Возвращение Дональда Трампа и рост христианского национализма в США и Великобритании

It is strange to think that it has been over five years since I last wrote for this august publication. Back then, I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh and inveighing against the removal of David Hume’s name from the campus building that bore it. 1 That small flashpoint in the culture wars seems, in hindsight, quite a quaint thing now. In the wake of the Russian assault on Ukrainian democracy, October 7, and the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, the ascendancy of what I like to call the “New Theism,” 2  the return of Donald Trump to the White House and his subsequent attempt to impose an aggressive, authoritarian Christian nationalism on the United States … Well, I’m still extremely annoyed about the renaming, or unnaming, of David Hume Tower, and I stand by my position on it as written at the time, but that foolish and boorish act, the result of activism by some campus social justice warriors whom I have now half forgotten, just doesn’t bring my corpuscles to the boil in quite the way it once did. Apologies if all this seems self-indulgent of me. I only mention it because I am ashamed I haven’t written for Free Inquiry again, until now, upon my acceptance of a senior editor role here. By the time you read this, it will be at least a few months since my name first appeared on the masthead (see the June/July 2026 issue), but for me, it is still fresh. What a thrill it is to see my name there, alongside some much more illustrious ones, in such a fine freethought outlet! As you may have guessed from my reference to the University of Edinburgh, I am not an American. But I have been lucky enough to visit a couple of times in the past (though not as many times as I would like), and I am a great admirer of America—or at least of a certain vision of America. I refer, of course, to the America of Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Green Ingersoll, Eugene Debs, Bayard Rustin, Abraham Baldwin, and so many others: the secular, democratic, radical America that takes its Enlightenment foundations seriously. That America was founded on radical and atheistic ideals is the alternative, truer narrative than the one most Americans are familiar with (readers of this journal excepted, of course). It is certainly truer than the lies of Trump and his ilk that America is a fundamentally “Judeo-Christian” nation, whatever “Judeo-Christian” means. As I said, it is too late for this to be a true Fourth of July article, but the 250th birthday of the American Republic is on my mind as I write (in early June 2026), so you’ll understand the reason for the focus. 3  I hope you’ll forgive me for lengthily quoting myself, but I can’t really put it any better than I did on the Fourth of July 2025 (I have made some slight, silent amendments to bring the following up to date): Twelve score and ten years ago, if you’ll indulge me, the Second Continental Congress, gathered in Philadelphia, did something momentous: they adopted the Declaration of Independence, as (mostly) written by Thomas Jefferson, and thus announced to the world the birth of a new nation, one based explicitly on democratic principles and rooted in radical, atheistic philosophy. That this American achievement was imperfect and marred by the crime of slavery, among others, should not detract from our admiration. The Americans took on a mighty empire and won (with the help of the French, let us not forget), and what was begun in 1776 culminated in the creation of the world’s first and oldest, and possibly even greatest, secular democratic republic. The history of America is the history of revolution and counter-revolution. It is the story of the unfolding of the promise of the Declaration—an unfolding opposed, and sometimes stemmed and even rolled back, by racists, oligarchs, and theocrats. The land of freedom was also the land of slavery; the epicentre of modern global secularism was also—is also—the epicentre of Christian fundamentalism. Today, under the second Donald Trump administration, almost everything that actually made America great is being spat upon by people who claim to be American patriots. Christian nationalism is stronger than ever, American imperialism is capital-B back, the rule of law and the system of checks and balances and the democratic process are being subverted. The true America, or at least the best, the noblest America—the America of Thomas Paine—is dying. As I once wrote with reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925: ‘Scopes was also a battle for the soul of America, another round in a fight that had gone on since 1776: between the radical, democratic, Enlightenment philosophy of Paine, Jefferson, and the rest, and the reactionary, demotic, fanatical spirit of religious enthusiasm.’ And so it continues. 