Posted on: 26th February 2026

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there has been a lot of chatter about the state of Christianity in Britain recently. The Bible Society’s Quiet Revival research has ignited hopes that young people are sensing the spiritual vacuum in much of popular culture and looking for meaning and purpose in a church that is ill-equipped to answer their questions (this has also been questioned by the BBC, among others.

However, the general feeling is of ‘managed decline’ in both participation and influence. Into this void has come a group of people saying they want to defend Christianity, and particularly the notion of ‘Christian England’. It is often left vague about who Christianity needs defending from, although we generally know: Muslims and LGBTQ+ people and their allies. Sometimes there is a more nuanced critique about whether ‘liberalism’ has caused community breakdown and the rapid rise in mental illness diagnoses, and this is a conversation worth having. However, when it comes to the loudest voices, this nuance is lost. There is normally some minority group who are identified as a threat to our Christian values.

You can probably tell that I am sceptical about the political motivations of people who position themselves as our protector. It has certainly worked wonders in the USA. I have a bigger question though: when did God ever ask for protection? When did God ever tell his people that they should organise their own protection instead of trusting him? What has Jesus taught us about how we should react when we feel under threat?

If you follow the lectionary, you’ll know that The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) was the gospel reading a few weeks ago. The whole of The Sermon on the Mount is an ethical treatise on how to live a godly life while being persecuted, and contains one of Jesus’s most difficult and revolutionary commandments: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (5:44). 

In John 18 we see Jesus live out this command. Peter tries to protect Jesus from arrest, but not only does Jesus tell Peter to put his sword away, he also heals the slave who was injured by Peter. There is no denying that the way of Jesus is hard, but we must resist the temptation to use violence to protect what believe to be sacred; in doing so, we undermine the teaching of Jesus.

If you would like to talk more about these issues, you are warmly invited to join the conversation at Café Theologique on March 12th, where we are discussing the question, ‘How Would Jesus “Unite the Kingdom”?’ (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cafe-theologique-how-would-jesus-unite-the-kingdom-tickets-1982309019640)