We hope, pray, and preach that out of our present chaos, many will find their way not merely to a forgotten cultural heritage carved into the side of the rock, but to the rock itself. As Spurgeon famously said: “Oh blessed hurricane, that drives me to the rock of ages.”

So much has changed, so many opinions altered, so many illusions undone, so many institutions exposed, so many alliances broken and made. The old certainties have shifted. So many people now say and do things they could not have imagined saying or doing before, both for good and for ill. And all in such a short space of time…
Does anyone else feel like the last half-decade feels longer than several decades put together?
So much has happened in the social and political and religious spheres, it’s hard to believe it fits into less than half a decade. The consequences of all that has been crammed into these historic years will likely remain imprinted upon us for decades to come.
So much has changed. So many opinions altered. So many illusions undone. So many institutions exposed. So many alliances broken and forged. So many people moved to say or do things they previously could not have imagined saying or doing before. And all in such a short space of time. All experienced so fast, as if we’re sat on a train watching the world we knew speed past us.
Rarely do we have sufficient time to reflect and take stock because as soon as something has happened or been spoken about, there are already several other paradigm-changing things apparently demanding our immediate attention or interpretation.
If someone was in a coma for four years they would think they had woken up to a new world altogether, where so many of the previously reliable “certainties” have been substantively and irreparably undermined. Things just don’t work the way they used to anymore. You can try to ignore it, but the world—and the way people think and talk about it—is nonetheless changing the way it’s changing.
Historians will surely analyse this as a time which substantially shaped the course of the next half-century at least, one way or another. There are, of course, noted parallels between the digital revolution (and its effects on the socio-political world) and the impact of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution.
But it’s not merely an issue of technological innovation and access to information. It’s also a revolution in how people think and act (no doubt in part due to the way people’s minds have been shaped by the digital revolution). But unlike many modern political revolutions, the revolution of thought we are currently experiencing also involves people returning to older ideas which they did not know they were “allowed” to think about.
The Changing of the Ground
There is a creaking in the floorboards of what we thought we knew, of what we thought was not ok to say or do. The pull is in both directions. As the liberal elites become more progressively intoxicated with their empowered derangements, those who see the poverty of their thinking began to realise that even the ground on which they were holding firm was already indirectly “held” by the progressives.
Gradually and imperceptibly, we had already begun to contribute to the downfall and were heading in the same direction, albeit at a slower pace. We had already given away too much ground, and much of the ground we thought needed defending was already compromised as it was.
However you describe it—whether via the effects of the “red pill” movement or the reactions to the societal forest fire that is “Woke”—for many people it now feels impossible to go back to talking the way we did about socio-politics, theology, mission the way we did even half a decade ago. Things have changed.
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One day, Britain as we knew it will be gone. Some may so, “Well that’s always the case; nations always change.” Perhaps so; but how did it change? According to what principles? Along what lines? Who gets to decide how it changes? If the Nazis had won the Second World War, would it have been right to simply accept the “change” that would have been wrought in Britain as a result? Would it not have resulted in a distinct loss of identity? “Don’t be absurd! That was different!” may be the reply. Perhaps. But if a government—whether your own or another nation’s—decides to do things which will drastically undo the foundations of what you believed your country stood for, and you essentially have no say in it, one may start to observe a few parallels.

For many people, home no longer feels like home. They do not know where or how they belong anymore. Such fragmentation did not happen by accident, but by policy. Those who disagreed with the mass renovations to their societal home were not consulted. There was no planning permission. No referendum. It just started to happen. And then it kept happening.
Those who opposed it too strongly were soon demonised as hateful and unwelcoming. It became increasingly inconvenient to oppose it, so most simply gave up. They opted to keep their heads down and try to live their lives as normal, as if the industrial diggers all around them were not really there, upturning the foundations they thought they knew.
The Rupturing of Foundations
As I write this, I can see literal diggers across the road from our house, tearing down hedgerows of what have been—for centuries—horse fields, paddocks, and woodland, in order to build 400 new houses.
Local residents here long before us had been fighting the “development” for over a decade, and finally lost on appeal last year. It has caused much sadness, even anger, in the area (there is a local Facebook group called “Rage” dedicated solely to the development, for example!).
Even knowing it was going to happen did not prepare many of the neighbours—even my own family—from visible upset at the physical destruction to the surrounding environment. This is natural greenery which many have known to be there for decades, something we can see being tangibly undone before our eyes.
