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.

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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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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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Across the UK, cities like Doncaster are facing immense social and economic challenges. Can rooted Christianity offer an antidote? 13/03/2026

How do you combat the use of Christianity to fortify a nationalism that excludes minorities? Perhaps you should start in a church.

I fear I was not the preacher that the congregation of St James were hoping for. The Bishop of Doncaster, the Right Reverend Leah Vasey–Saunders, had been the intended guest celebrant and preacher, but somewhere communication went awry and Bishop Leah was now elsewhere. So it was that on International Women’s Day, the sermon on the unnamed woman by the well in John’s Gospel was delivered by a middle–aged man. Hey ho.

As I turned off the M18 and drove towards Doncaster city centre, I saw a few flags hanging from lampposts, although not as many, I think, as when I last drove this way. Doncaster is a city in a political tug–of–war. Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero, Ed Miliband has been MP for Doncaster North since 2005. At the 2024 election, Labour won a majority in Doncaster Central, beating the Conservatives by just under 10,000 votes. However, in the council elections the following year, Reform UK swept to power with 67% of the vote and a significant overall majority. Doncaster Central sits a lowly 222nd on Reform’s target seats for 2029, but no–one now takes anything for granted.

The question of faith, nation and belonging has been an extremely live one in this area, which is covered by the Diocese of Sheffield. Churches from across South Yorkshire have seen new worshippers from all demographics. What hope might the church in Doncaster offer to a city that has its unfair share of social and economic challenges? What form might such hope take on the ground?

St James Doncaster is a mid–nineteenth century building, sandwiched between the East Coast railway line and a dual carriageway. Getting there is itself a bit of a challenge. Churches like St James can be found in cities throughout England. They were built to serve the burgeoning working class in the Victorian inner cities, a mission that few of them achieved with any success. Many are now closed.

St James is not facing that prospect. The congregation on this particular Sunday is small (about 25) but welcoming. In the afternoon, a growing Anglican Urdu congregation meet in the church, an initiative begun in 2023 by the archdeacon of Doncaster, the Venerable Javaid Iqbal, and his wife, Mussarat. As the congregation grew, some also began attending the morning service, filling valuable roles on the PCC and adding new life to the congregation. It is Mussarat who was helping to lead the service on this particular morning. An Anglican Farsi fellowship is now also being started.

The congregation may be small, but the worshippers include Pakistanis, Nigerians, an Iranian (who apologises for her English before reading the very long passage from John’s Gospel) and a white working–class family, one of whom may be in church for the first time. As a middle–class Southerner, I am very much the odd–one–out.

After the service, over tea and cake, two women enthusiastically tell me of the positive changes that they have seen in the church. The Boys Brigade, which numbered six in 2022, now regularly attracts over 30, with three families having joined the church as a result. Everyone greets one another in the peace and there feels like a genuine crossing of boundaries in the refreshments afterwards. When I slip away the cake has long gone but the chatting continues.

Just the other side of the dual carriageway, in a converted hairdressers, is another new congregation, established in September 2025 with money distributed by the national church expressly for innovative mission in places such as central Doncaster. Canon Adam Priestley, a highly impressive priest from a genuine working–class background has the credibility to minister in his context that many others (myself included) lack. The St Vincent’s mission is open weekdays (Sunday worship is planned for the future) and attracts a white working–class community with a recent increase in young men who no doubt see in Adam a model that resonates with their own background. Within three months of opening, they had had three adult baptisms. Christian players with Doncaster Rovers give their testimonies and a weekly Christians Against Poverty Job Club runs. The worship might be described as Catholic visuals with evangelical preaching. This is full–fat Christianity in the best sense of the term. Adam runs regular catechism groups, though wisely chooses to describe them differently.

It would be too easy to say that Christianity holds all the answers to Doncaster’s multiple challenges – challenges that may well increase along with popular expressions of nationalism. However, it certainly provides an answer, or at least the beginnings of an answer. Where Christians, ordained and lay, are prepared to root themselves in their local contexts, whether that is a traditional church building or a converted hairdressers in a shopping arcade, and are undefended enough to open themselves without judgement to whomever might walk through their doors, then the love of Christ is displayed and lives begin to be transformed. Transformed lives lead to transformed communities, and transformed communities lead to a diminishing of the barriers of otherness that, consciously or unconsciously, have been erected.

Toby Hole is Director of Mission and Ministry in the Diocese of Sheffield

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Chine McDonald reflects on it means to be human in an age of Artificial Intelligence. 06/03/2026

When did you feel most human today?

For me, it was soothing my three–year–old in the wee hours, after he was woken up by a night terror. It was feeling his skin against mine, his heartbeat slowing to the rhythm of my own. Stroking his hair.

It was feeling the anxiety in my stomach as I doomscrolled through the news headlines when I should have been sleeping, and then trying to steady myself by reading and holding in my hand a real, physical copy of my Lent book (Prof Maggi Dawn’s Giving It Up, if you’re interested).

It was noticing myself as just one of hundreds, thousands, of people determinedly stomping through Paddington station, busily trying to get somewhere. It was that glorious first sip of hot coffee.

To be human is to live an embodied life of texture: ups and downs, anxieties and joys, rage and hope. But in the age of AI and the machine, we’re being pushed towards a flattening. A seemingly perfect, and frictionless life. Optimising our productivity, our health, our family life; controlling life and ridding it of blemishes, ageing, and any suffering – from cradle to death.

Part of the reason so many of us find this quest towards a friction–free life so disturbing is that it is clearly a falsity, a mirage. We can’t pretend that life is perfect when bombs are being dropped, missiles fired, economies faltering, and forever wars looming.

Maybe this is in fact why we think we want the appearance of perfection. Perhaps it’s why social media channels are full of beauty – perfectly–lit reels and posts that put forward the most perfect of lives: beauty, even if merely the semblance of beauty, is an effective antidote to the brutality of the moment we are living in. I can to some extent therefore understand why the tradwife phenomenon – a social media trend of women cosplaying 1950s housewives, in perfect homes with perfect kitchens that produce perfect home–baked goods – is so attractive. When the world is on fire, why not stay home, make your house pretty, and make jam?

Scrolling through social media (again) recently, I came across a woman filming her morning routine as a mum. The kitchen gleamed; the children were perfectly dressed, their lunch boxes immaculate. Then I realised… the “children” were dolls. She was a “collector”. Her carefully staged perfection had none of the chaos of real motherhood: no tears, no crumbs, no sticky hugs.

Beyond feeling creepy, it struck me as a parable for our age. We’ve become experts at simulation, and yet what we simulate bears no cost. Real parenting, like all love, demands patience and resilience in the face of imperfection. It requires loving children that interrupt, that talk back, that wake you up in the middle of the night. But these children can also love you back. They are not tidy, inanimate objects. We see this too in the rise of AI companions – people choosing virtual partners who don’t make a mess, who don’t have a history, and who can’t really reject or love you.

In January, we at Theos began the year with a Reading Week that explored what all of this tells us about what it means to be human in the age of the machine. We live at a moment when technology – particularly AI – is forcing us to pay attention. The core question is no longer simply what will machines do? but what will machines turn us into? And underneath that lies an even deeper one: what does it mean to be human at all? The line between human and machine is blurring. And yet, paradoxically, this technological moment is making us more aware of what only humans can do. Who only humans can be.

Questions of technological solutionism, AI and humanity have already begun to thread their way through our work: in projects on motherhood (do listen to our podcast series Motherhood vs the Machine), and death (see our work on Love, Grief & Hope here), and AI companionship (check out Dr Nathan Mladin’s blog Valentine’s Day against the Machine).

Last month, I had the honour of delivering the Limborough Lecture to the Worshipful Company of Weavers – an 1100–year–old livery company with a rich history tied to the textile industry. Many of us are familiar with the stories of how 19th century English textile workers rebelled against mechanised looms. To later generations they were Luddites, quaint resisters of progress. Yet as many note, their protest wasn’t against machines themselves, but against inhuman systems that stripped meaning from their craft. “Ned Ludd,” the mythical figure, stood for moral economy – the conviction that work should serve life, not the other way around. (See our previous Work Shift series for more on this).

Technological advancements and AI mean we face new versions of the questions that (literally) loomed during the industrial revolution – we are grappling with the same questions the Luddites did, and perhaps coming to similar conclusions. Robots can weave, print, and design faster than any artisan, but when work is reduced to productivity, could something sacred be lost? Maybe, as writer Paul Kingsnorth notes in his book Against the Machine: “Everything deeper, older and truer than the workings and values of the Machine has been, or is in the process of being, scoured away from us. We turned away from a spiritual, rooted understanding of the world in order to look at ourselves reflected in the little black mirrors in our hands.” It’s less about the technology itself and more about what the technology does to us, how it attempts to reshape the things we hold as fundamental to being human, and who exactly it tells us that a human is. We are at great risk of humanity being shaped in the image of Silicon Valley.

You’ll see this become even more prominent in our work over the coming years. This, perhaps the defining question of our age, is something we feel the Christian tradition and scripture can helpfully offer a world that is searching for answers and for meaning. Soon, we’ll be marking Easter, and churches up and down the country will read of Pilate pointing the crowd towards a broken and bruised Christ in the hours before his crucifixion and saying Ecce Homo – “behold the man”. To me, this points to an understanding of what it is to be human as not flawless or without blemish, but vulnerable, embodied and yet still beautiful. 

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Nick Spencer responds to Reform UK’s proposed law which would prevent disused churches from becoming mosques. 05/03/2026

When Zia Yusuf, the Reform Party’s Home Affairs spokesman, recently announced that his party would change the planning law to prevent churches from becoming mosques, he was no doubt aware he was entering into a dense theological debate that went back centuries.

In 1633, two young scamps, Nicholas Lucas and William Mattock, devised a great game of “tossing a ball against the wall in a narrow place between two windows” of the chapel of Williton in Somerset. Predictably, the windows were broken. Repeatedly. “The people whose seats in church were near them suffered from ‘the drift in of foul weather’.” The insolence and the expense enraged local inhabitants but the boys “flatly refused” to stop. Eventually, faced with punishment, they took a brave – if somewhat facetious – stand, denied they had done any damage to the church, and asked the villagers, ‘Where is the church ? [Surely] the church is where the congregation is assembled?”

Greater theological minds than Lucas and Mattock have grappled with this question. Over a millennium earlier, the recently converted Augustine of Hippo witnessed thousands come to faith under the not–so–gentle encouragement of the Emperor Theodosius I, as the empire was formally Christianised at the end of the fourth century. Augustine was, at first, exultant. He soon became disaffected, however, as he saw the same people who filled the churches “on the festivals of Jerusalem, fill the theatres for the festivities of Babylon”. He became disillusioned with the idea that any institution could be Christian. “What is Rome but the Romans?” he asked later. “A city consists of its citizens, not its walls.”

The reason why minds as great as Augustine, Lucas and Mattock’s have found this matter so debateable over the years is that it emerged from a tension inherent in Christianity. Place is important in the scriptures, to put it mildly. There are well over a thousand place names mentioned in the Old Testament and above 200 in the New. Sometimes reading the Bible can feel like reading a gazetteer, except for the fact that some of these places are not merely place names. Jerusalem overflows with meaning. It is presence, home, joy, refuge, hope, transcendence, destiny. The religion that emerged in these places is embodied, located, rooted, named.

And yet, Christ subverts so much of this in his life and mission. Not only is his life peripatetic, with nowhere to lay his head, but he firmly relocates the hope of Temple and Jerusalem onto himself, onto his body. “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

This tension between place and person runs through the New Testament letters. Paul and a few other apostolic megastars travelled a lot, but the churches he founded did not, and much of his time was spent advising them on how to make their new faith real in the places they lived. The Church is indeed where the congregation is assembled, around the word and body of Christ, as Lucas and Mattock so heroically insisted. But it is assembled in a place.

All this orients me towards the Lucas and Mattock school of theology when it comes to our presenting issue. We should, I guess, mention that this is really a non–story. As The Times has shown, the actual number of churches becoming mosques is minimal, vastly outnumbered by the numbers that have become wine bars, bingo halls, carpet warehouses, and rubble. When the Reform party loudly proclaims that it is finally taking a stand on this issue, you don’t need to be a Guardian columnist to know what’s going on.

But even if this doesn’t really merit as much attention as it’s getting, it is an interesting topic in as far as it picks up on so many of the themes – Islamisation, secularisation, immigration, Christian nationalism – that swirl around the witches’ cauldron of the culture wars. Seeing hundreds of Muslim worshippers praying in a space that was once full of Christians – well, maybe not full: many of these churches were rarely full even in the first place – is powerfully symbolic. I would personally much rather they were being used for their initial purpose.

But would I prefer them to be used as mosques than wine bars, bingo halls and carpet warehouses? Actually, yes. I can believe the Qur’an is not a true revelation, and that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, while still appreciating Islamic practices of veneration, respect, and community that I believe are fundamentally good for human beings. I don’t buy much carpet these days, and prefer pubs to wine bars, but I hope I don’t disrespect them by saying that neither has ever really lifted my soul.

So, would I ban the conversion of disused churches to mosques, or indeed bingo halls? Of course not. Because ultimately, I agree with our ball–playing Somerset miscreants. And although I love (many) churches for their capacity to life the spirit, for the way in which they preserve an exquisite palimpsest of national history – for being serious houses “in whose blent air all our compulsions meet,” – I do ultimately believe that the church is people not the place, and that “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

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Pausing football matches so Muslim players can break their Ramadan fast is nothing new. Hannah Rich responds to recent backlash. 03/03/2026

As religious diversity among elite sportspeople has grown, and the lunar calendar meant that Ramadan has most recently tended to fall during the football season, attention on Muslim players in the Premier League has intensified. So too has the discussion of what it means to include religious belief and practice at the heart of the sport which is regarded by many as our national religion.

For several years, the Football Association protocol has allowed brief pauses in evening matches so that Muslim players observing Ramadan can break their fast at sunset.

