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Today is St George’s Day, though because it’s Easter week the Church has deferred its celebration until next Monday. Still, the 23rd April will be marked today all round the country with parades and flags, dancing and even epic mock battles.

St George was not an Englishman of course, and we share him with other countries including Ethiopia and Ukraine. God, though, is an Englishman at least according to the provocative title of a new book by Bijan Omrani which explores the way the Christian faith has helped form much that we take for granted today. This is not, repeat not, an apologia for Christian nationalism or triumphalism, rather an argument that what is most valuable about ‘Englishness’ goes back to its interaction with Christianity. Our culture is one of many products of Western Catholicism, something worth remembering after Pope Francis’ death on Monday. Our Catholic roots ensured that rulers had to reckon with the idea that there was a higher authority than earthly power; our monarchs, nobility and justice were ultimately constrained by the rule of law. So no dictators. Think here of Alfred the Great, Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus and the insistence that fairness and redress should be available to all, the humble as well as the mighty.

Then there was the Bible in English, read from cover to cover in homes and churches with its insistence on social justice. Omrani quotes the tireless efforts of 18th and 19th century Evangelicals to abolish the slave trade and improve working conditions for the poor. And then there are the first English scientists with their deeply held Christian beliefs including our greatest mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Our literary, musical and artistic traditions would never have developed the way they have without Christian inspiration. Omrani regrets the loss of well-known hymns in church and school. I know plenty of atheists who love the hymns they once sang at school assemblies. They brought us together and helped us to connect at weddings and funerals. But fewer and fewer people know them today. In all kinds of ways Christianity helped us answer that question a certain lawyer asked of Jesus, Who is my neighbour? He got from Jesus the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story of compassion and inclusivity if there ever was one. Free speech, fairness, toleration and kindness.

Bijan Omrani’s greatest fear is that we are letting this broad Christian culture go and the consequence is a loss of connection and deep loneliness. And with this loss of neighbourliness comes the danger of perpetual confrontation in which any vision which might unite us is endlessly contested. On St George’s Day it is worth thinking what our patron saint stood for and what scaly, fire-breathing dragons he would be fighting today.

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