Can you describe the needs you were witnessing from your context that led to the development of Kingdom Over Nation? Min. Hoyte: This resource was born less in a study than in a room. I had been invited to speak at a regional gathering of church leaders in England and, on the journey there, I passed street after street draped in national flags. The sight stayed with me not because national symbols are inherently troubling, but because of the ambiguity they carry. On one level, they reflect people’s legitimate love of place, people, belonging and need for particularity. Yet they also raise deeper questions: whose belonging? Which people? Who is included within our understanding of “us”? I also could not ignore and found myself wondering whether legitimate social and economic anxieties were being harnessed by political actors who were skilled at naming people’s fears while remaining invested in many of the systems that produced them. When I arrived, the need that glared at me was not ideological certainty but pastoral concern. Church leaders were navigating congregations in which faithful Christians had reached very different conclusions about immigration, national identity, political responsibility, and social change. Many were asking how they could disciple people through these differences without reducing complex questions to partisan slogans or allowing political loyalties to become more formative than Christian faith. At its heart, the challenge and need were theological. Christians are called to love their neighbours whilst seeking the welfare of the communities in which they live and positively contributing to public life. Yet Scripture also warns repeatedly against giving ultimate allegiance to powers, identities, and kingdoms that belong beneath the Lordship of Christ. The question is not whether Christians should care about their nation. The question is whether love of nation has become disordered, our modern day golden calves and whether that disorder is being named and addressed in our congregations. A second need emerged from recognising that discipleship is never neutral. If the church is not intentionally forming people in the way of Christ, other forces will inevitably shape their imagination. Political movements, media and social media ecosystems, cultural narratives, and digital algorithms all compete to tell us who we are, whom we should fear, and where our loyalties should lie. Kingdom Over Nation invites Christians to pause and ask a deeper question, what is forming my vision of the world, and does it reflect the values of the Kingdom of God? Finally, there was a need for the wider church to think together. Questions of nationhood, identity, power, and belonging are too significant to be addressed from a single tradition alone. One of the gifts of the ecumenical movement is that it enables Christians to draw upon the wisdom of different traditions, each bringing distinctive insights into discipleship, justice, reconciliation, mission, and public witness. Kingdom Over Nation was born from a conviction that the church is stronger when it discerns these questions together. Congratulations on already achieving international engagement! Can you describe some of the churches and people already engaging? Min. Hoyte: What the engagement tells me is that this was never going to remain an England-shaped conversation and we are grateful for that. The resource has already found its way into conversations across multiple continents, cultures, and ecclesial traditions. Among those engaging are churches and leaders connected to the United States, South Africa, the Netherlands, Pakistan, India, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. What encourages us most is not simply the international reach, but the fact that Christians from very different theological traditions, histories, and political contexts recognise that they are wrestling with similar questions. That recognition is itself a form of ecumenical gift. As I have reflected on this engagement, I have also become increasingly aware of the limits of my own context. I write from England, from a society shaped by democratic freedoms and institutions that many Christians around the world cannot take for granted. That reality requires humility. Questions of nationhood, belonging, and political responsibility are not experienced uniformly across the global church, and I am grateful that the ecumenical movement provides us with the frameworks and relationships to listen across those differences. For some peoples, national identity is inseparable from struggles for liberation, independence, and the recovery of dignity after colonialism. For others, the nation-state has been a source of exclusion, violence, or systematic oppression. Some Christians worship from positions of cultural majority; others live as minorities, migrants, displaced peoples, or communities facing persecution. The Faith and Order tradition has long reminded us that our unity is not uniformity, and these varied experiences of nationhood are precisely the kind of diversity that the ecumenical movement is called to hold together rather than flatten. What has encouraged me most about the international engagement with this resource is that Christians from vastly different contexts recognise this deeper question. Beneath the differences in political systems, histories, and cultures lies a common discipleship challenge: how do we participate faithfully in the life of our nation while remembering that our truest citizenship is found in the Kingdom of God? What are your hopes for how your message will reach even more churches and individuals? Min. Hoyte: My deepest hope is that Christians would pause long enough to ask: what has formed my personal and political convictions? Not simply what do I believe, but why do I believe it? What has shaped my understanding of nation, identity, neighbour, belonging, power, and responsibility? Is it Scripture, prayer, worship, and the wisdom of the church across the centuries? Or has my imagination been formed primarily by political tribes, media narratives and cultural outrage, cultural anxieties, and digital ecosystems that have no ultimate accountability to the