The impact on the game is minimal; indeed, there are time–wasting goalkeepers who have squandered more seconds with their delaying tactics than the cost of a fleeting, improvised iftar. Meanwhile in France, where the secularist principle of laïcité means the football federation makes no concessions for Ramadan or any other religious observance, players are still reliant on the solidarity of their teammates or opponents feigning injury to allow them to break their fast.

In our recent Theos report, Beyond the Classroom, we found that this example of top–flight footballers visibly breaking their fast during televised matches constituted a powerful form of informal religious education. We heard from teachers about the impact of this on young people wanting to discuss this in their RE lessons and thus becoming more animated and engaged in the religious education curriculum than they otherwise had been.

It is not ‘religious programming’ per se, nor is it done with any explicit pedagogical motivation, but the pitchside information screens which display a short explanation of what it means to break a fast and why Muslim players observe it are perhaps the most concrete form of religious education many of the crowd will have had since they left school.  Where else do 30,000 middle aged men passively learn about the tenets of a religious faith? The reasoning for the protocol has also been covered widely in the press.

This has largely gone unremarked upon, either embraced as easily as a favourite striker, or simply ignored. This weekend, however, was different. When play paused briefly 13 minutes into Leeds United’s match against Manchester City so that a number of City players observing Ramadan could break their fast with water and dates, a contingent of the Leeds fans began booing.

Online responses were mixed, to say the least, and the contested nature of Islam amid Christian nationalism reared its head. Tommy Robinson’s pastor of choice, Rikki Doolan, queried on X why games are paused for one religion when the “Premier league [sic] doesn’t do anything for the religion of the nation, Christianity… it’s wrong and must be corrected.” He has since continued this theme, calling on followers to boycott upcoming matches in which there will be a fast break.

Others have questioned why there is no equivalent allowance made for Christian players observing Lent. It seems that the calendars of the two seasons coinciding this year has heightened the potential for drawing parallels – see also last week’s pseudo–outrage about there being no Lent lights on Oxford Street – but find me a player observing Lent by refraining from eating or drinking during daylight hours on matchday, and we can talk. Further, contemporary ideas of Lent are shaped by choice rather than outright obligation; you choose what to abstain from and how in a way that is not true of Muslims observing a Ramadan fast.

I will concede that calls for matches not to be played on Easter Sunday, or on any Sunday, hold slightly more weight. The sanctity of the Saturday 3pm kick–off not being televised is afforded more respect than the Sabbath, and in the service of mammon and ticket sales rather than God.

But, in any case, demonstrations of Christianity in the beautiful game are hardly absent these days. Since 1927, the FA Cup Final has begun with a rendition of ‘Abide With Me’ and nearly a hundred years later, crowds still sing lines including ‘hold thou Thy cross before my closing eyes / in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me’ with gusto. When Crystal Palace won the cup last year, there were more players on the pitch praying together after full time than back in the dressing room.

Perhaps we might leave the final word to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, who underlines the potential for the Premier League to be the biggest arena of all for informal religious education. In criticising the Leeds fans booing his players, Guardiola simply said that in a modern world, in a modern footballing environment, we must all “respect religion, diversity, that is the point.”

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One year on from the UK’s cuts to aid spending, Catherine Masterman explores a biblical perspective on international development. 25/02/2026

One year ago, the Prime Minister announced a significant reduction in the UK’s budget for international development. This followed the cancellation of USAID as one of President Trump’s first acts in office, which J.D. Vance justified with reference to Biblical principles (then hotly contested by Rory Stewart). Christian leaders in the UK expressed outrage but wider political protest was muted, reflecting the decline in public support for aid. In 2026 governments are wrestling with the disruption of all international co–operation frameworks, including the future of development assistance. Does the Bible have anything to offer the current debate?

Historically, the Church has contributed to the UK’s previous claim to be an ‘international development superpower’. For over a century churches have had direct links with international projects, initially mission–funded hospitals or schools, then organisations partnering with local churches. Major development organisations started in the UK from Christian principles or church structures, including those now with a secular basis (e.g. Oxfam) as well as those retaining faith foundations. A strong awareness of global poverty was evident in the Church’s role in fair trade, and political campaigning, particularly Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History.

Today’s decision–makers are confronting a choice between a world governed by raw power, used to pursue the gain of individual actors, or an international policy where actors work together to enable mutual flourishing.

Debating whether public resources should purchase outcomes in other countries as a zero sum choice for outcomes in the UK obscures the fundamental principles at stake.  Aid, like all government spending, is an intervention in structures of power and wealth creation that reflect particular principles. Even without a moment of international rupture, those principles need to be subject to ongoing, robust debate, as Rowan Williams argues, in order that policies are based on what democracies consider to be ‘lawful’ and ‘good’. Without such a debate, institutions are merely brokering power between different interests.

This article looks at three biblical principles, which many would consider fundamental to democratic governance: the equal worth of all people; the use of power in the interest of all, not the few; and building of relationships founded on trust, not just transaction.

First, aid is one way to demonstrate a commitment to the equal innate value of all people. In theological terms, this is called ‘solidarity’, coming from the shared identity of all humanity, made in the image of God. This is echoed in the global human rights framework and, by definition, requires action beyond a country’s own borders. The overall volume of aid and its implementation plays a real and symbolic role, including but going beyond a humanitarian response to crises. Programmes to counter violence against women and girls are a statement that people are not defined by the way they are treated. Extending primary health care to vulnerable communities and vaccinating children reflects an ideal that the value of life should not be a factor of circumstance. This principle means that human dignity needs to be at the heart of international co–operation, reflecting local agency. It also matters for the health of our own democracies, bolstering a defence against the use of power for degrading or inhumane treatment on grounds of difference.

Secondly, development aid is a reminder of the need to use power to enable all to flourish, not just for the advantage of the few. Bearing the image of a relational God means that humanity flourishes or fails together. However, the universal human tendency is to use power and wealth to the advantage of the few. The Mosaic Law said that authorities need to strive to balance the drive for wealth with provisions to counteract ‘coveting’, (where wealth is created through exploitation of other people and/or the natural world). For Christians, working towards the new creation and the ultimate future (powerfully described in Tom Wright’s Surprised by Hope), addressing the use of power in political and economic structures is as much part of a life of faith as dealings within church and family life.

The Law included three specific provisions: enabling opportunity (gleaning); ensuring fairness in terms of credit, trade and employment; and establishing ways to address entrenched poverty (jubilee).

‘Gleaning’ requires those with assets to forego full exploitation for their own benefit (such as not harvesting to the very edge of the field) to provide opportunity for the poor.  International development assistance, itself a foregone resource by OECD governments, enables concessional finance for countries where capital borrowing would be prohibitive, an opportunity that declines as aid budgets  shrink. The idea of foregoing resources is highly relevant to the question of how to phase out fossil fuels, given the impact of climate shocks on poor countries.

The second principle is that of ensuring fair treatment, in terms of justice, credit and employment. The UK has supported a range of relevant interventions. These include improving labour conditions, (e.g. in the wake of the Rana Plaza fire in Bangladesh) and giving more people access to bank accounts, as well as supporting access to justice.

Finally, the concept of Jubilee provided for a periodic restoration in property rights to avoid entrenched poverty. The term is familiar as the movement to address high indebtedness in poor countries in the 2000s, again an issue as debt repayments outstrip budgets for health and education in some countries. In a globally interdependent economy, the principles governing the pursuit of wealth have an impact on who flourishes in rich as well as poor countries. Pope Francis’ Our Common Home argued that the interconnected social and environmental crises would only be addressed by looking at global economic and financial structures. 

Thirdly, development assistance can contribute to building relationships based  on trust, not just transaction. Ministers, whilst visiting or speaking about relationships with other countries, often use the term ‘partnerships’ and the idea of a commitment to mutual flourishing. Williams argues that healthy relationships are formed through ‘gifts’ (in the widest sense), which are offered in trust for the common good. Looking at aid only in terms of whether it benefits the UK or only benefits those in other countries underplays the contribution it makes to the wider relationship. This is not an excuse for naivety nor careless financial management; after all, Christ cautioned his followers to be ‘wise as serpents, innocent as doves’. Development co–operation can offer a platform for robust exchange and collaboration on issues of shared concern (ranging from local climate resilience to transnational crime). It can build trust in both bilateral and provide an anchor for multi–country and multi–stakeholder collaboration.

As the future of aid is debated there is an opportunity to shift the narrative, beyond whether it is ‘moral’ or ‘in the national interest’, or basing its legitimacy on the ability to count ‘results’. Democracies wishing to uphold the principle of global solidarity need to act and allocate resources outside their polity. In a globally interdependent economy, governments need to use their power to make specific provisions to prevent exploitation that affects the poor in both rich and poor countries; and international collaboration to address shared challenges requires trust, built when resources are used for the common good. Development assistance is not a discretionary stand–alone programme, but part of a wider international capability which is deeply connected with domestic flourishing, and a core part of a government’s global identity and impact.  

Catherine Masterman: Independent consultant

Catherine worked for DFID, FCO, Cabinet Office and FCDO on international development policy and programmes from 2002–2024 and now works as a freelance consultant on illicit finance and development. Catherine writes on faith and life at www.grainofsand.blog and in 2022 started a church forest playgroup.

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Chine McDonald reflects on the life and legacy of civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who died this week. 18/02/2026

Over the past 24 hours since the death of civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson, he has been called a “giant among men”, a “titan”, and an “icon”. But to many, one of the most distinctive things about him was that he was called: “Rev”.

The “Reverend” title for him was an important one. Like Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Rev Al Sharpton, and others of that iconic group of civil rights campaigners, Rev Jesse Jackson was both a pastor and a politician. These giants of political rhetoric, imagination and prophetic voice stood within the Black church tradition that birthed the modern civil rights movement. With the rousing oratory they honed from the pulpits, they delivered sermons as political strategies, and their political strategies as sermons. Their compelling, powerful and moving use of language made people feel something rather than left them cold. Scripture underpinned their social policy, they saw justice as an integral part of the Christian vision of the world turned right way up.

Many of Rev Jackson’s enslaved ancestors would have gathered together to sing songs of freedom and read the Bible nestled under trees in hush harbours away from the gaze of their white ‘owners’. Here the negro spirituals were born as they read of how God saw them, of how their freedom was possible, even while they were in chains. They read in the pages of scripture a liberating vision of human flourishing.

Decades later, their descendants, including Rev Jackson and his counterparts, did not just keep this vision to themselves behind closed doors in their churches. While they were more free than their parents and grandparents had been, they were still far from equal, and subjected to violence and oppression because of their race. These stirring sermons and readings of scripture propelled them beyond contemplation towards action.

As Barack Obama said yesterday: “For more than 60 years, Reverend Jackson helped lead some of the most significant movements for change in human history. From organising boycotts and sit–ins, to registering millions of voters, to advocating for freedom and democracy around the world, he was relentless in his belief that we are all children of God, deserving of dignity and respect.”

This belief in the inherent dignity and worth of every human person can be described as the theological concept of imago Dei, that draws on an understanding from Genesis 1 of humans being made in God’s image, and other passages such as Paul’s reference to us as “God’s offspring” in Acts 17:29. He didn’t always cite the Bible references, but the scripture infused his words and his actions.  The imago Dei can be a hard concept to grasp, but Rev Jesse Jackson communicated it in a way that people could understand. Most notably for me in his appearance on Sesame Street in 1971. Yes, Sesame Street. I happened to re-watch this moving scene a few weeks ago in which he leads a multi–racial group of children in declaring: “I am somebody.” This declaration is a Christian view of the human person – that each of us is imbued with dignity and worth, no matter who we are, no matter our background – in a way that a five–year–old can understand.

I’m sure those children will never have forgotten that moment. He was the kind of person that you would never forget meeting. An old school aura of greatness, courage and moral leadership that we seem to be in short supply of in our day. I have watched over the past 24 hours as black British Christians from across generations have shared their Rev Jesse Jackson moments. He visited the UK several times and each time made sure to connect with black Britons.

My own moment with him came in 2009, when I was a 25–year–old local newspaper reporter, and was invited to attend a press conference in Reading when Rev Jackson was visiting. Just a few months before, I had stayed up all night to watch Obama elected as the first black US president and wept as the cameras showed Rev Jackson himself weeping in the crowd gathered at Grant Park in Chicago, as he witnessed what had seemed unthinkable decades before. So I confess to having been somewhat starstruck when I met him in the flesh. As a young black woman who had studied theology, and had read about him my whole life, it was a special moment. After the press conference, he invited all of the black and brown journalists and reporters to gather round him to take a photo. In an industry in which many of us felt ‘other’, he made us feel seen. But he did that for so many others, too, no matter their race.

On Al Jazeera last night, I was asked why I thought Rev Jackson was able to mount a political campaign that very nearly got him to the White House long before Barack Obama. I answered that perhaps one of the ways in which he appealed beyond the black community is that he was an advocate for justice and equality for all who were marginalised. “Our flag is red, white and blue,” he once said. “But our nation is a rainbow – red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight.” His Rainbow PUSH Coalition arose out of a 1996 merger between his PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) – started in 1971 following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, which Jackson witnessed – and the Rainbow Coalition. The latter movement had its origins in civil rights era campaigns such as the Black Panther Party’s multi–racial anti–poverty coalition, led by Fred Hampton in Chicago. These Rainbow Coalitions brought together the white, black, Hispanic and Asian communities to work together at a grassroots level for educational programmes, food provision, voting rights and more. It is this work that – while clearly being part of the Black community and much beloved by it – enabled Jackson to widen his appeal in a diverse and polarised America.

Today, progressives and conservatives alike can be suspicious of the mixing of politics and religion – whether it’s concern around the ways religion can be weaponised to exclude and harm, or eye–rolling at the latest ‘woke bishop’ (as it were) commenting on issues such as immigration policy.

