Theos and YouGov survey reveals that many voters are disconnected from media and local communities. 01/10/2025

A survey has revealed that less than a quarter of us (21%) know the name of a local faith leader. The poll by YouGov, commissioned by Theos, the religion and society think tank, suggests that when it comes to the drivers of social cohesion, everyday people are not turning towards the figures and places at the traditional centre of local communities.

Although most people (58%) said that they can name their local MP, less than a quarter (23%) know the name of their regional or local mayor. Three–quarters (75%) of all respondents said that they couldn’t name a local faith leader of any religion, and only 5% could name a local police officer. Less than half of all respondents have visited a local library in the last year (48%), and more than two–thirds (67%) of adults between 25–64 years of age say they had not visited any place of worship in the past twelve months. In fact more people have visited a local park in the last seven days (36%) than have visited a local place of worship in the last year (30%). 

All respondents were far more likely to put their trust in friends and family (84%), and in their neighbours (63%) for accurate information. 86% of those polled said they know their next–door neighbour by name, and almost half (47%) have visited their neighbour’s house in the past twelve months.

When asked which features make them feel most connected to their local community, relationship with neighbours (38%), safety (37%) and visiting public spaces (31%) were top of the list, while shared faith mattered to just 4% of respondents.

Respondents were also asked what contribution faith groups make to local communities. More than a third of those who were polled said that faith communities have no real impact at all on the unemployed (35%), or on local (36%) or regional (38%) government. Only 8% believe that the overall contribution faith groups make to the life of the community is negative, but more than half (55%) say that they don’t know what contribution they make, or that it is neither good nor bad.

The research was conducted in preparation for the annual Theos Lecture at 7pm on Thursday, 9 October. In this year’s lecture, the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham will discuss the importance of faith–based and other community organisations in fostering hope, health and human connection. And he’ll reveal the critical role they are set to play in the next chapter of English devolution, as Greater Manchester works to deliver support for people in true partnership with the local organisations they know and trust.

Chine McDonald, the Director of Theos, said: “Building strong communities depends on trust, and trust is built on communication. Mayor Andy Burnham believes that people of faith can have a significant role to play in building communities and shaping devolved democracy.

“Indeed, faith groups up and down the country are making a significant contribution in many ways: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and helping free people from debt. But my reading of this survey data is that a strikingly high number of local residents are not aware of these contributions. This is particularly pertinent when we are seeing an increase in conversations about the role of religion in shaping politics and the nation. At a time of potential societal fracture, this is an encouragement for faith communities to step up, speak up, and increase their visibility beyond the church walls, showing the difference faith can make to social cohesion and building a better world for all.”

You can find the data tables here.

Interested in this? Share it on social media. 

Join our monthly e–newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Supporter Programme to find out how you can help our work. 

As students receive their A–Level results today, Theos have put together this open letter highlighting the importance of religious education in higher education. 14/08/2025

Many of the students across England and Wales who are receiving their A–level results this week will be looking forward to going on to higher education in September.   

However, many HE institutions are reducing staffing levels and ceasing to offer some courses, in an attempt to balance their budgets at a time of financial pressure. This results in a narrowing of the opportunities available to these young people as they take their studies forward. 

One of the subject areas that is being hit hardest by these reductions is Theology and Religious Studies. There will soon be only 21 HE institutions in England and Wales that offer an undergraduate degree in Theology and Religious Studies. For comparison, 90 run undergraduate degree courses in History, 80 in Music and 101 in Sociology.  

This impacts on student choice, but it also has adverse effects for society. Theology plays a crucial role in the intellectual, ethical and cultural development of communities. It equips people with the tools to engage more thoughtfully with global cultures and traditions and to engage deeply with complex sacred texts. It provides space for interfaith dialogue in an environment where people from different backgrounds (including the non–religious, because Theology and Religious Studies is by no means the preserve of believers), and creates room for students to explore issues of belief together. In an increasingly polarised world, it helps us understand other points of view.  

Theological education often leads people into service–oriented careers where they contribute to social cohesion and moral leadership, and strengthen civil society. One such career is teaching. But there are already too few qualified entrants to RE teaching. 51% of RE lessons are taught by teachers whose main specialism is in another subject, and in the 2024–25 academic year, only 20% of new entrants to RE Initial Teacher Training had a degree in Theology and Religious Studies.   

Beyond service–oriented careers, Theology & Religious Studies also develops skills in the careful analysis of evidence (ideal for careers in law or criminology), or the art of persuasion and storytelling (ideal for careers in politics, journalism or screenwriting).  

The future looks increasingly complex, diverse and pluralistic; local, national and global changes require us to wrestle with moral, ethical and spiritual challenges and ideas well. We owe it to the citizens of tomorrow to equip them with the tools to navigate this future and live together better. We can think of few better tools within our education system than Theology & Religious Studies.

Signatories:

1. Chine McDonald, Director, Theos
2. The Rt Revd Professor Rowan Williams FBA
3. James Norton, Actor
4. James Dacre, Theatre Director
5. Tom Swarbrick, LBC Presenter
6. Anna McNamee, Executive Director, Sandford St Martin Trust
7. Carrie Alderton, Interim CEO of the Faith & Belief Forum
8. Dr Wajid Akhter, Secretary–General, Muslim Council of Britain
9. Professor Jagbir Jhutti–Johal, Professor of Sikh Studies, department of Theology
and Religion, University of Birmingham
10.Dr Tim Hutchings, Associate Professor of Religious Ethics, University of
Nottingham, and TRS–UK
11.Ravin J Ganatra, Actor
12.Patrick Watt, CEO, Christian Aid
13.Imam Monawar Hussain MBE DL FRSA MCCT, Founder, The Oxford Foundation
14.Dr Ed Kessler MBE, Founder President, Woolf Institute
15.Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus, University of Exeter
16.Dr Kathryn Wright, Chief Executive, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust
17. Lord Singh of Wimbledon, Director Network of Sikh Organisations UK
18.Dr Deesha Chadha OBE, National Executive Committee (Interfaith), Hindu
Forum of Britain
19.Michael Wakelin, Executive Chair of the Religion Media Centre, former BBC
Head of Religion and Ethics
20.Professor Chris Baker, Professor of Religion, Belief and Public Life, Goldsmiths,
University of London
21.Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar MBE, President ,TRS–UK
22.Ruth Peacock, Director, Religion Media Centre
23.Dr Richard Kueh, Formerly Senior His Majesty’s Inspector & National Lead
Inspector of Religious Education, Ofsted; Visiting Scholar, Canterbury Christ
Church University; Director of School Improvement, Cam Academy Trust
24.Sarah March, programmes co–ordinator, education & learning, The Faith & Belief
Forum
25.Professor John Lydon KC*HS Professor of Catholic Education St Mary’s
University Twickenham
26. Louise Kirk, UK Coordinator, Alive to the World
27.Professor Bartholomew McGettrick OBE
28.Mike Otter, Head of Education, Bible Society
29. Luke Walton, Producer, The Pitch Film Fund
30.Dr Rob Barward–Symmons, Co–Director of the Centre for the Study of Modern
Christianity
31.Richard Collyer–Hamlin, Chair, Catholic Union
32.Professor Peter Hindmarsh, Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology and
Chair, Catholic Union Charitable Trust
33.Dave Legrand, Chair of Association of Teachers of Catholic Religious Education
34.Sarah Lane Cawte, Chair of the Religious Education Council of England and
Wales
35.Revd Dr Tessa Henry–Robinson, Moderator, Free Churches Group of England
and Wales
36.Katie Freeman, Chair, The National Association of Teachers of RE
37.Er. Trupti Patel, President, Hindu Forum of Britain
38.Sister Judith Russi SSMN B.Ed. MA Director EducareM
39.Dr Dominika Kurek–Chomycz, Associate Professor in New Testament Studies,
Liverpool Hope University
40.Rev Dr Andrew Cheatle, Principal Lecturer in Theology and Pastoral Theology,
Liverpool Hope University
41.Dr Simon Podmore, Associate Professor in Theology, Liverpool Hope University
42.Rev Canon Dr Yazid Said, Senior Lecturer in Islam, Liverpool Hope University
43.Rev Dr Taras Khomych, Senior Lecturer in Patristic and Byzantine Theology,
Liverpool Hope University
44.Dr Caroline Healy, General Secretary, Catholic Association of Teachers, Schools
and Colleges.
45.John Nish, President, Catholic Association of Teachers, Schools and Colleges
(CATSC)
46.Professor Denise Cush, Professor Emerita of Religion and Education, Bath Spa
University
47.Derek Holloway, Chair, Association of Church College Trusts
48.Matthew Dell, Executive Member of the Association of Teachers of Catholic
Religious Education
49.Dr Sean Whittle, Executive Chair, Association of University Lecturers in Religious
Education
50.Dr Paul–François Tremlett, President of the British Association for the Study of
Religions
51.Aliya Azam MBE, Interfaith Coordinator, Al–Khoei Foundation
52.Bob Bowie, Director, National Institute for Christian Education Research
53. Tulsi Seva Dasi, Chair, Central Bedfordshire Standing Advisory Council for
Religious Education
54.Dr. Linda Whitworth, Chair of Trustees, Culham St. Gabriel’s Trust
55.Alastair Reid, General Secretary, The Independent Schools Christian Alliance
56.Professor Graham Handscomb, Chair of the Free Churches Group Education
Committee
57.Kevin McSharry, Chair, Teachers’ Enterprise in Religious Education
58.Claire Clinton, Chair, The National Association of Standing Advisory Councils on
RE
59.Bill Moore, Chair, The National Association of Standing Advisory Councils on RE
60.Denise Chaplin, Chair, The National Association of Standing Advisory Councils
on RE
61.Paul Smalley, Academic and Education Consultant
62.Jan McGuire, Co–Chair, Association of Religious Education Inspectors, Advisers
and Consultants
63.Minister Jackie Wright, President of the Spiritualists’ National Union
64.Nicola Walsh, Headteacher, The Sacred Heart Language College Harrow
65.Josephine Backus, Chair and Education Officer NBO, Network of Buddhist
Organisations
66.Sister Marcellina Cooney CP, CEO, Teachers’ Enterprise in Religious Education
67.Dr Caroline Healy, General Secretary, Catholic Association of Teachers, Schools
and Colleges
68.Pamela Draycott, Chair, Christian Education Movement
69.Stephen Mitchell, Co–Founder, Sea of Faith Movement
70.Professor Julian Stern, Director, The World Religions and Education Research
Unit, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln
71.Shaunaka Rishi Das, Director, The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
72.Sarah Evans, Chair of Trustees, Westhill Endowment
73.Krishna Kotecha, Manager, ISKCON Educational Services
74.Yazad Unwalla, Head of Religious Studies, Charter School East Dulwich
75.Dr Maureen Glackin, Religious Education Advisor, Catholic Education Service

