Nick Spencer speaks with historian and journalist Bijan Omrani. 23/06/2026
The idea that our country is Christian – in the historical sense of having been comprehensively formed by the faith – is sometimes taken as a kind of Christian nationalist dog whistle. But it shouldn’t be.
In reality, this is true for most countries in Europe, in which, in spite of massive secularisation in the later 20th century, Christianity’s fingerprints are everywhere.
So, what is England? How has the English nation, its laws, politics, culture and literature, been formed by Christianity? And (how) can they survive without it?
This week on Reading Our Times, Nick Spencer is joined by British historian and journalist Bijan Omrani to discuss these questions and more, delving into his new book, provocatively titled God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England.
You can purchase a copy of his book here.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here.
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Nick Spencer explores what people across the UK believe is important when they think about British identity. 19/06/2026
Summary
Ten years ago, the UK voted to leave the European Union. The referendum drew on and then intensified the debate about what it meant to be British, a debate that has, if anything, deepened over recent years, as concerns around immigration, asylum, the rise of Islam, the rise of China, and the alleged decline of Europe and the West have come to dominate the news cycle.
As part of Theos’ work exploring the rise of Christian nationalism in the UK and Europe, this essay explores perceptions of Britishness, among people living in the UK, today.[1] We commissioned research into the relationship between nation and religion from RED C, technical details of which can be read here.
We found that the more lurid concerns about the UK sliding into exclusive forms of “ethnonationalism” have not been born out.
Britain remains strongly characterised by forms of civic, cultural and emotional belonging, with Britons leaning heavily towards achieved (and inclusive) identity when it comes to being “truly” British.
Based on new research commissioned by Theos and conducted by RED C, four factors are especially important to the UK population when it comes to their perception of what makes one truly Britishness, namely (in descending order):
– obeying the law
– being committed to democracy and freedom of speech
– speaking English
– contributing economically
More recent anxieties about the UK being gripped by Christian nationalism are also overblown. Levels of belief that you need to be Christian in order to be British are low compared to other Britishness factors, as low as those that say you need to be white to be British.
However, there are some causes for reflection and perhaps concern.
While “respecting the authority of parliament”, one of the pillars of political/ civic identity, is widely considered to be important for Britishness, it is very rarely considered the most important factor. This is noteworthy given how central parliament is to our political/civic identity. This presumably reflects widespread political disaffection at the moment, which, if left unchecked, could threaten to erode that commitment to political/ civic identity more generally.
Conversely, while ethno–nationalistic identity is rarely considered important, the importance of natal identity is thought somewhat higher (45% agree that being born in Britain is important for being truly British) and is judged to be the most important factor by nearly a third of those people. In other words, many of those who are inclined towards natal identity as a characteristic of Britishness, are strongly inclined that way.
Those who have an ethnic/ natal or a political/ civic idea of Britishness are intensely exercised by a handful of (different) issues each.
– The ethnic/ natal group are particularly focused on the level of immigration, the number of Muslims, and the number of asylum seekers but also, notably, the cost of living today, and the issue of national ID cards.
– The political/ civic group are particularly anxious about the level of racism, climate change, the rise of the far right, and the anti–vaxx movement.
– By comparison those who have primarily a cultural or emotional conception of Britishness are less intensely exercised by these (or indeed) issues.
Contents
1. Summary
2. Contents
3. Introduction
a. Seven dimensions of national identity
b. Conducting research
4. What does it mean to be British? An overview
5. What’s the most important factor in being British?
6. What issues preoccupy different ideas of Britishness?
7. Conclusion
Introduction
Seven dimensions of national identity
There are different ways in which people in a country can feel and express their national identity and loyalty.[2] The most familiar is the distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ national identity, the former focusing on commitment to political institutions, the latter on birth and ancestry. The divide runs deep. It maps onto debates about whether countries are, on the one hand, created or “imagined”, or, on the other, natural and inherent. It also maps onto contemporary concerns about the nature and possibility of social cohesion, with ‘civic’ identity considered more “achieved” and therefore inclusive, while “ethnic” identity is more “ascribed” and therefore exclusive.
While this distinction is foundational, it is also incomplete or at least inexact. There are various factors, not least cultural ones, that can blur the boundaries of the civic and the ethnic. Celebrating national customs and traditions, for example, are, in theory, civic identity markers, open to everyone. But because such customs and traditions are often deep–rooted and historically embedded, they are not necessarily easily or quickly “achieved” and can feel more ascribed. The ex–pat Briton who moves to Japan is unlikely to become a connoisseur of the quintessentially Japanese tea ceremony in quick time.
For that reason, it can be helpful to disambiguate the drivers and sources of national identity beyond the ‘civic/ethnic’ divide. In our research, we picked out seven different dimensions of national identity.
1. Political/ civic identity. To be British, means to have a commitment to certain political/ legal/ constitutional arrangements and institution.
2. Ethnic/ natal identity. To be British, means having been born here or being white.
3. Cultural identity. To be British, means participating in and celebrating British customs and traditions.
4. Religious identity. To be British means having a commitment to the historically dominant religious tradition of the country, meaning Christianity.
To these four (and relatively familiar) factors, we have added three others, which are often overlooked but play a serious role in debates around national loyalty.
5. Geographic identity. This is a relatively thin form of belonging, entailing nothing more than simply inhabiting the country. Nonetheless, it is important to include as 5.5 million (or 8 per cent) of British citizens live abroad, something often overlooked in debates around Britishness
6. Economic identity. Very often, the immigration debate is framed not so much around how many immigrants come here but what they do when they are here and, in particular, whether they contribute economically. Public opinion is, not surprisingly, rather different according to perceptions of whether they do.
7. Emotional identity. Finally, simply the way that people feel about their country is vitally important, and an important subjective factor to place alongside the other (slightly) more objective ones.
Conducting Research
In order to measure these different forms of national identity, we asked people how far they agreed or disagreed with a series of 12 statements about being British, that covered the seven different dimensions outlined above.[3] These were, “To be truly British you should…
In the first instance, respondents were asked whether they agreed (on a five–point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree) with each statement. In the second, respondents were asked to select the single “most important” factor that defined Britishness.
What does it mean to be British? An overview
The first pass at this question generated the following results.
Figure 1: To be truly British you should… (levels of agreement)
The first observation to note here is that there are clearly two separate categories of identity when it comes to public opinion. Political/ civic, cultural, geographic, economic, and emotional conceptions of identity are all relatively high, getting 60–80% agreement by UK adults, whereas ethnic/ natal and religious forms of identity are seen as comparatively less important. The only mid–way exception is the ethnic (specifically natal) form of identity (having been born here), which 45% of people agree is important to be “truly” British.
