Summary
This is a long post. For those with limited time, I argue that Danny Kruger's defection to Reform comes with a manifesto for Christian nationalism attached.
He claims England (and I stress, England) was consciously founded as a Christian nation, that secularism has failed, and that “woke” must be destroyed.
This is not history but myth-making designed to pit Christians against others and distract from economic collapse with culture wars.
The agenda is clear: re-Christianise public life, rewrite education, roll back equality.
The real choice we face is not between Christian nationalism and a “godless desert,” but between exclusionary myths and a politics of pluralism, equality, and care.
Background
Danny Kruger MP quit the Tory frontbench yesterday and joined Reform, where he has been in charge of preparing the party for government. He has not, of course, offered himself for re-election by his constituents wearing his new party colours.
Kruger's politics
As John Crace, the Guardian political sketch writer, might have put it, Danny Kruger has only a vague relationship with reality, or even politics in the UK. Like most of the Reform leadership, he is also, of course, the product of an elite private school in the UK, so in touch with the people of his country is that party. But his true political agenda has to be understood, and a speech he made in parliament in July, to an almost empty chamber, indicated just how bizarre his thinking is. I share the part on his philosophy here with no apologies for the length of the quotation:
There is a great hunger in society for a better way of living, and I want to use this opportunity to explain what that better way is and why we here in England have the means to follow it.
The Jewish and Christian God is a God of nations. He is interested in people as individuals, but also as groups—as communities not only of kinship but of common worship, with a common God. Uniquely among the nations of the world, this nation—England, from which the United Kingdom grew—was founded and created consciously on the basis of the Bible and the story of the Hebrew people. In that sense, England is the oldest Christian country and the prototype of nations across the west. The story of England is the story of Christianity operating on a people to make the institutions and culture that have been uniquely stable and successful.
The western model was forged and refined in England over a thousand years from the 9th to the 19th centuries. What is that model? It is simply this: that power should arrange itself for the benefit of all the people under it, and specifically for the poorest and weakest; that the law is there to protect the ordinary person against the abuse of power; and that every individual has equal dignity and freedom, including, crucially, the freedom of conscience, religion and belief, which makes space for other religions under the Christian shield—a secular space. Indeed, the idea of a secular space is a Christian concept that is meaningful only in a Christian world. These are ideas that only make sense if one accepts that we have some intrinsic value—a value that is given to us and is not of our own making or invention.
Throughout the long years from the time of Alfred to the time of Victoria, it was assumed that a nation was a community of common worship and that our community —this country—worshipped the Christian God. Then, in the 20th century, another idea arose: that it was possible for a country to be neutral about God; that the public square was empty of any metaphysics; and that the route to freedom lay through the desert of materialism and individual reason—“no hell below us, above us only sky”. That idea was wrong. The horrors of the 20th century attest to that, not least in the west, where we escaped totalitarianism but have suffered our own catastrophes of social breakdown, social injustice, loneliness and emptiness on a chronic scale.
Ugly and aggressive new threats are now arising, because we have found that in the absence of the Christian God, we do not have pluralism and tolerance, with everyone being nice to each other in a godless world. All politics is religious, and in abandoning one religion we simply create a space for others to move into. In abandoning one religion we simply create a space for others to move into as the dominant faiths. There are two religions moving into the space from which Christianity has been ejected, and one is Islam. In a debate yesterday, I said how much I find myself in agreement with Muslim colleagues in Parliament on moral and social matters. But as I have been saying, this is a Christian country—if it is a country at all—and I cannot be indifferent to the extent of the growth of Islam in recent decades.
It is the other religion that worries me even more. This other religion is a hybrid of old and new ideas, and it does not have a proper name. I do not think that “woke” does justice to its seriousness. It is a combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism, all mashed up into a deeply mistaken and deeply dangerous ideology of power that is hostile to the essential objects of our affections and our loyalties: families, communities and nations. It is explicitly and most passionately hostile to Christianity as the wellspring of the west. That religion, unlike Islam, must simply be destroyed, at least as a public doctrine. It must be banished from public life—from schools and universities, and from businesses and public services. It needs to be sent back to the fringes of eccentricity, like the modern druids who invest Stonehenge in my constituency with a theology that is seen as mad but harmless because its followers are so few and no one serious takes them seriously.
