Nick Spencer speaks with Alan Manning, Professor of Economics at LSE and former chair of UK government’s Migration Advisory Committee. 16/05/2026

Immigration is a major issue in the contemporary world, a – if not the – driver of nationalist movements the world over. It is impossible to think about nationalism today, religious or otherwise, without thinking first about immigration.

But immigration is also a hard subject to think about, not because of a paucity of information but because of a glut. Awash with statistics, anecdotes and personal stories, immigration offers people a well–stocked cupboard of things to feed their existing views and opinions.

So, what is the truth behind immigration? What are the actual numbers? What are the benefits? And the harms? And to which people? Immigration policy is notoriously tough – is there are way to think clearly about it and make it any easier?

Nick Spencer speaks to Alan Manning, Professor of Economics at LSE and former chair of UK government’s Migration Advisory Committee, about his latest book, Why Immigration Policy Is Hard: And How to Make It Better. 

You can purchase a copy of his book here.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.

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George Lapshynov reviews the new Steven Spielberg film ‘Disclosure Day’. Would alien life threaten Christian belief? 15/06/2026

Steven Spielberg has always looked to the skies for a certain kind of grace. In Close Encounters, the heavens open in light and music. In E.T., the little stranger dies and then comes back to life, showing a lonely child the way to love. The religious imagery was never exactly hidden, but it was usually carried by wonder.

Disclosure Day is different. This time, Spielberg does not merely borrow Christian imagery. He places it centre–stage and asks whether it can survive the plot.

The set–up is familiar enough. A whistleblower has proof that alien life is real. A shadowy corporation wants to keep it secret. The world must be told. Somewhere in the middle of this, a former Catholic novitiate nun worries that revealing extraterrestrial life will make people treat the aliens as gods and abandon their faith. Another (wiser) nun reassures her that God could perfectly well have created life elsewhere too.

So far, so reasonable. Christians do not need to panic at the thought of intelligent life beyond Earth. My colleague Nick Spencer recently made the point well: the discovery of aliens would not make Christianity “ridiculous”, as Tom Paine once claimed. Medieval theologians were speculating about “the plurality of worlds” long before Hollywood discovered flying saucers. There is no Christian dogma requiring alien life to exist, nor one forbidding it. If God is the “Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”, then other creatures, however strange, would be creatures of the Creator too. They might enlarge our imagination; they would not displace God. A larger universe is certainly not an embarrassment to the Gospel, as it is already held within it.

The problem is not that it asks this question. It is that it seems faintly pleased with itself for having asked it at all. The film portrays Christianity as a provincial belief system that is easily disturbed by changes in our understanding of the world. The moment we realise that aliens really do exist, the film suggests, we will see crucifixes trembling, nuns wavering in their faith, and the faithful rushing to trade the Creed for a UFO press conference.

This is not serious theology. It is a straw man with (in this particular case) a rosary.

To be fair, some of the Christian reaction online has not helped. A small fake scandal erupted around the claim that Spielberg had said Christians would start “second–guessing their own religion”. In reality, he raised the perfectly legitimate question of what a real ‘disclosure’ would do to people’s “fundamental beliefs” and asked whether God is God only on this planet or in every alien civilisation. It is also a question to which Christianity already has better answers than Spielberg appears to realise.

Yet my actual issue with the film is not its misunderstanding of Christianity. It is the salvation story that replaces it.

Jonathan Pageau, in his typical way, has described Disclosure Day as a “late–boomer propaganda film”: aliens as saviours, empathy as the supreme virtue, the mainstream media as priesthood, revelation as broadcast event. One does not need to follow every part of that (occasionally tenuous) reading to see the central point that the aliens are not simply neighbours; they are moral instructors. They arrive, or are revealed, as higher beings whose suffering exposes our cruelty and whose message can rescue us from ourselves.

This is an old trope now. Humanity is violent, divided, selfish and stupid. Then the ‘visitors’ arrive from beyond the stars, purer than us, wiser than us, somehow less compromised by history, sin, politics, and no doubt, social media. They show us that we must choose empathy. Everyone looks up. The music track swells. Salvation descends, tastefully backlit.

The absurdity is that these cosmic redeemers’ apparent saving mission begins with children being lured away into the woods, taken to “Hansel and Gretel’s house” – which turns out to be the aliens’ spaceship – and left with trauma so deep it marks them for decades. An odd first move as saviours go.

Glorification of kidnapping aside, there is something deeply revealing about this. For all that elements of modern secular culture still find the Christian idea of salvation implausible, embarrassing, even dangerous, it remains hungry for salvation all the same. It wants revelation, transcendence, grace, and a messiah who asks only that we be nicer to one another – only without repentance, judgement, or God.

Empathy is certainly not a bad thing. God forbid a Christian think tank should speak out against it. But empathy alone is a very thin gospel. It does not tell us what is true. It does not tell us what is good. It does not tell us how to order our loves, forgive our enemies, restrain our desires, or face death. It is a good feeling more of us should feel, but not a panacaea.

That is why the film’s (surprisingly abundant) Christian imagery jars. The crucifix, the nuns, the stigmata–like wound, the language of revelation and divine beings: all of it gestures towards something deeper than the film’s actual superficial message.

Disclosure Day is a good watch. Emily Blunt is tremendous. Even now, there is something moving in Spielberg’s refusal to surrender wonder. However, this sentimentality is rather disappointing: the aliens are kind, humans are bad, and empathy will save us all.

The good news for all who panicked online is that Christians do not need to second–guess God because Spielberg has rediscovered UFOs and very cliché–looking little green men. We might, however, second–guess Hollywood’s habit of treating Christianity as the fragile superstition from which its own thinner myths can liberate us.

The aliens may or may not be out there. But they are not coming to tidy up our politics, heal our divisions, or save us from ourselves.

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Nick Spencer speaks with writer, comedian and broadcaster Andrew Doyle. 09/06/2026

“Woke” has become one of the most contested words in contemporary culture, deployed as a badge of honour by some, a term of abuse by others. But what does it actually mean, and does it constitute a serious ideological movement or merely a passing fashion?

In today’s episode, Nick talks to writer, comedian and broadcaster Andrew Doyle, best known as the creator of satirical persona Titania McGrath, whose latest book The End of Woke examines the origins, methods and possible decline of the movement. They discuss how woke ideology captured institutions, weaponised language, and confused equity with equality – and why the real threat, left or right, is always authoritarianism in disguise.

You can buy a copy of his book here.

Tune in to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.

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Chine McDonald explores the recent backlash against our cultural obsession with self–optimisation. Can we resist the pull of productivity? 04/06/2026

Businessman Steven Bartlett – whose influential podcast Diary of a CEO has gained more than a billion listens – has come under fire in recent days for saying that having two glasses of wine “ruined” three days of his life “because of the domino effect that it caused”. Bartlett laments the horror of getting worse sleep that night because of the alcohol, eating poorly the next day because his “dopamine system or the cortisol system or whatever was all messed up”. He then – horror of horrors – “podcasted worse” and didn’t go to the gym the day after. All of his supposed failures could be tracked on his various self–optimisation devices.

The response has been fascinating. Radio 1 presenter Greg James called on people to join him in the anti–optimisation movement because “optimisation is killing fun”, he said. He also might have a book out saying just that.

The backlash to Bartlett’s comments have been less about the specifics of enjoying alcohol (some applauded those who have managed to give it up entirely), but the sentiment was more a tirade against the ‘optimisation movement’ which uses data, technology, life and productivity hacks to improve quality of life. That is, if we measure the quality of life by how much we achieve, how much of our to–do lists we blast through, how much money we make, and how much our bodies are optimised health–wise to achieve the said goals.

We start each weekly team meeting at Theos with an icebreaker question. I regret asking the team last week to share the most ‘self–optimising’ thing they have done recently. Some bristled against the question; some of my colleagues rightly pointed out that we shouldn’t be falling into the trap of thinking that the self–optimising way is the right one. After all, one of the key societal narratives we as a team are hoping to counter in the world through the wisdom of Christian scripture and tradition, is exactly this concept of self–optimisation. Nevertheless, we all had answers: ranging from increasing vitamin intake to lifting weights to being trained on how to use AI.

We were reminded of our senior researcher Hannah Rich’s excellent long read in which she interviews members of religious orders about their rules of life that counter this idea that we are what we achieve. The piece begins with a striking quote from the novel Stone Yard Devotional, which tells the story of the protagonist who flees to a convent in the Australian outback:

“Being here feels somehow like childhood; the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.”

I confess that I find in this quote both liberation and terror. It’s hard to resist the pull of productivity and self–optimisation when life feels overwhelming. Self–optimisation isn’t all bad, but rather a very human attempt to provide control, order and habits that we think might lead to a better life, especially when the world feels so turbulent. And yet the pull of nothingness – of just being – is a very human hope, too. But it feels counter–cultural because, as I heard Romanita Hairston say so powerfully at Washington National Cathedral last week: “We have not yet learned how to be valuable without being useful.” 

She was speaking at The Understory festival, which Theos partnered in, and which a few of us attended in Washington DC last week. Run by our friends at Comment magazine, the inaugural festival gathered civic, institutional and faith leaders to explore what Christian humanism in particular might offer into this fragile and turbulent political and cultural moment. Anne Snyder, Comment’s editor and creator of the festival, explained the concept of the ‘understory’ as the “hidden unity” beneath the world’s fracture. “Something real and raw is stirring beneath our disordered politics and performance,” she said.

What has this got to do with Steven Barlett’s two glasses of wine and the backlash to a culture of self–optimisation?

