What lies behind France’s latest wave of unrest? Hannah Rich draws on Theos/RED C polling to explore how different generations understand political violence, economic insecurity and the state. 23/10/2026

Two viral images of modern France emerged from the ashes of the recent rioting and violent disorder across the country. The first, of a couple calmly enjoying a drink and a cigarette against the backdrop of a burning city. The second, of a person in a Pink Panther costume running away from a police water cannon, under a street sign for Bastille, the Parisian fortress whose storming famously heralded the French Revolution. If the latter felt a little too on the nose, too much of a caricature even for France, this was because it turned out to be an AI fake, albeit not so ludicrous as to be instantly identifiable as such. In the post–mortem analysis of the riots too, fact and fiction have blurred convincingly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the widespread scenes of violence in French cities in recent weeks have been seized upon by all manner of political actors to prove their own point and scapegoat different groups accordingly: the young, the migrant, the working class, the disenfranchised, but also political extremists and the government itself.

As part of our ongoing research into Christianity and nationhood across Europe, we polled the French population’s attitudes to a range of topics including politics, authority, national identity, and religion.[1] The polling was conducted in April 2026 and surveyed 1,873 adults, whereas the majority of recent protest participants were lycéens or sixth formers. The data cannot therefore tell us directly why people have taken to the streets – but they do offer a data–driven picture of France and her approach here, as a counterpoint or nuance to some of the prevailing narratives around this recent violence.

Firstly, with regards to protest itself. It is often suggested that protest is the national religion of the French, and our data bear that out to some extent. Across all countries we polled – the UK, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Romania and France – the French are the least likely to agree that the extreme protest groups named in the question should be banned,[2] with only 19% of French respondents agreeing with this statement, compared to 39% of UK respondents and 29% across all six countries polled. They are also the most likely to strongly disagree with a ban on certain protest groups (25%, compared with 6% of Polish respondents and 16% across the whole sample). 

Within the French sample, Gen Z (18–29 year olds) are more likely than their older compatriots to agree that political violence is sometimes necessary; 17% of the youngest cohort agree, compared with 16% of Millennials, 12% of Gen X and just 6% of Baby Boomers. We observe the same pattern to varying extents across other countries in the sample; across the board, Gen Z are the most willing to regard political violence as justifiable in certain circumstances, although the French cohort appears uniquely likely to translate this into actual political demonstrations or unrest.

These generations differ with respect to whether the current moment requires ‘strongman’ political leaders who are sometimes willing to break the rules. Gen Z are seen more as the exception here, with 32% agreeing compared to 37% of Millennials, 38% of Gen X and 40% of Baby Boomers. This indicates that younger French adults are more willing to countenance political violence than older generations, but less likely to endorse ‘strongman’ leaders who break political rules. Here, we might suggest they differentiate between collective or grassroots demonstrations of violence and those of authority figures.

However, perhaps more strikingly, the French as a whole are also the most likely national group in our sample to agree with the need for ‘strongman’ leadership; 37% agree compared to 17% of Hungarians, although 36% of UK participants also agree.

There is a longstanding tension in French political life between the considerable authority invested in the central state and a tradition of popular mobilisation against that same authority. The polling data do not give us causation, but we might hypothesise that the current violence is both an expression of considerable dissatisfaction with political authority coexisting with a desire for more decisive, even ‘strongman’, forms of leadership in the run up to next year’s national elections. This hints at a wider crisis of political trust and legitimacy.

In terms of the motivation for discontent, the initial catalyst for the current disorder was French lycéens – sixth form or college–age students – protesting in response to the deteriorating standard and resourcing of the French education system. However, this has broadened to reflect wider discontent with the cost of living in France and the decaying social fabric of the country and the government’s handling of the country’s economic difficulties.

It is important here to highlight some of the nuances within the groups responsible for recent protests and violence. The wider protest movement encompasses a diversity of groups and individuals, including students, teachers, trade unionists, parents and other demonstrators, most of whom protested peacefully, or at the very least began in that spirit. What began as valid grievances and peaceful demonstrations has descended into vandalism and looting, but this is not representative of all those protesting: the fact that nearly 2,000 people have been arrested for rioting across France is shocking, but estimates suggest many, many more – over half a million – protested, most of them non–violently.

Our research asked interviewees to indicate how concerned they are about 23 different ‘big issues’. Across all six countries in the sample, ‘the cost of living’ was the topic about which most people were concerned. In France, the most concerning three issues were the cost of living; crime, law and order; and public finances and debt. These were held in common with the UK, Germany and Poland, which all shared the same top three issues.  

We find that younger French people are more likely to be very concerned about the cost of living today, although net levels of concern do not diverge significantly between generations: 54% of French Gen Z respondents expressed concern here, compared to 42% of Baby Boomers. Conversely, older generations are the most likely age groups to be concerned about public finances and debt. Among France’s Baby Boomers, 97% say they are concerned about this and 49% are very concerned, with concern decreasing progressively with each younger generation, to 83% of Gen Z (26% very concerned). Gen Z are the most likely to be either slightly or not at all concerned about public finances and debt, despite their stronger concern for the cost of living.

We might suggest this is because younger adults perceive public finances as distinct from their concern for individual or personal finances and the cost of living, the latter of which is a stronger driver of dissatisfaction. This is particularly significant in France, where demands for better–funded public services collide with an increasingly constrained fiscal position.

No one takes to the streets or burns things down explicitly because GDP or national debt is less healthy than it might be, but they might well be driven to do so because of a growing sense of insecurity around their personal or household financial circumstances and those of their entire generation collectively. Perhaps surprisingly, we observe minimal generational difference in concern about economic inequality or the gap between the elites and normal people.

Despite their differing economic priorities, these anxieties appear to be shared across generations. The tension within the French context is thus not simply between different generations, but between what citizens expect the state to provide and what it can sustainably afford. The demands of each group may be different, as are their reactions, but in their own way all are experiencing the inability of the French state to meet their demands because of the deteriorating economic position.

We find that older generations display higher levels of concern around levels of immigration, the integration of migrants, the number of Muslims and the number of asylum seekers; indeed, these are the three issues where we observe the biggest gap in levels of concern between the youngest and older generations in France. Gen Z and Millennials are much less exercised about these topics. In France, 21% of Gen Z are concerned about the numbers of Muslims, compared with 36% of Millennials and 55% of Baby Boomers. On the number of asylum seekers, 31% of Gen Z are concerned, less than half the proportion of Baby Boomers (64%) here. Regarding immigration levels in general, 37% of Gen Z, 51% of Millennials and 65% of Baby Boomers are concerned.

As next year’s French elections draw closer, competing interpretations and responses to the country’s social and economic malaise will abound. Inevitably, the truth is closer to a complex web of different causes and motivations which both intersect and diverge according to generational priorities. There is one national crisis, and a common understanding that this is the genesis of the current protests, yet the crisis is understood in almost as many ways as there are French citizens, or at least generations, and this points towards an increasingly strained relationship between French society and the institutions intended to serve it.

This article is part of a wider programme of research into the relationship between Christianity and nationhood in Europe. A research report into the relationship between Christianity and French national identity will be published in early 2027, along with other similar reports on Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Our UK report can be found here.

Chine McDonald reflects on national identity following a visit to the Bayeux Tapestry. What story about Britain we are telling? 15/10/2026

Last month, my family and I went to see the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum – back in the UK for the first time in nearly 1,000 years. As we side–stepped along the 70–metre historic textile, we pointed out the iconic scenes to the kids: Harold’s mysterious oath to William, Duke of Normandy, the death of King Edward, the invasion by the Normans, Halley’s comet, and the bit where Harold (supposedly) gets shot in the eye (my boys’ favourite, of course).

The fact that tickets for the exhibition sold out so quickly when they went on sale in July (generating £2.5m of sales for the British Museum on that day) tells us something about the very human desire to witness history, and perhaps pay homage to the ingenuity of human creativity. The Bayeux Tapestry is a story of honour and power and wealth and poverty and destruction and faith. Created in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings and during what historian Janina Ramirez describes as “an ongoing mission to destroy English identity”, viewing it felt particularly poignant in this moment in which we are exploring the fabric of national identity. What does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be English, or Scottish, or Welsh or Northern Irish? What does it mean to be us?

There has been much debate over the past few weeks, following former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Sunday Times article, in which he questioned those who questioned his Englishness. In 2025, podcaster Konstantin Kisin had claimed that Sunak could not be described as English on account of him being “a brown–skinned Hindu”. But Sunak wrote in his column:

“We cannot have a situation where people who live here, who feel British, who embrace our culture and embody our values, who strive to be the best members of society they can be, are marked down because you won’t find their name in the Domesday Book.”

Fellow Conservative Jacob Rees–Mogg also pushed back on defining Englishness purely in ethnic terms, while Reform’s Suella Braverman said that Englishness is an ethnic identity not just a nationality, and counted herself out. (I realise I’m oscillating between English and Britishness here, but this itself is part of what makes the debate a tricky one). As a brown immigrant myself, I would say… it’s complicated. I understand the need to have a sense of place and a people to whom we belong; and in conversations around national identity, we do risk reducing Englishness simply to “liking tea”, as my colleague Dr Nick Spencer put it at our event on faith and democracy at Westminster Abbey last month. But if the Bayeux Tapestry tells us anything, it tells us about the complicated history of these islands. A history of conquest, migration, assimilation, conflict and relationship. It doesn’t mean Britishness means nothing, nor that a nation doesn’t need a common story into which its people can place themselves. This makes the question of who gets to tell that story, and who gets written into and out of it, all the more important.

