As Britons digest Monday’s announcement that another English prime minister is resigning, conservatives and Christians from the U.S. were meeting in England June 23-25 to return the country to “traditional family values” by promoting right-wing politics.
“The Age of Reconstruction” is the name of the latest gathering of the UK’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. The event featured Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly, officials from both the UK government and the Trump administration, and Christian author Os Guinness.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage during a fireside chat at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) annual conference at Olympia London, Wednesday June 24, 2026. (Photo by Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images)
Topics at the ARC gathering, which was funded in part by oil and coal tycoons, included the dangers of immigration, doubts about climate science, worries over declining birth rates, the harms of diversity, the benefits of free-enterprise capitalism, classical learning, abortion, masculinity, and the West’s decline and imminent “civilizational moment.”
Speakers at the gathering were to include Nigel Farage, the leader of England’s far-right Reform UK party. Farage previously led the Brexit Party that took the UK out of the European Union, weakening its economy, destabilizing its politics and leading to a “revolving door” of prime ministers. Keir Starmer is the sixth PM since UK voters narrowly approved Brexit.
A fixture of UK politics for three decades, Farage has broken marriages, doesn’t attend church and has been a longtime supporter of abortion rights. But he now speaks about the need for “Judeo-Christian values” and curbs on abortion.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson announced founding of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in 2023. This year’s gathering, its third, includes nearly a dozen Trump administration officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has sought to roll back regulations on oil and gas.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson participated remotely, while Victor Glover, the NASA astronaut and pilot of the Artemis II mission who has spoken about his faith, was to appear in person.
Glen Youngkin (screencap)
Americans scheduled to attend “The Age of Reconstruction” gathering include Andy Crouch, Arthur C. Brooks, Gabe Lyons, Rod Dreher, Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee, associates of tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. U.S. groups promoting skepticism about climate were there.
Groups affiliated with Focus on the Family were represented at the gathering, including Family Research Council, which James Dobson founded in 1980; legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, founded by Dobson and others in 1994; and Katy Faust of Them Before Us, which opposes LGBTQ rights.
ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner was to speak at the ARC event and more than a dozen ADF representatives were to attend. In the U.S., ADF has won Supreme Court cases supporting cake makers and others who declined to participate in same-sex weddings.
Faust and Os Guinness were featured in Focus’s film, Truth Rising, produced with the Colson Center. Guinness says England, like the U.S., faces continuing decline unless it returns to conservative religious values.
“We are at a watershed moment … in the West,” Guinness said. “We have rejected the faith story and ideological foundations which provided for dynamism and inspiration. The attempt to replace it with Enlightenment secularism and reason has proven inadequate.”
Sarah Rogers, U.S. undersecretary of state (screencap)
Family Research Council has fanned flames of fear about British immigration in its article, “Occupied Britain: Muslim Rape Gang Reports Warn against Dangers of Mass Immigration.”
“The crime of organized mass rape has been perpetrated against the British people for decades,” said FRC, relying on a report from the far-right British party Restore Britain. FRC said Britons have suffered “the organized, systematic mass rape of white British girls, mostly underage, by Muslim gangs.”
Peterson may be the public face of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, but its leader and primary mover is Philippa Stroud, a baroness who serves in England’s House of Lords and has worked to combat poverty.
Media executive Sir Paul Marshall is the third ARC co-founder. Marshall runs GB News, which debuted in 2021, and is the UK’s partisan version of Fox News. Its leading prime-time host is Reform UK’s Nigel Farage.
GB News has been criticized for misinformation and for coverage that’s antisemitic and anti-Muslim, leading to investigations and the departure of hosts. The network has been sanctioned for violating British broadcasting laws.
DeSmog, a group that tracks climate disinformation, reported on the 2026 ARC conference in its article, “Senior UK Politicians to Mix with Oil Execs, Far-Right Figures, and Anti-Abortion Activists at London Conference.” DeSmog warned that event participants were “lending legitimacy” to a “toxic alliance.”
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