What I see in the anti–optimisation movement is an understory emerging that is dissatisfied with the overstories we have been told about who we are. Beneath the overstory that tells us we need to be endlessly productive and optimised to feel ok about ourselves is a desire to express to another person: I think we’re made for more than this. Do you? Or as Czech theologian Tomáš Halík told those of us gathered in DC: “Humanity has had the intuition that we are more than what we currently are.” On Tuesday, back in London, at an event we held at the Royal Society of the Arts on behalf of the Fetzer Institute on the launch of their new book, we discussed too the sacred understories that lie beneath the so–called secular; and encouraged society across sectors to pay more attention to them. 

As we see an increasing resistance to the belief that the overstories we have been told to believe are the only stories, perhaps, as Romanita Hairston said, “there is an understory of connection that is not fuelled by the name tags that we wear.” 

I think a Christian understanding of what it means to be human can help us in this moment to put language around what feels instinctive to many, whether they are ‘religious’ or not. People are increasingly turning to the wisdom and steadiness of faith traditions to help us make sense of what we’re going through. For example, could any of us have predicted that in 2026 the pope’s encyclical would go viral? And yet Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas has received mainstream coverage the likes of which we’ve never seen. 

And that podcast I mentioned at the start of this piece – Diary of a CEO? Well, the latest episode out today is Steven Bartlett in conversation with none other than last year’s National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast speaker, Christian apologist John Lennox.

In these times of hunger for things that can hold us in this moment, the role of organisations like ours is perhaps to connect the understories bubbling under the surface to a story – and a person – that might help us. In the gospel accounts, when a rich young ruler asks what’s needed for him to gain eternal life, Jesus in effect tells him to let go of all the things that he might find security in and give it all away. For our self–optimisers today, that might be the wealth and the sleep trackers and the things we might grip on to for dear life; the constant need to save time or to master it for our own purposes.

Perhaps Oliver Burkemann is getting to the truth of Christ’s response to the human need to both achieve and control and produce when he writes: 

“There is an alternative: the unfashionable but powerful notion of letting time use you, approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history.”

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Theos, the Fetzer Institute and LSE’s Faith Centre recently held an event at the RSA on ‘Exploring Sacred Stories in a Secular Age’, to mark the publication of the Fetzer book Retelling Sacred Stories. Senior Fellow, Nick Spencer opened the event with an exploration of what it means to “speak” human.

Daniel Everett is one of the world’s leading scholars of language, but he started out as a missionary among the Pirahã people, a small, indigenous group living in an extremely remote part of the Amazonian rainforest.

Everett was an SIL missionary, SIL standing for Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical nonprofit organisation whose main purpose was to study, develop and document languages, so they can translate the Bible into them. That meant that, unlike the popular idea of the missionary, Everett’s role was not so much to speak to the Pirahã people but to listen to them. He, and SIL, worked on the principle that if you really want to understand, communicate, connect with – and ultimately help – other people, you must spend your time and energy among them and in particular listening to how they use words. The experience, as he discovered, can be both enlightening and disturbing.

Now, let me beg your indulgence and ask you to imagine a cosmic missionary, a kind of Martian anthropologist, who wants to do for the human species what Everett did for the Pirahã people. It – because I don’t want to speculate about how many Martian genders there are – does a bit of research first. It discovers, courtesy of reading some of the academic work – our Martian is a big fan of Robert Bellah, Robin Dunbar and Neil MacGregor – that our species has long, indeed always, been, for want of a more precise phrase, “spiritually engaged”. For almost as long as we have records of our species, those records show our preoccupation with the sacred.

It shows up in our material culture, in the statues, temples and votive offerings that can be found the world over. It shows up in our fascination with ritual, prayer and meditation. But above all it shows up in the way we talk. Wherever you go in the world, whatever age it looks at, the Martian finds words like “soul”, “spirit”, “sacred”, “presence”, “holy”, “eternity”, in texts it looks at. And it also notices that humans tend to use words like love, mercy, justice, compassion not as if they are contingent and malleable things in the world, but as if they had some kind of permanence to them and some kind of authority over us; as if, in short, they were transcendent phenomena.

And so, just as Daniel Everett learned to speak Pirahã in order to connect with that people, so our Martian realises that if it wants to connect with this species, it’s got to learn to use these terms, to speak “spiritual”.

But our cosmic anthropologist is not naïve. It realises that some parts of the world appear at least to have abandoned the religious infrastructure that supported this spiritual language. And it also realises that attempts to define and determine the meaning of these spiritual words has proved largely fruitless. Our Martian is well aware that certain philosophers have tried to define the ‘soul’, and certain anatomists have tried to locate it, and certain cranks have tried to weigh it – and none of them has met with much success. So perhaps, our Martian anthropologist thinks, the human species is seeing a gradual evolution of language and that maybe, as TS Eliot wrote, “last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”

But then the Martian looks again. Are we really losing our religion as a species? Our Martian finds out, courtesy of the Pew Forum, that around 84% of the species today is “religious” and that this is forecast to increase to about 87% by 2050.[i] And – and this is a crucial fact – even in those places where that religious infrastructure appears in a state of decay, people still speak spiritual.

Listen to what people say, what they write. They still use the language of soul, spirit, sacred, presence, holy, eternity, transcendence – even the most non–religious of contexts – as if nothing has changed. Moreover, this isn’t simply a hangover from the past, in the way the language of “sunrise” and “sunset” is a hangover from a geocentric cosmology, because the way we use such terms today was the way we always used to: figuratively, imaginatively, and above all narratively.

When we say today that my yearns for something, we are not making a poorly–phrased statement about how hungry we are. When we say, we feel the inexorable pull of compassion or mercy, we are not making a statement about Newtonian mechanics. When we say someone has a sacred aura about them, we are not talking about a smell they emit. Rather, we are reaching for a language that reflects the deepest, most heartful, most stubborn, most important ideas and experiences we have of being human.

Some of the earliest human documents we have are about trade and tax – and that surely says something about us. But many of the others relate to offerings to the gods, to rituals, to priestly records, to hymns, to funerary formulas. And many of these, from at least 4000 years ago, are narrative in form. Very often, though by no means universally, our spiritual language is embedded in stories. Our Martian anthropologist realises that not only must he learn the language, but also their narrative grammar.

I’ll drop the analogy now but you will, I hope, understand the point I was trying to make. 240 years ago the great Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote the glorious–entitled verse “To a louse”, which contained the lines:

Oh, would some Power the gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!

That is what viewing our species through the eyes of a cosmic anthropologist might help us do. And in doing so it should help underline two points that are central to what it means to be human.

First, we are a spiritual species. Largely irrespective of what we actually believe in any formal sense, and entirely irrespective of what is actually the case – human beings and culture naturally and always gravitate to “spiritual” language. It’s just what we do. We might not be making a religious, let alone doctrinal point, but we need this language – the language of soul, spirit, prayer, sacred, holy, eternity, presence, etc – just to describe the basic human condition and everything that comes with it.

And second, we are a narrative species. Since long before we started writing them down, we told each other stories, as a way of making sense of time, or ourselves, or our world, and yes, of our nagging sense that this is not all there is. Just as the English speak English, and the Pirahã speak Pirahã, humans speak spiritual and we speak narrative. If we are at all serious about understanding, communicating, connecting, helping our species, our selves, we need to do that too. As Retelling Sacred Stories puts it “the elimination of the Sacred severely distorts the human family’s chances for shared flourishing.”

Let me end, by going back to where I started, with a coda which is also a warning. Daniel Everett spent his time among the Pirahã people learning their language so he could translate the Bible for them. In the process, he did end up having conversations with them and in the process he discovered that as soon as he admitted to the Pirahã that he had not personally met Jesus, they were not interested. So much authority did they place on experience or eyewitness testimony that they were not interested in the fact that the evangelists might have met Jesus. Daniel Everett hadn’t & that was enough for them. In one sense their universe was straightforwardly immediate and proximate.

But in other sense it certainly wasn’t. Everett was clear that the Pirahã were not “nonreligious.” They talked all the time about spirits, beings in the forest, supernatural presences, dreams and visions. Everett had to learn that to communicate properly with the tribe he really had to listen, even if it was a disconcerting experience. It’s a good lesson for us today.

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Join us for the second of our Theos 20 events at the National Gallery.

In a world increasingly impacted by AI, does the definition of humanity need to be rethought? How is human capacity to create art impacted by technological advancement, and what do we lose or gain by such advancements?

Using the National Gallery’s collection as a departure point, this event asks the question: What does it mean to be human in the age of AI? Our panel will explore how acts of creativity and the emotions attributed to them shape our shared human experience.

We’re delighted to be hearing from Dr Rowan Williams, Prof Marcus du Sautoy, Rev Ayla Lepine, Dr Nathan Mladin, and Chine McDonald.

Where?

The event will be held in the Pigott Theatre in the National Gallery, WC2N 5DN.

When?

Friday 10 July, 6.30pm. 

Find out more and get tickets here.

The panel

Ayla Lepine

Revd Dr Ayla Lepine is an art historian and theologian. She is the Associate Rector at St James’s, Piccadilly in London. Her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art focused on the Gothic Revival and medievalism in modern Britain. She has held Fellowships at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, the University of Essex, and the National Gallery. She publishes and lectures widely, particularly on the intersections of social justice and modern visual culture. Her book ‘Women, Art, God’ will be published with SCM Press later this year.

Chine McDonald

Chine McDonald is a writer, broadcaster and director of the religion and society think tank, Theos. She is the author of ‘God Is Not a White Man: And Other Revelations’ (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) and ‘Unmaking Mary: Shattering the Myth of Perfect Motherhood’. She is vice–chair of Greenbelt Festival, and a trustee of Christian Aid. Chine studied Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University, and is a Canon Theologian at Chester Cathedral.