The tapestry is widely believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo, half–brother of William the Conqueror. He would have had the means to pay for it, and would have shaped how the story of the Norman Conquest was told in it.  It can be read as a very effective piece of propaganda, into which Odo placed himself as a central figure, weaving himself into the story of England. Most notably presenting himself as a Christ–like figure at the head of a dinner table resembling the Last Supper. If we read Bishop Odo’s prominence as symbolic of Christianity’s presence in the story of England, then what exactly does this presence represent: genuine faith, political power, or both? What is the relationship between Christianity and Englishness, or more widely – Christianity and Britishness? What role has Christianity played in the shaping of our nation?

This is the complicated question we have explored in our new  study on Christianity and nationhood Beyond “Christian Nationalism”: Measuring attitudes to Christianity and Britishness today. Led by our Senior Fellow Dr Nick Spencer, it provides a useful framework into which we can discuss ideas of Christianity and nationhood, and where they overlap.  

For me, the question isn’t simply about who gets to count as British, but rather, what story about Britain we are telling. Who is at its centre? Who remains at its edges? Who gets to belong to its past, and who gets to – in the words of Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor – “survive the future”. As Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton puts it:

Who lives

Who dies

Who tells your story?

What struck me looking at the pictures sewn into fabric by anonymous skilled embroiders (some theories suggest these may have been English nuns) was the stories they might have been telling us in the margins. The stories of the women, the stories of ordinary people experiencing violence and lives and homes and livelihoods lost in the ravages of war. But also the stories of what it is to be human in a changing and turbulent world.

A thousand years after the Bayeux Tapestry sought to tell a very particular story of the nation, we’re once again deciding how that story should be told, and who gets to see themselves stitched into its fabric.

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Dr Nick Spencer and Dr Yinxuan Huang unpack our polling on Christianity and Britishness. 11/10/2026

“Christian nationalism” is apparently growing in the UK but, although much used, the phrase is often vague and can be unhelpful. We commissioned and analysed research into the perceived (and desired) relationship between Christianity and Britishness among 1,765 UK adults.

8% of UK adults strongly agree that you need to be Christian to be truly British, and 9% slightly agree. Only 1% thinks that being Christian is the most important factor for being truly British.

Beneath these headline figures, UK public opinion shows a more complex understanding of the perceived and desired relationship between Christianity and Britishness, in which different kinds of nationalism and different approaches to Christianity inform opinion.

Our analysis revealed five distinct groups or positions, split between (what we have termed):

Committed Separatists don’t want Christianity to be part of Britishness but don’t have a particularly strong sense of British national identity anyway.

Cultural Separatists don’t want Christianity to be part of Britishness but are hostile to the idea that any other cultural or religious identity – most obviously Islam or immigrant identities – should occupy that space.

Values Integrationists do not think you need to be Christian to be British, but they do see Christianity as an important element of British values and want to see that recognised and protected.

Identity Integrationists see Christianity as fundamental to Britishness and want to defend the nation’s Christian heritage from what they see as invasive and threatening influences.

Belief Integrationists want to see Christianity integrated with Britishness but, for the most part, because they want to promote the Christian faith rather than preserve Christian values.

You can download the report here.

About the Theos/RED C data

Data integrity is critical to our research. If you’re interested in this, you can find our Methodology, Panel Integrity and Data Quality Explainer here.

Download the questionnaire developed with RED C and administered in UK, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania here.

Download the data tables here.

About the project

This report is part of a wider research project exploring the rise of Christian nationalism in UK and Europe. It is led by Nick Spencer and undertaken by Yinxuan Huang, George Lapshynov, Hannah Rich, Nathan Mladin, and Coco Huggins. It is funded by The Ideas Workshop which is part of Open Society Foundations.

You can find out more about the project here. 

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George Lapshynov explores Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit to France and unpacks the tension within French secularism. 01/10/2026

France has long managed to sustain two rather contradictory reputations. It is the country once called the “eldest daughter of the Church”, whose landscape, history and culture are saturated with Christianity. It is also the home of laïcité and of proudly secular republicanism in which religion is expected to know its place.

Over four days at the end of September, Pope Leo XIV rather spectacularly complicated the second half of that story.

On Friday night, 80,000 young people gathered at the Stade de France for a prayer vigil. The following afternoon, around 800,000 people gathered on the Champs–Élysées and around the Place de la Concorde for Mass. Another 150,000 people attended in Lourdes on Sunday. In Paris, multitudes of priests heard confessions from penitents kneeling in the streets against the backdrop of some of the world’s most luxurious and unpenitent brands.

For as far as that is possible in the city of Notre–Dame and the Sacré–Cœur, it was Christianity at its least discreet.

Perhaps inevitably, not everyone in France was comfortable with the Catholic Church taking part in moral and political debates so prominently. Some commentators objected that the Roman Pontiff had been given an insufficiently critical platform from which to “lecture France” on abortion, surrogacy and assisted dying, among other issues.

Immediately before Pope Leo arrived, Charlie Hebdo ran a piece entitled “The week of street prayers”, provocatively describing those coming to see the Pope as dévots fétichistes – fetishist devotees. Another article examined, with some alarm, the increasingly visible attraction of young people towards Catholic traditions and practices: pilgrimages, Eucharistic adoration, kneeling and the Traditional Latin Mass. On mainstream French radio, a presenter said that the Pope’s insistence that “what is legal is not necessarily moral” (a principle so sound as to border on the truism) had disturbed her and given her “vertigo”.

Some members of the French public, under the impression “that street prayers were banned in France”, even questioned the legality of whole affair. Of course, they are not illegal as such. But given the political rhetoric around secularism, however, it is not surprising that its boundaries are widely misunderstood.

Indeed, laïcité, at least as far as the letter of the law is concerned, protects the freedom to believe, not to believe, and to practise a religion. Citizens may generally manifest religion through clothing, worship and processions in public, subject to public–order rules and particular legal restrictions. Only the state and its agents must remain religiously neutral at all times.

But the popular meaning of laïcité is a different affair. In the French government’s own 2025 survey, fewer than half of respondents chose the standard legal definition when asked how they personally thought laïcité should be defined; 17% said it should prohibit visible religious clothing or signs in the street, while another 12% thought users of public services should also be required to remain religiously neutral.

French politicians can be more selective about the definition still. In 2017, while attacking Muslim street prayers, Marine Le Pen declared that the street was a public space “where religions have no place to express themselves”. Nine years later, she and Jordan Bardella were among the politicians attending the Pope’s open–air Mass. This raises the awkward question of whether the objection is really to religion in public space, or to particular religions occupying it.

Pope Leo, for his part, made the distinction between a secular state and a secularised public square central to his first speech at the Élysée.

A Christian participating in public life, he told France’s political establishment, cannot automatically be treated as “a proselytiser or a threat to the unity of the nation”. A “just” secularism, in his telling, distinguishes Church and state without pretending that religious convictions cease to exist when Christians enter politics.

The Pope then proceeded to demonstrate exactly what he meant.

Standing before the President, he gave an unapologetically Christian account of France itself. France’s “spiritual, cultural, intellectual, artistic and missionary genius”, he argued, had been nourished by Christianity. Humanism, human dignity and even liberté, égalité, fraternité were, in his account, downstream from that inheritance. Even Europe, he said three days later in Metz, cannot be spoken of “without mentioning Christianity”.

Nor did he confine himself to heritage and stained glass. He criticised surrogacy, genetic manipulation, organ trafficking and the offer of a “planned death” – a scarcely disguised intervention in France’s fierce debate over assisted dying. He even recalled Macron’s own words from 2018: a President who pretended to be uninterested in the Church and Catholics would “fail in his duty”.

Yet, despite criticism in parts of the media, the French political establishment was hardly united in resenting this religious intervention. Macron himself exulted in Leo’s visit. Senior politicians from across much of the political spectrum attended the Mass. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the crowds, of which he was a part, revealed a French need for greater “communion and gathering”.

Whatever one thinks of the Pope or the Catholic Church, and despite the persistence of narratives of religious decline, all recognised it is a force to contend with. Few secular institutions, and indeed perhaps none of the presidential contenders, in contemporary France can bring this many people, old and young, conservative and socialist, together in the centre of Paris so peacefully and joyfully.

Leo XIV therefore exposed, by his mere presence but also by his carefully chosen words, a tension within French secularism itself: between a legal principle that protects religious expression and a cultural instinct, present in parts of French public life, that still expects serious religion to make itself scarce.

He punctured the assumption that Christianity is no longer a relevant force in twenty–first century France, whether socially or politically. For several extraordinary days, Christianity escaped the heritage site, the “private conscience” and the carefully marked religious box of secularism. It prayed in stadiums, processed through streets, heard confessions on the Champs–Élysées and addressed political power in its own language.

To nobody’s surprise, the Republic survived the pontiff’s supposed intrusion in its secular affairs.

