Christian Concern: Inside the rise of a powerful evangelical lobby

Court cases, think-tank connections and opaque funding streams reveal how a Christian pressure group has become a central player in the UK’s culture-war politics.

Some of the Darlington nurses and their supporters. Pic: Christian Concern

In January this year, controversial lobby group Christian Concern made headlines after their clients purportedly won a court case against Darlington NHS Trust.

Representing eight female nurses, the group’s lawyers claimed that the Trust ‘forcing’ the nurses to share a dressing room with a transgender nurse (Rose Henderson) had victimised them and subjected them to harassment from Henderson. A judge rejected this claim, but said the Trust’s actions had “[violated] the dignity of the Claimants” and created “a hostile, humiliating and degrading environment.” Despite the judge’s rejection, Christian Concern claimed the case as an overall win.

This is not the first time Christian Concern have placed themselves front and centre of the so-called culture wars. Active for twenty years, their spokespeople are regularly platformed by mainstream news channels on political and emotive topics from LGBT marriage, abortion, and Islam, to the correct flavour of hot-cross buns.

Speaking about their encroachment into British politics, Stephen Evans, CEO of the National Secular Society, told The Lead: “We should all be concerned about the influence of religious fundamentalism. Much of the focus is rightly placed on Islamic fundamentalism, but there is also a strain of Christian nationalism that seeks to define national identity through a narrow or exclusionary interpretation of Christianity.

“With money from the American Christian right pouring into Europe, serious questions need to be asked about where influential think tanks and advocacy groups are receiving their funding – and what agendas may be travelling with it.”

Seeking to answer those questions, The Lead took a deep dive into Christian Concern’s past, present, and policies.

Who exactly are they?

Christian Concern’s founder is Andrea Minichiello Williams, a barrister who began her training at Cardiff University. While there, she established and ran a branch of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship [LCF]; a registered charity with more than 2,000 members, whose mission is to “retell the Jesus story through the medium of the legal profession.”

By 2007, Williams was the LCF’s policy director and had established two more companies – Christian Concern for Our Nation [CCFON] and the Christian Legal Centre – as well as the charity Faith, Truth & Hope, all of which represent evangelical Christians in the courts. These were joined over the next five years by Christian Concern Ltd (the trading arm of CCFON), and Wilberforce Publications which publishes and sells Christian books.

In interviews, Williams is keen to emphasise that the organisation is politically neutral but, in 2008, she held a key advisory role in ex-Conservative MP Nadine Dorries’ anti-abortion campaign. At the same time, Christian Concern campaigned against the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, opposed parts of the Equality Act, and advocated in favour of ‘conversion therapy’, and against same-gender marriage; all of which were championed by the Labour government.

The cases currently listed on their website make it clear that these issues remain at the forefront of their campaigning, and head of public policy Tim Dieppe’s political analysis shows considerably more approval for Reform than Labour.

A former hedge-fund manager with WHEB Asset Management, Dieppe quit in 2016 to work for Christian Concern. He has since become a regular guest on GB News. In his many interviews, Dieppe has said the government should ban the burqa and halal meat, that no-fault divorce has made it “too easy” to end a marriage, that Ramadan displays in shops “disrespect Christianity”, and has claimed (without evidence) that children are being taught about BDSM in primary school.

Dieppe is also a member of the New Issues Group [NIG]. Founded in 2012, the secretive parliamentary lobby group was exposed in 2023 by Hope Not Hate, who revealed its involvement in “opposing Islam through legislation”.

According to the Hope Not Hate investigation, Dieppe had been a member since 2014 and had opened a bank account for a company that was run by fellow NIG member, Baroness Cox. This company then accepted tens of thousands of pounds in donations from both UK-based conservative donors and US-based evangelical groups; money which Hope not Hate believed had been used to fund the NIG.

Both Dieppe and Cox denied that the NIG was anti-Islam, claiming it had been set up to provide legal protection to Muslim women in “unregistered Sharia marriages”.

“Their work is based on the assertion that progressive politics are responsible for the persecution of Christians.”

While the NIG is the most recent link between CCFON and conservative pressure groups, it is not the only one. Their wider network includes members of other lobby groups and powerful conservative think tanks.

In 2016, CCFON associate Rev. Lynda Rose co-authored a book with Baroness Cox which was published by Wilberforce Publications. Wilberforce’s other authors include Patricia Morgan, a former member of Tufton Street think tanks Civitas and the Center for Policy Studies. Tim Dieppe’s son Daniel is currently employed as a researcher for Civitas and, in 2022, attended Camp Vinson, a summer programme run by another Tufton Street think tank - The Institute of Economic Affairs [IEA].

