ABSTRACT
The chapter considers the interface between two phenomena: (i) post-war debates about the role of anti-Jewish Christian sentiment before and during the Holocaust, and (ii) the extent to which Christianity in contemporary Britain is in a state of flux, with a sharp decline in self-identification as Christian and a large constituency of ‘nominal Christians’ who forego traditional religious practice. It is suggested that among formal Christian organisations and clergy, there have been some serious (albeit conflicted) attempts to engage with the difficult history of Jewish-Christian relations, but that amidst discourses that associate Christianity primarily with cultural heritage and ‘British values’, there has been much less engagement with this topic. This is an important and problematic dynamic given that the politicians who have, during the 2010s, championed ideas of Britain’s Christian heritage have also driven forward Holocaust remembrance initiatives that are largely disengaged from critical appraisals of Christian history. The final section of the chapter considers these issues with reference to the growing body of (particularly young) people no longer identifying with Christianity at all. There are challenging questions over the extent to which anti-Jewish sentiment has transferred into secular domains and how this can be addressed, but the non-religious are also important for understanding a context in which Holocaust remembrance activities have gained their own patterns of sacralisation in contemporary Britain.
