Kirsten Birkett on Class and Evangelicalism in Britain

Cambridge Papers are published once a quarter (or thereabouts) and address a wide range of topics, offering ‘Christian reflection on contemporary issues’.

The latest paper is available online here (from where a pdf can be downloaded here):

Kirsten Birkett, ‘Class and evangelicalism in Britain’, Cambridge Papers 35, 1 (March 2026).

Here is the summary:

‘Class in Britain is easy to understand in broad outline but very complicated in practice. This paper surveys ways in which class can be understood in twenty-first-century Britain, and some of the biblical material concerning class and wealth. It identifies a problem for British evangelicals: their evangelism is not reaching the working classes. It is suggested that there is a need to challenge existing evangelical church culture as well as making a concerted effort to plant more churches for working-class people.’

Theos Report on Belief in Post-Religious Britain

The Spirit of Things Unseen: Belief in Post-Religious Britain (London: Theos, 2013).

The latest Theos report, The Spirit of Things Unseen, ‘is based on research, commissioned by CTVC and Theos and conducted by ComRes, which looks at the state of spiritual belief in “postreligious” Britain. It finds that spiritual beliefs, in particular the more esoteric ones, are no weaker today – and in some instances stronger – than they were in the past’.

More information is available here, and the full report is available for download here.

Anvil 28, 2 (2012) on Englishness and Britishness

The August 2012 issue of Anvil is available online, with essays on Englishness and Britishness:

Stephen Backhouse

Benign Indifference: Patriotism, Protest and the Theological Politics of Romans 13:1-7

Christians on all sides of the debate regarding place of patriotic affection and national allegiance invariably find themselves wrestling with Paul’s injunction to submit to the governing authorities in Romans 13:1-7. Patriots read in this passage a clarion call to civic participation in the best interests of their nation. Radicals see instead a moral judgement on all states and an ethic of suffering submission to evil that effectively pits Christians against their countries. The paper argues that when it comes to the question of the earliest Christian attitude towards nations and states as found in Romans a controlling motif can be discerned, and that motif is best described as benign indifference. As such Romans (and the indeed the wider New Testament) does not endorse the family of feelings best known as patriotism (love for country). At the same time, neither does it endorse a radical attack on national forms of life (hatred of country). The political ethos of Romans is socially subversive. However, this subversion is not the goal, but a secondary by-product of the sweeping re-orientation of values and Christian identity that Paul works out in Romans. Both the patriotic and the radical approaches to 13:1-7 make much of the passage as a guide to government and to the citizen’s towards their countries, yet both camps fail to consider the wider context of Romans and the Pauline corpus, which is remarkably sanguine about these things. The paper reads Paul’s treatment of submission to authority in light of his treatment of submission to evil and to the weaker brother. In each case, Paul is far less concerned with those on the receiving end of right Christian action than he is with the Christians themselves. Christians are to submit to state authority, but this submission derives from priorities other than those of the life of the state itself. Any reading of this text that focuses on states and nations distorts the ethical injunction of the passage, which is only secondarily concerned with the effect that submission might have on a country (positively or negatively), and primarily concerned with the attitude of Christ-like submission in its own right. Christian submission springs not from the supposed superiority of the state and its natural created function, as the patriots would maintain; rather the reverse is true. No longer bound by the old cultural and national markers, in effect Paul is telling the Christians that they can condescend to abide by the old system for a time, because these things are ultimately a matter of indifference. Yet this newfound ‘Christian superiority’ is not directed against the state either. Paul is not seeking to eliminate one’s country any more than he wants to wipe out one’s weaker brother. A theo-political ethos of benign indifference charts a new course between the traditional forms of protest and patriotism.

Sam Jackson & Charlie Pemberton

Patriotism? A Set of Questions...

This paper presents patriotism as a set of stories about national identity and loyalty rather than as something with an essential substance. Utilising presentations from a conference on patriotism, we provide three divergent understandings of patriotism and consider their theological basis. We then consider the issue of otherness as it relates to the theoretical construction of patriotism and in the creation of a political other, questioning the effect of simplistic patriotic sentiment on international conflict.

Doug Gay

On Englishness

In this article, Scottish practical theologian Doug Gay offers a personal and theological perspective on Englishness, tracking his own changing knowledges of it since childhood, before reading it in terms of a theological case for celebrating and protecting cultural diversity. The article offers trenchant criticisms of how Englishness is performed in public rituals and popular culture, while appreciating the dilemmas posed in the necessary work of reclaiming and decontaminating English identity. It challenges English theologians and churchpeople, in particular those within the Church of England, to accept responsibility for forging a new ‘ethical’ English nationalism, which can promote the common good internally and generate external relations of peace, respect and co-operation.

Martyn Percy

Ministering to the English? Sketching Some Challenges for Mission and Ministry

This article explores the interface between spirituality, religion and Christianity in England with particular reference to the Church of England. Martyn Percy argues that the secularisation thesis is more nuanced than we are often led to believe and that there never was a Golden Age of church attendance. He claims that religious observance is part of the ‘English cultural DNA’, that the clerical ministry is enduring and necessary and that religion continues to provide ‘enchantment’ for our contemporary world.

Hugh Kemp: Book Review

Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, by Kate Fox

Hugh Kemp: Book Review

The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture, by Nigel Rooms

D.A. Carson on the Church in Great Britain

Many will know of the furore a few weeks back kicked off by some comments by Mark Driscoll (here) about the state of the church in Great Britain.

I read some of the responses to Driscoll (including those by a number of my friends) with interest, but (for the most part) kept myself out of the discussion. Truth be known, I confess I found some of the responses quite ‘knee jerk’ in their nature. But I realise it’s sometimes difficult to balance the double-sided wisdom of when and how to respond (cf. Proverbs 26:4-5).

Now that I am referring to it, I would like to say I personally found Eddie Arthur’s post (here) to be wonderfully sane and helpful, reframing the debate through cultural assumptions.

Anyway, all of this is to say that D.A. Carson has now written a set of ‘Reflections on the Church in Great Britain’. As might be expected, these are heavily freighted towards the Reformed and conservative end of the spectrum in terms of what’s going on in the country (and I fully anticipate he will be blasted and lampooned for that), but I particularly enjoyed reading his fifth and final reflection:

‘We must not equate courage with success, or even youth with success. We must avoid ever leaving the impression that these equations are valid. I have spent too much time in places like Japan, or in parts of the Muslim world, where courage is not measured on the world stage, where a single convert is reckoned a mighty trophy of grace... I find no ground for concluding that the missionaries in Japan in the 20th century were less godly, less courageous, less faithful, than the missionaries in (what became) South Korea, with its congregations of tens of thousands. At the final Great Assize, God will take into account not only all that was and is, but also what might have been under different circumstances (Matt 11:20ff). Just as the widow who gave her mite may be reckoned to have given more than many multi-millionaires, so, I suspect, some ministers in Japan, or Yorkshire, will receive greater praise on that last day than those who served faithfully in a corner of the world where there was more fruit. Moreover, the measure of faithful service is sometimes explicitly tied in Scripture not to the quantity of fruit, measured in numbers, but to such virtues as self-control, measured by the use of one’s tongue (James 3:1-6).’