Nathan Mladin

Dr Nathan Mladin is a Senior Researcher at the Christian think tank Theos in London, an Associate of the UK’s AI, Faith and Civil Society Commission and the co–founder of Faithbase, a community and resource hub for Christian technologists (Romania). His research, speaking and writing focus on the ethics of technology, AI, faith and economics and theology of culture more generally. He is the author of several publications, including ‘AI and the Afterlife: From Digital Mourning to Mind Uploading’ (Theos, 2024) and ‘Data and Dignity: Why Privacy Matters in the Digital Age’ (Theos, 2022).

Marcus du Sautoy

Marcus du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. In 2008 he was appointed to the university’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins. He works extensively with a range of arts organisations bringing science alive for the public, from the Royal Opera House and Glastonbury Festival to Complicité theatre company. His many books dive deep into the world of machines and creativity, including ‘Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut’, and ‘The Creativity Code’.

Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams is a former Archbishop of Canterbury and was until 2020 Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of many books, including ‘Looking East in Winter’, ‘Holy Living’, and ‘The Edge of Words’, published by Bloomsbury Continuum. He lives in Cardiff and continues to broadcast, preach and lecture internationally. In 2022, he gave the second of the BBC’s centenary Reith Lectures. He is contributing writer to The New Statesman.

The evening is part of an upcoming series of events celebrating 20 years of Theos’ work at the intersection of faith and public life, bringing together leading voices to explore how religion, values, and moral reasoning can help shape a flourishing society in a changing world. 

Do you want to help shape Theos’ work in our 20th year? Find out more about the ways you could support us.

Nick Spencer reflects on the real meaning of Christian humanism after visiting Washington DC. 03/06/2026

I have just returned from Washington DC where, with colleagues, I attended a seriously impressive conference about Christian humanism. Organised by Anne Snyder and the team at Comment magazine, it was held at the National Cathedral and had over a thousand people. The event, called The Understory Festival, comprised art, music, food, conversation, and numerous first–rate discussions, including an excellent keynote speech by Luke Bretherton, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University. Bretherton and others outlined what Christian humanism is and why it is so important for our age. I predict, I hope, we will hear a lot more of it over coming years.

Oddly, however, it was not the festival itself but a visit to the Lincoln Memorial that most powerfully brought home to me the real meaning of Christian humanism.

I had never been to Washington DC before, so I took some time to do the tourist thing. It’s an impressive city, with some outstanding museums (the National Museum of African American History has to be one of the best in the world) and a stretch of land, from the Supreme Court at one end to the Lincoln Memorial at the other that feels a bit like Rome must have done in its heyday. Magnificent, huge, brilliant white, marble and stone, classically styled buildings and monuments loom over tiny humans as they ricochet between them. It’s all very imposing.

But nothing, in my humble opinion, comes close to the Lincoln Memorial. Thirty metres high, 60 metres long, with 36 doric columns, the edifice is pure Eternal City. Already dwarfed as you ascend the 87 steps to the interior, you finally come face to face with the former president, in the form of a six–metre high statue, raised on a 3.4 metre pedestal, all of which weighs 170 tonnes. It is breathtaking and utterly intimidating.

Arriving there on Saturday afternoon was probably the closest I will ever come to experiencing what it must have been like to enter an imperial temple in ancient world. Only, instead of coming face to face with Honest Abe – whose famous Gettysburg Address, with its talk of human equality, is carved into the wall of the Memorial – back then I would have been confronted by an emperor, a man whose power was total, whose recourse to violent force limitless, whose very being was divine, and whose health, authority and victories I would have been required to honour, through the regular offering of incense, wine, or sacrifices. This was power, total, unrestrained, imposed on any and all that fell under its gaze.

To live in such an environment and to have thought in any way differently about imperial power would have been terrifying. Failure to honour the emperor could get you killed. The early martyrdom of bishop Polycarp, dating from the second century, gives you a sense of what was at stake. “They tried to prevail upon him, seating themselves by his side and saying, ‘Why what harm is there in saying, Caesar is Lord, and offering incense’.” He would have none of it. And “turning round he said prophetically to the faithful who were with him, ‘I must needs be burned alive.’” And so it came to pass.

This, ultimately, lay at the heart of Rome. An assertion not of humanity but of power, utterly raw and undiluted, total and final, destroying anything that stood in its way.

Christianity transformed this. In place of the imperial throne, there was the criminal’s cross. In place of imperial strength, there was human weakness. In place of huge marble, there was vulnerable flesh. In place of the imperial power as the image of divinity, there was the broken, tortured human body. Emperor and Christ were both men, both gods. They were both the foundation for all they surveyed. They were both the final word of authority in the world. They were just very different answers to those questions. Humanism was born here. “Behold the man,” Pilate said.

But, before we get too pious and triumphalist about this, there is a caveat. We should not assume that Christianity necessarily protects us from this un–humanistic power and idolatry. To the best of my knowledge, the largest imperial statue in ancient Rome, was that dedicated to the first Christian emperor, Constantine. Christianity has proved pretty adept at banishing divinity from living (political) leaders, and then smuggling it back in through some theological loophole.

And let us also not assume that, even if we acknowledge this tendency, we are therefore protected from such backdoor quasi–deification of human power. As I walked the capital’s streets, I couldn’t help but notice several huge banners of the current president, a man deeply popular with many American Christians, unfurled over government buildings. It felt a bit odd, to be honest. A bit like stepping back in time.

A banner of US President Donald Trump, photographed by Nick Spencer 

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Nick Spencer speaks with theologian Hannah Strømmen. 02/06/2026

Unpalatable truth as it may be, there are some, especially today, who draw on the Bible to exclude and vilify others, as a way of protecting and the “pure” Christian culture of Europe or the West.

It’s not an altogether new phenomenon – people have deployed the Bible for militaristic ends since the Crusades – but it appears to be growing once again, as the Europe comes under “attack” from immigrants and Islam.

How does this happen? What Bibles do the Far Right use? What texts do they quote? What principles underlie that usage? And what can be done about it?

In today’s episode, Nick talks to theologian Hannah Strømmen, whose latest book The Bibles of the Far Right, examines just these questions.

You can buy a copy of her book here.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.

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Nick Spencer speaks with journalist and author Sonia Faleiro 26/05/2026

Buddhism is often seen in the West as a religion of peace and serenity – rarely, if ever, associated with violence. But that comforting image has obscured a darker and more complex reality playing out across Southeast Asia.

Journalist and author Sonia Faleiro joins Nick Spencer to explore her latest book The Robe and the Sword, which examines how Buddhist nationalism has fuelled ethnic tension, discrimination, and outright genocide in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand. From the militant monks who emerged out of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war, to the Facebook–driven hatred that preceded the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, the patterns Faleiro uncovers are uncomfortably familiar to anyone watching the rise of religious nationalism elsewhere in the world.

You can buy Sonia’s book, The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhism is Shaping Modern Asia, here.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.

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Host Joe Wilson discusses our ‘Living Stones’ report with Interim Dean of Carlisle Cathedral, Michael Everitt. 24/05/2026

Catch the discussion about our report Living Stones: English Cathedrals as Sacred Spaces in Changing Times from 8:08am. 

Tune in here.

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A team of our researchers attended the Unite the Kingdom rally last weekend to investigate the rise of so–called “Christian nationalism”. 22/05/2026

“How many of our daughters have to be taken?…that’s the real cost of mass, open borders immigration…An invading army of men brought into this nation…raped and pillaged their way through it… a rape jihad”.

These were the words of Tommy Robinson (a.k.a. Stephen Yaxley–Lennon) at the Unite the Kingdom rally last Saturday. Tommy Robinson, a prominent far right and anti–Islam activist, recently announced his conversion to Christianity, contributing to growing discussions about the rise of so–called “Christian nationalism”.

In response to the increasing prominence of Christianity in our political debates, Theos is engaged upon a new stream of work exploring Christianity and ideas of nationhood in UK and across Europe. To try to gain more of an insight into how Christianity and nationalism intersect for those occupying political spaces like Unite the Kingdom, a team of Theos researchers decided to attend UTK for ourselves. We deliberately sought out attendees who were wearing or carrying Christian symbols or signs and spoke with them to try to understand how and why they had found themselves at such a controversial event.

Walking up to Parliament Square, our eyes met a sea of flags: Union and England flags, but also Israeli, Imperial (Pahlavi) Iranian, Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Scottish. There were a great many who fitted the usual media stereotypes: white, middle–aged men whose style and swagger felt football–hooligan coded; the baggy tracksuits and chain necklaces with flag–come–capes on backs were a common sight. Some had been drinking and the odd one at the fringes was making a bit of trouble. Speaking to some attendees, we found they had travelled (sometimes alone) from as far afield as Blackpool, Devon, Norfolk and Lancashire, as well as parts of Essex, East London and Kent. They were keen to interact and talk to us, many seemingly looking for kinship and visibility in a society which had often made them feel invisible and disposable. Coming to London was, for some, an act of civic agency: not democratic participation in the conventional sense, but a journey undertaken because other routes to being heard felt closed. 

The variety of people listening was one of the biggest surprises. There were chairs dotted along one side of the square. Small groups of children of various ages scampered in and out of the crowds, often with flags tied around their shoulders. Volunteers in high–vis UTK jackets wandered around picking up discarded beer cans and meal–deal sandwich boxes. One couple we met explained that they’d come last year and that it was great community event for celebrating Britian. We were struck at how much of a calm, open and generally ordinary, retirement–age they were. We could easily imagine them sitting in the café at the local garden centre, having just wandered around the selection of gnomes and terracotta pots. At times, the rally felt almost like a festival. And whilst white men were the majority, there were also the “Pink Ladies”, anti–immigration activists focused on protecting on women and girls, and the odd person from an ethnic minority background, including one Black lady holding a sign with “Christ, Culture, Country” and a cross emblazoned on it, and who somehow still looked like she belonged.

