The Cross and the Flag: Christian Nationalism, Anglican Confusion, and the Kingship of Christ
By the Titular Archbishop of Selsey
A warning misunderstood
Ahead of Remembrance Sunday, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams joined several Anglican bishops in denouncing what they called the rise of “Christian nationalism” in Britain.¹ Their statement cautioned against “the use of Christian symbols to exclude or stigmatise others,” warning that the Cross must never be used “to hate or alienate people.”² Bishop Anderson Jeremiah of Edmonton added that such misuse “betrays the heart of the Gospel,” while Bishop Rosemary Mallett of Southwark insisted, “We must reject any narrative that says the Cross is a symbol of exclusion.”³
Williams himself wrote: “It is more than time to challenge the story that every migrant approaching our shores is an unfriendly alien with unintelligible and hostile values. Christian culture, rightly understood, is based simply on the recognition that we share common human needs and that we are given strength and generosity in Christ’s Spirit.”⁴
The appeal was framed as a plea for compassion, but its theological assumptions reveal the enduring confusion of post-Reformation religion — a sentimental universalism that collapses revelation into moral emotion, and the Church into a chaplaincy for the prevailing liberal order.
The error of false universalism
The Church indeed rejects any distortion of the Cross into an emblem of hatred. Yet authentic universality cannot exist apart from truth. The Gospel is universal not because it affirms every culture equally, but because it judges all cultures by one standard — the Incarnate Word. The Christian message does not dissolve nations into abstractions of fraternity; it calls nations to conversion.
When “Christian nationalism” is condemned without distinction, the legitimate love of country that orders loyalty beneath the sovereignty of Christ is conflated with a pagan tribalism. Catholic teaching does not deny the virtue of patriotism, which St. Thomas Aquinas calls part of the virtue of piety: the honour owed to those from whom we have received life and nurture.⁵ But patriotism becomes idolatry when it usurps God’s primacy, and it becomes cowardice when it refuses to defend the moral and spiritual heritage entrusted to a people.
Williams’s version of “Christian culture” omits precisely that element of divine order which distinguishes Christian civilisation from mere philanthropy: the Cross as the sign of judgment as well as mercy, of redemption through truth as well as compassion through solidarity. His “Spirit of generosity” is not the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin (John 16:8), but a secular benevolence devoid of doctrine.
Christendom and the nation under God
The irony of the Anglican statement is that it rebukes “Christian nationalism” on the eve of Remembrance Sunday — a day when Britain remembers those who died under the sign of the Cross defending a Christian civilisation now publicly disowned by its clergy. The Cross on war memorials was never a nationalist symbol; it was a declaration that even in death the nation belongs to Christ.
To contrast “Christian nationalism” with “Christian compassion” is therefore to miss the deeper truth: that the social kingship of Christ, proclaimed by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, demands both a supernatural charity that transcends borders and a moral order that sanctifies them.⁶ A nation that acknowledges Christ as King does not become oppressive but just; a Church that denies His kingship ceases to be universal and becomes merely political.
The Church’s true witness
For Catholics, the challenge is not to erase the Cross from public life but to restore its meaning. We must not permit its reduction either to a tribal insignia or to a sentimental emblem. The Cross is both sword and ploughshare — the judgment of God upon sin and the mercy that redeems it.
The faithful must therefore reject two falsehoods: first, the nationalist distortion that subordinates the Gospel to blood and soil; and second, the liberal distortion that empties the Gospel into moral relativism. Between these lies the Catholic path of ordered charity — love of God above all things, and of neighbour and nation for His sake.
In this balance lies the renewal of Christian civilisation. For the flag without the Cross becomes tyranny; but the Cross without the flag — that is, without embodiment in culture, law, and nation — becomes an abstraction. Christ reigns not in vague sentiment but in the concrete realities of family, community, and kingdom. It is there that the kingship of Christ must be confessed anew.
¹ Catholic Herald, “Rowan Williams and Anglican clergy speak out against Christian nationalism ahead of Remembrance Sunday,” 7 Nov 2025.
² Ibid., quoting Bp Anderson Jeremiah.
³ Ibid., quoting Bp Rosemary Mallett.
⁴ Ibid., quoting Rowan Williams.
⁵ St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II q.101 a.1.
⁶ Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925), nn. 15-20.
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