A Christian Understanding of Identity, amidst our Present Discontent. # 212. 30/09/2025.
Out of Many, One People
Welcome, to a follow on from my previous blog, and an attempt, in the midst, to find Christian understanding of English identity.
A Christian Understanding of Identity, and our Present Discontent.
Concerns about ‘identity’ have been widespread for the past couple of decades or more, generated especially by sex, sexuality, ethnic, regional and class concerns. As regards ethnicity, the issue has ratcheted up over the past few weeks, with the vehement expression of a specifically white, English identity breaking surface quite dramatically. The immediate cause of this is the rapid increase of immigration over the past few years, with a net migration of 738,718 in the year up to mid 2024, and with an increase in the national population of almost 10m million from 2005 to a current (June 2024) population of 69.3 million. Almost 32% births in England and Wales in 2023 were to foreign born mothers, clearly being white and English is rapidly becoming less and less the norm that it was in the immediate post-war period.
The disappearance of being white English as the de facto assumption of what it means to be an inhabitant of this country has gone alongside an increasingly critical approach to the legacy of white Englishness. Pride in the spread of the Empire has been replaced by critiques of colonialism and especially chattel slavery in the Caribbean, and with the focus swinging to the current and continuing injustice of ‘white privilege’. Thus people once confident that this is ‘their’ country and proud of its heritage, now find that instead not only are they merely the biggest, albeit declining, ethnic group in the country, but also one with a backstory that is being robustly challenged.
This challenge to a normative and positive white English self-perception – once so pervasive it was seen as in little need of forceful self-expression – now has produced the inevitable push-back. This was notable in the demand for Brexit and the rise of assertively British political parties, eventually taking shape as Reform, which has now become a major electoral force. At a popular level this was evidenced in the large turnout for this month’s Unite the Kingdom demonstration, but it also attracted more established support, as by Danny Kruger MP and Professor James Orr.
For Christians this raises two quite different issues. Firstly, as I discussed in my previous blog, is the increasingly Christian colouring of this development, evidenced primarily by the appearance of crosses (including the St George flag), and Christian songs at the demonstration and also in the Christian faith of some high level supporters. This deployment of Christianity has in response already received serious questioning, not least in the balanced public letter published last week with the support of a very wide range of Christian leaders and institutions.
Here, however, I want to discuss a more basic issue, namely how as Christians we think of ethnic identity, of any sort, and then consider how this wisdom might bring help and healing to our current context.
Ethnic identity and Scripture.
The Bible is an ethnic book. Before a major pivotal passage – God’s vocation to Abraham to be a blessing to all peoples in Genesis 12:1-3 – we read in Genesis 11 ‘The Table of the Nations’, a listing of the known peoples of that time. Thereafter we read of conflicts with surrounding nations, enslavements, escapes, enemies, alliances and exile. Alongside of which is a running commentary in Psalms and prophets of how the Lord’s people are meant to relate to these other peoples. Then, through the saving work of Jesus, these peoples are themselves drawn into the Lord’s people, and it is this multi-ethnic people that carries forward God’s kingdom to all peoples.
So what do we glean from this narrative of the place of peoplehood, ethnicity – my ethnicity – in this kaleidoscope. I have suggested (see blog # 38 on ‘Paul and Ethnic Identity) that, following Paul’s writings, three major emphases appear of how we might understand our ethnic identity: affirming, chastening and transcending. I was encouraged to find that in ‘The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Inter-Group Reconciliation in Luke-Acts’ Aaron Kuecker identifies the same three emphases.
Affirming.
In Romans 9 Paul writes passionately concerning ‘my own people, my kindred according to the flesh’ (v 3). He lists their specific and unique place in God’s purposes, but it is not only an abstract, theological assertion, it also flows from the experience of the warmth of family and friendships, of an easily assumed sense of belonging with others. Appropriately, when Paul’s life was at risk he was protected through the intervention of one of his ‘kindred’, the son of his sister (Acts 23:16-22). Such identification with our own people is assumed to be the basic and fundamental attitude throughout the Scriptures. I once heard John Stott argue that loyalty to our ethnic identity is simply an extension of the command to honour our parents. It is worth noting that in the Bible and many cultures the awareness of our ancestral line goes far further back and deeper than for westerners. The worth of all those separate ethnic identities is affirmed in Revelation 21:24 when ‘the kings of the earth will bring their glory’ into the heavenly city. There are things in every culture which are of lasting and eternal value in God’s sight.
Chastening.
Ethnic identities, like all other human productions in a fallen world, have their negative and sinful aspects. If Paul could sense a deep sense of belonging with his kindred, he was also conscious that it had nurtured a false sense of confidence in that identity – the ‘flesh’ that took it away from its limited purposes in God’s redemptive work, and made it a source of idolatrous pride and security that was ‘rubbish’ (or worse) that hindered him from knowing the righteousness with God found only through trust in Jesus (Philippians 3:3-9).