Unifying these groups seemed to be a belief that the “the establishment” — whether that be the government and politicians or the media or indeed the established church — were not working for them and did not represent them: “They don’t listen to us, the media just say we’re a bunch of thugs”, was a common refrain. When a series of photographs were beamed on screen in a pantomime–esque “goodies” vs. “baddies” game, it was Keir Starmer’s face that was met with the biggest boos. “Keir Starmer is a w****r” was the crowd’s most popular chant. The only time this was hushed away, was during a minute’s silence for Rhiannon Whyte, a 27–year–old woman who was murdered by an asylum seeker in 2024. Asked who they thought could solve the country’s problems – including if Tommy Robinson himself should stand for office – their answer was rarely a clear endorsement of any party at all – although Restore Britain seemed popular. More often than not, we were met with a shrug and dismissal of the formal political sphere. It was politics just as much as politicians or political parties, that was to blame.

Scattered amongst this mass of red, white and blue were a number of large wooden crosses. One was being held up by a man in his mid–50s. His cross was noticeably larger than some of the others and had hinges on it so that it could be folded away more easily. “I made it myself,” he smiled. We discovered he’d been a Christian since he was 14 and had gone to a range of different Protestant churches in his life, from Pentecostal to mainstream Church of England. “This country cannot succeed as a nation if it does not have Jesus at its centre. We need to go back to that,” he explained. Asked about Tommy Robinson, he reflected carefully: “Clearly, he’s done some bad things, but something happened to him in solitary confinement and he became a Christian; there’s a rawness about him, you know? And beneath that rawness is an important message”. That message, for this particular man, was that we need to “go back” to Jesus. He was one of a number of Christians present who seemed serious and practising.

Like many of “the usual suspects” who condemned the “Islamisation” of Britain, often using vitriolic language in doing so, these Christians did often speak of wanting Britain to be Christian. But theirs was not a longing to return to England’s green (or rather, white) and pleasant land. Rather, it was a desire for re–Christianisation from below: revival, repentance, evangelisation. Even, as some put it, a new reformation.

These Christians’ opposition to Islam was real, that is certain. But their opposition was not simply defined by what Britain should be against but rather, however controversially, what they believed Britain should become. That was a New Jerusalem yes, but not one of conquest, crusade and the protection of the white man. Unlike many of the signs carried by some of their compatriots — “I see your jihad and I raise you a crusade” being the most striking example — their rhetoric was generally not coded with violent imagery, but instead characterised by talk of “softened hearts”, and minds opened to the “love and grace” at the centre of the Gospel message.

For one man in his 20s, holding a “Jesus is the way the truth and the life” flag in a St George cross style and wearing a selection of large rings and crucifix necklace, being confirmed as a Catholic at Easter had saved him from himself and given him fellowship and community. He said he was there because he wanted England to be built on Christianity. Another man who ran a right–wing, anti–immigration Instagram channel, explained to us he’d become a Christian in the last few months but really struggled to read the Bible. One of us showed him the Bible app we use on our phone, suggesting he try the short videos and search function to help him get started. He took out his phone, downloaded the app right in front of us and thanked us for the advice.

Some we spoke to who were wielding crosses were not practising Christians but nonetheless had a deep respect for Christianity. They wanted to engage with us and were pleased to see evangelisation at the rally, too. As one man we spoke to from Bedfordshire, who was holding a wooden cross he had picked up at the start of the march, explained: “I am not a God–fearing man, but I believe in the Lord. I don’t go to church, but my nan did. Jesus came first, not Muhammad. I believe we should be loving and our country should be centre on love, that’s why I’m here.” He repeatedly thanked us as Christians for being there, kept apologising for drinking, explaining he had a problem and said we were good people, shaking our hands.

And sincere Christian or not, all this felt completely at odds with Robinson’s call to arms for the battle over Britain and its identity; as did a lone “F**k Islam, Christ is King” sign. A stunt from three French anti–Islam activists, in which they removed burqas to calls of “take it off” from the crowds, was also met with a much more lukewarm reception than the viral media clips suggest – and seemed utterly at odds to the tone of many Christians we spoke to.

Beneath the flags and headlines of a “racist and xenophobic” march, then, we observed something much more complex than social media clickbait or political polarisation will allow. Whilst many of those present who were Christian or Christian–adjacent seemed to converge politically, and almost all were anti–Islam, their journey to the rally was not borne out of the same phenomenon.

For some, that journey began with Christianity, in a belief that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life. Calling for Britain to be a Christian nation was, for them, a natural extension of that. Some seemed uncomfortable with the extremity of language, some were handing out scripture, many had been Christians for a long time. They were not just nationalists reaching for Christian imagery, but Christians whose faith had led them to a distinct, and sometimes uncomfortable, kind of patriotism.

For others sporting Christian symbols, their walk to the march began with national concerns and ended up at Christianity; whether that was an actively developing faith, or simply a deep admiration for it. Their language was more militant; their theology was crude—sometimes almost totally absent — but their openness to us as Christians was striking.

Separate, perhaps, from both groups, was what we saw on the stage – that is, the public presentation of the far–right which, while more sanitised at points than might it have been, was nonetheless still strikingly provocative and at times, aggressive.

What we encountered resists easy generalisations or sweeping judgement. If anything, it highlights the importance of acknowledging the various and frequently complex ways in which faith, identity, and grievance are interwoven in such spaces. It might seem strange to say we found a far–right rally interesting, and there are certainly many millions of Britons who would have been uncomfortable and possibly even in danger there. But it is a worthwhile experience if you want to get to know our new political landscape, or at least one region of it, in its good, bad and sometimes ugly forms.

Theos is publishing research examining Christian nationalism in the UK and Europe. Full research findings and analysis for research countries (UK, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania) will be published over coming months. Sign up here to receive this research straight to your inbox upon its release.

Nick Spencer speaks with Tobias Cremer, a Member of the European Parliament. 19/05/2026

European Christian politics is not new. Indeed, the religion has been an integral politcal factor for 1700 years. But something has changed over the last 20 years.

Increasingly, a secularised form of Christian politics is taking centre–stage, in which populist leaders celebrate Christianity, but without the Christ bit.

What forms does this secular Christianity take? How does it differ between Europe’s major nations? And why may we be seeing not the Americanisation of European politics (as many claim) but the Europeanisation of American politics?

Nick Spencer speaks to Tobias Cremer, a Member of the European Parliament and former Junior Research Fellow in Religion and the Frontier Challenges at Pembroke College Oxford, about the history of European Christian nationalism, and about his latest book, The Godless Crusade: Religion, Populism and Right–Wing Identity Politics in the West.
Tobias’ book is available to buy here.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.

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A report by George Lapshynov and Nathan Mladin exploring the role of cathedrals in modern life.

England’s 42 Anglican cathedrals are not simply places of Christian worship but are among the country’s most remarkable institutions. They are centres of civic life, beacons in their communities, and sanctuaries of stillness in a world of incessant noise and constant change. Worship remains foundational to their identity and purpose and is the centre from which their many other functions flow. Cathedrals run outreach programmes, educate schoolchildren, stage world–class music and art, mark the civic calendar, and hold space for communal grief and celebration. 

They are among the most visited heritage sites in the country, contributing hundreds of millions of pounds to local economies, mobilising thousands of volunteers and sustaining thousands of jobs. 

They are also, for many, places of unhurried spiritual exploration. In a country where fewer than half the population identifies as Christian, cathedrals remain spaces where stillness, beauty and wonder can gently draw the spiritually open toward an experience of the sacred. 

In the years since our first major exploration of English Anglican cathedrals, in a report titled Spiritual Capital, cathedrals have changed in remarkable ways. They have professionalised their management and operations, diversified their revenue, expanded their events programmes, invested in digital communications, deepened their partnerships with local institutions, and broadened the range of people who cross their thresholds. They have survived a pandemic that drastically reduced visitor numbers and prompted the furloughing of most of their staff. They have adapted to a major overhaul of their governance under the Cathedrals Measure in 2021. 

Yet the resources that sustain this work are stretched thin. Cathedrals depend financially on the Church of England, through the Church Commissioners, as well as a patchwork of commercial revenue, charitable giving, and lottery grants to maintain ancient buildings, pay staff, and deliver the services that communities have come to expect of them. The gap between what cathedrals contribute and the support they need is widening. Drawing on a nationally representative YouGov poll, a separate survey of over 1,300 cathedral visitors, and qualitative fieldwork involving 146 interviewees across six representative cathedrals, this report examines the social, cultural and spiritual contribution of cathedrals. It traces how cathedrals are changing, and what pressures they face, ultimately calling for greater recognition, both financial and societal, of cathedrals’ status as civic, cultural, and spiritual assets. 

Download the report here. 

About the data 

Living Stones draws on a nationally representative YouGov poll of over 1,800 adults in England and a survey of over 1,300 cathedral visitors.  

If you’re curious, we’ve linked our data sets below. 

YouGov data sheets.  

Our survey data.

Erratum: Earlier versions of this report contained a typographical error. On pages 9 and 78, the figure should read 74% (not 77%), consistent with the chart in the report and the underlying data.

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This resource unpacks why our cathedrals matter and what you can do to support them. 18/05/2026

What is a Cathedral? Why are they important? And what do they need?

If you’re interested in ensuring that England’s cathedrals are here for generations to come, read our executive summary with practical guidance that get to the heart of how we can best support cathedrals. 