Theos report calls for a humane strategy for the integration of refugees, with churches at the centre. 17/06/2025

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned that without tougher immigration policies, the UK might become an “island of strangers”. When challenged, he said that “people who come here should be expected to learn the language and integrate.”

A new report from Theos challenges the rhetoric of dis–integration. It explores the ways in which refugees and asylum seekers achieve integration, and the significant but often overlooked role that the UK’s churches play in enabling those who have already arrived to settle and flourish.

Drawing on extensive interviews with church leaders, charities, and local authorities, the report uncovers the practical and relational ways in which churches help refugees to find community in the UK. It addresses misconceptions surrounding church activities, including unfounded allegations of proselytism and ‘fake conversions’. It highlights the challenges that churches face, such as limited resources, volunteer burnout, and tensions between faith–based motivations and public perceptions. It proposes practical policy changes that would support churches and facilitate a smoother and comprehensive integration of refugees.

The report calls for an improved national strategy for integration. Its author George Lapshynov says “It is not solely the role of the government to directly deliver integration, but government should create the framework that enables the efforts of civil society and churches. Crucially, we believe it can do this without significant new expenditure, not by overhauling the system but by humanising it”.

The report From Strangers to Neighbours will be launched at a gathering in parliament on 17th June 2025. It is accompanied by a set of stunning photographs from award–winning photographer John Boaz, illustrating some of the ways that churches support the integration of migrants.

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

In this open letter, women from different faiths unite in voicing safeguarding concerns over the current legislation for Assisted Dying. 04/04/2025

We write as a group of women of faith from different traditions and backgrounds passionate about care for people in vulnerable situations, many of whom have dedicated our professional lives to preventing male violence against women and girls.  

We hold a variety of views on the principle of legalising assisted dying. However, we are all clear that the current legislation – The Terminally Ill Adults Bill – progressing through parliament, has insufficient safeguards to protect some of the most marginalised in society, particularly women subjected to gender–based violence, and abuse by a partner, who also experience intersecting barriers to a full and safe life. 

We are concerned that the proposed legislation could create a new tool to harm vulnerable women, particularly those being subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control, by helping them to end their lives. 

A report out last month showed that the number of domestic abuse victims who died by suicide in England and Wales was higher than the number of people killed by their abusive partner, for the second year running. 

We know too that domestic abuse victims who are also women of faith can face a particular form of abuse[1] at the hands of their perpetrators, who may weaponise theologies and culture to harm and control their victims. We are concerned that the assisted dying legislation, as it stands, fails to take account of how faith and its role at the end of life, as well as its use by both perpetrators and the women they abuse, create complex dynamics that can lead to vulnerable women, who may also hold strong religious beliefs, seeing no way out but death.

We know that poverty and other inequalities increase the risk of women and girls being subjected to violence, ill health and the quality of care and support they receive from statutory institutions and civil society. We know too that in a society riven with inequalities, women who are from Black and minoritised communities, disabled women, migrant women and working–class women, struggle to be heard. Their voices are absent from conversations about this bill, and so too are those subjective to coercive control or violence. It is unclear to us how the legislation and its consultative process has taken account of the multiplicity of faiths, cultures, socio–economic and health backgrounds of our citizens and women who make up our country. 

Much of the debate inside and outside parliament has been conducted by those empowered to speak of the importance of personal choice, without consideration of those who struggle to be heard in the public square. It is the voices of the unheard, ignored, and marginalised that we are compelled by our faith traditions and scriptures to listen and draw attention to, in the pursuit of good law–making for the common good – legislation that considers and protects the most vulnerable, not just those who speak loudest.

Having followed the progress of the bill through parliament, we are particularly concerned about: 

• The risk that people (mainly women) with controlling and abusive partners (mainly men) will be coerced into assisted death. While we welcome the adopted amendments that stipulate training for the assessing doctors and the panel members, this safeguard only comes into play after someone has already been coerced into declaring that they want an assisted death, and will clearly not catch all cases. We also know, from research and experience, that coercive control is a long–term process that is both insidious and subtle with women often unaware of it until the perpetrator’s behaviour escalates. 
• The reality that since 2016, deaths by suicide have been included in the scope of domestic homicide reviews and there is growing research on women who die by suicide as directly linked to having an abusive partner. We are concerned that if this legislation passes, women may seek assisted deaths to end their suffering at the hands of an abuser. Domestic Homicide Reviews also reveal the disproportionate number of Black and minoritised women who are failed by statutory and state agencies like the police, social services, health services and specialist services like substance misuse and mental health and women’s services despite their calls for help.    
• There are no longer High Court protections embedded in the Bill
• There are insufficient protections for those with learning disabilities and people with anorexia. 
• The use of the vehicle of the Private Member’s Bill for this landmark legislation. This has resulted in the impact assessment being shared after the Bill Committee stage, which makes it difficult for all of us with concerns about inequalities to gauge how this legislation will affect Black and minoritised and faith communities, people with disabilities, and those experiencing economic disadvantage.

If assisted dying is seen as a response to alleviate suffering, without addressing the underlying structural issues that make life difficult and safeguard against harm, it could put undue pressure on vulnerable women to choose death over inadequate care.

This is no way to legislate, especially not on matters of life and death. We have serious concerns about the bill and its lack of safeguards. The bill has too much potential to hurt vulnerable people and so we are uniting as women from across faith traditions to speak up for vulnerable women, including victims of violence against women and girls, and disabled women, and raise our concerns publicly.