Things like this are happening in similar places across the country. There are many reasons for the housing crisis but few can argue it is not determinatively exacerbated by the kind of mass scale immigration—undergirded by the doctrine of multiculturalism—which requires a country to need over two hundred thousand new houses per year.
But aside from the particular issue of the destruction of the English countryside, what is currently happening across the road is also an apt metaphor for what many people feel about what is happening across the nation. They are seeing their culture and traditions torn away before their eyes. They are feeling utterly helpless to do anything about it. They are worried they might be labelled “selfish” for wishing that it was not happening, let alone saying so out-loud.
Death By Ideology
The tensions borne from the rupturing of a culture can be made to sound sensible by the all-encompassing ideology of “multiculturalism” but they cannot be buried for long. They have a tendency to erupt. This is what we have seen in recent times, however regrettable the events have been.
Douglas Murray warned about this problem almost a decade ago in The Strange Death of Europe. At the time, Murray was deemed something of a pariah for talking about immigration in civilisational terms, especially for highlighting the particular danger of a culturally embedded religion like Islam taking root in Britain as a result.
Indeed, the infamous political spin-doctor of New Labour, Alastair Campbell, recently suggested that Douglas Murray be investigated by the police for writing such a book, arguing that it may have helped incite some of the recent riots. As Konstantin Kisin highlighted regarding Campbell’s accusation, you can tell something’s very wrong when people are castigated not for being proven wrong but for being proven right!
As Murray pointed out—and has continued to point out—multiculturalism is essentially an ideological myth. It is the idea that multiple divergent cultures and traditions can be peacefully imported into co-existence with a dominant and/or host culture without causing the kind of real-time aggravated tensions we have seen manifested in recent times.
One may always be able to point to positives here and there about the comingling of cultures, of course. There can indeed be moments of mutual appreciation and learning when different ways of life coalesce. Not only this, but there are also negative—often horrendous—examples in history of where dominant cultures have sought the kind of conformity that refuses to tolerate peoples different to them.
The fear of becoming—or seen to be becoming—anything like such negative examples is powerful. It is this fear that dupes so many British people today into believing that multiculturalism not only makes sense, but believing that to disagree that multiculturalism makes sense probably indicates a fascist, racist, or xenophobic trajectory.
This is why the ideology of multiculturalism is so dangerous, because it seems so unassuming, so virtuous, so “obviously” true, as though we shouldn’t even need to think about it. People who adopt it tend to see the world not with it but through it. This is why they often cannot see it as an ideology. Multiculturalism is seen as the fundamental solution to societal disharmony when, in fact, it has caused—and will continue to cause—major societal disharmony by ignoring the significance of what culture truly means to people.
This is the case not only in those cultures now being drastically altered by uncontrolled mass immigration, but even among migrant communities themselves. The desire of immigrant populations (especially Muslims) to cling to the cultural and religious moorings of their own families and traditions rather than assimilate under the multicultural banner is hardly surprising. No doubt, many will continue to make use of the multicultural vision, but only in order to assert their own cultural values.
It’s understandable that people from other cultures wish to preserve their own way of life when they come to a different place. It’s not a strange thing at all. What is strange—as Murray well observed—is that the host culture (western Europe and its anglophone siblings) does not seem to think there is anything particularly worth preserving. In fact, as was reemphasised to me on a trip to Washington earlier this year, we are increasingly taught to be embarrassed of our cultural heritage rather than proud of it.
The Melting Pot and Islam
The myth of multiculturalism is that everyone can put a little of their own cultural “spice” into the melting pot without fundamentally upsetting the overall flavour, consistency, and viability of the whole.
No doubt this is possible here or there. There are plenty of examples of mutual flourishing in the growth and development of cultures. All cultures have already done this in one way or another at some point in their formation, and will continue to do so. But cultures adapt best when they do so gradually, organically, and according to established principles, rather than via swift revolution (violent or bureaucratic).
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The book raises many questions for further reflection, such as regarding the extensive implications of sphere sovereignty. Whilst it is Biblically undeniable that God institutes and informs the distinct spheres of family, church, and state—each with Biblically defined parameters of governance—what about other “spheres”? Where do their boundaries lie, and who says so?…Who gets to decide these boundaries if they cannot be identified Biblically?

As Western societal norms erode at unprecedented levels and the Western political system becomes ever more questionable, a growing number of evangelicals are beginning to wonder whether Christians might have a few things to say about how to run a country.