Download it here.

Erratum: Earlier versions of this summary document contained a typographical error. On pages 3 and 6, the figure should read 74% (not 77%), consistent with the report and the underlying data.

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Research identifies ‘warm but passive’ attachment of general public. 18/05/2026

Madeleine Davies unpacks our latest report Living Stones: English cathedrals as sacred spaces in changing times for the Church Times. 

Read it here.

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The discovery of aliens would not render faith ridiculous, writes Nick Spencer. 15/05/2026

“I like a moon mission as much as the next man, but even I thought the coverage of Artemis’s recent lunar trip was a bit excessive. Don’t misunderstand me. I am in awe of the physical, emotional, and technical strengths of astronauts who endure conditions that would reduce me to jelly. But I was also aware of how the coverage was essentially an antidote to all our other, somewhat grimmer, sublunary news.”

Nick Spencer writes on the possibility of alien life and its theological implications for the Church Times.

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Nick Spencer unpacks preliminary findings from our research on Christian Nationalism. Is it as widespread as we think? 15/05/2026

Headlines

–       These are preliminary and tentative findings outlining the size of Christian nationalism in the UK.

–       17% of adults in UK agree that you need to be Christian to be truly British, and just under half of them (8%) strongly agree with this statement. 

–       Being Christian is considered to be the most important factor (from a list of 12) for being British by only 1% of the population.

–       16% of people in UK agree that people who do not hold Christian values do not belong in Britain, with under half of them (7%) strongly agreeing with this statement.

–       Other data, while not measuring this kind of strict Christian nationalism, give a sense of public opinion concerning a looser, but still close, formal relationship between Christianity and Britishness.

–       Four in ten people (41%) agree that “the law in Britain should be based on Christian values”, and four in ten people (40%) agree that “religious education in Britain should prioritise the teaching of Christianity ahead of other faiths”, with about half in each case (e.g. c. 20%) agreeing strongly.

–       Slightly fewer (37%) think that “the government should formally state that Britain is a Christian country”, although slightly more (22%) strongly agree with that statement. 

–       Finally, less than a third of people (26%) agree that “it is important for the political leader of my country to be a Christian”, and only 14% strongly agree with that statement.

Introduction: taking care with numbers

This essay is intended to give a preliminary overview of the size and shape of “Christian nationalism” in the UK.

In order to measure “Christian nationalism”, you need to be able to define it. However, as this Theos essay on what Christian Nationalism is pointed out, this is not straightforward. Christian nationalism (we’ll drop the scare quote now) is a slippery term, with lots of different definitions flying around.

Many of those are highly pejorative, with ‘Christian nationalist’ being intended as much an insult as it is a description. The result is that very few who might legitimately fall into this category willingly use or own the description.

If this weren’t challenging enough, there is a risk of self–fulfilling circularity in defining the term. If you can’t ask someone whether they are a Christian nationalist, you need to define it another way. But if you define a Christian nationalist as someone who holds x, y, and z views, it should be no surprise that when you measure what Christian nationalists believe/ want, you discover that they believe/ want x, y, and z.

This can also be away of distorting, usually by exaggerating, the number of Christian nationalists in a country. To take an example of this: if you define a Christian nationalist, as is sometimes done in America, as someone who agrees that “the federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces”, then you shouldn’t be surprised to find out that Christian nationalists hold this view. It does not follow, however, that anyone who holds this view is therefore a Christian nationalist. Unless we are careful to make this distinction, there is a danger of reading the number of those who favour religious symbols in public spaces as indicating the number of Christian nationalists, thereby inflating the size of the Christian nationalist constituency.

These caveats need to be born in mind when we come to measuring Christian nationalism, and Theos’ on–going work in this area will address these concerns by forms of statistical analysis (more of which anon). In the meantime, we wanted to release initial findings from our on–going work in this area. Accordingly, this essay draws on findings (a) from a new quantitative research study into Christian nationalism that we have commissioned from the market research company RED C and (b) from existing research on this topic from a variety of polling companies and social science studies.

This numerical work takes its cue from the definition of Christian nationalism, described in the Theos explainer, as being about co–terminosity. Christian nationalism is best understood as seeing those two terms – “Christianity” and “the nation” – as somehow coterminous or co–dependent. According to this reasoning, ‘Christianity’ and ‘the nation’ have more or less the same social/ cultural/ moral/ demographic boundaries. In effect, the quickest way of getting a sense of whether someone is a Christian nationalist is to ask them whether they think it is essential/ important to be Christian in order to belong to the nation.

There are various ways of ascertaining this (our survey approaches the point from a number of directions), and a few of these are used below. What is important is to try and keep this question distinct from others factors that are sometimes confused with it, such as whether someone thinks the nation is a Christian country (which is a sociological, cultural or constitutional question), whether someone thinks the nation has always been a Christian country (a historical question), or whether someone thinks the nation should be a Christian country (an ideological or theological question).

The key question is whether you think you need to be Christian to be truly British. What does the research say about this?

How widespread is Christian Nationalism in Britain?

Theos/ RED C research

We asked a nationally representative sample of UK adults whether they agreed with the statement “To be truly British you should… be a Christian”. The results are given in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: How far do you agree that “To be truly British you should… be a Christian”

Source: Theos/ RED C. Sample 1765 UK adults

A clear majority of UK adults disagreed with the idea that you needed to be Christian in order to be truly British, and a clear plurality strongly disagreed with it. On the other side, 17% of people in UK claimed that you do need to be Christian to be truly British, and just under half of those strongly agreed with this.

This question was asked as part of a wider question which offered other options for being truly British, i.e. “To be truly British you should…

–       be white

–       contribute economically

–       respect the authority of parliament

–       have been born here

–       be able to speak English

–       share national customs and traditions

–       be committed to democracy and freedom of speech

–       defend the country when people criticise it

–       obey the law

–       be proud of Britain

–       live here

At first, respondents were allowed to tick as many options as they wanted, but then they were asked “which ONE of these factors is MOST important for being truly British?”. When asked this, only 1% of respondents said it was being Christian.

As noted, there are other ways of approaching this question which are less direct and arguably less clearly focused on the ‘coterminosity’ of Christianity and nation, but which are worth noting.

We asked people how far they agreed with the statement “People who do not hold Christian values do not belong in Britain”. The results (Fig. 2) were very similar to the question of whether you needed to be Christian to be “truly British”.

Fig. 2: How far do you agree that “People who do not hold Christian values do not belong in Britain”

Source: Theos/ RED C. Sample 1765 UK adults

Once again, a majority of people disagreed with this statement, and a plurality (and nearly a majority) strongly disagreed with it. Around a sixth of the population agreed with it, roughly split between those who agreed with is strongly and those who agreed with it slightly.

There are other, still looser, measures of the perceived/desired relationship between Christianity and the nation, which are worth mentioning. For example, we also asked people how far they agreed that “it is important for the political leader of my country to be a Christian”, or that “the government should formally state that Britain is a Christian country”, or that “the law in Britain should be based on Christian values”, or that “religious education in Britain should prioritise the teaching of Christianity ahead of other faiths”. It is worth underlining the point made in the introduction that, relevant and interesting as these factors are, they are not direct measure of Christian nationalism, and should not be treated as such. It is also worth mentioning – the perennial challenge with quantitative research – that it is impossible to know exactly what someone means when they dis/agree with a statement like “the government should formally state that Britain is a Christian country” (how? in what forum?), or that “the law in Britain should be based on Christian values” (which values? how explicitly?).

Such caveats noted, these statements given breadth and colour to the core data described above. The results can be seem in Figure 3.

Fig. 3: Agreement on the perceived/ desired relationship between Christianity and Britain

Source: Theos/ RED C. Sample 1765 UK adults

Four in ten people agree that “the law in Britain should be based on Christian values” and that “religious education in Britain should prioritise the teaching of Christianity ahead of other faiths”, with about half in each case agreeing strongly. Slightly fewer (37%) think that “the government should formally state that Britain is a Christian country”, although slightly more (22%) strongly agree with that statement. Finally, less than a third of people (26%) agree that “it is important for the political leader of my country to be a Christian”, and only 14% strongly agree with that statement.

Arguably, these statements measure not the desire for a tightly coterminous relationship between Christianity and Britain, but rather a slightly looser but nonetheless identifiably close relationship between the two. That being so, it is not a surprise to see that a larger number, if never actually a majority of people, agree with these statements.

How does this compare with existing research?

Although Christiain nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon in the UK, there have been some polls and studies conducted over the last ten or so years that cover a similar territory.

In 2012, an Ipsos MORI survey for Channel 4 reported that while 56% of adults said that they thought Britain is a Christian country, and 61% said that it should be, only 4% believed that not being a Christian stopped people from being fully British.[i]

A decade or so later, in 2024, British Social Attitudes published its 41st report which contained a chapter on National Identity, drawing on survey data from the previous year.[ii] This explored what it meant to be British today, looking at certain “civic attributes” such as “to respect British political institutions and laws”, “to have British citizenship”, “to feel British”, and certain “ethnic” ones, such as “to have been born in Britain”, “to have British ancestry”, and “to be a Christian.” This study reported that the proportion of Britons who believed that it is very or fairly important to be a Christian in order to be ‘truly British’ was 19%.

The following year, the US–based Pew Research Center studied attitudes to “the importance of language, customs and traditions, birthplace, and religion as components of national identity.”[iii] Their survey covered 23 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia–Pacific region, sub–Saharan Africa and Latin America, among which was the UK. “Being a member of the country’s predominant religion” was one of the factors tested. This found that 12% of the population considered being Christian “very important” for being British and 17% considered it “somewhat important”. These are higher numbers than that reported for the Ipsos MORI/ Channel 4 survey, but the question is softer, Pew asking about importance, Ipsos MORI about whether, in effect, it was essential.