Signatories:

1. Chine McDonald, director, Theos

2. Bekah Legg, CEO, Restored

3. Huda Jawad, co–founder and executive director, Faith and VAWG Coalition

4. Sam Clifford, CEO, Jewish Women’s Aid

5. The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE, Bishop of London

6. Dr Naomi Green, Assistant Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain

7. Professor Sheila The Baroness Hollins, President, The Catholic Union of Great Britain

8. Rabbi Debbie Young–Somers

9. Zara Mohammed, former secretary general, Muslim Council of Britain

10. Hannah Rich, director, Christians on the Left

11. Revd Dr Helen Paynter, founding director, Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence

12. Naomi Lerer, CEO, Noa Girls 

13. Amanda Jackson, senior advisor on diversity, World Evangelical Alliance

14. The Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Anglican Bishop for HM Prisons

15. Commissioner Jenine Main, Territorial Leader, The Salvation Army, United Kingdom and Ireland

16. Louisa Collyer–Hamlin, Head of External Affairs, Catholic Union

17. Patricia Stoat, Science Health & Bioethics Committee of the National Board of Catholic Women

18. Rt Revd Rose Hudson–Wilkin, Bishop of Dover

19. Dr Sahira Dar, president, British Islamic Medical Association

20. Rachel Fink, CEO, S&P Sephardi Jewish Community

21. Tola Doll Fisher, Creative Director and Editor, Premier Woman Alive

22. Elizabeth Harris Sawczenko, OBE, Interfaith consultant 

23. Nikki Dhillon Keane, Head of Caritas Safe in Faith

24. Jagbir Jhutti–Johal, Professor of Sikh Studies, University of Birmingham 

25. Professor Tina Beattie, Professor Emerita of Catholic Studies, University of Roehampton, London

26. The Rt Revd Dr Joanne Woolway Grenfell, Bishop of Stepney and Lead Safeguarding Bishop for the Church of England

27. Natalie Collins, author and activist

28. Sian Rees, head of Bible Society Wales

29. Rt Revd Dr Jill Duff, Anglican Bishop of Lancaster

30. The Rt Revd Vivienne Faull, Lord Bishop of Bristol

31. Rev Catherine De Souza, CEO, Prison Fellowship England & Wales

32. ​​Sally Hope, Domestic Abuse Practitioner and Writer

33. Dr Selina Stone, Lecturer in Theology and Ethics, University of Edinburgh

34. Dawn McAvoy, Both Lives UK

35. Mandy Marshall, Director for Gender Justice, Anglican Alliance and Anglican Communion

36. Revd Jenni Entrican, Former President of the European Baptist Federation

37. Alicia Edmund, Head of public policy Evangelical Alliance

38. Dr Madeleine Pennington, Quaker writer and head of research, Theos 

39. Damilola Makinde, Advocacy engagement lead, Evangelical Alliance

40. Julia Bicknell, ex–BBC Woman’s Hour producer; lay chaplain for asylum seekers/refugees

41. The Rt Revd Dr Rosemarie Mallett, Bishop of Croydon

42. Rev Mae Christie, Vicar, All Saints, Tooting

43. Joy Madeiros, Co–Founder, Oasis UK

44. Ann–Louise Graham, journalist and biblical counselor

45. Prof. Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Practice

46. Canon Dr Sanjee Perera, lay canon of Liverpool Cathedral, organisational psychologist and theologian

47. Aja Thorburn, writer 

48. Michelle Tant, Midwifery Lecturer and writer

49. Joanna Davey, editorial director, Hodder Faith 

50. Rev Bryony Taylor, Rector of Barlborough and Clowne and Author

51. Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, director, SHERA research group

52. Dr Caroline Hull, national director, Aid to the Church in Need (UK)

53. Amy Summerfield, CEO, Kyria Network 

54. Rev Liz Clutterbuck, Priest–in–Charge Emmanuel Hornsey Road, Islington

55. Rev Leonora Wassell, Co–Chair, Methodist Women in Britain

56. Rebecca (Bex) Chapman, General Synod member and vice–chair, Christians in Media

57. Debra Green OBE, CEO, ROC

58. Alice Gray, palliative care doctor and assistant pastor, Oasis Church, Birmingham

59. Ruth Parrott, former president and co–chair, Methodist Women in Britain

60. Shermara Fletcher–Hoyte, Principal Officer for Pentecostal, Charismatic and Multi–cultural Relations, Churches Together in England

61. Catherine Butcher, author, lay reader, and member of General Synod

62. Faith Van Horne, PhD, Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham 

63. Jamie Phear, writer and speaker 

64. Rachel Muers, Professor of Divinity, University of Edinburgh 

65. Jayne Manfredi, Anglican Deacon

66. Katharine Lock

67. Rev Cham Kaur–Mann, Co–Director, Next Leadership

68. The Rt Revd Esther Prior, Bishop of Aston

69. Rev Dr Kate Coleman, Co–Director, Next Leadership

70. Rosemary Nuamah–Williams, policy Adviser and advocate

71. Jo Chamberlain, National Environment Officer, Church of England Environment Programme

72. Dr Usha Reifsnider, Co regional Director, Lausanne Europe, Cultural Theology Consultant

73. ​​Lucy Butt, CEO, Bramber Bakehouse

74. Dr Janet Soskice, Professor of Philosophical Theology, Emeritus, University of Cambridge

75. Stella Mbubaegbu CBE, FE College Principal & Chief Executive

76. Mary McHugh, National Board of Catholic Women of England and Wales

77. Hope Virgo, author, campaigner and Secretariat for the APPG for Eating Disorders

78. Rev Bev Thomas Ecumenical Minister & Social Justice Advocate

79. Rev Claire McClelland, Head of Chaplaincy, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals 

80. Rev Jenny Kimble, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Regents Theological College

81. Rev. Michelle Nunn, Principal, Regents Theological College, and Member of Elim’s National Leadership Team

82. The Venerable Karen Best, Archdeacon of Manchester  

83. Dr Anne Richards, Policy Adviser, Church of England

84. Revd Dr Hannah Lewis, Lead Chaplain among the Deaf Community, Diocese of Oxford

85. Janie Oliver, CEO, Stewardship

86. Dr Calida Chu, Associate Editor, Practical Theology

87. The Revd Jessica Monopoli, Assistant Curate, St Mary’s Cockerton, and Clergy Lead at The Haven in Darlington, Co. Durham

88. Bobbi Kumari, founder, Living in Light 

89. Barbara Earl, Croydon Quakers

90. Danielle Finch, freelance writer (disability, family & faith)

91. Rev. Rebecca Amoroso, Hospital Chaplain

92. Christina Mottram, retired lay Catholic hospital chaplain, Leicester Hospitals

93. Salomé Criddle, CEO, Thriving Women In Real Life

94. Revd Dr Joanne Cox– Darling, Methodist presbyter

95. Anupama Ranawana, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham

96. Danielle Wilson, Pioneer Pastor, Birmingham

97. Dr Claire Williams OMS, Lecturer in Practical Theology, Academic Inclusion Advocate, Regents Theological College

98. Reverend Joyce Fletcher, National Executive Director of Women and Family for the Church of God of Prophecy

99. Dionne Gravesande, trustee of Restored and co–chair, National Church Leader Forum

100. Dr Beverley Samways, Director, Unique Connections

101. Alianore Smith, member of the General Synod of the Church of England

102. Revd Novette Headley,  Chair – Birmingham Methodist District

103. Colette Joyce, co–ordinator, Justice and Peace Commission, Diocese of Westminster

104. The Revd. Lis Goddard, vicar, St James the Less Pimlico

105. Doreen Patricia Waugh, domestic abuse practitioner, Justice and peace representative

106. Rev. Sarah Whittleston, National Elim Prayer Director

107. Dr Eve Poole OBE Lay Canon, York Minster 

108. Revd Alexandra Lilley, Vicar, St George and All Saints Tufnell Park and Dean of Women’s Ministry

109. Michelle Dumont

110. Revd. Canon Kate Wharton, Vicar of St. Bartholomew’s Church, Roby, Liverpool, General Synod member, and Prolocutor of the Lower House of the Convocation of York.

