The modern world is often said to have turned its back on religious belief. But secular morality is rooted in Christianity and the two creeds should work together to resist the rise of populism

One of the things I have always found fascinating and maddening about Christianity is its political slipperiness. Is it basically progressive or is it basically reactionary? It is more progressive, more radical than any secular form of politics. As an undergraduate I was excited by the prophetic vision of universal peace and justice; it felt like a more benign version of the Marxism that one or two of my peers espoused, and more substantial than the vague socialism that almost all the rest of them subscribed to.

But how could one counter the argument that Christianity is essentially backward-looking? Its strongest forms are often defiantly opposed to certain liberal causes, and the Anglicanism that I vaguely affirmed was steeped in nostalgic traditionalism. Should one try to reform Christianity, which would make it more attractive to one’s liberal friends – or would that mean watering it down, reducing it to little more than a desire for political progress with a tinge of religiosity?

As a postgraduate student of theology, I found that liberal reformism was very much out of fashion. The sharpest thinkers strongly rejected liberal Protestantism, arguing that it merged the Gospel with Enlightenment rationalism.