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God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England
A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025
'Allows us to understand the profound, and often profoundly beneficial, impact of Christianity' Anthony Seldon
'Superb ... Lively and erudite' The Telegraph
'Tremendous ... The arguments are truly profound' The Spectator
'A finely judged and beautifully written account' Peter Frankopan
Christianity in England is in decline. Congregations are dwindling and ever fewer young people believe. Should we merely shrug our shoulders and accept this as inevitable and even healthy, or is something important being lost?
Bijan Omrani argues that this decline is the most momentous change to occur in English history. He shows how a religion that has been part of our national story for over 1700 years was instrumental in the creation and development of the English nation, its codes of law and morality, and its structures of government and kingship. He demonstrates its profound cultural impact, in areas ranging from architecture and literature to our very landscape and the structure of our everyday life and language. Its influence, he contends, has been enormous, largely benign, and shouldn't be lightly abandoned.
Ending with a rousing call to retain Christianity, rightly understood, as a way of dealing with both the eternal questions of the human condition, as well as the malaises of modernity, this is an erudite and tender tribute to our Christian history and heritage.
'Allows us to understand the profound, and often profoundly beneficial, impact of Christianity' Anthony Seldon
'Superb ... Lively and erudite' The Telegraph
'Tremendous ... The arguments are truly profound' The Spectator
'A finely judged and beautifully written account' Peter Frankopan
Christianity in England is in decline. Congregations are dwindling and ever fewer young people believe. Should we merely shrug our shoulders and accept this as inevitable and even healthy, or is something important being lost?
Bijan Omrani argues that this decline is the most momentous change to occur in English history. He shows how a religion that has been part of our national story for over 1700 years was instrumental in the creation and development of the English nation, its codes of law and morality, and its structures of government and kingship. He demonstrates its profound cultural impact, in areas ranging from architecture and literature to our very landscape and the structure of our everyday life and language. Its influence, he contends, has been enormous, largely benign, and shouldn't be lightly abandoned.
Ending with a rousing call to retain Christianity, rightly understood, as a way of dealing with both the eternal questions of the human condition, as well as the malaises of modernity, this is an erudite and tender tribute to our Christian history and heritage.
480 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2025
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About the author
Bijan Omrani
9 books25 followersBijan Omrani is an historian and classicist specialising in the history of Afghanistan and Central Asia. He was educated at Wellington, and then read Classics and English at Lincoln College Oxford,where he contributed to the Spectator as an undergraduate. He produced his first major publication, Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide, in collaboration with the seasoned Afghan traveller Matthew Leeming in 2005, and since then has edited and published numerous works, articles and book reviews on Afghan and Central Asian history. A special area of research has been the controversial area of theAfghan-Pakistan border, also known as the Durand Line. His latest book, Asia Overland: Tales of Travel on the Trans-Siberian and Silk Road, was published in 2010.
Omrani has also lectured and broadcast widely, commentating on Afghan history for BBC Radio 4 and Sky News. He has spoken at numerous venues including the RGS (Hong Kong chapter),the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, SOAS, Pushkin House, and Eton College. He has also briefed army officers and journalists on aspects of Afghan history. He sits on the editorial board of the Asian Affairs Journal. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
Omrani has also lectured and broadcast widely, commentating on Afghan history for BBC Radio 4 and Sky News. He has spoken at numerous venues including the RGS (Hong Kong chapter),the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, SOAS, Pushkin House, and Eton College. He has also briefed army officers and journalists on aspects of Afghan history. He sits on the editorial board of the Asian Affairs Journal. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 3, 2025
I read this book purely because of the jingoistic pride generated by the title (I’d always suspected Jesus was from either Northampton or Ludlow). As it is, the big man is barely mentioned. Instead, "God is an Englishman" is more about the history of Christianity in England. It’s dead interesting but people will find certain parts more pertinent than others (i.e. I think there’s only a very specific set of disappointment-to-their-parents-solicitors who will enjoy the chapter detailing how the Church of England affected English Law).
If in a hurry, skim Chapter One, then just enjoy the oddities of Chapters Six, Eleven and Twelve.
Finally, whilst the book does not hypothesise on God’s most likely nationality, it is strongly hinted that he wasn’t French – much to the relief of everyone involved.
If in a hurry, skim Chapter One, then just enjoy the oddities of Chapters Six, Eleven and Twelve.
Finally, whilst the book does not hypothesise on God’s most likely nationality, it is strongly hinted that he wasn’t French – much to the relief of everyone involved.