111. Rani Joshi – South Asian Forum coordinator / Evangelical Alliance

112. Baroness Shaista Gohir – CEO, Muslim Women’s Network UK 

This initiative follows a meeting organised in partnership with the Faith and Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition, and Restored, facilitated by Jewish Women’s Aid, and brought together by Theos.

For more information, see:

Addressing Spiritual Abuse in Ending Violence Against Women – Faith & VAWG Coalition

The Meaning of Dignity: What’s beneath the assisted dying debate? – Theos 

Following the release of research by the Explaining Atheism Project, Theos responds to the assertion that we are living in the “first atheist age”. 03/10/2024

A research project led by Queens University, Belfast, has set out to explore why a growing number of people in the UK say that they don’t believe in God. The report, entitled ‘Explaining Atheism’, generated a fair bit of publicity with the idea that the UK is entering ‘the first atheist age.’ 

Like any quantitative research on religion and belief, it’s a challenging area, and the data uncovered by the project has not yet been released. Last week’s headlines focussed on assumptions based on converging data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and the World Values Survey.  Definitions matter – and in this area they aren’t at all straightforward. To say that you don’t believe in God is not the same as saying that you don’t believe there is anything beyond the material world. And it isn’t the same as ticking the ‘no religion’ box on the census form either.  The 2021 England and Wales Census recorded 37.2% of the population now identifying as having no religion, up from a quarter in 2011. The number of people identifying as Christian fell to a minority for the first time, at only 46.2% of the population. But there is no absolute majority for atheism. And if ever there was a question to which the answer “Don’t know” would be appropriate, belief in God must be that question.  Belief in God and atheism are rarely simple or settled matters.  

For this reason, the claim that “the UK is entering its first atheist age” needs some unpacking. The truth is, surely, that the religious culture and identity of the UK is far more nuanced and complex than a simple head–count of people who say they do or do not believe in the existence of God at a particular moment could ever show. We know, for example, that many people who would say that they don’t believe in God nevertheless believe in various supernatural phenomena.  And there are people who hold fervently to a particular religion but don’t believe in a personal God. I for one feel like an atheist most days until I’ve had my first coffee!  

Even if this is an age of atheism, how do we know that it is the first age? The data simply don’t exist to know how our distant ancestors would have completed their census forms. At a political level, the idea that a country goes through ages that are ‘owned’ by one belief system – any belief system – is unhelpful, and potentially dangerous.  

The ‘Explaining Atheism’ report finds that people who are brought up in cultures and households where there is belief in God are more likely to become believers themselves. That’s not surprising. We would assume that the reverse is also true – that people are socialised into atheism if they find themselves in a family or a culture where that is the perceived norm.  

It is also not surprising to read that “most atheists and agnostics endorse objective moral values, human dignity, and inherent rights”. That finding only invites a further conversation about what those values are and where those rights come from: a conversation that Theos has been helping to host for 20 years.   

In our own research, Theos looked at the 53% of the population who identified themselves in the 2021 census as having “no religion”. We found a complex and nuanced picture, suggesting that atheism and being non–religious do not always go hand in hand. One can be non–religious without being an atheist, and vice versa. For example, only 51% of those who say they have no religion say that they definitely don’t believe in God. Just like any religious group, those who describe themselves as non–believing vary in their degrees of non–belief, and also in what kind of God they don’t believe in!  

So whilst we recognise that the number of people in the UK who say that they don’t believe in God is rising, we don’t think this makes a good basis for policy or public understanding. Whatever ‘age’ we are living in, the human urge to look beyond ourselves to make meaning endures for both theists and atheists alike.   

More on this

Chine McDonald was quoted in the Times and spoke on BBC Radio 4 Sunday unpacking the complexities of this claim.

Interested in this? Share it on social media.

Join our monthly e–newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Supporter Programme to find out how you can help our work.

Press Release to Theos’ new report ‘Love, Grief and Hope: Emotional responses to death and dying in the UK’. 24/11/2023

High costs and loss of faith lead to radical change in the ways we mark death 

Less than half of the UK population now want their death to be marked with a funeral, according to a major research report called Love, Grief, and Hope: Emotional responses to death and dying in the UK, released on Tuesday 28 November by the religion and society think tank Theos. 

The findings are based on polling commissioned from YouGov, and reveal significant changes in the ways that people in the UK are approaching death and dying. Less than half of respondents (47%) said they wanted a funeral.  Just over one in 10 (13%) of respondents who did not want a funeral said this was because they did not have enough money saved, but far more said they felt the money could be better spent another way (67%). Others said “I don’t see the point” (55%) or “I don’t want a traditional service” (43%). 

Existing polling from Sunlife indicates that direct cremation (or ‘take–away funerals’ where the body is taken directly to a crematorium without any service or other event) is now chosen for 18% of all deaths. This new polling by Theos suggests that this trend could grow further, translating into a potential crisis for the funeral industry as a whole.  

The researchers found that financial factors are significant in these decisions, but religious and spiritual adherence is even more influential: 76% of frequent worshippers said they wanted a funeral compared to 38% who never attend. Author Dr Madeleine Pennington, head of research at Theos, said: “It appears that the UK population no longer has a shared conviction on the importance of ritual frameworks to say goodbye. Market forces have a bigger impact on how we grieve, when we no longer approach grief itself through a ‘transcendent’ frame. In an age of declining formal religious affiliation, this is driving a significant realignment of British bereavement practices.” 

Dr Pennington says that a lack of familiarity with death and dying also has an impact on the ways we experience loss. “As a consequence of the professionalisation and medicalisation of death, bereavement is often now experienced almost entirely as the loss of a relationship, without direct exposure to death or the process of dying itself. Far more than in previous generations, we are likely to face the unvarnished realities of death for the first time only when losing those closest to us.” 

“This is such an important report for our time,” says Archbishop Justin Welby in his foreword to the report. “It is shocking to discover that death may be seen as expensive, time–consuming and irrelevant, and that it is better just to move on.” He calls for the Church to re–offer its “honed compassionate skills.” “We must re–open conversations, name Death, and think about how this compassionate caring can be re–shaped for this new world.” The Archbishop reflects on his response to the loss of his own mother, who died in July of this year, and calls on the Church to “re–open conversations about death”.  

Love, Grief, and Hope: Emotional responses to death and dying in the UK is part of a suite of resources from Theos on death and dying. It also includes findings about how well–prepared people feel for their own for death, and how they want their passing to be marked. The report was written by Dr Madeleine Pennington with Dr Nathan Mladin, senior researcher at Theos. All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2569 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 19th – 21st July 2023. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+).” 

For further information, images and interviews, or to receive a full copy of the report please contact Andrew Graystone via media@theosthinktank.co.uk or 07772 710090. 

Notes 

Theos is a Westminster–based think tank researching and resourcing the interface between religion and society.   www.theosthinktank.co.uk.   

The report’s co–author Dr Madeleine Pennington will answer questions in an online news briefing hosted by the Religion Media Centre at 12noon on Tuesday, 28 November. To receive a link to join the conference please write to info@religionmediacentre.org.uk. 

Nathan Mladin, on behalf of Theos, signs joint letter to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology cautioning proper attention be given to ethical questions surrounding AI. 02/11/2023

On behalf of Theos, Senior Researcher Nathan Mladin signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology cautioning that the “implications of Artificial Intelligence raise significant ethical and arguably existential questions that demand our collective attention.” 

The 19 signatories, who represent a range of faith, belief and civil society leaders say “it is essential that all parts of society can fully contribute to the principles and processes that will shape future governance”, and that “short–term commercial and economic interests will outweigh long–term social and ethical concerns if we do not find ways to engage a wide range of religious and cultural perspectives.”

The group, who met last week to discuss the implications of Artificial Intelligence, under the chairmanship of The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, developed six points for consideration ahead of the AI Safety Summit. 

Read the full letter including the six suggestions here.

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

UNDER EMBARGO until Monday 7th November 09.00 

Gordon Brown and Rowan Williams warn that churches and other warm community hubs like pubs face closure this winter unless government takes ‘honest’ approach 

– Further crisis unless Rishi Sunak’s Government acts to help ‘last line of defence’ against cost of living crisis, new report shows 

– Former prime minister and Archbishop of Canterbury warn: ‘Society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members’ 

Churches and community hubs – including pubs – are threatened by closure this winter because ‘they cannot afford to keep the lights on’ unless the new UK government makes urgent reforms such as exemption from business rates, a new report shows. 

