Cultural Christians 

15th June
It’s become fashionable for people who have no faith to describe themselves as Cultural Christians.

What this means in reality is that they are pandering to what has been incorrectly labelled as Christian Nationalism. Christain Nationalism is an oxymoron because Jesus spent most of his time with people Jesus’ national religion claimed were unclean or unacceptable. Jesus rejected nationalism in both his teaching and in his actions.

When someone says I am a cultural Christian, they are using coded language to say I’m anti-immigrant, anti-other religions. I want society to go back to how it used to be before immigration.

There are multiple problems with this kind of attempt to appeal to this fearful intolerance.

Firstly, the idea that immigration is a recent thing is nonsense. My DNA was analysed recently. Although I am white and born in the UK, my DNA contains significant elements of Italian, Dutch, German, Ukrainian, Greek and Scandinavian ancestry. My DNA gives the lie to the idea of British ethnicity, or that immigration to these islands is a recent thing. My DNA shows that we have been trading with, invaded by and interacting intimately with people from other nations and cultures since the Bronze Age.

Another problem with the idea of being a cultural Christian is that cultural Christains don’t exist. There’s one thing and one thing only that makes someone a Christian: a personal decision to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Being born in this country does not make anyone a Christian. A nostalgic desire for an imagined past that never existed does not make anyone a Christian.

Some of the rioters in Belfast and Southampton have talked about “Protecting our women.” Inferring that violence against women is coming predominantly from different cultures or ethnicities. But Police analysis of the data of protesters arrested for violence shows that one in five of them have previous convictions for domestic violence. In the general population, the proportion of convictions for domestic violence is one in every 1263 people, meaning that the violent protestors are 252.6 times more likely to have been convicted for domestic violence than the general population, including ethnic minorities.

When talking about the last judgment, Jesus tells a story about a person surprised to be admitted into heaven who says,

And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. 

If you want to be a Christian, if you want to get into heaven, believe in Jesus and follow Jesus’ teaching, which includes welcoming the stranger in our midst.