But religion and politics can’t help but mix. Christian theology has over centuries offered views and visions of what human society can and should be, and how we live together well in light of that. Perhaps Rev Jesse Jackson’s life will serve as an example to critics of the ways in which politics and religion can work well together, for the good of all; how it’s possible to seamlessly interweave the two unselfconsciously. When politics loses the language of hope and justice – words that are heard in churches every Sunday, when it becomes purely and deliberately secular in tone, could it be that we lose some of its humanity?

Perhaps what Jackson’s generation can teach us about the relationship between faith, activism and public life – particularly at a time of democratic fragility and deepening inequality, is that maybe they shouldn’t be seen as entirely separate spheres. Because maybe they never have been.

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Nathan Mladin unpacks the dangers of forming ‘relationships’ with AI companions. Can love triumph over artificial intimacy this Valentine’s Day? 13/02/2026

We live at a time in which people are forming romantic relationships with AI chatbots and avatars, even “marrying” them. And I never thought I’d ever write a sentence like that. But here we are. According to a Harvard Business Review study, the top three use cases for generative AI in 2025 were companionship, finding purpose, and “sorting out your life”. Millions are turning to AI not just for information, but for deeply personal guidance and intimacy.

It’s easy to greet this with disbelief, sneering superiority, or pity. I have succumbed to the temptation. But the rise of AI companionship speaks volumes about much that ails our Western world – and we will not understand properly what is happening until we resist the urge to look away or look down.

The ground for artificial intimacy was prepared long before chatbots landed. The triumph of “expressive individualism”; fraught relationships between the sexes; the decline of third spaces (e.g. pubs, community centres, libraries); the normalisation of so–called parasocial relationships through influencer culture. These are just some of the conditions that have made AI companions more than a far–fetched idea, especially as the business model behind chatbots is still geared towards “engagement”.

But there is something deeper at work. Digital technologies, and social media in particular, have been training us for years to live at a remove from our bodies. We connect across vast distances largely as “brains on sticks”. Absent a body, we just don’t feel we are talking to a real human being. It’s what explains why online exchanges quickly descend into toxic hostility.

Covid only accelerated the migration to online spaces and virtual worlds. Alas, social distancing turned out to be a more successful policy than it should have been. Post–Covid, in–person meetings and gatherings have taken a hit; our social lives are now far more technologically mediated. And for many of us, especially young people, the boundary between online and offline is blurred to non–existent. But being online means, to a significant extent, being oblivious to one’s embodiment. Ours is a “disembodying age,” as Notre Dame philosopher Megan O’Sullivan has recently put it.

AI companions succeed not simply because they “hack our empathy circuits”, as Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has recently put it – though they probably do. They have appeal because we have already been habituated into relating to one another as though our bodies don’t matter – and that real presence, body language, touch, the shared vulnerability of sharing space, were optional extras rather than the very conditions of intimacy. We were ready to fall for simulations of persons because we had already settled for simulations of presence. 

The real danger of AI companions is not simply that people will choose artificial partners over real ones. Most people, it’s fair to assume, will always prefer real human beings (fingers crossed). Rather, the risk is that sustained engagement with AI companions is slowly eroding the dispositions and virtues necessary for authentic, inter–personal relationships: the ability to tolerate friction, to hold ambiguity, to accept inconvenient requests, to be turned down and disappointed. An AI designed to affirm and never resist trains us, over time, to expect frictionless interactions with the people around us.

So what is to be done? Pandora’s box cannot be shut. Generative AI will not magically vanish, and AI companions will likely become more alluring. Regulation is critical but, as usual, insufficient. What we need, first, is to start paying attention. Every person turning to an AI for love is telling us something true about the world we have built: its loneliness, its harshness, and the failure of community. If we cannot hear this, we have no standing to offer alternatives. We don’t just need restrictions on harmful technology, but pro–social policies and investment in social infrastructure: restoring funding for youth services, expanding social prescribing, investing in mental health provision in schools and workplaces, renewing community spaces, urban planning that prioritises encounter over traffic flow, and much more.

But above all, we need close–knit yet porous communities that practise the costly, unglamorous, but vital work of showing up for one another, in flesh and blood. Here, churches and other communities of faith have an extraordinary potential. At their best, they are gatherings of people from different generations, backgrounds, and classes, committed to remaining in relationship because they believe we are made for one another, and indeed, for more. 

We are, as the fourth–century North African theologian Augustine understood, creatures of desire. What we love shapes us more deeply than what we think. And our deepest desire, the one that hums beneath all others, is to be fully known and fully loved. That we reach for this love everywhere, in human beings who can rarely, if ever, provide it, and in AI companions that can only mimic it, is a sign that we were made for a love more total and more fierce, both in its offer and the demands it makes of us.

Which brings us, at last, to Valentine’s Day. Consumerist, kitschy, sentimental to the point of parody it may be. But for all its gaudy commercialism, it still gestures toward something true: that love means choosing this person, in all their particularity, with their limits and resistance and morning breath too; that love is not merely a feeling elicited by fancy algorithms but a practice sustained by commitment and, ultimately, by grace.

So this Valentine’s Day, the most countercultural thing we can do is also the simplest: look up from our screens and be fully present to someone who, unlike a chatbot, may challenge and frustrate us, but may also suffer alongside us, and even – whisper it – love us back.

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What are National Prayer Breakfasts for? Chine McDonald compares her experience in the UK to recent events in the US. 12/02/2026

I’ve attended pretty much every National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast for the past decade. Except one. Sadly maternity leave meant I missed the one that will go down in history as the prayer breakfast that brought down a government.

Once a year, the prayer breakfast draws hundreds of church and charity leaders, MPs and peers, to Westminster Hall. That year, the event – which took place in July 2022 – was themed around Serving the Common Good. Over the usual pastries, teas and coffees, Rev Les Isaac – founder and CEO of Ascension Trust and founder of Street Pastors – delivered a sermon on Psalm 23. He spoke about integrity, humility and the courage to act when conscience demands it.

Listening intently was Sajid Javid – the then health secretary – who, stirred by Rev Isaac’s words, decided that day to resign from Boris Johnson’s Cabinet.

“I made my decision then,” he said. “Sitting there listening to his sermon, and I just thought, it’s about integrity, it’s about a duty. If you haven’t got confidence in the boss, you owe it to yourself and the country to tell the boss nicely that you can’t serve and that was it.”

It’s not often that a prayer meeting is linked, however indirectly, to the fall of a government. But that’s what can happen when Christian scripture is given the space to speak into public life. For much of the past few decades, Christianity has at times been sidelined; seen by some as irrelevant at best, and at worst – dangerous. But perhaps Christianity poses a danger to any dominant narratives that might act against human flourishing.

Last week in Washington DC, the US version of the National Prayer Breakfast featured a very long address from Donald Trump. Seventy–seven minutes, to be precise. You can read the full transcript of the speech here, which starts with the words:

“And, you know, I never get a fair break from the fake news, which is back there. That’s a lot of fake news.”

He went on to talk about religion being “back hotter than ever”, in part because of the good things he’s doing for it, his popularity, and whether or not he’ll get into heaven [“I really think I probably should make it.”] Read this great post by John Kuhrt for more analysis.

The prayer breakfast has always been intended to be a moment of reflection, repentance and reorientation towards God, and l a recognition of the role of Christianity in American public life. But this felt something closer to a campaign rally. Michael Wear, founder of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, has written extensively about the prayer breakfast, and warned about the dangers of it being co–opted by partisan interests. And also, by ego.

For Wear, who was a former faith adviser to Barack Obama: “One purpose of the breakfast in history has been to position presidents and political leaders in such a way that they are humbled – their remarks typically focused on ways they fell short, the nation’s reliance on grace that politics and politicians can’t provide. Not until this president has someone gone to the breakfast to make so much of himself, and so little of God. And he does it every year.”

We don’t get everything right on our side of the Atlantic, but the UK National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, which drew a record number of MPs last year (170), does things differently. We at Theos, via our colleagues at Bible Society and Christians in Parliament, play a key part in organising the event. The Prime Minister is never invited to deliver the keynote address; he or she is an honoured guest in the audience/congregation. The platform isn’t handed to the most powerful political figure in the room. Instead, a Christian leader opens up the scriptures and offers wisdom to those who hold power. Maybe this distinction matters.

Because power has a gravitational pull. It bends institutions towards itself. It’s hard to resist.

Christian scripture, however, doesn’t exist to sanctify the powerful. Time and again, it unsettles them. The prophets speak woe to unjust rulers. In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the mighty being cast down and the humble lifted up. Jesus stands before Pilate and redefines what power and authority look like.

When Rev Les Isaac addressed Parliamentarians, he did not flatter them. He spoke of service, of character formed in obscurity, of communities crying out for justice. In that space, MPs were not the main characters. They were listeners under the authority of an ancient text that judges – and hopefully speaks to – us all.

This vision sits at the heart of Theos’ work. Our aim is to promote a Christian imagination arising out of that scripture of human flourishing for society – across politics, the media, the arts, education and business. That imagination doesn’t merely point to the old days of “Judaeo–Christian values” and civilizations. It asks what kind of society enables people and communities to thrive; what virtues sustain democratic life; what stories shape our common good. It offers the wisdom and riches of the Christian intellectual and spiritual tradition to help meet some of the biggest challenges our society is facing today: from AI to nationhood to economic inequality to immigration to motherhood.

We know that Christianity has so often failed, but we also believe that good public theology, which tells the stories of Christianity, can be a gift to society.

In an adrenaline–fuelled political culture (see Keir Starmer’s week), the quiet power of a well–preached sermon, rooted in scripture and addressed to the conscience, can ripple far beyond a single morning in Westminster Hall.

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Ahead of the installation of the new Archbishop of Westminster, Marianne Rozario breaks down what this appointment means for the Catholic Church. 10/02/2026

For Catholics in England and Wales, this Saturday marks a significant moment: Bishop Richard Moth will be installed as the new Archbishop of Westminster, one of the most prominent roles in the Catholic Church in this country.

The Diocese of Westminster, along with other dioceses, was established on 29 September 1850 by Blessed Pope Pius IX. This marked the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, following centuries of suppression after the Reformation—when the celebration of Mass was largely confined to chapels in foreign embassies or celebrated in secret. By 1850, Catholic life had begun slowly to re–emerge: since 1688 the country had been under the care of a missionary bishop (a Vicar Apostolic), with missionary churches serving the small Catholic population, alongside the gradual development of Catholic schools, charitable institutions, and lay organisations. [i] But no formal Catholic hierarchy existed.

After the Diocese’s establishment in 1850, expansion accelerated, with 45 churches opening between 1850 and 1865, and growth continuing in subsequent decades.[ii] It is worth noting, however, that the diocese had a policy of building schools before churches so that the burgeoning—and largely very poor—Catholic population could be educated. The building of Westminster Cathedral itself did not start until 1895.

In 2025, the Diocese marked its 175th anniversary; it now has 212 parishes and 206 schools. Despite being one of the smallest dioceses in terms of geographical size, it serves one of the largest Catholic populations and has one of the highest number of priests in the country.[iii] Although Westminster is only one of the 21 Catholic dioceses that cover England and Wales, Westminster Cathedral is widely regarded as the “mother church” and the Diocese the de–facto head.

During his service from 2009 to 2025, Cardinal Vincent Nichols—the outgoing Archbishop of Westminster—has guided the Catholic Church through significant times[iv]. He has overseen unparalleled events post–Reformation including the first official papal state visit to the UK with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit in 2010 (Saint John Paul’s visit in 1982 was a pastoral one), participated in the coronation of King Charles III as the first Roman Catholic cleric to do so, and most recently presided over the first royal funeral at Westminster Cathedral, that of the Duchess of Kent.

Cardinal Nichols has also had to oversee some more challenging times, including child sex abuse scandals identified through the IICSA inquiry, and the introduction of British legislation in contradiction to Catholic teachings on matters redefining marriage, curtailing religious freedom, expanding abortion, and most recently promoting assisted suicide (though this remains before parliament). He has also been involved in significant religious moments—the canonisation of Saint John Henry Newman, now a Doctor of the Church, and Saint Carlo Acutis, along with participating in the election of Pope Leo XIV.

This year brings change for the Diocese: a new ‘shepherd’ to lead Westminster and beyond. Archbishop–elect Richard Moth was born in Zambia but brought up in Kent and was ordained a priest in 1982. He has served in numerous roles including as Bishop of the Forces, and since 2015 Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, and has been Chair of Governors at St Mary’s University, Chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference Department for Social Justice, and Liaison Bishop for Prisons.[v] He will become the twelfth Archbishop of Westminster pastorally guiding the Catholic faithful and, working closely with his brother bishops and lay Catholics, will be one of the prominent voices for the Catholic Church in the country. But the primary role of a bishop is not in the public square.

A bishop’s vocation is to exercise the threefold ministry (tria munera) of sanctifying, teaching and governing the people of God, reflecting Jesus’ role as priest, prophet and king. As priest, he sanctifies by celebrating the sacraments—most especially the Eucharist—but also through possessing the authority to ordain clergy, and by fostering the Church’s prayer and liturgical life. As prophet, he teaches the Gospel with authority, safeguards apostolic doctrine, and offers moral and social guidance to both the faithful and the wider society. As king, or shepherd, he governs by exercising pastoral leadership: guiding the diocese, ensuring the unity and discipline of the Church, promoting justice and charity, and coordinating the mission entrusted to him for the building up of the Body of Christ.[vi]

Lumen Gentium, a key document of the Second Vatican Council, teaches that bishops, by divine institution, have succeeded to the place of the apostles and have received “the fullness of the sacrament of Orders”. This is what distinguishes them from priests defined as “co–workers of the episcopal order” who exercise their ministry in dependence upon and communion with the bishop.[vii] Therefore, bishops bear responsibility for the sanctifying, teaching, and governance of the diocese, in communion with the pope and the College of Bishops, and “take the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd, and priest, and act as his representative (in Eius persona agant)”.[viii]

Beyond his responsibilities as teacher, shepherd, and priest to the Diocese of Westminster, the new role Archbishop–elect Moth takes on carries wider significance. An archbishop has no greater ecclesial authority than a bishop. The Catholic Church is more decentralised than one imagines: there is no ‘national church’. However, an archbishop oversees an archdiocese that is usually larger, older or of more significance than other dioceses, and it is likely that the Archbishop–elect will become the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Because of this, and due to the significance of the Diocese of Westminster, Archbishop–elect Moth may represent the Catholic Church in national public life, speaking on moral, social, and political issues in the light of Catholic teaching, in ways appropriate for a pastoral leader, and always respecting the appropriate competence of the laity. Beyond the national sphere, he will, in a certain sense, also represent Catholics of England and Wales to the wider world and to the Holy See, serving as a key figure in the Church’s international life.

