What does it mean to be Christian?

Oct 6, 2024 by

by Steve Dew-Jones, Artillery Row:

We are in danger of reducing faith to the shallow depths of personality and politics.

I always feel a little trepidation before admitting to someone that I’m a Christian. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the fact — quite the opposite — but more that I expect others not to want to hear about it, nor to have a particularly good impression of what being a Christian means.

Yet not everyone seems to feel such trepidation. In fact, being “Christian” appears to have become an increasingly popular status symbol in some quarters — such as, for example, among candidates for the Republican Party in the US, famous new converts like Russell Brand, or those on the far-right seeking to “preserve our British values”, including us being “a Christian country”.

But what does that actually mean, is it really true, and, if so, is it something of which we should be proud?

It’s certainly the case that much of modern society in the West owes a lot to the Christian faith, as evidenced in Tom Holland’s brilliant book, Dominion. But does that alone make us “Christian”?

What would a Christian country actually look like, were one to exist? Is America — and especially Republican America — more “Christian” simply because they talk about Christianity more often in the public sphere?

Perhaps to answer these questions we should consider what the word “Christian” actually means.

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