October 12, 2025
The author makes a convincing case that Christianity has been vital to the history of England and has shaped all sorts of aspects of it - music, art, poetry, the campaign against the slave trade and even the early development of the Labour Party. He also argues, in the closing section of the book, that the decline in church attendance has more to do with social changes such as the popularity of television and pop music than a decreasing belief in God and spirituality. I think that this is open to debate at the very least. He makes a brief comment about assisted dying which I strongly disagree with and I have a suspicion (although he never actually says this) that he would quite like the debate about same sex marriage to just go away. But it won't and, however much Christianity has contributed to our history or might have to offer people today, the days when everyone goes to Church and the Church acts as a social glue are gone and aren't coming back again. This isn't to say that Christianity and religion generally doesn't have something to offer or that the story he tells isn't worth telling. An interesting book with an interesting take on English history (yes, this is explicitly about England and not Britain).
May 11, 2025
Absolutely fantastic: a clear and compelling account of the beneficial influence of Christianity on English culture. Do global has this influence in fact been that it is hard, as the author points out, to understand or discuss English culture without constant reference to it. Indeed, the reticence which surrounds discussion of English culture is clearly an outcome of the unwillingness to confront this fact, rather than any intrinsic incoherence in the idea. So convincing is the account offered here that it provokes astonishment, even anger, that the formative role of Christianity is so absolutely neglected in both the media discourse and the educational system. Whether this neglect springs from ignorance, embarrassment, or something more sinister and deliberate is hard to say, but what is clear is that it must be rectified.
July 16, 2025
The first half about the ways in which Christianity contributed to various aspects of English culture was interesting. The second half about its decline in England, the reasons for its decline elsewhere being largely the same, was deeply thought provoking. I'm not sure England or anywhere is quite ready for the post Christian world. I will say that the many reasons for its decline and the somewhat cyclical nature of history does make me believe a comeback as a reaction to the utter apex of depersonalization and artificiality we've reached with algorithms and AI could be in order. To get off the drug, you have to hit rock bottom.
October 7, 2025
The name is unusual: Bijan Omrani. If we can judge by it, then Bijan Omrani has the same sort of complex relationship to England and Englishness as I do. In my case, my Christian name betrays a foreign source (my mother is Italian) but my surname, while ostensibly English, conceals an even more exotic home: Sri Lanka. My father is Sri Lankan – half Sinhala and half Tamil – but at some point in the past an ancestor changed his name to Albert, possibly in honour of Prince Albert. Unfortunately, we don’t know for sure when this happened as my grandparents, one Sinhala and one Tamil, were a love match who married in the teeth of parental opposition and my father never met his own grandparents. So I don’t know when or why our name was changed.
But like Mr Omrani, I was born in England and I have lived all my life here. My roots lie draped over half the world but my growth is here, in this place and this city: London. So like Mr Omrani, at some level I am concerned with, and am trying to answer, the question of what is it to be English? In my case, I have also written a book to answer this question: Bede: the Man Who Invented England (due out next spring from Birlinn). It’s interesting to compare our answers, as given in our two books.
From various passages in Mr Omrani’s book, it’s clear that at least one set of his grandparents were what I might call properly English. Indeed, they appear to have represented something of a survival from Britain’s Imperial heyday during the reign of Queen Victoria: morning tea, choral evensong, self discipline expected and inculcated, and a deep but mostly unspoken patriotism.
In my case, there were no relatives in this country. In fact, all my childhood friends were the children of immigrants – it was only when I went to university that I became friends with actual English people. My mother, however, had distinct ideas as to what ‘Englishness’ was. I remember her, when I was about six, pulling me up about how I was speaking and telling me to talk like the BBC. Remember, this was the 1960s, when BBC presenters all spoke in proper RP. In terms of behaviour, she told me to behave like an English gentleman. Although I was young, I did not have to ask her what she meant by that. I was a reader, utterly formed by books, and the idea of the English gentleman had been formed in me by reading books like The Wind in the Willows and the Famous Five. I knew what she meant from what I had read.
For Mr Omrani, a key part of being English was the Church of England. Its rituals, its company, its words and its physical presence in town and school and through the passages of his growing life.
It was different for me. My parents were Catholic so I was too. This was, in the 1960s and ’70s, still the religion of outsiders and immigrants: Irish, Italians, Poles mostly at the schools I went to. Loyalties were mixed but still deep: my best friend, Paul Fitzpatrick, ran the cadet force during the worst times for IRA attacks in London when he, as a 16 year old, had the keys to the arsenal in the school – he literally had access to enough guns and ammunition to start a small-scale insurrection! (Times were a little different!) But despite his thoroughly Irish Catholic ancestry, Paul never even thought of sneaking any Lee Enfield rifles to the IRA. We weren’t English, but we were loyal.