To these studies, we can add three more from 2025. In 2025, Pew returned to the subject of nationalism from a specifically religious point of view, looking at levels of “Religious Nationalism Around the World”.[iv] This was measured according to people’s responses to four questions, one of which was “how important is belonging to the historically predominant religion [i.e. Christianity in the UK] to being truly part of your national identity?” Pew found that 10% of Britons thought it was very important and 12% considered it somewhat important.

It is worth noting that the other three questions Pew asked in this survey were:

–       How important is it to you for your national leader to share your religious beliefs?

–       How much influence do you think the historically predominant religion’s sacred text [the Bible] should have on the laws of your country?

–       When the sacred text conflicts with the will of the people, which should have more influence on the laws of your country?

The results for the UK were as follows.

Table 1: Importance of Christianity to the nation, from Pew research (2025)  

Pew went on to say that for their report “we define “religious nationalists” as people who identify with the historically predominant religion [i.e. Christian in the UK] and take a strongly religious position on all four of these questions”, on which basis only 1% of Britons classified as ‘religious nationalists’. [p. 8] This is obviously a very demanding set of criteria.

Also in 2025, More in Common asked a UK sample if religion was important to whether someone was English. Just over one in ten (11%) of said that it was.[v]

Finally in 2025, the 2025 Ipsos Populism Report asked respondents in 31 countries a battery of questions, among which was how important they thought being part of the religious majority in their country was for being “truly” from that country. When it came to Britain, a quarter (25%) said it was.[vi]

Most recently, a small survey conducted by Premier Christian News in May 2026 (260 adult Christians) reported that 23% of respondents said they identify as Christian nationalists, while 25% described the movement as “godly”.[vii] That said, 93% said they were happy living in a country where neighbours are of different faiths and cultures, including Muslims, Sikhs and others.

 

Is Christian nationalism in the UK growing or declining?

Because most research in this area is recent (and one–off), it is hard to get a clear idea of the longitudinal trends. Trying to do so via comparing discrete studies is problematic because, however similar questions and surveys are, there are usually small but important differences in wording that render any comparison between them problematic.

The one set of studies that might give some indication of this is the British Social Attitudes survey which has been measuring how “important” people think it is to be Christian in order to be British since the 1990s. BSA found that the proportion of Britons believing that it is very or fairly important to be a Christian in order to be ‘truly British’ has declined from 32% in 1995, to 31% in 2003, to 24% in 2013, and to 19% in 2023.

This would suggest that Christian nationalism has become less of an issue over the last thirty years, which would run counter to the current concerns about a spike in Christian nationalist sentiment recently. However, there are reasons why we might treat these data line with some caution.

Firstly, it only runs to 2023, and the recent interest and apparent rise in Christian nationalism post–dates that. Second, it measures the perceived importance of being a Christian to be British, which is a comparatively weak measure of the phenomenon (and certainly weaker than statements around needing to be Christian in order to be truly British). In that respect, therefore, the BSA data may be measuring something closer to perceived salience of Christianity to Britishness, which has been falling since the 1990s, rather than the slightly different and somewhat harder phenomenon of Christian nationalism itself.

Conclusion

As noted at the outset, Christian nationalism is a slippery term, vulnerable to different definitions and therefore to different assessments of its extent. This essay has looked at initial findings from new Theos/ RED C research into Christian nationalism across Europe, alongside existing studies that explore the same topic.

Although all conclusions must be tentative at this stage, the data here studied suggest that Christian nationalism, being a complex social, cultural, political and religious phenomenon, does not manifest itself as – and is not best understand simply by means of – an “in–or–out” measure. Rather, it is better understood by means of a series of different, and perhaps concentric, groupings.

In this way, there is a tiny group of people for whom being Christian is the single most important factor for being British (Theos/ RED C) or who think it is “very important” that their national leader shares their Chrisitan beliefs, and that the Bible should have a preeminent influence on British laws, and that when the Bible conflicts with the will of the people, the former should have the greater influence, and that being Christian is “very important” to being truly British (Pew, 2025). This is probably no more than 1% of the population.

Then are people who hold recognisably Christian nationalist views, but without the same intensity. They agree that “to be truly British you should… be a Christian” (Theos/ RED C, 2026) or that “people who do not hold Christian values do not belong in Britain” (Theos/ RED C, 2026). They might have agreed (in 2012) that “not being a Christian stops people from being fully British” (Ipsos MORI/ Channel 4, 2012). They might say that it was fairly (or, more likely, very) important to be a Christian in order to be ‘truly British’ (BSA 41, 2024), or that being Christian is “very important” for being British (Pew 2025). They would say that when the Bible conflicts with the will of the people, it is important that the former should have the greater influence on the laws of the country. This group is somewhere between 7 and 15% of the population.

Finally, there are those who want a looser but still strong and formal connection between the nation and Christianity, without seeing the two identities as essentially linked. They agree, for example, that “it is important for the political leader of my country to be a Christian”, or that “the government should formally state that Britain is a Christian country”, or that “the law in Britain should be based on Christian values”, or that “religious education in Britain should prioritise the teaching of Christianity ahead of other faiths”, but they would not go as far as to say it is necessary to be Christian to be British (Theos/ RED C, 2026). This group is somewhere between 15 and 25% of the population.

It is important to stress that these are initial and very approximate categorisations, which will be refined, supplemented (and no doubt) corrected by our on–going analysis of the data.

 

Research Methodology

More details on the methodology, panel integrity and data quality of this research can be found here.

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]]> nick.spencer@theosthinktank.co.uk (Nick Spencer) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/15/how-big-is-christian-nationalism-in-the-uk https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/in-the-news/2026/05/12/one-foot-in-the-graveyard Tue, 12 May 2026 16:07:00 +0000

Dr Madeleine Pennington appears on BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Belief. 12/05/2026

Giles Fraser digs deep into graveyards and asks how we remember those we have loved and lost. He meets Johanna Holmes OBE, Chair of the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, to discover this graveyard’s hidden secrets.

He’s joined by Dr Madeleine Pennington, Head of Research at the religious think tank Theos and author of their 2023 report Love, Grief and Hope – emotional responses to death and dying in the UK, Glasgow–based author, journalist and blogger Peter Ross, author of ‘A Tomb With a View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards’ and Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg.

Listen to Madeleine here.

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]]> madeleine.pennington@theosthinktank.co.uk (Madeleine Pennington) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/in-the-news/2026/05/12/one-foot-in-the-graveyard https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/12/what-is-american-christian-nationalism-in-conversation-with-andrew-whitehead Tue, 12 May 2026 15:47:00 +0000

Nick Spencer speaks with sociologist Andrew Whitehead. 12/05/2026

Christian Nationalism seems to be on the rise – particularly in the US, but increasingly in Europe. The phrase, however, is often used vaguely and carelessly. Indeed “Christian nationalism” can be something of a “dustbin” term, into which people throw all the kinds of things they dislike.

So, what does it mean? What forms does it take and, with a particular focus on the US, what motivates and shapes it?

Join Nick Spencer as he talks to sociologist Andrew Whitehead about what Christian nationalism is – and what it isn’t. You can buy a copy of Andrew’s latest book, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, here. 

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]]> nick.spencer@theosthinktank.co.uk (Nick Spencer) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/12/what-is-american-christian-nationalism-in-conversation-with-andrew-whitehead https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/12/whats-motherhood-got-to-do-with-it Tue, 12 May 2026 00:41:00 +0000

What comes to mind when you think of motherhood? There’s more to it than meets the eye, says Chine McDonald. 12/05/2026

When I tell some people one of the themes we at Theos are exploring in our research is ‘motherhood’, or tell them I’ve written a book about motherhood, I can’t help but sense eyes glazing over, or sometimes even a barely perceptible eye–roll. It might be just me, but I can’t shake the feeling that in public consciousness, ‘motherhood’ is followed by apple pie; it’s sweet and saccharine. It’s dull and unintellectual. To some, motherhood is a smug and exclusive club, swinging from moaning about our plight to talking far too much about the love we feel for our children – a love the likes of which you can only experience once you’re in said club, of course. For some, motherhood represents pain: the pain of loss or the pain of that which may never come to pass. It is a topic fraught with difficulty, almost every sentence needing a qualifying statement in case it implies judgment or disregard towards other people’s choices or situations. We talk candidly about the challenges of a Theos team managing several pregnancies and pregnancy losses within the space of a few years in our podcast Motherhood vs the Machine, which has recently been shortlisted for a Sandford St Martin Award.

And yet despite its difficulties, I am more convinced than ever that it is a profound lens through which to look at what it is to be human. Not all of us are mothers, but all of us were born of mothers. Motherhood elicits thoughts and ideas around embodiment, care, politics, the family, citizenship, the economy, the workplace, technology, and spirituality. Motherhood is about literal births of literal children, but at a metaphysical level, it also represents what philosopher Hannah Arendt introduces in The Human Condition as ‘natality’ – the human capacity to begin anew. Writing in and around the Second World War, Arendt describes natality as the opposite of mortality; beginnings rather than endings. In a world which seems ever turbulent, with destruction of systems and democracies and trust, and nations, natality is for Arendt, “the miracle that saves the world”. This is not an exclusive club, but a task we are all called into – to remake the world, participating in its renewal, bringing hope where there is only death.

Last week, the team and I enjoyed hosting Edward Davies, director of research at the Centre for Social Justice, and heard how they too are increasingly exploring the place of motherhood and family life within wider topics such as nationhood and work: areas that feel more well–trodden ground for Westminster think tanks.