Of the more widely recognised dimensions of identity, political/ civic is seen as most important with 83% of people agreeing that to be British you need to obey the law, and 77% that Britishness requires being committed to democracy and freedom of speech.[4] The only (slightly) weaker element in this category was “respect[ing] the authority of parliament”, with only 60% agreeing, arguably reflecting current widespread political disaffection.
Cultural and economic identities are also seen as significant, with 77% of people agreeing that speaking English is an important dimension of Britishness, 68% “sharing national customs and traditions” and 77% saying that contributing economically was important to being truly British.
Religious and ethnic identity on the other hand, were only deemed important to being truly British by a minority, just 17% of people in each case.
Overall, therefore, it is clear that Britons lean heavily towards achieved (and inclusive) identity and loyalty when it comes to being “truly” British.
Further clarity can be acquired on this issue when we factor in not only levels of agreement but also the level (and strength) of disagreement on these issues. For example, it is salient that nearly half of all people strongly disagree that you need to be white to be truly British. By applying a rating score to people’s views on this issue,[5] we can evaluate overall balance of public opinion.
Figure 2: To be truly British you should… (balance of public opinion)
This calculation shows that four factors – one economic, one cultural, and two political/ civic – are particularly important to the UK population when it comes to their perception of what makes one truly Britishness, namely:
– contributing economically (1.1)
– speaking English (1.13)
– being committed to democracy and freedom of speech (1.15), and
– obeying the law (1.31).
Conversely, two factors – one religious and one ethnic– are especially unimportant:
– being Christian (–0.73)
– being White (–0.86)
While this should not altogether dismiss the existence of religious and ethnic identity in the UK, it should contextualise it within a broader landscape of other dimensions which are considered more important.
What’s the most important factor in being British?
One challenge that might be levelled at the question just analysed is that it allows people to hedge their bets. Looking at the raw numbers, there were almost three times as many answers (12,599) agreeing (strongly or slightly) with the options available than disagreeing (4,400) with them.
In some instances (religious and ethnic identity, most obviously) people do feel sufficiently strongly as to disagree vigorously with their being important to Britishness. But with others, the picture is one of generally positive citizenship, and so generally amenable to positive opinion. In effect, many of the factors listed here could be seen as necessary rather than in any way sufficient to being British. Obeying the law, for example, might be a basic responsibility if you want to be British, but that may not mean it’s a key characteristic of being British.
To probe this element further, we asked respondents which from the list was the single most important factor for being truly British. The responses are given in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Which ONE of these factors is MOST important for being truly British
This data broadly preserves the priority ascribed to the factors already discussed.
Commitment to democracy and freedom of speech is considered the most important factor for being truly British by the largest proportion of people (15%) instead of obeying the law, which had the highest balance of public opinion (1.31), but obeying the law is still considered the most important factor for being truly British by 10% of people.
At the other end of the scale, being Christian and being white are considered the most important factor for being truly British by just 1% of people, which is where one would expect those factors from the agree/ disagree data discussed earlier.
In other words, there is broad correlation between a factor being generally agreed to be important and it being considered most important. There are two noteworthy exceptions, however, which can be seen in Figure 4.
Figure 4: The correlation between a Britishness factor being considered important (“agree”) and it being the “most important”.
Figure 4 plots the percentage of people who agree (slightly or strongly) that a factor is important to being truly British (red bar) and the percentage of people who say that it is the most important factor to being truly British (blue bar) – both measured on the left–hand scale. It then also measures what proportion of the former think the latter, i.e. what proportion of people who think a factor is important actually think it is the most important. It charts this with a green line, on the right–hand scale (and has data labels).
For example, 78% of people think that being “committed to democracy and freedom of speech” is important to being British, and 15% think it is the most important thing (right–most bars). That means that nearly a fifth (19%) of those who agree that commitment to democracy and freedom of speech is important, think it is core, or “most important”.
At the other end of the scale, 17% of people think that being Christian is important to being British, but only 1% think it is the most important thing, meaning that around 1 in 20 (6%) of those who agree that Christianity is important to Britishness, think it is of “core importance”. The same proportion applies for being white.
This measure is helpful because it draws out how big the core to any view is; in other words, so to speak, what proportion of people who have an opinion here are prepared to die on that hill. For most factors it is between 10% and 20%.
However, there are some outliers. Comparatively few people consider Christianity or being white as core to Britishness, and even fewer (5%) consider defending the country when people criticise it as being core. It appears that Christian nationalism, ethno–nationalism, and “my country right or wrong” nationalism are rarely considered core to being British.
Similarly, only 3% of those who agree that this is important for being truly British, think it is the most important factor. The unpopularity of parliamentary politics (and possibly the rise in nationalist movements across the UK[6]) is visible here and while this is hardly news, it is still noteworthy. Preserving the strong sense of political/ civil identity and loyalty that still dominates feelings of Britishness is made harder when ever fewer people respect the keystone of that identity.
There is another outlier, in the opposite direction. While 45% of people think that being born in Britain is important for being truly British (the third lowest figure), nearly a third of them, or 14% of the population overall (the second highest figure), think it is the most important factor for being British. In other words, a disproportionately high number of people who favour some form of natal identity and loyalty believe it is the core issue when it comes to Britishness. It seems that this, rather than any older and more familiar kinds of (white) ethno–loyalty is where the more “ascribed” nationalistic sentiments currently reside.
What issues preoccupy different ideas of Britishness?
Finally, how do different concepts of national identity and loyalty map onto political and social concerns today.[7]
We simplified the dimensions outlined above into four distinct categories, each of which had a sufficiently large sample base on which to conduct analysis. (The other dimensions of identity discussed above – geographic, economic and religious – do not have large enough sample sizes to test.) The four categories selected were:
We then analysed people’s current social and political concerns according to their conception of Britishness. The top three issues for each of the four kinds of national identity were as follows:
Table 1: Top three issues of concern in UK today (very concerned by conception of Britishness)?
“The cost of living” was the topmost concern for all different groups, but after that there was a marked difference between the concerns of political/ civic nationalists (who were concerned about the rise of the far right and the level of racism, and other groups, whose concerns were asylum and immigration.
We then examined which issues different groups felt very concerned about compared to other groups.
Table 2: % very concerned about [issue] for Britain?
