“Do Not Be Afraid”: A New Vision for Christians Lamenting the Politics of Fear
by Jonathan Downing and Theo Hunt
Introduction
In March 2024, after a Muslim Hadith was displayed on the departure board at King’s Cross station, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party, posted on X: “Aren’t we supposed to be a Christian country?”1 Farage has often been comfortable implicitly associating the term “Christian” with a right-wing worldview that combines a socially conservative instinct with economic liberalism.2 This invoking of Christianity brings to mind the well-established Christian right in the United States, whose attitudes are characterized by fear and suspicion.3 So what does this mean for those in this country who love Jesus but don’t recognize their own values in this alternative Christian right?
We hope to outline here a joyful and accessible approach to politics and community for those who follow Jesus that subverts the stridency of right or left. We will draw from the Bible and the wider Christian tradition to explore God’s design for living well together and our own role in bringing it about. We will start by discussing what politics (and government) is: the deliberation by a community about “common good”—that is, the end to which the community is oriented. We argue that the divine design for the common good is the continual pursuit of human flourishing in community, and we will explore this by examining who God is and how He designs creation. This helps us flesh out the shape of a flourishing community before closing with a reflection on our own role in bringing about this better society through virtue and character. We are at every stage knowingly and feebly imitating political theologians such as Oliver O’Donovan, Luke Bretherton, and James K.A. Smith, as well as postliberal thinkers such as Maurice Glasman, John Milbank, and Adrian Pabst.
What Is Politics?
First, can we work toward a common good with non-Christians if we are separated from them by how we see Jesus? The Christian tradition suggests “yes” because through history we have seen God’s mysterious work of “common grace”: the reality that God keeps society from being as appalling as sin should make it, and that non-Christians are able to live with love and hope despite not experiencing the regeneration and sanctification of the Holy Spirit.4
This allows us to do politics together—but what is politics? We think of politics as a placard-waving, voting business that some people take too seriously, but in reality we believe politics is the constant practice of establishing what any given community wants through the shaping of beliefs and values.5 In the post-fall world, family units have a limited range of options when they interact: to fight each other, to flee from one another, or to coexist peacefully in order to achieve a shared—common—good.6 This “common good” may be a secure food supply, an absence of conflict, or another shared need. And the deliberation around what these common goods are and how to seek them occurs constantly: any time we speak to a neighbor about our upcoming holiday and who we’re going with or what food we’re eating and who we’re eating it with, we are making a statement about what is valuable and what we think the fruits of peace should be. Government, as we will discuss, is downstream from this deliberation, which must mean that the crucial discussion—the politics—is happening well before the voting starts, at a much deeper level than is realized.7 In every community, everyone “politics” all the time about what the common good should be, and the consensus emerging out of this politics is the context within which every government operates.
“Government” is not just bureaucrats in a big city. In almost every community some form of central authority emerges to help steward the common good, and this government is shaped by the constant value discourse of those in the community—politics—as well as occasional, intentional expressions of desire (revolutions and elections).8 It is important to note that relatively few Christians will be called to play a professional role living Christ’s love within government, but the whole Church is a living challenge to the temptations of all governments to indignify the community it governs. This is because God has His own vision of the common good, and every Christian is called to live their life signposting toward it, often in tension with their own community and their government. It is to this vision that we now turn.
God’s Flourishing and Common Good
God designed creation for human flourishing—the common good—and the Bible and the Christian tradition make clear the core fundamentals of flourishing: family, creation care, proper valuing of work and rest, and care for the marginalized. But to become citizens capable of living these common goods, we need the family.
We learn much about the common good in the beginning, where a perfect, loving triune God dwells relationally and communally.9 So, when God creates man in “my own image,” we know man will also be designed to live loving and loved, relational and communal. The creation of a companion follows soon after, forming the first human community and the perfect basis for all humanity.
The family is the first act of God-designed common good upon which further common good can be built. We are born into a family so that we can experience communal love long before we have a self-conscious identity.10 The newborn learns what love is through the total giving of her parents, and she loves in return without really knowing it, as well as learning both how to practice the character virtues of love and sacrifice that are necessary for any community pursuing a common good, and the reality that she has bonded obligations to groups she has not chosen: family, neighborhood, town, nation. God’s design for our lives is for us to love and be loved in the communities in which we find ourselves on this side of Heaven, and the ingredients for living this truth well are prepared for us in our early years.
So, as we grow up, we can begin to think about the practicalities of a flourishing community. Some key facts are repeatedly clear:
Freedom is shaped by duty and belonging. The world is a collection not of individuals but rather of communities of families, and our being raised in a family is the hint that we are to live in deep mutual sharing in every community we find ourselves in. Those who reject these connections find themselves deeply lonely and confused.11
We are to seek preference for the vulnerable, marginalized, and impoverished, so that those whose voices are not the loudest are able to participate equally in the politics of the community.12
Where communities have government, this government is to represent the whole community, seeking justice as God defines it, not acquiescing to mob rule, and devolving decision-making as frequently as possible.13
Because the economy is subservient to communal life, education should be focused on building virtuous citizens who can work together for the common good, not employable workers.14
Natural creation is deeply important; land is a common resource managed by local people for the good of the community, not because they can meaningfully “own” it.15 Climate change is a threat to the common good and must be recognized as a failure of stewardship.
