Blessed are the peacemakers

How should churches respond to Christian nationalists and the hard right?

Back in December last year, I did a post about the growing phenomenon of ‘culture war Christianity’ in the US and how it had helped usher Donald Trump into the White House. It’s a trend I find fascinating not only because of how fast it’s spreading, but also, as I wrote at the time,

…because I’m a Christian, and to me, leaders like Trump stand for the opposite of what I understand Christianity to be about: values like kindness, wisdom, looking out for the vulnerable, looking out for the planet, and the common good.

Nine months later, it’s all feeling a lot closer to home.

Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march earlier this month had lots of crosses on display and included a public recital of the Lord’s Prayer. (Robinson himself claims to have been “led to Christ” in prison.) Danny Kruger’s defection to the Reform party, meanwhile, will bring an overtly Christian tenor to a party that plans to deport the best part of a million people.

All this raises big questions for Christians who feel deep unease about the increasing politicisation — perhaps even weaponisation — of our faith.

But I also feel like there’s potentially a more hopeful story here.

Because churches and the people who belong to them are in many ways uniquely well placed to respond not just to the emergence of Christian nationalism in the UK, but also, more broadly, to the wider rise of the hard right. Here’s why.

• First, churches have a clear mandate to speak to issues of identity and conflict, at a point when we urgently need more storytellers who can help bring us together.

• Second, churches still have vast reach, despite falling attendance nationally: with nearly 5m members, they’re effectively the UK’s second largest membership body.

• Third, churches have on the ground presence all over the UK, including places where tension is spiking, at a time when community organising capacity is vital but also patchy.

• And fourth, churches have an overriding concern for encounter, reconciliation, and welcoming the stranger — at a point when political division makes this more important than ever.

So what might such a response look like?

The them-and-us playbook

To answer that, we first need to understand why the hard right is doing so well right now. Part of the answer has to do with politics and the state of the country: plunging trust in politicians, spiralling cost of living, stagnant wages, creaking public services, a sense that ‘Britain is broken’.

But it’s also about psychology and our states of mind. In my day job at Larger Us, we see leaders like Trump, Farage, Putin, or Modi, as well as extremist groups like the Proud Boys or the EDL, all using the same ‘them-and-us’ playbook, which:

1. Feeds a sense of threat, taking us into fight-flight-freeze states in which we become more aggressive, less empathetic, more focused on in-groups, and less good at differentiating what’s real from what’s illusory (like fake news or conspiracy theories).

2. Preys on widespread feelings of disconnection and loneliness by offering a sense of belonging – but the kind of belonging but that’s based on who’s excluded from ‘us’, and that creates and amplifies division, othering and scapegoating wherever possible.

3. Plays on feelings of shared loss (both locally, for instance about rundown town centres or the loss of local industries, or nationally, as with perceived loss of national prestige or status) as a source of grievance, rage, and identity.

4. Offers hugely resonant stories, often combining an idealised past, a them-and-us conflict in the present, and a future of restoration and renewal through return to traditional values — with Christian nationalist mythology a key element.

This playbook has real psychological depth. It speaks directly to existential fears during a time of interlocking crises, to our need to belong and our tendency to retreat into in-groups when we feel threatened, and to the fact that we make sense of the world primarily through stories. It’s no surprise that the hard right is making such headway.

A larger us playbook

How can we counter this highly effective and successful approach, and figure out an alternative playbook that creates a larger us, rather than a them-and-us? In a nutshell, by flipping the them-and-us playbook on its head. Imagine if more of us were able to:

1. Steady ourselves in the face of things we find threatening, so that we can make conscious choices about how to respond rather than lurching automatically into fight-flight-freeze.

2. Feel like we belong and are valued in spite of our shortcomings, resist othering by recognising what we share in spite of the things that make us different, and bridge divides through the power of curiosity and encounter.

3. Grieve for experiences of shared loss rather than seeing them as a source of grievance, and find agency, purpose, and hope amid the loss.

4. Share deep stories of who we are, where we are and where we’re going, that help us expand how far our compassion extends and lean into connection, hope, and joy.

As I noted in my first post on this Substack a year ago, this list is a pretty good summary of what religions are all about. They’ve always lived at the cusp of our inner and outer worlds, addressing both the individual and the collective. They’re a unique kind of institution, with a uniquely important role.