250 years on from that world-historical turning point in Philadelphia, will the America of Paine survive? As an admirer of America from afar, I hope so …. The freethought movements in Britain and America have always been close friends, and it is to American freethinkers and secularists that we must look now. 4 As it happens, I am planning to be in Philadelphia during the upcoming midterm elections. Perhaps this is a risky plan, for it is a time of political and cultural tenterhooks (to put it mildly). But never mind being caught up in some election drama, I might not even get past the border at all. I’ve written frequently and scathingly about Donald Trump and his allies, and since his return to power, foreign visitors have been turned away from the border for the crime of having text messages on their phones that express dissent from or disapproval of the Dear Leader. Given that I am coming to attend a free-speech conference in the city of brotherly love and the center of the American Revolution, such an outcome would be jarringly ironic. Anyway, it is not just because of my philosophical and political kinship with Paine-ite, Jeffersonian America that I am glad my name first appeared on the masthead of the June/July 2026 issue of Free Inquiry. No, it also happily underscores the need for a bit of international freethinking solidarity. (“The freethought movements in Britain and America have always been close friends, and it is to American freethinkers and secularists that we must look now.”) I am also the editor of the Freethinker, a UK freethought publication founded in 1881, making it one of the world’s oldest surviving such journals. 5 The Freethinker has long stood up for secular, liberal (broadly conceived) values, especially free speech, and from the off it was unapologetically, ruthlessly anti-religious. As its founder and first editor, G. W. Foote, put it in the opening number: “The Freethinker is an anti-Christian organ, and must therefore be chiefly aggressive. It will wage relentless war against Superstition in general, and against Christian Superstition in particular.” Foote was later imprisoned for publishing blasphemous cartoons in his new journal; then as now, it seems, the faithful cannot stand to see their beliefs mocked in this way. Though, of course, Foote got off lightly compared to the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. The world’s oldest surviving freethought journal, however, is an American one, The Truth Seeker, founded in 1873 by D. M. Bennett and currently edited by Roderick Bradford. 6  The links and parallels between the Freethinker and The Truth Seeker are a nice example of the freethinking special relationship. Bennett, too, was imprisoned, and for about the same amount of time as Foote, for falling afoul of his country’s “conservative Christian decency crusaders,” as the late Tom Flynn called them. 7  (Foremost among these was the notorious Anthony Comstock, whose 1873 anti-obscenity legislation is oft-cited by today’s Christian decency crusaders.) For many years during their youths, the Freethinker and The Truth Seeker republished each other’s articles, and today, in what I hope is only our/their young adulthood, we continue to collaborate fruitfully. Foote and Bennett met in London in 1881, at a banquet for Bennett hosted by the National Secular Society (NSS) during Bennett’s world tour of that year, which he embarked upon not long after his release from prison. During his keynote speech, the founder and leader of the NSS, the redoubtable Charles Bradlaugh, made a speech in Bennett’s honour, which included this immortal declaration: “Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech.” Hear, hear! Bradlaugh and other British freethinkers were also the British publishers of “The Great Agnostic” Robert G. Ingersoll’s works, and he himself lectured many times in the United States. Though he never met Ingersoll, Bradlaugh was part of the international secularist network in which they were both giants (and gigantic nodes). The international secularist solidarity historically represented by Bennett and Foote, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll, is the sort of thing we need more of today. Thus it is that I like to think my renewed involvement with Free Inquiry will help to (re)forge a small link in the chain of secularist internationalism. Or at least of Anglophone secularist internationalism. Because it is not just America that is facing the religious onslaught. Faith is on the march everywhere, in a way that it hasn’t been for quite some time. You can see it, in Russian Orthodox guise, slaughtering Ukrainian men and women and kidnapping Ukrainian children. You can see it in the bruises and broken bones of Iranian women beaten by the forces of the Islamic Republic for resisting theocracy or even just for showing a strand of hair. You can see it in the bloodthirsty invocations of biblical genocide by Israeli officials. You can see it preening in the Oval Office. And you can see it in council chambers up and down the UK, where a far-right party named Reform UK—which won many local council seats in recent English elections and whose leader many predict will be the next Prime Minister—is trying to reinstate Christian prayers at the start of