Perhaps France can now stop pretending laïcité means religion has no role to play in its public life.

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Our 2025 Annual Lecture with Andy Burnham featured in the New York Times. 16/09/2026

“’Catholic social teaching underpins my politics,’ he once said. In an expansive talk last year for the British religion and politics think tank Theos, Mr. Burnham called for moving from a crisis of trust between people and their government to a “culture of encounter,” a phrase he learned from Pope Francis.”

You can read the full article by David Gibson in The New York Times here.

You can watch the full recording of our 2025 Annual Lecture here.

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Madeleine Pennington was quoted in The Guardian’s Saturday read ahead of the release of our research on Christian nationalism. 12/09/2026

“There are many Christians who are very concerned about a framing of Christianity that they don’t recognise as their own” 

Madeleine Pennington was quoted in The Guardian‘s Saturday read ahead of the release of our research on Christian nationalism.

Read the article in full here.

Find out more about our research into Christian nationalism here.

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Chine McDonald reflects on the wide–eyed innocence of starting school. We don’t always need to have all the answers. 03/09/2026

After a long summer break, my children are back at school, and for my youngest son, this is his first time. Like many four–year–olds across the country heading into reception this week, he has no real concept of the journey he is beginning. Not really. I recall some years ago, a family member mentioning school to my eldest, then a toddler, and he replied inquisitively: “What is school?” Oh, the beauty of not knowing.

It’s been said perhaps too often that September feels like just as much of a new year as January does. After a long summer break, many of us are back at our desks with the familiar feeling of seasons changing and the sense of a new school year beginning, which maybe has never left us. (Which reminds me, I do need a new pencil case and a shiny new notebook). 

In the wide–eyed innocence of school starts I am witnessing this week, I’ve been thinking about the fact that not knowing things feels counter–cultural in our society so gripped by certainty and hot takes. We are expected to know whose side we are on, and what we think about the huge issues and debates swirling around us; and we’re expected to know these things quickly. We can’t move for opinion pieces and social media reels and threads in which people are adding their two pennies worth to the latest debate, their creators hitting publish within minutes, before there has been a moment to really grapple with the issues at stake, to listen or to understand. Many of them are based on very little actual knowledge.

As E.M. Forster writes in the dystopian fable The Machine Stops: “Let your ideas be second–hand, and if possible tenth–hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element – direct observation.”

This is something we think quite a lot about at Theos. As several of the team return from summer breaks, we are looking ahead to all that we have planned before Christmas. There are a number of exciting projects we’re looking forward to sharing with you, and events we would love to see you at.

Like everyone, we can be tempted to have a ‘take’ on things, with the algorithm pushing us to have that take and post it quickly. Our weekly team meetings include discussion on what’s in the news, and what ‘Theosy’ thing we could say about it. In those conversations, there can be a sense of pressure to say ‘something’, but that pressure is an external one rather than an internal one. More often than not, we decide not to comment. Not because we don’t care, but because we don’t yet know enough to have something genuinely useful to say. In a culture that rewards speed, certainty and reaction, there is something quietly counter–cultural about that. Because, as an organisation with research at its heart, being measured and nuanced, and taking time to understand is a big part of our raison d’etre. At the start of a research project, we are aware we don’t know all the answers. Guided by the wisdom of the Christian tradition, we aim to enter into the themes we’re exploring – whether motherhood or cathedrals, AI or social prescribing or Christian Nationalism – with curiosity, ready to be challenged. We know we don’t know all the answers.

In our frenetic culture of certainty and knowing, being cognizant of what we don’t know or at least don’t know yet is in many ways liberating. The slow work of research requires us to pay attention, to listen to what we are hearing and ask informed questions. The alternative narratives we offer to the world’s certainties are based on centuries of wisdom inspired by scripture, not hot takes always ready at the tips of our tongues.

Christianity, of course, makes claims about what can be known. But it also has a rich tradition of acknowledging the limits of our knowing. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “we see through a glass darkly”. In the gospels, the disciples spend much of their time misunderstanding what’s happening in front of them. And Jesus himself repeatedly answers questions with questions, not to deflect but to illustrate the true meanings of things.

Why are you afraid?

Are you asleep?

Why have your forsaken me?

Who do you say I am?

Unlike Jesus, we are not the answer, but in our work at Theos, we seek to answer the questions our world is so often asking: about how we live well together, what our responsibilities to each other and our communities are, and what it means to be human. All of this is perplexing and wondrous and glorious. It’s also a privilege to have the time and space to steadily seek to understand.

So as we head back to school this week, our prayer is that we will have open minds and hearts, embracing the beauty of not knowing all the answers. Or perhaps not knowing them… yet.

In the words of the poem The Real Work by the great Wendell Berry, who died this week:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

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Join us for the fourth and final of our Theos 20 events in Southwark Cathedral.

What has economics got to do with morality?

For decades we’ve been told the answer is: very little. Modern economics has often sought to present itself as a science, stripping away questions of values and morality in favour of models, markets and measurable outcomes. If ethics enters the conversation at all, it is usually after the fact, stepping in only when markets fail.

But as inequality deepens, trust in public institutions declines and the climate crisis accelerates, many are asking whether an economy without a moral compass can ever deliver a flourishing society.

Perhaps it’s time to ask a different question.

What if economics wasn’t simply about generating wealth, but about creating the conditions in which people and communities can thrive? What if the purpose of markets, governments and businesses was not merely to fix problems, but to build the common good from the outset?

In the final event marking Theos’ 20th anniversary, and in partnership with Southwark Cathedral, world–leading economist and public intellectual Professor Mariana Mazzucato explores why the idea of the common good is making a remarkable return to public life. Drawing on the ideas behind her groundbreaking new book The Common Good Economy, she argues that economies should be designed around shared purpose, participation and human flourishing, offering a practical vision for how governments, businesses and citizens can build a future that serves both people and the planet.

The lecture will be chaired by Dr Nick Spencer and followed by a response from Prof. Anna Rowlands.

You can find out more and register here.

Date: Thursday 22nd October

Location: Southwark Cathedral Nave, London Bridge, London, SE1 9DA

Time: Entry from 6.30pm with the event starting at 7pm

We are pleased that tickets to this event are free, but we encourage donations to Southwark Cathedral on the night.

About the speakers

Professor Mariana Mazzucato – Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of numerous international prizes and awards and the author of several books, most recently The Common Good Economy: A New Compass.

Professor Anna Rowlands – Prof. Anna Rowlands is the holder of the St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice at the University of Durham. She is a political theologian who works at the interface of political and social theory and Christian theology, and her books include Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (Bloomsbury, 2021) which won the Ratzinger Foundation / Expanded Reason Prize in 2023.

Hannah Rich – Hannah Rich is Senior Researcher at Theos, specialising in economic inequality, poverty, and social insecurity. She is the author of a number of reports including A Torn Safety Net and has written widely on welfare, social justice, and the relationship between economics, community and faith. Hannah holds an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics.

About Southwark Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral is the Cathedral and Mother Church of the Diocese of Southwark. Standing on the south bank of the River Thames beside London Bridge, it has been a place of Christian worship for more than 1,400 years. First established around AD 606, it became the Augustinian Priory of St Mary Overie in 1106 and was consecrated as Southwark Cathedral in 1905. Today, it remains the parish church for Bankside and a significant historic landmark at the heart of London.

Guided by its vision of ‘making space for love with heart, mind and soul’, Southwark Cathedral is a centre for a pattern of daily worship within the English Cathedral music tradition. It continues to serve the people of its parish and the diocese, to be a centre of teaching, of worship, prayer and pilgrimage. It also hosts a vibrant public programme of art, heritage, tours, talks and family events, offering an open and inclusive welcome to all who enter.

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Madeleine Pennington reflects on the life and unassuming faith of Dolly Parton. 27/08/2026

Dolly Parton has died aged 80, and it seems everyone has a tribute to pay. Individuals and institutions as wide–ranging as Donald Trump, Blue Labour, the British Royal Family, Eminem, and the Empire State Building have all marked her passing.

What was it about Dolly that we all loved – “will always love” – so much?

It goes without saying that she was exceptionally talented. She had a beautiful voice and was an extraordinary songwriter. She was performing on television by the age of ten, and famously wrote ‘I Will Always Love You’ and ‘Jolene’ on the same day in 1973. Her discography spanned some of the most iconic tracks of the last century. She was one of the best–selling music artists of all time.

Yet more than her musical success, her character moved people. Born into a poor but loving family near the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, her first home was a one–room cabin, and her father was an illiterate tobacco farmer (she claimed he had to pay the doctor who delivered her with a bag of cornmeal). She spoke and sang movingly of this humble background. It gave her a natural relatability. She was notoriously funny, self–deprecating, warm, and kind. And as RuPaul proclaimed following a 2020 interview with her for Marie Claire, “Let’s get one thing out of the way: Dolly Parton is exactly how you’d hope for her to be – frankly, even better.”

Nor was this just an interview persona. Throughout her dazzlingly successful career, her compassion for those on the margins also inspired a truly formidable philanthropic record. Her much–celebrated book gifting programme, Imagination Library, was founded in 1995 and has since distributed more than 300 million books worldwide. The UK operation alone has gifted 7 million books since 2008. Considering the total number of children living in the UK (as of 2026) is an estimated 12.6 million, these are staggering figures. She also donated to (and raised money for) medical causes, including HIV/Aids–related charities, cancer research, and a $1 million donation to the early development of the Moderna vaccine against Covid–19.