Table 2 above records what percentage of each group (plus what percentage of the total) said they were very concerned with an issue. Different figures have different shading to give an indication of how to read each ‘footprint’. More precise definition can be read in this footnote[8], but in essence
– Red indicates a strong level of difference between the opinion of the group on the issue to hand, and the opinions of all three other groups.
– Orange indicates a strong level of difference between the opinion of the group and those of two other groups.
– Yellow indicates a strong level of difference between the opinion of the group and that of one other group.
– Grey indicates no meaningful difference at all between groups.
A number of points can be made about these results.
First, there are only a handful of issues that elicit no meaningful difference at all between people according to their understanding of Britishness. These issues are shaded in grey: gender identity (e.g. the trans debate), public finances and debt, the threat from Russia or other hostile states, and mental health problems among young people. Note, this does not mean people are not concerned about these issues but rather that their conception of what it means to belong to Britain does not appear to affect how concerned they are about this issue.
Second, those who have an ethnic/ natal or a political/ civic idea of Britishness are intensely exercised by a handful of (different) issues each. The ethnic/ natal group are particularly focused on the level of immigration, the number of Muslims, and the number of asylum seekers but also, notably, the cost of living today, and the issue of national ID cards. Rather differently, the political/ civic group are particularly anxious about the level of racism, climate change, the rise of the far right, and the anti–vaxx movement.
By comparison those who have primarily a cultural or emotional conception of Britishness are less intensely exercised by these (or indeed) issues. To be clear, it is not that cultural or emotional nationalists are unconcerned by these issues facing Britain today, but rather their conception of what it means to be British does not correlate with any particularly strong social or political anxieties at the moment. Where they do, as indicated by the prevalence of yellow boxes on the two right hand columns on the table (and more specifically by the letters next to the statistics), the cultural or emotional nationalists are marked out as being different from the civic/political nationalists, rather than the ethnic/ natal ones. In effect, holding a cultural or emotional concept of Britishness inclines you in the same direction as holding an ethnic/ natal, but with less intensity.
There is an intuitive logic to much of this. Ethnic/natal “nationalists” are more concerned about who is living in the UK, and are more inclined to reject outsiders. Political/ civic “nationalists” are not concerned with who lives here but they are with how they get on with one another, and are especially worried about factors that they consider to be divisive.
Beyond that, however, it is worth noting that:
– Although ethnic/natal “nationalists” are not especially bothered about economic inequality, they are disproportionately concerned with the cost of living. In other words, there is likely to be an economic dimension to their ethnic/natal concerns.
– There is almost no co–incidence between the felt concerns of ethnic/natal “nationalists” and political/ civic “nationalists”. These two, at least, do feel like two tribes.
– Over a third of Britons prefer neither an ethnic/natal nor a political/ civic idea of Britishness, but instead favour a cultural or an emotional form of identity and belonging, and if these feel like softer forms of “nationalism”, it is probably because they are. People in these categories are far from indifferent but also less animated about social/ political affairs than those in other groups. In other words, while there are political tribes at work in relation to different conceptions of Britishness, that does not mean the whole landscape is tribal.
Conclusion
The Brexit vote, and the ensuing three–year parliamentary hokey–cokey, was a difficult and tense time in British public life, with many sensing or prophesying a decisive shift in our idea of Britishness, away from a civic/political model and towards a more exclusionary ethnic/ natal one.
In reality, things were always more complex when it came to British identity (the question of English identity is very different of course, and no less complex). When British Social Attitudes measured conceptions of national identity more than twenty years ago, splitting identities according to civic and ethnic ideas, they found that just 23% (in 1995) and 32% (in 2003) of people had a civic–only understanding of Britishness.[9] The majority of people – 63% in 1995, 58% in 2003 – had a mixed ‘civic and ethnic’ idea. (Very few people had an ethnic–only conception). In other words, the lines between these well–established conceptions of identity are vaguer and more permeable than might appear to be the case in theory, or indeed from the above data on the apparently incompatibly different concerns of ethnic/ natal vs political/ civic groups. Something of that blurring is captured when you factor in those who prefer to hold to more cultural or emotional forms of national identity.
Either way, the data presented in this essay strongly suggest that the civic/political conception of Britishness remains predominant, in spite of news stories that have stoked anxieties about the slide towards angry, exclusive, ethnically–flavoured nationalism. We should be aware of this before we sound apocalyptic trumpets about the state of society.
All that noted, and factoring in the point just made about the permeability of boundaries in this whole debate, while the differences between ethnic/ natal and political/ civic categories are real and clear, the two categories are not unrelated.
Some people will have immutable opinions on what it means to be British, and nothing will change that. However, many will not and it is quite possible, for example, to imagine that some, who once held a more civic/political idea of Britishness, could relinquish it because they feel that national politics is no longer functioning as it should, and therefore no longer a satisfactory source of identity, belonging or pride.
Were that to be the case, these people might not slide all the way from a civic/political idea of Britishness to an ethnic/ natal one, but move to a more moderate and less intense emotional or cultural view of the nation. That may be what we are seeing.
Either way, however much the public still favours a civic/political idea of Britishness, and however much the lurid anxieties of public life being transformed by a tide of ethno–nationalism after Brexit were overdone, it would be wrong to assume that the civic/political identity is secure. Because of its very nature – an achieved rather than an ascribed identity – it needs to ‘perform well’, and could therefore be seriously eroded by waves of political frustration and anger.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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 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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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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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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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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]]>Nick Spencer speaks with Eric Storm, Senior Lecturer in European History at Leiden University. 05/05/2026
We live in an increasingly nationalistic age, with globalisation stumbling and international institutions disregarded. But we have been here before.
Nations have existed for centuries, but it’s only in the last 200 years that nationalism has become such a huge influence.
So, where does nationalism come from? How has it changed since its inception? And what can its history tell us about its future?
Join Nick Spencer as he speaks to Eric Storm, Senior Lecturer in European History at Leiden University and author of ‘Nationalism: a world history’, a global perspective on the nature and evolution of nationalism, from the early modern era to the present.
You can buy a copy of Eric’s book here.
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What makes a mother? A new animation by Emily Downe exploring matrescence – the hidden metamorphosis of becoming a mother. 30/04/2026
What makes a mother?
A short animation by Emily Downe exploring matrescence, the often unseen and deeply personal metamorphosis of becoming a mother. This film reimagines ancient wisdom for contemporary motherhood, offering language, beauty, and recognition to an experience many feel, but few can name.
A new mother is in a process of radical change – morphing, transforming, transcending. But does anybody see her?
