Jun 23, 2026 · 45 min · 11 segments
The idea that our country is Christian - in the historical sense of havinng been comprehensivlely formed by the faith - is sometimes taken as a kind of Christian nationalist dog whistle. But it…
Bijan OmraniGuest
Nick SpencerHostNo entities detected.
One of the things I like most about this book was how much time it spent in the Anglo-Saxon world, which is a place that I find very conducive.
We're going to go to the beginning of England when Pope Gregory sends over his missionaries to England at the end of the 6th century.
The things laid down then still have extraordinary ramification for the shaping of the society and the nation in which we live.
And you go back to the 6th century, the whole idea of nationhood in the context of these islands had not been developed.
And it was into this cultural, ideological and practical vacuum that Christianity, in terms of the more organised form which came over with Augustine and the missionaries that arrived in 597, started to put down the boundaries, the markers, the ideas, the fundamental notions about how a nation could exist, how laws could exist, as well as the whole ideas of spirituality and religion.
So it was a time of freedom and ferment in which foundations could be laid down.
There are lots of different nations, for want of a better word, people groups that are inhabiting the land we now call England at the time.
The idea of a coherent English church is something that actually predates the idea of coherent English nationhood, but it's something that seems to fecundate it.
If there can be one church, then ultimately there can be one people behind that church in these islands.
And this is something that very much plays to the imagination and the vision of of one of the great foundational Christian scholars of these islands and indeed of the whole Christian church, the Venerable Bede, who lived from the 670s until about 735.
And he wrote one of the most important works, the history of the English church.
One of the things I like most about this book was how much time it spent in the Anglo-Saxon world, which is a place that I find very conducive.
We're going to go to the beginning of England when Pope Gregory sends over his missionaries to England at the end of the 6th century.
The things laid down then still have extraordinary ramification for the shaping of the society and the nation in which we live.
And you go back to the 6th century, the whole idea of nationhood in the context of these islands had not been developed.
And it was into this cultural, ideological and practical vacuum that Christianity, in terms of the more organised form which came over with Augustine and the missionaries that arrived in 597, started to put down the boundaries, the markers, the ideas, the fundamental notions about how a nation could exist, how laws could exist, as well as the whole ideas of spirituality and religion.
So it was a time of freedom and ferment in which foundations could be laid down.
There are lots of different nations, for want of a better word, people groups that are inhabiting the land we now call England at the time.
The idea of a coherent English church is something that actually predates the idea of coherent English nationhood, but it's something that seems to fecundate it.
If there can be one church, then ultimately there can be one people behind that church in these islands.
And this is something that very much plays to the imagination and the vision of of one of the great foundational Christian scholars of these islands and indeed of the whole Christian church, the Venerable Bede, who lived from the 670s until about 735.
And he wrote one of the most important works, the history of the English church.
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