Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible by Nick Spencer was launched last night in a private event at Westminster Abbey.

The Very Revd Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster, welcomed guests from the worlds of publishing, media, academia and theology, as well as Nick Spencer’s family, friends and colleagues to the reception in the Jerusalem Chamber. It was in this room, some 400 years earlier, that committees had met to collaborate on a new translation of the Bible. Their work was eventually to contribute to the great text we now know as the King James Version of the Bible.

An appropriate venue, then, for the launch of a book which celebrates “the Bible’s immense influence on national politics: from its role in the formation of national identity and in setting limits on kingship in Anglo-Saxon times, through its impact on ideas of tolerance, democracy and equality, to its subtle influence on the formation of the Welfare State.”

Historian Tom Holland, who provided a commendation for the book, spoke briefly, noting that of the three books he has written tracing, respectively, the Roman, Greek and Christian origins of much of what we like to think of as modernity, the latter was the one to generate what he described as “a full post bag”.

“Many secularists,” he noted in a New Statesman article at the time, “are still determined to regard all religions as being essentially the same and to deny the glaring fact of their own descent from a specific religious tradition. Hence their scrabbling around for…any heritage,…just so long as it is not Christian.”

Nick Spencer’s book, he said, demonstrates just how great is the debt that Western politics owes to Christianity.

Nick then thanked the Dean, the Abbey staff, his publishers and the many people who had been instrumental in helping both to form and to improve the text and bring it to publication.

“One of the key messages of the book”, he said, is that “it is possible to read the Bible politically in almost any way, but that does not mean that all readings are equally good or true or accurate or admirable.

“Hopefully, by telling the story of the long tradition of Christian Political thought in Britain, Freedom and Order will not only remind us that it is there, but also help us to avoid some of the more egregious examples in the future.”

Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible is published by Hodder and Stoughton and can be purchased here or from all good bookshops.

Nick Spencer recently wrote a series of four Current Debates on the Theos website focussing on different themes from the book: Tolerance, Democracy, Equality, and Nationhood.