First, one must congratulate Fraser Nelson on his article In God’s Name: the Rise of Weaponised Christianity.
If prizes were awarded for the greatest number of non sequiturs within 1,000 words, he’d be the runaway winner. Mr Nelson managed to get so many things wrong that those he got right look oddly out of place.
In the good tradition of bad writing, Mr Nelson had to establish his credentials as “a lifelong Catholic”. This is supposed to entitle him to utter any nonsense on the subject of Christianity – that’s like a Leftie cracking a racist joke knowing that no one will call him a racist.
He starts out by saying that “the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is something even Catholics get confused about. This is not about the Angel Gabriel or the conception of Jesus, but his mother being born free of original sin.”
No Catholic I know suffers from that confusion, but I suppose exponents of other creeds or none would be grateful for this bit of recondite knowledge. Then: “What’s even more confusing is to have a lengthy greeting to mark this obscure festival from the not remotely Catholic Donald J Trump, ending in a heartfelt Hail Mary.”
No sensible person would be confused by that either. And by the way, Hail Mary isn’t just a Catholic prayer, but I’m sure our lifelong Catholic knows this.
Trump follows the American political tradition of deifying politics and hence politicising the deity. Every American politician, even if he is a rank atheist, ends his speeches with “God bless America”. And the Pledge of Allegiance describes the country as “one nation under God” (which is why many American leftists refuse to take it).
This is incongruous in a country whose Founding Fathers were deists or agnostics almost to a man, and some, specifically Thomas Jefferson, loathed Trinitarian Christianity. After the First Amendment proscribing an established religion was passed, Jefferson gloated that it put up “a wall of separation between Church and State”.
I myself have pointed out this incongruity in different literary genres, but America doesn’t hold exclusive rights to “weaponizing Christianity”. Though Christ himself unequivocally separated his realm from the political one (“My kingdom is not of this world”, “Render unto Caesar…”), this separation has been wishful thinking throughout much of history.
Politicians have always invoked Christian rectitude. For example, this explains to a great extent the success of the Reformation: princes used it in their fight for independence from the Emperor. But for their support, Luther would have been turned into firewood the first time he called the Church the “Whore of Babylon”.
On balance, I’d rather political leaders invoked God and not, say, Marx, Marcuse or Mandela. But Mr Nelson would have none of that.
He specifically identifies as malicious weaponisers all opponents of unrestrained immigration, meaning the whole Right end of the political spectrum: Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Reform and even Tommy Robinson.
Contextually, Mr Nelson has little time for any of them, although I wouldn’t lump Meloni and Robinson together. The former is a successful conservative statesman; the latter, a recidivist thug.
Even so, I’m glad that, for once, Tommy is organising a carol service rather than a mass brawl. And I can’t find it in my heart to disagree with his statement that such a service is “more than music, it’s a statement that Britain belongs to the British people and our Christian heritage will not be silenced.”
Logically speaking, a true statement doesn’t become false when enunciated by a hideous character. The problem I can infer from Mr Nelson’s circuitous writing is that he doesn’t regard that statement as true, and neither does he have anything against mass immigration.
As a lifelong Catholic, he is critical of “the public-rosary movement [that] started in Poland in 2017 to commemorate the Battle of Lepanto, described by the organisers as a victory ‘that saved Europe from Islamisation’. In that contest, Christianity was not so much a faith as a cultural marker.”
Does he mean that the Battle of Lepanto didn’t save Europe from Islamisation? If so, that’s factually wrong. That 1571 battle was historically bookmarked by the 732 Battle of Tours and the 1683 Battle of Vienna, with all three checking Muslim expansion in Europe.
Mr Nelson also implies a contradiction between Christianity being a faith and “a cultural marker”. None exists: Christianity is both. Surely, as a lifelong Catholic, Mr Nelson must have heard the term ‘Christendom’, used to describe Christian civilisation, of which culture is a major component.
