The British Crisis

Authors: John Stonestreet and Dr. Glenn Sunshine

The Christian’s citizenship is in heaven, but that doesn’t mean that our cultures and civilizations don’t matter. Rather, Christians are to bring Christ’s kingdom to bear in the times and places where God has placed them, working to renew and restore, turning our upside-down world right-side up. Christians are also right to mourn nations that reject their Christian heritage, especially when they devolve into something unrecognizable.  

In the new film, Truth Rising, an impressive collection of British intellectuals describe how this has happened within their own nation and what this predicts for the Western world. Baroness Philippa Stroud, a founder of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, Sir Niall Ferguson, perhaps the foremost expert in the world on the history of civilizations, Winston Marshall, formerly of Mumford and Sons, and Konstantin Kisin, best-selling author and political commentator, are among the many voices that describe our fraught cultural moment. Check out Truth Rising when it premiers September 5. Learn more at truthrising.com/colson.  

In the years after World War II, immigrants from former colonies generally integrated into the countries that had colonized them. However, in recent decades, many European nations adopted a careless border policy while at the same time rejecting their own heritage. As a result, mass migration from the Middle East and Africa—or in Britain’s case, South Asia—occurred without sufficient vetting or expectation of assimilation. Particularly migrants from Muslim countries tend to despise Western values and the people who hold them. Often, they are explicit about their desire to transform their new countries into fundamentalist Islamic states. 

The contempt for kafir, or non-Muslims, can be seen in the “grooming gangs” in England. Since the early 2000s, Hundreds of thousands of British girls have been raped, trafficked and abused, some as young as 11. Often, the victims are taken from care homes and lower income communities. Countless have been murdered or were victims of drug overdoses administered by their abusers.  

According to the 2023 UK Strategy for Countering Terrorism, 75% of MI5’s caseload involved monitoring Islamist threats, while 80% of counter-terrorism suspect investigations were classified as Islamist. And yet, until last month, the Labour government in Britain shut down attempts to investigate or deal with the problem of grooming gangs. Police often ignored reports of the abuse out of fear of being labeled racist. Fathers attempting to rescue their daughters were arrested, and trafficked girls were labeled child prostitutes in order to shift blame upon them. For over two decades, the U.K. was more interested in protecting the reputation of the immigrant community than protecting English girls who were being abused.  

Meanwhile, King Charles, who is officially the head of the Church of England, participated in very public celebrations of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, while making no statement about Lent and only generic statements about Easter. 

Historically, Britain has championed civil rights, including free speech. Not anymore. In 2023, over 12,000 people were charged for their social media posts. Many involved comments that were deemed too anti-immigrant or too pro-British. Public perception is that native Brits and Christians are policed far more harshly than migrants and Muslims.  

British elites long ago succumbed to the progressive take-down of national identity. Thus, there is little interest in protecting or preserving Western civilization. Since Western civilization is a product of Christianity, that must be rejected as well. Rejecting Christianity will mean losing those cultural goods that depend on Christian values, such as freedom of speech and religion, civil equality, universal human rights, and a host of other things the West has long taken for granted. The cultural goods of the Western world cannot be preserved if cut off from their roots. Currently, Britain is a case in point, and much of the rest of the West is not far behind. 

Whether or not the West can be saved is not clear, either from history or from Scripture. God can certainly change the trajectories of nations and civilizations, but He has not revealed what His plans are for our specific time and place. Either way, whether in times of prosperity or persecution, Christians are called to be agents of renewal.  

Thus, we pray out of love of neighbor and for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. We promote and preserve those things that are good. We oppose and resist what is evil. We imagine and innovate what we might offer the world in Christ’s name, and we renew and restore what is broken. As we do, perhaps the Western tradition may be saved. Maybe not. As T.S. Eliot said, “For us there’s only the trying. The rest is none of our business.”