For those of us who aren’t Jews the parallel with Paul’s experience is not perfect, nonetheless the realisation that things in our own ethnic group that we have taken for granted when growing up, indeed taken pride in, leading to complacency before God are all accretions which can be both idolatrous and also hinder us from free and open relationships with people of other ethnic backgrounds. Coming ‘to regard as loss’ (v 7) things in our background that we once took pride in should be a painful awakening for all people.
Transcending.
Being cast into a multi-ethnic environment inevitably challenges us to adapt, not only to let go of the illusions of false pride, but also find ways of developing open and positive relationships with people of other ethnicities. Again, Paul’s experience is not quite parallel. He had a specific calling to ‘the Gentiles’, to move outside of his own ethnic, cultural and religious ambience. But all Jewish believers in Christ faced a massive challenge – sitting down to meals with Gentiles - that our more functional, less principled culture finds it difficult to understand, let alone feel its powerful emotional force. If for Peter the apostle this was a difficult hurdle to overcome, then how much harder for an ordinary Jewish believer to transcend the very roots of their cultural identity and share food with Gentiles.
So, in the process of becoming ‘all things to all people’ Paul the evangelist became ‘as one outside the law’ (1 Cor 9:19-23), and was the front-runner in a challenge that would face all Jewish believers. This new faith called them to abandon the stronghold of their law and traditions and enter relationships with those who were culturally and religiously ‘other’ to an extent that we find hard to comprehend or feel.
Being aware of our ethnicity today – a case study of being English.
What does this outline of a Christian understanding of ethnic identity have to say to all people today, and especially to English people, many of whom seem to feel that identity is ignored, disparaged, or even characterised as toxic. If this specifically applies to the English (of a certain age? social class? region?) then I trust that readers of other ethnicities will be able to transpose what I write into their own cultural backgrounds.
‘Say it loud, I’m English and proud’.
One benefit (albeit perhaps unrecognised or even rejected) of living in a society that has become multi-ethnic is that it stimulates us to recognise and give some account of our own ethnicity. We are not a blank canvas set amongst others marked by colour; nor are we vanilla, lacking the marked flavours that characterise others. We really are an ‘ethnicity’: distinct, peculiar, historically and geographically formed. (Therefore, never refer to other ethnic groups as ‘ethnics’, as though we have no ethnicity, and are just, well, ‘normal’).
It is valuable to try to itemise what it means to oneself personally to be English, albeit such attempts will always be elusive, indefinable and idiosyncratic. One such attempt is by the journalist Matthew Paris on attending a recent Pulp concert in Manchester. He drew attention to the significant fact that the concert audience was almost entirely white, and reflected: ‘Pulp . . . are a powerful magnet for white Englishness. Why? Is it the suppressed ardour, the almost constipated longing, the gentle irony and a kind of tenderness punctuated by stifled outbursts of passion? I bracket Jarvis Cocker with Delius, Betjeman, Samuel Palmer, Wallace and Gromit, and Winnie the Pooh.... I recognise, know and struggle for the right words to express the unmistakable feeling of being a white Englishman’ (The Times, 25/06/2025).
I am not a fan of any of the exemplars that Parris listed (who is Samuel Palmer?) nor does his (class-based?) characterisation of ‘white Englishness’ resonate with me; but that re-assuring sense of being with ‘my kind’ did resonate with my experience of attending a Bruce Springsteen concert in Liverpool around the same time, where - despite Springsteen’s very defined Americana, blue-collar persona - the audience here was overwhelmingly over 50, of varying sorts of middle class, and white. I was at home. That’s not something to be embarrassed or ashamed about.
The English have given the world its nearest thing to a universal language and a universal game. We have had a major impact on the process of world history. It’s crucially important that we get a handle on who we are. That process has imposed costs on us. Did being the world’s first industrialised and heavily urbanised society create that ‘Social Dis-ease . . . a shorthand term for all our chronic social inhibitions and handicaps . . bordering on a sort of sub-clinical combination of autism and agoraphobia’ that Kate Fox’s ‘inward looking anthropology’ characterises as the most distinct quality of the English (‘Watching the English’, p 548)? Which perhaps was what Matthew Paris, albeit more positively, was feeling after.
Despite our limitations, and our evil (see below), nonetheless it is right that like all other peoples, the English have pride in who we are. We have made major contributions in the sciences, the arts and in government and law which have greatly benefitted all humanity. Writers with non-English backgrounds such as Matthew Said and Konstantin Kisin have commented positively on the society we now live in. There are strong reasons beyond the economic why people want to come and live here.
Accept the pain.
Anyone who relates to people of other ethnicities will experience criticism of who we are; and indeed of who I am. It is only by such experiences that we become aware of both limitations that may be hard to correct, and wrong assumptions and attitudes that we ought to correct. The correlate of belonging to a once world-leading nation that had caused much of the world’s map to being coloured red was an inherent sense of being better equipped to take power and authority, make judgements, define policies, to be wiser and more developed. That bull in the china shop needs rebuking and disciplining. The Christian faith ought to give us well used processes to recognise our failures, confess to God and others and to make amendment of life into a more humbled and reciprocal direction.