This celebrated character – these gifts – were formed at the deepest level by her Christian upbringing, and continued Christian faith. As in the words of her nephew announcing her death, “sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light, and is in the arms of Jesus”. She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostal pastor, and this spirituality, which she made her own, marked a clear thread throughout her life and work.

Various of her songs reflect religious themes; some (including two whole albums) are explicitly devotional, or even theological. Her religious identity was never dogmatic, and she generally preferred to describe herself as spiritual rather than religious. Yet this should not be interpreted as fence–sitting, spiritual apathy, or an unwillingness to speak in explicitly Christian – even deeply biblical – terms. On the contrary, she was steadfast in her faith. In that same Marie Claire interview, she reflected:

“I’m a very spiritual person. Every single day, before I do anything, I wake up and I thank God for the night and ask him to bless the day…and bring all the right stuff in. And just to guide me, lead me. And I always pray that he’ll let me uplift mankind and glorify him. I have my little meditations I do, my little scriptures that I read, and all that. And that’s how I start my day. And I also can draw on that throughout the day. If things get chaotic and crazy around me, I can just go into that little spot of my own. It’s why I say you need to keep a little spot for yourself and your spiritual self and for God. I gain strength and courage and hope and light and love from that little spot.”

Jack White, lead singer of the White Stripes, yesterday posted a picture of Dolly Parton on Instagram with the simple caption, “Instant sainthood.” This is clearly hyperbolic – deliberately so – but it speaks to a palpably spiritual character that a wider audience felt they were experiencing in Dolly Parton. Perhaps we might characterise her not as an “instant saint”, then, but as a disciple – not in the narrow and elevated sense of Jesus’ original, closest followers, but in the original Greek meaning of the word as a student or learner – or, what 20th century Quaker Edgar G Dunstan called “a humble learner in the school of Christ”. In Dolly’s own words, “I am a seeker, a poor sinful creature… I am a seeker and you are a teacher… Reach out and lead me, guide me and keep me / In the shelter of your care each day”.

Dolly Parton was not perfect, and she knew she wasn’t perfect. In ‘Just Because I’m a Woman’, she sang (humbly but defiantly) of her mistakes; in ‘Golden Streets of Glory’ she “just [hoped her] feet are clean enough / To walk upon the golden streets of glory”. Yet striving, failing, and striving is the life of a Christian. She nonetheless carried the joy of a living God with her. In ‘Yes I See God’, she described how:

Yes, I see God when the bridegroom meets his bride I see God in a father’s loving eyes I see God when a mother starts to cry I see God in a love that never dies.

Prayerfulness, steadfastness, humility, kindness, generosity, self–awareness, gratitude. These are the characteristics of a Christian – of a soul endeavouring to become ever–more faithful to the everyday demands of following Jesus. In a noisy public square, in which Christianity is increasingly associated with domination, political polarisation, and manipulation, Dolly Parton’s unassuming spirituality serves as a reminder of what the true heart of Christian character should be – what indeed it often is, quietly, away from the headlines.

In Galatians 5, we are told that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self–control”. Surely Dolly would have appreciated this agricultural metaphor – not only as an artist and storyteller herself, but given her agricultural upbringing. And of the tiny baby whose delivery was marked with a bag of corn, surely we can now say: hers was a life of abundant, fruitful harvest.

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Nick Spencer speaks on welfare for The Symposium by The Church Times. 21/08/2026

The Church Times’ new four–part series, The Symposium, continues with a talk by Dr Nick Spencer, senior fellow of Theos, and a response by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.

The talks were given in July 2026 at the event “Public faith, common good, Christian social order,”, organised by St John’s College, Cambridge, in conjunction with the diocese of Ely and the Church Times.

Listen to the episode here.

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Esmé Partridge unpacks her research on how young people are finding the Church of England. 21/08/2026

The breadth of Anglicanism provides a range of entry points for spiritually curious younger people, Esmé Partridge finds

Read the full Church Times article here.

You can read the Theos and Church of England report ‘Understanding young adult journeys to faith’ here.

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As the Premier League and Prime Minister question the prominence of betting companies, Hannah Rich reflects on the knotty ethics of the gambling industry and the need for regenerated community spaces. 14/08/2026

When the Premier League returns next weekend for 2026–27, there will be a conspicuous absence: front–of–shirt gambling sponsors, which have been collectively banned from this season.

You might be forgiven for not noticing, given the plethora of opportunities that will still abound for betting companies to promote themselves, from pitchside hoarding to shirt sleeves (but crucially only the sleeves) and incessant ad–breaks during televised games. But still, it is a gesture in the right direction, in recognition of quite how ridden with gambling the sport has become.

Elsewhere this week, betting shops were one of the entities that Prime Minister Andy Burnham took aim at in his announcement of plans to improve high streets. Town centres, he said, had been “hollowed out” by years of economic decline and in many communities, high streets are unloved and “unrecognisable”. The proliferation of betting shops is part of that, along with vape shops, mini–marts and barbers, all of which councils will be given greater powers to regulate.

There are three times as many gambling premises (including casinos and gaming centres) in the most economically deprived local authorities than there are in the least deprived areas, and betting shops account for the majority of these. A government review in 2023 found that the cost to the UK economy of the societal and health–related harms of gambling was an estimated £1.05 to £1.77 billion, also disproportionately concentrated in already disadvantaged population groups. There is also a litany of evidence for the negative socioeconomic and physical health outcomes of problem gambling in particular. (Closing or limiting the number of physical betting shops is not a panacea; moving gambling online further reduces the social aspect and accountability of the industry, such as it is, and does nothing to tackle the associated harms.)

Conversely, I come from a city where almost everything from the cancer unit in the hospital to the local hospice, and countless other community projects, has received funding thanks to the beneficence and philanthropy of the Coates family, founders of the Bet365 gambling empire. As the potbanks and manufacturers have closed, one by one, Bet365 is now also the largest local employer in the Staffordshire Potteries. Through their charitable foundations, they have given away millions of pounds, much of it directly to the communities where their business is headquartered, where employees live and where the Bet365 brand is itself a byword for the local football club and ground they own. (Somewhat ludicrously, even the road signs directing away day visitors to the Bet365 stadium effectively function as free advertising for the betting company, and being in the lowly Championship this season means they are still free to advertise on the team’s shirts.)

Bet 365 Stadium in Stoke–on–Trent, Andy Sumner/Focus Images Ltd/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

The ethics of gambling funding health care, directly or otherwise, are knotty. At a time when the patchwork of access to palliative care is in the spotlight, it is problematic to say the least that there are parts of the country where hospice provision and a good death is reliant on the proceeds of others gambling away their livelihoods. There is virtue in philanthropy, to be sure, but at what cost? I am not convinced that the charitable contribution of the Coates family and other industry giants like them even begins to erase the human and economic costs and harms of gambling. Almost everyone in Stoke knows someone who has been treated at the cancer unit or the hospice, but almost everyone also knows someone whose life has been ruined on some level by gambling.

Ahead of the budget last autumn, when the government mooted increasing some forms of taxation on the gambling industry, a startling argument emerged in its defence. Far from being dens of iniquity, it went, betting shops are the new community hubs and their workers the new Samaritans. “Our betting shops are sanctuaries. I worry for the men if we close,” ran the headline of a Times article which lauded the contribution of the shops’ staff to the health and wellbeing of their customers. It painted the workers – overwhelmingly middle–aged women – as akin to social workers, with their shops being the only place many of their regulars could stay warm amid a cost–of–living crisis and soaring heating bills. It was an astonishing piece, and one I have found myself thinking about frequently ever since.

Admittedly, this is not an entirely new phenomenon. When my uncle, who ran a bookies’ shop on a less than salubrious Scottish high street, died a decade ago, the local newspaper announcement of his death read ‘late of’ followed by the name of the shop rather than the place he called home so that his regulars could come and pay their respects.

But if the argument that we owe betting shops a debt for their community contribution has any truth to it, then the hollowing out of the high street is far worse than even Andy Burnham fears. Recent polling from More in Common found that the public are more likely to say that they would prefer to see an empty shop front than a gambling shop on their high street. Not only is closing or limited betting shops likely to be popular therefore, but it suggests the public already recognise the flaw in the argument that such premises have community benefit. An empty shop, after all, contributes nothing to the economy or to the quality of life locally, but at least it does less harm.

There is a need, however, to go beyond this and build spaces that genuinely add to communities, rather than sucking the life out of them. For many of us, faith communities and their buildings naturally fulfil this role, and the Co-operative Party’s effort to revive the social clubs that were once the beating heart of communities also responds to the need for shared community spaces.

We cannot resign ourselves to a world where betting shops are the last bastions against the loneliness epidemic, and the gambling industry our strongest hope of regeneration in cities like Stoke. It is not just a crisis of local business or of micro–economic growth, but a crisis of community itself, and one of human dignity. Real regeneration means creating places of belonging that do not depend on people losing money in order for others to survive.