“In my loud and invisible creation, I found that I was Created”
Credits
Directed and designed by Emily Downe
Written by Emily Downe, Chine McDonald, and Lizzie Harvey
Music and sound design by Jan Willem de With (vocals by Lizzie Harvey and violins by Sofia Yatsyuk)
Animated by Martha Halliday and Emily Downe
Voiced by Clover Stroud, Beverly Shepherd and Emily Downe
Produced by Theos with special thanks to Lucy Jones, The Ideas Workshop, Open Society Foundations.
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Who was St George? This St George’s day, can our patriotism be reimagined by a richer understanding of the saint behind England’s flag? 23/04/2026
On St George’s Day, England marks the feast of its patron saint: a third–century Christian martyr, Roman soldier, and legendary dragonslayer whose red cross has become one of the most recognisable national symbols in the country. Yet in modern Britain, St George is no longer a straightforward figure of shared celebration. His flag now sits at the centre of heated disputes about identity, immigration, and the place of Christianity in public life.
Over the past year or so, the red–and–white Cross of St George and the Union Jack of which it is a part have become an increasingly visible and contested presence in the public space: hanging from windows, fluttering from lampposts, graffitied on countless walls, and sometimes waved outside hotels housing asylum seekers. For some, these displays express perfectly legitimate pride in nation and tradition. For others, they provoke unease, appearing bound up with exclusion, hostility, or a hardening of cultural boundaries.
This tension points to a deeper question about love of country itself. Patriotism can be a powerful and necessary civic force. However, there are clear dangers associated with its anxious and defensive forms. Without a positive shared vision of ‘us’, patriotism easily mutates into ‘us versus them’. It becomes a nervous love of country, one that is afraid of losing its identity and is suspicious of outsiders. When the only people flying England’s flag do so in anger, it becomes a tool of grievance rather than belonging.
It is no accident that these arguments now overlap with wider concerns about Christian nationalism. Over the past year, Theos has begun sustained research into the ways in which Christian language, symbols, and history are being drawn into contemporary national politics. As my colleague Nick Spencer has shown, such appeals can take very different forms: sometimes instrumentalising Christianity as an identity marker to exclude others, and sometimes drawing more deeply on Christian traditions that emphasise humility, hospitality, moral limits, and a shared civic life.
St George’s Day forces us to decide which of these traditions we are invoking.
If the Cross of St George is to mean something more than resentment or retreat, it must be rerooted in a richer understanding of the saint behind the flag. As Nick Spencer has put it elsewhere, we may need to ‘recapture the flag’ and redirect its symbolism towards something lifegiving. On this day of all days, that work can only begin by asking who St George was, and why England came to claim him in the first place.
*
Paradoxically, England’s patron saint was not English at all. But that is perhaps the point. St George was a third–century Roman Christian soldier from Cappadocia (modern–day Turkey) whose mother was from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. He was martyred for his faith by Emperor Diocletian. His story travelled across the Mediterranean and Europe, and by the medieval period, he had become one of the most venerated military saints in Christianity. By the late 13th century, Edward I had adopted the red–on–white St George’s Cross for his armies, and it swiftly became England’s national flag on battlefields and ships.
England embraced St George as a Christian ideal: a saintly hero who was believed to defend all who called upon him. To medieval Christians, he was a protector of the vulnerable. He was celebrated as a ‘martyr–warrior’, a soldier of faith who stood up to evil and fought for goodness. It was these universal Christian qualities – courage, sacrifice and defence of the weak – that formed the basis of his appeal.
Crucially, English devotion to St George transcended the mediaeval world’s many social barriers. His Mediterranean ethnic background was irrelevant and, unlike earlier patron saints tied to particular regions of England or royal dynasties, he became a unifying figure for a people who were often divided by class and conflict. Contemporary chroniclers recounted how both nobles and peasants prayed to him, and even warring factions adopted his banner. St George stood for England itself. His red cross flag became a rallying standard that allowed the English to imagine themselves as one people – a national community bound by loyalty and shared meaning rather than blood.
St George was so devout a Christian that he died for his faith. It is difficult to imagine that the generations of English people who invoked his protection would recognise their saint in the hard–edged nativism now sometimes associated with his flag. The Englishness St George represents can only be a capacious identity of shared belonging. To invoke St George today should therefore still mean welcoming the stranger, defending the vulnerable in our midst, and forging one people out of many.
This vision is badly needed in modern Britain. Latest census data highlight the cost of our failure to nurture a shared national identity. Almost three in four people born outside the EU and four in five people born in the EU who arrived in the UK since 2011 do not identify as British and do not feel an affinity with any nation of the UK. In other words, a majority of newcomers do not feel that this is their country.
How might we close that gap? Policies and practical support are certainly part of the answer. But so too is patriotism in the best sense: a confident cultural welcome that invites newcomers to participate in English and British life and to learn the moral grammar that has historically underpinned it. The invitation to join a common culture and a shared public language – one robust enough to be learnt, inhabited, and eventually claimed as one’s own.
As quiet leaders in integration, Theos research has found, churches have an important role to play in making this vision tangible. When a new refugee hotel opens or families are resettled, churches often become hubs of welcome, hosting language classes, meals, and drop–in sessions. They also offer something less measurable but just as vital: friendship and a listening ear. Through shared activities, meals, and sometimes worship, strangers become neighbours. In these spaces, refugees begin to identify not only with their local community, but with England (or indeed Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or Britain) itself.
The patriotism of St George’s England is not about guarding a fictitious national purity. It is about sharing the traditions of English life with others. It means helping newcomers celebrate St George’s Day as a story of shared identity. It means passing on the stories of England – from the Magna Carta to the NHS, from Shakespeare to the Premier League – so that new residents can adopt these stories as their own and find room for their own stories within them. It means flying the Cross of St George from the church tower not to mark fenced–off territory, but to signal sanctuary, as the Bishop of Leicester recently argued.
On St George’s Day, then, we are not simply remembering a saint from our past but rehearsing a question about England’s future. St George – the soldier, martyr, victory–bearer, and legendary dragonslayer from faraway lands who nevertheless became a hero to the English – reminds us that Englishness need not be defined by narrow ancestry. At its best, it has been an evolving project centred on shared values, moral obligations, and mutual loyalty.
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How much love should we give to which neighbours? Nick Spencer unpacks the use of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in political discourse. 21/04/2026
The topic of what (if any) responsibilities we as a nation owe to others – refugees, immigrants, other nations, etc – is never settled. But, of late, it has been particularly unsettled.
