LONDON – Remarks made last week by Daniel Kruger, Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, have drawn sharp reactions from the UK Pagan community following a parliamentary debate on the future of the Church of England.
In a speech lamenting the Church’s internal divisions, Kruger claimed the institution is “riven by deep disputes over doctrine and governance,” and “literally leaderless,” with the process for choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury “unclear, confused and contended.” He then made a broader claim about the state of Britain itself:
“The country itself reflects that—unclear in its doctrines and its governance, profoundly precarious, chronically exposed to threats from without and within. It is at risk economically, culturally, socially and, I would say, morally.”
Westminster Palace in London [Photo Credit: Thomas Dahlstrøm Nielsen CCA-SA 4.0]
Kruger went on to identify what he sees as two major threats to Christianity in the UK. The first, he said, is Islam—though he expressed some qualified respect for its internal coherence. The second, however, was more nebulous and alarming in tone:
“It is the other religion that worries me even more. This other religion is a hybrid of old and new ideas, and it does not have a proper name. I do not think that ‘woke’ does justice to its seriousness. It is a combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism, all mashed up into a deeply mistaken and deeply dangerous ideology of power that is hostile to the essential objects of our affections and our loyalties: families, communities and nations. It is explicitly and most passionately hostile to Christianity as the wellspring of the west. That religion, unlike Islam, must simply be destroyed, at least as a public doctrine. It must be banished from public life—from schools and universities, and from businesses and public services. It needs to be sent back to the fringes of eccentricity, like the modern druids who invest Stonehenge in my constituency with a theology that is seen as mad but harmless because its followers are so few and no one serious takes them seriously.”
The Pagan community responded with a mixture of confusion, concern, and critique. Several individuals noted the vagueness of Kruger’s target: was he referring to contemporary Paganism, Druidry, New Age spirituality, or simply conflating a range of cultural trends under a single imagined threat?
Kruger, an Evangelical Christian convert and old Etonian, is the son of South African property developer, restaurateur, and television personality Prue Leith. Though his voting record suggests relative moderation on welfare, he remains aligned with his party’s hardline stance on immigration.
The debate was held in a largely empty House, but had contributions from Labour’s Jim McMahon, Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, who steered the debate back to the importance of parish life, and Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford. The latter has come to wider public attention on a number of occasions, including expressing admiration for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2022 on suspicion of indecent assault, sexual assault, rape, abuse of position of trust, and misconduct in public office. He was not charged. The Charges did not meet the prosecution threshold and he remains as Romford’s MP.
Some Pagans questioned whether Kruger’s language about “destroying” a religion might constitute hate speech. However, Members of Parliament are protected under “Parliamentary privilege,” allowing wide latitude in speech made within the House of Commons. Since Kruger’s comments on this presumed religion are so inchoate, a complaint is unlikely to gain much traction. While censure is theoretically possible, legal action is unlikely, particularly given the inchoate nature of Kruger’s remarks.
One Pagan respondent, who asked to remain anonymous, said they had met Kruger on a constituency matter and found him “more reflective than one might assume.”
Below are some selected reactions from the Pagan community:
“Today he’s an outlier, tomorrow he’s leading a bunch of nitwits speaking in tongues over a new Prime Minister. Bit of an exaggeration, but we’re always just five years behind the U.S. in most things—and religion is routinely used as a vehicle for violence. His views are by no means unusual, especially in secular helping professions. Some extremely wealthy Evangelicals are enmeshed in all kinds of philanthropy—not to help people thrive, but to force their extremism into everyday functioning.”
— John Smith, Pagan
“How absolutely bizarre. Is he confusing Pagans with Vikings?”
— Ali Baker Brooks, academic
“Does he mean modern Paganism? Taken as a whole, it might be described as a hybrid of old and new ideas. But is he trying to make it illegal?”
— Lucya Szachnowski, Pagan Witch
“It sounds like he’s not talking about Paganism at all, but using the word to describe everything he doesn’t like: secularism, environmentalism, New Age beliefs, atheism, leftist politics. It’s the same bogeyman ideology Jordan Peterson types call ‘Cultural Marxism.’ This imagined religion is just a catch-all for their anxieties about modern life.”
— Dr. Mark Fitzpatrick, Pagan scholar and poet
“A combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism? Sounds like a perfectly fine cocktail of ideas to me. I’m far more afraid of ideologies that exclude nature and nonhuman life from divinity.”
— Caroline Wise, Pagan researcher
“He does live in a peculiar reality bubble! I’m fascinated by the absurdist notion of his ‘Cult of Modernism.’ Some matters are far too serious to get serious about. O do not meddle in the affairs of Bards, for we are subtle and swift to satire.”
— Tim Hawthorn, Druid
“The vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my vision’s greatest enemy.”
— William Blake, quoted by Nick Ford, author
The full transcript of the parliamentary debate is available in Hansard.
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