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A multifaceted exploration of how evangelical politico-legal activism in England is contributing to the secularizing forces it seeks to challengeOver the past two decades, a growing number of Christians in England have gone to court to enforce their right to religious liberty. Funded by conservative lobby groups and influenced by the legal strategies of their American peers, these claimants—registrars who conscientiously object to performing the marriages of same-sex couples, say, or employees asking for exceptions to uniform policies that forbid visible crucifixes—highlight the uneasy truce between law and religion in a country that maintains an established Church but is wary of public displays of religious conviction.Representing God charts the changing place of public Christianity in England through the rise of Christian political activism and litigation. Based on two years of fieldwork split between a conservative Christian lobby group and a conservative evangelical church, Méadhbh McIvor explores the ideas and contested reception of this ostensibly American-inspired legal rhetoric. She argues that legal challenges aimed at protecting "Christian values" ultimately jeopardize those values, as moralities woven into the fabric of English national life are filtered from their "idian context and rebranded as the niche interests of a cultural minority. By framing certain moral practices as specifically Christian, these activists present their religious convictions as something increasingly set apart from broader English culture, thereby hastening the secularization they seek to counter.Representing God offers a unique look at how Christian politico-legal activism in England simultaneously responds to and constitutes the religious life of a nation

AbstractThe increasing visibility of sexualities beyond heterosexual, gay/lesbian, and bisexual is often associated with progressive politics and the questioning of heteronormativity. Yet non‐majoritarian sexualities can also include self‐identifications premised upon an opposition to LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion, including those who identify as "ex‐gay." Drawing on fieldwork with evangelical Christian activists in London, UK, this paper uses a court case in which the "legality" of ex‐gay sexuality was contested to discuss the law's simultaneous desire and inability to render contested identities legally legible. In seeking recognition as a sexual minority, self‐described ex‐gay evangelicals reveal the inadequacy of modern law's efforts to regulate difference as either "innate" or "chosen," thus upsetting the terms of the hetero‐secular legal gaze even as they embrace heterosexual supremacy. As such, this activism, which is typically analyzed in terms of evangelicalism's commitment to heteronormativity, works to denaturalize the concept of sexual orientation(s)—including, I argue, the heterosexuality ex‐gay Christians pursue.

Although human rights are often framed as the result of centuries of Western Christian thought, many English evangelicals are wary of the U.K.'s recent embrace of rights-based law. Yet this wariness does not preclude their use of human rights instruments in the courts. Drawing upon fieldwork with Christian lobbyists and lawyers in London, I argue that evangelical activists instrumentalise rights-based law so as to undermine the universalist claims on which they rest. By constructing themselves as a marginalised counterpublic whose rights are frequently 'trumped' by the competing claims of others, they hope to convince their fellow Britons that a society built upon the logic of equal rights cannot hope to deliver the human flourishing it promises. Given the salience of contemporary political conservatism, I call for further ethnographic research into counterpublic movements, and offer my interlocutors' instrumentalisation of human rights as a critique of the inconsistencies of secular law.

This introduction calls for an 'anthropology of grace', arguing that an ethnographically informed theory of grace will offer valuable interpretive tools not only to scholars of religion but also to anthropologists of law, economics, and power. Focusing on four interlinked dimensions of grace—its Christianity, sociality, temporality, and potentiality—we highlight the relevance of this concept to local and global politics, particularly in encounters across difference. Building on analyses of what has been called 'the Christianity of anthropology', we suggest not only that Euro-Christian scholarship is indebted to the idea of grace but that its explicit invocation can propel emerging debates on time, sociality, and progressive politics. An interrogation of this theo-political concept reveals submerged conceptual assumptions and sheds new light on anthropology's decades-old investment in reciprocity (and its discontents).