Theology at the Intersection of Mission and Christian Nationalism: Exploring Attitudes Among British Christians in an Age of Anti-Migration Anxiety

This essay examines how contemporary forms of Christian nationalism shape some British Christians’ theological attitudes toward migration and mission. In an age marked by deepening anti-migration anxiety, the paper explores how theological narratives are employed both to justify exclusion and to inspire hospitality. Drawing on qualitative data from church leaders and congregations, as well as postcolonial and missiological frameworks, it interrogates the persistence of cultural superiority and how national identity continues to inform ecclesial imagination in Britain. It also argues that Christian nationalism distorts the missional vocation of the church by aligning discipleship with the defence of borders rather than the welcome of strangers. In contrast, it proposes an alternative theological vision grounded in the Trinitarian life of God—a communion of mutuality and openness—and in the incarnational model of Christ, who crosses boundaries to reconcile humanity. By reimagining mission as participation in divine hospitality, the paper calls for a renewed ecclesial identity that resists nationalist ideologies and embodies the gospel’s call to love the stranger in a postcolonial, plural Britain.