We can no longer pretend, as people did in the 20th century, that we can be neutral or indifferent to God or to the public square being a godless desert. The fact is that the strong gods are back, and we have to choose which god to worship. I suggest we worship the God who came in the weakest form, Jesus Christ. This God is a jealous god—it is him or nothing—and we have to own our Christian story, or repudiate it. Not to own it is to repudiate it, and to repudiate Christianity is not only to sever ourselves from our past, but to cut off the source of all the things we value now and that we need in the future, such as freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and human rights.
Without the Christian God, in whose teaching these things have their source, these are inventions—mere non-existent aspirations. To worship human rights is to worship fairies, but if we own our story and remember the real sources of our civilisation, we can have these things and make them real—real freedom and tolerance and dignity, a culture of love and, crucially, a culture of humanity. We are in the age of the machine, and a great choice confronts us: whether to make machines in the image of fallen man, bent on exploitation and domination with mankind in its sights, or to make them what they properly are, the servants of mankind able to help us make a better world.
To conclude, a wind is blowing, a storm is coming and when it hits we are going to learn if our house is built on rock or on sand, but we have been here before. The reformers of the 11th and the 16th centuries, the Puritans in the 17th century, the Evangelicals in the 19th century all brought this country back from the edge—from idolatry, error or just plain indifference, and from all the social and political crises that indifference to Christianity brought about—and they each in their generation restored this country to itself.
A new restoration is needed now, with a revival of the faith, a recovery of a Christian politics and a re-founding of this nation on the teachings that Alfred made the basis of the common law of England all those centuries ago. This is a mission for the Church under its next leader, whoever that is; it is a mission for this place—the old chapel that became the wellspring of western democracy—and for us, its Members; and it is a mission for our whole country. It is the route to a prosperous modernity founded on respect for human dignity, responsibility for the created world and the worship of God.
Analysis
Let me be blunt about what this is: it is a manifesto for Christian nationalism in England.
Kruger claimed that England — not Britain as a whole, but specifically England — was consciously founded as a Christian nation.
He went further and said that Christianity was not just one faith among others, but the very foundation of our laws, our freedoms, and our rights. From Alfred to Victoria, so his story went, this country flourished only because it worshipped the Christian God. The 20th century's great mistake, in Kruger's view, was to imagine that a nation could be neutral about God. Secularism, he claimed, had led only to emptiness, breakdown, loneliness, and moral decline.
I suggest that this framing is no accident. It is a very obvious and deliberate attempt to recast national identity in religious terms. What Kruger presented as history was, in fact, myth-making. His tale was a profoundly sanitised account of a thousand years of English life, which carefully ignored both the brutality of religious conflict and the fact that modern rights had to be fought for, most often against the established church and its entrenched support for privilege, which in turn had required many of Christian faith to look elsewhere to worship.
Kruger's view of the present is no more appealing. With secularism supposedly collapsing, the “strong gods” were returning. Islam, he acknowledged, is growing, although under what he called a “Christian shield.” But the real enemy, in Kruger's opinion, is a hybrid of paganism, heresy, and modernism; what he inevitably derided as “woke.” This, he claimed, must be destroyed and be driven out of schools, universities, businesses, and our public services until it is banished to the margins of eccentricity. Concern for others is, it would seem, in Kruger's opinion, the greatest threat to our society, because that is what woke means: it is an awareness of inequality and the resulting injustice flowing from it.
Kruger's language is not, then, the language of tolerance or democracy. It is entirely about the rhetoric of exclusion. It pits Christians against non-Christians, England against the other nations of the UK, and the faithful against the secular majority. And it presents liberalism and pluralism as dangers, not achievements.
Kruger's political intention is obvious. Rather than addressing the economic failures of recent governments, which he supported, he is seeking to shift the battlefield to culture and identity instead, where the far-right thinks they can mobilise fear and resentment. This is straight out of the Farage/Reform/Fascist playbook: distract from economic collapse with a culture war framed as an existential struggle.
And if we take the words seriously, the policy implications are stark. Kruger seeks:
- The re-Christianisation of public life.
- The rewriting of education to promote Christianity as the national faith.
- Restrictions on progressive teaching, equality initiatives, and secular ethics.
- The toleration of minority religions, but only so long as they accept the existence of a dominant creed.
- The potential rollback of women's and LGBTQ+ rights in the name of “tradition.”
This is not just theology. It is a programme for cultural authoritarianism in Britain.