The idea that churches and similar buildings might operate as ‘warm banks’ for vulnerable people is now under threat, according to the report, which has a joint foreword by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. 

These community institutions form a vital part of the safety net offering security and material support to millions of people but are now themselves becoming less secure, the report demonstrates. 

Mr Brown and Dr Williams say: ‘What we are waiting to hear from the latest administration in Westminster is whether this urgency is recognised, and whether there is enough honesty about the problem and enough willingness to find a solution.  Britain’s safety net is torn. So much is clear from this report.  We dare to hope that it is not torn beyond repair; but that is up to public as well as private vision and generosity.’ 

The cost of living and economic crises, on top of the Covid–19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now pose a threat not only to individual circumstances, but to the fabric of civil society and faith groups.  

Tax breaks for volunteers and linking giving to the rate of inflation are among other proposals in the report aimed at relieving the social crisis at the heart of communities.  

The new report by the Christian think tank Theos, A torn safety net: How the cost of living crisis threatens its own last line of defence, is based on extensive research and dozens of interviews with key community figures this year concentrated in Wolverhampton, Glasgow, Cornwall and London. 

It says: ‘There is a risk that churches and other faith groups will close, not because of falling attendance or religious affiliation, but because they cannot afford to keep the lights on.’  

The report found that without action to address rising bills, the financial sustainability of buildings such as churches themselves will be threatened, and it is not only faith institutions which will be at risk of being lost as a result, but also community hubs such as pubs as well and scout huts, all of which are subject to business rates for utilities.  

‘The safety net of charities and community groups which offer security to those in precarious circumstances is now at risk,’ the report says. ‘If the effects of this are not addressed effectively, it is possible that valuable institutions like churches may shut, leaving economic and social scars on the community.’ 

The report’s author, Hannah Rich, a senior researcher at Theos, describes the situation as a ‘perfect storm’ for communities. She says: ‘As the economy has spiralled, we have seen these anchor institutions themselves become less secure. Soaring energy costs threaten the ability to run vital community spaces. At the same time, volunteer capacity is stretched thin and financial donations are drying up. It is a perfect storm.’ 

The report argues that a new ‘social recession’ has emerged in local communities as a result of four key dimensions of insecurity: income and employment, housing, access to food, and migration status.  

As well as the energy price cap for community hubs, Theos makes a series of recommendations, including: 

– A tax break for volunteering time, which has retreated, as well as greater employer support for paid volunteering leave and changes in the tax code for paying petrol and other expenses to volunteers. 

– Helping charities and churches and people who generously give to them by raising the rate of Gift Aid on charitable donations, with an increase for groups being able to claim an extra 25p for every £1 donated by a taxpayer to 30p or more.  

– A link between giving with the rate of inflation for organisations and congregations reliant on regular giving via direct debit. 

Theos also argues that it should be made easier for local communities and faith groups to invest in assets like housing for local residents. The Charities Act 2011 requires charitable organisations selling land or property to achieve the best possible price for it, unless there are compelling reasons otherwise. This means charities and churches are often forced to sell to corporate developers, and the resulting properties are unaffordable for local community members.  

ENDS 

Note to editors: 

1. This report is informed by a series of 48 semi–structured interviews conducted by Theos researchers between January and August 2022. These were concentrated in four local authority areas: Cornwall, Glasgow, Wolverhampton, and the London borough of Newham. These areas were selected based on data for various indicators of insecurity, including metrics for housing, debt and (un)employment, as well as covering both urban and rural areas. Additionally, Theos interviewed a number of individuals from outside these geographical areas, chosen because of their experience and expertise of particular aspects of insecurity and religion.  

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview please contact Hannah Rich (Senior Researcher and Author) on 07917 433 624 or hannah.rich@theosthinktank.co.uk or Lizzie Harvey (Head of Communications, Theos) on 07778 160 052  

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

New research has revealed a significant gender divide in attitudes towards technology in the UK with Artificial intelligence and robotics remaining highly contest topics. The YouGov survey of 5000 UK adults found almost one third of men (28%) would consider having an artificially intelligent companion in the future compared to 13% of women. 

The Think tank Theos has analysed data provided by YouGov and found,  

• One fifth of men (21%) believe that one day we will have to extent human rights to robots, compared to only 13% of women. 

• One in ten men would prefer a robot to conduct surgery on them than a human surgeon, compared to just 4% of women. 

• Less than half of men (47%) would be reluctant to get in a self–driving car compared to over two thirds (64%) of women. 

In the face the recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and robotics the survey revealed that whilst women are more suspicious of these technologies than men, hostility across UK adults remains high irrespective of age, ethnicity and religion. Over half of respondents (56%) would be reluctant to get in a self–driving car and only 7% would want a robot surgeon over a human.  

The findings are part of a new report produced by Theos and The Faraday Institute investigating the science and religion debate in the UK today. The publication includes interviews with leading scientists and philosophers, including Brian Cox, Susan Greenfield, Adam Rutherford, and A.C. Grayling. 

Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos says “Artificial Intelligence is one of the fastest moving scientific areas and is increasingly asking penetrating questions about what it means to be human. It is sometimes assumed that the answers people give depend on whether they are religious but the research shows that other factors, not least gender, play a massive role. The conversations we need about these issues will require us to draw on scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas.” 

The report ‘Science and Religion: Moving away from the shallow end’ has been produced from a YouGov survey of 5000 adults along with over 100 in–depth expert interviews.  

Kathleen Richardson, Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University says “Unfortunately, technology in these areas is being significantly shaped by men who have a very particular set of assumptions, motivations, priorities and goals. All too often, these risk excluding women and eroding human relation in a way that will ultimately harm both men and women.” 

For the full findings of the report visit: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/science-and-religion 

ENDS 

For further information (interviews, images or additional quotes), please contact  

Megan Hills via e: megan@jerseyroad.com t: +44 7591 830352  

Catherine Goodier via e: catherine@jerseyroadpr.com , t: +44 7874 864056 

Notes to Editors 

 Please find the data tables for attitudes to Artificial Intelligence and robotics linked here.  

Please find the data tables for the full report linked here.  

YouGov Survey: 

Theos has analysed the data supplied by YouGov. The total sample size was 5,153 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th May – 13th June 2021.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+). 

About Theos 

Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society. 

About The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion 

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is a Cambridge–based interdisciplinary research institute improving public understanding of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences. Its main focus is on the relationship between science and the Christian faith, but it also engages with those of any faith or none. 

The mission of The Faraday Institute is to shed new light on life’s big questions through academically rigorous research in the field of science and religion; to provide life–changing resources for those with interests in science and faith through research dissemination, education and training; and, to catalyse a change in attitude towards science and faith, through outreach to schools, colleges, the scientific community, religious institutions and the general public. 

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

New research has found Gen Z (57%) are more likely to think religion has a place in the modern world than any other generation, whilst having a better understanding and greater acceptance of science. This compares to less than half of Millennials (47%) and Gen X (47%). The data also revealed that 37% of Gen Z think science and religion are compatible, compared with only 30% of the British public and 26% of Gen Xers.  

The think tank Theos has analysed data provided by YouGov also found that amongst Gen Z: 

• More than two thirds (64%) agree that it is possible to believe in God and evolution – at least 10% more than any other age group.  

• 68% believe that you can be religious and be a good scientist – 10% more than any other age group. 

• 79% agree that there is strong and reliable evidence for the theory of evolution and 83% are confident they understood it – more than any other age group.  

• Nearly a quarter (24%) disagree that science is the only way of getting reliable getting knowledge about the world – more than the other generations  

• Over two thirds (62%) disagree that religion has nothing helpful to say about ethics – significantly higher than Millennials (53%), Gen X (45%) and Boomers (53%).  

• More (44%) disagree that science will be able to explain everything one day – more than other generations  

The findings are part of a new report from Theos and The Faraday Institute investigating the science and religion debate in the UK today which also included interviews with leading scientists and philosophers, including Brian Cox, Susan Greenfield, Adam Rutherford, and A.C. Grayling. 