Then, in 1998, I married an Englishwoman. My father-in-law, as my mother approvingly remarked, was a proper English gentleman. And he was. Oxbridge. High-flying civil servant and (we finally found out), he had even been a member of MI5 in the 1960s (when asked whether he had had anything to do with Philby, Burgess and Maclean, David answered, ‘Not directly.’) In fact, the stuff David was involved with was so secret that, after his death, when his daughters tried to find out about his service with MI5, they discovered that his career there was all covered under the 100-years rule, which only applies to the most sensitive of state secrets.
Together, we have three children, three sons. And watching them grow up, it was clear that they all regarded themselves as English. But then, what did that make me? In part, I wrote my book to answer that question.
Recently, some people have taken to claiming that being English is genetic: take a DNA test and if it comes up that your ancestry is, say, 90 per cent British with maybe 10 per cent Irish layered on top, then you qualify as English. It’s a view of national identity that lies in blood and, obviously, that would then exclude me – as it would exclude Rishi Sunak, Ian Wright or Frank Bruno. Now, these are three men I do regard as English. They see themselves as English. Sunak was prime minister. Wright played football for England, Bruno came close to winning the world heavyweight boxing title for England. Are they wrong?
I don’t think so. My mother-in-law was born in South Africa to English parents who emigrated there. She grew up under apartheid, which was in effect a sort of whiteness purity test: you might look paler than Snow White but if a great-grandparent was African, then you were put into the ‘mixed-race’ designation. This is clearly nonsense. There was no point at which the ‘taint’ of black blood could be washed away. The same is true in the opposite direction: how many generations born on this island are necessary to produce an Englishman? Following this logic, you’d have had to come over in the original boats with Hengist and Horsa to qualify as English. By this view, even an admixture of Norman blood would disqualify the bearer as properly Anglo-Saxon.
When I wrote my book on Bede, I realised that it was Bede who was, in part, the man who first developed the idea of England. Before Bede, there weren’t any Englishmen. There were Kentish men and men of Suffolk, Northumbrians and Mercians, the West Saxons, the South Saxons, the East Saxons and the Middle Saxons. Identity was local and personal. It was Bede who invented the English and he did this by contrasting them against the other people living in Britain, the Britons, the Picts and the Scots (who were actually from Ireland). What distinguished these different peoples were their languages:
“At the present time, there are in the island of Britain five languages, and four nations: the languages of the English, the Britons, the Scots, and the Picts, each having its own tongue; and the fifth is the Latin tongue, which is used in the service of religion.”
By defining the English in opposition to the Britons (who became the Welsh) and the Picts and Scots, Bede contributed to the long history of conflict between the later kingdoms. In his time, warfare was just as common between the Anglo-Saxon kings as it was against the Britons, the Picts and the Scots, but by creating an idea of a single English polity, Bede provided the impetus to turn its expansion outwards, against the Britons and the Scots.
Indeed, today’s blood nationalists have taken this idea and run with it, equating nationality and identity with genetic, and racial, inheritance, while also producing an idealised view of an Anglo-Saxon idyll destroyed by the Norman conquest.
However, while Bede might be guilty of defining the English against the Briton and the Scots, he had another basis of identity that superseded blood: Christianity. For Bede, religion was much much more important than race. The Britons were condemned not for their nationality but for their stubborn clinging to heresy. The man whom Bede admires most wholeheartedly in the whole history was the Irishman, Aidan.
For Bede, religion was the core of identity and, as a Christian, that identity transcended any local allegiances or ties of blood. When Benedict Biscop, the founder of Bede’s monastery, was dying he expressly forbade his monks to choose any of his own relatives as his successor.
Some of the more fervent of present-day English nationalists seem to have understood this, for they have forsaken Christianity for a full-throated embrace of a reinvented Anglo-Saxon paganism.
Mr Omrani clearly understands Bede’s unique role in the definition of England, and his equally unique role in opening England up to the world as England became Christian. Paganism is local and particular, tied to roots and unable to escape them. The genius of Christianity is that it is both local and universal, tied to roots and open to heaven, a religion of a people and the religion of the world. Mr Omrani’s book makes that very clear and I hope mine will too.
But like Mr Omrani, I was born in England and I have lived all my life here. My roots lie draped over half the world but my growth is here, in this place and this city: London. So like Mr Omrani, at some level I am concerned with, and am trying to answer, the question of what is it to be English? In my case, I have also written a book to answer this question: Bede: the Man Who Invented England (due out next spring from Birlinn). It’s interesting to compare our answers, as given in our two books.
From various passages in Mr Omrani’s book, it’s clear that at least one set of his grandparents were what I might call properly English. Indeed, they appear to have represented something of a survival from Britain’s Imperial heyday during the reign of Queen Victoria: morning tea, choral evensong, self discipline expected and inculcated, and a deep but mostly unspoken patriotism.
