{"id":514609,"date":"2026-04-05T18:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/514609\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T18:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:00:09","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-britains-religious-right-using-and-abusing-faith-in-the-pursuit-of-power-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/514609\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on Britain\u2019s religious right: using and abusing faith in the pursuit of power | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview<\/a> conducted a few days after the beginning of Lent, Reform UK\u2019s Muslim home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, outlined a new policy to prevent churches being converted to mosques. This was an \u201cincendiary\u201d issue relating to Christian heritage, Mr Yusuf claimed, which was causing anxiety\u00a0across the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Subsequent analysis<\/a> by the Times \u2013 which conducted the interview \u2013 concluded that instances of churches becoming mosques were in fact extremely rare, adding up to less than 0.09% of the 47,000 churches active in the 1960s. Mr Yusuf\u2019s solution to this alleged crisis \u2013 which involved granting automatic listed status to churches, and changing planning laws to restrict change of use \u2013 was also widely questioned. For many churches struggling to fund repairs through the contributions of thinned-out congregations, the onerous bureaucratic obstacles posed by listed status would only be another expensive headache.<\/p>\n

Mr Yusuf will not care much about any of that. The point of the policy is to sow cultural division for political gain, and position Reform as the party of a\u00a0besieged Christian majority. The object of the far-right-inspired Unite the Kingdom march<\/a> last September, which featured wooden crosses and chants\u00a0of \u201cChrist is King\u201d, was the same. The Conservative MP Nick Timothy has recently also done his bit to foment discord, describing<\/a> public Muslim prayers during Ramadan as an act of \u201cdomination\u201d.<\/p>\n

This insidious agenda flagrantly channels fears expressed<\/a> in the great replacement conspiracy theory, which claims that migration is being used to change the cultural \u201cDNA\u201d of Europe. It hijacks the Christian traditions of a now largely secular country to legitimise a callous disregard for the rights of refugees, particularly Muslim ones, and inculcate hostility towards Britain\u2019s multicultural reality.<\/p>\n

There will be much more of this to come. The Christian nationalist right played<\/a> a key part in the rise of Maga and Donald Trump in the United States. Figures such as James Orr<\/a>, a Cambridge theologian and Reform\u2019s head of policy, hope to perform a similar service for Nigel Farage. Last month, Mr Orr was a star guest at a gathering<\/a> of far-right leaders in Hungary, where Viktor Orb\u00e1n has entrenched his power by using cultural Christianity as a political weapon.<\/p>\n

In response, Britain\u2019s churches have rightly begun to make themselves heard in the public square. In February, Anglican bishops sought to reclaim the meaning of the cross in the flag of Saint George, which has been used by the Raise the Colours movement in a transparent attempt to intimidate<\/a> immigrants. The \u201ctrue significance of the cross\u201d, read their statement<\/a>, lay in the \u201cvalues of respect, compassion and care for all.\u201d Throughout the gospels, of course, accounts of Jesus\u2019s taboo-breaking encounters with reviled outsiders of every description make precisely the same point.<\/p>\n

On Easter weekend, this message of universality will have been conveyed in churches of all denominations, as believers celebrated Christ\u2019s redeeming sacrifice on the cross. But opportunists such as Mr Yusuf ignore Christian teaching\u2019s ethical core, in order to turn its traditions into a vehicle for social exclusion and the expression of cultural supremacy. As Britain\u2019s religious heritage is steadily\u00a0turned into a political battleground, practising Christians and church leaders will need to find new ways to combat those who use and abuse their faith in the pursuit of power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an interview conducted a few days after the beginning of Lent, Reform UK\u2019s Muslim home affairs spokesperson,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-514609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}