As the newly appointed shepherd of Westminster, Archbishop–elect Moth is wished every success in his ministry. It is hoped that he will lead those entrusted to his care closer to Christ. He will, in turn, be supported by their prayers—something which Archbishop–elect Moth, as a man of prayer himself, will greatly value.

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Madeleine Pennington takes a look at our current, power–crazed political moment in light of our new report with Christian Aid. In all this, does power have the potential for good? 29/01/2025

In a 2016 interview with The Washington Post, the then–presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked if he agreed with Barack Obama’s observation that “real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence”. Trump’s response was telling, as he (not so) subtly drifted from a reflection on soft power to the military:

I think there’s a certain truth to that. Real power is through respect. Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear. But you know, our military is very sadly depleted… Hey, as a real estate person, all the time I’m getting listings of bases, Army bases, Marine bases, naval bases. I keep saying, how many bases do they have? … do we want to buy a base in Virginia? … And I see it all the time. We have to strengthen our military.

Trump’s electoral success since that interview – and moreover, his totemic representation of a certain kind of politics sweeping across the West – has only entrenched a view of power as a close relative of fear. From Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to Trump’s own divisive rhetoric on Greenland and military intervention in Venezuela, strongman leadership is back in fashion – and it is precisely the way such leaders talk about, and wield, their own military, financial, and political power that is now challenging historical norms so profoundly. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently observed in a viral speech at the World Economic Forum, “It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry – that the rules–based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

It’s ironic, then, that our society is also increasingly suspicious of ‘the powerful’. Political movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have drawn attention to the devastating ways in which power can be misused to harm or control others. Core institutions – the government, legislature, police, army, and, yes, churches – face crises of trust and legitimacy as their potential as vehicles for structural injustice, corruption, and bullying is increasingly recognised. So too, waning colonialism has left many with an instinctive scepticism towards the way in which the Global North has (and continues to) exercise economic, military and cultural power at the expense of the Global South.

Power harnessed through fear, corruption, and the threat of violence has never been more scrutinised, just as it is making a comeback on the world stage. Yet the postures described above – domination and despair – both understand power fundamentally as coercive and self–interested: they differ only on whether that is a good thing.

Carney’s intervention at Davos was striking because it emphasised a different sort of power at play alongside strength alone. Here, he drew on Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, asking how the communist system prevailed for so long:

[Havel’s] answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite”. He doesn’t believe it, no–one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false… When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. 

For Carney, this is a call to action for global leaders in 2026 to recognise this other power as their own, faced with increasingly flagrant violations of the rules–based order: “Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.”

Together, all these reflections on power triangulate the historical moment in which we find ourselves. Many of our political differences are shaped foundationally by what we think (and say) about power, and many of our greatest challenges reflect the outworkings of these different ideas in practice.

But if the powerful should aspire to more than control over others – and if those of us who seek justice are not to lose total hope in the potential of power for good – where might we find resources to construct a broader and more hopeful understanding?

Our latest report A Theology of Power, produced in partnership with Christian Aid, unpacks what the Bible has to say about power.

For the biblical authors, power is fundamentally creative, God–given, and pervasive. Yes, humans too often subvert its positive potential for their own, destructive ends: the Bible tells this story of rebellion and injustice time and time again. But this is not what power is. In fact, the first demonstration of power in the Bible is creation, spoken by Word alone: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Flowing from this first creative act, God then actively distributes his power, delegating authority over aspects of creation to others – and he will ultimately judge whether its use aligns with good – divine good – or not.

Consequently, those with particular power now (not only those in the highest office, but those “placing their signs out”) have a responsibility to use it for the flourishing of all. They are not finally accountable to themselves for their use of this power, but to a higher power whose purposes are always just. Nor have we yet seen the full outworking of this power: it is by nature creative, hopeful, generative, borrowed, distributed.

Here, then, is a corrective to the tendencies both to dominate and to despair. True power is not fear – nor even mere respect. In the words of author Andy Crouch,

“What if the Western intellectual tradition at least since Nietzsche (but further back… to the ancient Greeks) is mistaken about power? What if there is another way? If the gospel really is good news for all creation, is it possible that the gospel is good news about power?”

Not for a long time has this good news felt so sorely, or so urgently, needed.

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Marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz–Birkenau is as important as ever, says Zaki Cooper. 27/01/2026

Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) and my mind is turning to my wife’s maternal grandmother, Raymonde Feuerwerker, or Mémé as we called her, who passed away 10 years ago.

“You have two hands, one for each of your brothers. Never let go.” These were the instructions Mémé’s mother gave her 12–year–old daughter when she recognised the growing threat to Jews in Vichy France and sent her away with the duty of safeguarding her two younger siblings. The three children were separated from their parents, who were later sent to Auschwitz where they were killed, as part of the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.

During the months that followed, Mémé guided her brothers and several other young people toward safety, ultimately arriving at the border with Switzerland after a dangerous trek filled with narrow escapes, assistance from a rabbi, and her own remarkable instinct for survival. Though I only knew her in her later years, her journey was extraordinary.

Having endured such traumatic ordeals that broke many other survivors, she built a new life in Geneva and became a mother, grandmother, and great–grandmother, demonstrating extraordinary strength and determination. Sadly her story was a rare positive one, set against a mountain of despair, loss, destruction and death.

Holocaust Memorial Day is the time to reflect on these stories, and dwell on the Holocaust, the systematic, state–sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. It is sometimes hard to comprehend the scale. In the tragedy of 9/11 in 2001, approximately 3,000 people were killed. During the Holocaust, 3,000 people were killed every day, every week, every month of every year for six years.

HMD on 27th January marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz–Birkenau and was started by the UN in 2005. It is as important as ever for several reasons. Firstly, ignorance about the Holocaust is increasing. Several recent surveys in the UK and overseas show substantial gaps in basic knowledge. A national Holocaust knowledge survey of UK adults found that 52% did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Secondly, the corollary of that is that some people do not believe that the Holocaust took place at all, and argue that it’s a fabrication. In the same UK study, 9% of respondents said the Holocaust is a myth or that the number of Jews killed has been greatly exaggerated, and almost a third had seen Holocaust denial or distortion online. The internet and its twin sister social media have become a toxic wellspring of Holocaust misinformation and denial. This nonsense is promulgated by a number of extreme, populist politicians in Europe, the US, and elsewhere.

Thirdly, the people who lived through the Holocaust are becoming increasingly frail and elderly, or passing away. In recent years, King Charles has gone out of his way to meet with and engage with Holocaust survivors like Lily Ebert and Manfred Goldberg. By all accounts, he has been inspired by their indomitable spirit.

Finally, over 80 years after the end of the Holocaust and Second World War, antisemitism is rearing its ugly head again. Surveys show it is on the rise in the UK and in many other countries around the world. Terrorist attacks in Manchester in October and Australia two months later, which killed Jewish people going about their lives, have been a terrible blow for the community. The war in Gaza, which was precipitated by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, has opened the floodgates to virulent antisemitism. Criticism of Israel’s government has, on too many occasions, morphed into hatred of Jews, which has found expression on the streets, on social media, and elsewhere.

Against this depressing backdrop, what can we do about it? The starting point has to be education, particularly in schools. The fact that the Holocaust is on the national curriculum is welcome. Programmes, such as those run by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), which arranges visits by schoolchildren to Auschwitz, carry out an important function. But there is so much more to do.

Furthermore, the UK has some excellent exhibitions about the Holocaust, not least at the Imperial War Museum and the National Holocaust Centre in the Midlands. There are thought to be approximately 450 memorial museums worldwide dealing with the Holocaust. The latest to open was the impressive Lost Shtetl Museum in Lithuania just four months ago. All these museums serve as an important pillar in representing historical truth and acting as a bulwark against misinformation and ignorance.

Alongside these physical buildings, we need to harness the potential of technology to promote Holocaust education. There is some creative work taking place. As an example, HET is rolling out “Testimony 360” in UK schools, using AI to let pupils ask questions to virtual versions of survivors and then explore camps and ghettos in VR linked to that testimony.

A number of other organisations carry out important work educating about the Holocaust. One such example is the Council of Christians and Jews, the national interfaith organisation, which was set up in 1942 as an initiative by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, who was horrified by reports of what was happening to the Jews of Europe. It organises study trips to Poland for senior Christian leaders.

Yet for all these noble efforts, we must acknowledge they are not enough. As the generation of survivors diminishes, the imperative to tell their stories grows ever more urgent. By sharing Mémé’s story and those of countless others like her, we bear witness to both the depths of human cruelty and the heights of human courage.

These testimonies are not simply historical records. They are beacons that illuminate the path forward, reminding us of our shared responsibility to confront hatred wherever it emerges.

Zaki Cooper is a Vice–President of the Council of Christians and Jews.

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Chine McDonald reflects on 80 years of the UN and why anniversaries matter. 22/01/2026

In January 1946 – four months after the end of the Second World War – delegates from around the world gathered in London with one mission: to rebuild a renewed world of collaboration, solidarity and peace; a world where such war would never again be possible. This was the inaugural meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and it took place in the Great Hall at Methodist Central Hall Westminster. The towering building had been unscathed by war and so was the ideal choice for such a gathering. Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin had to convince the church’s trustees, however, to lend their building for the meeting, saying: “there could be no better place than a House of God, with the atmosphere of prayer already there”. So the Rev Dr William Sangster and his congregation vacated the premises, moving out so that the world could move in.

Over the weekend I joined Christian leaders at a moving service to mark 80 years since that first meeting, and give thanks for the work of the United Nations (you can watch some of my reflections on this here). Sat in the Great Hall – the room where this daring global commitment happened – I couldn’t help but be cognizant of the reality that the world in 2026 feels much more fractured, unstable and violent than those gathered in that moment of global solidarity might have hoped for.

If Bevin were around today to see the wars raging, the increased sense that might is right and that global alliances are fracturing, he might conclude that the project had failed. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said at Davos on Tuesday: “Every day, we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules–based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” The UN is not perfect by any means – anyone who has got close to its structures will know it is an institution often crippled by bureaucracy. UN Secretary–General António Guterres, who attended the event at Methodist Central Hall on Saturday, told the BBC he knew his organisation lacked the leverage that is perhaps needed in this moment, which he described as one in which “there are those that believe the power of law should be replaced by the law of power”. For all its faults, it is one of few institutions committed to global solidarity and peace – hard as it may be to achieve.

Anniversaries are a time to reflect on what has been, and take the temperature of where we are now. This week marked a year since Donald Trump’s inauguration, this month marked 80 years of the UN, and – admittedly, not quite on the same geopolitical scale – this year marks 20 years since Theos was founded. Throughout 2026, we’ll mark this milestone with a series of events that assess the past, present and future of religion in public life, from a number of different angles. The context in which we were founded has of course changed, and so with it has our original raison d’être. Gone (just about) is the New Atheist rhetoric which claimed that faith was a virus to be eradicated in order to make the world safer, that faith had no relevance to what was happening in our world. Today, religion is clearly not something that can be ignored and is instead playing an increasing role in our public conversations – sometimes in positive ways, and sometimes in negative. In this world of more religion not less, I was encouraged by Cardinal Vincent Nichols’ homily at the UN 80th anniversary event, in which he said “belief in God is not a problem to be solved, but a great resource to be rediscovered”.

Theos’ task in this moment is not a defensive one, but one that proactively puts forward the compelling ideas about human flourishing based on the great resource of our scriptural tradition. As people of faith, we stand in a long line of those who have drawn from these deep wells to offer counter–narratives to the ones that the world is telling. As Catholic theologian Professor Anna Rowlands said at a gathering of women I attended in the House of Lords this week, brought together by Baroness Elizabeth Berridge, Christianity has played a key role in the foundations of our modern institutions. Namely: “The idea of limited government accountable to the people, of orderly government, of the restrained use of power, of the person before the law, equal, free, dignified, of some responsibility we bear for suffering neighbours – the solidaristic elements of democratic cultures. The post–war world was founded in a sober moment of institution rebuilding at national and international levels that would hold arbitrary individuals’ wills and the horror of unlimited force at bay, and Christians played leading roles in that process.”

It’s clear to us that our work here at Theos is not done just because journalists are writing stories about God being back, about public intellectuals converting, and about young people exploring church. Rather, this renewed interest in Christianity gives us the opportunity to present a case for what the Christian faith can offer to some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. These challenges are unsettling, complex and significant: from Christian nationalism at home and abroad to AI to mental and spiritual health. Some could say that – 20 years in – our work is just beginning.

There will be many opportunities throughout this year to get involved in our 20th anniversary events, and support this important work into the future. If you’d like to find out more about ways to support us, do get in touch with our Fundraising & Supporter Relations Officer Miriam McCulloch: Miriam.mcculloch@theosthinktank.co.uk

Hannah Rich delves into the themes of the latest Knives Out film (spoiler free). 18/12/2025

The following is a spoiler–free commentary on the film Wake Up Dead Man.     

In a world where power and religion collide in ever more complex ways, you could make your way through any number of theological analyses before finding as incisive an exploration of our current moment as the latest instalment of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man.  