council sessions. Yes, Christian nationalism has finally come to Britain. Reform leader Nigel Farage asserts that we are a “Christian country.” Danny Kruger, a Reform MP, is even more assertive. Last year, in the House of Commons, he called for the UK to be re-founded as a Christian nation. Amusingly, the chamber was almost empty for the speech. But the recent success of Reform and the increase in Christian nationalist rhetoric do tend to make one feel uneasy. The fact that we in the UK still have an established Christian church will only make the task of these aspiring theocrats all the easier, should they gain real power. Meanwhile, far-right agitators such as the odious Tommy Robinson are organizing “Unite the Kingdom” marches at which giant crosses are carried alongside flags (shades of the Capitol on January 6, 2021) and even ripping up banners emblazoned with the words secular humanism. And another party, even more extreme, or at least more explicit in its ethnic and religious chauvinism, is gaining ground: Restore Britain, led by Rupert Lowe, the new darling of the very worst of the British far right, many of whom think even Reform is too soft on non-Whites. Farage vacillates on the question of Englishness and ethnicity. Not so Restore communications director Charlie Downes, who believes that Britishness can only be based on “ancestry and Christian faith.” (Does this mean that, say, an atheist who can trace her ancestry back to the time of the Conqueror is not truly British? Should she be booted out, too?) The ideological and financial networks linking far-right, Christian nationalist groups in Europe and the United States are well known. The outsized power and reach of America grant outsized power and reach to its theocrats and fundamentalists, too, and these people are, at present, firmly in charge of things. American freethinkers don’t have such power and reach. Clearly, freethinkers (or secular humanists, if you prefer) are on the back foot. We, and liberalism broadly conceived, need a good dose of internationalist solidarity. The enemy, in all its guises, is powerful and united, across the globe, even sometimes across religious lines ( vide Tucker Carlson’s love affair with Tehran; anything to stick it to the Enlightenment-lovin’ libs). As I said, I hope that my coming on board the Free Inquiry ship is a small step in the right direction. I’m very happy to be here. In closing, some more Semiquincentennial reflections: The Fourth of July is the birthday of both America and also the date on which the author of its Declaration of Independence died. Shortly before his death, Thomas Jefferson had to turn down an invitation from the mayor of Washington, D.C. to attend a celebration for the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration. In what turned out to be his final letter, Jefferson wrote: May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. Two-hundred and fifty years on, and many, perhaps most, people are still stifled under those monkish chains. They continue to manacle themselves and others with them. Still, it is worth recalling that Jeffersonian message, even if by the time you read these words the big birthday will be long since passed. In that spirit, then (and assuming America is still standing by that time): Happy Fourth, with love from Scotland, y’all. Notes 1. See my “The Quiet Erasure of David Hume Tower” in Free Inquiry February/March 2021, Vol 41, No. 2. Available online at https://secularhumanism.org/2021/02/the-quiet-erasure-of-david-hume-tower/. 2. See my “Against the New Theism” in the Freethinker, April 19, 2024. Available online at https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/04/against-the-new-theism/. 3. Here is some recommended reading on the radical, atheistic origins of America: The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American by Andrew L. Seidel (2019); Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (2014) and An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America (2024), both by Matthew Stewart; and Gordon S. Wood’s classic The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991). Though I don’t think Wood appreciated, or would go along with, the “atheistic” aspect of the thesis so much. 4. See my “The Fourth of July and the Battle for America’s Soul” in the Freethinker, July 4, 2025. Available online at https://freethinker.co.uk/2025/07/the-fourth-of-july-and-the-battle-for-americas-soul/. 5.  https://freethinker.co.uk/ 6.  https://thetruthseeker.net/ 7.  https://centerforinquiry.org/blog/the-tale-of-the-truth-seeker/. Incidentally, I was sad to hear of Tom Flynn’s death a few years ago. It was under his editorship that I published my previous (and until now, only) articles for Free Inquiry. Though we only corresponded briefly and via email, I remember him as a pleasant and encouraging editor. My first article, for anyone who is interested, was “Faith and the Closing of the Universe,” in Free Inquiry June/July 2020, Vol 40, No. 4 ( https://secularhumanism.org/2020/06/faith-and-the-closing-of-the-universe/ ).