s allegiance is either with Christ or it is against him. Paul writes in Romans 10: “ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

Likewise, Justin Brierley's Easter article in The Spectator gave short shrift to the cultural Christian concept because such a phenomenon was not about saving faith:

If it isn’t literally true, it isn’t valuable. Whether Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead matters. It mattered to St Paul. ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.’ And it should matter to us.

As Hooker reminds us, what is true of the order of salvation is not true of the Church's earthly existence and its cultural presence. Indeed, it is to profoundly confuse the Church visible and the Church invisible, the Church as polity and the Church as mystical body:

For lacke of diligent observing the difference ... betweene the Church of God mysticall and visible ... the oversightes are neither fewe nor light that have beene committed (LEP III.1.9).

As what Hooker termed a "visible society" (III.1.14), the Church will have a public and cultural presence capable of evoking support, sympathy, identity, and gratitude. This may be equated to "things of externall regiment in the Church", that is, of a different order to "thinges necessarie unto salvation" (III.3.4). In other words, the term 'cultural Christian' has meaning and significance even though such identity does not belong to the order of salvation.

What is more, just as church polity, while not belonging to the order of salvation, yet serves the order of salvation, so identifying as a cultural Christian in a deeply secular culture can be indicative of a willingness to see something in Christianity which has greater significance than that which is transitory. Here are beginnings which should be nurtured, rather than rejected; built upon, rather than overthrown. As Niall Gooch has said:

Those who can’t quite bring themselves to believe in full, yet still find consolation and moral guidance in the faith, are to be commended for their openness, and encouraged to think about what it might mean if beauty and truth and joy are real things in the universe, rather than mere illusions generated by collisions of atoms.

We might also apply to such sensibilities of cultural Christians the words of Hooker: 

[they] should in divers considerations be cherished accordinge to the mercifull examples and preceptes whereby the gospell of Christ hath taught us towardes such to show compassion, to receyve them with lenitie and all meeknes, if any thing be shaken in them to strengthen it, not to quench with delayes and jealouses that feeble smoke of conformitie which semeth to breath from them, but to build wheresoever there is anie foundation, to ad perfection into sclender beginninges (V.68.9).

A Hookerian vision of 'to add perfection' should shape how the churches respond to the confusions and scepticism of cultural Christians regarding creedal faith. This requires solid and engaging preaching of the faith, resources which confidently and thoughtfully share the faith, centres of teaching and - assuming it is not to be dismissed as a 'key limiting factor' - serious theological formation of clergy. The profound failure in catechesis which has been so evident in most Christian churches over the past half century can hardly be regarded as the responsibility of cultural Christians. If we want cultural Christians to confess the creed with faith, it is the responsibility of the churches to address the profound failures in teaching and catechesis of recent decades.

The theological despisers of cultural Christians also overlook how this phenomenon can recall the churches to discern and recognise a significant aspect of our current cultural context. While Brierley's Easter article was critical of cultural Christians in a rather predictable fashion, it did rightly point to how Christians should not be surprised by the phenomenon:

The New Atheists of the early 2000s – led by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett – predicted a utopia founded upon science and reason once we had abandoned religion. But their bestselling books proved to be full of empty promises. All that our post-Christian society has delivered so far is confusion, a mental health crisis in the young and the culture wars. It’s not surprising then that a movement of New Theists has sprung up.

Any survey of our contemporary culture - a landscape of fears, confusions, divisions, hatreds, and anxieties - is hardly going to offer much hope or inspiration. Are we really to be surprised that, as a result, there is a not insignificant proportion of people who value cultural and social forms associated with Christianity? Related to this, are we really going to suggest that Christianity does not have cultural and social consequences that contribute to human flourishing? That the answer to both questions might be 'yes' suggests that contemporary churches have lost a rightful, generous confidence in Christianity as a bearer of grace, truth, and goodness. Somewhat ironically, it might be that the theological despisers of cultural Christians have ingested that which cultural Christians have rejected - the New Atheist insistence that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is a culturally regressive force. In this case, cultural Christians are rightly recalling the churches to a renewed confidence in the public and cultural presence of Christianity.

As with any social grouping, cultural Christians stand in need of the transforming grace of the Gospel. Woke Left, Reactionary Right, Sensible Centrists, and, yes, middle-aged, cricket-loving Anglican Royalists: we all stand in need of the Gospel. So too, of course, do we all who faithfully confess the Creed, read the Scriptures, and partake of the Sacraments. There is never, in this mortal life, a time when we all are not called to conversion. To say that that this is particularly true of cultural Christians, in a way which does not also apply to a progressive who would never dream of voting Conservative, is not merely unhelpful: it is to add to the Gospel, contrary to the Apostolic injunction "to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things". 

This is not to deny that 'cultural Christian' can, for some, embrace attitudes not only unpleasant but sinful towards, for example, our Muslim neighbours - just as Woke Left opinion can embrace anti-Semitism and polite Centrism can be blithely dismissive of those lacking economic and educational opportunities. All cultural, political, and social identities stand under the judgement of the Gospel; all are called to repentance; all are to be changed by the call to love our neighbour.

Contrary to the theological despisers of cultural Christians, the churches in general, and Anglicanism in particular, should be seriously reflecting upon and meaningfully engaging with the 'cultural Christian' phenomenon. The passing of the New Atheist moment, the profound unease afflicting post-Christian societies, and the unexpected reappearance of the cultural Christian have significant implications for the life and witness of the churches, particularly those historically embedded in civil society and with a national vocation. 

If cultural Christians are asking uncomfortable questions of churches regarding the public and cultural presence of Christianity, good. It long past time to abandon that theology of the 1960s which celebrated secularism and had a self-loathing for Christianity's cultural presence. (Sam Brewitt-Taylor's superb study on this process in the UK is required reading.) 

And finally, to return to Alison Milbank's words, considering it "is astonishing that nearly half the population [of England] still claims Christian allegiance", the churches in general, and the Church of England in particular (is it too late to ask the same of the Church of Scotland?), should be considering how to craft and communicate an understanding of Christian faith, life, and worship which resonates with those who - despite an intensely secular culture - still somehow identify as Christian.