Your imaginary friend is not the solution to my problems, but thanks

The future of British conservatism does not lie in an embrace of evangelical Christianity, and non-Christians like me aren't missing out

Genesis

Sometimes two and two don’t make quite what you’d expect. I’m an atheist and a passionate (though not uncritical) fan of the late Christopher Hitchens, but I don’t hate or disparage organised religion as a concept. Of course it is true that religion in its many interpretations has directly inspired people to do unspeakable things over the centuries, and it can be adduced as a clear and immediate cause of appalling crimes of all sorts. The same is, however, undoubtedly true of all sorts of belief systems, not merely those which have some kind of religious or spiritual framework (you don’t need me to point to the baleful figure of Mao Zedong and the deaths of perhaps as many as 80 million people).

I am not a cheerleader for organised religion. I find it baffling that public figures are lauded simply for having faith. The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is an atheist, raised in a loosely Anglican context; his wife is Jewish and his children are being raised in the Jewish faith; but his approach to faith is a weird mish-mash of respect and detachment.

You don’t have to be a person of faith to recognise the real difference that faith can make in our communities… It’s the job of the church, of Christian leaders, and of individual Christians to call for justice, to speak out on inequality and advocate for those who don’t have a voice. I’ll always recognise that, respect that, and listen to those voices.

That’s all fine, but there is no sense in which any of those activities are dependent on someone’s religious belief. There is a sense—and this is not a criticism aimed solely at Starmer—that someone’s profession of faith is a marker of seriousness and sincerity: you may not agree with their individual beliefs, but at least they know what they think. I’m conscious of the opposite point of view that Hitchens proposed to Penn and Teller in 2005:

Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our scepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

This is not to say I believe, as Hitchens clearly did, that religion is inherently damaging (his 2007 anti-faith manifesto, God Is Not Great, was after all subtitled “Why Religion Poisons Everything”), or, at least, no more damaging than any belief system to which humanity will always be prone. But, whether you like it or not, those who subscribe to a religion are inherently willing to accept certain precepts and principles without argument: faith is by its nature different from logical reasoning and conclusion. That someone has a religious faith is, for me, a matter of general indifference unless it is so dominant that it shapes their fundamental personality.

I eventually came to accept that I was not a muddling-along, middle-of-the-road, split-the-difference agnostic but an atheist, in the sense that I have concluded, in the absence of anything else to persuade me, that there is no God nor any supreme or divine being, there is no afterlife, there is no guiding force directing humanity’s affairs and that the threescore years and ten we are allotted (adjusted for inflation and events) are our only performance, both début and farewell, without a dress rehearsal. I derive great comfort from that approach.

On the other hand, I entirely understand those who find that notion frightening or depressing, and I understand the profession of religion. I don’t mean that in a patronising or judgemental way: some of the most brilliant people I know, men and women of piercing intellect, profound humanity and vast imagination, are religious. I wouldn’t suggest for a fraction of a second that their faith derives from any lack or failing of intellect. Human beings have always searched for meaning and order beyond our immediate surroundings, driven by curiosity, by a desire for understanding and a need for reassurance, and organised religion has been one of the things which has satisfied that urge over the centuries. (I would argue, for what it’s worth, that it is the same impetus which fuels many people’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories at the moment, as I have previously written.)

Religion in the public sphere

I dwell on this issue because it’s important to emphasise that I have no particular animus against organised religion. I spent my academic life studying monks, for goodness’s sake, and will quite happily take (and dispute in elaborate detail the result of) internet quizzes which ask “Which religious order are you?” (yes, they exist; I usually end up as a Benedictine, with which I can live). I am impossibly relaxed with the fact that England has an established church and that there are Church of England bishops in the House of Lords, because I value tradition, shy away from change for its own sake and cannot think of a single example in half a century of politics when it has made a noticeable difference to public policy.

I tend to agree with something Enoch Powell said (not a phrase many people venture these days), before he embraced Anglicanism in 1949, that even though he was not a member he believed that there should be as Established Church of England and that the Queen should be head of it. I am a Tory, “a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions”, as Powell expressed it, and part of that is accepting that there may be wisdom in institutions and existing arrangements which is only exposed by its disappearance when those institutions are changed or dismantled. Were I to design a second chamber of the legislature from scratch, it would not include 26—a slightly arbitrary number—Anglican prelates, but we never work in a vacuum.