The real danger is that, unless it is challenged, this vision will shape the political narrative of the next decade. It offers a false choice between a Christian nationalism rooted in nostalgia and a “godless desert” of secular liberalism. But that is a false dichotomy. The real choice is whether we build a society based on pluralism, equality, and care, or whether we retreat into an exclusionary myth of England (as not the UK) that never truly was.
What we know is that when economic arguments fail, demagogues turn to identity politics. That is what is happening now. We need to call it out for what it is — and insist that the future of this country will not be secured by reviving a medieval past, but by facing the real crises of our age: inequality, ecological breakdown, and the desperate need for a politics of care.
That is the choice we have. Where are the politicians calling Kruger out on this?
Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.
Comments
When commenting, please take note of this blog's comment policy, which is available here. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor's sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Is he related to Freddie of film fame? Sounds like it.
(at times like this ridicule of these nutters is the only way forward – I refuse to even engage with their blather).
For those who have not read John Crace
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/15/danny-kruger-takes-reform-back-to-full-strength-so-wholl-be-next-to-quit
as we say in Somerset “he make I laugh .”
I can hear, in my head, the words of my (long since departed) dad.
The man’s a heid case!
After reading Mr. Kruger’s potted mystery history of England here, one wonders how he gained a doctorate in history from Oxford University.
Indeed…
I’ve had my eye on Mr Kruger for some time, and his erstwhile MP colleague Miriam Cates (no longer an MP) since their appearance at the National Conservatism conference.
When I saw that he had switched to Reform I re-read his speeches, including that one in an empty Parliament Chamber about England as a nation in covenant with God.
It is indeed pure (English) Christian nationalism. It is an attempt to create an English Christian myth (with the emphasis on myth – historians differ on nearly all the details). I might add that it marginalises Jesus – it has to, because it clashes with his teaching and life-example.
He claims England under Aethelstan as the first truly Christian nation (935AD). (Armenia and others 301AD onwards, including Constantine 325AD might disagree, although I think the very term “Christian nation” is an oxymoron).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_official_adoptions_of_Christianity
He has written a book called “Covenant” on the same theme, I haven’t read it, but his speeches indicate the theological and historical flaws in his argument. His idea of covenant doesn’t fit with either Hebrew/Aramaic understanding from the Old Testament, or the reworking of the covenant theme in the life and ministry of Jesus.
His faith may be sincere but his history and theology are very flawed, and his politics is unabashed and highly dangerous Christian nationalism. He will “prepare a highway in the desert” for the Fascism of Fa***e.
Many British Christians will fall for it, both those who do attend churches and those who just use Christianity as a national, cultural or racial identity marker.
Thank you for highlighting this. He will need challenging – especially that English myth he is trying to create.
I think this is important – hence the lenghty quote and effort.
I was awake absurdly early this morning.
Thanks, RobertJ.
Re how many Christians (or church attenders, self-identified…) “will fall for it” – this study on Anglicans’ voting intentions is interesting:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farage-reform-uk-christian-polling-b2796872.html
– and here (with some graphics): https://theconversation.com/new-polling-reform-is-winning-over-britains-christian-support-260751
I feel a blog coming on (and I am trying to ration myself, but now have five in progress this morning since publishing the last, as this is not a video recording day).
Clearly you do not know Danny Kruger, may I suggest you look into the way he conducts his life, and how much work he does in prisons etc. Danny, like many of us, live our lives in an open, honest way, we have peace, even in the storms, and Danny just wants to make people aware that they do not have to suffer. You are very wrong about his agenda, but it sounds more like you are angry about Reform. I pray that you will find the peace and love that comes from really ‘knowing’ our Lord.
The man is promoting racially motivated division in society, misogyny and a lack of care for the vulnerable. Do not tell me that he knows anything about the teachings of Jesus, and nor, very clearly do you. And yes, I am very familiar with them.
How do you like Reform with misogyny? You are losing the plot Richard.
Kruger and Miriam Cates (ex Tory MP) were united in their claims that a) abortion was wrong and b) women should have as many children as possible and it was their duty to stay at home and look after them (ignroning cost, the two child cap and much else). He is profoundly misogynistic, as have all Farage’s parties been.
I look at the political party he has represented and the Reform party that he has now transferred his allegiance to. I see no application of christianity in either. I see hate mongering and enforced destitution.
Charlie Kirk’s murder has given the far right he represented — grounded in Christian nationalism — a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.
Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good. War is the final aesthetic. This is what is coming.
