Resistance To The Captivation

In the meantime, a gamer has been raised to the altars by the body that at least two of Calvin Robinson’s former affiliations were forever having to explain why they were not. You can keep your console and still find consolation. And no one has yet raised Robinson to the purple since he expressed his opposition to immigration by moving to another country, his monarchism by moving to a republic, and his integralism-without-the-Pope by moving to the land of Article VI Clause 3 and of the First Amendment. But in January, I wrote:

When Donald Trump was last President, then Calvin Robinson was an ICT teacher at a North London comp, with a sideline in videogames. It is always videogames. Robinson is clearly a tortured soul. Since the Church of England refused to ordain him, then he has joined a different denomination every year. He is in Old Catholic Priest’s Orders, so the late Richard Williamson might have raised him to the Episcopate in 2025. Someone probably will. Then watch Robinson ordain any and every fanboy. It is a story as old as the Church Herself.

The key to understanding Williamson was that he had been existentially a Catholic for only a very few months, if ever. The Authorised Version is that he was received from the Church of England in the usual manner in 1971, and that he was then briefly a postulant at the Brompton Oratory. But he was one of the Society of Saint Pius X’s first ordinations to the Priesthood in 1976, meaning that by then he had completed the six-year seminary course at Écône. The SSPX had lost its canonical status the year before, so that those ordinations resulted in Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s suspension a divinis. And even before 1975, it had always been a thing apart, participation in which was a very different matter from being part of a diocesan parish, or even of being at a mainstream seminary, whether before or after the Second Vatican Council. Yet Williamson really does seem to have gone straight there from the Church of England. In practice, he was always in opposition to the Pope. He was never less than a de facto schismatic, and he was a de jure one most of his life. To him, that was normal.

The rise of the online and populist Right has given an odd political prominence to this particular world of overlapping subcultures. Yet against what does all of that think itself a bulwark? An apostate from the Syriac Catholic Church, Salwan Momika had sought asylum in the Schengen Area, not “the Anglosphere”, on account of the newfound militant atheism that moved him to burn the Quran. That act would have been a straightforward public order offence in this country, yet it is defended by those who screamed about the Nazis when people burned The Satanic Verses. Momika would as gladly have burned the Bible, as his defenders still would. His lies about his terrorist connections on his Schengen visa application made his immigration status questionable in Sweden, and led to his straightforward deportation from Norway. A martyr for something, I suppose. But certainly not for conservatism, or for Christendom, or for Christ.

And now, one of the several alumni of The Lanchester Review who quietly delight me by having gone on to greater things, Fergus Butler-Gallie, writes:

“Tommy Robinson’s Christmas Carol Service” sounds like a cutaway gag from Shooting Stars. 15 years ago it probably would have been just that. Now, it is a reality. Robinson has been inviting his followers to help put Christ back into Christmas and sing, in the words of his advisor-cum-chaplain, Ceirion Dewar, “carols of victory” at an undisclosed central London location. As surreal as it sounds, it is part of a concerted effort which Robinson has made of late to co-opt and promote a specifically Christian angle to his nationalism. The cast of clerical characters he has found to support him in these efforts is predictably bizarre.

Dewar refers to himself as a “confessing Anglican missionary bishop”. It is unclear what the provenance of his consecration was, nor what his ministry involves other than attending Robinson’s rallies and making online content in which he gives stirring exhortations for people to join a movement for Christ. Where he emerged from is lost in the annals of the world of the online right, but we do know that Dewar was subject of a court case in 2012 after a pensioner lent him money to pay a driving fine. He is very present on X, where he puts out videos on a regular basis aimed at those who are or might be Robinson adjacent. His profile has a tagged post of an AI picture depicting him on a very small horse with the word “reconquista” above him.

In his video promoting Robinson’s carol service, he stands in a room that looks like a level from the crystal maze and with an American Christmas carol being played in a harmonica and xylophone arrangement. He makes invocations of strength and courage in a pantomime voice, claiming that the carols will be an act of witness. It is a strange scene, but clearly effective in the world of the very online.

Other figures in this movement include Brett Murphy, who has fallen out with a number of small and fragmented offshoot churches and who also focuses on the production of online content. Over the pond there is the tragicomic figure of Calvin Robinson. Given that all of their ministries seem to have been defined by fallings out with congregations and other clergy, there’s little surprise that the subculture of online hard-right clergy are generally defined by their loathing of each other. There was a major split – with catty tweets galore – with another figure purporting to be a bishop, Matthew Firth, a former CofE vicar who now lives online, challenging people to nominate him to the House of Lords. They are figures who are sad, angry and ridiculous in equal measure.

All of them, however, conform to the type of a very old and recognisable Christian fringe figure: the episcopus vagans or “wandering bishop”. These were clerics who set up their own denomination having fallen out with everyone else. Historically these have, via the rogue ordinations in the 1960s of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and British Holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson, often had links to far right movements. However these latest wandering clerics seem to combine this ancient pedigree with a closeness to the very new world of online fringe culture and the Americanised Right. This, unsurprisingly, has led to some contradictions.

