While it is not unprecedented for the widely-read political website Guido Fawkes to feature articles by conservative Christians, it was a pleasant surprise to find a piece by evangelical theologian Carl Trueman in its ‘Seen Elsewhere’ section last week.
Guido Fawkes, which in the week ending June 13 attracted over one million visitors to its site, highlighted a piece by Trueman in the American religion and public life journal First Things, headed ‘What is the Church of England for?’
Trueman, a British professor in the department of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College, Pennsylvania, US, described his experience of walking past a ‘progressive’ C of E church during a visit to central London in early June.
The church was not merely celebrating LGBT Pride Month this June but was promoting a “whole year’s worth” of Pride-affirming events.
These included a Q&A with “the next generation of queer priests” in March; a “queer movie night” in April; an evening of LGBTQ questions for clergy in May, followed by a screening of the film Pride; a Pride service in June; a “drag performance and then another queer service” in July; a “Drag Sports Day” in August; another Pride service in September; an evening denouncing conversion therapy in October; another “queer movie night” in November; and in December, a “queer Christmas Carol Service” where the public is invited to join the congregation to “celebrate the Nativity through song, blending its beauty with iconic queer anthems -from Cher to Ariana, Bowie to Gaga - for a truly unforgettable night”.
Trueman commented: “A month is clearly not enough for this parish as it hijacks the rainbow from God’s promise to Noah and attaches it to human confusion for a whole year.
“This is a dramatic but tragic example of what happens when Christianity loses sight of its transcendent purpose. It is one of the ironies of progressive theology that however sophisticated its intellectual articulation, its liturgical expression tends toward childishness.”
It turns out that Trueman is one of the Christian inspirations for Reform UK MP Danny Kruger. Kruger has just given an interview to the Church Times.
Kruger was speaking to former Spectator editor Matthew D’Ancona who commented that if he had been interviewing “an ambitious and cerebral politician of the Right 20 years ago”, they would have cited economists such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, or Joseph Schumpeter as their philosophical influences.
But for Kruger “the reference points are very different”. Among his inspirations he cites the philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre and Roger Scruton, whose thought was heavily influenced by Christianity, and includes Trueman in his list. Kruger “is an emphatically post-secular conservative”, D’Ancona declares.
Kruger attributes his conversion to Christianity in his twenties to the prayers of his future wife, Emma, and to CS Lewis’s 1952 book, Mere Christianity.
“Between starting and ending it, I sort of switched my identity. And I don’t know what it was but suspect reading it was - correlation and causation - an act of submission, just to open the book. And I kind of gave in,” he told D’Ancona.
Whilst the supposed "Quiet Revival" is not producing an upturn in church attendance in Britain, these two examples in the media surely show the shift away from the strict ‘we don’t do God’ ethos of the political class back in the 2000s.
This was epitomised in 2003 when the then Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an interview to the American magazine Vanity Fair. Writer David Margolick described what happened when the conversation turned to religion:
“As he always does, Alastair Campbell, the former London newsman who is Blair’s director of communications, political strategist, and protector, hovers nearby, ostensibly involved in a separate conversation. But when the topic turns to religion, his ever sensitive antennae home in.
“Campbell, who worships a soccer team more than any church, has never forgotten the 1996 article (in which Mr Blair, then Leader of the Opposition, wrote about his faith) and how it was construed to mean that Tories were too selfish to be good Christians. Ever since, he has tried to steer Blair clear of the topic. ‘Is he on to God?’ Campbell asks Blair—the ‘he’ being me. ‘We don’t do God,’ Campbell declares. ‘I’m sorry. We don’t do God’.”
Danny Kruger’s Church Times interview concludes with him declaring: “We’ve tested to destruction the idea that we can all get along happily in a godless world.”
“And then he is off to Lambeth Palace, for dinner with the Archbishop of Canterbury”, D’Ancona reports.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