The report found that the majority – 57% of the general population – still think that science and religion are incompatible. This view, however, seems to be a reaction to the words “science” and “religion”. Antagonism is dramatically reduced when people are asked about specific disciplines like cosmology or psychology (as opposed to “science”) or about specific religions like Christianity or Islam (as opposed to “religion”). 

The majority (68%) of Gen Z respondents believe that you could be religious and be a good scientist – at least 10% more than any other age group. 

Moreover, a high proportion of both religious and non–religious across the generations agree with scientific theories. For example, 74% of people agree there is “strong, reliable evidence to support the theory of evolution”, compared with 6% who disagree. The majority (64%) of Gen Z thought it was possible to believe in both evolution and God. 

Chris Done, Professor of Astrophysics and Theoretical Physics (University of Durham) says “I think the study shows most that there is much less of a conflict for anyone who has had to think a bit about it, whether they be a practicing scientist or a practicing member of a faith community. the idea of a problem comes more from those who aren’t either, who have just picked up the cultural zeitgeist.” 

Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos says “Our research revealed that the debate between science and religion has been distorted by being viewed through a few narrow lenses – such as evolution vs creation(ism) or the Big Bang vs God. There is a far richer conversation to be had and our interviews with experts and with the general public, particularly younger people, suggests that we are moving in the right direction.” 

The report ‘Science and Religion: Moving away from the shallow end’ has been produced from a YouGov survey of 5000 adults along with over 100 in–depth expert interviews.  

To find out more about the findings of the report visit: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/science-and-religion 

ENDS 

For further information (interviews, images or additional quotes), please contact Catherine Goodier via  

e: catherine@jerseyroadpr.com , t: +44 7874 864056 

Notes to Editors 

 Please find the data tables for the generational statistics linked here. 

Please find the data tables for the full report linked here.  

YouGov Survey: 

Theos has analysed data supplied by YouGov. The total sample size was 5,153 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th May – 13th June 2021.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+). 

Generational groups: 

Gen Z: 9–24 (16–24 in the data)  

Millennial: 25–40 

Gen X: 41–56 

Boomers: 57–75 

About Theos 

Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society. 

About The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion 

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is a Cambridge–based interdisciplinary research institute improving public understanding of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences. Its main focus is on the relationship between science and the Christian faith, but it also engages with those of any faith or none. 

The mission of The Faraday Institute is to shed new light on life’s big questions through academically rigorous research in the field of science and religion; to provide life–changing resources for those with interests in science and faith through research dissemination, education and training; and, to catalyse a change in attitude towards science and faith, through outreach to schools, colleges, the scientific community, religious institutions and the general public. 

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

The distinctive approach of Christian charities can help women facing abuse, trauma, sexual exploitation, poverty and other severe disadvantages and may help avoid the fatal consequences of inadequate support and care.  

Many women in the UK face multiple and severe disadvantage, including mental ill–health, homelessness and isolation, yet the issues they face and the help available to them often goes unrecognised, with support limited. 

Valuing Women: Making Women Visible – a new report, written on behalf of religion and society think tank Theos and being launched on International Women’s Day – explores what can be learned from how Christian charities provide support to women experiencing these disadvantages.  

The in–depth study, undertaken during the pandemic, showcases the distinctive approach of staff and volunteers from six Christian organisations and how they made the women they worked with truly visible. 

Key themes that emerged from the study included:  

1. The trusting relationships needed to support women experiencing multiple and severe disadvantage 

2. The way the faith and values of staff and volunteers informed the way they met women 

3. The utilisation of prayer by some in their work 

4. The tensions and opportunities found in resourcing helping services.  

The report also explores the ways in which Christian organisations – though not without their own challenges – are well–placed to make visible the women they work with. Internally, their faith motivations and theological understanding of every human as made in God’s image encourage them to treat the women as of equal worth and in no way less deserving of stability, care and love.  

Externally, Christian organisations are supported by their faith community who can act as added resource, including through raising much–needed funds for specific purposes, and enable the organisations to have a level of independence that helps them navigate the systems that are increasingly not fit for purpose.   

Report author Dr Kathryn Hodges said: “When women are unable to access effective, trustworthy, and reliable helping services, there can be fatal consequences. Effective help for women needs to understand the impact of the things that happen to women, provide continuity of care, and build trusting, respectful relationships.” 

Chine McDonald, director of Theos, added: “International Women’s Day this year asks us to imagine a gender equal world, free from stereotypes and discrimination and calls on us to collectively break the bias against women. Women all over the world face barriers, many of them suffering from extreme and intersecting inequalities including poverty and sexual violence, and barriers to progress.   

“But closer to home, there exists a group of women often unseen, who face severe and multiple disadvantages, and who are being failed by health and social care, criminal justice, housing and wider policy in the UK unable to meet the complex needs these women face.  

“We hope that by focusing on the important role Christian organisations in the social care sector can play in tackling the disadvantages women face, we can demonstrate the role of faith in society and how people motivated by their faith can contribute to flourishing communities.” 

The report will be profiled in an online webinar and panel discussion at 12.30pm on Wednesday, 24 March, in which expert speakers will draw on themes that emerged from the research. Book your place here. 

[Notes to editors] 

1. Theos’ new report ‘Valuing Women: Making Women Visible’ will be launched on Tuesday, March 8th. An advanced copy of this report is attached under embargo. 

2. The report online launch event is on 24th March. More information can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/working-9-to-5am-work-and-its-limits-in-the-post-covid-world-tickets-160968239337  

3. For more information, or to arrange an interview please contact Lizzie Harvey (Head of Communications, Theos) on 07778 160 052  

4. Kathryn Hodges is a registered social worker with over twenty years’ leadership and practice experience in social care, research, and higher education. She co–founded PraxisCollab, a social enterprise providing social research, training, and consultancy. She is also a visiting fellow at the Bakhita Centre, St Mary’s University.  

5. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.  

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

Theos is delighted to announce the appointment of Chine McDonald as its new Director. 

Currently Head of Community Fundraising and Public Engagement at Christian Aid, Chine will join the Theos team in January 2022, taking over the leadership role from Elizabeth Oldfield. 

A highly–respected author, public theologian, speaker and broadcaster with 16 years’ experience in journalism, media and communications, Chine brings with her a wealth of executive and non–executive leadership experience across faith, media and international development organisations. 

Having studied Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University, Chine is a sought–after commentator and broadcaster on religion and ethics, regularly contributing to programme slots such as the BBC’s Thought for the Day, Prayer for the Day and The Daily Service. Chine also sits on a number of charity boards including Greenbelt Festival and Christians in Media. She was previously a trustee of Bible Society. 

Commenting on her appointment, Chine said, ‘I have long admired the work of Theos: its clear–sightedness, its creativity, its ability to draw people in with differing points of view, its success at presenting to the world a credible Christian voice and a non–anxious presence in a society that can at times feel increasingly fractured. 

‘I am thrilled to be joining Theos, so ably led over the past decade by Elizabeth Oldfield, and leading it into the next phase. I am looking forward to working with the excellent team on some of the most pressing issues facing our world today and in the years to come.’ 

Speaking about the appointment, Bible Society’s CEO Paul Williams said: ‘I’m so pleased that Chine has agreed to join us as our new Director for Theos. She’ll bring fresh thinking, high energy and strong leadership to build on the strong track record of Theos as it tells a better, richer story about Christian faith as a force for good in society.’ 

Former Director Elizabeth Oldfield also shared her congratulations. ‘I am delighted that Chine is stepping into this role,’ she said. ‘She has an instinctive grasp of the dynamics of public debate, and experience of the many different and delightful groups that make up the Church. I know she will be fierce in her commitment to effective communications, intellectual and theological rigour and the good of the team.’

…….

Notes to editors

For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact Lizzie Harvey (Head of Communications, Theos) on 07778 160 052. 

Theos conducts research, publishes reports, and holds debates, seminars and lectures on the relationship between religion, politics and society in the contemporary world. We are a Christian think tank based in the UK and a part of The British and Foreign Bible Society, charity number 232759.

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

The Government is being urged to create more British public holidays and introduce measures to combat increasing unpaid overtime, following a national report into the worrying future of work.  

