A House Divided Cannot Stand

“And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”
— Mark 3:25

Andy Burnham’s win of 55% in Makerfield will be read in different ways depending on where you sit. For Labour there is the exciting prospect of its own regicide with the King of the North replacing Our Keir. For the political Right, well that’s another matter. Another seat lost because the Right remains more interested in splintering than in presenting a united front against the governing project. I’ve seen this elsewhere, it’s all too familiar pattern that has dominated my life when it comes to Christian traditionalism.

Traditionalists and the political Right like nothing better than a circular firing squad. One faction accuses another of insufficient purity and heterodoxy. Lord, I’m so bored with it all! My first experience of such silliness happened in 1989 as an undergrad when I handed a Northern Ireland presbyterian a cheap WH Smith Christmas card which happened to have picture of the Virgin Mary. We were both on the student chaplaincy committee. Anyway as she opened the card her eyes widened with horror - you’d have thought I’d robed her grandmother. Her visceral reaction stayed with me. She kept banging on about the bloody card as if I’d purposely tried to trigger her with “Marian devotion”. The irony is that I thought we were pretty much on the same side especially as we resisted the chaplain leanings towards Don Cupitt’s Anglican uber-heterodoxy. (In happier times she and I nicknamed the infamous theologian ‘Don Stupid’.)

Personal animosities harden into permanent vetoes. In the Westminster melodrama Lowe and Farage clearly hate each other more than they hate Starmer. The result of their animosity is predictable: the centre-Left or progressive forces advance through the gaps the Right has obligingly left open. Makerfield is simply the latest local illustration of a national habit.

The same dynamic operates, with different vocabulary, on the traditional, small-o orthodox side of British Christianity. As I said earlier, I’m so tired of it. Here the shared conviction is that the historic faith must be defended against revisionist theology, progressive ethics, and the slow erosion of doctrine. Evangelicals and Catholics (including Anglo-Catholics) often agree on the diagnosis. They diverge sharply on the cure, and the divergence frequently hardens into mutual suspicion that weakens both. Online its terrible. You now get “supposedly” faithful conviction Christians (yes, Christians) trolling each other on Twitter/X to point score.

Each side can dredge historical wounds: the Reformation itself, the Oxford Movement, the battles over ritual and authority in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and more recent disagreements over who can and can’t be ordained and of course (drum roll the.. liturgy). What better way to serve the liturgy than to randomly comment to online strangers on how your take worship is superior than theirs. Some people need to get a life and get offline.

Sustained collaboration on the ground is rare. Opportunities for shared witness are missed because one side fears being compromised by the other’s distinctives. Energy that could be spent commending the faith to a sceptical culture is instead spent policing the boundaries between fellow traditionalists.

I have to say another iteration of this is where Christian leaders (often evangelicals but not exclusively) play winner-takes-all. I have come across magisterial clergy who cannot share power due to their self-importance. They glide from church to church on air or royalty. You approach them with, “Let’s work on this together on this,” and they give you that patronising look which is basically, “You are not worthy to stand in my pulpit,” or (actual recent quote) “My people will deal with that.” I call them, Alpha Males. Tom Hollander’s sitcom “Rev” brilliantly captured this when the neighbouring vicar is permitted to use his clapped out church for a few weeks. Of course, the handsome vicar is hugely successful and has a massive following. When the service starts and the rapper kicks off a startled Rev Adam in his dusty cassock asks what do they want him (the actual host vicar) to do, and he is instructed to “Stand by the smoothie bar.” Again, I had versions of this.

The political Right is now repeatedly choosing suspicion and paying the price in seats and influence. The Church’s traditionalists have often chosen the same posture and paid in diminished public credibility and fragmented institutional strength. There is no neat organisational “quick-fix” for either problem. Political coalitions and ecclesial friendships both require habits that are currently deemed unpallatable: the willingness to fight the main battle first and the secondary skirmishes later, and the ability to recognise that your sharpest critics inside the broad tradition may still be more useful allies than your opponents outside it. It’s not rocket science!

Until those habits reappear, the pattern will continue I fear. Another seat will fall. Andy will enter No.10 all smiles and swagger. In the Church we don’t have byelections but quietly opportunities for common witness will pass us by.

The house will remain divided, and therefore standing less securely than it might.

Share Holy Disruption