And they become even more important during times of instability or crisis, because it’s when things feel like they’re falling apart that being able to steady ourselves, hold together, grieve shared loss, and tell stories of unity, purpose, and hope become most important.

So what might this mean for church groups?

Steadying ourselves

Let’s start with the first item on our list: being able to steady ourselves in the face of things we find threatening.

Attending to our mental and emotional states might seem like a luxury at a point when it seems like everything’s on fire and hurtling towards the edge. It’s not. On the contrary, what goes on in our heads is the front line of polarisation and populism — and as we keep seeing over and over, it’s the hard right who understand this best.

Being able to make conscious decisions about how to respond to things that make us feel anxious or scared is ground zero for building resilience in polarised times — resilience not only to overwhelm, burnout, and compassion fatigue, but also to the hard right’s siren call of scapegoating and othering.

In our work at Larger Us, we emphasise that this is a skill that can be learned (and that’s routinely trained for in emergency responders or special forces), and point participants in our trainings to resources that can help them to do so — many of which are essentially meditation techniques.

Want to know who’s been practising this skill longer than anyone in our society? Churches. From tiny Celtic island monasteries in the 5th century, all the way up to today.

The contemplative end of Christianity is an absolute treasure trove of techniques for steadying ourselves, whether through formal approaches like centring prayer, or simply through creating spaces where people can fall silent together.

It’s also clear that there’s huge appetite for it today, as seen for instance in the immense popularity of Christian contemplatives like Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating or Laurence Freeman.

Which makes it all the more puzzling that contemplative approaches can be quite hard to find on the ground, in parish churches. But if churches decided to change that, then they’d be making a big contribution not only to our peace of mind, but also to the peace of our societies. It’s an open goal.

Building belonging, bridging divides

What about how churches can help to build belonging and bridge divides?

Churches are by definition supposed to be places where all of us are welcome in spite of our shortcomings, and where we’re invited to recognise that we have more in common than that which divides us — both factors that are more vital than ever amid our so-called culture wars.

And their emphasis on encounter, reconciliation and peacebuilding also makes them uniquely well placed to do the work of building bridges to people who are at risk of drifting into the far right, and using curious conversations to subvert and defuse the othering dynamics that can draw people into extremism.

I’ve written here lots of times before about one of the most inspirational examples of the transformational power of encounter: the work of Daryl Davis, the African-American blues musician (and Christian) who has helped over 200 people out of white supremacism through listening and relationship. (Elizabeth Oldfield and I had the most lovely chat with him on the Larger Us podcast, if you haven’t listened.)

And there are amazing examples of church groups doing this kind of work on the ground here in the UK, too.

In the Seacroft area of Leeds, where a hotel housing asylum seekers has become the site of weekly protests and counter-protests, people from All Hallows (a church I know and love) started showing up with cake to talk to people on both sides, make them feel heard, and help to dial down the temperature and build empathy. Since then, they’ve been joined by steadily more churches, Quaker groups, and non-churchy kindred spirits.

What I find most interesting and inspiring about this work is that if you know All Hallows, then you know it’s a church that’s deeply involved in helping asylum seekers, interfaith work, and being radically inclusive. It would be the easiest thing in the world for them to join the counter-protest and shout at the people waving St George’s flags.

But by maintaining a steadfast commitment to staying in relationship with everyone and refusing to other anyone, I feel like they’re doing something much more subversive and transformational — which is trying to end culture wars rather than win them.

It’s work that feels both politically vital and spiritually inspiring, and it’s an approach that could be repeated much more widely, up and down the country, if it gained more attention. (I’ve written a separate piece about what’s happening there, which you can find here.)

Grieving shared loss

Someone we talk about a lot at Larger Us is the psychiatrist and conflict mediator Vamik Volkan. His work is all about how experiences of shared loss can easily become the basis of tribal group identity, especially when manipulated by political leaders who excel at funneling people along the ‘grief to grievance pipeline’.

The way to prevent this, he continues, is through healthy collective mourning for shared loss, whether in communities (dying industries, closed down high streets, crumbling public services, the effects of drugs and crime) or whole nations (as when people feel a deep sense of national decline or loss of status).

Few political or civil society leaders are willing or able to hold space for grief: it’s deep water, and by and large outrage or hope are seen as safer ground (unless we’re talking about Keir Starmer, in which case ‘delivery’ is your lot).