Christianity may have been co-opted by a number of these movements, but actually very few of them seem to understand it. There is much noise from Robinson and his supporters about saving Christianity as a foundational stone of Western culture. The problem is that they routinely make remarkably basic mistakes about what it is. They don’t seem to know what Christianity actually entails. This is not just in the failure to obey the command to “love thy neighbour” but also from a theological or doctrinal point of view. Neil Oliver, the TV presenter with a history of conspiracy theory promotion, posted on X what he clearly thought was a profound and new thought, challenging the pairing of the Old with the New Testament in the Bible. Oliver mused that, despite the New constantly quoting the Old and indeed presenting itself as a fulfilment of its prophecies, he thought the two an ill-matched pair. Elsewhere, US podcaster Joe Rogan has suggested that Christ could come back as AI because Mary was a Virgin and you can’t have sex with a computer. I suspect some of his listeners might be proof that one can at least try.

What is absolutely fascinating to the Church historian is watching a new generation of grifting, online personalities make all the same mistakes that their equivalents in past ages made. Oliver’s was rejected as heresy by Tertullian in the year 208. Rogan’s brain farts on the nature of the Virgin Birth sound like a sort of steampunk Apollinarianism, a heresy about the mind of Christ rejected by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Early Christianity was filled with different theories about the nature of Jesus – decisions on these were made by a series of councils and gatherings. Almost all Christians have viewed these as settled questions. Not so the faith’s new enthusiasts on the hard right. This ignorance of basic doctrine comes from the fact that they’re often doing this for grift or without actually attending church or have only ever experienced Christianity as an online fringe culture, they fall into the same doctrinal traps that people did thousands of years ago. There is nothing new under the Sun (or Son..) and all that.

So, these warriors for Christ seem to have neither the dignity of order nor the security of orthodoxy. Where, then, does this trend come from? Well, it is in part a response to the Americanisation of the more extreme parts of British politics. Having imported a number of tropes and tactics wholesale from the United States, they now have the incongruous task of tacking on a tradition – the Christian Right – which is alien to British politics, to existing aspects of their movement. Historically, whether Oswald Mosley or the skinheads, the British extreme right has often been very hostile to Christianity. This is perhaps reflected by the fact that these current advocates for a Christianised politics on the British right are not using the traditional methods or organisations. Ironically, their tactics mirror most closely those used by radical Islam. Lengthy, rambling filmed sermons conflating grievances and anger with a doctrinally dubious expression of a global faith is a tactic long used by extremist imams to recruit disenchanted young men. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that the Christian theology on display is dubious.

Yet this movement does pose a problem for the actual national Church. The C of E has made recent attempts to “combat” the pseudo-Christian narrative which Robinson is trying to propagate. What this actually entails is a “rapid response resource pack” and an online page of “brand guidelines and logos”. As far as resistance to nascent fascism is concerned this is less Maximilian Kolbe and more David Brent.

It has a patronisation problem too. Much of the Church’s online output is delivered in a tone reminiscent of Come Outside, the 90s educational series where Pippin the Dog and Auntie Mabel would learn about the production of soap or the breeding of geese. All very nice in its own way but completely inadequate for the missional task it needs to perform on the Wild West of the internet. In the pronouncements of its Bishops, it appears out of touch and hectoring, simply parroting the playbook of a governing class who despise it anyway.

There will be the argument that the Church is showing “another way”, but the precise problem is that it isn’t. For as long as it’s led by people who look, sound and believe that they may as well be running an NHS or multi-academy trust or a medium sized district council, it simply isn’t going to appeal to those who are howling into the void of postmodernity.

If the faith seems to be just another political tool, but for the opposite side, then it will simply only add to the problem rather than help soothe it. Only a coherent communitarian vision of the Church rooted in the particularities of the places it serves will suffice to combat hate. One can see why the bishops don’t want to do this; it would involve focussing on the work done by parishes on the ground, the very parishes which they routinely undermine and deep down would rather defund in favour of vast religious hubs. The response really ought to be two fold – a cold, hard deconstruction of the theologically dubious claims by scholars who actually do know what they’re talking about (and few bishops now do) followed by a more joyous attitude, a positive affirmation of why specific places – the streets and byways that the hard right claims to love more than the people who care for them – do matter in the Christian faith.

Resistance to the captivation of faith by the far right is happening. It is not being done by the official statements and poster campaigns but by priests and communities on the ground, who quietly, faithfully model a love for their communities rooted in the idea that the love of God in Christ might be encountered by anyone, anywhere. At the heart of this quiet resistance is the fact that churches in England remain one of the few places where people with radically different political views, varied racial backgrounds, ages, classes and cultural assumptions still actually do come together, united by something which they believe is bigger and more important than any of those supposedly conflicting identities. Their practical faith – so misunderstood by Robinson and his acolytes, and so dismissed by the bishops – will be the thing that really keeps “Christ in Christmas” this festive season.

Further to the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth, Lord Falconer has given the House of Lords the logically inescapable assurance that “pregnancy should not be a bar” to assisted suicide. Dame Sarah Mullally had already said that she might table an amendment to deny Third Reading to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, and might force a vote on that. She ought now to do so. All of the Lords Spiritual should then take that opportunity to defeat this Bill. Or why are they there? And why should the rest of us maintain any formal relations with the Church of England as such?

Down the corridor, Sarah Pochin voted to give that Bill a Third Reading. Did they know that in the Conservative Evangelical citadel of St Michael, Cornhill? Of course they did. But did the Reverend Henry Eatock-Taylor preach to it? Challenges to “the woke liberati” should be addressed to the woke liberati. Supporters of assisted suicide need to hear challenges to assisted suicide. And “Christian Nationalists” need to hear challenges to “Christian Nationalism”. As for “cancelling Christmas”, I for one have never noticed any such cancellation in any shop owned or managed by Muslims. Have you?