Evangelicalism has long separated the ecclesial from the socio-political. The idea has been that if we can just get people saved and into churches, the world will more or less sort itself out. And if it doesn’t, it’s the state’s fault, not ours. We have imagined the worst possible state of affairs to be a “politicized” Church, preferring instead a policy of political quietism—or we might say, political “appeasement”—with the political Zeitgeist.
Perhaps this appeared sensible in light of the political partisanship of previous generations, where the Gospel’s edges may have been all too easily tailored to suit particular political agendas. This was, of course, a contextual reactionary approach, but has been held up as the definitively “Christian” way to engage (that is, disengage) with politics—an unusual stance even in light of Protestant history, let alone wider Church history.
There was also the issue of that revelatory year of 2020, when “Gospel-centered” evangelical churches appeared to become more politically amenable to the Left in subtle ways. Such pulpits had previously refused to speak strongly on issues like homosexuality, abortion, and transgenderism for fear of entangling the Gospel in distractive socio-politics. These same pulpits started commending government directives to deny church meetings, chastising the unvaccinated as unloving, and apologizing for whiteness and maleness.
Suddenly, we were introduced to a ream of new “Gospel issues” on the Left whilst continuing to dial down issues on the Right. Something deeply hypocritical in the evangelical mission was exposed, which many are still trying to dissect. Evangelicals are fast needing to re-educate themselves on what’s gone wrong and what Christians might say (and do) about it.
Enter Joe Boot’s Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government (2022). Boot offers not just an engaging diagnosis of the deep problems with Western politics but also maps out how the Church might begin to respond reflectively and proactively. The word “toward” in the subtitle is key. Boot is not offering a fully fleshed-out political strategy nor a manifesto for Christian nationalism per se. But what he does offer is a robust, reflective, and extremely valuable theological underpinning for how we might begin to reclaim the socio-political arm of Christian mission.
At 200 pages it is a relatively short book, yet it feels tightly packed, covering an impressive amount of ground, introducing and unpacking an enormous amount of Biblical, theological, and socio-political reflection. Whilst the brevity of the book in light of the ground covered certainly leaves some material in need of yet more unpacking (especially Biblically) Boot generally does a superb job here of bringing issues to the forefront which have gone unconsidered for a long time.
Whilst he engages a wide range of sources, he is offering here a recovery of the Kuyperian vision applied to our present era. To evangelicals less familiar with some of these Dutch Reformed sources, it may feel like Gandalf trawling the dusty shelves of the Minas Tirith library for things long forgotten. If evangelicals have claimed to appreciate the socio-cultural apologetics of Francis Schaeffer or Abraham Kuyper’s famous maxim that there is “not one square inch” over which Jesus is not Lord, most evangelicals have not acted like it.
This is what Boot’s book aims to do, to think through the socio-political implications of Christ’s lordship and to reflect upon what it might mean to take it seriously in our time.
The Rule of Christ and the Cult of the Expert
Boot begins by contrasting the authority of Christ with the “self-anointed elite class—the intelligentsia” of Western humanism, who become “a secular substitute for pastor and priest” (16). He roots this in the radical human autonomy of the Renaissance, which ultimately rejected God’s given order for creation, recreating the world in humanity’s image. We need not look far today to see such reconstructions in practice: “[W]e can create the world we live in by our thought and language, right down to our sexuality” (19).
The “cult of the expert” refers to the way in which specialized intellectuals are afforded immense ideological power over the populace, despite having—in Thomas Sowell’s words –no “overarching conception of the world” (21). Such experts today are on a quasi-divine mission to convert and sanctify us towards the “virtues” of their favored ideology.
Whilst Western Christians seem to place implicit trust in such figures, Boot reminds us of Biblical figures like Joseph and Daniel, whose courageous application of God’s revelatory Word confounded the governmental advisors and experts of their day, enabling profound kingdom influence upon state and society (31-32). It should be noted, however, that such heroes did not strategize their way to political influence but were raised up through providential happenstance, often against their own inclinations. Even so, today, it is not political hubris that haunts evangelicalism, but fear of it.
Such fear comes at a cost. If we neglect our confidence in God’s Word, relying instead on “the ideas of godless people” for political direction, we “faithlessly abandon our society and culture to despotism and tyranny.” (33). A decade ago this might have sounded like a zealous overstatement. But the devastating impact of the cultural revolutions of recent years, coupled with cowardly ecclesial responses, reveals a more pressing concern to reclaim our socio-political confidence.
