Beyond the progressive echo chamber: how might the established Church offer a distinctive Christian vision in the public square?

Recent days have witnessed the Church of England yet again clumsily demonstrate the default progressive views of its senior hierarchy. With widespread and significant public concern regarding illegal immigration - immigration has overtaken the economy as the primary concern of UK voters - the Archbishop of York responded to Reform's proposal for deporting those who illegally entered the UK by saying "we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk 'send them home'". In other words, illegally entering the UK should carry no sanction. Attempting to control the UK's borders, according to the Archbishop of York, is "isolationist". 

As one commentator stated, the Archbishop's statement "is not part of Christian teaching, it is not a logical outworking of any Christian principle ... It is just the personal view of a generic leftish middle-class English person in 2025". There is significantly increasing public disdain for such "generic leftish middle-class assumptions", evident in the fact that the Labour government - the embodiment of these assumptions - now has a net approval rating of -59, Labour's lowest score to date. It is this which makes the established Church's default progressive left political interventions a serious matter for all Christians in the UK. An established church which is merely an echo-chamber for polite progressive opinion is no better than - indeed, it is precisely equivalent to - those evangelicals in the United States who merely affirm all actions of the Trump administration. 

What could be an alternative approach by the established Church to the current British political context? The emphasis should be on a distinctive Christian voice in the public square, providing challenge and guidance to the political left, centre, and right. This might begin by looking across the North Sea and listening to a politically successful centre-left political party, Denmark's Social Democrats. A Spectator article last week highlighted how Demark's Social Democrat government has recognised the need for public Christianity. Despite the long history of the Danish Social Democrats seeking to undermine the national and cultural presence of the Church of Denmark, the Prime Minister has said that the national Church offers "national grounding". She has challenged the Church of Denmark, in words that could also be applied to the Church of England:

If I were the Church, I would be thinking right now: how can we be both a spiritual and physical framework for what Danes are going through?

As the Spectator article went on to say:

What is becoming clear in Denmark is the limit of secular governance. Rights and freedoms, as noble as they are, do not exist in a vacuum. They are the fruit of a deeper moral vision, one rooted in transcendence, in religion, in shared understanding of truth and goodness. Cut off from those roots, the tree will not stand.

The fact that this coheres with the much commented upon speech given in July by Conservative MP Danny Kruger highlights how a recognition of the need for public Christianity can be found on both political left and right. It also demonstrates how the Churches can articulate the civilisational vision of Christianity at a time when our cultures are seeking such a vision, amidst the ruins of the post-1989 neoliberal order. A failure by national churches to articulate the civilisational vision of Christianity - or, worse, to deny (contrary to Christian history) that there is such a vision - is not only to hand over to other forces, some of them very dark, the opportunity to do so; it also fails to recognise that society, culture, and civilisation are transformed by Jesus Christ.

There should, then, be no embarrassment on the part of the established Church about describing the UK as a Christian country, urging renewed engagement with a culture fundamentally shaped and defined by Christianity - as splendidly shown in Bijan Omrani's God is an Englishman. As Omrani states, this civilisational vision, as expressed in English and British history, "if offered with confidence and approached with an open-minded patience, has the power to assuage and nourish those longings of the spirit so clearly present by which the demands of this age desire us to disregard". 

Secondly, the former Conservative MP Miriam Cates has urged, in a recent article, that the "celebration of childlessness" should be challenged:

We no longer talk about the joy, satisfaction, love, richness of starting a family. Social media is awash with glamorous women broadcasting their “child free” independence, and influencers warning that motherhood is an ordeal to be dreaded. It has become unfashionable to discuss the wonder of having a newborn. Instead, we’ve spent decades telling young women that the virtually worst thing they could do would be to get pregnant.

This should be straightforward for any Christian church. It certainly should be straightforward for the Church of England. The Prayer Book marriage rite declares that the first reason for the institution of marriage is " for the procreation of children". The marriage rite then goes on to pray, "We beseech thee, assist with thy blessing these two persons, that they may ... be fruitful in procreation of children". A good indicator of a church having seriously lost its way is if such statements result in awkwardness or embarrassment.