My response to this cherry picking of a man’s actions and words is that Jimmy Savile, anongst others who must remain nameless for NDA’s sake, was renowned and rewarded with a knighthood for his lifetime of charity work. Sexism and misogyny are the bedrock upon which all forms of sexual predation is justified.
Danny Kruger seems to be ignorant of the fact that Islam is also an Abrahamic religion and that Jews, Christians and Muslims basically share the same god. As a modern Druid (not of the Stonehenge white sheet brigade) the Danny Krugers of this world are seriously worrying.
I thought about discussing that – but did not get that far.
It was very weird he embraced Judaism but not Islam. Racism, maybe? What else explains that? He can explain, of course.
Assuming that Islam is alien has been normalised in this country – the expression universally used in discussion and reporting is Judeo-Christian, with no mention of Muslims at all (except to “other” – resistance to, for example, a new mosque being built o whatever.
Agreed
His version of Christianity seems to exclude Catholicism as “idolatry, error” and I suspect some Jewish people would not be too happy with the very Christian view of god he attributes to them.
“freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and human rights. Without the Christian God, in whose teaching these things have their source, these are inventions—mere non-existent aspirations. To worship human rights is to worship fairies”
is a total inversion of history where Christianity has repeatedly been used as an excuse, contrary to its basic original teaching, to ignore and deny these rights to many, I’m sure may Humanists would say he’s inverted who “worships fairies” too. I note he also proclaims “God is a jealous god”
conservatism derives from strict father thinking, everything they believe, including their economics, can be traced back to that is some form and George Lakoff’s explanation of why White Evangelicals support Trump potentially helps explains Kruger quite well.
“Those whites who have a strict father personal worldview and who are religious tend toward Evangelical Christianity, since God, in Evangelical Christianity, is the Ultimate Strict Father: You follow His commandments and you go to heaven; you defy His commandments and you burn in hell for all eternity…….Such a version of religion is natural for those with strict father morality. Evangelical Christians join the church because they are conservative; they are not conservative because they happen to be in an evangelical church, though they may grow up with both together.”
Much to agree with
An excellent book on this very topic is by the eloquent Peter Oborne “The Fate of Abraham”
Dear Danny,
Faithfulness to God means first to love God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour as yourself. If you seek to re-Christianise your nation, let it not be by coercion or exclusion, but by living mercy, justice, care for the poor, and humility. If people believe differently, treat them not as enemies but as neighbours. Don’t look backward to a mythical golden age of Christian dominance; seek the kingdom that comes not by might, but by service, forgiveness, peace. Beware of the worship of nation. Let your greatest concern be not that you dominate the public square, but that you embody the humility, compassion, and love Jesus taught, so that all may see in you a light, and be drawn to what is true and life-giving.
Amen
I’m not a Christian, but it strikes me that he has a very skewed notion of Christianity, both historically and as interpreted by most Christians today (not all – a few seem determined to ignore everything taught in the Gospels). I’d like to see the leaders of all the different Christian denominations call him and his ilk out in no uncertain terms, frequently and publicly, and make very clear that the values that Reform is proclaiming are not ‘Christian’.
And as for his history, the DfE ought to be putting Eton into special measures.
Much to agree with
I have no religion, but can see that following Jesus’s teaching could lead to a peaceful world. My problem is that so many self described Christians (especially Americans) seem to live by the Old Testament rather than the New. To me, the two books that make up the bible appear to be incompatible. If only Christians lived by Christ’s words and ignored the anger and retribution in the Old Testament, I feel the world would be a more tolerant place.
I’m not at all surprised that the Chamber was almost empty.
Both the Tories and Reform are a strange choice for an avowed Christian; neither party is Christian in outlook, policies or actions.
Can it be that he’s not much of a Christian himself?
Yes, a very distorted history of the Origins of Christianity. Didn’t it arise in Palestine and then spread through the Roman Empire? Then split into the Papal and Eastern Greek and Russian Orthodox? He fails to mention the barbaric crusades in the middle east against that Mohamadans. Also the discrimination in England against nonconformists such as Methodists and Quakers until the Act of Toleration in the 19th century. True secularism supports the freedom of religion and belief, the National Secular Society is not opposed to religion as such but is opposed to religious privilege such as bishops having seats in the House of Lords. Also religion interfering in human rights Soch as gay rights and abortion.
And what about intolerance of Roman Catholics by supposedly Christian protestants now – which still causes massive problems in society now – and not just in Northern Ireland? The man has an absurd view of the arcti ce of Christianity.
