12th February 2025

‘Christian nationalism’ is a potent factor in far-right extremism, exalting one’s country as a privileged instrument of God to be supported at all costs regardless of other peoples. This contradicts the Gospel of God’s kingdom first and foremost, which calls us to scrutinise our country in the light of that kingdom of justice and peace.

But why wait for attitudes to become ‘extreme’ before challenging them? Some years ago a revealing ecumenical study was made of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. It showed how there was a wide spectrum of attitudes. At one extreme were the paramilitary groups like the Ulster Defence Force and the Provisional IRA who promoted violence and armed conflict as the only way to fulfil the aspirations of the respective communities they claimed to represent. Moving further inside the spectrum were the people who had hard political views though not necessarily inclined to violence, and so on until one came to people seemingly indifferent to it all, ignoring people because they were different, or simply pretending they didn’t exist. Each level of sectarianism, however, drew upon the less extreme level beneath it. The more extreme presented itself to the less extreme as the way of hope for fulfilling their apparently benign aspirations.

‘This country belongs to us’. This may sound like common sense. But it’s on such seemingly acceptable sentiments that extremism feeds (leading eventually to ‘This whole planet belongs to us.’). They, no less than inflammatory rhetoric, need challenging here and now by the radical Gospel of Jesus which is about all people called to live in the love which knows no barriers, healing and reconciling.

Keith Clements