I would celebrate if high streets followed the front of football shirts in the list of places where gambling is no longer welcome, but I would celebrate even more if it was accompanied by the regeneration of the sort of community spaces, relationships and human connection that we are sorely in need of.

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Where could studying Theology and Religious Studies take you? 13/08/2026

Choosing a degree is about what prepares you for a world shaped by technological change, global connection, and deep differences in belief and identity. Theology and Religious Studies (TRS) speaks directly to that world. 

TRS graduates go on to careers in law, journalism, policy, education, the civil service, finance, and the charitable sector. They’re valued for their ability to analyse complex information, communicate clearly, and handle disagreement with care. At the same time, TRS is intellectually engaging, bringing together philosophy, history, ethics, politics, and culture in a single field. 

You can read the resource in full here.

Poster

Based on this research, we have made a poster about the benefits of studying TRS in higher education for secondary school of sixth form centres. 

You can download the poster here.

What you study 

TRS explores how beliefs shape individuals and societies. You might examine ethical and philosophical questions, study religious traditions, analyse texts, or explore religion’s role inpublic life. 

A typical course includes topics such as religion and artificial intelligence, medical ethics, philosophy, religion and climate change, or freedom of speech. Courses vary across universities, and you do not need A–level Religious Studies to apply. 

Why it matters now 

Religion and belief continue to influence public life. Understanding how belief shapes identity, language, and conflict is increasingly important. 

Public debates often show how easily complex issues are misunderstood. TRS develops religious literacy: the ability to interpret beliefs carefully without reducing them to stereotypes. This matters in fields such as healthcare, law, education, journalism, and public service. 

It also matters in a digital world shaped by social media, misinformation, and new technologies. TRS equips you to ask better questions and navigate these changes thoughtfully. 

The big questions 

TRS explores questions such as: What is a good life? Why do people search for meaning? How do ideas of justice, dignity, and personhood develop? 

These questions shape debates in medicine, law, politics, and culture. TRS gives you the space to explore them seriously and with curiosity. 

Skills and future paths 

TRS develops highly valued skills: critical analysis, clear communication, and careful argument. 

Graduates move into roles such as policy adviser, journalist, teacher, lawyer, civil servant, consultant, or work in NGOs and public service. Employers value the ability to interpret complexity and respond thoughtfully to different perspectives. 

Ethics, connection, and understanding 

TRS is especially valuable where ethical judgement matters, including law, medicine, and public policy. It helps you understand how beliefs and values shape decisions, trust, communication, and care. 

It also connects different subjects. Ideas about belief run through literature, politics, history, philosophy, and art. TRS helps you see how these areas interact – and how questions of identity, power, and meaning often come together. 

A subject that opens questions 

TRS offers something distinctive: the chance to engage seriously with ideas and reflect on questions that shape human life. 

If you want to understand the world, TRS is worth serious consideration. It develops both intellectual depth and practical skill, preparing you for a range of careers and for thoughtful participation in a complex society. 

Want to find out more? Find out more and discover testimonies from TRS graduates here.

In collaboration with

This pamphlet was produced in partnership with Theology & Religious Studies in Higher Education (TRS–UK), the professional association for departments, units and subject associations of the study of religion and theology in the UK. With grateful thanks to Dr Tim Hutchings.

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Nick Spencer unpacks the relationship between environmental problems and democratic problems. 06/08/2026

Greetings. I write to you on day 5,379 of the Great Drought. We at Theos are surviving on the occasional eggcup full of stagnant rainwater, while we watch footage of southern England ablaze, and stare longingly at photographs of something The Elders tell us was once called “grass”. We hope you’re coping too. 

A joke, of course, but not an especially funny one. As I write, half of England (and all of Wales) is in drought, having received about 3% of long–term average rainfall in July; the fire service is responding to 19 active wildfire incidents in the UK; huge tracts of France, Spain and Greece are burning; and the temperature is again predicted to hit the high thirties across most of central Europe this week. And then there’s also the rest of the world.  

We can expect more to come. The young Bart Simpson once complained to Homer, “This is the worst day of my life”, to which his father sagely replied, “The worst day of your life so far.” Wags have memeified the exchange for climate change.  

“We all know what to do,” the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean–Claude Juncker, is supposed to have remarked. “We just don’t know how to get re–elected after we’ve done it.” He was talking about economic reform and democracy, but if any arena owns this aphorism, it is climate change. We know what causes climate change. We know what we need to do to slow it (we can’t stop it now). But it is a super–wicked problem – combining all the classic problems of collective action, short–term cost vs long–term benefit, and extreme pathway dependency (the problem is essentially embedded in our daily lives). The environmental problem is, perhaps more so, a democratic problem. 

Alas, we’re not exactly suffering from a surfeit of democratic trust at the moment. Theos research, to be published later this year, has found some eyebrow–raising results among the British population when it comes to the question of whether we need a “strong man” political leader who is “prepared to break the rules.” The virtues of pluralism, political patience, and democratic deliberation have seen their stock fall over recent decades. 

But if the environmental crisis unfolds into a democratic one, the democratic one unfolds into a human one. Whatever ails our politics, its unlikely to be fixed by tweaks to the electoral machine, or even by the election of Count Binface in Clacton, epochal as that may prove. Democracy rests on pre–political foundations and, as Jonathan Sumption recently argued, “even the most carefully designed democracy can be subverted once the underlying spirit has gone.” 

Over a decade ago, in his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis wrote: 

“We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision. Today, the analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from the analysis of human, family, work–related and urban contexts, nor from how individuals relate to themselves, which leads in turn to how they relate to others and to the environment.” (#141) 

He was spot on. The pressures of the hour call for (what he describes elsewhere in the encyclical as) “a genuine and profound humanism to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society”. (#181) Thankfully, there are signs of this emerging. 

For a depressingly long time, many Christians were resistant to the green movement, because they saw it as pagan, and resistant to humanism, because they saw it as anti–religious (despite its deep Christian intellectual roots). As noted, Laudato Si’ ended the long drought of encyclical letters on environmental themes by rooting creation care in integral humanism. More recently, in 2020, Francis wrote in Fratelli tutti about “faith, and the humanism it inspires”, while just this year Pope Leo XIV’s much–lauded encyclical Magnifica humanitas pitted Christian humanism, against hubristic post– and transhumanism, insisting the while Christian humanism does “not reject science or technology, but embraces them with gratitude and realism”, it does so with the “higher vocation” of true human flourishing in its sights. (#129) 

Earlier this year, a few members of the Theos team spoke at a conference, held at Washington National Cathedral and attended by over a thousand delegates, about Christian humanism and its potential to transform society. Later in the summer, Prof Luke Bretherton, who gave the keynote speech in Washington, assembled an academic conference in Oxford to discuss Reimagining Humanism. The historian of ideas Jens Zimmerman is about to publish a fascinating book on What is Christian humanism? 

In other words, there is momentum here, as more and more people become aware of the way in which the current storms that are buffeting societies across the world are generated by deep weather patterns, originating miles away, in which the most fundamental questions that face human beings – who am I? who are we? to whom (and what) do we have a responsibility? and why? – are worked through. 

As friends of Theos will know, this has been a theme in our work for many years now, linking theology (and, in particular, theological anthropology – the question of who I am, posed in the light of Christ) to everyday affairs. You can watch our most recent event on this topic, held at the National Gallery, in which Rowan Williams, Marcus du Sautoy, Ayla Lepine, Nathan Mladin, and Chine McDonald discuss “Art, creativity and what it means to be human in the age of AI” here. And you can also book to come to our next one, in September, on “Faith in Democracy”, in partnership with, and held at Westminster Abbey, here. 

And as ever, there is a wealth of articles, longreads and reports on the Theos website, including our project uncovering the spiritual, social and political impact of motherhood (Motherhood, Inside Out), another of Emily Downe’s brilliant animations Making a Mother, and (sorry for the plug and even sorrier for the price; I didn’t make the decision) my forthcoming book that applies a Christian humanist lens to the question of future of welfare in the UK. 

Happy August.

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Coco Parkinson–Huggins & George Lapshynov review Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’. What if the stranger we should fear is ourselves? 04/08/2026

Why do stories written nearly three thousand years ago still captivate us today? Because the greatest stories are rarely about the past: they become mirrors in which every generation sees itself.

Few stories have proved more enduring in this respect than Homer’s Odyssey. Enter Christopher Nolan’s take on it, a blockbuster and star–studded screen adaptation of one of the most famous and influential stories in the Western cultural canon. It is perhaps unsurprising that Nolan decided to make his own version of the poem. As classicist Emily Wilson and others have argued, themes of journeying, homecoming, meaning and, indeed, a sense of man (and, in Nolan’s case, only ever of man) standing on the edge of world–historical change, are deeply Nolan–esque, from Interstellar to Dunkirk and Oppenheimer.

These are themes of Nolan’s work for a reason; they speak deeply to our contemporary moment. Whether it is the nonchalance with which tech giants affirm that AI may well destroy humanity, what appears to be the ever–deepening polarisation of politics, or the increasing frequency of climate change–related disasters, there is a strong sense that we are collectively on the edge.

