What Does it Mean to be Christian?

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on October 26, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

All Saints

For the whole of my lifetime, I’ve dwelt in a story about Christianity that goes something like this. Christianity began as simple and subversive. It was taken over by the Roman Empire and became dominant and prescriptive. It permeated the Middle Ages and caused bloodshed in the Reformation. It conquered the world in the colonial era. But for the last 75 years it’s been in decline in the West, such that it’s now well-meaning and harmless and best kept as a private matter. But that story is now being challenged by the way Christianity is being presented in the United States. The first three-quarters of the story isn’t much discussed, because history as we know it began in the seventeenth century with white European immigration into America. But right now, we’re beholding a brand of Christianity that’s abrasive, aggressive, entitled and bent on stamping out alternatives. Meanwhile in London last month we had crosses and the Lord’s Prayer dignifying a huge rally that demanded the expulsion of migrants and the restoration of Christian values.

Which raises a question that’s always been there but seems more pressing right now than at any time in my lifetime. That question is, ‘What actually is a Christian? What does being a Christian entail?’ The feast of All Saints seems a very appropriate occasion to explore this question. I want to invite you to think about the word ‘Christian’ in three possible ways.

The first way to imagine the word Christian is to treat it as an adjective. This is widespread in our society. We find it in the names of many organisations – the YMCA is the Young Men’s Christian Association. We perceive it in the designation of a whole society, such as the notion that the United Kingdom is a Christian nation. But one thing you can be sure of, whenever we see the word Christian used as an adjective in this way: behind it lie a trail of arguments and debates about what it actually means. Take a Christian college. Does every student at that college have to be a Christian? What happens if you wake up one morning and decide you’re not a Christian? Do you have to leave? What about the faculty? Or the administrative staff? Does the curriculum have to be somehow promoting Christian convictions? And what are Christian convictions – and who decides? And what if there’s a dispute about scriptural authority or sexuality or political affiliation or alcohol consumption – does any Christian get to tell another Christian they’re not a ‘real’ Christian, or the right kind of Christian?

For all these reasons the use of Christian as an adjective runs into multiple difficulties. It defies definition, it’s open to ridicule when its anomalies are exposed, and, as we’ve seen recently, it’s easily co-opted to give credibility to movements that seem to have come a long way from Galilee. I truly believe we’d be best off disentangling from our culture almost all uses of Christian as an adjective. So what’s the alternative? The most obvious is to understand Christian as a noun. A noun turns ‘Christian’ into ‘a Christian.’ A Christian is a person who follows Jesus, and joins with others in forming the church, a collective of Christians seeking to be conformed to the God of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the most memorable rendition of Christian as a noun is John Bunyan’s 1678 book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Told in the form of a dream, it describes a person called Christian who reads a holy book, realises his sin, and is directed by a person called Evangelist towards the Celestial City. Two figures called Obstinate and Pliable fail to convince him to return to the City of Destruction, while Mr Worldly Wiseman tries to dissuade him from his quest. Christian continues, but nonetheless sinks into the Slough of Despond. Through many delays, distractions and rescues, eventually he reaches the Celestial City.

The story represents the helpful features of Christian as noun. The person suffers, endeavours, endures. It’s not about his convictions or subscribing to some kind of nominal faith statement – it’s about dispute, determination and dedication. This is very much distinctive, and clearly about genuine faith not cultural gesture or conformity. But it also displays the drawbacks of Christian as a noun. There’s very little reference to church – it’s a very individualist picture of Christianity, and when church does appear, its role is simply to motivate the individual. This account also sails close to an air of self-righteousness and superiority, to which a sharp division between believer and unbeliever can be prone. Being distinctive is a good thing, but being so in a way that inclines you to judgementalism and exclusiveness isn’t.

So Christian as an adjective is problematic, and Christian as a noun is a big improvement but still not without challenges. Where might we go for a better answer to our question, What does it mean to be Christian? I’m going to suggest a grammatical stretch and propose we reflect on what it would mean to consider Christian as a verb. I’d like to retell Marjorie Newman’s 1998 children’s story Is that What Friends Do? Elephant meets Monkey. While Elephant explains he’s never had a friend before, Monkey says nonchalantly, ‘I’ve had lots.’ They then embark on a series of adventures, in each of which Monkey behaves unreasonably, unsociably and unhelpfully, whereupon Elephant asks, plaintively, ‘Is that what friends do?’ Monkey carries blithely on, until Elephant’s distress becomes impossible to ignore. Monkey reflects ruefully that, while he’s had many friends, none of them have stayed friends very long. He resolves to make a new start. Realising Monkey’s newfound humility and collaborative spirit, Elephant asks, ‘Is that what friends do?’, conclusively and satisfyingly. The story makes it clear that ‘friend’ is useless as a noun, and ‘friendly’ is meaningless as an adjective, if detached from concrete acts that demonstrate understanding, empathy and true companionship. It’s a simple story, but I think it provides the clue to answering our question.

