THAT there is a growing sense of alienation amongst the white working class is evident; what is not sufficiently recognised is their sense of betrayal by the church.
At one time the Church of England and other mainstream churches stood at the heart of many working-class communities. No longer; over the past half-century many working-class people have come to feel that the church no longer connects with them or their values. They have become alienated from the church, and more importantly from Christ.
In industrial Britain, the parish church or chapel offered moral structure, social events, education, and welfare before the welfare state existed. Churches, chapels and missions were deeply intertwined with labour movements and mutual aid. Nonconformist chapels in particular played a major role in organising communities and promoting self-respect and social reform.
As industries and communities declined from the 1970s onwards, church attendance also fell. In response the church chose, instead of evangelism, to close, merge or repurpose once-busy churches. The community anchor disappeared. For many, this felt like an abandonment of the very people who had once built and sustained the church.
The Church of England in particular has become increasingly perceived as a middle-class, educated, southern institution, more comfortable in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster than in the working-class parishes of Middlesbrough or Bradford.
Clergy today are too often seen as representing liberal, metropolitan values. People who speak the language of inclusivity and internationalism rather than concerns about stability, family and belonging. When bishops speak out on national issues, Brexit, immigration or race their tone often reflects liberal metropolitan priorities rather than the concerns of ordinary parishioners. The church hierarchy is often seen as distant, focusing on abstract moral or global issues such as climate change, diversity and international aid, rather than local deprivation, addiction or unemployment.
The church has moved from preaching sin and salvation to lecturing on social justice. Many working-class people have felt alienated by the shift from traditional moral teaching to progressive activism. Traditional values have been neglected, if not dismissed as belonging to a bygone age. Working-class communities often value tradition, patriotism and moral clarity; all too often they don’t get it from the church.
The church’s growing emphasis on progressive causes, gender identity, multiculturalism, migration and climate activism, is out of step with the priorities of the white working class. For many the church no longer offers transcendent meaning and purpose, instead it offers social commentary.
In the face of rapid demographic and cultural change many white working-class communities perceive the church as embracing multiculturalism and interfaith outreach in a way that neglects their own identity and traditions.
While the church preaches inclusion, many working-class people feel their own culture and heritage, often shaped by Christianity, is being erased. The church’s willingness to accommodate other faiths or secularism is rightly seen as a retreat rather than a defence of their identity.
For many in the white working class, even those who don’t attend church, Christianity remains a cultural marker of Britishness, morality, and continuity. The church’s movement away from national rituals, patriotic symbols, and traditional liturgy feels like a loss of identity.
When the church removes historic hymns, alters the language of prayer, or downplays Christian festivals in the name of inclusivity, it can feel like a rejection of the very people who see Christianity as part of their national and family heritage.
The Church of England is still the established church, and its leaders often speak in ways aligned with the government or elite consensus. To many white working-class people who distrust Westminster, this makes the church seem like part of the same establishment that ignores them.
Where once the church stood beside miners, dockers, and factory workers, it now seems to speak to urban professionals about abstract causes. For many, the church stopped being a moral anchor and community ally and became just another elite institution preaching down to them.
The irony is that the church’s own decline mirrors the decline of the working-class communities it once served. Both have suffered from deindustrialisation, cultural fragmentation and loss of confidence.
To rebuild trust the church would need to:
Recommit to local presence and pastoral care: this means a stopping expenditure on the concerns of a tiny but vocal minority who are concerned with woke causes, and release some of the church’s money to provide pastors and buildings for the people of Britain.
Defend the moral and cultural heritage of the communities that built Britain. A recovery of appreciation, even pride, in the achievements of British Christians over the centuries to replace the guilt-ridden handwringing of too many ecclesiastical pronouncements.
Speak with empathy about class and place. There is nothing wrong with being working class and coming from the English Midlands and North East, or Wishaw and Paisley in Scotland’s Central Belt. Unless the church speaks to people in areas like these with accents like these, it is no longer the church.
Above all, rediscover a theology rooted in the whole of Scripture, including all the ‘problematic’ bits, rather than Guardian editorials. We are in the midst of spiritual warfare which cannot be fought with woke weapons or middle-class niceness. Only a return to the challenging yet encouraging gospel of Jesus Christ can we hope to rebuild Christian communities in the heartlands of Britain.
The betrayal felt by the white working class towards the UK church is about abandonment, cultural alienation and loss of voice. But above all it is about failing to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the people of Britain in language they understand and in a way which shows that they are valued for who and what they are.
