Scattered amongst the crowd at Tommy Robinson AKA Stephen Lennon’s September rally were wooden crosses. They were flanked by flags which read ‘Jesus is King’ and ‘Jesus the way, the truth, the life’, as well as Orthodox Christian symbols; upon closer inspection, there were religious figures in full attire participating in the parade. Christian nationalism, the fusion of British identity with Christianity, was at the forefront of the day’s narratives.
Lennon’s choice of speakers echoed the rhetoric. Rikki Doolan is a far-right Christian nationalist and minister at Spirit Embassy Church London; he performed several songs at the beginning of the event. Bishop Ceirion Dewar recited the Lord’s Prayer before giving a fierce sermon in the pouring rain. Brian Tamaki, head of New Zealand’s Destiny Church, gave a particularly disturbing speech calling for a ban on any expression of non-Christian religion in the UK.
The crowd was peppered with other Christian nationalist figures of the far right, including Brett Murphy, a controversial reverend with particularly homophobic views, and of course Nick Tenconi, the UKIP leader dead set on bringing his version of Christianity to the British people.
Christian nationalism is by no means a new phenomenon within the far right. As leader of the English Defence League (EDL), Lennon regularly utilised Christian imagery such as crusader crosses, establishing a connection between English national identity and Christianity. This tended to be a form of cultural Christianity, rather than a theological argument, whereby religion acted as a cultural marker to distinguish English ‘insiders’ and foreign ‘outsiders’. This was particularly useful for the EDL to mobilise Brits as a religious cultural unit against Islam.
However, where the far right previously attached themselves to cultural Christianity, the movement has shifted towards overt religiosity. There are explicit references to God and Jesus, with the Lord’s Prayer being performed both in local anti-migrant protests and Lennon’s larger rally.
Speakers no longer attach themselves solely to ‘Christian identity’ or anti-migrant sentiment, but rallies now include clergymen giving sermons and directly citing the Bible at marches. The active religious overtones of far-right protests where crosses, prayers and references to God are becoming more commonplace.
Since coming out of prison in the summer, Lennon’s relationship with Christianity has intensified. In his first public appearance since being released, he wore a rosary around his neck, having reportedly attended weekly Bible sessions while in prison.
Despite being raised Catholic, he has previously claimed not to believe in God. However, he now identifies as a Christian. He has argued that the “fall of Britain has come from the fall of belief”, and that even if one did not believe in Jesus, Christianity was essential in building Britain. He since posted “BRITAIN IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY”, referred to the September rally as the “Christian revival” and told his followers that a “Christian revolution is coming”.
In response to the death of Charlie Kirk, he declared that he had been inspired to start attending church again at the Spirit Embassy Church in London, run by far-right ally Rikki Doolan. Thus, while he remains a Christian nationalist in relation to identity, his recent return to belief and the church, as well as his choice of speakers at his events, suggests Lennon is moving into an openly theistic Christianity.
Seasoned far-right demonstrators might have been shocked by the inclusion of the haka at a Stephen Lennon rally. The war dance native to the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand felt somewhat out of place against the backdrop of far-right activists. However, as the leader of New Zealand’s Destiny Church, Brian Tamaki, took to the stage afterwards, the group’s place in the far-right narrative became clear.
“As far as I’m concerned there is no other God,” Tamaki bellowed from the stage, flanked by his warriors, “All Gods of other nations are idols… There are no other religions, there is only Jesus Christ, and the rest”. He goes on to describe the current political climate as “religious war” of “Christianity versus the rest”. He decried that all non-Christian religious beliefs are false, and that western nations needed to “clean our countries up” by “getting everything out that does not receive Jesus Christ”.
In an assault on the UK’s religious freedom, Tamaki called for a ban on any public religious expression other than Christianity in the UK. He also called for banning halal meat and the burqa, as well as a ban on mosques, temples and shrines. His team tore up a Palestinian flag, the Islamic State flag, the Muslim Brotherhood flag, and a flag reading ‘Secular Humanism, No Religion’.
Assuming that Lennon had done his homework, he would not have been shocked by Tamaki’s extreme rhetoric. Destiny church and its associates have a long track record of promoting hate, being particularly potent in its homophobia and transphobia.
Around 50 members of the church’s anti-violence group, ‘Man-Up’, physically barged into a children’s science show hosted by a drag queen, directly under the instruction of Tamaki. In the clip, Tamaki prides himself on the fact that he is able to stay safe at home during these attacks, only having to instruct his “general” to mobilise his “platoons and battalions”. His self-professed “army” also recently protested at a pride parade by blocking the road and performing another haka.