Morgan now works for the Commission of Inquiry into Discrimination Against Christians [CIDAC] alongside multiple associates of CCFON. These include former CCFON barristers Paul Diamond and Christian Bogle, Rev. Rose, and Tony Ruczinski who runs the Coalition for Marriage.

Both their work and that of CCFON is based on the assertion that progressive politics are responsible for the persecution of Christians; a belief that is reflected in many of CCFON’s high-profile court cases. These include defending March 4 Life organiser Isobel Vaughan-Spruce after her arrest for “silently praying” inside an abortion clinic buffer zone, and challenging the dismissal of counsellor Gary McFarlane after he refused to provide sex therapy to same-gender couples.

These and the other 68 cases on their website (of which only 25 are labelled as a ‘win’) take considerable time and money to arrange, the source of which is not always clear.

Where does the money come from?

Dormant since inception, Christian Concern Limited’s accounts show a current bank balance of £0. The Christian Legal Centre shows a balance of around £25,000, and CCFON Limited has just over £27,000. Only the charity, Faith, Truth & Hope [FTH], appears to have the sort of income which could fund multiple legal actions, with a balance of £954,000.

The Darlington nurses taking their case to Number 10 last year. Pic: Christian Concern

A statement on the Christian Concern website advises visitors the company is “not a registered charity” and says “there is, however, a registered charity, named ‘Faith, Truth and Hope’ … which has generously (but not exclusively) supported aspects of Christian Concern’s work.” Not mentioned on the site is that Andrea Williams is both the founding member and a person with significant control of both CCFON and FTH.

The 2024 accounts for FTH show that £949,000 was passed onto CCFON as a grant, but none of it was listed in CCFON’s end of year statement. Audits for previous years show the same trend, with FTH donating almost £3.5 million (between 88 per cent and 99.1 per cent of its income) to CCFON since 2021, none of which is recorded in CCFON’s public accounts.

Williams has not responded to our request for comment.

The provenance of FTH’s vast wealth is mostly unknown, and its only recorded donors are the Christian Aid Foundation, the Nigel Vinson Charitable Trust (who have also donated to the NIG, CCFON, and fund the Vinson Centre), and the Street Foundation. Run by Richard Smith, a Conservative donor and the owner of 55 Tufton Street, the Foundation came under fire in 2024 when it was revealed that, despite existing to support young people with disabilities, 43 per cent of their donations went to Right-wing Tufton Street think tanks.

There have been suggestions of involvement from US-based evangelical association the Alliance Defense Fund [ADF]. Whilst both ADF and FTH deny this, their involvement goes back almost fifteen years to when they created the Wilberforce Academy; an annual training course run by Christian Concern which leads to many young people joining their organisation. At a cost of £599 per person, enrolling an average of 70 people per course, this generates annual income of around £43,000.

FTH also grants tens of thousands of pounds per year to both the Wilberforce Academy and Wilberforce Publications [WP].

“Their associates have influenced the decisions of Conservative MPs, and their work is being funded via influential right-wing think tanks.”

What’s next?

It is in their publications that we get a view of CCFON’s plan for the future. In 2022, WP published a book titled “Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government”, written by the director of Wilberforce Academy Dr Joe Boot, with a foreword by Andrea Williams. Demanding a stronger Christian presence in all arms of government, Boot believes modern society has replaced the fear of God with “a social construction theory of reality” which has allowed feminism, LGBT marriage, and abortion to become acceptable.

Describing the separation of Church and State as “an impossible myth”, he claims this can only be fixed by developing “numerous Christian orgs and institutions: hospitals, schools, courts of arbitration, political parties, businesses, film studios, universities, research programs, news media and journalism platforms.” Not going so far as to say the Church should run the country, Boot wants a world where politicians’ decisions are guided by their faith (which, in his ideal world, would only be Christianity).

While this may seem far-fetched, as we have already seen CCFON has the ear of MPs, seats on influential committees and a platform in the national press. Their associates have influenced the decisions of Conservative MPs (many of whom have now defected to Reform), and their work is being funded via influential right-wing think tanks. Experts have warned of the Christian right’s “higher potential to provoke radical change in politics, business and culture, as they are more likely to get into influential professional positions.”■

About the author: Katherine Denkinson is a freelance investigative journalist with an extensive body of work on conspiracies and the far right. She is also the co-host of podcast, Carrie Jade Does Not Exist.

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