That atmosphere permeates Nolan’s Odyssey. Hanging throughout the film is a sense of impending crisis. Within the story’s historical context, this takes the form of the Bronze Age Collapse. Within our contemporary context, to which the story alludes, it refers to notions of a collapse of the West (whether perceived or actual). Characters whisper about the approaching “people from the sea”, mysterious outsiders who will bring about the end of their civilisation. The mood is unmistakably eschatological, and it is difficult not to hear in it echoes of the End Times, including the biblical language of judgement and endings.

What struck us most, however, was what this impending coming of “the people from the sea” was accompanied by: the breakdown of “Zeus’s law”. Whilst questions of travel, migration and the encounters with strangers are certainly strong themes in Homer’s original, Nolan arguably makes xenía, the sacred duties between host and guest, far more explicitly the moral axis of the story. Indeed, Nolan’s depiction of Zeus’s law bears a striking resemblance to biblical ideas of hospitality, as Krish Kandiah and others have pointed out. If the Odyssey has shaped the minds of most Western writers for centuries, then so have biblical stories which repeatedly present the stranger as a figure through whom God (Genesis 18, Matthew 25) and his angels (Hebrews 13) may be encountered. 

Across Nolan’s film, there is a persistent sense that this moral order is fraying. In much the same way, contemporary political language across both the Left and the Right in Britain is filled with anxiety about the erosion of the moral assumptions on which our common life depends. Whether expressed through concerns about the “rules–based international order” governing global cooperation, the decline of trust in public institutions, or the loss of a shared national cultural inheritance, depending on one’s priorities, there is a seemingly universal sense that something which once held society together is becoming harder to sustain. Can a society survive when trust and hospitality cease to be? The Odyssey offers an imperfect (and somewhat gratuitously violent) but compelling parable of what happens when our common life is no longer rooted in shared moral commitments.

In this context, the Trojan horse is not only a brilliant military trick; it is portrayed as a sacrilege against hospitality, an attack on what holds society together. It becomes, argues Joseph Earp, the moment when trust breaks down, when a horse is no longer simply a horse and appearances can no longer be believed. Not simply the lies we tell, but the institutions, technologies and political projects that promise security or prosperity while quietly corroding the trust on which societies rest.

The irony is that through its shallowing and blockbuster–ing of much of its characters, the film undercuts the very themes it wishes to explore. The female characters from Penelope through to Calypso are all but hollowed out. Even the choice to parachute some of Hollywood’s biggest names into leading roles distracts from the serious themes it wishes to discuss. Meanwhile, the film’s breathtaking photography and the scale of the production overwhelm the human stories of suffering it intends to honour.

And yet Nolan’s central insight lingers after leaving the cinema. There is a realisation at the end of the film that Odysseus himself is one of the harbingers of destruction menacing society. Nolan reframes his Odysseus as haunted by guilt where Homer’s is famously cunning, ambitious, and morally ambiguous. The obstacles keeping Nolan’s Odysseus from home are not merely storms, monsters, or hostile gods, but his own conscience. In many respects, he becomes a kind of prodigal son: not merely longing for home but seeking restoration after the devastation he has helped to bring about.

Just as he does not realise that it is his own acts of destruction on this journey home that are contributing to its tearing it apart, the film calls us to reflect – in a somewhat heavy–handed way – on how the forces eroding our own common life are not only beyond our borders but also within our own habits, institutions, and actions. Every civilisation fears the stranger. Nolan asks a more uncomfortable question: what if the stranger we should fear is ourselves?

Perhaps that is why The Odyssey still matters. It reminds us that every civilisation eventually faces the same question: not simply whether it can defend itself, but whether it still remembers the moral vision that made it worth defending.

Nolan’s film cannot fully answer that question. It remains, ultimately, a Greek tragedy in which violence restores order only temporarily. Christianity offers a different ending, one in which homecoming comes not through vengeance but through grace.

Even so, Nolan leaves us with an important warning. The forces capable of unravelling a civilisation are not always waiting beyond our borders. More often, they begin within us, whenever trust gives way to suspicion, hospitality to fear, and our shared moral imagination begins to fade. The question is, what are our Trojan horses?

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The third of our 20th anniversary events held in Westminster Abbey.

In collaboration with the Westminster Abbey Institute, leading thinkers will examine how people of all faiths and none can help strengthen the future of democracy.

Chaired by broadcaster Mishal Husain, hear from a distinguished panel including Dame Caroline Spelman, Vicky Fox, Dr Nick Spencer, and the Revd Dr James Hawkey about the prominent role faith has played in the evolution of British democracy. Together, they will consider what trust means at a time when political debate is frequently fractured, how citizens with profoundly different convictions can find common ground, and what it takes to disagree well when divisions run deep. In an increasingly pluralist and multi faith society, what are the shared values that can continue to sustain public trust and democratic consent?

As the UK’s democracy continues to evolve, join the conversation this Autumn about democracy’s past, present, and future.

Find out more and get tickets here.

About Theos 20

To celebrate 20 years of shaping public debate on religion and society, Theos are hosting a year–long programme of lectures, events, and ideas that looks ahead as much as it looks back, asking how faith, values, and moral reasoning can contribute to a more humane, trustworthy, and hopeful public life in the decades to come.

Interested in this? Share it on social media. Join our monthly e–newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Supporter Programme to find out how you can help our work. 

Join us for a live recording of The Sacred Podcast with Elizabeth Oldfield in conversation with author and journalist Jamie Bartlett.

How do we remain thoughtful, free, and deeply human in a world of AI?

AI is changing far more than the way we work. It’s reshaping how we find information, form opinions, build relationships, and understand the world around us. As the internet fills with AI–generated content, what happens to truth? To democracy? And ultimately, to us?

For more than a decade, journalist and Author, Jamie Bartlett has been uncovering how the internet is reshaping our identities, relationships, and society. From social media algorithms and online extremism to misinformation, surveillance, and the future of democracy.

Jamie is the bestselling voice behind The Dark Net, The People vs Tech, The Missing Cryptoqueen, and most recently Endgame: Can We Live with Artificial General Intelligence? His most recent book is, How to Talk to AI (and how not to).

Elizabeth Oldfield is a writer, speaker, and author of the book Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. She is the host of The Sacred podcast, where she engages guests from a wide range of backgrounds in thoughtful conversations about their core values, beliefs, and the ideas that shape them.

We’d love you to join us for a human, honest and curious conversation about one of the defining questions of our time.

Doors open at 7:00 pm with the live recording kicking off at 7:30 pm, so please ensure you are seated by then. Complimentary drinks and nibbles will be available after.

The conversation will be followed by a Q&A, after which the bar will be open.

There will be plenty of opportunity to chat and connect after the event, so we hope you’ll be able to stick around for that.

Use the promo SACRED–EARLY–BIRD to get your ticket for £12! (Promo ends on 08/08 at 23:59)

Find out more and get tickets here.

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Analysis of the main quantitative findings from our UK motherhood research. 30/07/2026

Motherhood is one of the most significant transitions a woman can experience. It can reshape identity, relationships, priorities and, for many women, how they see the world itself. Yet it remains surprisingly under–researched and is often undervalued in public life.

This report accompanies the Motherhood, Inside Out research project, unpacking its main quantitative findings. In Spring 2026, Theos and the Bible Society commissioned Ipsos to undertake a survey of women aged 18 to 75 across Great Britain. A representative sample of 4,458 women responded to the online survey and, of these, 3,606 women consented to proceed with the survey (having been notified that it contained questions about religion and health). The sample included 2,112 “Mothers”, who we have defined as those who identified themselves as biological mothers, adoptive mothers or step–mothers.

Fieldwork took place between 24th April and 14th May 2026. We asked women how they saw the value of, and economic and cultural support for, parenting, before asking the mothers specifically how their thinking and identity had shifted since having children. The findings reveal that motherhood can transform women from the inside out.

— Changing identity, relationships and community

Over a quarter of mothers (27%) said they were (a lot or a little) less likely to feel valued by society since becoming a mother, while 36% were more likely to feel lonely. Yet the same proportion (36%) said they were more likely to feel authentic or true to themselves, and 34% were more likely to feel connected to their local community since becoming a mum.

— A complex emotional picture was a feature running throughout the data.

Mothers associated childcare itself with a range of emotions. The top positive emotions were rewarding (64%), enjoyable (60%) and heartwarming (57%), and the top negative were challenging (59%), tiring (53%) and exhausting (50%). Other responses included overwhelming (40%), lonely (25%), thought–provoking (24%) and awe–inspiring (20%), reflecting the intensity of the experience for some women.

— Navigating existential and spiritual shifts

Alongside high proportions of mothers who said they thought (a lot or a little) more about family (76%), education (72%) and their local community (52%) since becoming a mother, 65% said they thought more about death, 44% thought more about politics, and 27% thought more about God or spirituality.

— Facing life’s biggest questions

Some 56% of mothers agreed they had engaged in thought–provoking discussions about life’s big questions with their children, rising to 67% among parents of secondary–school–aged children.

The findings also point to motherhood as a political issue, not simply a personal one.

— The economic value of parenting

Some 72% of women agreed that time spent looking after children at home is “as vital to the economy as time spent working in paid employment”. Agreement rose to 78% among mothers, compared with 64% among women who are not parents or guardians.

— Who pays the cost?