Whistleblowers from the group have also claimed that women in the church were forced to stay with violent partners. One woman said that she repeatedly asked the church for help to leave her abusive partner, but was refused help and made to feel like she was the problem in the relationship. Another ex-member described the continuous feeling that he and other followers were expected to be obedient to Tamaki, rather than to God.
Tamaki is an openly thuggish church leader, and by far the most extreme of the event’s speakers in terms of Christian nationalism. For Lennon to have given him a stage, where he then contradicted the essential British value of religious expression, is evidence of the far right’s move towards exclusionary Christian nationalism.
Cei Dewar is undoubtedly a powerful speaker, which makes him an obvious choice from Lennon’s 2024 rally line up to return for a second gig. His presence on the stage is that of an experienced preacher, with a booming Welsh voice.
Dewar is part of the Confessing Anglican Church, which confusingly describes itself as ‘Catholic, Evangelical and Protestant’. What is clear, however, is that the CAC is not recognised by the Anglican Communion, the broader worldwide Anglican church led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. At this year’s Unite the Kingdom protest, he advocated for the UK to become a formally Christian country:
“We will not bow to tyranny, we will not surrender our freedom. We will not be silent any longer… Let justice roll down like rivers, and justice like mighty waters, until this land once again proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
However, for all his powerful preaching, Dewar has had his own sins to repent for. In 2012, he was ordered to pay a pensioner back the £1000 she had loaned him to cover a court fine after he was involved in a car accident. He had refused to pay the 89 year old woman back, despite being written to by her lawyers when she was in hospital twice. She was forced to take him to court to get the money.
Rev’d Brett Murphy is a frequent face within the far-right scene. He runs an X page called ‘Make Britain Christian Again’, and is a seasoned expert at combining Christian identity with Islamophobic, anti-migrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
He has stated that all churches should denounce Islam as “a demonic, false religion” and has strongly advocated against women in positions of church power. He has also referred to pride month as “an abomination” and the gay pride flag as the “sodomite flag”.
Murphy seems to have trouble making a church affiliation stick. In 2023, formal investigations were launched into his alleged misconduct in the Church of England, after Murphy had made derogatory comments about a senior church member who had come out as transgender. He resigned from the Church of England, who he now calls heretics on a regular basis.
In hope of finding a new home for his bigoted attitudes, he joined the Free Church of England (FCE), which is strongly affiliated with The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON). GAFCON are a conservative Anglican group; they strongly oppose same-sex marriage and described the election of Cherry Vann, a lesbian, as the Archbishop of Wales as a “painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy”.
However, even in a hyper-conservative church, Murphy only lasted 13 months there before he was stripped of his licence and the FCE stopped all services at his Morecambe church. They said that services at his church were suspended “until such time as the Custodian Trustees can be assured that services will be conducted with proper dignity”.
What is left of Murphy’s doctrine is a single church in Lancashire which is so extreme in rhetoric that even the most conservative Anglican organisations have washed their hands of them. Despite being stripped of his official licence, an entire flock of men from his church attended the rally. The group included David Nicholls, Ryan Burdett, Dave Hassall, and Rev’d Steve Donald.
David Nicholls is a retired Catholic Bishop, now claiming to be an independent Anglican Bishop. This means that he, like Murphy, is not registered as a Bishop with the Church of England. He and Murphy jointly run the Emmanuel church.
Steve Donald is a retired preacher who has been thrown out of several parishes for his attitudes towards same-sex relationships, as well as “strongly encouraging” a senior church member who confided in him not to come out as transgender. He is also heavily against the ordination of gay clergy.
Tagging along with the Emmanuel Church group was pastor Chris Wickland, a newer face on the far right who has had his fair share of controversy. Wickland has claimed that God used him specifically to predict the exact day of the 2007 stock market crash, and continues to make prophetic predictions despite pushback.
He recently made a speech at a Bournemouth anti-migrant protest, where he claimed that Bournemouth council “had the most anti-Christian rhetoric” in Britain, and that preaching Christian gospel had been made “illegal”. Reiterating his Christian nationalism, he said that somebody could come to the country and get a British passport, but one cannot become English.
In other sermons, Wickland has invited Christian unity against what he refers to as ‘hyperliberalism’, and has prophesied that “the agenda of the highly liberal left will collapse and fall” and “this nation will start to turn back to her God again”. He echoed a similar argument at the recent Bournemouth protest: “If we do not stand up for our nation this day, then the future of Great Britain will be communism and Islam; we do not want Islam to become the religion of our nation, we want Christianity to be the religion of this nation”. His fearmongering poses an unrealistic scenario where the only options for the future are either an Islamic or Christian state.