As a religion think tank in particular, motherhood for us presents a space in which the sacred and the secular meet. We felt that keenly and beautifully at an event we held last month entitled Making a Mother: Sacred Rituals for Modern Motherhood. The event drew in a packed audience of women and mothers, including influential thinkers and speakers on motherhood, such as author Lucy Jones, whose book Matrescence was long–listed for the Women’s Prize for Non–Fiction, and Theo Clarke – former Conservative MP–turned campaigner, who led the birth trauma inquiry. The event comprised the debut screening of our stunning new animation Making a Mother by Emily Downe, and a preview of the UK element of our upcoming research Motherhood: Inside Out, as well as qualitative findings from UK mothers of all faiths and none on the socio–political and spiritual changes that happen during matrescence, it will also include some new findings from landmark polling on motherhood we have commissioned, undertaken by Ipsos.

As we sat in the candlelight led by live music and Rev Alice Watson leading us in a reworking of the ancient Churching of Women liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, I was convinced again that what we at Theos are doing – offering alternative narratives about the wisdom the Christian faith can offer into some of the biggest challenges of our times – can be attractive and compelling. And that it can be both intellectually stimulating and viscerally engaging. We’ve been overwhelmed by the feedback from those who attended the powerful evening. If you would like to be kept in touch about our work on Motherhood, sign up to hear more here. As well as a stream of research coming out on motherhood throughout the year, we’ve also got some fascinating events in the coming weeks, including a panel I’m hosting at How the Light Gets In on gender equality today (featuring Mary Harrington, Kathleen Stock, Lucy Jones and Minna Salami). We’re also partners at the upcoming Understory Festival being run by Comment magazine at Washington National Cathedral in DC at the end of the month, including a panel conversation on Motherhood, Natality and the Future of the World. Our senior fellow Dr Nick Spencer will also be sharing our Christian nationalism work at Understory, as well as taking part in a conversation on nationhood at How the Light Gets In alongside James Orr, Yasmin Alibhai–Brown, and chaired by Mary Ann Sieghart.

These events join a host of others we are hosting or taking part in over the coming months. In just a few weeks, we’re partnering with the LSE Faith Centre on behalf of Fetzer Institute to run an event at the Royal Society of the Arts entitled Exploring Sacred Stories for a Secular Age. Tickets are free, but you’ll need to be fast to book your place. Do also save the date for the next in our Theos 20th event programme – with Dr Rowan Williams and Marcus du Sautoy on creativity, and what it means to be human in the age of AI – at the National Gallery on 10 July.

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]]> hello@theosthinktank.co.uk (Chine McDonald) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/12/whats-motherhood-got-to-do-with-it https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/08/one-year-in-how-pope-leo-xiv-is-shaping-the-catholic-church Fri, 08 May 2026 00:16:00 +0000

What has Pope Leo XIV’s first year looked like? Here are 5 issues shaping his papacy so far. 08/05/2026

Today marks one year since Cardinal Robert Prevost stepped out onto the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica and was introduced to the world as Pope Leo XIV, the new head of the Roman Catholic Church. As discussed in our blog at the time, his papacy began full of both opportunities and challenges – spanning questions of territory, diplomacy, and the demands of leading a transnational church. Twelve months on, those early expectations have started to play out in real time.

Global attention on the papacy tends to peak in dramatic moments: the white smoke, the first appearance, the occasional headline–grabbing clash. But what often goes unnoticed is the sheer amount, breadth, and complexity of the role day to day.

So what has Pope Leo’s first year actually looked like? Where have opportunities emerged, and where have challenges proven more entrenched? Here, we take a look back on his first year highlighting 5 issues shaping his papacy so far.

1.        External global tensions

Pope Leo has consistently used his public voice to call for peace, framing conflicts in moral terms, urging dialogue, reconciliation, and respect for human dignity. For example, on the Israel-Gaza conflict, he repeatedly urged a permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages, and safe humanitarian access, with a strong emphasis on easing civilian suffering. In his first Urbi et Orbi blessing at Christmas, he appealed to Russian and Ukrainian leaders to find the “courage” for dialogue, he has also called for a ceasefire in Myanmar, an end to the crisis in Sudan, and condemned surges of violence in Colombia. One of the most high–profile moments came amid tensions between the Holy See and President Trump in response to the ongoing war in Iran, escalating to an infamous viral social media post from the US president. The Pope responded stressing that he is not a partisan actor, while firmly reiterating his central message of peace and restraint in a volatile world. Perhaps above all, Pope Leo is trying to create a new attitude and culture of peace: “As a Church – I repeat – as a pastor, I cannot be in favour of war. And I would like to encourage everyone to make efforts to seek answers that come from a culture of peace, not hatred and division.”[i]

Multiple conflicts will continue to compete for Pope Leo’s attention and challenge his diplomatic nous significantly, many of which tread a fine line between pastorally caring for exhausted Christian communities and the kind of hard–headed diplomacy needed for peace negotiations. One is the continued relationship between the Holy See and China amid the persecution of Chinese Catholics. Others include the flight of persecuted Christians in places such as Nigeria and Syria. Further still, the ongoing dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh border region has much wider implications for the Church’s mission and statecraft than appears on the surface. The “questionable optics” of the Vatican receiving substantive financial aid from the Azeri government, which seems bent on erasing the presence of Armenian Christians from the region, has the potential to undermine the Holy See’s diplomatic neutrality. It would threaten to derail the significant ecumenical gains between the Church and the Coptic Catholic Churches (including the Armenian Church) from this potential appearance of bias or corruption in favour of a proscribing state. How much Pope Leo chooses to speak out on – or directly challenge – such situations may offer insight into the character of his papacy.

Pope Leo XIV meets U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Vatican via REUTERS.

2.        Interfaith and ecumenical bridges/barriers

In his first year, Pope Leo has engaged with ecumenical and interfaith outreach, visiting places such as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul and Christian communities at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem during his first Apostolic Journey to Turkey, to the Grand Mosque of Algiers and engaging with Muslim communities during his recent Pastoral Visit to Africa, while also welcoming figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican. His approach has emphasised dialogue, harmony, and peace, reflecting the Church’s commitment to unity and solidarity with all people of goodwill, as seen in his call to “respect one another, live in harmony and build a world of peace.”[ii] However, these interfaith dialogues are more than feel good optics”; they function as vital “Track Two diplomacy”, which is a form of diplomacy that is unofficial and involving non–governmental actors, like individuals and civil society, in dialogue and negotiations to address conflict and promote peace. The importance of this type of diplomacy is especially the case for vulnerable Christian minorities in nations with governments that are actively proscribing – or at least ineffective at protecting – these minority communities. By building cordial relations with other religious actors, the Church can secure access for clergy, sustain its charitable work, and support credible local mediators in conflicts. Pope Leo’s cross–cultural experience as a bishop, along with the institutional memory of his religious order, the Augustinians, are critical to this confident offer of hospitality to dialogue partners. At the same time, however, some Catholics have expressed concern about how this outreach is perceived, particularly around language like “communion”, symbolic gestures in mosques, and shared blessings, fearing these may blur theological distinctions and exacerbate existing internal division in the Church. This highlights an ongoing tension in the Church: whether such bridge–building strengthens its witness in a divided world or risks confusion about Catholic identity.

Pope Leo XIV visits the Great Mosque Of Algiers via REUTERS.

3.        Internal Church divisions

Pope Leo has had to navigate several significant internal Church tensions in his first year, adopting a careful balancing act – firm where necessary, but consistently aiming to preserve unity. One of the most closely watched disputes has been with the German bishops, where debates over governance and moral teaching, particularly around blessings, have strained relations with the Holy See. Pope Leo has intervened to clarify that while pastoral care and blessings for individuals are always possible, formalised blessings of those that the Church would see as in “irregular situations and for couples of the same sex”, as Fiducia Supplicansoutlined, go beyond what the universal Church allows. He has tried to hold a middle line: upholding Catholic doctrine while encouraging dialogue and pastoral sensitivity, offering a clearer position than his predecessor.

Another delicate challenge has been the situation with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist Catholic priestly society which celebrates the Tridentine Traditional Latin Mass. They announced plans for episcopal consecrations on 1 July 2026 without papal mandate, raising fears of excommunication or schism. Talks between the Holy See and the SSPX – handled by the controversial Cardinal Fernandez – have stalled. Recently, Pope Leo seems to have taken a more indirect, de–escalatory approach, encouraging the French bishops (where Traditionalist Catholicism has a strong presence) to seek the Holy Spirit to offer “concrete solutions” toward reconciliation. Alongside this, he has continued the reform process of Opus Dei, revising its statutes and structure, amid a backdrop of abuse allegations within Argentina and allegations of human trafficking. Throughout the process, Pope Leo has placed an emphasis on stability and dialogue rather than abrupt change.

Taken together, these issues highlight a consistent theme of his papacy so far: holding together a diverse and sometimes divided Church by means of de–escalation while promoting ecclesial unity, doctrinal clarity and competent governance. However, it remains to be seen how these tensions will ultimately play out.

The Priestly Society Of Saint Pius X (SPPX) In St. Peter’s Square. Vatican City, Vatican State via ZUMA Press Wire.