The report called “Just Work” by theological think tank Theos claims that unpaid overtime has increased in recent years – exacerbated by more people working from home due to Covid. The UK has long since lost the religious tradition of resting on Sundays but an alternative must now be found – for the sake of family life, mental health, and the environment argues the report. 

Set to be launched tomorrow (July 20th), the timely report follows news that the Government is considering the “right to work from home” at a time when many are calling for the “right to switch off”.  

Covid aside, the world of work is changing due to artificial intelligence and robots, ecological and climate change, and human vulnerability argues the report. If action is not taken now to protect workers from these new threats we will face a future of further infringed privacy, increased surveillance, and poor mental health. 

Dr. Madeleine Pennington, Head of Research at Theos, said: “We are calling on the Government and policymakers to stay ahead of the game in a changing world of work to help protect the mental health of the nation. And now, in what we hope is the wake of the pandemic, is the time to re–evaluate and make changes for the future. 

“We have effectively lost the space for rest and we must redress this balance. The UK has the fewest number of public holidays of comparable economies and increasing these is one way to do that.”  

The boundaries between work and leisure are dissolving rapidly, further exacerbated by the pandemic. The report raises a poignant question: “Have we been working from home or sleeping in the office?”  

With working from home comes longer hours (unpaid overtime) and increased surveillance of employees.  

This increasing use of surveillance technology on employees must be “stopped in its tracks”, claims the report. However, other technology in the workplace can have a positive impact in helping employees disconnect, like apps that only send emails during office hours. Technology is both part of the problem and the solution, it argues. 

The report, written by Paul Bickley and Barbara Ridpath, also urges the Government to help tackle the increasing hours of unpaid overtime, by encouraging employers to pay fairly for extra hours of work, or by hiring more staff to reduce overtime completely.  

Finally, Theos is also calling for the introduction of retraining resources as robots and technology replace humans in the workplace. 

Businesses should fund the retraining of people they let go, argues the think tank. It also recommends that everyone should have a training budget with contributions from employers, the Government, and individuals that can be used throughout our working lives. 

…… 

[Notes to editors] 

1. YouGov polling was carried out as part of this report in January 2021 – at the height of the third UK lockdown. Data showed quite a high dissatisfaction with work – 33% agreed that ‘work is just a way of earning to provide for life’s necessities’, compared to 16% who agreed that ‘I feel that in work I’m doing things that are really meaningful’ and just 10% who agreed that ‘I believe my current work is part of my calling and vocation’. A significant number – 45% – said that they would train for a different career if they had the opportunity.  

2. Theos’ new report Just Work by Paul Bickley and Barbara Ridpath will be launched on Tuesday, July 20th. An advanced copy of this report is attached under embargo.  

3. The report online launch event ‘Working 9 to 5(am)?: Work and its Limits in the Post–Covid World’ is at 4pm on 20th July and will focus on the question of limiting work. More information can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/working-9-to-5am-work-and-its-limits-in-the-post-covid-world-tickets-160968239337  

4. For more information, or to arrange an interview please contact Paul Bickley (Author) on 07789 943 527 or paul.bickley@theosthinktank.co.uk or Lizzie Harvey (Head of Communications, Theos) on 07778 160 052  

5. Paul Bickley is Research Fellow at Theos. His background is in Parliament and public affairs, and he holds an MLitt from the University of St Andrews’ School of Divinity. Paul is the author of Building Jerusalem? Christianity and the Labour Party (2010) and numerous Theos reports.  Barbara Ridpath is Associate Fellow at Theos. She served as Director of St Paul’s Institute at St Paul’s Cathedral from 2014–18, and then as a member and subsequently Chair of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group of the Church of England. She is the co–author of two Theos publications and also serves as a non–executive director of two financial organisations, and on the International Advisory Board of the Institute for Business Ethics.  

6. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society. 

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

British councils and policymakers are being urged to make better use of the UK’s 45,000 churches and their vast resources to help bring communities together in a post–Covid–19 world, where loneliness and inequality look set to rise. The new national report, which has been endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and MP Danny Kruger, is especially timely following news that many councils are at risk of collapsing and resources are more stretched than ever.

The report, to be launched on Thursday (26/11) by Theos and the Free Churches Group entitled “The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People”, will call on government leaders to stop seeing churches as a “danger to social cohesion”, which are only turned to in times of crisis, but instead should recognise that they play a key role in bringing together people from different backgrounds. At a time when there are more church buildings than pubs, and community groups continue to face the brunt of council cuts, the role of the churches is more important than ever.

The report, which interviewed almost 400 people across 14 English local authorities, will claim policymakers have regarded churches as a “risk factor for division” for too long, neglecting to consider the role of churches in their communities on an everyday level. More than half of those interviewed for the report were from outside the church community, including council officers, police and healthcare professionals, elected representatives, and other faith leaders. The remaining 42% of people interviewed were from church communities up and down the country.

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, said: “Too often in studies of community cohesion the place of religion is treated either as only a problem to be solved or as an irrelevance to be ignored. This excellent report brings home the power and potential for the Church at the heart of our communities and provokes us to think what more we might do together in the future.”

In frank and honest interviews conducted as part of the report, council officers admitted that councils must look for partners to help tackle the issues around social cohesion. One reported: “We can’t do that in a formal way now because we don’t have the resources.”

However, the report does not shy away from the fact that religious belief is at the heart of churches’ motivation to create and build social cohesion amongst communities. It argues these Christian beliefs and values cannot simply be stripped away or ignored, and that the church cannot just plug the funding gap of local authorities and take on this role in a secular fashion.

Elizabeth Oldfield, director of Theos, said: “Our groundbreaking research shows churches are a gift, not a threat to social cohesion. They are quietly building strong links in communities, not in the short term, crisis driven cycles that state services and charities can end up in, but faithfully over the long term.”

According to the report, there are numerous concerning signs regarding social cohesion in the UK; including the hate crime that has emerged following Brexit, the stories behind Black Lives Matter, the loneliness of an ageing population in a transient world, the rise in inequality and the fact that Britons are less likely to share experiences with neighbours.

Despite this, the report highlights that communities are losing vital space to connect; more than 600 youth centres and clubs closed across Britain over the last six years, public libraries have reduced by 27% since 2005 and the number of pubs has fallen by 26% between 2001 and 2018. In a world where social media is on the rise, people are more likely to be working from home, and there is less communal space; isolation and a loss of shared experience is an increasing concern.

 Bolton was praised in the report for how its town churches (through Bolton Christian Community Cohesion) have worked together alongside the council, police and other faiths to promote the Bolton 2030 Vision of the city. The report also applauds the successful “Passport for Faith” scheme in Bolton where schoolchildren met and could ask questions to members of different faiths and collect stamps for their “Interfaith Passport”. It is praised as an example of how working together can “unleash significant positive energy”.

The report demonstrates that the Church has six great assets at its fingertips, which are key for aiding social cohesion in communities:

·       Buildings – to hold community events (of which many are secular including mother and toddler groups, food banks, LGBT meet–ups etc).

·       Networks – that bring people together from different backgrounds and can be used to send information quickly into communities in times of need.

·       Leadership – not just faith leadership at a formal level but also encouraging and nurturing young Christians to lead.

·       Convening power – bringing people together offering conversational space.

·       Volunteering –providing but also helping co–ordinate volunteers and events in communities.

·       Vision – the desire to shape and transform communities is intrinsic to the core values of Christianity with its belief to “love your neighbour as yourself” at the centre of that. 

The report will be launched on Thursday, November 26 at an online event being hosted by FaithAction and the All–Party Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society. Further details on the event, including instructions on how to register, can be found here.

Notes: Between November 2018 and September 2019, Theos conducted 361semi–structured interviews with individuals across fourteen local authorities within England. Of all participants, 42% spoke on behalf of a church community (for example, church leaders, chaplains, and church–based volunteers) and the remainder were local and national stakeholders speaking in a non–church capacity (for example, council officers, police and healthcare professionals, elected representatives, and other faith leaders). Within the church sample, a range of ecclesiastical traditions were represented: just over half of church–based participants represented a “Free”, Nonconformist or Orthodox (as opposed to Catholic or Anglican) ecclesiastical tradition. 

