Quiet Revival and Renewed Interest
It is a genuine source of encouragement and reason for optimism that, over the last four years or so, since the disastrous COVID lockdowns, a significant rise of interest in the idea of Christian culture, heritage, and nationhood has been seen both within and outside the Christian community. It is also important because a renewed concern with the task and calling of the nation-state, and its inescapably religious character, is vital for the recovery of Western society. This increased interest tracks well with what is being called a ‘quiet revival’ of Christianity. The well-publicized Spring 2025 survey by the Bible Society in the UK showed that in 2018, just 28 percent of respondents believed in God. This had jumped to 45 percent in 2024. At present, thirty-three percent of adult churchgoers in England and Wales are aged eighteen to thirty-four. Notably, twenty-one percent of men aged eighteen to twenty-four are now regular churchgoers.[i]
Sadly, some Christian leaders and professors today treat the resurgent interest in a distinctly Christian view of culture and politics as an unwelcome development. The mysticism, pietism and studied ‘other worldliness’ that has dominated the church landscape in the English-speaking West for so long means that many are annoyed or even troubled to see younger believers or enquirers asking questions about our Christian heritage and culture, and the biblical view of law, politics and the state.[ii] But as the West has sunk further and farther into decay and disillusionment under the guidance of secularism and liberal progressivism, increasing numbers of younger believers are no longer content to accept a radically truncated Christian faith taught in so many of the churches that is akin to a ‘personal salvation’ mystery cult, generously smothered like icing atop an essentially humanistic view of the world. Nor are they willing to embrace the warmed-over neo-Marxism passed off by many professed Christian pastors and teachers as a biblical view of ‘social justice.’ They are simply not interested in working with that obviously failed recipe. All this has led to new discussions in the English-speaking world about the Christian worldview as it relates to culture, politics and the nation.
Divergence and Divisions
Though I currently reside in England (the land of my birth), I’m also Canadian, having lived and worked in Canada for nearly two decades, and am deeply involved today with the church in the United States because the Ezra Institute (the organization I founded in 2009) is headquartered and does extensive ministry there. This diverse experience has enabled me to gain valuable insight into recent divisions emerging in some Christian circles – differences centred in how a Christian view of politics and nationhood should express itself. As with all important questions arising in times of social upheaval, various competing visions are emerging and struggling for ascendancy as the new generation wrestles with the state of their nations and the decaying culture in which they find themselves.
In times past, it was normal and uncontroversial for Christians to believe that the political order was obligated to obey God and be Christian, even if there were differences regarding how that was to be worked out and accomplished. In Britain, for example, from the ninth century on, when Alfred the Great enshrined God’s law in the law of the land, it was the Christian faith that forged English identity and British nationality. Britain remains, by law, a constitutionally Christian nation as enshrined in the ‘Coronation Oath Act’ of 1689. This still-binding Act was preceded by the even more evangelical and robust ‘Solemn League and Covenant’, approved by the English Parliament in 1643 and by Scotland in 1644, and initially supported by Charles II in 1651. It is obvious, however, that steadily, over the last hundred years or so, the substance of this public legal commitment has been gradually eroded to the point of reducing its remaining outward forms to mere pantomime. The result has been the steady decay and disintegration of the British nation, culminating in the present existential crisis. The churches (most notably the established Church of England) and their organs within the seminaries and schools, in large measure and with few notable exceptions, have been complicit in this decline, refusing to address themselves to the collapse of our society by clear reference to the claims of Christ as Lord and the authority of his Word over every aspect of life – something that our forebears had insisted upon. Today, a female nurse with no theological qualifications, surrounded by a cadre of feminized progressives and an effete bureaucracy, is the ostensible leader of the Church of England and a lesbian is the most senior ‘cleric’ of the Anglican church in Wales.
As the governing religious ideology of secularism has embraced multiculturalism and globalism – a form of polytheism accepted as politically normative by most church leaders in Britain today – it has very often been left to frustrated ordinary working people, organizing themselves outside the churches, to falteringly address the issues as best they can, and without the scriptural resources they might have been given. As one prominent example, the recent ‘Unite the Kingdom’ peaceful marches in London, attended by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, can no longer be ignored or smeared as simply Far Right hooliganism. Many ordinary people now realize something has gone badly wrong in the nation, and they are searching for meaning and answers. In addition, some prominent politicians, like former Conservative and now Reform UK MP Danny Kruger, have publicly called on the English Parliament to return to the nation's historic Christian commitment if we are to avoid societal collapse.