Moreover, it is one that Christians are seriously (and increasingly?) unclear about, opinion being spread wide along a spectrum that stretches from one group of usual suspects who are satisfied by some boilerplate moral universalism backed up by a few airy references to the Good Samaritan, all the way to another, increasingly associated with the phenomenon of Christian Nationalism, who want to preserve the Christian culture of our nation by keeping immigrants out.
It’s not an easy discussion, nor one that is amenable to answers, perhaps even to any answer at all. But it is an important one, that we do ill to shy away from.
The following article is adapted from a talk Nick Spencer gave at a recent symposium which ran under the title of “How much love, to which neighbours? : Our duties within the nation and beyond.”
*
About 10 years ago I wrote a book on the different ways in which the Parable of the Good Samaritan had been used in British politics. It turns out that not only has the parable been used a lot but it had been used by a number of very prominent politicians, including Margaret Thatcher, John Smith, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nicola Sturgeon, Hilary Benn, and Jeremy Corbyn.
Needless to say, they weren’t all using it in the same way.
The recurrent presence of the Samaritan in our political discourse should give some cause for reflection among those who think modern politics is (or should be) a wholly secular affair. You can’t keep a good Samaritan down, it seems.
This is of obvious relevance to the question of what responsibility we have as a nation because the parable has been repeatedly invoked over recent years as a way of justifying a kind of moral universalism, and countering what its critics would call a morally myopic approach to our international responsibilities.
Last year saw a public spat last year between J.D. Vance and Rory Stewart over the Christian approach to the proper ordering of love and loyalty, sometimes known as the Ordo Amoris. The US Vice President had said in an interview on 30 January that he held to “an old school — and … very Christian concept… that you love your family and then you love your neighbour and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world” – an ordering, he went on to say, that had been inverted by the contemporary far left.[1]
This drew a number of responses, not just from Rory Stewart but, more notably, Pope Francis who, in a letter to the American bishops published 11 days later, wrote, with unusual directness:
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups… The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25–37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”[2]
Here we have, as it were, two theologically–flavoured answers to our presenting question.
On the one hand, there is the Ordo Amoris at least as interpreted by J.D. Vance, which sees love and neighbours extending from the moral agent in question, in a series of concentric and temporally sequential circles: first family, then neighbour, then community, then fellow citizens, then country, and only then after that the rest of the world.
This ordering of love demotes care for those beyond your nation to the lowest possible priority. And given that no nation is ever likely to be free from problems or possessed of a surfeit of resources on which there is no domestic call, it is highly unlikely that any nation will ever be in a position to “focus and prioritize the rest of the world”.
Such an ordering risks legitimising wholly self–interested national policies while entirely ignoring those beyond its borders. Our duties are not beyond the nation, but within it (and they may not even extend that far within it.)
On the other hand, and at the other hand of the spectrum, we have the ordo amoris as filtered through Pope Francis and the Good Samaritan which insists that there are no limits – and certainly no ethnic, religious or national limits – on those who have a claim to my attention and generosity.
By this reckoning, we might end up with a kind of political ethic that the former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell is quoted, by David Goodhart, as having advocated during a conversation at Oxford High Table; namely:
“When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration… I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare.”
As an aside, Goodhart goes on to remark that the other person he was sitting next to, Mark Thompson, then Director General of the BBC, agreed with O’Donnell, which led Goodhart to observe that
“Both men’s universalist views are perfectly legitimate and may reflect their moderately devout Catholic upbringings.”
*
I can’t vouch for how moderate or devout were the Catholic upbringings of either Gus O’Donnell or Mark Thompson, but I think it’s fair to say, J.D. Vance notwithstanding, the weight of Christian opinion, certainly in the UK, leans towards the universalist end of the spectrum.
There are many reasons for this, some of which are circumstantial. Many Christians see who stands at the other – nationalistic – end of the spectrum. Some Christians are mindful of the highly compromised ecclesiastical stances to nationalism in the early 20th century. And so they position themselves as far down the other end as possible.
But the position is underpinned by principle. We do find in the scriptures and supremely in the life and ministry of Christ, a more or less uncompromising attitude to the extent of our moral responsibilities.
Old Testament Israel was a tiny and vulnerable people, sandwiched between imperial superpowers. It could have been excused for adopted highly exclusionary and isolationist policies, which is more or less what it did for a time when it returned from exile.
But central to its identity – buried in the law – is the self–identification as aliens, which came with a particular responsibility. The Torah famously declares
“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native–born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”[3]
This sets the tone. In a similar vein, however much we might try and attenuate his teaching, the life and words of Christ are uncompromising.
The American scholar Bart Ehrman, who is no orthodox believer (indeed no believer at all), but in a book published this month called Love Thy Stranger, puts it this way:
“Kindness to strangers is not hardwired in our DNA. Nor was it esteemed by the great canon of ancient Western philosophy – the Greeks and Romans prioritised generosity to your friends and family. When Jesus told his followers to give up everything they owned to the poor, he heralded a moral revolution. The needy, the sick, the outcast were to be cared for – even if they were unknown to you. This was a tough pill to swallow for early Christians, and to this day, many insist Jesus didn’t really mean it. Nonetheless Jesus’ most radical commandment transformed the moral conscience of the West: its legacy lives on in public hospitals, the billions given in charity each year and even government welfare.”
These views offer us an uncompromising answer to our question. You are to love everyone – friends, neighbours, even enemies – and your neighbour is emphatically not limited to those with whom you share physical space or family loyalty. Try as we might to domesticate the teaching of Christ, it will not be tamed.
*
However, a direct translation from the pages of scripture to a Government White Paper is never a great idea. Those states that have tried to realise eschatology through the statute book and to legislate for Christian morality have ended not as New Jerusalems but as oppressive and dystopian nightmares. The possession sharing of the early Church in Acts has been successfully imitated in many small, committed, volitional communities through the ages, most famously monasteries. But it didn’t work out so well when ruled out acorss entire societies in the 20th century.
For those who claim to follow Christ, his words have a direct authority that we should heed – albeit we usually don’t. Archbishop William Temple once remarked that the church is the only organisation that exists for the benefits of its non–members, and though there may be more than a bit of idealism in this, the principle is right. The church should have a centre but no borders and should seek to extend love and responsibilities as far as possible.
But there are two reasons why this doesn’t translate into a straightforward universalist political ethic such as Gus O’Donnell might advocate.