Some 76% of women (and 81% of women with a child under 18, compared to 71% of non–parent/guardians) agreed that being a mum can limit career opportunities for women, while only 11% said the same about dads.

— Support for new parents

Some 66% of women agreed that the UK government should do more to support new parents and guardians.

— Motherhood as a politicising experience

Women with children under the age of 18 were consistently more likely than those who are not a parent or legal guardian to feel that new mums do not receive enough in–person support from healthcare professional services (44% vs. 31%), local authorities (53% vs, 43%), and their local/wider community (51% vs. 41%).

— Motherhood rituals

When asked about interest in formal rituals or ceremonies to mark a woman’s transition to motherhood (focusing on them as the mother), 29% were “very” or “fairly” interested. Interest was highest among mothers with a religion (37%), younger mothers aged 18–34 (41%) and mothers of children aged 0–3 (43%) – factors which may be interlinked to various extents.

Taken as a whole, the findings explored in this report speak to a potentially under–supported social role – but as explored further in our separate qualitative report, they also hint at an existential shift that is far more complex and wide–reaching than is acknowledged in ordinary depictions of motherhood, entailing social, political, and even spiritual impacts on the women who go through it.

You can read the report in full here.

About the data

If you want to know more about the survey, undertaken by Ipsos, you can find the data tables here.

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Esmé Partridge shares the stories of young Christian converts from new report with the Church of England. 27/07/2026

To grow up in the world today – to grow up online – is to experience culture as a dizzying kaleidoscope of images and ideologies. The beliefs and values held by young people are rarely ones they have inherited, but rather chosen from the vast array of options in a postmodern, digital age: wellness culture, alternative spirituality, “manifestation”, self–optimisation, therapy TikTok, financial gurus, the manosphere.

Yet a curious feature of this strange new world is that it can also throw up ancient ideas and timeless truths in places where they are least expected. In a climate where anything goes, beliefs previously thought outdated or irrelevant may find new expressions and new legitimacy. Even Christianity may become a viable option once again, even if it is only one of many possibilities for spiritual exploration. In this sense the digital world may be seen as the culmination of what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called ‘liquid modernity’, in which all socially dominant narratives – including secularism itself – have melted away.

This was the experience of many of the young adults Theos interviewed for its new report on young adult journeys to church, who have found faith in what might seem like unlikely and surprising circumstances. The report, published last week by the Church of England, brings together the stories of thirty 18–30 year olds who have found a spiritual home in Anglicanism. Most of these journeys were long and winding. They did not come about because the Church of England was the default option or something they were familiar with from their upbringing.  Instead, having grown up in mostly secular or other religious families, they came through their own personal explorations, most beginning online and out of the postmodern supernova of belief. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly, they became open to the idea of Christianity – often having previously held very different views.

Some of these young people had previously been militant atheists, describing having a “teenage atheist phase” before later coming to faith. Farid*, a medical student in his early twenties from a Muslim family, developed strong opinions against religion having spent his early teens on the Reddit forum R/atheism and watching YouTube videos from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Alex O’Connor. “These guys hard launched my atheism in my teens”, he explained. Other men had said they had been enticed by right–wing manosphere influencers and the ideas of self–improvement they promoted. One 18 year old described how he got into bodybuilding, believing that “if you just get muscly, you’ll be happy”.

Others, particularly among the women interviewed, said they had previously dabbled in alternative spirituality. Many commented on the popularity of astrology and manifestation on social media, especially during the Covid pandemic. Abby*, a 24 year old nurse from the East Midlands, described how through encountering New Age spirituality and tarot cards on Instagram, she put her trust in “the universe” rather than God because “that was just what was accessible to me at that time”. She explained that her generation were drawn to these spiritualities because they were searching for some meaning or guiding purpose in life, making them open to just about anything. Among Gen–Z, one 19 year old convert said, “there’s just a longing for truth”.

There were others who pursued this longing for truth in religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. Whilst at university, Dom*, a 24 year old from Surrey, stayed up all night listening to talks by the Eastern religious philosopher Alan Watts. Others had been interested in Islam, which another young man said “opened up my mind to what God was as an idea” years before he considered Christianity.

It was sometimes through these other ideas that people, accidentally or otherwise, eventually found Christianity. Marina*, a 25 year old who works in a nursery, had followed alternative spirituality. But one day, a spiritual influencer she had been following on Instagram posted a Christian testimony out of the blue. Seeing her renounce her previous occult beliefs, Marina said, “sparked my curiosity but also scared me…I just never really considered that they were opposing [spiritual] forces”. This revelation led Marina to buy a Bible. In reading it she found deep solace and felt called to explore further, eventually deciding to attend a church near her.

There were others who stumbled across Christian content randomly – or perhaps providentially. Becky*, a young mum from the South West who grew up with an atheist mother and satanist sister, described how one day her phone “started showing me loads of TikToks and Facebook posts, all to do with Christianity”. She thought “OK, I’ll watch a few.” But realising that she “found so much peace and joy” in watching the videos, she kept clicking, “end[ing] up down this rabbit hole of sermons and speeches”. In retrospect, Becky says, this content suddenly appearing on her feed can only be explained by providence; what she described as “the Holy Spirit moving through the algorithm”.

Similar stories included Jake*, a 22 year old aspiring entrepreneur, who only became curious about faith after watching livestreamers on the gaming platform Twitch who mentioned being Christian. For Carmen*, a gap year student in the Midlands, it was seeing an artist she followed on Instagram post paintings inspired by Bible stories that inspired her to go deeper into Christianity, turning what had initially been a purely intellectual curiosity into a personal one.

The result for many people was a period of deep exploration that went beyond short–form online content and into longer podcasts, articles and books. These young people, whether or not they had been to university, were remarkably autodidactic. They spent hours watching theological YouTube channels like “Pints with Aquinas”, studying contemporary theologians like David Bentley Hart, and even reading Christian novelists like Dostoyevsky. These explorations carried them a long way on their spiritual journey, with many seriously considering becoming Christian at this stage.

However, strikingly, these explorations alone did not tend to convert them. Despite first discovering faith in a highly postmodern, virtual way, the deeper spiritual shifts that people described almost always occurred through a personal relationship or real–life encounter. For example, Owen*, a 28 year old from Yorkshire, had been researching the religious beliefs of J.R.R. Tolkien, being a lifelong fan of The Hobbit (with a Lord of the Rings sleeve tattoo to prove it). But it was only after passing his local parish priest in the street one day and getting to know him that he seriously thought about becoming a Christian himself. He described spending hours talking to the vicar, who offered personal guidance and answered his many questions. It was through this relationship that Owen’s curiosity grew into church attendance and, eventually, baptism.

Similarly, Jamilah*, a postgraduate medical student, had also been thinking about Christianity independently, but only made the decision to go to church after forming a close relationship with a pastoral support officer at her university. From housemates and partners to teachers and childminders, almost every story involved some individual who played a decisive role in the journey to church, providing a living example of faith, hope and joy.  

Others were transformed by emotional and spiritual encounters they had upon entering a church for the first time. For Dylan*, a recent English graduate, it was stepping into a medieval parish church and seeing rainbow light beaming through the stained glass windows that first awakened his sense of the numinous. “I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen”, he said. “I didn’t quite know what to do with the feeling…so I kept going back to that church”. At his first service there, he went up to the altar and described feeling an “overwhelming love” while receiving a blessing. He now goes to that church every Sunday, sings in the choir, and was recently baptised there.

Another student who came to church through her university’s Christian Union described going along to a service for the first time and being suddenly and unexpectedly moved by its “atmosphere of safety, people being so vulnerable…but so joyful…it was just an environment that I had never experienced before.” For her and others, it was these real–life spiritual encounters – of kindness, goodness, beauty and truth – that brought them into the Church.

What might these findings tell us about young adult journeys to faith today, in the Church of England and beyond? It is certainly true that the channels through which people discover Christianity in a digital age are novel and unpredictable. And yet, what is striking about these stories is that what really moved people – what turned them to Christ – were real relationships, real places, and real experiences. It was encountering the beauty of a sacred space; receiving a warm welcome from a congregation; spending hours talking with clergy and being able to ask them questions. The spark of curiosity may come from somewhere new, but the factors that sustain faith are unchanging – they are rooted, relational and timeless.

*All names were changed for the purposes of this research.

You can read The Church of England report ‘Understanding young adult journeys to faith’ here.

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Lucy Jones unpacks our new research on motherhood for the Guardian. 27/07/2026

”We hear about the ruinous effect of low birthrates, but comparatively little of the difficulties mothers face.” 

Lucy Jones writes for The Guardian unpacking the findings from our new report Motherhood, Inside Out and what the experiences of new mothers reveals about our current value system.

Read the article here. 

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Nick Spencer was quoted in the Guardian on how a Catholic Prime Minister will play out in our wider culture. 25/07/2026

Nick Spencer was quoted in Guardian article by Aamna Mohdin, unpacking the differences between Christianity in politics in the US vs the UK in light of new PM Andy Burnham’s Catholic faith. 

“Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the thinktank Theos, said he believed there were many reasons why we were seeing such different expressions of Christian politics in the UK and US.