In my case, there were no relatives in this country. In fact, all my childhood friends were the children of immigrants – it was only when I went to university that I became friends with actual English people. My mother, however, had distinct ideas as to what ‘Englishness’ was. I remember her, when I was about six, pulling me up about how I was speaking and telling me to talk like the BBC. Remember, this was the 1960s, when BBC presenters all spoke in proper RP. In terms of behaviour, she told me to behave like an English gentleman. Although I was young, I did not have to ask her what she meant by that. I was a reader, utterly formed by books, and the idea of the English gentleman had been formed in me by reading books like The Wind in the Willows and the Famous Five. I knew what she meant from what I had read.
For Mr Omrani, a key part of being English was the Church of England. Its rituals, its company, its words and its physical presence in town and school and through the passages of his growing life.
It was different for me. My parents were Catholic so I was too. This was, in the 1960s and ’70s, still the religion of outsiders and immigrants: Irish, Italians, Poles mostly at the schools I went to. Loyalties were mixed but still deep: my best friend, Paul Fitzpatrick, ran the cadet force during the worst times for IRA attacks in London when he, as a 16 year old, had the keys to the arsenal in the school – he literally had access to enough guns and ammunition to start a small-scale insurrection! (Times were a little different!) But despite his thoroughly Irish Catholic ancestry, Paul never even thought of sneaking any Lee Enfield rifles to the IRA. We weren’t English, but we were loyal.
Then, in 1998, I married an Englishwoman. My father-in-law, as my mother approvingly remarked, was a proper English gentleman. And he was. Oxbridge. High-flying civil servant and (we finally found out), he had even been a member of MI5 in the 1960s (when asked whether he had had anything to do with Philby, Burgess and Maclean, David answered, ‘Not directly.’) In fact, the stuff David was involved with was so secret that, after his death, when his daughters tried to find out about his service with MI5, they discovered that his career there was all covered under the 100-years rule, which only applies to the most sensitive of state secrets.
Together, we have three children, three sons. And watching them grow up, it was clear that they all regarded themselves as English. But then, what did that make me? In part, I wrote my book to answer that question.
Recently, some people have taken to claiming that being English is genetic: take a DNA test and if it comes up that your ancestry is, say, 90 per cent British with maybe 10 per cent Irish layered on top, then you qualify as English. It’s a view of national identity that lies in blood and, obviously, that would then exclude me – as it would exclude Rishi Sunak, Ian Wright or Frank Bruno. Now, these are three men I do regard as English. They see themselves as English. Sunak was prime minister. Wright played football for England, Bruno came close to winning the world heavyweight boxing title for England. Are they wrong?
I don’t think so. My mother-in-law was born in South Africa to English parents who emigrated there. She grew up under apartheid, which was in effect a sort of whiteness purity test: you might look paler than Snow White but if a great-grandparent was African, then you were put into the ‘mixed-race’ designation. This is clearly nonsense. There was no point at which the ‘taint’ of black blood could be washed away. The same is true in the opposite direction: how many generations born on this island are necessary to produce an Englishman? Following this logic, you’d have had to come over in the original boats with Hengist and Horsa to qualify as English. By this view, even an admixture of Norman blood would disqualify the bearer as properly Anglo-Saxon.
When I wrote my book on Bede, I realised that it was Bede who was, in part, the man who first developed the idea of England. Before Bede, there weren’t any Englishmen. There were Kentish men and men of Suffolk, Northumbrians and Mercians, the West Saxons, the South Saxons, the East Saxons and the Middle Saxons. Identity was local and personal. It was Bede who invented the English and he did this by contrasting them against the other people living in Britain, the Britons, the Picts and the Scots (who were actually from Ireland). What distinguished these different peoples were their languages:
“At the present time, there are in the island of Britain five languages, and four nations: the languages of the English, the Britons, the Scots, and the Picts, each having its own tongue; and the fifth is the Latin tongue, which is used in the service of religion.”
By defining the English in opposition to the Britons (who became the Welsh) and the Picts and Scots, Bede contributed to the long history of conflict between the later kingdoms. In his time, warfare was just as common between the Anglo-Saxon kings as it was against the Britons, the Picts and the Scots, but by creating an idea of a single English polity, Bede provided the impetus to turn its expansion outwards, against the Britons and the Scots.
Indeed, today’s blood nationalists have taken this idea and run with it, equating nationality and identity with genetic, and racial, inheritance, while also producing an idealised view of an Anglo-Saxon idyll destroyed by the Norman conquest.
However, while Bede might be guilty of defining the English against the Briton and the Scots, he had another basis of identity that superseded blood: Christianity. For Bede, religion was much much more important than race. The Britons were condemned not for their nationality but for their stubborn clinging to heresy. The man whom Bede admires most wholeheartedly in the whole history was the Irishman, Aidan.
