Okay, maybe it is time to worry about the Christian revival

For the US hard right, taking the Lord's name in vain is becoming a full-time job

Last week, I told you all why you’re finding the Christian revival so hard to reckon with. Do give it a read, but the TL;DR for the time-poor amongst us is that our commitment to atheism and secularism is underpinned by colonial-era fantasies about how advanced Western civilisation is. After a certain point, religion simply became too primitive for our inflated egos. We can see this reflected in negative discussions on Islam in the UK and beyond since 2001, which focus far more on the idea that Muslims are religious (and remember, religion = bad) than any particular elements of their faith. I was very much on my high horse, and enjoying it greatly.

I concluded that we, especially those of us on the left, need to stop moralising about other peoples’ faith, particularly since the vocabulary that we use to do so was originally developed to denigrate colonised populations in the Global South. However, my wife very helpfully pointed out that the Christian revival that we are seeing is not all stoic prayer, joyous hymns, and a sincere commitment to Luke 6:31. No, much resurgent Christianity, particularly amongst those with the loudest voices, is deeply partisan, aggressively political, and chauvinistically nationalist. And so, to paraphrase Mark Corrigan, I will now reverse out of my previous position with all of the elegance of a man trying to three-point-turn a lorry in a cul-de-sac, and spend the next 2,000 words or so explaining why it maybe is time to worry about the Christian revival. Mea culpa. Who knows, maybe next week I’ll do another U-turn, and consider the salvation we could all find in the more radical Anglican village parishes?

Because yes, the Christian nationalism that we are seeing, particularly emerging from the States but also uncomfortably close to home, is terrifying. A potent blend of moral certitude, cultural chauvinism, and ultra-conservativism, used to justify racism, homophobia, and misogyny in the highest order. Worse still, this is all underpinned by the kind of historical weight and precedence that can only be drawn by hijacking a 2,000-year-old faith for your own nefarious purposes. So yes, while we do need to be more conscientious of people’s beliefs, and inclusive of people of faith, we should absolutely do whatever we can to challenge this. On the plus side, it does mean that we all get to disagree with Jordan Peterson more often, which I find to be very good practice in general.

Christian Nationalism never died, but it is Risen Again

Last week, I made a passing comment on the role of the Crusades as one of the first instances of European colonialism, explicitly motivated by Christian faith. But it is also one of the first instances of that other great European project – nationalism. One of the best ways to draw the ‘imagined community’ of the nation together is, of course, through a common enemy. An enemy who you can identify against, and in opposition to. The minor and major divergences in faith between Christianity and Islam are the stuff of gold for early-stage nationalists. On eight separate occasions, the squabbling kingdoms, fiefdoms, and principalities of Europe were convinced to set aside their differences for the greater good, the Christian good, of ejecting Muslims from Jerusalem. Europe was, in these moments, not England, France, Normandy, or Bavaria – it was Christendom. The arbiters of the true faith, and defenders of it from the false prophesising of the infidels. Noel to the Islamic Liam. Coke to the Saracens’ Pepsi. All Europe joined together to sail Eastwards under one, unified, Christian banner.

This newfound pan-European feeling wasn’t to last. Of course it wasn’t. But that sense of religious identity and moral superiority didn’t fade with the end of the Crusades. If anything, it intensified, laying the groundwork for some of the Middle Ages' worst atrocities

Take England. The idea that Jews and Muslims were unwelcome, a threat to Europe, or just bad (no one is saying these ideas were very well thought-through) picked up significantly following the first Crusade. This intolerance reached its peak in 1190 when a very familiar conspiracy theory centred on blood-drinking rituals (QAnon, is that you?), led to the massacre of around 150 Jewish Britons at York Castle in 1190. The centenary of this massacre was marked when Edward I banished all Jews from England in 1290, citing a need for religious purity. Similar expulsions followed in France, Switzerland, and Germany over the next century.

It is not a coincidence that these events all took place during, or following on from, the Crusades. For the first time, Europe had come to define itself by its faith, and to see those of different faiths as an existential threat to their own Christian wellbeing. We were no longer countries who practiced Christianity. No, we were Christian countries.

However, dreadful as they were, the antisemitic and Islamophobic practices elsewhere in Europe during this period are eclipsed by those of the newly-Christian Spain. After a long and drawn-out conflict, what had for hundreds of years been the Islamic caliphate of Al-Andalus finally fell to the Castilian Christians in 1492. And they wasted no time in ensuring that Spain would no longer be considered anything other than a Christian country, immediately expelling around 200,000 Jewish Spaniards from Castile and Aragon. Over the next 150 years, 3,000,000 or so Muslims were also expelled from the peninsula.