First, humans are temporal, located, embodied, relational, dependent beings. We exist in certain times and places. And we show love by helping one another in those times and places. And so we form communities, groups, networks and the like, in and through which we collectively seek mutual goods. To serve our universalist aspirations we must take account for our actual neighbours.
A few years ago, the journalist Jenny Kleeman wrote a book looking at how much value we put on a life in different social contexts. She went to San Francisco and visited the headquarters of the effective altruism movement, which pours huge amounts of money into poverty reduction schemes abroad, the effectiveness of which has been relentlessly and rationally calculated. But the streets around their offices were littered with the homeless and drug addicts.
“I appreciate that it takes a certain kind of moral courage to be dispassionate enough to have these convictions,” she wrote. “[But] is it a good kind of courage? Can you save more of humanity if you’re prepared to have [such convictions]? Or does this way of thinking require you to deny your own humanity”
As embodied and located human beings, we do not consider the person who lets their child starve in order to feed others abroad as a moral hero. The “telescopic philanthropy” of Mrs Jellyby in Dickens’ Hard Times comes to mind.
The second point is that the nation–state is not the church. The nation–state is not beholden to the same Christ–like ethic of welcome and boundless generosity as is the church. That does not necessarily mean we are bound to default to the kind of concentric, sequential loyalties that JD Vance outlined. I think you can still make the case for more and wider, rather than less and narrower, love and responsibility – but you have to make it within the space of actual public views.
You can make the case that international development aid, assuming it is well–targeted and effective, is the right thing to do; a moral duty. I think we should. You can make the case that we have a moral responsibility to welcome refugees. You can make the case for a national responsibility for those in society who are least able to provide care for themselves or through their own family and community networks. You can make a case for trade relations and immigration policy that are more than a blunt assertion of my country first.
But you have to do so cognizant of the fact that the nation is not the church, and operates by a complex, shifting, plural set of moral visions, and if you do want to make that case, you are going to have to persuade people who care not two hoots for Christian ethics, moral universalism or the parable of the Good Samaritan.
*
Let me end by returning to the Good Samaritan and saying one more thing about what principles we might draw on to navigate the universalist challenge it, and the gospel, places before a nation state.
Like all good stories this parable has been interpreted in different ways. Beyond the politicians I mentioned earlier, Christian ethicists have read it as underlining the message that our ethical responsibility should extend to those whose needs you become aware of. In this vein, as Luke Bretherton said recently in the FT, the parable may be interpreted as saying that although people do have primary responsibility to their close circles, these may be superseded by the urgent needs of strangers.
The implicit ‘moral universalism’ of the Samaritan story (and indeed the gospel) tells us that there should be no arbitrary limitations to our love. But that still leaves open the practical question of who should be loved, when and how. The principle of “becoming aware of their need” is an important one and should be included in the mix. But the problem today is that in a hyperconnected, always–on world, we are constantly aware of the genuinely desperate needs of many people across the world.
So I would argue that this cognizance of need should be tempered by the principle outlined in CST of subsidiarity, namely that that decisions and responsibilities should be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority, with higher authorities intervening only when necessary to support or coordinate those efforts.
I suspect this was what JD Vance was trying to get at in his interview – at least that would be a generous interpretation of his words. But as a principle – just as our cognizance of need today needs to be tempered by a commitment to subsidiarity – because otherwise we might end up becoming like the people Jenny Kleeman visited in San Francisco…
… so our commitment to subsidiarity needs to be tempered by a cognisance of need – because otherwise we will end up ignoring the needs of those a long way away who happen to have no competent national government or effective civil society to help them in their need.
The question of our national moral responsibilities is an inherently agonistic one and not amenable to any final answer. In one respect it is good that we are having these kinds of debates openly in society today. But it will have escaped nobody that the mood music of our current political moment is to retreat, to downgrade the needs of the distant and to slip into the logic of a global zero–sum game. And I think that would be a profound mistake.
Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos and the author of The Political Samaritan: how power hijacked a parable.
I would like to thank Jonathan Chaplin, Hannah Rich and Esmé Partridge of their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
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George Lapshynov responds to Donald Trump’s AI generated image of himself amidst his conflict with Pope Leo XIV. Why are Christians embarrassed to call out blasphemy? 16/04/2026
Was it blasphemous? In the few days since Donald Trump posted the already infamous AI–generated image of himself in flowing robes, radiating light and laying hands on a sick man, in the midst of his bitter and undiplomatic (the understatement of the year) public quarrel with Pope Leo XIV, we have seen Christian leaders tiptoe around the question.
Not only is the question itself perfectly reasonable for any religious person to ask, or indeed anyone who holds something sacred, but the hesitation around answering it has been striking.
That reluctance is understandable. In a liberal democracy, and in a society no longer straightforwardly Christian, “blasphemy” can sound antique, illiberal, faintly embarrassing (i.e. everything I love): the sort of thing one is not supposed to say in a grown–up secular age. In Britain, blasphemy laws are gone (since 2008 in England and Wales, and since 2024 in Scotland), and few believers want them back.
We also live in a society where offense is weaponised so regularly that the risk of being perceived as a ranting polemicist (or even a tinfoil–hatted conspiracist who sees persecution round every corner) when reflecting on whether something is indeed “offensive” or not – still less whether something is in fact “blasphemous” – is real. Small wonder, then, that many would rather sound detached than unreasonable.
But none of that makes blasphemy, as a category, meaningless. As Natasha Moore recently put it, it remains the right word for sacrilege: the violating of something sacred. Blasphemy is not a synonym for “this upset me”. It is (or at least, should be) a judgement that something holy has been profaned.
Which is why, in this context, the obvious thing is also the right thing to say: Trump’s AI slop was blasphemous.
The image clearly traded on Christian iconography and did so for political self–display at the precise moment Trump was publicly berating Pope Leo for (rightfully) criticising the war in Iran. Trump later claimed that he thought the image showed him “as a doctor… making people better”. No, it didn’t. It showed him as Christ.
Even some of Trump’s religious allies recoiled. Bishop Robert Barron called Trump’s remarks about Leo “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful”, while Tony Suarez, a pastor and longtime Trump adviser, said of the image that it “shouldn’t have been posted… and needs to be taken down immediately”.
To be clear, I am not throwing a bone here to defendants of blasphemy laws, nor is this a plea for censorship in any shape or form. Quite the opposite: Trump was free to post the image, however unseemly it may be for a world leader to do so. But so, too, are others free to condemn it. Saying “this is blasphemous” does not threaten free speech; it is an exercise of free speech.