There were many beliefs and practices around the world that we follow today that came well before the concept of Christianity was formed, many of them many thousands of years before……
10 Christian Holidays and Beliefs Steeped in Pagan Traditions.
Pagan traditions and celebrations preceded the onset of Christianity. Arising spontaneously in the ancient world, holidays and feasts developed in Syria and Egypt, Persia and Mesopotamia, in Gaul and the dark woods of present-day Germany, and in the Roman Empire. The Norse of Scandinavia, the Druids in England and Ireland, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, all celebrated holidays throughout the year. Despite the lack of communication all of these celebrations shared something in common. They all followed the sun.
Festivals, feasts, and celebrations, centered around the winter and summer solstices, appeared in all pagan civilizations centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and continued for centuries after. Originally the Christian Church frowned upon these pagan rituals, but when traditions were too difficult to overcome the Church absorbed them, creating the ecclesiastical calendar around their existence. Scholars doubt that Jesus was born in December, even the Biblical account of shepherds watching over their flocks in the fields – which would not have happened in winter – make a winter birth unlikely. But celebrating Jesus birth’ during the time of the existing pagan celebration of the solstice was convenient and the Church usurped the holiday.
Full article at…
https://historycollection.com/10-christian-holidays-beliefs-steeped-pagan-traditions/
Thanks
All I can say – as an atheist mind – is ‘Poor old God’.
Has anyone/thing been so mis-quoted? Abused? Used to cover human greed and other frailties?
People like Kruger – they will resort to anything to preserve a system that has worked for them won’t they?
What an appalling individual. Suffering? Because of ‘woke’?
A long post but a short(ish) reply from me.
For clear indicators of what direction Reform and its supporters want to take look no further than across the Atlantic to the US. Everything – and I mean everything – that Trump and his cronies have already done, or plan to impose on the US, is going to be copied here. And so will every technique Trump and his band of corrupt brothers are using to get it done. And believe me, it’ll be easier to do here in the UK as we have no written constitution. Consequently – and as we saw with Johnson – conventions/rules – and then laws – will simply be ignored.
It used to be said that whatever happened in the US happened here five years later. Well, Trump was elected in November 2024, and currently we can expect a Trump carbon copy, Reform government in 2029. In the meantime, I’m sure Reform’s newest recruit will be busy on the Reform equivalent of Project 2025, except that as we don’t have a lag between an election and a new government taking office, that makes it Project 2029.
And finally, while I wouldn’t put Starmer in the same league as Harris politically (to be clear, she’s way better), the same mistakes are being made. Thus, Starmer and co are gifting the next election – and the political ground between then and now – to Reform. The crucial question is, therefore, will the Labour Party make the same mistake as the Democrats did, and leave it too late to change their candidate for the next election?
At least Biden had an excuse (his age and health) for his poor personal performance in the last year of his government. Starmer has none. He’s a man utterly out of his depth, lacking in any ideological convictions, surrounded by people who may as well be parts from a disassembled vacuum cleaner, they are so vacuous and lacking in any ideas that don’t come out of their little box of “blue” Labour (i.e. Tory) thinking, that they are about as much use to Starmer as a chocolate grill pan. Not that he would realise that – until it melts – as his government already pretty much done. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Much to agree with
Kruger needs to start with a statement attributed to Christ “That those who live by the sword die by the sword.” He needs to reflect on the many ways that people can be injured by a “sword” (policy) and how effective democracy is the way people help prevent such injury outside of needing to engage in civil war. He should also reflect that democracy has nothing to do with religion other than human beings extend themselves like other organisms even down to microbes by linking up with others to optimise their survival and well-being chances. In other words balancing their individual needs against those of others. Do microbes, for example, engage in organised religion?
https://ankara.lti.cs.cmu.edu/11780/sites/default/files/BacterialLinguisticsandSocialIntelligence.pdf
Kruger ignores the Celtic Christianity which earned some Irish missionaries the title ‘schoolmasters of Europe”. It was only in northern Europe but as far as Switzerland.
In the 7th century the north of England was Celtic and the King of Northumbria celebrated Easter at a different time to that of his Roman Catholic wife from Kent. It was decided at Whitby in 664 that England would follow the Catholic path.
I have written some fiction -just for myself -in which the characters address the falling away of traditional beliefs. In doing so, it clarified for me that Christianity has changed – though not for everyone.
Fewer would argue there is only ‘one true religion’ and that other faiths can also have merit.
