LONDON: The former archbishop of Canterbury has accused Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of using the Christian faith to “channel anti-Muslim feeling.”
Rowan Williams also said he would pose some “awkward questions” to anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson over his professed Christian belief.
There is an “inevitable scepticism these days about some claims to religious conviction,” Williams — who served as the Church of England’s leading bishop for a decade — told New Humanist magazine.
“I suspect really that Farage and others want to channel anti-Muslim feeling, and it helps to have ‘we’re a Christian society’ to fling back. It gives a sort of ballast.”
Farage faced criticism in 2024 after speaking of a “growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values, in fact loathe much of what we stand for,” later confirming that he was referring to Muslims.
An iftar event held in London’s Trafalgar Square was also attacked by Farage earlier this year as an “attempt to overtake, intimidate and dominate our way of life.”
Williams, in his magazine interview, was asked about the forces driving Christian nationalism in the UK.
“There are lots of possible causes: anxiety about migration; anti-Islamism. In France that anxiety has a secular aspect, but the St. George’s Cross still means something in the English imagination, which still has a Christian aspect,” he said.
“The second thing is the globalising of all political discourse. The message given at international Christian conservative gatherings is that self-respecting nationalist movements need a bit of theology injected into them.
“Ironically, for someone like Nigel Farage, it’s about trying to find a presentational strategy that allows him to be taken seriously outside England. He’s often not here, after all.”
On Robinson, Williams said he would “ask him how attempting to lead a life of Christian discipleship squares with public rhetoric designed to produce hostility and violence.”