Christianity and conservatism

Despite all of this, despite my inherent sympathy, despite my innate conservatism and despite my belief that order and regularity are the essential counterweights of personal freedom and responsibility, a trend has emerged over the last year or two, almost exclusively on the right of the political spectrum, which irritates me more and more. There is an element of ideology on the right, which emerges in many forms, which proposes that Christianity is not just an important strand of conservative thought but an essential underpinning of it; more, that, without Christianity, any formulation of conservatism is essentially rootless and drifting, lacking a coherent foundation.

Thanks, but no.

The National Conservatism movement seems to have kicked off this manifestation of the religious right in a British context. After a toe-in-the-water gathering in 2016, the organisation held a conference in London in May 2019 with speakers including the late Sir Roger Scruton, then-MEP Daniel Hannan, former Margaret Thatcher advisers John O’Sullivan and Nile Gardiner, Israeli-American philosopher Yoram Hazony, Polish senator Anna Maria Anders and midwit Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski.

The New Conservatives, a parliamentary group of about 25 Conservative Members of Parliament convened last summer by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, represented a continuation of this trend. Both Kruger and Cates are evangelical Christians, and the group’s 10-point plan was ostensibly a re-emphasis on the Conservative Party’s 2019 general election manifesto, the implication being that the leadership had strayed too far from its “mandate” (an idea with no serious meaning in British politics). But it promoted several ideas and narratives that were, at least, profoundly socially conservative and obviously sat easily with dedicated Christians: “attachment to family”, “cultural security”, heterosexual marriage as the “only basis for a safe and successful society”. All of this was underlined by Kruger’s publication of Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood and Nation in August 2023 in which he essentially rejected free-market economics, social liberalism and the Enlightenment. I was clear at the time that the group’s formation was neither helpful nor electorally advantageous.

National Conservatism’s statement of principles concentrate on “traditional beliefs and institutions” and propose directing society towards “patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice”. (Some might argue those items are not all mutually compatible.) Its fourth principle makes the movement’s status quite clear: “God and Public Religion”. It is worth quoting in full.

No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

National Conservatism was created by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a public affairs institute chaired by Yoram Hazony. It felt, and continues to feel, like an innovation in British politics, a movement which is not only sympathetic towards religion—and by “religion” we mean Christianity, though it is good enough to mention “Jews and other religious minorities”—but argues that Christian observance is an essential part of a healthy and prosperous society.

It’s at this point I need to raise a hand in very firm opposition on a number of points.

• “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment”: really? Who decided that? France has muddled through nearly 250 years since the Revolution with a passionate attachment to the concept of laïcité, the idea that religion is a matter for the private sphere while in the public arena citizens are equal on all measures including their confessional identity. Equally, although Christian conservatives may try to reinterpret it, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is quite clear that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (and Article VI stipulates that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”). Article (4)(2) of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany declares that “the undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed”. The important factor here is that citizens should be free to observe their religious faith—or an absence of one—and that such freedom should be underwritten by the state. That is a very different proposition from ordaining a nation which is based on “humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment”.

• Christianity should “honored by the state and other institutions both public and private”: private institutions should honour the Christian faith? Insofar as this means anything, I would reject it absolutely. Private institutions are just that, private, and it no business of the state how they conduct themselves or what “moral vision” they pursue so long as they act within the law. It is a short distance from “private institutions” being required to “honor” the “moral vision” of Christianity to a radical reversal of policy on, say, equal marriage, divorce, homosexuality or abortion.

• “Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes”: there is a glaring omission from this principle, admirable in its own way. Should adults be protected from coercion in the public sphere? If this limited consideration is your guiding principle, then there is nothing to prevent the return of the Test Acts and a requirement that those holding public office should declare their adherence to Christianity, or, as used to be the case, a certain denomination of Christianity.

