Is
British politics immune to US-style rightwing Christianity? We’re about to find
out
Lamorna
Ash
Nigel
Farage and Tommy Robinson are increasingly espousing Christian ‘values’, and a
wealthy US legal group is becoming influential – this could have dire
consequences
Tue 25
Nov 2025 07.00 CET
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.
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