In the context of falling birthrates, with consequent significant social and cultural challenges, and a sub-culture which claims superiority for the "child-free" life, the established Church should be confidently proclaiming that children are a blessing to be sought and cherished. This also provides the established Church with a means of addressing the profoundly distressing abortion figures for England and Wales, with almost 1 in 3 (29.69%) pregnancies now resulting in abortion. Against such a culture of death, the established Church should be joyously, confidently proclaiming and encouraging a civilisation of life.

This can challenge both political left and right. While welfare dependency is, to say the least, not what we should desire for any family, the two-child benefit cap does not recognise that children are a blessing - for parents, family, and community. This, by the way, provides a distinctive Christian approach to critiquing the cap, rather than the standard progressive defence of welfare spending currently offered by the Church of England. Also noteworthy is that while the established Church is prepared to call for an end to the two-child benefit cap on these grounds, it has not encouraged the UK government to implement pro-natalist policies, including tax breaks, for all married couples. As Cates stated in her article, "We must change the incentive structures around parenthood by restoring the link between having children and economic security". Elizabeth Bruenig has also argued that "genuinely pronatalist policies may ... have more traction with the left". A politics which affirms the "good of childbearing", says Bruenig, requires "programs that channel money and resources to parents and children". A celebration of the gift of children by the established Church should include an encouragement of wider pro-natalist policies. 

Thirdly, the immigration debate requires a distinctive Christian voice. To be clear, open borders, no meaningful enforcement action, and collusion with the widespread abuse and debasement of asylum is not a distinctively Christian voice: it is merely the standard progressive view. How, then, might the established Church offer a distinctive Christian voice in the immigration debate?

A good starting point is the then Bishop of Truro’s 2019 Independent Review for the Foreign Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Office Support for Persecuted Christians. The Review's Preface opened with words from an editorial in The Times: 

Across the globe, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, Christians are being bullied, arrested, jailed, expelled and executed. Christianity is by most calculations the most persecuted religion of modern times. Yet Western politicians until now have been reluctant to speak out in support of Christians in peril.

The Preface continued:

to understand why this Review is justified we have to appreciate that today the Christian faith is primarily a phenomenon of the global south - and it is therefore primarily a phenomenon of the global poor ... this particular focus is justified because Christian persecution, like no other, is a global phenomenon. And it is so precisely because the Christian faith is a truly global phenomenon.

A distinctive Christian voice in the UK's immigration debate is to be found in emphasising that we live in an age when the persecution of Christians is intensifying across the globe. The complexities of immigration law, of balancing competing concerns and interests, of formulating policies to protect the UK's borders and to prevent abuse of the asylum process are not areas in which the established Church can legitimately speak with any insight or authority. But the established Church can and should speak up for persecuted Christians across the globe and remind the UK that, as a Christian country, often with historic links to countries in which the persecution of Christians is a reality, it has particular responsibilities to these Christians when they flee persecution. 

This would also assist in challenging and refuting ethno-nationalist propagandistic invocations of Christianity. The Christian Faith is not and never has been a white European religion: those seeking a white European religion should set up an idol and sacrifice to it at the Winter Solstice, while wearing antlers and muttering make-believe supplications from pretend runes. By ensuring that the UK's immigration debate takes account of Christians fleeing persecution in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, the established Church would be exposing the anti-Christian vision of the ethno-nationalists while also ensuring that a distinctive and pressing Christian concern is heard in these debates.

A Christian culture and civilisational vision; the blessing of children; and a concern for Christians fleeing persecution. Such issues could provide the basis for the established Church being something rather more interesting and hopefully compelling than a progressive echo chamber. What is more, this would also be a means for the established Church to offer an alternative both to the weird and often dark enthusiasms that roil our political landscape and to the soulless technocrats who have been the architects of this era of turmoil. Above all, however, it would seek to serve the Church's mission to proclaim Christ Crucified and Risen, winning the attention of a culture which has for too long assumed - not without some justification - that the established Church is unwilling to offer a distinctive Christian vision.