Being Christian isn’t a label like an adjective or even an identity like a noun. It’s something you do – a verb. If we reflect on the most succinct and compelling portrayals of Christianity in the New Testament, they all approach things this way. Let’s start with Matthew’s Beatitudes – they say being a Christian means to be a peacemaker, to hunger for righteousness, to show mercy, to be persecuted. Then there’s Matthew’s parable of the sheep and the goats – that’s about being with the hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, sick and prisoner. Then there’s the Good Samaritan, which is about not walking by on the other side but offering practical help and genuine compassion. And when we turn to Paul’s summary of the fruits of the Spirit, we’re back in the territory of Elephant and Monkey – Paul urges us to show love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. He’s not talking about inner dispositions about how we feel, or generalised sensations of some disembodied sense of wellbeing. He means go-the-extra-mile love, infectious and dynamic joy, hard-worn and long-negotiated peace, dogged and sacrificial patience, egregious and extravagant kindness, deep and demonstrable goodness, enduring and self-denying faithfulness, inspiring and touching gentleness, and characterful and determined self-control. These are signs of what you start being able to do when you’ve spent months, years, decades humbly and devotedly letting the Holy Spirit work through you, and seeking in community to learn and improve and forgive and begin again. And the crucial point is that while the word hero never appears in the New Testament, the word saint appears 64 times, always in the plural. Christian is not so much an adjective or even a noun but a plural verb. If you want to know what it means you check not the claims to cultural heritage or personal identity but the concrete collective actions it yields.

Some of you may recall during covid I conducted monthly livestreamed interviews with figures around the world who I felt had something to say into our beleaguered situation. One of those was Michael Curry, then Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He had a memorable turn of phrase. He said, ‘If it doesn’t look like Jesus, if it doesn’t love like Jesus, if it doesn’t care about others like Jesus… it may well not be Christian.’[1] Actions speak louder than words. We can affiliate to statements, like social media posts, align ourselves with stances or perspectives or movements, make an identity for ourselves or correct others’ ethical or political shortcomings. But being a Christian isn’t really any of those things. ‘If it doesn’t look like Jesus, if it doesn’t love like Jesus, if it doesn’t care about others like Jesus… it may well not be Christian.’ One of the best things about this definition is that plenty of people who don’t call themselves Christians look a lot more like Jesus than plenty of people who do. That’s not something to criticise; it’s something to admire.  It should make Christians humble and eager to learn and quick to appreciate. It shows the Holy Spirit is at work in ways far beyond the church’s conception or comprehension or control.

For a long time, when being a Christian and being a good citizen were assumed to be more or less the same thing, the real tests of Christian faithfulness turned inward. So people focused, sometimes to the point of obsession, on being free from pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. But what got lost was the point of striving to be a person free of such things. The reason such things are damaging is because they distract or prevent us from looking like Jesus, caring like Jesus, loving like Jesus; and because if we relate to one another in such detrimental ways, we undermine the collective unity of looking, caring and loving that we call church.

So at this feast of All Saints, when we celebrate our solidarity with all Christians in every time and place, now and forever, let’s clarify our thoughts about what it means to be a Christian. Let’s let go of the aspiration to cultural dominance represented by the tendency of making ‘Christian’ into an adjective. Let’s by all means be Christians, as a noun, but let’s not be so in an individualist, self-righteous or judgemental way, or focus overmuch on doctrinal statements or precise convictions. And let’s instead focus on Christian as a collective, constructive verb. To be a Christian is to let the Holy Spirit work through your community in such a way that together you end up looking, caring and loving like Jesus. It’s not about condemning, ostracising, excluding or diminishing anyone. It’s about cherishing, embracing, inspiring and empowering everyone. It’s something anyone can do. It takes a moment to understand; and a lifetime to live.

[1] Michael Curry, ‘Looking Like Jesus,’ in Samuel Wells ed., Living God’s Future Now: Conversations with Contemporary Prophets (Norwich: Canterbury 2022) 72.