But when space is made for grief, it can be extraordinarily powerful. My colleague Claire wrote a riveting account a while back of how Tess Humble, a community organiser in Glasgow, designed a ritual to bring communities impacted by economic, social, and climate crises together in grief. As Tess recounted to Claire,

There were stories of migrant injustice, dictatorships in Sudan, of the huge inequalities within Glasgow and the suicide of young men here. Some people spoke at length, with anger shaking in their voices, some simply said a word or two.

We invited everyone to write on a piece of paper what their struggles were and we burned them in front of each other. It was quite spontaneous and a bit chaotic but also beautiful and cathartic. It felt really alive.

When you grieve alone there is no container. When you cry with a group there’s something in the collective psyche that knows that you are caught and held and when it’s time to stop.

“Once all these containers for the grief were in place,” Tess concluded, “it was ok to be joyful. Joyful, standing in solidarity, and chaotic — with intermittent torrential rain.”

Churches are so well placed to do this kind of work, if they want to. They have profound experience of lamentation — the Bible literally has a Book of Lamentations — and as the late, great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann observed, lament is, along with confronting reality and maintaining hope for the future, one of three essential prophetic tasks during times of crisis and upheaval.

Sharing deep stories

Finally, what about churches’ role on offering deep stories that can help us to find our way during times in which it can feel like everything is unravelling?

I’ve argued before that part of the reason the hard right has been able to flourish is our contemporary lack of deep shared stories, which has left the way open for extremists to fill the void with darkly resonant narratives of them-and-us.

Churches are uniquely well placed to do something about this.

To start with, they have a key role in contesting Christian nationalism. Last weekend’s open letter by church leaders (Rowan Williams, numerous Church of England bishops, and senior Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and Evangelical leaders), which criticised the “misuse” of Christian symbols at the Unite the Kingdom march, is a great start — especially its crystal clear statement that:

The cross is the ultimate sign of sacrifice for the other. Jesus calls us to love both our neighbours and our enemies and to welcome the stranger. Any co-opting or corrupting of the Christian faith to exclude others is unacceptable.

The Church of England, in particular, is very well placed to contribute to the national debate over English flags, not least given that the St George’s Cross flies from thousands of its churches. (Imagine the impact if all of them simultaneously switched to a version of the flag that emphasised togetherness and welcome, like this one from All Hallows.)

Above all, Christian theology has a lot to say about all of the themes explored above — steadying ourselves, bridging divides, grieving loss.

For one thing, there’s the explicit emphasis on welcoming and loving the stranger, above all in the story of the Good Samaritan — a parable that Pope Francis drew on to correct JD Vance’s invocation of the idea of ‘Ordo Amoris’ as an argument against welcoming refugees.

There’s the gorgeous mystical idea of an Everlasting Covenant formed at the beginning of time as a system of relationships that holds everything together; how it can be broken through human action, leading to everything being at risk of unravelling; and how it can be restored through transformational self-sacrifice (if you’re curious, here’s a set of talks I did on this for All Hallows last year).

And then, of course, there’s the idea of apocalypses as revelatory moments of unveiling, rather than being ‘the end of the world’, that have within them the possibility of breakthroughs rather than breakdowns (lots more on this theme in this post from back in January).

In England’s green and pleasant land

Church groups have so much to contribute right now, whether on helping us to steady ourselves, encouraging us to bridge divides, supporting us to grieve shared loss, or offering deep stories that can help us make sense of who we are, where we are and where we’re trying to go. And in some areas, above all contesting the Christian nationalists’ interpretation of theology, they may be the only ones that can do it.

There are already bright spots, like the church leaders’ letter last weekend or All Hallows’s uplifting bridge building work in Leeds. But there’s also so much more that churches all over the country could do. It’s a big moment for us. I hope we step up.

Links I liked

Joseph Geffer went to walk with Unite the Kingdom — “not because I support Robinson, but because I wanted to experience for myself the mood among this group of people who are so frequently othered and demonised.” It’s a really good piece.

Sam Freedman has a detailed analysis of Reform’s deportation plan.

Scientists have developed an invisible, clear coating that turns windows into solar panels.

Among the many things I did not see coming this year: the US hard right has got into reading Gramsci.

Boredom is good for you, says Erin Nystrom. “Being bored is the only way to figure out what YOU want out of life. In a sea of endless options, it’s the thing that can keep you from drowning.”