Fewer Christians today really believe that the crucifixion was a necessary sacrifice to save Humankind.
The ‘modernists’ put the emphasis on the two ‘Great Commandments’ (love God, Love our neighbour) and the practice of the teaching of compassion and inclusion. Salvation Army and Quakers are poles apart in theology but united in their approach to all, including “the least of my Brethren”. Other churches are increasingly acting as back up to a failing welfare system.
The modern world also has an impact. Fifty years of research into Near Death Experiences and also widespread meditation practice gives a different perspective on a metaphysical reality than one provided by church accounts of miracles. I will add quietly that quantum processes are part of that wider view not available until the last century.
There is a lot of spirituality about which has a variety of roots and is less exclusive.
The churches struggled to come to grips with Evolution and whether it can do so with the things I mention is debatable. It might be a new version of Christianity emerges or perhaps it will decline further.
I don’t see us going back to the sort of state Kruger hopes for.
Much to agree with, and I hope not.
In terms of Christianity struggling with evolution it doesn’t need to if it understands consciousness:-
https://www.davidabel.us/papers/The-common-denominator-of-all-known-lifeforms.pdf
In my view most religions don’t understand consciousness as an aspect of metaphysical belief.
Evangelical Christianity has engaged enthusiastically and positively with quantum physics.
This gentleman is worth looking at, for such dialogue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilkinson_(theologian)
I’ve heard him speak and I’ve read his “God, the Big Bang and Stephen Hawking”.
I’m also looking forward to reading Richard’s “Economics, the Big Bang and Rachel Reeves.” 😉
🙂
It is another example of myth making along with Brutus of Troy. Who fled the Trojan war and had 4 children who would become the 4 kings of Britain. The idea of a ‘peoples religion’ did not originate in England, but in Germany. I don’t need to go on about the 20th century to see the problems it caused. The 80 years war is evidence enough.
Richard,
I really like your teaching on economics and feel I’ve learnt a lot, you explain things really well.
But here I think you overstep the mark and read too much into someone’s agenda, and you go far beyond what he said in terms of your implications for his position of intolerance or prejudice against different groups. Most practicing Christians are on the side of tolerance, free speech, justice for the poor, and indeed many of the institutions (schools, hospitals) that care for the poor were started by Christians before the state tended to take them over, once it was seen as morally right thing to do. And there is a place to come at injustice from a Christian viewpoint, such as Wilberforce did with slavery.
However, it is also possible (whilst believing in free speech and tolerance) to speak up against things that are morally wrong. But our world likes to polarize/demonize people, which I think you have fallen fowl of here.
Thanks again for you videos.
Please don’t patromise me, or be obsequious.
And please don’t give me a lecture on the virtues of Christinaity – which has a hideous history of absue on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic and social exploitation and straighforward sexual abuse to which it has turned a blind eye – rather than the teachings of Jesus, wich as a Quaker I am interested in.
I suggest you take the plank out of your eye and see Kruger fir what he is promoting – Chrisitian nationalism, or a form of fascism.
You need to have a close look at muslim culture and see what you like and don’t like and be equally vocal about it. Except you won’t of course because its not politically correct.
I disapprove of all supposedly religiously motivated extremism.
There you are, job done.
Most Muslims are not religous motivated exremists.
Job also done.
Royston – you ignore what Kruger actually says.
Firstly, the sheer inaccuracy of Kruger’s history, and his theology, can’t be ignored. He’s WRONG.
Secondly, it isn’t a coincidence whom he chooses to single out, disadvantage & demonise –
Muslims, and those espousing “woke” ideas –
which is bad news for minorities, whether they be sexuality, gender, age, health, race or religion focussed.
Of the three Middle-Eastern-originated Abrahamic religions, why does he single out Islam as the THREAT to be demonised? That’s happened before in England, only in earlier centuries we picked on Jews, not Muslims, and let prejudice and fear wreak havoc.
Even when we had establishment of Christian religion, the changes from one creed to another were very nasty, when allied to, or opposed to the power of the state. (Chalcedon, Arian, Nicene, Orthodox, Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican). Christians ended up burning, beheading, incarcerating, expelling or otherwise disadvantaging other Christians. Do you want another Five Mile Act? A religious qualification/bar in relation to employment, housing or education? Those things are in the VERY recent past. I’m a Baptist, RJM is Quaker, persecution by the state church is in our DNA. Then there is N Ireland…
“Anti-woke” politics is bearing down on those who speak out for minority interests. Doing it in the name of Christian morality is either deluded or dishonest or both – but it isn’t Christian.
