The Collective Action Framing of Conservative Christian Groups in Britain

Abstract

Conservative Christian groups in Britain have been involved in a number of high profile and controversial policy issues. Scholarly research into the political activities of such groups, however, remains limited. This article addresses this lacuna by exploring the collective action frames deployed by conservative Christian groups in their attempts to influence national level policies and debates. Drawing on elite interviews with group representatives, it argues that these frames have been constructed largely in response to the pressures of secularisation, but have, in many respects, become secularised themselves.

Do Religious Justifications Distort Policy Debates? Some Empirics on the Case for Public Reason

“…Academic research into the way in which religious actors engage in the use of discourse covers a diversity of themes. Examples of the breadth of coverage here include religious and secular discourse in Islamic societies (An-Na'im 2005; Pfeifer 2019), Islamist discourses on human rights (Carle 2005), conflicts over evolutionary theory (Silva 2018), the discourse of Buddhist nationalist groups (Walton and Jerryson 2016), the discourse of South Korean evangelical Christians (Yi et al 2017), religion in Swedish public discourse (Lövheim and Axner 2011), abortion discourse in Singapore (Tan 2010), the use of religious discourse on the Internet (Karaflogka 2002), the rhetoric of the U.S. Christian Right (Jelen 2005; Wilson and Djupe 2020), the discourse of conservative Christian groups in the UK (Kettell 2016a; 2016b), as well as religious discourse on sexual rights (Hunt 2010; Thomas and Olson 2012), assisted dying, and same-sex marriage (Djupe, Lewis, and Jelen 2016; Kettell 2018).…”

The shifting Christian right discourse on religious freedom in Australia

“…We note “normative reflection must begin from historically specific circumstances because there is nothing but what is, the given, the situated interest in justice, from which to start” (Young, 1990, 5). Thus, we sought to find historical (e.g., Maddox, 2005; Furse-Roberts, 2010; Piggin and Lindner, 2020; Jones, 2021), contextual (Hilliard, 1995; Melleuish, 2002; Bouma, 2011, 2012; Maddox, 2014, 2015; Grube and van Acker, 2017; Brennan, 2019; Wilson and Djupe, 2020), socio-political (Young, 1990; Thornton and Luker, 2010; Nelson et al ., 2012; Lewis, 2017; Ngo, 2017; Richardson-Self, 2018; Lopes, 2019; Ezzy et al ., 2021 a , 2021 b ), legal (Sharp, 2011; Ball, 2013; Evans and Read, 2020), and comparative (Gin, 2012; Kettell, 2017; Malloy, 2017; Brown, 2019) scholarship to situate the contemporary claim to injustice. Second, we sought to understand the explicit and tacit meanings of ACR actors' statements.…”

Christian Interest Groups in A Religiously Changing United Kingdom: Issues, Strategies, Influence

“…Yet there may also be specific factors associated with the UK's complex socio-religious context. Declining comprehension of Christian concepts is likely to make explicitly religious language less effective: Kettell (2017) found that secularization had presented such challenges to conservative Christian groups, leading them to instead frame their arguments around the secular theme of religious liberty. Even so, as highlighted above, the embeddedness of Christian ideas and themes within UK culture may serve to offset some of the challenges.…”

“…While religious groups might be expected to fall into the latter category, they do also have sectional interests that might inform their policy work (Warner 2000;Gill 2001). Finally, and as already mentioned, some prior attention has been paid to socially conservative Christian campaign groups (Kettell 2016a(Kettell , 2017). Yet, although such organizations may be especially visible, it is not known to what extent they are representative of Christian interest groups more broadly in the UK.…”

“…Certainly, confidence and trust in the church and its ability to answer social problems are relatively low, while a growing proportion of British people are opposed to religious leaders attempting to influence government decisions (Field 2014a; Clements 2015). Religious interests and arguments that might have in the past been widely comprehensible are likely to be less resonant today—reflecting a more broadly observed deterioration in “religious literacy” (Dinham and Francis 2015), and potentially presenting challenges for how these groups “frame” their policy demands (Kettell 2017). Churches may plausibly retreat into a narrower range of public policy concerns as they seek to stem the flow of weakening social authority.…”