In ceasing to see God’s Law-Word as good and wise for all people, we have outsourced wisdom to posturing experts who oppose God’s kingdom, and thus we neglect “the whole counsel of God” as an important way we are to love our Lord as well as our neighbor.
Globalist Utopia vs. Biblical Nationhood
One of the consequences of our political abdication is the rise of globalist utopianism. This trend is rooted in the ideological legacies of the French Revolution and Marxism which continue to inform the infantilization and social control of the Western populace today, powered by elitist ideals. As Rousseau said: “Those who control a people’s opinions control its actions.” (36). Boot argues that Christians should reject all utopian visions as anti-real, coercive, and placeless (hence, “global”).
Theologically, utopias implicitly reject God’s providence, assuming a soteriological role to liberate humanity from disorder (36-39). Boot imagines globalist utopia as an idolatrous “godhead”, harboring mutated doctrinal attributes of divine “omnipotence”, “love”, “justice”, etc. This is insightful for understanding the progressive weaponization of personal offense in our time: “For there to be unity in the new godhead there must be total equality and equal ultimacy among all people…This means that there can be no discrimination in regard to anything.” (49). Although Boot does not cite it, this chimes in with Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences (1948) which lamented the West’s inevitable abolition of hierarchy, distinction, and judgment between different moral choices and ideas.1
The incessant drive towards mutated versions of love and justice leads to “an essentially structure-less collectivity of beings in harmony with themselves and the other (nature).” (53). This entirely impossible totalizing ideal requires an imagined omnipotence to even attempt: “In order to be all-powerful, the new god, of necessity, must eliminate chance, impotence (powerlessness) and uncertainty from human affairs and this requires total control and omni-competence.” (54). Totalitarian globalism thus becomes an inevitable byproduct of the Enlightenment, where God’s authority was supplanted in place of our own, echoing both Eden and Babel.
What, then, is the Christian alternative? Not Christian imperialism, Boot argues, but the preservation of Biblical nationhood. This involves theological reflection on the purpose of the nation-state throughout Scripture, including God’s desire to set distinct boundaries (e.g. Deut. 4:5-8, Acts 17:26-27), His proclamations to the nations (e.g. Isa. 42:1-6) and His opposition to man-made attempts at unification (cf. Babel). Indeed, Biblical nationhood has both a creational and eschatological telos, culminating in Revelation where the nations are unified not in defiance of God but in worship of Him.
Boot is nuanced enough to understand some globalist intentions stem from “a deep religious hunger and urge toward the unity and peace of the human race” but argues how this cannot possibly be achieved by idolatrous rejection of God’s commands (80). Contrasting the coercive “diversity” of the humanist utopia, God’s New Jerusalem “affirms a rich cultural diversity of languages, ethnicities and national identities, because the Word of God will have been applied and contextualized amongst every people of the earth.” (81). An ambitious vision indeed—but a Biblical one.
Religion, Government, and the Secularist Illusion
Boot then moves on to the implications of worldview. When Christians assume the neutrality of a secular and/or religiously pluralistic worldview in society they often aid implications that directly oppose Christianity. What we believe about the world is not merely a “private” religious matter. It necessarily affects “how we view marriage and family, human society, education, law and yes, politics and government!” (88).
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Like the Methodist missionaries two centuries ago who risked their reputations to re-awaken America from its slumbers, many Christians today may need to relearn what it truly means to be convinced of our convictions. You must learn to speak them out, knowing that the world—and even a good deal of Methodists—may never forgive you for it. Christianity will land you in some kind of trouble one way or another. They’ll find out what you believe in the end.

The Tale of a Tweet
On March 8, 2023, I was fired from my job as a lecturer and programme lead at an evangelical Methodist Bible college. I had worked in this role for seven years and had never faced any formal disciplinary action previously. I was dismissed on the charge of “bringing the college into disrepute” due to a tweet I posted on February 19, 2023.
Here is what I said that was deemed so disreputable to so many:
Homosexuality is invading the Church. Evangelicals no longer see the severity of this because they’re busy apologising for their apparently barbaric homophobia, whether or not it’s true. This is a ‘Gospel issue’, by the way. If sin is no longer sin, we no longer need a Saviour.