Kruger is promoting far right politics and as a follower of Jesus, I call him out for weaponising religion in support of it. I will be watching his relationship with that godly morally upright truth-telling Reform party leader he has hitched his wagon to, to see how long the relationship lasts. Fa***e doesn’t like competition.
Kruger speaks a lot about protecting the weak and vulnerable, but then insists on politically and legally privileging the majority white “culturally Christian” straight cis fit and able community in his vision for England. That is not good news for minorities.
When the flags go up, whom do they protect? Whom do they scare?
If we are going to have a “christian” theocracy in England, then we can’t object to “islamic” theocracies in Saudi Arabia & Iran, or Hindu ones in India, or a Jewish one in Israel. The New Testament teaches that Jewish disciples abandoned theocratic politics for a kingdom, NOT of this world.
Very much appreciated
And, I agree
Has anyone noticed the recognition by Christian nationalists, individually or collectively, that the Bible reports that Jesus Christ was judicially murdered through the combined efforts of a fascist government and the leadership of the national religion?
What might be the reasons/puposes of such a lack of reference to a really relevant part of the Bible which presents the dangers of combining the state with religion?
You are presuming the reports are an acurate record.
The founding fathers of the United States knew that religion should play no part in the governance of the country. They couldn’t foresee someone like Trump trying to seize power by insurrection, then turning the USA into a fascist state while claiming they were guided by God. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.
Most modern democracies are secular, but everywhere we can see despots using religion to consolidate power.
Kruger is no mug and obviously thinks the UK is ripe for similar treatment.
It is, of course, all complete hogwash, but it can still happen unless we convince enough people of that.
Apolgies for lack of clarity!
I was assuming that more orthodox forms of Christianity presume the Bible reports are accurate and that not commenting upon this reported collusion between religion and state undermines efforts by Christian nationalists to use such a combination for political and/or personal advantage.
Noted 🙂
A late addition to all the interesting comments here (out all day). Late last week I was struck (via a links I followed from one of the US OSINTs X account) by the number of people in the US admitting to praying that Charlie Kirk would be resurrected on the third day after his death (I joke not). I was also struck by the fact that Kirk’s wife claimed he was with Jesus.
I added a comment to one such post in which I said I doubted he was as Kirk preached a lot of hate, whereas I was taught that Jesus preached we were to ‘love our fellow man’. In response to this someone wrote that Kirk was right to say what he did as the people he targeted were sinners, and they quoted Jesus, ‘Sin no more.’ as justification.
So, I did a few minutes research – not being a reader of the bible – and discovered what I’m sure you and other religious people know. That is, that Jesus accepted that there was no such thing as sinless perfection. But also that in Galatians 5.14 it states: “The whole law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.”. It seems to me that Kirk and his ilk cannot in any way be regarded as conforming to, or accepting, that statement.
Spot on
Biblical references to neighbours specifically mean fellow Hebrews only, not foreigners who did not count until Paul’s revisionism. As for ignoring the crazy Old Testament and only look at the shiny New one, the New is not independent, it is tied to the Old, and both talk about the same psychotic god. Jesus makes a point of saying he stands by the OT Mosaic Laws in full, (not a jot or a tittle etc) though he also interferes in the ‘legal’ stoning to death of an adulterous woman.
Paul did not write the book of Luke, although Luke (whoever he was) also write Acts and so almost certainly knew Saul/Paul, but the parable of the Good Samarian is in Luke and conradicts your claim. It is perfectly obvious that to Jesus neighbours did not mean Hebrews alone.
This is not the place for a lengthy theological discussion, but followers of Jesus from across the theological spectrum, as well as many non-believing scholars of the Bible would disagree with you on your assertions about references to neighbours, (“who is my neighbour?” the young man asked Jesus, and was told a story about a heretic Samaritan) and also the references to Jesus and the Mosaic law, where in regard to ritual cleanliness, food laws, the Sabbath, and the rules around forgiveness of sin, Jesus challenged the commonly held understanding of the requirements and function of the Mosaic law.
Your statements about Paul’s “revisionism” are also open to serious challenge.
But of course you are entitled to your pov.
I disagree with both you AND Danny Kruger.
I can also agree on political economy, with many who have a different faith position to me.
My point in this thread, is to disagree with the way Kruger weaponises Christianity to promote nationalism, and specifically to justify his support for the godless fascists leading Reform. It will end in tears.