Politics, Nationalism and Romanticism
The question then becomes: what form should the Christian public response take at the socio-political level in Britain, the United States, Canada, and the rest of the Western world? What is the vision? We are not short of remarkable examples in the West, with trails blazed by men who led politically in terms of a reformational and scriptural legacy like Oliver Cromwell, William Wilberforce, Groen Van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper; men whose work can still help steer the church away from merely reactionary responses to our cultural crisis. Christian models rooted in God’s word are especially needed when there are so many political philosophies on offer today: Socialism, National Socialism, Marxism and Communism, Liberalism, Social Democracy, Fascism, Islamism, Conservatism, Globalism, Nationalism and more. None of these “isms” are in themselves Christian, whilst some ideas comport better with a biblical vision than others.
We cannot do a credible survey of all those various ideas here, but one emergent and prominent question among Christians currently is whether Nationalism, as a political philosophy, is the best way to refer to and articulate a Christian view of political life and nationhood.[iii] A difficulty immediately and naturally arises in that discussion, which version of the various forms of Nationalism on the historical landscape is to be advocated, if any? What, precisely, is this Nationalism to entail? Should it seek to translate the ideas of imperial Japan under the emperor with its belief in an ethnically superior Japanese people and an immutable culture? Should it reflect a typically authoritarian form of Nationalism seen in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain? Should it incorporate a distinctly Aryan racial component, along with a particular hostility to Jews as seen in Nazi Germany? Most of these ideas, believe it or not, are circulating in some ostensibly Christian spaces and churches. Alternatively, might it reflect an essentially benign form of patriotism and realism, along with a reassertion of the nation-state in a principled rejection of globalism, as articulated by the capable Jewish philosopher Yoram Harzony in his book ‘The Virtue of Nationalism?’
Whilst a more serious and measured discussion is underway among Christian academics, thinkers, church leaders, activists and political figures on this issue, the world of social media, with its influencers, personalities, climbers and grifters, is awash with performative actors churning out clickbait on the subject. This is producing genuine confusion among a generation that inhabits digital social spaces more than most. It also means that there is a seriously diseased variety of Christian statecraft being circulated and promoted in the name of Christian Nationalism – often using demeaning, abusive, threatening or foul language against opponents, so that getting to a healthy view of Christian nationhood is made more difficult by the lazy, ignorant or malevolent.
The term Nationalism was first coined in the late eighteenth century with the emergence of the modern nation-state and has deep roots in romantic philosophy. Prior to this, to linguistically capture the necessary and healthy sense of societal unity rooted in religious commitment, language, culture, and custom (something at which some versions of Christian Nationalism aim), our forebears spoke instead of patriotism. The Armenian American social critic, R. J. Rushdoony, ably captured the link between romanticism and nationalism:
Just as for the Romantic hero, the good of the individual is paramount and takes precedence over all other considerations, so for the nation, in the Romantic faith, the good or concern of the nation is the highest good and takes precedence over Christian concerns. National self-interest went hand in hand with a belief in national superiority and self-glorification…. In earlier eras, men felt loyal to a lord or a king, not to the nation as such; now allegiance was to a nation-state…. [W]hile Romanticism stressed at the beginning the individual, it came in time to stress the freedom of the national state, or the worker’s state, or a racial state, at the cost of personal freedom.[iv]
Tragically, the twentieth century gave us horrifying versions of a primordial form of Nationalism embodied in the racial state. Imperial Japan expressed it, and so, of course, did Nazi Germany, culminating in the romantic doctrine of blood and soil, combining comfortably with evolutionism, socialism, militarism and radical Jew-hatred. Whether we like it or not, this is now the historical baggage of the term 'Nationalism,' which severely limits its usefulness to us today. This confusion of tribalism and the myth of blood and soil with a genuinely Christian view of nationhood was addressed by the Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd:
A nation viewed as a socio-cultural unit should be sharply distinguished from the primitive ethnical unity which is called a popular or tribal community. A real national cultural whole is not a natural product of blood and soil, but the result of a process of differentiation and integration in the cultural formation of human society. In a national community all ethnical differences between the various groups of a population are integrated into a new individual whole which lacks the undifferentiated totalitarian traits of a closed and primitive unit of society.It was, therefore, unmistakable proof of the reactionary character of the Nazi mythof blood and soil that it tried to undermine the national consciousness of the Germanic peoples by reviving the primitive ethnic idea of “folk” (“volkstum”).[v]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Unfortunately, in the United States, among some commentators, ‘influencers’ and professing Christian leaders, this uglier form of Nationalism has emerged and has gained public voice and traction – especially in online forums and social media. It tends toward a primordial view of nationhood, a conspiratorial worldview and the related virulent hatred of Jews, espousing long-worn tropes concerning the global control of world-Jewry. World War II is also being subjected to sophomoric historical revisionism, and the Nazi agenda is rehabilitated with Winston Churchill and England cast as the villains against a well-intentioned and misunderstood Hitler. These ideas, rooted in anger, frustration, sin and ignorance, are dividing some communities, churches and public conservative voices.