This aggressive, genocidal practice of cultural purification was overseen by the Spanish Inquisition. Their mission was simple: ensure that any Jews, Muslims, or anyone with heritage derived thereof, either converted to Christianity, were expelled, or were tortured and murdered. These guys wrote the rulebook on totalitarianism. Everyone was a suspect. People were dragged off by the Inquisition for scrubbing a borrowed pot too vigorously after learning it had touched jamón, leading to the very public, ritualistic consumption of pork to stay off their radar – and you thought David Cameron had a weird thing about pigs. Those suspected of heresy were locked in dungeons for up to two years awaiting trial, and had their possessions pawned to pay for their room and board. Anyone found guilty could be whipped, ostracised, banished, or burned alive at the stake. All for not conforming to the ‘correct’ religious norms of this Christian country.

At the heart of all of this was a set of laws that I’ve written about before, and will almost certainly write about again. Limpieza de Sangre. Literally: blood purity. As foundational to racism as they were to violent nationalism, these laws held that Jews and Muslims were inherently and irredeemably ‘dirty’, impure, on account of their ancestry. Ideas of ethnocentrism, of an us/them mentality, have been around forever, but Limpieza de Sangre laws were the first time that this difference was codified biologically. That Christians were deemed superior as a result of their bodies, their blood, and not just their faith and culture. I stress again, this all emerged as a way to ‘defend’ the faith of an early Christian nation. Christian nationalism is not new. It is, however, risen again, like an inebriated right-wing uncle after a Christmas day snooze. And it is ready to offend once again.

The (very sad) horsemen of the revival

So how has this medieval brand of intolerance survived the dawn of reason? Well, through the actions and words of deeply unreasonable people, of course.

It is the opinion of many more learned than I (and some who are far less learned than I – I’m looking at you, Daily Mail journalists) that much of this new Christian revival is being driven by the public Christian affectations of several very high-profile men. Who are they – and what do they want?

There is Joe Rogan. A man who bears an uncanny resemblance to a baked potato, or perhaps the Sontarans in Doctor Who. Now Joe has not publicly declared that he is a man of faith, nor has he outwardly advocated for a Christian nationalist position. But he is the host of the most successful podcast of all time, and has consistently platformed many who do harbour these beliefs. During his interview with ‘journalist’ Michael Shellenberger, the latter proclaimed, paradoxically, that “loving your enemies is what Christianity is about”, and also that “wokeism is a like a new religion… it’s sort of the end of civilisation”. Christianity good, progressivism bad. Then there is JD Vance, with whom Joe shared his fear of a US state falling under Islamic law: “that starts getting real weird… when you have people openly saying our goal is … to outbreed everyone who is not Muslim”. So far, so great replacement theory.

There is also Pete Hegseth. The man the US senate saw fit to confirm as the US Secretary of Defence. Pete’s views on Christian nationalism are so unhinged I’d need another 2,000 words to do them justice – so let me direct you to The Guardian instead. The headlines are that Pete believes that ‘cultural Marxism’ (seizing the means of… culture? occupying theatres?), feminism, critical race theory, and the public school system (?) are the great enemy (one of his interviewers helpfully clarified that they are, in fact, Satan). Instead, Pete believes that civil government should be subservient to Old Testament law, enshrining patriarchy capital punishment for homosexuality, and all of the other batshit crazy parts of Leviticus into policy. In addition to this, the man literally has a Crusader’s Cross tattoo, and has spoken at great length of the role of Jerusalem as the ‘Christian homeland’. He even suggested the possibility of building a third Jewish temple on Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. He also wrote a book called American Crusade. American Crusade. No prize for guessing who the ‘great enemy’ is.

Pete looking very proud of his oversized Crusader’s Cross tattoo (image via)

And who could forget Jordan Peterson? In an interview with Michael Gove for The Spectator (possibly the first time in history Michael Gove has had the smallest ego in any room), Jordan referred to himself as a ‘new kind of Christian’. He doesn’t quite believe in God, Christ, the resurrection, or any of the miracles (a cynical man might say that then, Jordan, you are not a Christian), but Jordan does believes that Biblical stories serve as useful parables for the moral conundrums of our age. He deploys Christian language in his patronising videos liberally, perhaps hoping to draw on some divine imperative to make up for his hope-and-a-prayer approach to interpreting actual data, and to shore up his trademark blend of patronising self-help bollocks, incel-apologism, homophobia, and covert Islamophobia.

