Trump’s Victory is a Wake-Up Call to the Church of England

Donald Trump’s re-election victory stunned elites on both sides of the Atlantic and has unmasked the disconnect between the ideologies of Church of England Bishops and the daily lives of the people they serve.

The reach of American media, combined with the global significance of its political outcomes, ensures that American political developments help shape political, media, and public opinions here in Europe. Social issues central to the U.S. election, like gender ideology, immigration, racial tensions, economic hardship, and the erosion of traditional family values, resonate strongly in my country; consequently, U.S. election outcomes can fuel or dampen similar ideological debates within the Church of England. Like it or not, Donald Trump is shaping our public discourse, something bishops cannot ignore, given the church’s internal divisions between progressives and traditionalists. The Democrats are now soul-searching why they lost the trust of Americans across the socioeconomic and racial divides. The Church of England must do the same.

Earlier this year, I joined 14,000 non-Christian young men and women at the O2 Arena to hear Jordan Peterson and other leading intellectuals of our age explore whether, in our period of moral decline, we need to return to our Christian heritage. I couldn’t make out any pink shirts but I saw ordinary people who, by their presence, were saying “yes.” Without pastors to guide them, they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” Tragically, these young people are on the wrong side of the culture-war fought by our woke Bishops. Their leaders are bogy-men today’s left call, “far-right” so the Church of England won’t send pastors to guide them.

On both sides of the Atlantic, people feel the weight of economic hardship. Inflation, combined with a sense that their struggles are overlooked by those in power, has left families fighting for survival. At the same time, open border policies contribute to a sense of cultural displacement. The election wasn’t just about these issues, if they were, Kamala Harris might have won. What appears to have won Trump the presidency is that he and his creatively named “Avengers,” J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, RFKjr. Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tulsi Gabbard, became champions of family values across the religious, income, gender, and racial divides.

Trump responded to families unsettled by rapid social change. Mums want their sons to grow into strong men, rather than be taught that their natural masculinity is “toxic.” Dads must protect their daughters from losing to men commandeering women’s sports. Parents don’t want their sons transitioning into daughters and daughters into sons. They fear for the safety of young women when creepy middle-aged men in lipstick invade their changing rooms, and won’t be silenced by the stigma of “transphobia,” for stating the obvious. When people feel their traditional way of life is under siege, they look for leaders who promise a return to sanity. One campaign ad summed up the feelings of millions of Americans: “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.” The Church of England must answer, who are we for?

For me, the hurt caused to normal people by progressive ideologies was powerfully on display during one particular Trump rally. The beautiful, strong, and composed Megyn Kelly, pointing at the construction workers in uniform behind her, asked the “ladies out there,” “how can you win, when the sons and the husbands and the brothers and the dads you love are losing?” These working-class men – the very backbone of the country, once lionized by 19th and 20th-century clergy, – are today vilified by the progressives for being “ignorant,” and“misogynist.” Hard-working men who struggle to put food on the table are absurdly gas-lit by well-heeled intellectuals for having white-privilege. Men who built their communities, and raised families on Christian values, deserve better than to be called “garbage” by the sitting president or “deplorable” by a former first lady. They need their priests and bishops to tell them like Megyn did, that they are loved and respected in Jesus’ name.

Donald Trump’s triumph among minority voters, plus the recent elevation of Olukemi (Kemi) Badenoch as the leader of the Conservative Party in England, is proof that there is little demand for ecclesial “racial justice” but that this is an ideological project of the Left. Another is how Bishops have diverted a hundred million pounds of funding that should have saved a thousand churches fighting to survive, to pay slave-trade reparations. No one living in our parishes were slave-owners in the 17^th century nor ever lived as transatlantic slaves. Racial justice is not keeping traditional families up at night, and minority groups don’t want guilty white priests teaching them to live as victims of white-supremacy. The election proved, that, irrespective of race, all families want the same things; safer neighborhoods, higher wages, fairer taxes, and lower inflation.

Church promotion of trans-ideology in schools isn’t connecting parishes to the needs of local communities; rather, it’s undermining the trust of parents as it has in American schools. Bishops opposing the assisted dying bill in the House of Lords is welcome but their absence from the equally relevant abortion debate is rooted in their alignment with the progressive left who, in the US, made abortion the defining policy of the failed Harris campaign.

Families in our pews recognize the allegiance between the Church of England and progressive causes as a deviation from biblical principles especially when it comes to protecting children. From pride flags on pediatric wards to activist literature in school libraries, families feel their everyday lives have become ideological battlegrounds. My wife and I homeschool our children, and we know other Christian families who did not return their children to school after the pandemic due to woke activism shaping every part of their education. A local authority representative for homeschooling in my county admitted to me recently that this year alone, homeschoolers have gone up by 39%. She admitted that many are Christian families rejecting progressive activism in schools.

Trump has flaws, but millions were willing to look past them to safeguard their way of life. Harris, whose polished charisma, gender, and heritage, appealed to elites, held progressive positions alienating the same kind of people the Church of England is alienating. If our leadership continues to use their institutional power to force secular ideologies on people who are rejecting them, they will lose these people just as the Democrats have. Bishops need to reconnect with the Christian traditions that have sustained our families, parishes, and nation for generations. The Trump victory has shown us that people are tired of being lectured by clergy that their values are outdated, that being white makes them racist, and that their nation was built on theft. They need pastors who are proud of their country, champion their families, and offer stability amid a rapidly changing world.

Trump’s re-election creates a moral imperative for bishops to engage with the uncomfortable truth that there is now a line-of-sight between the American “forgotten voter” and the English “forgotten parishioner.” I fear however, that our church leaders will be so caught up in their hatred for the president that they will fail to listen to the hopes and fears of those who elected him and millions who feel the same across the pond. We’re at a cultural inflection point. Trump’s victory is a wake-up call to the Church of England that must not be ignored.