As a former colleague wrote on this site some years ago, Christians are often pushed into a kind of “faux sophistication” in which we pretend not to care when what we love is treated with the seriousness of a novelty snack – or of some offensively shaped chocolate.
But strong moral language is not the enemy of a fairer, more liberal society. In fact, it is what keeps us honest. The real danger lies in being so frightened of sounding prudish, censorious or unsophisticated that we can no longer say what is really at stake. Or indeed see the obvious, even when it is staring us in the face in unholy glowing robes.
What we need, as Teresa Bejan has termed it, is “mere civility”. It does not mean blandness, niceness, or the suppression of strong disagreement. It means having the courage to disagree fundamentally and speak plainly, sometimes sharply, while doing everything in our power to make sure common life remains possible. As Bejan puts it, a merely civil society is one in which we do not pull all our punches at once, but we do stay in the room with opponents we profoundly reject.
Calling Trump’s image blasphemous is not uncivil. It is a forthright moral judgement made without any desire to coerce, exile or silence. It is disagreement in public, not persecution. And any Christian should not have to think twice to reach for the ‘b–word’ when justified.
That is partly why it is heartening that a significant number of known Trump supporters publicly took offence at the president’s anti–Christian icon and at his attitude towards the Pope, and expressed their disapproval in strong yet civil terms. They demonstrated that moral seriousness need not collapse into panic, or censorship, or even abandoning their broader political loyalties.
In that sense, this row matters far more than the one lurid image – though it is now forever engraved on millions of retinas and will, no doubt, be the object of more than one undergraduate dissertation. It is a small test of whether we still possess the moral vocabulary for life together in a plural society. Such a society does not need to abolish strong language; it needs the confidence to use it carefully and appropriately. Some uses of sacred imagery are not merely tacky, not merely “provocative”, not merely “content”. They are profanations.
Though I pray they won’t, the Trumps of today and tomorrow will continue their profanities. The rest of us should have the courage to call them out in the strongest terms every time they do so. If we become too coy to call a spade a spade, we are not becoming more mature; we are growing less capable of honest common life.
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Chine McDonald reflects on 20 years of Theos and interviews previous directors, Paul Woolley and Elizabeth Oldfield. 09/04/2026
When I walk into the Theos office on Great Peter Street in Westminster, one of the first things I’m greeted with is a newspaper clipping with the headline: “Why Theos will fail.” It’s certainly a humbling way to start the day.
Just days after Theos launched in 2006, Martin Newland – writing in the Guardian – predicted that a religion think tank ‘hadn’t got a prayer’ in a world dominated by anti–religious secular humanism. Newland himself had been burned by talking about his own Roman Catholicism in the same newspaper some time before. He had critiqued secular society for its inability to understand the motives behind religious observance, and faced the wrath and ire of critics in the comments section of his piece for doing so.
Newland’s prediction captured something of the cultural mood at the time: religion was widely seen as irrational, irrelevant, even dangerous. Public atheism had gripped the nation in the years post–9/11, and faith was expected to retreat quietly into private life.
It’s why he couldn’t see how Theos’ argument, as outlined in Dr Nick Spencer’s first report Doing God: A Future for Faith in the Public Square, could possibly cut through.
And yet, 20 years on, Theos is still here.
As we mark this milestone, I’ve been thinking of the legacy that was passed on by my predecessors, the two previous Theos directors, and the ways in which our mission remains the same despite the context having changed significantly. Our founding director Paul Woolley, now CEO of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, said of the mission of Theos at its formation: “We believed, theologically, that the gospel of Jesus is good news for the whole of society… We also pushed back on the idea that secularism was inevitable and religion was in decline. In fact, we argued the world was becoming more religious, not less. And that meant that stripping away the Christian foundations of our common life would come at a real cost.”
Paul recalls the launch day as a moment when it all felt real: “We had coverage in every broadsheet… that was the moment it felt like we were part of the national conversation.” But there were challenges too: sustaining momentum, producing research that people actually wanted to read, and weathering scepticism and opposition. Plus ça change. And there was opposition, too. “Some people really didn’t want Theos to exist,” Paul said. “And we had our fair share of tough or sceptical media encounters. So a lot of the challenge was about resilience, staying clear on our purpose and continuing to deliver, even when it wasn’t easy.”
By the time Elizabeth Oldfield took on the directorship in 2011, the landscape had changed. The confident secularism of the 2000s had given way to a more complex and unsettled public square. Her vision for Theos was “to be a credible, visible and persistent Christian presence in public conversations, holding open space for faith as a mainstream element in building a healthy society.”
Of course, challenges remained. “Trying to convince people religion was interesting and relevant” was still part of the task, she says, as was responding to vocal critics. But the questions themselves were shifting.
This year, four years since I took on the role as Theos director, we mark our 20th anniversary, and find ourselves in yet another moment of change. I joined Theos in a post–Covid world; a world of global instability, polarisation, economic and political turmoil, climate catastrophe and violent conflict. The secular ideals we had been led to believe would lead to progress, freedom and peace have not exactly been shown to do so. People are understandably therefore looking for answers in ancient spiritual and religious ideas. Many of us who have worked at the intersection of religion and mainstream secular culture have sensed a ‘vibe shift’ – people (footballers, public intellectuals, national newspapers and broadcasters) are Doing God in public in a way that we couldn’t have predicted.
Our task at Theos today is to continue to show how the good news of the Christian faith can help us meet the biggest challenges humanity faces today. The dominant conversations – about technology and independence, autonomy and progress – are loud, angry and increasingly frantic, and cry out for a vision of human life, love and forgiveness that we believe is seen in the person of Jesus Christ.
As Paul Woolley says: “The good news of Jesus isn’t just private. It’s public. It speaks to individuals, whole communities and societies, and it’s transformative. And at the same time, it carries a challenge: if Jesus is Lord, then no one else is. Every other claim to ultimate authority is relativised. In a world where a lot of voices still want to play Caesar, that’s a message we really need.”
In this our 20th year, we’re giving thanks for all the doors that have been open to Theos, the excellent staff and fellow travellers that have worked tirelessly to continue this mission. And we’re celebrating big; with a programme of events, talks and public lectures that touch on elements of Theos’ work today. We would love to see you at these events (outlined below) which will take place at St Martin–in–the–Fields, the National Gallery, Southwark Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey. We’re also delighted to be partnering with Comment magazine at the Understory Festival at Washington National Cathedral in DC next month.
