This week Reform UK’s only black branch chair, Neville Watson, quit. While he said he hadn’t faced any racism, he said the tenor of Britain’s migration debate is “doing more harm than good”, citing fears about Christian nationalism. But does Christian revivalism go hand in hand with anti-immigrant nationalist politics? There is perhaps more tension than we realise.

There have been two crucial trends in British politics in recent years. The first is a turn towards neo-nationalism against globalised neoliberalism, linked with nativist reaction against mass immigration. The second is an apparent Christian revival, or what has sometimes been called “New Theism”, especially among Generation Z and young men, reacting against the spiritual wasteland and nihilism of the post-Christian West, and, to some extent, against the “Muslim question”. These two trends are thought of as complimentary.

Watson, who is of black Caribbean descent and an evangelical Christian, said he resigned because he was alarmed by the rhetoric he saw around the Unite the Kingdom rally in September. He said it attempted to “weaponise our faith against Islam”. Additionally, some voices in politics are “stoking a fire” around immigration in ways that contravene his “very strong, Christian, love thy neighbour sort of perspective”. Noting the effect Reform has had on the “Overton window”, he said: “Politics is losing its compassion as politicians try to out-Reform Reform and I no longer feel that this is compatible with my Christian faith.”

He is right: there was a lot of Christian symbolism at Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally. Earlier this year, Nigel Farage — a noted opponent of Robinson and usually more guarded on matters of the divine — made a stand for “Judeo-Christian values” and proclaimed Britain a “Christian country”. In a speech in the House of Commons in July, the then-Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who has since defected to Reform, called for a “revival of the faith, a recovery of Christian politics, and a refounding of this nation”. Elsewhere in his remarks, he called for Christians to “destroy” and “banish from public life” a “woke” modern creed combining “ancient paganism, Christian heresies, and the cult of modernism”.

The invocation of Christianity among the Right to boost a politics based on nationalist renewal and immigration hawkishness is, at the very least, in tension with the universalism of Christianity. Many Christian believers are not down with aggressive anti-immigration nativism, because it would be an offence to their conviction of Christian love and helping the downtrodden stranger. They hold, as per the book of Philippians, that ultimately “our citizenship is in heaven.”

It hardly needs to be stressed that many believing Christians are themselves immigrants. A good chunk of this soft Christian revival in places such as London has literally been imported as a result of immigration from West Africa and elsewhere. West African immigrants are not just boosting church attendance. They’re also transforming the aesthetics, sounds and rhythm of actually existing Christianity in Britain. If you go to a church in a large British city, it is likely the attendance will be as diverse as the United Nations. Part of the strength of religion — especially universalist faiths such as Christianity and Islam — is its ability to attract a wide range of people from wildly different backgrounds and make a community out of them. Churches are a prime example of an institution that can concretely integrate newcomers into civil society — not just to integrate them, but to allow them to participate.

Those who are eager to “restore” Britain on “Christian foundations” as part of a project of nationalist renewal will face a dilemma. Part of their project means getting a handle on immigration, including mass deportations — even potentially of those who have settled legally. But the people who would be most useful allies in reviving “Christian values” in society are largely themselves immigrants, who have formed Christian communities which are vulnerable to dissolution in such a scenario.

At some point, those sympathetic to both the ideas of nationalism and Christianity may have to choose between the two. Clinging to the teachings of Jesus precludes a certain kind of nationalism. Yet, judging by the way the wind is blowing, it appears nationalism will trump the divine.

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Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.

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