4.        Episcopal appointments and Extraordinary Consistories

Since the start of his papacy, Pope Leo has made over 200 episcopal appointments, quietly shaping the Church’s future leadership. While these decisions rarely make headlines, they are one of the most lasting ways a pope leaves his mark, and so far Pope Leo’s choices point to a focus on pastoral experience, global representation, and more collaborative styles of leadership. Much of this has involved filling long–standing vacancies and ensuring continuity across the global Church, including recent appointments in the UK such as Bishop Nichols Hudson to the Dioceses of Plymouth after a 3–year wait for a bishop, and the appointment of Archbishop Richard Moth to the Diocese of Westminster following the retirement of Cardinal Nichols. He has also appointed his first new Dicastery Head, Bishop Anthony Randazzo from Sydney, Australia. The Dicastery of Legislative Texts is charged with the keeping and reforming Canon Law that applies across all Catholic dioceses and people and the legal system of the Vatican City State. The choice of a fellow Anglophone Canon lawyer is notable given ongoing legal challenges, including financial crime,adult victims of abuse, investigating and penalising bishops for poor governance.

An equally quietbut telling development in Pope Leo’s first year has been his convening of Extraordinary Consistories of Cardinals, a formal meeting of cardinals. So far, he has held one – at the Vatican in January 2026 – formally bringing cardinals together for communion, fraternity, and opportunities to reflect together on the various issues that affect the life of the Church. Another Extraordinary Consistory is expected next month, reinforcing a more collaborative and consultative way of governing in the Church. However, Pope Leo is yet to make his mark on the composition of the College of Cardinals by appointing new cardinals, especially those under the age of 80 who may participate in a future papal conclave.

The newly appointed Archbishop of Westminster, Richard Moth via REUTERS/Toby Melville.

5.  Vatican finances

The long–term financial challenges continue to be an issue for Pope Leo. After years of consecutive deficits, in November 2025 it was reported by the Secretariat for the Economy that the Vatican’s finances could be at a “turning point”. The structural deficit dropped significantly, from 83 to 44 million euros, representing a substantial reduction of nearly 50%. Increased revenue, particularly from donations and hospital income, and controlled spending has seen the Holy See go from a €51.2 million total deficit in 2023 to a €1.6 million surplus in 2024.

The spectre of the London property scandal, as we commented on last year, continues to hang over the Vatican. Resolving this is vitally important for the credibility of the Holy See’s financial integrity and solvency for both potential donors and for other financial institutions and the global banking ecosystem. It will require a response grounded in confident governance, and a commitment to enforcing the law without fear or favour. Recently, the Vatican’s Court of Appeal ordered a partial retrial in the high–profile London property finance case due to procedural issues with four papal decrees issued by Pope Francis during the investigation. These papal decrees altered procedural rules but were not publicly promulgated, which the Court found undermined the legitimacy of some investigative acts. The head of the ‘Vatican Bank’, the IOR, has also recently stepped down after 12 years of steering the bank out of a storm of incompetence, ill–repute and corruption. His successor is yet to be announced, and the continuity of Pope Francis’ financial reforms will need careful consideration by Pope Leo, given the continued resistance in certain sections of the Curia to financial oversight and transparency. 

An exterior view of the tower of the Institute for Works of Religion in Vatican City (’The Vatican Bank’) via REUTERS.

The road ahead

Pope Leo, now one year into his papacy, has had to navigate and guide an increasingly divided and uncertain world. It has required him to be deftly diplomatic calling for peace, framing conflicts in moral terms, urging dialogue, reconciliation, and the respect for human dignity. While the demands of Church governance have similarly needed a balanced and firm where necessary approach to preserve unity within the Church and reform of the bureaucratic structures for competent governance. Whether these efforts will ultimately succeed remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that the day–to–day job of a pope is immensely demanding with an agenda that is global, political, theological, managerial and pastoral. 

Marianne Rozario, Kiara Black and Christian Santos

Kiara Black has completed an MA in International Relations on Pope John Paul II’s diplomatic relations with Mexico and the impact of his Pastoral Visits in the 1990s with the University of Notre Dame Australia. She is currently a wife and mother to three little girls and a baby boy in Sydney, Australia.  

Marianne Rozario holds a PhD in International Relations exploring the notion of Catholic agency in international society through the University of Notre Dame Australia, as well as a MA(Hons) in International Relations from the University of St Andrews. She is an Honorary Researcher for the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, and a former Lecturer for St Mary’s University.

Christian Santos is a Sessional Academic at the University of Notre Dame Australia and Legal Counsel at the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. He holds a PhD in International Relations as well as a LLB and BA(Hons) in International Relations from the University of Notre Dame Australia. 

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]]> marianne.rozario@theosthinktank.co.uk (Marianne Rozario) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/08/one-year-in-how-pope-leo-xiv-is-shaping-the-catholic-church https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/07/the-reality-of-faith-the-future-of-re-and-religion-and-ethics-broadcasting Thu, 07 May 2026 00:17:00 +0000

Coco Huggins puts forward our case for broadcasters to engage more with religion and worldviews. Could exposure to different beliefs on TV be an unexpected antidote to division? 07/05/2026

The reality is, faith is fashionable. From duelling vicar Rev Rachael Phillips on Gladiators to Muslim Traitor‘s star Faraaz Noor, people of faith seem to pop up on our screens more often than they once did; and they’re not shying away from “doing God”. In March this year, Bournemouth FC and Scotland international footballer Ben Gannon–Doak was interviewed on BBC Sport Scotland’s A View from the Terrace, and openly declared he prays before games and reads the Bible. 23–year–old Christian Jasmine Mitchell, who was crowned winner of The Great British Bake Off in 2025, similarly opened up about her faith, explaining that she thinks she “prayed more during the competition than…ever before in [her] life”.

Despite this growing openness to discussing faith informally, “formal” religion and ethics broadcasting has fallen dramatically. Since 2011, UK–produced religion and ethics content appearing at peak times across public service broadcasters has been cut by 85%.

This is against the backdrop of increasingly poor Religious Education provision in schools, too. In 2023, 15% of secondary schools in England did not teach RE in year 11.  This is closely linked with a decline in subject specialists, shrinking availability and dwindling student numbers, as our Why RE Matters report emphasised: In 2021, more than half of RE teachers spent the majority of their teaching time teaching another subject, and between 2011/12 and 2017/18 alone, the number of student studying theology and religious studies dropped by 6,500. Where it is taught, the RE curriculum is often substandard, according to Ofsted and “lack[s] sufficient substance to prepare pupils to live in a complex world”.  This is something which Theos research identified back in 2020, emphasising that UK RE provision “does not engage adequately with the real religion and belief landscape, both in the wider world and amongst the pupils that it should be serving” (p.109).

It is not the case that informal RE can simply fill the gap, either. Findings from our Beyond the Classroom report showed that RE provision outside schools—in culture, sport or other community or social interactions— was strongest where formal Religious Education was best, leaving some areas severely lacking in provision across the board.

These trends are all the more worrying because of the UK’s increasingly pluralistic religious landscape. Almost 1 in 10 Britons now identify with religion other than Christianity, and a third of those attending weekly religious services are doing so in religious buildings other than churches. Similarly, whilst the 2021 census showed a record number of Britons ticking the “no religion” box, this group of “nones” is hugely diverse. It incorporates those who believe in God or a higher power, those who are “spiritual” and who have intermittent belief, not just atheists, as our 2022 report The Nones, explained. 14% of Nones, for instance, believe in the supernatural power of ancestors and 14% in the healing powers of crystals. In other words, the growth of the “nones” doesn’t mean we’re becoming more similar, but more diverse in our religious outlooks. This means we need more religious education across the board, not less.

Growing community tensions amid faith–heightened global conflicts, have made the situation all the more urgent. The October 7th attacks in 2023 and the escalation of violence across Gaza, Lebanon and more recently, Iran, have had repercussions for communities, driving up religiously and ethnically motivated hate crimes. In the year to 2025, hate crimes targeting Muslims rose 19% and 2024 saw a record 113% increase in hate crimes against Jewish people. Rioting in the wake of the Southport murders, the racially aggravated rape and assault of a Sikh woman (mistaken for being Muslim) in Birmingham and the repeated arson attacks and violence directed against synagogues and Jewish communities in London, all cannot be understood without acknowledging the underlying religious and ethnic tensions which underpin them.

Building social cohesion is now a key governmental priority, as outlined in a recent policy paper by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and building faith literacy must be a key part of this. Recent Theos research has suggested that informal religious education could be a valuable of supporting wider changes to RE provision and in doing so, boost social cohesion. Reality TV shows and other “informal” media coverage are becoming an important source of religious education for a growing number of people, with scientific evidence suggesting that positive exposure can reduce prejudice and hostility towards minority groups.

As the Government undertakes a review of the BBC’s Royal Charter which is due to expire in December 2027, this is a vital moment where we need to be calling for more engagement with religion, ethics and worldviews across mainstream platforms. Research has suggested that the BBC remains a world leader on religion and ethics coverage. BBC iPlayer is “the only platform that gave prominence to the arts, international issues, religion and belief on its homepage in significant numbers”, according to research published by the University of Leeds,  something we must continue to support.

For this reason, Theos submitted evidence to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, calling for religion and ethics coverage to be protected going forwards. As Anna McNamee, Executive Director of the Sandford St Martin Trust, reflected during discussions around the charter: “Historically the BBC has played a vital role in furthering religious literacy and tolerance in the UK. In increasingly fractious and fragmented era, its vital it remains at the frontline of promoting understanding across our differences”  

Whatever happens in the wake of the BBC Charter review and the Government’s social cohesion strategy, there is no doubt that religion will continue to play a vital role in our national conversation. What kinds of conversations we have and their outcomes however, will ultimately depend on how well and how deeply we choose to engage with those who are different to ourselves.

You can read Theos’s full evidence submission to DCMS and its recommendations here.

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]]> Coco.Huggins@theosthinktank.co.uk (Coco Parkinson-Huggins) https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/07/the-reality-of-faith-the-future-of-re-and-religion-and-ethics-broadcasting