Another aspect of this development struck me while reading the latest essay in Ed West’s Substack, The Wrong Side of History. This is not to point the finger at Ed, for whom I have a great deal of time and whom I always read with interest; and I am focusing on a secondary part of his essay. But he quoted a famous aphorism by G.K. Chesterton from his Orthodoxy (1908):

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Chesterton was a stridently orthodox Christian who eventually converted from High Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, and I don’t think I’m being unfair when I interpret his words as saying that those who have turned away from Christianity (or perhaps never embraced it in the first place) may hold certain virtues but are somehow deficient and incomplete (“isolated… wandering alone”) because of their lack of Christian faith. Indeed, earlier in the text, Chesterton argues this “wandering” occurs inevitably when “a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation)”.

Your faith is yours, and let’s keep it that way

I don’t accept any of these propositions. Not a single syllable. The idea that my moral universe is somehow diminished or lacking in direction because I am not a Christian would be insulting if I could take it seriously, but, as it is, it just strikes me as mad and delusional. It is the sort of attitude adopted a priori by door-to-door missionaries and receives exactly the same length of shrift as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.

Firstly, the whole argument is predicated, understandably enough, on the idea that Christianity is theologically and spiritually true. This was an assumption widely enough shared to order a society by in the 16th century, and perhaps even in the 19th century and the early years of the 20th: it is now, to put it mildly, contestable, and certainly sufficiently questioned to make it a dead end as the overarching identity of a modern nation state.

There is also a subconscious assumption that Christianity is anything like a unified whole. Many of the very proponents of Christian conservatism know this is not true, and know very well that the difference between, say, a Southern Baptist and a Russian Orthodox is an enormous, perhaps unbridgeable, one, not just a polite disagreement over emphasis or phraseology. Simply try to get Christians of different denominations to agree on a description of Holy Communion and its significance. So what kind of Christianity should we honour and enshrine in our national life?

Let me be as clear as I can. Our general morality derives a great deal from what Orwell called the “Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals”, and consequently the knotty and controversial but necessary concept of “British values” owes a great deal to the Bible and the holy texts of Judaism. It is very likely that a devout Christian or orthodox Jew would find such values comfortable and sympathetic. Equally, I am very much in favour of freedom of religion and the freedom to observe whatever faith you choose (although, like any freedom, it can never be absolute, and there will always be instances of friction between religious observance and public law). I am, as I have said, utterly relaxed about the existence of an established church and the right of Church of England bishops to sit and vote in the House of Lords; I have no objection to the House of Commons saying prayers every day before it sits; I went to a school which maintained aspects of collective Christian worship and had no difficulty in participating in them.

But I don’t believe God exists. I think the whole basis of Christianity, while it embodies many admirable virtues, is based on a fallacy, the idea that there is a supreme being and that a 1st-century AD radical Jewish agitator was the manifestation on earth of that supreme being. I see no reason at all, therefore, why I should feel any sympathy towards or attraction to an ideology which enshrines this unproven assertion as a fundamental policy. Even more strongly do I reject the idea that the embrace of this unproven assertion would somehow enhance or complete my moral universe.

In short, I’m very happy for you to talk to your imaginary friend. If your relationship with Him (or however you gender the godhead) gives you solace, reassurance, stability and meaning, that’s great, and I would not seek for a moment to interfere in your private interactions. But my life is not diminished by the absence of your imaginary friend. I am not lacking anything in my intellectual or emotional life, my sense of ethics and morals, my view of society or my political ideology for which your imaginary friend would compensate.

We all construct our world views from disparate sources. We reach for experience and emotion as well as philosophical or religious principles. I’m sure a great many conservatives do draw heavily on their Christian beliefs to form their ideological stance (though many left-wingers do too; Christian socialism has a long and distinguished history, while the Liberal Party was long associated with Christian non-conformism). You can cite St Thomas Aquinas or John Wesley or William F. Buckley as significant influences, just as you might equally cite the pagan Marcus Aurelius or the arguably agnostic Adam Smith or the self-described agnostic Milton Friedman: you should not expect your Christian sources to be in any way privileged or elevated.

Reality bites

This dominant Christian framing of conservatism is narrow, exclusionary and insulting, but even if it were none of those things, there is no electoral future in it, in the United Kingdom at least. At the last census, only 46.2 per cent of England and Wales identified themselves as Christian, while 38.8 per cent of the population of Scotland did so. In Scotland, “no religion” was the majority position (51.1 per cent). Ten years before, in 2011, 59 per cent of the population in England and Wales chose to be identified as Christian, and in 2001 it was 72 per cent. This demographic shift is only going one way.