Jordan Peterson and a like-minded friend (image via)

We are not immune from this discourse on our side of the pond, either. Tommy Robinson and his supporters often use the idea that we are a ‘Christian country’ to reject the presence of Islam in Britain - employing the sort of logic that belies the fact that many of them are incapable of holding more than one thought in their heads at a time. That said, even allegedly learned and respected ‘intellectuals’ are falling into the same trap. Richard Dawkins, the odious atheist-in-chief himself, came out to the world last year as a ‘cultural Christian’. Not a believer – but someone who identified with the ‘Christian’ morality and culture of Europe, when faced with, you guessed it, the threat of Islam. To Dickie, Christianity is ‘a fundamentally decent religion’, and Islam is not. This opinion is shared by Calvin Robinson, a bona fide Catholic clergyman who has stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Brexit Party, who also believes the UK is a ‘Christian country’ and that “we need Reconquista” - which, funnily enough, is the very term used by the Spaniards who set up the inquisition back in the 15th century. He continued that “we need to remove Islam from Britain”, for the avoidance of any doubt, on the off-chance his Islamophobic target audience weren’t all that historically literate.

What do these men have in common? It isn’t really their faith. Calvin may be an ordained clergyman, and Pete a confirmed religious nutter, but Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson’s relationship with Christ is murkier. Tommy Robinson I think says his evening prayers to the ghost of Oswald Mosely, and Dickie Dawkins is only religious in a ‘cultural sense’ (your guess is as good as mine). No, one key thing that these men really have in common is their dislike of Islam, Muslims, and presumably any brown people in Euro-America (or, in Calvin’s case, any other brown people in Euro-America). Just like the Inquisition before them, and the Crusaders before that, Christianity in this case is a useful moral justification for what are, at their core, aggressive, racist politics of nativism. A way to define the idea of the ‘Western nation’ according to extreme, exclusive metrics, that ultimately hark back to a time of explicit White supremacist politics, hidden behind an increasingly thin veneer of religious sensibility: We’re not saying that the Muslim people are wrong, after all, only their culture, beliefs, traditions, practices, and their presence in the UK – a Christian country. What’s racist about that?

Thy kingdom come, thy rights be gone

So, as it turns out, the Christian revival isn’t really all that Christian. As a facet of the noble and ancient European tradition of being a bit scared of Muslims, it also isn’t much of a revival. This awful group of men, and their co-conspirators, are not only concerned with using religion to ensure the monocultural Whiteness of Europe and America are restored, however. No, scripture is also wilfully misinterpreted in order to justify a crackdown on the rights and freedoms of gendered and sexual minorities in the US, a project which I’m sure Tommy Robinson et al. would be delighted to mirror in the UK.

Roe v Wade, one of the most significant legal precedents in support of American women’s bodily autonomy, was overturned by a Conservative-majority Supreme Court in 2022, after a decades-long campaign by Christian nationalist groups who suddenly found themselves pushed from the fringes of American politics into its mainstream. LGBTQ+ rights are another area where the new Christian right have been eager to exercise their power and control, by banning trans civilians from military service, stripping back rights and legal protections, and demonising our LGBTQ+ friends (sometimes in the most literal, biblical sense) in public addresses and policy briefs.

So yes, all this to say, perhaps it is time to worry about the Christian revival. Because along with it, we are also seeing a revival, or more accurately a mainstreaming, of some of the ugliest political ideologies which have been operated under a Christian nationalist banner. The idea that Islam is an existential threat to Christendom, and that a jolly old fashioned Crusade or, failing that, an Inquisition-style pogrom, is the only way to ensure the safety of our Christian society. Or that women have no rights or social function, beyond the strictly reproductive. Or that the LGBTQ+ community are some sort of moral and biological aberration.

For those currently in power in the US, Christianity doesn’t represent a set of belief to live their lives by. No, it represents yet another way to assert power and control over the marginalised and minoritised in our society. With supposed moral and spiritual impunity. The divine right of dickheads.

In any case, I feel confident with the side of the debate that I’m on. You show me someone who is happy to share a room with Jordan Peterson, Pete Hegseth, and Joe Rogan, and I’ll show you a soul in need of salvation.