There’s a danger in taking your inheritance for granted. What one generation neglects, another can be persuaded to despise.
For those of Anglo-Celtic descent, heritage can become so familiar that it rarely attracts conscious thought. Family names, customs, churches and national traditions form the background of ordinary life. Like a fish unaware of the water until it is lifted out, we can take belonging for granted until it is threatened. For many years, it seemed too obvious to need defending.
But that indifference left a dangerous void. A people who cease explaining their own history leave it open for others to explain it for them.
Today, we are told that Anglo-Celtic peoples have no distinct identity of their own—that anyone from anywhere can simply become English, Scottish, Irish, American, Australian, Canadian, and so on. Yet when historical guilt is assigned, ancestry suddenly matters again. An inheritance supposedly too indistinct to preserve becomes distinct enough to condemn.
But it’s this social pressure that is today producing precisely the opposite of its intended effect. Tell people repeatedly that they have no heritage worth preserving, no particular people they belong to, no history to identify with, and you give them every reason to investigate it. Demand that they apologise for their ancestors, and they may begin asking what those ancestors believed, why they believed it, how they lived, and what kind of world they intended to leave for their descendants.
Today, a new generation of Anglo-Celtic descendants is rediscovering its ancestors, with renewed affection for the lands they called home and the institutions, civilisation and culture they built.
Mark my words, over the next decade, you can expect two things to grow together: an awareness of belonging among Anglo-Celtic peoples, and efforts to shame them out of it. Accusations of extremism, Nazism and racism will be used to discredit even ordinary expressions of ancestral attachment, as though loving your own people were itself an offence.
But that social pressure will deepen the attachment it seeks to dissolve. The more people are condemned simply for being Anglo-Celtic, the more they will question why their heritage alone is treated as something to despise. Frustration will grow at the suggestion that they have no people to cherish, no place to call home, and no purpose beyond making way for everyone else.
Contrary to the popular narrative today, we don’t need to be embarrassed by, or indifferent to, a love of kindred. The Apostle Paul expressed profound concern for his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3), and that, without any fear of being branded a “racist.” His Christian faith didn’t extinguish natural, God-given familial bonds.
Our responsibility is to honour our fathers and recover gratitude for the inheritance they passed down, including the Christian faith that shaped so much of that inheritance.
Once we recover that, we will produce leaders who unashamedly love their people, honour their ancestors, and understand that they owe their descendants something worth receiving.
Inherited shame won’t sustain a people long. We’re seeing the devastating effects of it today. Grateful stewardship, on the other hand, inspires a people to honour what they have inherited, preserve what is good, and pass on something greater to the generations yet to come.