The tweet went viral. I was routinely Twitter-mobbed before being publicly denounced by the college on Twitter, who called my tweet “unacceptable” and “inappropriate.” They also posted the following remarkable sentence:
Cliff College is committed to being a safe and hospitable place where those with differing convictions are welcomed and encouraged to live and learn together as faithful disciples of Christ.
The following day, after I had said I could not take down the tweet in good conscience, I was suspended, instructed to leave the college site within half an hour, and banned from all contact with fellow staff or students. Following a disciplinary hearing two weeks later, I was dismissed for misconduct.
The Investigation Report compiled about that single tweet was 17 pages long. It itemized a selection of the many public and private complaints made against me, and the many institutional and reputational risks incurred by the college as a result. Most of the complainants characterized the tweet (incorrectly) as homophobic, whilst some pro-LGBT+ students declared they would now feel “unsafe” in any classroom where I was teaching. The report further noted that the college was reviewing whether the tweet should be reported under the college’s “Prevent” duty (the UK government’s anti-terrorism and hate speech programme).
Cultural Pressure and Ecclesial Compromise
The wider context of my tweet was the recent Church of England decision to offer official blessings for same-sex couples. Even whilst refraining from fully accepting same-sex marriage (for now), the event was disturbing enough to cause ten global Anglican dioceses to publicly break communion with the Church of England. In the weeks prior to my tweet, I had been debating various pro-LGBT+ ministers and theologians on social media, each of whom were speaking as though the affirmation of homosexuality within the Church was inevitable and that sooner or later the Church simply had to “catch up.” Even prominent evangelical bishops like Steven Croft began declaring how sorry he was for all the harm and distress the Church’s position had caused the LGBT+ community, leading him to make a dramatic public u-turn to affirm same-sex marriage. Croft, like many, believed that now was the time to take the brave stand of solidarity with the powerless: by siding with the majority within secular Western society who were already standing precisely there and had been for some time.
It almost goes without saying that the shifting of the Overton Window on homosexuality in the west has been one of the most successful marketing campaigns of the last thirty years. As shown by the tactics employed in Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s book, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the ‘90s, this was a concerted campaign to present the for/against narrative at its most extreme in order to enact a dramatic shift in public opinion towards the progressive view. As a result of these determined efforts, the LGBT+ movement today has effectively gained not mere cult status but major religious status.
What I found especially reprehensible about the Anglican situation was that these many pro-LGBT+ vicars, bishops, and theologians refused to admit that their theological position on marriage was determinatively influenced by those shifting cultural currents. They were adamant that their view was simply the fruit of diligent Biblical exegesis and prayer. Apparently, it had nothing at all to do with the pressures exerted upon the Church by secular society, nor any burning desire to keep in step with public opinion on LGBT+. Apparently, God’s sheer delight in homosexuality was in the Bible all along, just sitting there in the text, waiting to be exegeted.
Such disingenuity in defense of the recent shifts is precisely why I used the language of “invasion” (the term which seemed to cause most of the trouble, especially for “winsome” evangelicals). If the affirmation of homosexuality did not come from Biblical exegesis then it came from the world, and if it came from the world then it did not come in peace.
The Apology Complex
My tweet, in essence, was not actually aimed at homosexuals, nor even at pro-LGBT+ Christians. It was aimed towards the safe centrist evangelicals who are not pro-LGBT+ but do not speak up because they find themselves stuck in the endless spiral of apologizing for their beliefs rather than proclaiming them. I had already observed far too often how evangelical leaders could no longer simply declare their non-affirming view on homosexuality without marinating it with lashings of heartfelt woe over just how much hurt the LGBT+ community has suffered at the hands of churches just like theirs.
I am not saying there is never a reason to repent of sinful discrimination against homosexuals, if warranted. But many of the mainstream apologies were exhibitions of reputational safeguarding, stemming more from fear of the world than fear of the Lord. And in any case, just how far back in one’s ecclesial history are these apologies supposed to stretch? If even the nice conscientious evangelicals are guilty of systemic homophobia, then who isn’t? What would be the systemic pastoral and theological implications of that? Surely if we now think that most Christian churches have been actively suppressing homosexual people for most of their history, this would have to be one of the greatest oversights of sin in church history, would it not? Given the lack of any historic precedent for explicit homosexual affirmation in the history of Christendom before the (post)modern west, one does wonder: why did God permit all his people to get it wrong for quite so long? Either God’s people really have no ears to hear after all, or else God has a very serious communication problem.
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