From the very start of the film, the dichotomy between the two main clergy characters – two personas of the church – is set. Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is a former boxer relegated to a small parish in upstate New York as punishment for punching a clerical colleague. In his own words, he is “young, dumb and full of Christ… David facing down Goliath,” unpolished but ardent in his faith. His opposite number, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), is a cipher for the institutional church and an inherited sort of cultural religion. The church is his family business; his grandfather sought ordination after the death of his wife, we learn, making him the literal inheritor of the parish, the mausoleum and the mysterious fortune at the heart of the plot.  

“The church doesn’t need some pussy who’s gonna lie down and take it, we need a warrior and I believe God sent Monsignor Wicks to be that warrior,” says one of the parishioners of Chimney Rock. The desire for a warrior priest echoes that of the people who refused to listen to Samuel, instead insisting that “we want a king to lead us, to go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19–20). Even when Samuel lays bare for them what having a king would mean, still they want it. Their system is broken and corrupt and they long for the immediacy and power of a king like other nations. To the people of Chimney Rock too, the brashness of Monsignor Wicks looks like a stereotypical warrior king, the sort they are conditioned to want.  

To Father Jud, though, “the priest is a shepherd, the world is a wolf.” “Christ came to heal the world, not fight it,” he says, noting that Monsignor Wicks would do well to learn that. His calling is simply to love his people, to extend grace rather than warfare. By the end of the film, the name of the parish church has shifted from Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude to Our Lady of Perpetual Grace, a literal sign of the changing ethos and priorities of its clergy. 

The origins of the feast of Christ the King – marked liturgically the same weekend that Wake Up Dead Man hit cinemas – was in the restatement of the kingship of Christ in the wake of the First World War. But lately, we have seen the phrase “Christ is King” come to be imbued with all sorts of political meanings and contentions. Christ is the sort of king I like, it can say. Christ is a warrior king, not a shepherd boy. Our understanding of Christ shifts to fit our mould of a king too simplistically, when in reality, Christ shatters the world’s understanding of what a king is.  

Cyril of Alexandria wrote that Christ’s dominion is one “not seized by violence nor usurped, but by his essence and by nature”. Father Jud embodies this; if he comes to command the parish, it is by an essence and nature which is not domineering. It is notable that Johnson has cited GK Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries as a key inspiration for the film. Chesterton himself is credited with saying that “the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him,” a line which captures Father Jud’s approach to life, faith and the institution. So much of what makes his character so attractive – in a moral sense, although he has been described as heir to co–star Andrew Scott’s ‘hot priest’ mantle from Fleabag – boils down to the matter of how we meet the world at the church doors, with fists poised or arms open.  

Wake Up Dead Man is dripping with religious imagery and metaphors. There are Damascene conversions, confessions as both a sacrament and a police procedure, a forbidden apple, an empty tomb and a woman called Martha (Glenn Close) who simply never stops serving. There are also the sort of congregational details that can only be absorbed through experience; Johnson has been clear that he set out to make “a movie about faith… a movie about the church,” drawing both the material and spiritual substance of his childhood Christianity. 

No spoilers here, save to say that resurrection and an empty grave is an equally compelling mystery to grapple with whether it is a killer plot twist or a theological truth. So too the nature of power, institutional, individual and spiritual.  

Theos Senior Fellow Nick Spencer unpacks what he saw at the “Unite the Kingdom Carol Service” in Whitehall over the weekend.

Central London is extremely busy when we arrive, on Saturday afternoon. It’s not with protestors or carollers though. Tourists and Christmas shoppers rule the pavements. After the September UTK rally, I had imagined swathes of Westminster cordoned off for legions of flag–waving nationalists, ordinary people waiting and cowering in fear and anticipation. This time, however, although there is a visible police presence, people in and around Trafalgar Square seem to be oblivious to whatever is about to happen.

We meander down Whitehall to be met by probably the most English sign we see all day. It’s not a George’s cross or an “Anglo–Saxon Freedom” flag but an electronic display telling us which direction to queue for whatever rally we want: left for Unite the Kingdom, right for (anti–)Digital ID. The latter has a large stage and very loud music. The former is much smaller, dwarfed by the Cabinet Office outside which it stands. It is more like the kind of thing you would find outside a town hall than on Whitehall.

The location is important. In his public communication about the event, Tommy Robinson had been insistent that this was about putting Christ into Christmas, and not about politics. But Whitehall is a strange location for a non–political carol concert, and e–mails that Robinson had sent to supporters had talked about this being an “assembly of dedicated patriots [singing] beloved carols that proclaim our enduring devotion to faith and homeland”, and how this “holiday [a curious word to choose] spectacle is set to become Sadiq Khan’s ultimate dread”. In other words, this looked like textbook Christian Nationalism stuff, a thin paper of Christian culture wrapping some very red nationalist meat.

The crowd is vastly smaller than the September event, perhaps 1–2,000 people at its max. It is largely but by no means exclusively white, and roughly equally mixed in terms of gender and age. There are a few families and younger people, some veterans, and a guy with a shofar horn, who really knows how to use it. Some people carry flags – there are perhaps 20 in total – mainly Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses, with a few ‘Jesus is King’ banners, plus, curiously, a Shropshire county flag and briefly, before it disappears, a Deus Vult banner. Aside from the guy I’m standing next to who is dressed in a Christmas onesie and drinking a can of Stella, I see no one consuming alcohol, drunk, or behaving anti–socially. (Interestingly, in a preparatory twitter post, Robinson had written “No face coverings, and no drinking please, as we have always done, let’s self police, behave respectfully and let’s make sure we honour our faith, our culture, and our heritage in the very best way we can.”) Perhaps most importantly, it feels like a more working–class crowd than you would get in most UK churches.

At first, when the event proper begins at 3pm, it feels rather low energy. People aren’t angry or even particularly animated (unlike at the digital ID rally 250 yards up the road) but they warm up as the event proceeds. The focus is relentlessly on Jesus throughout the whole thing – who he was and how he has saved people and can save your life and save our country. There are half a dozen readings from the gospels and prophets, a few short sermons, mainly from the (all male) clerics who assume the stage (Bishop Ceirion Dewar, pastor Rikki Doolan, Chris Wickland, etc) – and some heartfelt testimonies. The audience are led in familiar carols by a small band and three black women with impressive voices. A number of independent evangelists, male and female, black and white, ply the crowd handing out their tracts and leaflets. Ignore who is organising this and where we are, and you would mistake it for any evangelistic carol event in the country, albeit, as noted, with a lower–than–average middle class contingent.

There is pretty much no politics at all. Several speakers talk of “patriots” rather than, say, “believers”, “citizens” or “subjects”, and there are a few calls to renew the country, but other than that, you would be hard pressed to pin the event politically. The tone remains largely positive. There’s a bit of anti–elite rhetoric, some anti–liberal stuff, but pretty much nothing on wokery or on Islam, which is mentioned only once, in passing, by a minister from Pakistan who was exhorting the crowd to pray for the persecuted church in Pakistan and Nigeria. On a few occasions the audience, encouraged by the stage, breaks out in a chant of “Christ is King”, which feels (to me at least) both aggressive and unnecessary. The crowd is also animated by periodic references to how Jesus can save the nation, showing their approval by cheers or, more usually, applause. For the most part the audience seems happy to listen quietly and join in when the band strikes up.

One or two younger speakers talk about mental health problems and how Jesus rescued them from depression and suicidal feelings. Several advise the audience that their Christianity should be a seven–day–a–week thing, and that they should also find a church to go to (though they seem to draw the line at Church of England churches, which they consider to be pusillanimous and too liberal). A few speakers complain about the commercialisation of Christmas obscuring its true meaning. Most talk as if they are preaching to the unconverted but, in as far as I can tell from the singing and handwaving, the majority of the crowd are already in the flock.

All in all, it feels like an old school revivalist meeting, Primitive Methodism c.1820 mixed with a bit of Billy Graham c. 1960, with just a pinch of patriotic Rudyard Kipling thrown in. Perhaps the only notable difference is that there is not much mention of sin, with Robinson himself being pretty much the only one to talk about it. He is most notable on account of his absence throughout (again I sense the crowd wanted more of him: “Where’s Tommy?” a woman behind me shouts, when it’s beginning to look like he won’t appear at all). He comes on stage but only in the last five minutes, during which time he calls himself a sinner, several times, although straightaway softens the self–accusation by saying that everyone is a sinner. The crowd is certainly enthused by his presence, and it is doubtful whether as many would have turned up had he not organised it, but at no point does the event turn into a personality cult, which it so easily might have done. It’s all over by about 4.45 and people drift away, leaving a relatively litter free street.

What is one to make of this? Well, anyone (including researchers) coming for some full–blooded Christian nationalism, will have been disappointed. The political location; the (false) premise (“this is purely about putting Christ back into Christmas”, Robinson had tweeted, despite the fact that 50,000+(?) church carol services already had Christ at their centre); and much of the peripheral language (“our beloved country faces grave threats from those intent on undermining our cherished Christian traditions and national pride”): all of this would have led you to expect some obvious and unapologetic Christian nationalism. That was the frame.

But the picture was different. “I want to remind everyone this is a religious celebration,” Robinson had tweeted, “this is not a political event, it’s not about Islam, immigration, or the useless communists in control of our government.” That may be a rather comical way of announcing that something isn’t political, but the fact is that the event was not really political. On the contrary, it was tightly and insistently focused on Christ, more so than some other (carol) services you might attend. The people who spoke, including, it seemed, Robinson himself, were genuinely moved by, and passionate about Jesus. The audience was varied, respectful, enthusiastic, and sober. For all that some waved Union Jacks, there were rather fewer than on the Last Night of the Proms. Jesus got more applause than England did.

The fact is that everyone will be able to find something in this that will confirm their existing opinions. There’s enough here, especially in the way it was framed, to confirm, for those who are already convinced, that this was straightforwardly the far right weaponizing Christianity for invidious and divisive political ends. But there is also enough, in the picture, to suggest that this was simply ordinary people, tired of being dismissed as bigots, who want to be proud and public about what Jesus has done for them and what he could do for their country, and who don’t feel particularly heard or welcomed in more institutional settings.

So, frame or picture? Or perhaps both?

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos

To round off another eventful year in religion and public life, Director Chine McDonald looks back on 2025 from our perspective. 11/12/2025

January: Health, humanity, and a new political era

As is now tradition, as a team, we kicked off the year with a Reading Week, clearing the diary to read, think and reflect. Our theme this year was ‘coming of age’, and we centred our discussion on books including The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. Research–wise, we began the year grounded in neighbourhoods. Our report, Creating a Neighbourhood Health Service by senior researcher Dr Marianne Rozario, demonstrated how churches and faith groups quietly hold together the fragile ecosystems of local health and wellbeing. The launch, in collaboration with Good Faith Partnership, brought together policymakers, practitioners and clergy to imagine what a more relational NHS might look like, and the report was endorsed by Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Out in the world, this month also saw President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, and Harriet Harman proposing removing bishops from the Lords. Commentary from the Theos team included our senior fellow Dr Nick Spencer’s exploration of AI and Genesis, while other team reflections on our blog mused on political centrism and constitutional reform. Our podcast, The Sacred, began the year with conversations with Freya India and James Longman, uncovering the anxieties shaping Gen Z and modern journalism. This was also the year in which assisted dying hit the national agenda again, with much debate and discussion around the issue itself, but also the role and place of religious views within them. I found myself on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme debating the ethical and theological threads entwined in that complex question.

And this was all just in the first few weeks.

What we were watching: The Traitors (BBC One), which in this, its third, series featured an undercover vicar Rev Lisa Coupland.

February: Faith and the far–right

February was a reminder that the meaning of religious faith is constantly changing and evolving, taking on new forms of meaning for new ages. This month, we launched Dr Nick Spencer’s book The Landscapes of Science and Religion – the latest in a series of books that formed part of our three–year Templeton–funded project on science and religion. Meanwhile, conversations about far–right extremism – which were to be a defining topic of conversation in 2025 – saw us bring together theologians, activists and practitioners to consider this global trend. The event was in partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Bible and Violence and discussion centred around their book The Church, the Far–Right, and the Claim to Christianity, by Rev Dr Helen Paynter and Dr Maria Power. Media coverage this month continued with our senior researcher Dr Nathan Mladin interviewed for an article in the Economist on TikTok as a religious pulpit, and Dr Marianne Rozario was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Sunday about the findings from our social prescribing report. Among our guests on The Sacred this month included actor and activist Jameela Jamil and theologian–turned Reform adviser Professor James Orr. With discussion of Pope Francis’ poor health, the world began preparing for a papal transition. This month, we also rehomed our photography exhibition You Cannot Pour from an Empty Cup in the Houses of Parliament’s Upper Waiting Hall, following the opening of the exhibition by Stephen Timms MP. The exhibition by Ruth Samuels accompanied a report by Hannah Rich entitled Love’s Labours: Good work, care work, and a mutual economy.

What we were watching: The long–awaited second season of the chilling workplace parable, Severance, explored what happens when we try to split our inner lives from our outer duties: raising sharp questions about identity, agency, and the meaning of being a whole human; and sparking much discussion among the Theos team.

March: Mothers, machines and moral confusion

March saw the launch of our four–part documentary series Motherhood vs the Machine. Co–hosted by me and our head of research Dr Madeleine Pennington, the series explored motherhood in an age of technological advancement, and asked probing questions about what it means to be human. Our polling on artificial wombs – one of the topics discussed in the series – was picked up by media, including the Daily Mail, Unherd and The Times. Our findings threw up questions such as whether the aversion to growing a ‘baby in a bag’ was just a knee–jerk ‘ick’ reaction, or whether there is something deeper to be said about pregnancy as embodied and relational. Elsewhere, Nick’s piece in Comment magazine on The Great Overcorrection, and to mark Social Prescribing Day, Marianne wrote a blog Faith and Health: why collaborate? – summarising the key findings from our report.

What we were watching: Like the rest of the UK, we were gripped by Adolescence – a drama, which probed how a 13–year–old’s murder accusations – and the digital, societal and familial pressures behind it – can force us to ask questions of youth radicalisation, online formation, masculinity and violence. 