Dan Hitchens wrote an interesting analysis of religious observance for The Spectator last September. He noted the rising popularity of some forms of evangelical Christianity but pointed to a statistical model developed by a former maths lecturer, John Hayward, which applied a metric made famous by the Covid-19 pandemic, the R number, to various Christian denominations. Essentially, for a population to maintain its size, it must have an R number of one; if it rises above that, it will grow, but if it falls below it, it will begin to shrink. The results were sobering.

The Church in Wales is declining at such a rate that—on the assumption that nothing changes—it will be extinct at some time in the 2030s, just after the Welsh Presbyterians. In the 2040s, it will be the turn of the Scottish Episcopalians, Methodists and the Church of Scotland. The last rites for Anglicans and Catholics will be read in the 2060s.

It is a staggering additional statistic that only three per cent of those under 25 regard themselves as adherents of the Church of England.

When William F. Buckley founded The National Review in November 1955, he declared in its mission statement that, as a conservative publication, it “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it”. It was a brave and noble intention, and actually much less quixotic than Buckley made out, as the magazine flourished and was instrumental in shaping American conservatism. But standing athwart history is always fraught with risk, and that risk is all the greater of the juggernaut which approaches is a powerful one with a great deal of momentum.

However you feel about the decline of Christian observance in Britain, and however deep-seated and devout your own faith may be, it is happening. 72 per cent (2001) to 59 per cent (2011) to 46 per cent (2021) is actually a very steady downward rate, suggesting that we should expect something of the order of 33 per cent of the population to identify as Christian when the next census is conducted. Politics is a business of ideas as well as management, and I have written about my passionate belief that ideology is important and should be valued.

But politics is also, famously, the art of the possible, and political movements have to work within the context of the society in which they exist: one of the reasons for the death of the Liberal Party as one of the two mainstream parties of government in the 1920s is that it lost its traditional support base on the left and the right, with radicals and socialists transferring their allegiance to the Labour Party and middle-class professionals who saw socialism as a threat voting instead for the Conservatives. In the same way, you would not now find much traction for the Crofters’ Party, which existed in the 1880s and 1890s, because the pattern of land tenancy and the population distribution of the Scottish Highlands has radically changed. Ideology has to fit society, or it is irrelevant.

It is an abiding curse of British politics that we import American trends and debates which have no resonance in our own public affairs. Our approach to race and ethnic minorities is often disfigured by talking points from discourse in the United States where the history of race relations is utterly different, not least because of the predominance of chattel slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. In the same way, there is a flourishing Christian conservative movement in America which goes as far back as 1864 and the creation of the National Reform Association, the objective of which was to make the United States explicitly and avowedly Christian by amending the constitution.

There is no equivalent movement in Britain of any great strength or antiquity; it was for centuries the case that Liberals and Whigs enjoyed the support of non-conformists, while, in preacher Maude Royden’s famous phrase, the Church of England was “the Conservative Party at prayer”. As late as the 1950s, the Scottish Unionist Party, the semi-detached allies of the Conservative Party north of the border, could win in parts of the west of Scotland which it would not have been able to conquer by socio-economic logic through its association with working-class Protestant sentiment and the Orange Order, appealing to “Unionism, Crown and Constitution”. But the steep decline in observant Christianity has robbed these traditions of much electoral power.

Goodnight, and may your god go with you

Conservatism should not be a cold house for devout Christians. It should offer a welcome to those of any religious tradition, or, increasingly, none on the basis of a shared adherence to broad political principles (and exactly what those are in the United Kingdom is something we will be debating for some years yet). But Christianity cannot expect to be elevated as a fundamental truth of conservative identity, nor can it be a necessary element of “real” conservatism. That would be intellectual surrender, but it would also, more fatally, be tying the conservative movement to a declining trend. We should never seek to be, in Vice-President Kamala Harris’s glib phrase, “unburdened by what has been”, but the politics of the past cannot become a dead weight.