Is British politics immune to US-style rightwing Christianity? We’re about to find out

Earlier this year, not long after Tommy Robinson embraced evangelical Christianity while in prison, the then Conservative MP Danny Kruger spoke in parliament about the need for a restoration of Britain through the “recovery of a Christian politics”. Less than two months later, Kruger joined Reform, and shortly after that, James Orr, a vociferously conservative theologian who has been described as JD Vance’s “English philosopher king”, was appointed as one of Reform’s senior advisers. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, now frequently invokes the need for a return to “Judeo-Christian” values.

The British right is increasingly invoking the Christian tradition: the question is what it hopes to gain from doing so.

Until recently, there were no obvious British analogues to political figures on the US right such as Vance, the Catholic-convert for whom religion plays a foundational political role. With Orr and Kruger, both of whom converted to conservative evangelical Christianity as adults and attend church regularly, we have some contenders. Kruger has said he is in agreement with Vance that to solve the “plight of the west” there needs to be a “substantial revival” of “governance and culture”; he believes this can be achieved through a return to Christianity.

Those further to the right prefer their Christianity more pugilistic and watered-down. Robinson has clearly recognised the political value of the Christian faith: there was an abundance of Christian symbolism at the “unite the kingdom” far-right march that he organised in London this September. Pastors on stage gave speeches and led worship songs, aping the style of the evangelical mass politics of the US Christian right.

Robinson’s newfound faith mirrors an important development that is taking place among European far-right groups, which are shifting emphasis in their political messaging from ethnicity to religion. (Rikki Doolan, a British evangelical pastor who was the witness to Robinson’s conversion at HMP Woodhill, has suggested that Robinson first grasped the political value that Christianity could have for his movement while attending far-right rallies in Poland.) In its most nationalist guise, this new racism views Christianity as synonymous with whiteness (it matters not that Christianity originated in the Middle East). Other religions, but especially Islam, can be repurposed as existential threats, making religion into a zero-sum game: you are either for Christianity, or you are working to destroy it.

Viewed through this lens, Robinson can remake his anti-Islam politics into a defence of Christianity.Kruger, meanwhile, can argue that Islam is moving “into the space from which Christianity has been ejected”, offering a religious gloss to more generalised fears about immigration diluting an imagined ideal of Britishness. Much of this thinking involves simplifying both Christianity and Islam, two enormously complex, heterodox religions. In order to pit entire civilisations against one another, the influential scholar Edward Said wrote, one is required to refashion civilisations into what they are not: “sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history”. The homogenous form of Christianity that Robinson subscribes to is a reaction to what he perceives Islam to be – representative of all that is evil, while Christianity represents all that which is good.

Powerful backers and strategists on the US Christian right increasingly see Britain as fertile ground for its movement. Since 2020, the US legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending in Britain, and increased the size of its UK-based team fourfold. ADF is known for providing legal counsel on high-profile culture war cases in the US. It was an architect of the overturning of Roe v Wade, regularly represents clients who oppose gay and transgender rights – and is now exporting its methods to the UK.

In recent years, a number of conservative Christians in the UK have been taken to court for illegally praying in abortion clinic “buffer zones”, which protect those visiting or working at abortion clinics from harassment. On multiple occasions, these Christians have been offered legal support by ADF’s UK branch. This is part of its “long-term strategy to shift public opinion around abortion”, the New York Times reported. By calling such cases “free speech issues” – an incendiary topic in Britain’s so-called culture wars – the ADF thinks it can push religious arguments against abortion on to the national stage.

This might seem like a pointless exercise: according to recent surveys, the vast majority of British people believe abortions should be legal. But, public opinion is never static. Farage has started calling the UK’s 24-week abortion limit “utterly ludicrous”. This summer a survey found that less than half of men aged 16-34 believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 82% of men aged 55-77 – a generational vulnerability that could be exploited. The issue has always been a particularly useful cause for the right: in the US in the 1970s, the New Right movement – combining conservative hardliners and conservative Catholics – realised abortion could be tied to various perceived social ills, such as women’s liberation and the civil rights movement. Their target was not only to limit abortions, but to use abortion as a means of unifying disparate camps on the right and legitimising other socially conservative policies.

ADF UK is doing more than just providing British Christians with legal counsel. Its lobbying has secured Farage a seat at the high table on several occasions: thanks to its interventions, in September he was able to give a nearly three-hour public appearance before the House judiciary committee in Washington DC describing the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK. ADF also trains student groups in Britain, hosting seminars on topics such as “the right to freedom of speech on campus”. Its members make appearances on broadcast media and write pieces for the rightwing press.

This striking project to empower conservative Christianity in Britain should serve as a reminder of the fragility of Britain’s largely secular politics. It is also a reminder that anti-trans, anti-queer and Islamophobic positions do not spring from nowhere. Public consensus can be manipulated by discreet networks with distinct agendas and multimillion dollar budgets.

It’s impossible to say which political figures currently embracing Christianity are doing so in earnest: at root, faith is a deeply private experience, generating a wide variety of conclusions about the world and our moral duties to one another. In October, Neville Watson, the only black branch chair of Reform UK, defected to the Christian People’s Alliance, a small independent party. Shocked by the strong presence of Islamophobia at the “unite the kingdom” rally, he declared that those present were advancing “an ideology that is not Christian”. Watson was brought up a socially conservative evangelical Christian: “I’m coming from a very strong, Christian, love thy neighbour sort of perspective,” he said at the time. This is the first indication of a struggle for the meaning of Christianity among the hard-right. It could have significant implications for the movement’s future.