While Rikki Doolan is an equally devoted Christian nationalist, his set served more as comic relief than the others as he performed his new song “Unite the Kingdom (Come One, Come All)”.
His presence was a clear shift into the religious overtones of far-right events, as at one point he looked to the sky and asked God to stop the rain which had been pouring for most of the day. Doolan has been a long-term admirer of Stephen Lennon, having said before that Lennon is “certainly backed by Jesus Christ”. He is also a potent Christian nationalist, explicitly stating that “the way that Britain gets great again is by coming back to Christ, and all of the problems Britain are facing comes from turning away from Christ”.
In 2023, Doolan was exposed by undercover journalists for Al Jazeera for his involvement in a mass money laundering scheme in Southern Africa. He and senior Zimbabwean diplomat Uebert Angel laundered millions of dollars through gold smuggling, with Doolan openly boasting how Angel’s status could be easily abused: “It’s a great washing machine, right?”. Doolan was happy to exploit his connections to power to run a crooked financial scheme, transforming fraudsters’ dirty money through the gold-mining industry.
Doolan has described an “anti-Christian” spirit coming from the LGBTQ+ community, Islam, “hyper-feminism”, and “the destroying of the family unit”. He therefore equates gay and trans individuals, as well as Muslims and women who stray from traditional gender roles as, by nature, “anti-Christian”.
Aside from religious figures, it was UKIP leader Nick Tenconi in the crowd who laid much of the foundation for this God-fearing anti-migrant sentiment. During the hotel protests over the past three months, Tenconi has been a regular guest speaker, using the platform to spread Christian nationalism to protesters.
In multiple locations, he has led chants of “Christ is King” alongside chants for remigration. He has referred to asylum seekers as “invaders” of a Christian nation, reproducing a ‘crusader’ dynamic between Christian Brits and Muslim migrants. Tenconi has also targeted universities for their alleged role in “indoctrinating into communism” which is “by definition, away from Christianity”.
Tenconi goes so far as to pair his UKIP manifesto with a second document simply titled “Christianity at the heart of Government”, which explores how UKIP plans to instil Biblical values and teachings back into the UK government. The document is overtly Christian nationalist in nature, openly excluding those of other beliefs:
The document is also hauntingly homophobic and transphobic, advocating against gay marriage and promoting conversion therapy for trans individuals:
Tenconi clothes his hate as the beliefs of an ‘authentic Christian’, pushing others to adopt similar vitriol if they have any hope in being considered faithful. By conveying hate through the word of God, Tenconi manipulates believers into thinking that in order to fulfil their role as Christians, they must take on homophobic and racist rhetoric.
A group of Church of England bishops and senior clergy members have come together to stand against their faith being co-opted by malevolent forces at the Unite the Kingdom rally. They collaborated with leading members of the Pentecostal, Methodist, and Baptist churches, as well as an assortment of other organisations, to produce a joint letter speaking out against the co-opting of Christianity.
The letter emphasises the need to come together to fight “poverty, inequality and exclusion”, and condemned the “racist, anti-Muslim and far right elements” of the event. They declared the event a “misuse of Christianity”.
Other members of the clergy have voiced the danger in these niche and harmful interpretations of the Bible. The Reverend Dr Helen Paynter, Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, said that:
Many Christians who joined the march on Saturday will have participated out of a deep concern for the moral and religious state of our country. But whatever their motivation, it is highly disturbing to see my fellow Christians making common cause with people like Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk. In so doing, they are allying themselves with movements far darker than they realise, and unleashing forces within the nation that they will not be able to control. This is a time for Christians to join with others of good will to promote community cohesion, seeking civil ways of dialoguing about our differences, not to join forces with a movement whose very animus is division.
The co-opting of Christianity serves both extremist preachers and non-religious far-right activists. Fringe religious figures like Doolan, Murphy, and Dewar have found a home within the far right where figures like Lennon will platform them without questioning their hateful views. They are celebrated as religious voices and bolstered as trustworthy spiritual ‘protectors’ of Britain.
For the non-religious among the far right, co-opting Christianity gives hate a respectable religious cover, where individuals can express homophobia, transphobia, and anti-migrant sentiment under the guise of ‘Christian values’. Despite pushback from the Church of England, the co-option of faith remains a worrying progression within the far right who seek to disguise hate as religious doctrine.
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