It is impossible to discuss in this short piece all the implications of God’s common good for creation. But here we will take the opportunity to briefly explore one field of life relevant to every reader: work.
Work and the Marketplace
How and why we work matters to God, whether this work is a paid role, caring duties, schooling, or volunteering. Unlike the rest of creation, man is tasked with a mandate, making work part of who we were created to be, which means quiet quitting and benefit dependency are out.16 And good work produces good fruit; the character we show in work can point others toward God and his flourishing—a crucial political act that every Christian engages in.
But those who are more productive quickly find they can receive more in return by dealing in a transactional way, and this temptation for a secure and increased income is powerful. Humans are ensnared by the option of making the products of their labor transactional—“I give . . . I get”—rather than relying on a riskier, more fruitful grace economy: “we share.” And this temptation has generated an entire economic system: capitalism, which relies on individuals accumulating resources and trading them in an ever-more aggressive “urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, [and] speed.”17 God’s creation—people and natural resources—are treated as things from which to extract resources. As inequality grows, communal, sacrificial living becomes much harder, moving from the posture of generosity in Acts 2:44–47 to the divided communion of 1 Corinthians 11:21–22.18
Character
As we engage in deliberations about the common good and seek God’s flourishing, character is crucial, both in shaping our politics and in judging our government. We feel this is a central and underrealized point within much of the Church concerned with government, which implicitly makes itself the “goodies” facing a sea of “baddies” and thereby able to justify a range of blurred behaviors when trying to challenge values pointing away from God.
Character virtue is deeply important in shaping our community to live out God’s common good. Given that every interaction we have with another human is with an imago dei, how we behave with one another in the work of politics matters deeply. By the work of the Holy Spirit, we grow more Christ-like day by day. And when we speak and think and behave in the way Jesus teaches us—honoring God and one another above ourselves; giving up what we have for our enemies and the poor; delighting when our community choses God’s goodness and lamenting when it chooses sin instead—then we stand witness to God’s good design for creation in a way that is itself God’s good design for creation. To “Church” as we are called to is the only right way we can “politics” to bring flourishing into being.
Moreover, character is a metric by which we judge government. When contemporary politicians lobby for what we want yet speak and act in a way our Savior would not, then they are falling short at the very first hurdle: to lay down their lives for those around them. If the president who stops a war is also a bully, then that is a mark against her record, because we know she is incapable of honoring the divine image bearers around her too. That matters to us, because it matters to Jesus: He delights in the poor woman giving what she can out of humility rather than the rich man giving much out of pride.
Conclusion
We have argued that through God’s revelation we can see a more complete vision for a flourishing community than the current Christian right envisages, and this is a calling that can be picked up and applied by Christians of all stripes: the Holy Spirit works through us to make our community—wherever that may be—a flourishing one.
If we allow the Holy Spirit to steer us to act in ways that value natural creation, that honor ours and others’ labor, that create ties of belonging and responsibility, and that do so in community, beginning with the family, then we are helping bring about the common good in which all people flourish. Where a community’s politics is riven with fear and suspicion, we know there are not Christians picking up litter, healing the sick, giving beyond their means, and praying for a shalom far more powerful than any government policy.
This is hard. Not all want the Church to succeed in the flourishing of creation, and the Bible promises that suffering, persecution, and deep joy accompany the gospel ethic. But when Joshua and the Israelites were in the uncertain land, knowing of the darkness behind them, and nervous of the promised land to be, they were reminded “do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”19 Shall we begin?
Topics: Beyond State and Market • Reflections & Dialogues
Jonathan Downing works to create dense networks of senior leaders who care about rediscovering the common good. He graduated with a degree in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick and is a proud ginger.
Theo Hunt works as a parliamentary assistant to a Labour MP. He also enjoys reading, hiking, and supporting Reading FC (sometimes). He lives in London.
Nigel Farage, “Nigel Farage Hadith King’s Cross Tweet,” X (Twitter), March 19, 2024, https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1770103391911366848.
Reform UK, “Reform UK 2024 Manifesto,” p. 2, https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf?1718625371.reform%20uk; Nigel Farage’s Mentions of “Christian” on Twitter/X since 2015, search query, https://x.com/search?q=from%3ANigel_Farage%20christian%20until%3A2025-03-31%20since%3A2015-01-08&src=typed_query&f=top.
Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (New York: Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2023).
Wayne A. Grudem, “Common Grace,” in Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020).
Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019); Luke Bretherton, Resurrecting Democracy (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015).
Waheed Hussain and Margaret Kohn, “The Common Good,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2024 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/common-good/.
Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020); Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (London: ABACUS, 2020).
Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (London: Profile Books, 2012); Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022).
Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2011).
Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self; Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum; Matthew 5, Holy Bible (NIV) (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011).
Thomas C. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2020); Romans 13, Holy Bible.
MacIntyre, After Virtue.
Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory; Christopher J. H. Wright, The Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023); Genesis 2, Holy Bible.
Mark Greene, Thank God It’s Monday: Flourishing in Your Workplace (Edinburgh: Muddy Pearl, 2019); John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, in association with Yates & Yates, 2017); Genesis 2, Holy Bible.
E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered (New York: HarperPerennial, 1989).
Jon Cruddas, A Century of Labour (Medford: Polity Press, 2024).
Joshua 1:9, Holy Bible.