April: Death, resurrection and a farewell to Pope Francis

Holy Week and Easter provided an opportunity for space and reflection across the team, but April quickly turned towards global grief as Pope Francis died. Our blogs – on his legacy, the meaning of peace, and the media’s misunderstandings of conclave – sought to offer analysis, insight, and depth at a sombre moment, which also sparked discussion about the place of the Church in public life. Elsewhere, debates on assisted dying continued; our open letter signed by more than 100 women of faith and published in the Guardian explored the gendered risks such legislation could pose. In one of our most popular blogs of the year, researcher George Lapshynov debunked the common claim that Easter originated as a pagan festival, in light of the publication of English Heritage’s new children’s booklet

What we were watching: Sinners – Ryan Coogler’s 1930s southern gothic vampire drama uses a period horror story about twin brothers confronting ancient evil in their Mississippi hometown to explore themes of community, cultural heritage, redemption, and the spiritual costs of survival.

May: A new pope and signs of a quiet revival?

May was a month of beginnings. After all eyes were on the white smoke, the world welcomed Pope Leo XIV and explored what his papacy might mean – from the symbolism of his chosen name to the challenges awaiting him. Nick Spencer asked why young people seem to be flocking to religion, revealing both complexity and some signs of hope. This month, we held a live recording of The Sacred, with host Elizabeth Oldfield in conversation with columnist and author Caitlin Moran, exploring men, women and the great gender divide. Meanwhile, our commentary on integration responded to the government’s new White Paper, insisting that neighbourliness must be at the heart of policy, not fear. And as AI debates continued, Nathan Mladin’s reflection on transhumanism offered a much–needed theological grounding.

What we were reading: Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever by Lamorna Ash – an exploration of a new generation’s search for faith, from the outside in.

June: Refugees, democracy and the ethics of endings

What role should religion play in public debate? In particular, what role should it play in complex political debates like that over assisted dying? Nick’s essay on religion and the assisted dying debate, which was also distributed to parliamentarians and church leaders at the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, sought to answer a question that is more assumed than understood: what even is a “religious reason”? Elsewhere, our report From Strangers to Neighbours – launched with a roundtable discussion in the House of Lords – showcased churches’ extraordinary work integrating refugees, and we were delighted to partner with award–winning photographer John Boaz in capturing some powerful imagery to illustrate the findings. Our photography exhibition highlighting the importance of care work You Cannot Pour from an Empty Cup was also on display in Southwark Cathedral this month, as part of Carers’ Week. This month, I also appeared on Free Thinking discussing faith, politics and culture – threads that, in 2025, felt increasingly impossible to separate.

What we were watching: The latest season of The White Lotus satirized wealth, privilege, and moral emptiness at a Thai resort, mixing dark comedy with social critique. Uncomfortable viewing.

July: Suffering, memory and the Scopes centenary

This was a month of confronting uncomfortable truths. MP Chris Coghlan’s denial of the Eucharist because of his support for assisted dying triggered widespread debate about communion, conscience and church authority. Members of the team gave their views in this blog. Twenty years after the 7/7 bombings, I reflected on how the attack reshaped our sense of belonging and fracture in Britain. Nick travelled to Tennessee, where he spoke at events marking 100 years since the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, reminding us – as outlined in his book Magisteria – that science and religion have never simply been enemies. This month, The Sacred podcast welcomed journalist and author Christine Emba, and political commentator David French, while Reading Our Times guests included Rupert Shortt on the future of Christianity in the West, and Sophia Rosenfeld on choice.

What we were watching: James Gunn’s fresh retelling of the classic Superman story moved away from the DC cinematic universe’s darker aesthetic to new, hopeful horizons and asked what it means to be a hero amid conflict and political corruption. Another hope–filled moment we can’t ignore was England’s victory in the Women’s European Football Championship.

August: Empire wars and the fight for religious education

August wasn’t quiet. Perhaps it never really is? Recent years have seen ferocious battles about ‘empire’: statues toppled, books cancelled, scholars infuriated, insults hurled. This month, Nick Spencer’s long read explored what is going on and, more importantly, why? And asked what is it about our cultural moment that has caused so many people to get so angry about the past? As students prepared to get their A–Level results, I led our open letter defending provision for Theology and Religious Studies in higher education, alongside people in the public eye including Dr Rowan Williams, actor James Norton, and broadcaster Tom Swarbrick. The letter was picked up in a number of places, including Times Higher Education. At Greenbelt Festival, I did a live interview with actor Liz Carr, a vocal member of the campaign against assisted dying.

What we were watching: The Thursday Murder Club but despite the star–studded cast, we were left wanting more. In better news, we were watching the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in what would soon lead to another sporting success story for England.

September: Flags, fear and the fight for meaning

As St George’s flags fluttered across the country, we asked what it means to belong without turning identity into exclusion, and launched our new two–year project on Christianity, nationhood, and the rise of Christian Nationalism. Also, my earlier piece on race and assisted dying was quoted in the House of Lords, and I joined a group of national leaders questioning the misappropriation of Christian symbols at the “Unite the Kingdom” rally.

Meanwhile, The Sacred continued to reach new audiences with Gen Z social media influencer Jade Bowler’s honest reflections on the pressures of belonging and identity.

What we were reading: Against the Machine – Paul Kingsnorth’s fierce personal manifesto, which challenges the spiritual, ecological and cultural costs of a technocratic age, urging a return to limits, locality and the deep sources of human meaning.

October: Leadership, faith in devolution and a new archbishop

October opened with the announcement of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, and I reflected in the Financial Times on the challenges awaiting Sarah Mullally, as well as the opportunities. This month, we took our Theos Annual Lecture outside London for the first time, with Andy Burnham delivering a lecture in Manchester on faith and devolution, making the case that local leadership and moral imagination are not opposing forces.

Marianne unpacked the significance of King Charles III’s meeting with Pope Leo XIV, while Nick asked what national pride might look like in a wounded, weary Britain. The Sacred Manifesto video was launched this month, too, telling the story of why such a space is needed in a polarizing and overwhelming world.

What we were watching: Nobody Wants This. Season two of this warm but complicated rom–com hit our screens. It follows an agnostic podcaster and a progressive rabbi as they try to turn a whirlwind romance into a real, shared life; wrestling with faith, identity, family and the challenge of merging two very different worlds.

November: Rosalía, religious education and redemption in cricket

We launched Hannah Rich’s report Beyond the Classroom with a roundtable at the National Gallery. The report revealed the surprising places religion is learned: supermarkets, sports clubs, TikTok, galleries, and reality TV.

Esmé Partridge explored what a worldviews–based RE should look like, while Joe Downy explored masculinity for International Men’s Day. Dr Rob Barward–Symmons’ piece ahead of The Ashes on redemption reminded us how often our willingness to offer grace and forgiveness can be driven by tribal loyalties – sporting or otherwise. Nathan took part in a conversation on digital resurrections for BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence. Meanwhile, I was delighted to see two of my Thoughts for the Day on BBC Radio 4 picked two weeks in a row on the BBC’s Pick of the Week – we love it when religion breaks out of pre–defined programming boxes.

What we were listening to: Lux by Rosalía – the Catalan singer’s breakout album was woven through with spirituality and sainthood. Hannah Rich unpacked the album’s themes here.

December: a weary world rejoices

This month, Reading Our Times explored topics such as quantum theory and consciousness, and Nick Spencer was interviewed on Times Radio about Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s comments on Christianity and the welfare state. We’ve ended the year with a flurry of activity – as is the way – looking ahead to 2026, Theos’ 20th anniversary, when we have much planned. If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that faith isn’t fading. In fact, it’s evolving and taking on new and surprising forms.

From our reports to our podcasts, our media commentary to our events and public interventions, Theos has tried to meet the cultural moment with depth, honesty and imagination. And perhaps, as we step into 2026, the most important lesson is this: even in an age of noise and division, people are still searching for meaning. Faith still speaks. And the sacred still surprises us.

What we were listening to: Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas album, of course. 

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Hannah Rich unpacks the religious imagery and themes in ‘Lux’ – the new album by Rosalía. 27/11/2025

I am a woman in my mid–thirties, with an underused modern languages degree languishing dustily on the shelf, one foot still in my Catholic heritage, working for a religion and society think tank. Rosalía’s new album? Of course I love it.

If the lyrics were set texts on a Spanish literature module back in uni, I would be relishing the prospect of annotating and drawing out all the hidden and not–so–hidden religious imagery woven throughout the Catalan singer’s recent breakout album Lux. If anything, it is maybe more surprising that it has reached an audience beyond my personal niche. An album written in Spanish and Catalan, blending pop, rap and classical opera, with riffs in 12 other languages including Latin, Arabic, Sicilian and Hebrew, inspired by a veritable girl gang of mystics, saints and icons from various faiths – from Teresa of Avila, to the Buddhist nun Vimala, via Simone Weil and the Old Testament prophetess Miriam – doesn’t scream mainstream success. And yet, a hit it has been.

Maybe this is the year of unexpected religious inspiration in chart–topping albums; in a very different genre, my colleague Rob recently wrote about the latest from the rapper Dave, a hip–hop collection equally improbably inspired by the life of King David in the Old Testament.

The first single from Lux, ‘Berghain,’ is inspired by St Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German Benedictine abbess known for her ecstatic visions of God. ‘His love is my love / His blood is my blood,’ Rosalía sings, echoing Hildegard’s intimate descriptions of unity with Christ, ‘the only way to save us is through divine intervention’. (Elsewhere in this beatific odyssey through pop culture, the ‘suggested for you’ feed on my Instagram last week served me a reel expounding the theory that Hildegard herself was responsible for inventing pumpkin spice, and thus the autumn girl spirituality circle was complete.)

‘La Yugular’ takes its inspiration from the first female Islamic saint, Rabia Al Adawiyya, whose line that ‘no woman ever claimed to be God’ is quoted in Spanish on the physical copy of the album. Channelling Rabia, Rosalía sings about how ‘a continent does not fit in Him / But He fits in my chest / And my chest occupies His love / And in His love I want to lose myself.’ It is lyrically reminiscent of Mary Magdalene’s ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar, a portrayal of a complicated saint similarly conflicted about whether to react in anger, or love, or both. ‘Look, I don’t have time to hate Lucifer / I’m too busy loving you, Undibel,’ she sings. Undibel is a Spanish Romani word for God, inspired by Rosalía’s Flamenco background.

Here is a love that you cannot fit into the boxes of typical male characters, nor into the typical imaginations of saints responding to God as male.

Another song (‘De Madrugá’) draws on the story of Olga of Kyiv, a 10th century Eastern Orthodox saint whose road to canonisation was marked by vengeance for the death of her husband. ‘The cross on my chest calibrates my body / I’ve got every right to get even,’ sings a narrator trying to convince herself she doesn’t want revenge at dawn.

The whole album then is a hymnal to the contradictions of female spirituality in the material world. From the opening lines (‘Who could live between the two / first to love the world and then to love God’), it is riven with the sense of being torn between this world and a higher one, this consciousness and a deeper one. The first is characterised by sex, violence and tyres, the second by glitter, doves, fruit and grace. From start to finish, the female voice wrestles with the human instinct for the former while also embracing the mystic’s capacity to elevate above it.

Lux is hagiographical in the sense that its core texts are the lives of the saints, but Rosalía’s icons do not carry the undue reverence or unattainable perfection usually associated with hagiography. Women are ‘imperfect, agents of chaos,’ prone to ‘dismantle ourselves like myths’. The album cover depicts Rosalía in a white veil; a parallel with another of my musical highlights of 2025, Self Esteem’s A Complicated Woman which sees the singer dressed in a costume that is part nun, part Handmaid’s Tale as she performs songs eviscerating the illusion of a woman with a straightforward inner life.  

The tendency to flit between the material and the divine, to diminish herself while in the same breath seeking complete unity with God reaches its apotheosis in the Latin refrain of ‘Ego sum nihil / ego sum lux mundi’ (‘I am nothing / I am the light of the world’) in ‘Porcelana’.

In interviews around the album’s release, Rosalía has spoken at length about her relationship with God and with faith, embracing its nuances and contradictions. She engages with the physicality of prayer (‘Each vertebra reveals a mystery / Pray on my spine, it’s a rosary’) as well as the mysterious elements of faith; Christ ‘cries diamonds,’ which alludes to both the value of a deity’s tears and the supernatural occurrences of statues appearing to cry. Elsewhere, she muses on the surreal coincidence of her namesake, Rosalía of Palermo, who fled her own wedding to surrender her life to God as a hermit. Rosalía also broke off an engagement and describes the album as her gift back to God for all he has given her.

Xabier Gómez García, the bishop of Sant Feliu de Llobregat diocese, wrote an open letter to his flock – among whom is Rosalía’s grandmother, a regular mass goer – in which he honoured the way the singer ‘speaks with absolute freedom and without hang–ups about what she feels God to be, and the desire, the thirst (to know God).’ The album represents ‘a spiritual search through the testimonies of women of immense spiritual maturity,’ the bishop wrote, while acknowledging the provocative nature of lyrics that might sit uneasily with many of the devout in the pews. Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, the Vatican’s culture minister, has also commented on the album, recognising that Rosalía ‘captures a profound need in contemporary culture to approach spirituality, to cultivate an inner life’. Her work speaks to the profound spiritual desire – in its most visceral sense – that is ever more prominent in young women’s lives.

It is probably overstating it to describe the album is a spiritual experience even for an English speaker, but I do think that you can get a sense of the mystical, semi–religious adoration of the saints that comes through even without comprehending a word of it. A colleague who I recommended Lux to recently said that they had initially thought they’d listened to the wrong album, or the wrong Rosalía, because it felt like it came from another time and place. It truly is a ‘thin place’ in musical form.

If to sing really is to pray twice, as the aphorism attributed to a variety of saints goes, then Rosalía’s Lux is heaving under the weight of prayers, voiced and unvoiced.