The United States has struggled with ethnic strife and the question of American identity since the Civil War. Late nineteenth-century legislation from Democrats that embedded the ‘Jim Crow’ laws in many Southern States for about eighty years, segregating blacks and banning ‘interracial’ marriages, still looms large in the American consciousness. Similar ideas are reemerging in the name ‘race consciousness’ and being promoted by some bad actors in the name of ‘Christian’ Nationalism – though the Marxist led the way in provoking this counter-reaction with their Critical Race Theories and endless accusations of ‘racism.' The patently false notion that ethnic lineage and skin colour are the essential sources of Western European and Anglo- American thinking and culture seems appealing to many, but as Rushdoony pointed out:
Providentially, the early missionaries to Europe, coming from North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean world generally, had no such regard for the European mind. They regarded it as unregenerate and in need of being broken and redeemed. All the plagues and evils of “the European mind” are products of the fallen man and the relics of barbarian cultures, not of Christ and His Word. All that is good in “the European Mind” is a result of Christian culture, not of race.[vi]
Christians concerned with the transformation of cultures and nations through Christ and under his law and lordship need not go down the sinful and misguided root of primordial Nationalism. Whilst ethnic lineage has always played an inescapable role in the gradual formation of nations, for the bible, nationhood is ultimately covenantal with a religious, not ethnic, root. Moreover, land grants from God throughout scripture are always conditional – no people have an absolute right to their land, customs, laws and practices in rebellion against God (c.f. Dan. 9:4-10).
To gain some clarity on the subject, I have found reflection on my own nation, Great Britain, and its Oaths and Covenants with God in the seventeenth century quite instructive, since it is probably the oldest political union of nations in the Western world. Though England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are more ancient, Britain (the United Kingdom), after centuries of invasion and war, was finally formed in 1707 with the Acts of Union – Ireland joining in 1800 (Northern Ireland only from 1927). Before this, we were a collection of separate sovereign states with an ugly history of conflict and hostility. We had different languages, customs and very different ethnic lineages. What finally gave us unity and forged our nationhood as Britons was our shared commitment to Christ and the Protestant faith. Interestingly, the collapse of that shared commitment has driven calls for further devolution of our once United Kingdom.
Covenantal Politics of the Kingdom
The two vital biblical concepts for thinking through a Christian view of the nations are covenant and kingdom, because the root of any truly political entity is religious, not tribal. The early Greek city-states were formed when tribes and clans agreed to worship the same deity and to establish a city as the site of ritual worship, governance, and the residence of the sovereign authority. It is when people and their deity covenant together that cities and nations form. And it was the living God who formed a covenantal nation under his kingship at Sinai from the ethnically diverse group that left Egypt (Ex. 12:38; 19:6) – a type of the messianic kingdom and model for the gentile peoples. In the Newer Testament fulfillment, we see the formation of a new kingdom, people and holy nation, both Jews and Gentiles under the promised rightful King (1 Pt. 2:9), called to disciple, baptize and teach all nations to live under the authority and rule of the King of kings (Mt. 28:18-20).