“Culture war politics really thrives on a narrative of exclusion,” he said. “But its much harder to argue that you are being socially, culturally and politically marginalised as a Christian in this country. If you crown the head of state, if you have 26 bishops in the Lords, you are already quite close to the heart of power.” In the US, he said, pastors were able to take their congregations in different political directions because the church landscape was much more fragmented. 

Read the full article in the Guardian here.

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Chine McDonald reflects on the life and legacy of Broadcaster and Journalist, Edward Stourton. 21/07/2026

It was rare for broadcaster Edward Stourton’s name to appear without being prefaced by the word ‘veteran’. His style steady, his voice instantly recognisable, Stourton represented the best of British broadcasting and, in particular for us, a British broadcasting that took religion seriously. This week, he died at the age of 68, and tributes have been pouring in.

Born in Nigeria in 1957, Stourton was educated at Ampleforth College before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read English Literature. His career started as a trainee at ITN and then a founder member of the Channel 4 News team before becoming a stalwart of the BBC, where he spent most of his career, presenting Radio 4’s Today programme for a decade until 2008, as well as The World at One and The World This Weekend. Current Today editor Rebecca Keating said she and her colleagues described Stourton as the “Rolls Royce of broadcasting”.

That someone of Stourton’s journalistic stature devoted so much of his career to religious affairs, most notably as a long–time presenter of Radio 4’s Sunday, was significant. When religion can so often be treated as either irrelevant or a culture–war battleground, he approached faith with the seriousness it deserved. He neither sensationalised nor trivialised it; he simply believed it was important enough to understand well.

It was on Sunday that several of the Theos team regularly encountered Stourton. To be interviewed by him was both terrifying (he was the Edward Stourton, after all), but also strangely reassuring. This was a man who knew his stuff when it came to religion. You knew he would have done the reading, that he understood the theological nuances, and that he was more interested in getting to the truth of a matter rather than point–scoring or hearing the sound of his own voice.

He was particularly knowledgeable about the Catholic faith, which played a significant part in his personal life. In a Christmas edition of BBC One’s Mastermind, chaired by his Today co–presenter John Humphrys, his chosen subject was Pope John Paul II. He later wrote a biography of the former pope – John Paul II: Man of History – one of several he wrote about the Christian faith, which also included In the Footsteps of St Paul.

It was his 2023 book Sunday: A History of Religious Affairs through 50 Years of Conversations & Controversies for which Theos hosted a book launch, in partnership with Sandford St Martin Trust and the book’s publishers SPCK. There, I had the honour of interviewing Stourton and his co–author and long–time Sunday producer Amanda Hancox, about the biggest religious affairs news stories over the past five decades.

It was after Stourton disclosed in his memoir Confessions: Life Re–examined that he was living with incurable prostate cancer that we invited him to write the foreword to our report Ashes to Ashes: Beliefs, Trends and Practices in Dying, Death and the Afterlife.It explored how Britain is rethinking death, dying and the afterlife in an increasingly secular age, and how the role of faith communities within the death process is changing, too.

Stourton wrote in the foreword: “Religion – and I am sure this applies just as fully to the United Kingdom’s minority faiths as it does to Christianity – still seems to be a source of strength we turn to when confronted with the enormous enigma of death…“As someone with a slow–moving but incurable cancer, I welcome the greater openness about death this report identifies. It is certainly true, as the report finds, that many people are turning to new and more secular ways of celebrating the memory of those they loved, but most religious traditions can call on the experience of centuries of responding to the reality of death, and they have much to offer in a debate of the kind Ashes to Ashes seeks to encourage.”

Reading these words now is both poignant and insightful into who Stourton was. He wasn’t someone interested in easy answers or saccharine optimism. Rather, he understood that religious traditions carry a depth of wisdom which remains relevant, even (or especially) in a society that often imagines it has moved beyond them.

Edward Stourton was a friend of Theos, once describing it as “an inspired idea” that filled “a big gap in our culture”. But for us, his greatest legacy was in showing that journalism about religion can be both rigorous and generous; that broadcasters can combine scepticism with respect; and that faith, when treated with intellectual curiosity and seriousness, belongs not at the margins of public life but at its heart, offering answers to some of the biggest challenges our society faces today. 

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Nick Spencer appears on BBC Radio 4’s Church Going, with Giles Fraser. 20/07/2026

What is the relationship between England’s national and religious identities?

In Episode 2 of Giles Fraser’s ‘Church Going’ series, Nick Spencer appears alongside Tom Holland, Alice Roberts, Bishop Arun Arora and more to discuss England as a Christian nation and the anxieties surrounding this. 

Tune in here.

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Our 2025 Annual Lecture with Andy Burnham was featured in The Observer. 19/07/2026

“Today his identity is still wrapped up in football and politics, but his relationship with the church is more equivocal. Last October he gave a lecture on religion and society to the thinktank Theos. In the Q&A afterwards he acknowledged his debt to one of the great voices of liberal Catholic social teaching, the former Archbishop of Liverpool. “Derek Worlock was a big influence. I was an altar boy. I used to have to press the button on his tape–recorded messages in the church. And to me, that kind of church was always about speaking for people without power; those who needed to be built up.”

But in the lecture itself, Burnham mentioned Pope Francis just twice, Jesus and spirituality not at all, and devolution 14 times. It was an orthodox political text with no religious flavour and – through what it left out more than what it said – placed Burnham in the right pigeon hole: a cultural Catholic who ‘doesn’t do God’. Religion is a piece of the Burnham jigsaw but far from the whole picture.”

Read the full piece by Ceri Thomas in the Observer here.

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Our research on the life–changing effects of motherhood. 19/07/2026

What really happens when a woman becomes a mother? 

Motherhood is often described as life–changing, yet the depth of that transformation is rarely understood. Beyond sleepless nights and practical adjustments lies matrescence: the profound process of becoming a mother.  

Like adolescence, matrescence is a period of far–reaching physical, emotional, psychological, social, political, and spiritual change that reshapes identity. It unfolds not only within a woman’s body or home, but also across her relationships, her place in society, the way she spends her time and money, and how she understands the world. It often prompts deeper questions about meaning, values, community, and connection. For many women, this transition also brings a form of spiritual disruption or awakening, though this is experienced in different ways and to varying degrees. Motherhood exposes our vulnerability and interdependence in a culture that prizes autonomy, productivity, and self–optimisation. It is, fundamentally, a transformative human experience. 

Our report Motherhood, Inside Out presents the qualitative findings from our wider research project on new motherhood, drawing on interviews and focus groups with 91 mothers and interviews with 14 professionals directly involved in maternal care. It explores women’s experiences of matrescence from the inside out, examining how they navigate the physical, emotional, social, relational, political, and spiritual dimensions of becoming a mother. Participants reflected on identity, faith and spirituality, embodiment and body image, media, family and friendships, local community, work, politics and current affairs, and mortality. 

The research found that there is no single, universal experience of becoming a mother. Every participant’s journey was shaped by her own circumstances, relationships, and beliefs. Yet across every theme we encountered women whose views and perspectives – and, in many cases, whose entire lives – had been transformed by motherhood. We heard from the mother who now writes regular postcards to her children in case she dies unexpectedly; the mother who understands breastfeeding her child as worship; the Christian mother pacing at the back of church with a crying baby, grieving the uninterrupted worship she once took for granted; the many mothers newly angered by inadequate maternity policies, unaffordable childcare, or diminished agency at work; and the mother who finds herself baking cupcakes at midnight because her daughter cannot sleep. 

The report also considers how well existing forms of support respond to these experiences, and where significant gaps remain. It finds that the inner changes of matrescence, and how they intersect – are generally not adequately supported, highlighting the need for more holistic approaches to maternal care. Where mothers experience consistent, relational, face–to–face support, they feel better equipped to navigate this transition. In this context, churches can sometimes provide one of the few places of sustained local accompaniment, even if their potential to support mothers – spiritually and in other ways – is not always fully realised. 

The report concludes with practical recommendations for healthcare providers and local churches and faith communities. These focus on improving understanding of the inner dimensions of ordinary matrescence and increasing awareness of the support that already exists. More broadly, however, the findings point to the need for a wider cultural shift: one that more fully recognises and responds to the depth of the personal, relational, political, and spiritual transformation that accompanies becoming a mother. 

You can read the report in full here.

Methodology

Theos and Bible Society researchers spoke to 91 self–defining mothers and 14 experts and professionals directly involved in maternal care. Findings from our qualitative study were lightly supplemented with a quantitative survey of women aged 18–75 in Great Britain, both with and without children, exploring perceptions of motherhood. Full datasets can be found on the Ipsos website here. 

Full analysis of the quantitative survey can be found here.

About the authors 

Dr Marianne Rozario is senior researcher and projects lead at Theos, and author of several publications including Creating a Neighbourhood Health Service (2025), Moving on Project: Wraparound Survivor Support (2025), and co–author of Ashes to Ashes (2023). She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Notre Dame Australia.

Dr Rhiannon McAleer is Director of Research and Impact at Bible Society. She writes and speaks on contemporary Christianity, spirituality and Bible engagement and has a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Exeter.

Dr Madeleine Pennington is Head of Research at Theos and co–host of the podcast Motherhood vs the Machine.

Dr Eona Bell was a Research Assistant at Theos. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics.

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