Gospel? Kingdom Over Nation does not seek to tell people what political conclusions they should reach. Rather, it invites Christians to examine whether their instincts, assumptions, and loyalties have been shaped by the values of the Kingdom of God or by competing allegiances. It is, at its heart, a tool for discipleship and discernment. I also hope churches recover the confidence to draw from their own theological inheritance. We have faced these questions before, and the early Christians refused to declare Caesar as Lord because they recognised that ultimate allegiance belonged to Christ alone. The Barmen Declaration emerged in response to attempts to subordinate the church to nationalist ideology and reminded the church, at great cost, that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God to whom we must listen and obey. These are not merely historical footnotes. They are testimonies that the church has navigated faithfully before and can do so again. My hope is that churches become places where people can wrestle honestly with these questions: where difficult conversations are held with grace, where disagreement does not become division, and where discipleship runs deeper than political affiliation. In a world increasingly shaped by polarisation and tribalism, I believe the church has a unique opportunity and responsibility to model a different kind of belonging. One rooted not in ideological agreement, but in our shared identity as members of the body of Christ. I also hope that the ecumenical family continues to speak with a distinctive voice in public life. The World Council of Churches has a long tradition of prophetic witness on questions of justice, peace, and human dignity. At a time when nationalist movements are reshaping political landscapes across many regions of the world, that witness is urgently needed. The church is not called to be a chaplain to any nation’s ambitions; it is called to bear witness to the Kingdom of God. What was the most rewarding aspect for you when putting these resources together? Min. Hoyte: One of the most rewarding aspects was witnessing the richness of the wider church as a millennial Christian leader under 35. The contributors brought together perspectives shaped by Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, Catholic, and ecumenical traditions, each offering insights that strengthened the whole resource. What became clear throughout the process was that no single tradition possesses the entirety of the church’s wisdom. Each brought distinctive gifts, biblical scholarship, pastoral sensitivity, prophetic challenge, and practical discipleship. Together, they produced something far stronger than any one voice could have achieved alone. The other deeply rewarding aspect was seeing the prophetic, pastoral, and public dimensions of the church’s witness held together. These are too often separated from one another. The prophetic voice without pastoral rootedness becomes strident and the pastoral voice without prophetic challenge can become accommodating. Yet Scripture refuses such divisions. The prophets addressed public life, challenged unjust systems, called people back to covenant faithfulness and cared deeply for the spiritual wellbeing of God’s people. Kingdom Over Nation attempts to hold those dimensions together, encouraging Christians to think theologically about public life while remaining rooted in discipleship, worship, and pastoral care. There is also something deeply personal in this work for me. I believe the church in England and perhaps across much of the Western world is at a moment of reckoning. The political and cultural pressures on Christian communities are intensifying. The temptation to align with partisan movements, to find security in national or ideological identity, is real. Kingdom Over Nation a contribution, however small, to helping the church navigate that moment with faithfulness, integrity, and hope. What can your ecumenical family pray for you as you continue to hone prophetic messages for Churches Together? Min. Hoyte: Please pray that we do not lose our prophetic imagination. There is always a temptation within ecumenical work to settle for the safest statement, the most carefully balanced formulation that offends no one and therefore challenges no one. I understand why, unity is precious, and the ecumenical movement has learned through long experience how easily it can fracture. But faithfulness sometimes requires us to ask difficult questions, challenge entrenched assumptions, and speak uncomfortable truths with humility, with love, and without apology. Pray that the church would continue to cultivate hospitality, neighbourliness, and reconciliation in an increasingly fragmented world. Polarisation thrives where relationships are absent. The Gospel offers a different vision: one in which strangers become neighbours, and enemies become brothers and sisters in Christ. That vision does not emerge automatically and must intentionally be taught, practised, and lived in congregations, communities, and across the dividing lines of culture, class, and nationality. Pray also for church leaders. Many are serving communities where political and cultural divisions are becoming increasingly visible and increasingly painful. Pray that they would have both the courage and the tools to disciple people through disagreement and help them to become mature followers of Christ whose primary allegiance is to God’s Kingdom. Pray that people can hold their political convictions without being held captive by them. And finally, please pray that the church resists every attempt to be co-opted by partisan ideologies, whether from the left or the right, whether from nationalist movements or from any other political project that would reduce the Gospel to a cultural or ideological programme. The church belongs to Jesus Christ. Before we are citizens of any nation, members of any political movement, or participants in any cultural project, we are members of the body of Christ. My prayer is that the Church in England, and across the global ecumenical family would continue to live faithfully into that calling, and bear witness in every generation to the Kingdom that has no end. | 