It has been a tragic error of the modern Western church to largely fail to see the meaning and implications of the Kingdom of God. Christianity is inescapably political in character because the Kingdom is a political, not cultic concept, and the church (ecclesia) is also a political concept. The Kingdom of God is a divine political order under an absolute monarch, Christ Jesus, regardless of the varied and valid institutional forms his vice-gerents employ in its organization. The administration of that Kingdom and law-order is the only true politics. Together, Christians throughout the world constitute a new society and nation – a political order that exists in distinction to the pagan and humanistic orders around them – whose origin, power and authority is derived from a divine source. This is why the early church established organizations and agencies to address every sphere of life – care homes, courts, schools, exchequers, hospitals, and much more. Because to abandon any area of life to be conducted outside the Lordship of Christ in terms of another law-order was considered idolatry and treason against the King. God’s Kingdom in the earth is an imperium in imperio (a sovereignty within a sovereignty) manifest in total loyalty to Christ. That imperium seeks, ultimately, to displace and replace all other political orders with the Kingdom reign of Christ (Psalm 2; Rev.11:15); the one to whom all the peoples of the earth are given as an inheritance. This is why we are taught to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven (Mt. 6:10).”
It is here that many of the Christian Nationalists err badly. They typically fail to see that all political philosophies and orders of men not explicitly rooted in the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ and subject to his Word are to be supplanted. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so only that which cannot be shaken will remain (Heb. 12:27). Biblically, politics is not an independent domain of so-called ‘nature’ to be conducted in the light of ‘natural reason’ – a sphere essentially unrelated to the universal Kingdom of Jesus Christ in the earth and his royal people. His Kingdom refuses to be shunted off the world stage into another time and place or abstracted into a ‘spiritual’ realm of ‘grace.’ On the contrary, man and his ancient philosophic concepts of nature and reason are fallen, and all man’s humanistic political systems are in the grip of sin: be it Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Socialism, Globalism, Nationalism, Conservatism or any other ‘ism.’ The only totalizing reality for human society, the only true politics, is that of the Kingdom of God under the lordship and law of Jesus Christ. The politics of Jesus is that of covenant and kingdom.
Like Abraham, we are looking for that city whose builder and maker is God, ruled by the Prince of Peace. As Christians struggle forward in our calling, under God, to realize a vision of Christian countries, cultures and states throughout the world, surrendered to the gospel of the Kingdom and covenanted to Christ, I do not believe the defining term for that noble task should be Christian Nationalism. This is not simply because of its recent provenance, its ambiguous and confusing use for various agendas, or its humanistic and ugly historical baggage, but because it displaces the central organizing politics of the Kingdom, which relativizes rather than absolutizes nations, peoples, or bloodlines. This does not negate the importance of strong borders or a healthy love of country, which can be legitimately expressed in an unashamed patriotism and godly pride in our history and national achievements. It does mean our objective as God’s people should be the inclusion of all who share that covenantal and Kingdom vision, not the subtle exclusion or reduction to second-class status of people based on skin colour, ethnic background and family lineage.
Among William Wilberforce’s key coworkers in the Christian reformation of Britain were the black men Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and Quobna Cugoano, with Sancho being a respected intellectual in London. As Wilberforce strove for a Christian nation, he laboured with these faithful believers, whatever their ethnicity, because the gospel of the Kingdom was central to their work. We need a Kingdom politics and covenantal nationhood above all else if we want to see the blessing of God on our endeavours. Christian culture should be our watchword.
[i] See, The Quiet Revival, https://theresource.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Quiet-Revival.pdf
[ii] As one typical hysterical example: https://www.keepthefaith.co.uk/2025/12/02/a-christian-response-to-christian-nationalism/
[iii] It should be noted that as far as mainstream media, academia and almost all secularists and progressives inside and outside of the church are concerned, anyone who believes in the importance of the Christian heritage of the Western nations, or who believes that nation-states can and should be Christian, is a Christian ‘Nationalist’ used in the pejorative sense.
[iv] R. J. Rushdoony, An Informed Faith: The Position Papers of R. J. Rushdoony Vol. 2: Ecclesiology, Doctrine and Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2017), 595-596
[v] Herman Dooyeweerd, Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History: The Collected Works, Vol. 21 (Jordan Station, Ontario: Paideia Press, 2023), 62
[vi] Rushdoony, An Informed Faith, 24
