Sky News Invents a Christian Crisis.

A look at Sky’s moral panic, the Church of England’s political drift and why Catholics and Evangelicals are filling the pews.

A still from “Why Tommy Robinson and his followers are turning to Christianity” on Sky News.

The media loves a crisis, even if it has to invent one. On Sky News, Tom Cheshire recently interviewed Bishop Ceirion Dewar about the rise of “Christian nationalism” in Britain. According to the Church of England, this is a corruption of faith.

The language hints at a dangerous power quietly amassing. We’re supposed to be alarmed by a Christianity “on the march”. Perhaps it is on the march — and perhaps that is not a bad thing.

I suspect Cheshire is unfamiliar with the Anglican concept of the Church Militant, referring to all Christians on earth, engaged in spiritual conflict, striving for holiness, discipline, and virtue. Indeed, the Book of Common Prayer includes prayers for “the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth”. This militancy might be a an invisible state of mind, an inner struggle against temptation for instance, or it might be visible.

Cheshire describes what he perceives as a new visible militant Christianity as elevating “ground-level protest” into something “bigger” and “grander,” especially when it is “in opposition to Islam”. Christians, he seems to suggest, mustn’t get too loud or uppity about their beliefs.

“How can we know what people’s motivations are to carry a cross or to say the Lord’s Prayer?” asked Wilfred Frost on Sky News this morning. It’s a dumbfoundingly arrogant question, but I suppose we do live in a time when people are arrested for silent prayer on the street. Motivation matters, if you are considered a dangerous Christian. It matters far less if you are shouting about Jihad or globalising the Intifada.

The Sky News report was keen to emphasise that the majority of Christians go to churches like St Martin-in-the-Fields. The camera swept across a congregation of elderly white people singing an Abba song. I’ve been to churches like that, and I’m afraid they left me cold. It seems many people feel the same, as pews drain of congregants year after year.

It would seem that Christianity is considered an acceptable pursuit for a milquetoast Church of England congregation who probably listen to BBC Radio 4 and Sky News and would draw back from a crucifix like the undead, but not for “gammons” who march with crosses, want to pray in public and have the temerity to wave the St George’s Cross on days when the English national football team is not playing.

These days, Sky News would slap Alfred the Great with a Christian Nationalist label.

But while talking strategically about a “majority”, the report said nothing about the fact that Christian identification has in fact fallen from 59.3% of the population in 2011 to 46.2% in 2021 (ONS Census). Meanwhile, Evangelical, Roman Catholic, and Pentecostal churches are growing. I am currently undertaking the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

What are Christians finding in these churches that they can’t find in the Church of England?

I’ve written before about how unfortunate it is that my own Road to Damascus moment coincided with the Church of England’s Road to Davos moment. Cheshire claims the Church of England has failed to meet political challenges. I’d argue the opposite: it has become too entangled in politics and culture wars, and is not focused enough on scripture and faith.

Here’s a case in point. On Saturday, I was walking the dog and discovered a beautiful church I’d never noticed before. As I entered, I was amazed to find that the entrance had been converted into a coffee shop, with tables and chairs along the aisle. I asked the lady working there if it was always like that. She said yes, Tuesday to Saturday. A coffee shop patron told me that at least it gets people into the church. What a travesty that such a stunningly beautiful Church is so hollowed of purpose it is reduced to a coffee shop. I responded simply, from the heart, without missing a beat, that it was “sad”. That was my first mistake.

If you have to turn a church into a coffee shop to draw people in and just hope they have an epiphany while there, you will almost certainly be disappointed. Eating a slice of Victoria sponge is not the same as receiving a sacrament.

I fingered the Progress Pride flag bunting which festooned the coffee shop and pointed out that this was “unusual” in a church. This was my second mistake — and it was enough to set her off.

I was subjected to a lecture on how the church is open to everyone. “It’s open to prisoners,” she said, leaning intensely close to me. That’s good, I replied, but this flag isn’t about prisoners. “Jesus welcomed the lonely and the poor,” she retorted. Yes, he did, but this flag is not about the lonely or the poor. She repeated again that the church was open to everyone.

The Progress Pride flag is not the straightforward Pride flag of old. It provides representation to the BLM movement, which is a Marxist, anti-family, anti-police movement, and it reflects the colours of the trans ideology movement, which has led to confusion, transition, and sometimes sterilisation of children. The absence of this flag would not indicate hostility to gay and bisexual people, but its display does indicate an endorsement of highly political and contentious movements.

But I didn’t argue further. I said goodbye and left. She continued speaking in a loud voice, if not shouting, at my back as I retreated and at anyone who would listen, insisting everyone was welcome. I’m not sure that included me.

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Can the Church of England complain about the cross being co-opted by the “Far Right” when it has allowed its own spaces to be co-opted by gender ideology, silent raves, Covid vaccinations, and even Iftars, to name but a few recent incursions? This hasn’t just fuelled “Far Right” baptisms on beaches; it has created a serious schism and led some African Anglican churches to break away this year. We’ll be waiting a long time for Sky News to label a host of African churches in African countries as “Far Right”.

At my local Catholic church on Sunday — the day of the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran — the building was full. This day reminds us of the importance of physical church buildings, where communities gather to worship, reflecting God’s desire to build a spiritual temple, not a temple to coffee and cake. And here, there were no enticements, nothing to lure people in but the service and the faith itself.

The congregation was a mix of skin colours, backgrounds, and social classes — a cohesive community united by faith. Every community has a duty to care for its sacred buildings and to remember that together, and individually, we are the “living stones” that make up the Church. Sometimes, that might even look like marching.