There is nothing inevitable about the way American evangelicals and politics are intertwined
Since the 1970s scholars and commentators have spilled vast amounts of ink plotting the link between religion and American politics.
British and American politics have often moved in tandem with each other. Most recently Trumpism and Brexit have sounded many of the same themes around restricting immigration, “taking back control” from global elites, and restoring a lost national greatness. However, unlike the United States, there is little evidence that British Christianity has become intertwined with right-wing populism. While around 80% of American white evangelical Christians support Trump, British evangelical Christians were more likely to have voted to “remain” than to “leave” the European Union, taking the liberal internationalist posture over the conservative nationalist one.
This lack of Christian buy-in to conservative populism and Christian nationalism reflects the long-standing absence in British politics of anything approaching the American religious right. Less than 10% of British Christians claim their faith informs their decision about for whom to vote.
What makes the difference? We can note five things.
First, numbers. The American religious right exists because the sheer volume of enfranchised Christians creates an allure of political power and entices politicians to court a religious bloc. While regular church attendance in the United States hovers around 30% of the population, in Britain it is around 5%. This does not mean British Christians would join the political fray if only there were more of them. The American religious right has helped catechize Christians in a suite of beliefs (doctrinaire free market capitalism, gun rights, anti-immigration, militarism) that arises more from the political and cultural allies with whom Christians have been in coalition than from any discernible apostolic or biblical tradition. This package of ideals is largely unappealing, inaccessible, and often inexplicable to Christians outside of the country.
Second, there is the role of the established (Anglican) Church of England and (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland. The Church of England is the more powerful of these two “establishments” because of its unique relationship both with the British monarch (who is “supreme governor of the Church of England”) and the British parliament (where twenty-six Bishops sit in the House of Lords). While both the Church of England and Church of Scotland are home to zealous adherents of various principled theological and ecclesiastical positions—evangelical, charismatic, Anglo-Catholic, liberal—when acting in their “establishment” capacity the churches have generally assumed a nondogmatic, capacious, and tolerant style. In occupying the position of Christian establishment, but then acting in a fashion not incompatible with liberalism and pluralism, the national churches have in effect forestalled any attempt at constructing the kind of exclusivist Christian legislative hegemony imagined by members of the American religious right. By contrast, American Christians have always felt compelled to exert strenuous moral effort to construct a voluntary establishment to compensate for the founders’ “forgetfulness” (Alexander Hamilton’s word) in establishing a real one. The American public square has thereby become the site of far more religiously motivated conflict.
The exception that proves the rule is Northern Ireland. Here there has existed the most space to construct a de facto religious establishment, because of the lack (since 1869) of a de jure state church, as well as the greatest incentive to do so, because of the unique ethno-religious nature of the polity. The results are a strident Protestant tradition that bears similarities in its religious and political tenor to the American Christian right. Certain prominent Northern Irish Protestant leaders even openly affiliate with Trump.
The third factor counting against the emergence of a vocal Christian political movement in Britain is that Christianity has infused all three of the major British political traditions: conservatism, social democracy, and liberalism. It would take another essay to tease out these relations, but this dispersal of Christianity through different political tributaries makes it difficult for anyone to claim that there is a single normative Christian political position on any issue, or for any one political party to attempt to monopolize the Christian vote. In a survey of British “Evangelical” Christians by Andrea Hatcher in 2017, 21% identified as Conservative; 24% as Labour; 5% as Liberal Democrats, 4% as Socialist, and 1% with the anti-EU, anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party. 31% said they had no party affiliation.
The fourth factor is nationalism. The American Christian imaginary posits the nation-state not simply as the contingent location for Christian life and work but as itself a sacred object that must be honored, protected, and restored. Britain arguably once exhibited a similar Christian nationalism, but the collapse of its global empire in the 1960s was accompanied by a cultural shift that has led to embarrassment about the flag-waving, bellicose posturing of a former imperial age. Post-colonial British Christianity is often allergic to rhetoric that summons Christians into the political sphere to help fulfill an apparent national mission or sacred trust.
British nationalism is also subject to centrifugal forces. The United Kingdom is a composite state, comprised of four “nations” (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) each with its own cultural and political traditions. There is a question of whether there even remains a unifying “British” identity at all. Just as British Christianity is diffused through multiple political traditions, so too is it fragmented into distinct regional cultural and civic spheres. It is in no way certain that a Scottish Christian would join an English Christian in a common religious-political cause.
Fifth, there is race. Britain’s imperial history is stained with racism, and there remains entrenched individual and structural racism regarding late-twentieth century immigrants from Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and west Africa. But there is nothing in British domestic history comparable to the entrenched racialization of American society (with the Protestant treatment of Catholics in Northern Ireland perhaps again being the exception that proves the rule). For centuries both Black and white American Christians have been incentivized to enter the political sphere as a way of securing or opposing the racial hierarchy, and both have summoned Christianity to support their defensive or reforming political visions. Race structures cultural and religious discourse, defines the contours of communal identities, and impels American Christians into political stances in a way not evident in Britain.
In conclusion, there is nothing inevitable about the link between Christianity, even in its conservative and evangelical forms, and the bundle of ideological positions adopted by a large section of the contemporary American church. Christians who share similar theological beliefs and spiritual priorities can end up in very different political and cultural places. Of course, you need not travel across the Atlantic to make this point: Canadian and Mexican Christians prove it, as does the African American church. Still, the fact that British and white American Christianity have historically been so tightly bound in religious priorities—a “transatlantic community of saints” united by preachers, authors, missionaries, hymnody, spiritual practices, and ecclesial networks—means that the political and ideological differences are revealed particularly vividly. When it comes to politics, British and American Christians are two peoples divided by diverging understandings of a common Jesus.
Martin Spence is a historian and author living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has taught global, European, British, and Christian history at seminaries and Universities in Britain and the United States.