Through all of this, Theos’ calling endures: to offer a credible, generous, and winsome voice in public life. As we look ahead, I’m encouraged by Elizabeth’s hope that we would approach this task “with courage and creativity… and a twinkle in your eye”. Our prayer is that we do just that, supported by people like you.
If you’d like to join us in the mission to provide a compelling and creative voice for Christianity in the public square, join our Theos 20 Club today.
Theos 20th anniversary events
20 April – Science, faith and the future of humanity, with Dr. Francis Collins, Dr Nick Spencer and Miranda Green (Financial Times) – St Martin–in–the–Fields
10 July – Art, creativity and what it means to be human in the age of AI, with Dr Rowan Williams, Prof Marcus du Sautoy, Rev Ayla Lepine, Dr Nathan Mladin, and Chine McDonald – The National Gallery
September (TBC) – 20 years of religion and democracy, chaired by Mishal Hussain (Bloomberg) – Westminster Abbey
22 October – A Common Good economy with Prof Mariana Mazzucato – Southwark Cathedral
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As supermarkets blur the lines between Christian festivals, George Lapshynov calls for us to remember how to truly celebrate Easter. 31/03/2026
A few days into the New Year and still in the throes of the post–holiday haze, I walked into my local Sainsbury’s for a small shop. And there it was: the Easter chocolate aisle, proclaiming proudly that Easter had arrived on January 5th. It stood there, provocatively, unrequited, mere yards into a supermarket whose air was still filled with the smell of Brussels sprouts and pigs–in–blankets.
There is something absurd about living by a calendar whose holidays seem to arrive whenever the supermarkets say they do. Halloween begins some time in September. Christmas appears the day after Halloween. Easter arrives with prematurely laid chocolate eggs in January, while the last discounted mince pies wait to be cleared from the shelves. Holidays no longer punctuate the year, but smother it, blending into a single, shapeless blob of novelty chocolate.
The result is not that we celebrate more. It is that we celebrate less well.
Festivals are intended to mark the passage of time, distinguishing one day from another and one season from the next. They give shape and texture to the year. The calendar was invented for the very purpose of keeping track of religious festivals. Holidays are therefore moments with a narrative, a rationale, an atmosphere, and historically, a pattern of preparation, restraint, anticipation, and celebration.
The modern liturgical calendar, meanwhile, is made up of promotional aisles, where the days of saints are replaced by confectionery in slightly different shapes to keep track of time. And holidays, have become little more than an occasion to eat chocolate in the general direction of a religious tradition.
This is not a plea for less celebration. Britain is not suffering from an excess of cheerfulness, to say the least. In many respects, ours is a lonely and frayed culture: hyper–connected, overstimulated and often spiritually threadbare. It is very important that we have shared rituals and occasions for celebration and spending time with family. There is nothing wrong with enjoying an Easter egg or a mince pie, giving one away or delighting in the small extravagances of a festival. Christians, of all people, should not be embarrassed to rejoice.
However, rejoicing only makes sense if there is something to rejoice in and a way of distinguishing a feast from ordinary times. Without some downtime, a feast quickly becomes indistinguishable from any other day. If we shop as though it is always Christmas, eat chocolate as though it is always Easter and indulge as though every week were a special occasion, then no occasion will feel special. Celebration that is not connected to anything meaningful becomes, by definition, meaningless, and leads to boredom. Or in my case, exhaustion.
This is why the commercialisation of our religious festivals is more damaging than it first seems. It does not merely democratise ancient holy days. It hollows them out. It renders them unintelligible. It detaches them from the stories and practices that gave rise to them in the first place, offering them back to us as harmless cultural products. They retain the shell but lose the substance.
Consider Easter. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the defeat of death, the harrowing of hell, and the emergence of a new creation. It is not just a minor ‘spring festival’ with a few spiritual overtones. It is the theological and historical centre of the Christian year. Yet in public life, it is presented, at best, as a vague seasonal interval marked by pastel colours, extended weekends, and spring–themed edible garden decorations. At worst, it is misrepresented as a pagan festival that belligerent Christianity shamelessly appropriated from the harmless tree–hugging, bunny–worshiping pagans of Europe.
Sometimes this commercialisation is simply lazy. At other times, it is ludicrous, bordering on deranged. A colleague recently showed us a photograph of a pair of oversized glossy, red chocolate lips, marketed as “the most stylish Easter present”. The lips stared into my soul with a kind of mute confidence, as if they knew we had all long since given up asking what precisely any of this had to do with Easter. I hesitate to be po–faced about these things – no one likes a killjoy. However, I also struggle to believe that if they were animated, those lips would proclaim the Paschal greeting, “Christ is risen!”
My objection is neither to chocolate nor to silliness. (God knows I love both too much.) I object to meaninglessness and to us mining Christian festivals for atmosphere after setting aside their truth claims. We are, as a culture, following in the footsteps of those towns that collapse because decades of intensive mining have hollowed out the ground beneath them.
The selective nature of the process makes this more rather than less conspicuous. In a Britain that prides itself on being multicultural and religiously diverse, Christian holy days are often treated as common cultural property, open to parody, dilution, eroticisation and indefinite commercial exploitation. Other religious observances, by contrast, are approached with respect, solemnity and caution. For instance, I struggle to imagine a major retailer launching sweets designed to be cheeky or suggestive for Eid al–Fitr or some other important religious celebration for a minority group – and quite rightly so.
On the one hand, I see the liberties that our confectionery manufacturers, Pontiffs of the modern calendar, take with Christian holy days as a tacit acknowledgement that ours is a Christian country, despite what the naysayers may believe. I take solace in the fact that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. On the other hand, if respect is the right instinct where sacred matters are concerned, why is it so often suspended when it comes to Christianity, treated as a pretext for novelty gifts and commercially opportunistic nonsense?
I enjoy a good Easter egg as much as anyone, especially one indecently full of hazelnut or pistachio cream. However, I also find that chocolate eggs are best enjoyed liberally after fasting for Lent, and best purchased in classical, inoffensive shapes no earlier than one week before. Feasting is more satisfying when it follows restraint and is kept to a narrow time– window. And true joy is more fulfilling when it has actual meaning and substance and is not the product of confectionery marketing departments.
So by all means keep the chocolate. Keep the family meals, the flowers, the laughter, the days off, and even the lip–shaped absurdities if you must have them. But let us at least be honest about the utter pointlessness of having every holiday blend into the next in one big year–long chocolate orgy. It is not making our culture more festive or cheerful; it is making it less capable of celebrating anything at all.
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