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With the Ashes underway, Rob Barward–Symmons unpacks the careers of the English and Australian captains, Ben Stokes and Steve Smith. Is there room for redemption in the face of such rivalry? 25/11/2025

In the early hours of last Friday morning English time, as bleary eyed cricket badgers watched with trepidation and hope, one of the sporting highlights of the year began in Perth, Australia. The oldest – and arguably fiercest (though India and Pakistan may contest this) – rivalry in international cricket, ‘the Ashes’ pits Australia and England against each other in five five–day test matches stretching over two months. The rivalry has been short neither of drama nor incident in its 140–year history, with the tactical decisions of the English even once threatening diplomatic relations between the two nations. As is often the case, the weekend proved to be a tough watch for English fans pulling themselves out of bed, but even before a ball had been bowled stories behind the scenes were not in short supply. As ever, the captains – in this case one, Australian Steve Smith, only serving in a temporary capacity – drew much of the attention.

In differing forms the careers of the two opposing captains can both be seen under the same lens – public fall and public redemption, in the sense at least of earning back lost status. Yet in the midst of this sporting drama, we see the extent to which rather than moral judgement or justice, it is often tribalism that shapes our expectation whether redemption is even possible.

For Ben Stokes, the talismanic all–rounder who was named England Test captain following the humiliation of the previous Ashes tour in 2022, redemption has been sought both on and off the pitch in dramatic terms.

Trusted with the crucial final over of the T20 – the shortest format of international cricket, with each team facing 120 balls each – World Cup final against the West Indies in 2016, with England in a strong position, Stokes’ bowling was hit for a remarkable four consecutive sixes to hand the Windies their second global title. The image of Stokes, alone on his haunches with his head in his hands as the West Indian batters celebrate jubilantly behind, is a powerful one. While his captain insisted he was not to blame for the loss, it is not a surprise that he described it as “complete devastation” at the time, a sense that he had let down his nation.

Three years later, however, Stokes found himself at the centre of two of the most remarkable individual performances ever seen in English cricket. In July 2019 he dragged England to victory in the final of the One Day World Cup against New Zealand, and a few weeks later Stokes was stood in the centre of Headingly in Leeds, arms outstretched with a roar of ecstasy, having pulled off the most extraordinary innings in English history to forcibly seize victory from the hands of certain defeat against Australia. From the pit of competitive despair, in a few short weeks Stokes had cemented himself in English sporting history as an all–time icon, even being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year for his feats.

In this sense, ‘redemption’ appears a straightforward (albeit dramatic) narrative. From seeing himself as responsible for collective defeat to bringing about collective victory. Those who he believed he had wronged had received recompense in a directly comparable way. On the pitch at least, few questioned the legitimacy of this arc.

For Steve Smith – missing that day in Leeds due to injury, yet in the middle of one of the greatest series performances of all time – the story has been more complex, making for an unclear path to redemption. Unlike Stokes, the need stemmed not from poor performance but rather poor judgement. As Australia captain, Smith had overseen the 2018 scandal in which members of the team used sandpaper to tamper with the ball so that it would behave in unnatural ways, a practice which is clearly and unambiguously cheating. This led to widespread condemnation from the cricketing world and beyond, even from the Australian prime minister who called it a “shocking disappointment” and called for Smith’s resignation as captain. This duly came, alongside a year–long ban, culminating shortly before the World Cup and Ashes tour of England in the summer of 2019, and what followed was a summer in some ways as equally remarkable as Stokes’.

Unlike in the case of Stokes, many did not take warmly to Smith’s redemption arc, and many in cricket have still struggled to fully forget and forgive the sins of ‘sandpaper–gate’ – and particularly the sense that there remain elements that have been hidden about the affair. Yet to others, punishment has been served and remorse has been displayed, and it was time to allow him the opportunity to re–earn the respect of fans and players through performances on (and off) the pitch.

It should not be a surprise that responses to Smith have been more mixed than to Stokes. For many of us, poor morals are harder (or at least less straightforward) to fully overcome than poor performances. While Stokes was able to ‘make up’ for his errors in one final by winning another, an instance of explicit cheating is not made up for simply by an instance of not cheating, of behaving as is expected and demanded within the laws of the game.

To complicate matters further, the incident against the West Indies was not the low point of Stokes’ public image. Eighteen months after the fateful final over, in September 2017, Stokes was arrested after injuring a former soldier in a street–brawl. Images of the incident soon spread across the front and back pages, and he was charged with affray early the following year. He was ultimately acquitted, having argued he was defending a gay couple from homophobic abuse, but was nevertheless charged by cricketing authorities for bringing the game into disrepute and subsequently fined and banned for eight matches. While the heroics of 2019 therefore straightforwardly made up for the on–pitch failings, in the minds of many they also over–wrote the memories of that fight, grainy black and white CCTV images of a Bristol backstreet replaced by footage of jubilant crowds surrounding their icon, all in glorious technicolour.

Yet the reality is in both cases there is another aspect at play here, beyond that of simple judgement as to what is an appropriate level of recompense for moral failing, or whether sporting feats can ever atone for unsporting sins.

Rather, these are inescapably shrouded by tribal loyalties and collective or individual self–interest. Both are undeniably world–class talents, and all–time national greats of their sport. Both teams benefit from their respective presences, and both oppositions would benefit from their absences. Of course both have critics from within their own nations, those who feel more was needed from them to earn back public trust and be worthy of representing the national side. But overwhelmingly, cries for leniency come from those within the tribe, and calls for ongoing punishment come from those in the opposition camp.

Sporting loyalties are one thing, and of course, despite the protestations of the Australian prime minister, ball–tampering is not a crime, at least beyond the laws of the game, and certainly not an unforgiveable one. Yet it is clear that public perceptions of the possibility and even necessity of redemption are increasingly (or perhaps they always have been) driven by other tribal loyalties – often party, religious, or ideological affiliations – resulting in situations far more impactful than who is in charge of selecting the England batting order.

Rather than a shared moral compass, across public life figures are often held to wildly different expectations by the differing camps that have emerged in society. For each camp redemption is easy (or perhaps even unnecessary) for figures who for another camp are irredeemably fallen, or at very least should not be given positions of high prestige. Likewise, those who are viewed as more valuable to a camp will often face different expectations to those who are viewed as more dispensable. This is not solely down to wilful blindness and double standards (as may often be the case in sporting situations, for example, with an unspoken recognition that it is part of the fun of the game). Rather the media bubbles we find ourselves in help shape stories of individuals and of tribes which frame our perception of moral behaviours, and the extent to which acts can and should be forgiven, even long in the past.

Either way, in the same way as in sports this is all too often framed by one central desire – for one’s own tribe to triumph over the other.

In this context, therefore, the Christian understanding of redemption strikes a strong challenge. For a start, there is no question over the necessity – all of humanity, regardless of tribe, are in the same state of requiring redemption. Our natural state of unity with God has been in some way damaged, and the metaphor of redemption is used to describe the process through which this relationship is restored. Not only this, but all of humanity are equally capable of experiencing redemption. Just as our fallenness is a shared state, so is our possibility of redemption through the work of God. Redemption and restoration are not the preserve of those within our tribe, those whom our tribe supports, or those who can benefit our self– or tribal–interests, but rather is radically extended to all.

Here stands two of the crucial offenses at the heart of Christianity when facing the modern world. Not only is it not sufficient to condemn those from other tribes than our own, we are instead forced to recognise that we ourselves are in need of redemption. All includes us, our peers, and those who lead our causes. And contrastingly, we are faced with the idea that even those whom we stand in ardent and fierce opposition to, are worthy of forgiveness and redemption. All includes those who we cannot stand.

As an England fan, I cannot assure the reader that I will not slip into tribal mindsets over the coming months. Indeed, I can promise you that it is almost certain to occur – unless the miraculous occurs, England storm to victory, and I am feeling particularly magnanimous. But the central challenge of escaping tribalism with an open view of redemption is an essential one for a civil society, not only in relation to our athletes but to those in public life and to those we encounter in our day to day. Of course this is not to say that there should not be earthly consequences for actions, and it is vitally important that we hold public figures to account and to a high standard, but rather there is still a need to approach this task with a single vision of shared human dignity across all – as difficult as this may be.

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While society has rightly focused on advancing women’s equality, we’ve left young men behind. Joe Downy asks what should be done about it.

A few years ago I was part of a Christian men’s group – full of men from early 20s through to mid–60s. We would get together once a week to eat, pray, but mostly to talk – about careers, childhoods, hobbies, sports, loneliness, social media – in short: life. But only once did we talk about masculinity, about what it meant to be a man. 

I can feel the tension already. Talking about gender identities is fraught with it, and most of the time I would rather ignore the issue. Which is what I wanted to do when the group devoted a whole session to it. We went around the room and each of us described what being a man meant to us – it meant being strong, a protector, a provider, someone with wisdom, someone you feel you can turn to for support. 

These were all perfectly reasonable answers, all good things to strive towards, but to me they felt outmoded. After all, don’t women also fulfil most of these criteria? To me (as I eventually expressed to the group), it was more important that we prioritise being fully ourselves and not worry about how ‘masculine’ we are. It felt too much as if we, as a society, were placing too much pressure on men to conform to fit this vague and murky notion of ‘masculinity’, whatever it may be. 

Now I don’t know if I was right, but it said a lot that no one else knew either. Because masculinity (and femininity) is so ill–defined, fluid, subjective and individualistic on the one hand, and yet simultaneously universal on the other, shaped by common culture, common media, common ideals. And of course, the two are inextricably entwined. As much as we’d like to separate our desire to be individuals from these gender expectations, we are invariably influenced and shaped by what we consume – on social media, the TV shows we watch, the friends we keep, the places we work. While Christians believe God created man and woman as imago dei, made in the image of God, the meaning of our gender identities and purpose is more ambivalent – as is the degree to which it is or isn’t a “cultural construct based on group needs”, as psychologist David D. Gilmore writes in his book Manhood in the Making.  

What has become clear over the years is that masculinity is undergoing something of an identity crisis. And not talking about it is having some very real and harmful consequences. 

In the UK, suicide remains the highest cause of death for men under 50, with more than 5,000 cases in Britain in 2023 alone, more than the number of road deaths for the same year. Three in four of all suicides are male, with that figure on the rise since the pandemic. Boys are also suffering academically, with girls aged 16–18 outperforming them in almost all test results. Boys are also more than twice as likely to be excluded than girls, which means that men are less likely to graduate to higher education (men are also more likely to drop out of university than women). In prisons, the male prison population outnumbers the female by a factor of almost 24. 

I have the privilege of being a mentor to teenagers through my church’s youth group, and too often I see these young men struggling with the expectations placed on them by society and social media to live up to unhealthy masculine ideals – that men should be rich, successful, good–looking, muscular, sexually active, the list goes on. This is striking for two reasons: firstly, that at the centre of all these is power or dominance; and secondly, that nowhere on this list is humility – famously lauded by St Augustine as the “foundation of all other virtues”. 

All this to say that, while in recent decades we have rightly focused our attention to advancing the cause of women (we still have a long way to go on that front mind you), we should be able to accomplish this while also looking to our young men and boys. 

Whereas the traditional role of men in the 20th century was broadly understood, if not agreed upon (provider and protector), today these have been hollowed out without being replaced. Men have become rudderless. 

This has contributed (at least in part) to a worrying rise in misogyny and backlash against women, the overwhelming majority of which takes place online. One in four women aged 16–34 in the UK have experienced online abuse, with nearly half (45%) being sexually explicit, and two–thirds directed from strangers. In a recent YouGov poll, 21% of Gen Z men saw dominance as a positive trait compared with 7% of Boomers, while 21% of Millennial men believe that the purpose of feminism is to put men down, compared with just 3% of women.  

We see this reflected in the rise of controversial public figures such as Andrew Tate, the Netflix series Adolescence, incel movements, as well as a recent finding that more than a third of teachers in UK schools had witnessed misogyny, while 61% of teachers who had been teaching for more than five years had seen increases in misogynistic behaviour among pupils since they started teaching. 

Within Christianity too, there has been a push in recent years to portray Jesus and the Christian faith as something ultra–masculine. Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, said in an interview that “In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” Of course, the irony here is that Christians must worship a guy we can beat up, since this is precisely what Jesus endured in his torture, crucifixion and death. And while within the Christian faith Jesus is the archetype of what a man is (in the sense that he was fully man as intended by God), he goes against so many of our modern tropes: a man who wept openly in public, who taught that we should turn the other cheek, who allowed himself to be crucified. St Paul also taught that we should not boast in our strength but in our weakness. 

What should be done about it? 

In a recent conversation, Richard Reeves, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, said that “too often we ask what is the problem with men, instead of asking what are the problems of men”. We tend to place the problem at the level of the individual rather than with society. 

There is a clear and present need for more healthy male role models and for more men in roles traditionally seen as more caring or nurturing. In 1966–7, 42% of teachers in the UK were male compared with 58% female. Today, that number is at 24% and falling, and in primary school it is as low as 14%. Similarly, the number of male therapists in the UK is lower than 25%, while the number of men in the NHS is less than 20%. Part of the issue is that we as a society have devalued these roles and pigeonholed them as ‘feminine’, when young men and boys are in need of male leadership in their mental and emotional wellbeing. 

What’s more, we need to take care that this is not viewed as a zero–sum game when it comes to gender, and male and female identities. We should be able to acknowledge the good things that men offer without this being interpreted that they are somehow superior to women. We should be able to hold two ideas in our heads at the same time and advance the cause of women in society while still addressing the issues affecting men and boys. We should be able to say to boys and men that they are seen and valued while still uplifting and empowering girls and women. 

But perhaps most importantly we should talk – about gender expectations, roles, virtues, and challenges. These can be uncomfortable conversations, but to some extent they should be. Challenging our preconceptions and ideals is innately painful but the alternative is to let society and social media be the father figures and role models for boys and men. This is where churches and faith communities can play such an important role, in providing those rare and much–needed spaces for men of all ages to talk about their mental health, their deep–felt struggles and desires.  

What does it mean to be a man? I don’t know, but I do know we need to talk about it. 