For Bede, religion was the core of identity and, as a Christian, that identity transcended any local allegiances or ties of blood. When Benedict Biscop, the founder of Bede’s monastery, was dying he expressly forbade his monks to choose any of his own relatives as his successor.
Some of the more fervent of present-day English nationalists seem to have understood this, for they have forsaken Christianity for a full-throated embrace of a reinvented Anglo-Saxon paganism.
Mr Omrani clearly understands Bede’s unique role in the definition of England, and his equally unique role in opening England up to the world as England became Christian. Paganism is local and particular, tied to roots and unable to escape them. The genius of Christianity is that it is both local and universal, tied to roots and open to heaven, a religion of a people and the religion of the world. Mr Omrani’s book makes that very clear and I hope mine will too.
July 6, 2025
Good history and iffy politics.
Omrani argues, convincingly, the once uncontroversial case that England is a Christian nation. He covers - capably - a lot of historical ground even for 350 pages: national political traditions, art, education, music, geography, calendar all get a mention.
Because the case is now controversial, he takes the additional political step of arguing why England's Christian heritage is, on balance, a good thing. No one who needs the issue so framed is in the market for this book. I found it all a bit sterile when the history already makes a compelling, quiet case for 'No Church, no England'.
The book does not handle immigration well.
Not taking off points for this, but it seems remiss to not address the rise of popular right wing, decidedly non-Christian nationalist movements in the UK. As Omrani notes, the Christian message is fundamentally open-hearted ('there is neither Greek, nor Jew... for you are all one in Jesus Christ'), even if Christianity in England has a terroir of its own. What's left of Englishness in its absence?
Omrani argues, convincingly, the once uncontroversial case that England is a Christian nation. He covers - capably - a lot of historical ground even for 350 pages: national political traditions, art, education, music, geography, calendar all get a mention.
Because the case is now controversial, he takes the additional political step of arguing why England's Christian heritage is, on balance, a good thing. No one who needs the issue so framed is in the market for this book. I found it all a bit sterile when the history already makes a compelling, quiet case for 'No Church, no England'.
The book does not handle immigration well.
Not taking off points for this, but it seems remiss to not address the rise of popular right wing, decidedly non-Christian nationalist movements in the UK. As Omrani notes, the Christian message is fundamentally open-hearted ('there is neither Greek, nor Jew... for you are all one in Jesus Christ'), even if Christianity in England has a terroir of its own. What's left of Englishness in its absence?
July 23, 2025
I finished this book half way through the Peak Pilgrimage, a forty mile walk through the southern Peak District from the ancient settlement of Ilam with its impressive country house and church to the famous plague village of Eyam where the villages, led by Reverend Mompesson sacrificed themselves in order to spare the surrounding country. In between a number of ancient churches are visited along with the superlative Chatsworth estate with its own Gilbert Scott church. As an example of the impact of Christianity on the rural landscape of England, it couldn't be bettered. The churches are now multi-parish benefices with comparatively small Sunday congregations, although the vicar remains a person (parson) of importance in the village.
God is an Englishman takes a wide view of the contribution of Christianity to English history, culture and society. In fact Omrani has comparatively little to say about the architectural impact of churches and much more to say on culture and politics. There is not a great deal here that readers won't have found elsewhere, and that is the reason for my slight lukewarmness towards the book. Readers with little knowledge of Christianity's contribution - and Omrani believes that number is large - will find it informative and hopefully enlightening. For some it may even change their minds as to the supposed secularism of our age.
Omrani takes us from St Augustine's initial trip across the Channel, through the Middle Ages and into the reforming Evangelicals of the Nineteenth century. The bulk of the book feels rooted in the Reformation or pre-Reformation period, a fact reinforced by Omrani's frustrating insistence on quoting only from the KJV (leading him very oddly at one point to refer to St Paul's Letter to the Hebrews - an attribution doubted by many before the seventeenth century and everyone since). Donne and the Metaphysical Poets are here. Shakespeare is claimed (in my view somewhat dubiously) to have been influenced by passages such as Philippians 2. The English choral tradition gets a good mention. The chapter on law is very good and certainly worth the price of the book alone.
At the same time it's very difficult to escape from the sense that this book has been written by a well-educated and clever public school boy and Oxford student who has spent the formative years of his life immersed in a Christianity that has been alien to most of the population for many years (and was indeed alien for a good many in preceding centuries).
As such it feels a little bit Matthew Arnold. The tide of choral music and metaphysical poetry is retreating and a dark and uncertain world of barbarism awaits. He mentions the changing demographics caused by immigration from non-Christian cultures but does not mention the rapidly changing face of Christianity itself from Christian immigration. No doubt the Ethiopian, Congolese and Nepalese congregations that meet in my wife's inner-city church will add their own flavour to Christian and English culture.