On the stage of world history, too, white Englishness has come in for serious criticism, most obviously through our leading role both in trading in African slaves and also the shameful cruelty of the treatment of those slaves and their descendants in the Caribbean, as well as our wider involvement in the whole project of western European colonial expansion. We are still far from a broad consensus as to the overall impact of that expansion and its continuing effects on the long-term well-being of all humanity. But detailed analysis reveals so many instances of brutality, deceit and injustice that white English consciences ought to be severely smitten.
Here too the Christian faith gives us a clear light. Repeatedly in the Old Testament prophets rebuked not only surrounding nations, but more especially those who saw themselves as God’s people. The popular response to John the Baptist’s preaching ‘What then should we do?’ (Luke 3:10) leading into explicit steps to practicing justice is a template for our response to revealed injustice. One blessing that the Christian faith can give to a culture is the prophetic readiness for public self-criticism and reformation.
Reaching Out.
Is transcending our own culture a vocation limited within the community of faith, or is it a calling incumbent upon all peoples? If we see enjoying being with ‘my kind’ as a legitimate good for minority cultures in this country, even at times with statutory support, then to disdain it or even condemn it amongst white English will inevitably arouse resentment, and the sort of anger that has bubbled up recently. (See the discussion in blog # 16 on “Ethnicity and Asymmetry’). But whilst a biblical perspective recognises the value of a centripetal movement to affirm cultural belonging, it also points to the importance of the centrifugal motion – the desire, stemming from bearing God’s image and mandate within his creation, to discover and form relationships in the wider world.
Our status as creatures means there is right human drive to know more about the natural world and the human societies in which God has placed us. Both individuals and cultures may vary in the strength of that desire, but it is inherently a good one. Further, it is productive. Cultures that are open to others take on board new ideas, incorporate foreign techniques, are challenged by new understanding. Europe advanced by abandoning Latin numerals for Arabic ones. Japan prospered by first adapting and then improving on western technology. Societies that have closed themselves off from the world, as China did for several centuries have stagnated. Thus Paul’s commitment to ‘become all things to all people’ is not just a requirement for evangelists, it is appropriate for all people.
When Paul told the Athenians that God ‘allotted the times of (the nations) existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live’ (Acts 17:26) he was affirming God’s control of the historical process. Since then, and particularly over the last century that process has speeded up considerably so that more and more ethnic groups find themselves in close interaction with other ethnicities. Whilst there needs to be respect towards those – of any ethnicity – who have a strong, conservative sense of ethnic belonging, nonetheless the direction of world history is towards cosmopolitanism and a positive, indeed enthusiastic, desire for deepening encounter with other cultures. As has often and rightly been pointed out, in the current crisis of white English identity churches can and ought to have a salutary role in setting the path for generous, open interaction with other ethnicities.
As with any progress there are difficulties and strains along the way. Our current situation, where the demands of transcending our ethnic identity fall most heavily on those who have least benefitted from our diversity, is an injustice in need of correction. But the challenge of such transcending opens up to a flourishing, mutually enriching and more united humanity that is a blessing from God.
We need more essays addressing this intricate topic. For example, what is "White English Identity?" Aren't the English a fine melting pot of the Anglos, the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes, the Celtic Britons, the Danes, the Norsemen, and the Normans? And let's not forget the Vikings. I write from afar in San Diego, California, USA, so perhaps I am missing something. I find elements of White English Indentity in my own conception of myself, in place names like the James River, Chesterfield County or Ampthill. All of these names which informed my childhood in Virginia originated in England. Similarly, my very family name "Twyman." came from Birchington, Kent, England. My genetic heritage is probably 10% percent English. Are the White English my people? https://twyman.substack.com/p/who-are-my-people?utm_source=publication-search
The comment of Greg Smith intrigues me as to identity as a social construction framework. Maybe, identity derives more from internal locus of control as consciousness. As I grow older, I feel so far away from external creation of boundaries.
Best,
W. F. Twyman, Jr.
John... this is good as far as it goes, but as a sociologist I think it needs to be in counterpoint with identity seen though a social constructionist framework. Idenitites are "imagined communties", never reified and fixed cultures. They work because of the creation of ingroup and outgroup boundaries, and the interplay between these groups, and the languages, narratives, symbols and rituals which are used to define them. People may have blurred or bipolar identities. What we are seeing is a political manipulation of the concept of white Englishness... Personally I am not convinced that Englishness exists in a real sense... I wrote this... at Jonathan Chaplin's instigation..
Title of paper: Will there always be an England? https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~assets/doc/comms%20and%20marketing/Will%20There%20always%20be%20England%20-%20Greg%20Smith.odt?
There is a more extended treatment of my theoretical approach to identities in my Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism: Toxic, Fragmented or Redeemable? (2020)
https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/temple-tracts/