Brexit and the Church of England

What does it mean to be the national church of England at a time of rising English nationalism?  Whatever we might think of Brexit, it has now taken place and it creates a new set of conditions for Christianity in England and the United Kingdom more broadly.  These new conditions raise a fundamental question: is Brexit Britain going to be a Christian country?  There is a real opportunity for the Church to influence society for the better, but there is also a possibility of being seen as increasingly irrelevant.  There was an editorial in The Guardian this morning citing a new book by Pope Francis, Let Us Dream and asking whether this is the moment for liberal Christianity to flourish.  I worry that within the Church Brexit and the new situation it creates isn’t really being talked about, and as a consequence we’re not doing as much as we might to adapt and to seek to influence the country for the better.  There are a number of possible reasons why the Church is reluctant to talk about Brexit, which I may explore in a future blog post.  But as the country continues to ask what sort of society we want to live in, it seems to me to be important that the Church contributes to this conversation.