Aside from the archaic Hebrews attribution, a couple of small slip-ups spotted: The second of the legal quarter days was Midsummer Day not May Day. The slave trade was abolished by the UK parliament in 1807, not 1808.
The bibliography and footnoting is extensive and gives a good indication of Omrani's command of the secondary literature. The contents will be found elsewhere but as a one volume summary this is very good.
God is an Englishman takes a wide view of the contribution of Christianity to English history, culture and society. In fact Omrani has comparatively little to say about the architectural impact of churches and much more to say on culture and politics. There is not a great deal here that readers won't have found elsewhere, and that is the reason for my slight lukewarmness towards the book. Readers with little knowledge of Christianity's contribution - and Omrani believes that number is large - will find it informative and hopefully enlightening. For some it may even change their minds as to the supposed secularism of our age.
Omrani takes us from St Augustine's initial trip across the Channel, through the Middle Ages and into the reforming Evangelicals of the Nineteenth century. The bulk of the book feels rooted in the Reformation or pre-Reformation period, a fact reinforced by Omrani's frustrating insistence on quoting only from the KJV (leading him very oddly at one point to refer to St Paul's Letter to the Hebrews - an attribution doubted by many before the seventeenth century and everyone since). Donne and the Metaphysical Poets are here. Shakespeare is claimed (in my view somewhat dubiously) to have been influenced by passages such as Philippians 2. The English choral tradition gets a good mention. The chapter on law is very good and certainly worth the price of the book alone.
At the same time it's very difficult to escape from the sense that this book has been written by a well-educated and clever public school boy and Oxford student who has spent the formative years of his life immersed in a Christianity that has been alien to most of the population for many years (and was indeed alien for a good many in preceding centuries).
As such it feels a little bit Matthew Arnold. The tide of choral music and metaphysical poetry is retreating and a dark and uncertain world of barbarism awaits. He mentions the changing demographics caused by immigration from non-Christian cultures but does not mention the rapidly changing face of Christianity itself from Christian immigration. No doubt the Ethiopian, Congolese and Nepalese congregations that meet in my wife's inner-city church will add their own flavour to Christian and English culture.
Aside from the archaic Hebrews attribution, a couple of small slip-ups spotted: The second of the legal quarter days was Midsummer Day not May Day. The slave trade was abolished by the UK parliament in 1807, not 1808.
The bibliography and footnoting is extensive and gives a good indication of Omrani's command of the secondary literature. The contents will be found elsewhere but as a one volume summary this is very good.
September 14, 2025
I had to do a little snort of laughter at the fact presented near the end of the book that the University of Nottingham put a trigger warning on canonical medieval works as “professing Christian faith”. I mean if you’ve signed up for medieval literature, gird your loins. Game of Thrones it ain’t. Mind you, not so long back a woman withdrew from a course about medieval art that I was doing because there was “too much religion in it”.
These examples perhaps reflects Omrani’s contention that by failing to acknowledge the fundamental place of Christianity in many aspects of English life, including our literary and artistic culture, people are genuinely surprised and maybe even uncomfortable when confronted with it, having absorbed a sense that religion, especially Christianity is somehow to be shunned, that it sits in opposition to liberal, secular values. Perhaps people are just embarrassed by it. Or maybe, cut off from the traditional paths of studying Christianity through school and church, they simply don’t understand what is being depicted or discussed. This is a shame. It means that a trip to an art gallery must necessarily be quite a superficial thing since most Western art up until the 18th century was dedicated to Bible stories (that’s if they weren’t depicting the antics of the Classical world - but the diminution of Classics as legitimate study is for another day).
I have very little in common with the author. Clearly from a wealthy, educated background, an Oxford scholar and brought up as a Christian. I am none of these except the last bit. There was a nebulous, non church attending faith in my house only expressed in christenings, weddings and funerals and attendance at Sunday School (until I rebelled) which meant I had a grasp on the basic stories even if I’m not quite clear about the theology. I had an English teacher who told us to read Ovid and the Bible if we wanted to get a handle on English literature (she could have said art too). Even in the 70s and early 80s there was still hymn singing at school and RE was not comparative but Christian based.
Nevertheless, Omrani and I would both still have common ground. His analysis of how Christianity underpins not only culture which I was aware of but our social structures and legal processes was illuminating and written without verbosity. Our landscapes and our relationship with it were formed by our church building and our spiritual belief of the presence of God in all things. Even political beliefs that embrace equality and fairness are rooted in Christian beliefs that uphold the dignity of humans as made in the image of God. You may be as uncomfortable with this as that lady in my art class but it’s nonetheless true.