He then produces his own version of weaponised Christianity to suggest – again, as far as I can infer – that there’s something fundamentally wrong in opposing rampant Islamisation. He loads that blunderbuss with the ammunition of Pope Leo’s “dismay at Trump’s recent national security strategy”.
His Holiness was dismayed not by Trump’s disgusting betrayal of America’s traditional allies, but by his justifiable opposition to mass immigration. “This came,” continues Mr Nelson, “a few weeks after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops – hardly a radical body – issued their first ‘special message’ in 12 years saying they were ‘saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants’.”
Vilifying immigrants isn’t the same as opposing an uncontrolled influx of cultural aliens, often hostiles. Contrary to what Mr Nelson and, according to him, Pope Leo believe, different civilisations do exist and they don’t always co-exist. Christ teaches love for all men, but nowhere does he say that his teaching shouldn’t be defended.
On the contrary, he says: “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” The Church Militant has always seen believers as ‘soldiers of Christ’, and the Crusaders took that title literally. They wouldn’t have had a problem with the concept of alien civilisations, and neither would the denizens of Constantinople as their city was being sacked by the Ottomans in 1453.
Mr Nelson hails the Pope for preaching the importance of mutual respect. Those who have ever read the Koran or seen its devotees act in its spirit may question exactly how mutual this respect is. But I agree: we must respect exponents of all creeds.
That, however, doesn’t mean believing that all faiths are as true as our own, nor that they have spawned civilisations as valuable as ours and as indigenous to our country. In that connection, Mr Nelson asks two lapidary questions: “Is Britain a Christian country? If so, what does that mean?”
Contextually, Mr Nelson’s answers are “Not really” and “Nothing much”. He is right if he means that church attendance has been dropping for the past century or so – in a country that has existed for millennia. But it’s ignorant to deny on that basis the unique significance of Christianity in our history.
Every traditional English institution, political, constitutional, legal, social and cultural, is rooted in Christianity. Just a few decades ago, English judges quoted from the Scripture to justify their verdicts.
Moreover, England is one of only seven Western countries that have an established church (Denmark, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Vatican, Malta and Greece are the other six). And only our secular head of state is anointed to reign.
Yet it’s this anointed head of our state whom Mr Nelson uses as an exemplar of Christian forbearance: “It’s now 31 years since Prince Charles, as he was, said he wanted to be ‘defender of faith’ rather defender of ‘the’ faith.”
In 1521, Pope Leo X conferred on Henry VIII the title Fidei defensor, and since then every English monarch has been called ‘Defender of the Faith’. While the Latin version had no definite article, it was implied: Henry was the defender of specifically Christian faith, and so is Charles III supposed to be.
That pronouncement of his was one of many wishy-washy, multi-culti, tree-hugging statements Charles has made and continues to make. Anyone who understands the nature of our history and constitution, even if he isn’t a lifelong Catholic or any other Christian, is appalled by this implied parity between Christianity and other creeds. The first bearer of Charles’s kingly name was beheaded for less.
But Mr Nelson hails the king’s commitment to “a multi-faith democracy, where all faiths [are] minorities and would be respected and protected as such.” Does this follow from this that we should open our doors to more millions of Muslims? To respect, protect and presumably finance?
Most of my English friends are cultured Christians who see unchecked Muslim migration as an existential – and civilisational – threat. None of us hates Muslims, which doesn’t prevent us from detesting the sight of British cities losing their Britishness.
If Mr Nelson disagrees, perhaps he should visit Leicester, Leeds or Bradford. Or, for a smaller carbon imprint, Tower Hamlets in the East End. He’ll know what we mean.
P.S. Congratulations are also in order to Sir Keir Starmer and his government. They’ve found an effective stratagem for curtailing immigration: making Britain so unattractive that no one will want to go there.
For example, Poles, hundreds of thousands of whom migrated to Britain over the past 30 years, are now repatriating with alacrity. Poland is freer than Starmer’s Britain and will soon become richer as well.