What lies ahead for RE? Esmé Partridge unpacks the evolving landscape of worldviews education and citizenship. 14/11/2025

It is Friday morning in a rural primary school in Kent. After registration, the children walk over to their weekly assembly, where the headteacher opens by leading them in prayer. They say together: “Jesus is the light of the world.” It is, as you probably guessed, a Church of England school, and faith is clearly integral to its ethos and approach to education. This is also the case when the children return to their classrooms – but there, it takes a rather different form.

In the Year Two classroom, there is a question for the day written on a whiteboard: “how does the Torah bring joy to Jewish people?”. Year Three has a wall dedicated to RE, but Christianity takes up only one sheet of A3 in a display of six. Filling the noticeboard are colourful posters about all the major world religions and beliefs from Hinduism to Humanism, the latter displaying questions like “do humanists believe in God?” and “how might a humanist decide what to do?”.

It is striking, being in a primary school for the first time in years, to see how RE has evolved into “Religion and Worldviews” education. Last week, the Government’s Independent Curriculum and Assessment Review recommended that RE should be included in the national curriculum, with a view to improving provision and addressing regional inequality. Its call to give RE the same status as other humanities subjects is a welcome one, and rightly reflects the continuing and arguably growing significance of faith in modern Britain.

But it does raise questions about the purpose of RE today – how is the subject supposed to enrich learners, and to what end? Although collective acts of worship like those in the school assembly are still technically a statutory requirement, classroom RE has moved away from providing “religious instruction” (as it was called until 1988) towards focusing on cultural diversity and the experiences of minority communities. Essentially, it has shifted from a theological approach – the teaching of religion as a normative, moral framework – to a sociological one, studying belief systems from a supposedly neutral standpoint.

While this may be positive from the perspective of responding to cultural diversity, it does risk compromising another aspect that once gave RE its unique value: its potential for character formation. While other parts of the curriculum look at particular areas of study in isolation, RE traditionally offered a more holistic view; a coherent narrative about the world and our place within it. Through the study of scripture, it engaged pupils with ideas of ethics, virtue and justice applicable to world events and situations in their own lives.

The Review does not intentionally seek to undermine this aspect of RE, stressing its “important role in children and young people’s intellectual, personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development”. But how feasible is it to ensure all of these within a sociological, worldviews paradigm in practice? Many would argue, as the Review implies, that it is entirely possible to provide character formation while teaching multiple religions, and that the two are not mutually exclusive. It is certainly true – and one of the most valuable aspects of interreligious dialogue – that across the major faiths we find remarkably similar ideas of compassion, justice and reciprocity. The question of virtue especially can illuminate profound affinities between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.

Yet exposure to a vast plurality of belief systems – in a way that is, inevitably, compressed – risks a shallow engagement with all of them that is more likely to confuse than to inspire a clear moral or spiritual ideal. Children come to terms with abstract ideas and principles through the sustained familiarisation and memorisation of particular stories, symbols, parables and proverbs. Constantly moving between frameworks risks disorienting students rather than grounding them.

It also, ironically, risks imposing a certain worldview onto the classroom – precisely what the sociological paradigm sought to avoid. Presenting each of the religions as beliefs and practices which happen to be observed by different communities risks reducing them to sociocultural artefacts rather than reflections of any transcendent truth. This too, though implicitly, assumes an ideology of its own: relativism. 

It does not have to be this way. We can preserve the best of pluralism without succumbing to relativism. This might mean grounding pupils primarily in the Christian tradition during primary school, by facilitating deep engagement with scripture and the history of Christianity. Although the current RE framework does designate 50% of RE teaching to Christianity, poor levels of religious literacy and training among adults can hinder this, with many primary teachers themselves lacking the training and therefore knowledge to offer confident exegesis and application of scripture. As a result, fewer than half of schoolchildren recognise narratives such as Jonah and the Whale to be from the Bible – a loss that weakens their ability to engage with other aspects of culture and literature, and which any changes to RE in Britain ought to address.

The curriculum could then – in secondary school – open up more fully to others. At this stage, students would have a firm enough foundation for engagement with different beliefs to be truly comprehensible and meaningful. The best of interfaith dialogue – a recognition of universal truths – arises not from cursive comparisons but from a deep understanding of one particular tradition. Such an approach would not only give children a much–needed grounding in their national history and culture; it would ultimately make interreligious encounters even richer, enabling a genuine appreciation of shared values and virtues.

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Hannah Rich unpacks the key themes in her new report ‘Beyond the Classroom in her latest blog. 13/11/2025

Last week,, the government’s much–awaited Curriculum and Assessment review announced its recommendation that Religious Education (RE) should be embedded within the new national curriculum. This is in recognition of the fact that current provision of RE varies significantly in quality and nature across the country, and a move towards a more equitable state of affairs, which can in turn lead to a more cohesive society. As we argued last year, in our case for why RE matters in the modern world, better religious education, everywhere, is good for everyone, and in an age where the world feels ever more divided, this is vital.

But while this is welcome, constraining our understanding of religious education to what takes place within the classroom, during our school years, or the parameters of the curriculum, is a failure of imagination and a missed opportunity for greater social cohesion.

If we are to build compassionate, cohesive societies, we need to understand religious education as something active, lifelong, evolving and to be taken seriously.

Our new Theos report, Beyond The Classroom, explores these informal forms of religious and worldviews education that occur across the country; the places and spaces where people of all ages, all backgrounds, can learn about other religions, beliefs and worldviews. From sports clubs to supermarkets, museums to mosques, cathedrals to community groups, and from training sessions to our television screens, we find examples of encounter and learning in everyday life and in communities.

Like formal RE, informal RE is patchy across the country. The report highlights case studies of good practice, examples of communities and projects where informal RE is at its richest; interfaith youth clubs, faith communities organising educational walking tours together and medical professionals learning about their patients’ religious beliefs in order to deepen the care provided. However, there are also comparative deserts; geographical areas with fewer spaces of informal RE, but also whole sectors of society which are less prepared or resourced for this.

As might perhaps be expected, informal RE appears strongest in areas of greater religious diversity, where there is greater opportunity for organic, unstructured encounters with those of other beliefs, often reinforced by stronger interfaith networks. At the least formal level, this might look like local supermarkets catering to specific religious festivals that are significant to the local population. While a Diwali display or Eid aisle in a shop is driven by commercial rather than by pedagogical considerations, and these are not in themselves sufficient for religious literacy, they are the sorts of informal encounters we argue can contribute to a greater underlying level of mutual understanding.

These also occur more in the same communities where, at their best, other communal spaces are more likely to generate inter–faith encounters informally; the school gate, after–school activities, diverse workplaces and sport clubs, for instance. This raises the question of how to mainstream and encourage informal religious and worldviews education everywhere, not only for those living in more religiously diverse communities. The paradox here is that social cohesion is often prioritised in these communities, for good reason, but with the result that the population of less diverse communities do not develop similar religious understanding or literacy.

At the more structured end of the spectrum, we highlight examples of good practice in workplace training, with professionals such as social workers, palliative care staff, police officers and medics being encouraged to engage in religious literacy development, through formal learning and encounter with local faith communities. In all these cases, there is an acknowledgement that greater religious understanding can improve the care or service provided to people, but again it is more prevalent in areas with more religiously diverse populations.

In the sectors and institutions where we identified a greater reluctance to engage with religious education, this is attributed to a sort of squeamishness rather than deliberate ignorance. There can be a perception that religion is a difficult topic to discuss, whether in workplaces, public settings or ‘non–expert’ contexts. This simply leads to it not being discussed, and the rich potential for education being squandered.

This is not to cast blame or point the fingers at the individuals working in these spaces. Rather, it is a reminder of the need for universal religious literacy developed naturally, not by mandate. A population which understands other religions and beliefs well, is better equipped for these conversations and less scared of (discussing) religion, regardless of personal worldview or affiliation.

In many ways, this is the core argument of much of our work at Theos: that religion matters and that it benefits us all to understand its role in our society, even and especially if we don’t perceive it to be relevant to our own lives. Familiarity with other religions and worldviews makes it harder to see as ‘other’ those who subscribe to them. Seeing religious education as alive and embodied, beyond textbooks and at every stage of life, is central to the greater unity we need.

As the government moves to formalising RE within the curriculum, it is also important that as a country we also embrace informal RE and recognise its potential to benefit us all.

Read ‘Beyond the Classroom’ here.

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As we start our new research project exploring Christian Nationalism, Nick Spencer reflects on the meaning of national pride. 29/10/2025

As I start out on Theos’ big project looking at the rise of Christian Nationalism worldwide, I look around at all that has been written on the subject, and I stand aghast at all the hard work that lies before me.

Who am I kidding? Big fat academic tomes on nationalism, theologies of nationhood, academic articles attempting to quantify the public’s understanding of and loyalty to national identity: I am like a pig in sugar.

It was when reading one of these, last week, that I had a bit of a (self)–revelation; or rather, it was what happened after reading it. When seeking to understand the depth and nature of the (British) public’s ‘Christian nationalism’ (a term we will disambiguate and problematise as the project goes on), it’s helpful to get a sense of the depth and nature of their nationalism. So, I do what I like to do when faced with all such questions, and turn to the British Social Attitudes survey, which helpfully had a chapter on just this question a year or so ago.

The BSA study does lots of interesting things – traces levels of nationalism, compares civic and ethnic varieties, contrasts English and Scottish kinds, etc. To ascertain the patterns, the BSA puts to respondents a variety of questions and statements, often asking how strongly they dis/agree with them. Two of those statements are, “I would rather be a citizen of Britain than of any other country in the world”, and “Generally speaking, Britain is a better country than most other countries”.

Now, maybe it’s because I’m a (prejudiced, university–educated, soft, elite) Londoner, but when I read those statements, an image of the kind of person who would agree strongly with them appears, unsolicited, in my mind. (Do you see him too?) I have been well trained by those powerful cultural currents in which we all swim, to know the kind of person who says, “I’d rather be British than anything else because Britain (or perhaps England) is one of the best countries in the world!” Ah yes. “This little world… the envy of less happier lands… our green and pleasant land… the White Man’s burden… Play up! play up! and play the game!… England, my England… my country right or wrong… I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!” etc, etc. Even if I would rather be a citizen of Britain than anywhere else – and whenever I think that, my alter ego barks back at me, “how on earth would you know?” – I would never say it out loud.

Anyway, that was in the morning. Later in the day, I joined a conversation between a local authority representative, a residential charity that helps people with severe life–long difficulties, and my brother. My brother experienced a stroke as a toddler, and has faced numerous painful hurdles in his life as a result: brain damage, learning difficulties, epilepsy, dystonia. He is unlikely ever to work, though dearly wants to (he volunteers where he can), and will certainly never be able to earn enough money to pay his way or organise his own affairs.

The local authority social worker was calling to assess how things were going. (Well, if you’re interested). He asked and listened respectfully to my brother (even though he has some problems expressing himself as he would like to). He went through a detailed list of questions with the charity worker to ensure everything was being done to the highest standard possible. (It is) He even asked me for my impressions. (Very positive.) And, of course, just in case you didn’t realise, you are paying for all (well, most of) this, with disability residential care funded largely by the local authority, which ultimately means taxpayers.

And it was as this was going on, the thought struck me… wow, this is amazing. The whole experience was thorough, respectful, sensitive, kind, generous. It was a remarkable example of a whole country – taxpayers, politicians, policymakers, vocational educators, care workers, charity workers, etc. – working together to make sure that the life of someone who is genuinely “vulnerable” and has had to endure so much, has been made not just possible or tolerable, but agreeable and enjoyable. Am I proud of that? You bet. Am I honoured to be part of a society that does that? Yes, I am.

And then the chaser thought. How many countries around the world could boast that? To be honest I have no idea, but I would be surprised if it were very many. Which means… say it out loud, man… Yes, I would rather be a citizen of Britain than of many other countries in the world, because, generally speaking, Britain is better than most in the way the state organises to look after vulnerable people here.

I know, I know, there are lots of spin offs. Why is Britain like this? (Long debate) Why are so few other countries? (Longer debate) Is this intrinsic to Britain? (Of course not) Could we lose it? (Obviously) Is Britain always like this? (Obviously not) Could it be better? (Yes) Are there other things about which we should be a damn sight less proud? (Duh) Are there things that other countries, including less ‘developed’ countries, do better than us. (Yes, of course) Could other countries develop similar statutory patterns and levels of care? (Yes, obviously) Will they? (I hope so)

All worth debating. Being fiercely proud of Britain does not mean ‘my country right or wrong’ or ‘my country is better on every available metric’. But the revelation – minor and self– as it may have been – was how I had been subtly conditioned to hear any clear–throated expression of national superiority or even pride as somehow arrogant, or exclusionary, or unjustifiable, or jingoistic.

I am convinced that one of the reasons why Britian is like this is because of its Christian foundations and heritage. I am familiar enough with our theo–political history to know that you cannot simply draw a line from Old Testament injunctions to look after the vulnerable, through Jesus’ ethics, to the modern welfare state. I am familiar enough with the history to have read the Christian voices that were resistant to the state’s assumption of such responsibilities. I am open minded enough to know that there were other non– or even anti–religious influences in this systemisation of care. But I am also familiar enough to know that the sense of self–conscious Christian identity was crucial to the formation of most European welfare states (see chapter 12 of this, in case you are interested). As the philosopher Charles Taylor puts it in A Secular Age, “Seen within the history of Western civilization, the present–day welfare state can be understood as the long–term heir to the early Christian church.”

But that is less my point here, than the basic observation that pride, even intense pride, in your nation, need not be an unwarranted, arrogant or exclusionary emotion. It may be thoroughly justified.

In his remarkable performance at the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast this year, the Welsh performance poet Dai Woolridge made a very similar point for a very similar reason. He said,

“That’s why I value our values…
That blend Equality with Freedom Justice with Compassion
So a Neurodiverse, Potter–loving 42–year–old [his own brother] has a right to vote, and also to be cared for by society.”

Yes. Yes. That is something to be proud of.

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