The second half of the book makes the case for what role Christianity has to play in a society where many people are indifferent or reject it. I’m rooting for Omrani here and he makes good cases for the spiritual element and the presence of a tolerant faith as being good for all faiths but I don’t know, given the way so many pseudo religious beliefs are taking hold of people’s lives, whether Christianity can grab people in the same way in this country. Some Christian faiths such as Catholicism or evangelical missions remain strong but the Anglican Church is struggling. It remains to be seen whether it can survive the 21st century or what would send people back through its doors.
These examples perhaps reflects Omrani’s contention that by failing to acknowledge the fundamental place of Christianity in many aspects of English life, including our literary and artistic culture, people are genuinely surprised and maybe even uncomfortable when confronted with it, having absorbed a sense that religion, especially Christianity is somehow to be shunned, that it sits in opposition to liberal, secular values. Perhaps people are just embarrassed by it. Or maybe, cut off from the traditional paths of studying Christianity through school and church, they simply don’t understand what is being depicted or discussed. This is a shame. It means that a trip to an art gallery must necessarily be quite a superficial thing since most Western art up until the 18th century was dedicated to Bible stories (that’s if they weren’t depicting the antics of the Classical world - but the diminution of Classics as legitimate study is for another day).
I have very little in common with the author. Clearly from a wealthy, educated background, an Oxford scholar and brought up as a Christian. I am none of these except the last bit. There was a nebulous, non church attending faith in my house only expressed in christenings, weddings and funerals and attendance at Sunday School (until I rebelled) which meant I had a grasp on the basic stories even if I’m not quite clear about the theology. I had an English teacher who told us to read Ovid and the Bible if we wanted to get a handle on English literature (she could have said art too). Even in the 70s and early 80s there was still hymn singing at school and RE was not comparative but Christian based.
Nevertheless, Omrani and I would both still have common ground. His analysis of how Christianity underpins not only culture which I was aware of but our social structures and legal processes was illuminating and written without verbosity. Our landscapes and our relationship with it were formed by our church building and our spiritual belief of the presence of God in all things. Even political beliefs that embrace equality and fairness are rooted in Christian beliefs that uphold the dignity of humans as made in the image of God. You may be as uncomfortable with this as that lady in my art class but it’s nonetheless true.
The second half of the book makes the case for what role Christianity has to play in a society where many people are indifferent or reject it. I’m rooting for Omrani here and he makes good cases for the spiritual element and the presence of a tolerant faith as being good for all faiths but I don’t know, given the way so many pseudo religious beliefs are taking hold of people’s lives, whether Christianity can grab people in the same way in this country. Some Christian faiths such as Catholicism or evangelical missions remain strong but the Anglican Church is struggling. It remains to be seen whether it can survive the 21st century or what would send people back through its doors.
August 17, 2025
So this is a good book, but it regrettably could have been something greater than it is. The author is Christian, yet there is a certain wetness (perhaps weakness?) to his faith when he briefly discusses matters on sexuality, in that he doesn't clearly lay out a position grounded in the Bible. This is perhaps my strongest objection: that if, as a Christian, you want to write a book about the benefit of Christianity to England, it is best if you wholeheartedly and clearly embrace it, no matter the potential to be denigrated or maligned by embracing the parts less palatable to modern readers.
So, if we put that aside, I think the book sits about four stars. It narrates a reasonably good history of the church in England, and the impact that Christianity has had on the culture. This improves the more recent in time, because better sources tend to mean better judgements. The circular impact of translations of the Bible into English I found interesting, that the original Tyndale Bible, was based on the ordinary English spoken in Gloucestershire, which then its evolution into the King James Version, then greatly impacted our wonderful language. Indeed, the ESV that my church uses, based on the KJV, therefore find its English roots in Tyndale.
The great impact of Christianity in the 19th century is demonstrated, as the evangelicals and the nonconformists flex their strength, notable in their missional work both within England and across the Empire, but also in their social plays. Much of the betterment of society owes much to the church. As does the abolishment of slavey and all manner of wicked things the world over where England had the chance to impose itself, often for good, indeed more often for good than we give her credit for, whatever her sins.
There is also much to be said for the natural love of the English for song, and how Christianity plays into that, too, once again, in a circular way.
What would have titled the book over to five stars, if we remove the weakness on the matter of sexuality, would be a greater look at how the character of the English themselves has been impacted by Christianity. There is a legion of work still to be done on this, but because we are dealing with national character, something not clearly obvious until we contrast it with another, it is hard to discern. But discern it we are beginning to. The English (and their descendants abroad, I being one of them) are largely a fair, honest, hard-working, law-abiding people, and the roots of this are not, I think, purely ethnic, but rather the fact that Christianity is so deeply stamped upon this wonderful nation.