Thanks
And agreed
See my comment
I doubt Philip Wagstaff will make it here again
The politicised evangelical dogma we now observe stems, somewhat alarmingly in this context from America; and specifically in a British-American context. can notably be observed in JD Vance. James Orr, an Associate Divinity Professor in Cambridge appears to have been a significant philosophical influence on Vance’s Christianity. Two points arise from this in the context of the Blog. First, Orr wrote a piece on Vance in the Daily Telegraph in 2024, in which he apparently described Vance as a “National Conservative” ; and in Orr’s own Wikipedia entry, he is himself described as a “national conservative”, and as having written quite extensively on Vance. Second, Orr’s philosophy appears to embrace an adventurous desire to resurrect a kind of Christian mediaeval scholasticism (imbued with neo-Aristiotelianism – there is a lot of fancy footwork); notably through a genteel, faded refurbishment of the Argument from Design. Provocatively, he has written a rebuttal of the Philosopher of Science, Nancy Cartwright’s paper ‘No God, No Laws’ (2005); titled ‘No God, No Powers’. We are moving forward by crawling back into the unprepossessing nineteenth century, in all its fake-Gothic splendour.
Thanks
Kruger might look at society and think “something is wrong”. Well, d’uh. But it’s secularism, materialism and modernity that can be rebuffed by Christianity? .
Perhaps Kruger ought to consider the social, political and economic dynamics going at full pelt. What started perhaps 200 years ago (let’s not argue about dates) is that The ‘ bourgeois class is the most revolutionary class’. So, in pursuing their interests, “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Marx and Engels suggested that the dynamic, transformative process of capitalism and industrialization caused established values, traditions, and institutions—including those previously considered sacred or inviolable—to lose their former status and be violated or defiled in the process of change.
Karl Polanyi made similar observations in the ‘Great Transformation’.
So in a sense Kruger is right….something valuable has been/is being lost as the modern bourgeois class, most notably the tech bro gods of techno-optimism, are sweeping all before them. As they do so, Kruger’s Christian nationalism will only survive if the new gods of capitalism allow it, and will in any case be totally unable to address the social mayhem the tech bros, private equity, rentiers etc are unleashing.
Thanks
What is amazing about this rise in Christian nationalism that is occurring both in the UK and abroad and seems intent on dissolving the separation of church and state, is that it draws its justification for taking such a stance from The Battle of Vienna, of September 12th, 1683, which happened, between the Ottoman force led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa and troops led by the Polish King, Jan III Sobiesk.
This battle is often portrayed by the far right as a heroic defense of Christianity against islamic expansion into Western Europe, which is a total myth because there were thousands of Hungarian Protestants fighting on the side of the Ottoman forces and though not so many, Tatar Muslims fighting on the Polish side.
Attention is drawn to this battle and other battles over several years, in the book “Two Faiths, One Banner” by Ian Almond, where he shows that, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples, thus dispensing with the myth of Christian v Muslim wars over Europe’s religious identity.
It is also very strange that some Christians assume that any sense of morality and integrity entered into human consciousness with Moses descending from a mountain with his commandments when through the three papal bulls, the Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493), Christian European colonial powers were given a religious dispensation to claim lands and enslave non-Christian people in Africa and the Americas, which led to the conquest of these lands with horrendous consequences for the native peoples and the creation of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade.
These bulls which were very similar to the bulls which justified the crusades, gained their quasi- legitimacy from an eighth century forgery of a supposed fourth century document, which was suspected of being a forgery in 1441, called the Donation of Constantine, whereby as a sign of gratitude for the pope curing him of leprosy at his baptism, Emperor Constantine bequeathed to the pope, his powers of dominion of all lands, even though there is no evidence of him ever having leprosy or being baptised a Christian. This toward native peoples could also explain the Berlin Conference of 1884, whereby the European nations believe they had the right to carve up Africa for themselves and the devastating consequences that have been the outcome of such action.
Noted
Richard’s reply re the Good Samaritan: 1. Only Luke mentions this, no other gospel 2. It is another example of Jesus side-stepping a trap about the Mosaic Law, this time about who is a neighbour. Instead of giving a straightforward answer he redefines neighbour as the one showing mercy 3. I understand theologians argue in depth about this parable.
We’ll have to disagree.
But I’ll say this: I think you are not just profoundly wrong – completely ignorong the language used – and your comment sounds horribly Christian Nationalist adjacent to me.