A study still to be written which looks more deeply upon this has the potential to be so impressive a read as to perhaps partially, reawaken the English to what they are best to be. This book is a step in the right direction, as are others, such as Tom Holland's Dominion, but I suspect the defining book on England, Britain, Europe and the West, and how the goodness of their characters are ultimately derived from Christianity, and any reinvigoration of them, depends upon a genuine taking up of a wonderful, life- and world-changing faith in the Lord Jesus.
So, if we put that aside, I think the book sits about four stars. It narrates a reasonably good history of the church in England, and the impact that Christianity has had on the culture. This improves the more recent in time, because better sources tend to mean better judgements. The circular impact of translations of the Bible into English I found interesting, that the original Tyndale Bible, was based on the ordinary English spoken in Gloucestershire, which then its evolution into the King James Version, then greatly impacted our wonderful language. Indeed, the ESV that my church uses, based on the KJV, therefore find its English roots in Tyndale.
The great impact of Christianity in the 19th century is demonstrated, as the evangelicals and the nonconformists flex their strength, notable in their missional work both within England and across the Empire, but also in their social plays. Much of the betterment of society owes much to the church. As does the abolishment of slavey and all manner of wicked things the world over where England had the chance to impose itself, often for good, indeed more often for good than we give her credit for, whatever her sins.
There is also much to be said for the natural love of the English for song, and how Christianity plays into that, too, once again, in a circular way.
What would have titled the book over to five stars, if we remove the weakness on the matter of sexuality, would be a greater look at how the character of the English themselves has been impacted by Christianity. There is a legion of work still to be done on this, but because we are dealing with national character, something not clearly obvious until we contrast it with another, it is hard to discern. But discern it we are beginning to. The English (and their descendants abroad, I being one of them) are largely a fair, honest, hard-working, law-abiding people, and the roots of this are not, I think, purely ethnic, but rather the fact that Christianity is so deeply stamped upon this wonderful nation.
A study still to be written which looks more deeply upon this has the potential to be so impressive a read as to perhaps partially, reawaken the English to what they are best to be. This book is a step in the right direction, as are others, such as Tom Holland's Dominion, but I suspect the defining book on England, Britain, Europe and the West, and how the goodness of their characters are ultimately derived from Christianity, and any reinvigoration of them, depends upon a genuine taking up of a wonderful, life- and world-changing faith in the Lord Jesus.
October 13, 2025
Bijan Omrani manages to not only cover the entire spectrum of influence which the English Christian church has had on British life - its culture, its laws, its traditions, its education systems, its form government, its art and literature - but also offer a deeply moving and heartfelt threnody for what we look to lose is Christianity goes, and what it has to offer if we keep it at the centre of our national life.
Omrani's reach is wide and the book is compellingly erudite. I was particularly excited to see him cover the British mystics and Christian poets so thoroughly. He is convincing on where the Church has failed, and the reasons for the fall off in Church attendance since the 1960s. He also make a good argument that belief in some kind of higher power has not faded, and ties things up with a case that Christianity is the form which such otherwise inchoate belief should take.
Highly recommended as a book which takes our Christian heritage and our potential Christian present seriously.
Omrani's reach is wide and the book is compellingly erudite. I was particularly excited to see him cover the British mystics and Christian poets so thoroughly. He is convincing on where the Church has failed, and the reasons for the fall off in Church attendance since the 1960s. He also make a good argument that belief in some kind of higher power has not faded, and ties things up with a case that Christianity is the form which such otherwise inchoate belief should take.
Highly recommended as a book which takes our Christian heritage and our potential Christian present seriously.
October 24, 2025
A lovely book, reminding us of what not to loose and what to be grateful for. In the preface the author sets out this is a continuation of Tom Hollands masterful Dominion applied to Britain specifically and this has been achieved. My one gripe is that as with all historical books that try to explain the present and future, the chapters actually addressing said present and future are rather brief, one could argue it would be better not to include those chapters and let the reader infer.
November 22, 2025
This is brilliant and a good read for believers or non-believers alike. It shows how Christianity shaped our country: the abolition of slavery, setting up of charitable giving and foundations and even our laws. An important part of history not to be forgotten.
June 16, 2025
A useful analysis of Christianity’s important role in England without being too preachy or self-help-y.
July 20, 2025
Remarkable readable yet erudite survey of the contribution of Christianity to English life and culture.
In the end I found the sheer amount of information rather wearing.
In the end I found the sheer amount of information rather wearing.
August 30, 2025
I found this tedious - but Omrani does show very thoroughly how England has a Christian heritage which cannot and should not be ignored.
September 23, 2025
Very good!
Walks through the profound influence of the Christian faith on England.
Walks through the profound influence of the Christian faith on England.
November 28, 2025
Don't judge a book by its title. This book could perhaps have been more accurately titled "The debt England (and through it the world) owes to Christianity how this has been forgotten"
December 13, 2025
Fascinating
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