The areas visited were: Bolton, Bradford, Bury, Cornwall, Croydon, Derby, East Lindsey, Haringey, Middlesbrough, Newham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Solihull, and Thanet.

 [Ends] 

……

[Notes to editors]

 1. Theos’ new report The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People will be launched on Thursday November 26 2020. An advanced copy of this report is attached under embargo. 

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview please contact the report’s author Dr Madeleine Pennington (Head of Research, Theos) on 07778 160 185 or Lizzie Harvey (Head of Communications, Theos) on 07778 160 052 

3. Dr Madeleine Pennington is Head of Research at Theos. She holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford, and previously worked as a research scholar in Philadelphia. She is the author of The Christian Quaker: George Keith and the Keithian Controversy (Brill: 2019) and is now working on her second book, entitled Quakers, Christ and the Enlightenment (OUP, forthcoming). Outside of Theos, she is a member of the Engaging Young Adult Friends steering group, aiming to increase age diversity among British Quakers.

 4. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

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

Churches in England are growing through community action, argues a new report from Theos and the Church Urban Fund called: Growing Good; Growth, Social Action and Discipleship in the Church of England.

The report, which includes a foreword by the new Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, calls for a Church of England volunteering service to be set up, connecting people of all faiths and none to opportunities which make a difference in their local communities. The report also argues that the Church of England should develop a broader measurement of church growth and impact, reflecting the declining centrality of Sunday services to the life of the Church.   

Over the past decade religious affiliation and church attendance in the country has continued to decline by most key metrics, however, the contribution the Church of England makes to society through its social action has increased, and is only set to increase further. COVID–19 has demonstrated the need for local churches to continue to provide essential support to their communities, through initiatives such as foodbanks. The most recent data from the Church of England found that in 2019, 77% of Church of England churches were involved in one or more forms of social action, totalling involvement in 35,000 projects nationwide, with foodbanks among the most common forms. The new report – the culmination of an extensive three–year study into the dynamics of membership and growth in the Church of England (aka. The GRA:CE project) – also finds that social action can be a route to church growth in both numerical and spiritual terms. 

One example is a church in Brockley which opened a foodbank during lockdown, and now runs a weekly social supermarket. 57–year–old Brockley resident T (Teresa) struggled to put food on the table, often going hungry. She received support from the church’s food bank when it opened and began volunteering in August. She now leads a team of other volunteers and through this, she has come to faith. 

In another example, Bosede, a 47–year–old single mum received support from a church in Hoxton when she and her daughter became homeless, and now, is exploring the idea of ordination. 

Report author Hannah Rich identifies a series of characteristics of churches that are growing numerically, flourishing through their engagement in social action, and helping people deepen their faith. She says “Spending two years visiting parish communities the length and breadth of England leaves you in little doubt of the extent of the socioeconomic challenges facing the country, even pre–COVID, but also in little doubt of the potential of the church to address this. The Church of England, in all its beauty and diversity, is well–placed to build relationships in local communities, transforming lives and growing in both depth and size in the process.” 

[Ends]

[Notes to editors]

1. Theos’ new report will be published on 9th November 2020. An advanced copy of this report and executive summary is attached under embargo. 

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview with the author, please contact Hannah Rich on 07503 187 846 or hannah.rich@theosthinktank.co.uk

3. Hannah Rich is a researcher at Theos, working on the GRACE Project since November 2017. Previously, she worked for a social innovation think tank and a learning disability charity, as well as various faith–based organisations in the UK, France and Spain. She has an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics.

4. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

You can read the report here.

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

Placing the notion of “worldviews” at the heart of Religious Education will ensure the subject remains relevant for an increasingly non–religious generation of students, argues new Theos report, Worldviews in Religious Education.

Previous polling has shown that only 12% of the 4000 surveyed pupils were prepared to admit to enjoying RE a lot. In secondary schools there is a decline in the number of pupils entering for public examinations in Religious Studies, and an increase in the number of schools not offering the subject. It seems that RE as a subject is under threat with more schools ignoring or marginalizing it and pupils increasingly not enjoying it. 

In 2018, the Commission on RE suggested a way of reinvigorating the subject by reframing it with a focus on “worldviews”. This proposed paradigm shift generated considerable debate and has not yet been adopted by the government.

Worldviews in Religious Education offers a distinctive contribution to the debate in support of the Commission’s recommendations, interpreting and developing the idea of “worldviews” and exploring its implications for the classroom. Lead author Trevor Cooling and co–authors Bob Bowie and Farid Panjwani argue that the previous “world religions” approach to Religious Education is no longer fit for purpose, and respond to various criticisms that have been made of the paradigm shift. For example, they argue that changing the focus would not dilute the proper attention that should be given to religions but that it is rather a different way of framing how that content is introduced to the students.

They argue that the exploration of both “organised” worldviews, such as Christianity, Islam and Humanism, and also “personal” worldviews, the beliefs and hidden assumptions which shape how each individual sees the world, should be at the heart of the subject going forward. RE should focus on pupils’ understanding their own worldview through their study of the worldviews of others. 

Theos Head of Research Madeleine Pennington says “Religious education in schools is a key ingredient in any cohesive society, especially as the UK becomes increasingly religiously diverse. Re–framing the subject around the study of ‘Religion and Worldviews’ promises to enliven RE for another generation.”

[Ends]

[Notes to editors]

1. Theos’ new report, Worldviews in Religious Education, will be published on 21 October 2020. An advanced copy of this report and executive summary is attached under embargo.   

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview with the authors, please contact Elizabeth Oldfield, Director of Theos, on 07875343554 elizabeth.oldfield@theosthinktank.co.uk or Trevor Cooling.

3. Professor Trevor Cooling is Professor Emeritus of Christian Education at Canterbury Christ Church University UK, and Chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC). Previously, Trevor worked as a secondary school teacher in biology and religious education, a university theology lecturer, a diocesan adviser and CEO of a Christian Education charity.

4. Professor Bob Bowie is Director of the National Institute of Christian Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, Executive Chair of the Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education, an executive officer of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values and regional editor for the International Journal of Christianity and Education.

5. Dr Farid Panjwani is Professor and Dean of the Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University, Pakistan.

6. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society. 

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

London is more religious and more socially conservative than the rest of the country, despite the city’s progressive reputation, according to new report published by the think tank Theos.

It is time to rethink prevailing views of the capital as a secular and progressive centre, the Theos report argues. Instead, the polling paints a more complex picture of Londoners, who are both significantly more religious (62% identify as religious compared to 53% across the rest of Britain ex. London) and who hold some surprisingly conservative views on social issues.

The polling, conducted for Theos by Savanta ComRes, shows that:

• most Londoners are religious (62% identify as religious compared to 53% across the rest of Britain ex. London)

• Londoners are nearly twice as likely to say that sex before marriage is at least sometimes wrong compared to the rest of Britain (24% vs 13%)

• Londoners are more likely to say that same–sex relationships are at least sometimes wrong compared to the rest of Britain (29% vs 23%)

• Londoners are more likely to say that assisted suicide in the case of an incurable illness is at least sometimes wrong compared to the rest of Britain (38% vs 27%).

The findings also unearth some interesting insights about London’s religious demography. The data found that Religious Londoners were 48% BAME compared to just 27% of non–religious Londoners. Christianity in particular was significantly more ethnically diverse in the city (31% Christians in London are BAME vs 2% across the rest of Britain. ex London).

Theos also identifies further insights around the nature of religious practice, finding that Londoners are more intensely practicing, more likely to pray, and more likely to attend a religious service than those outside the capital.

• 1 in 4 Londoners attend a religious service at least once a month vs 1 in 10 in rest of Britain (ex. London)

• Religious Londoners are twice as likely as religious people in other parts of the country to attend a service twice a month or more (31% vs 15%)

• 56% London Christians pray regularly compared to 32% of Christians in the rest of Britain

Religious Londoners are also good neighbours.

• Christian Londoners are more likely to say that they will donate to a charitable initiative than non–religious Londoners (76 vs. 68%).

• Christian Londoners are more like to say that they would help their neighbours with a simple task than non–religious Londoners (92% vs. 86%)

• Half of Christians (49%) and non–Christian religious adults (53%) say that they are likely to volunteer regularly for a local charitable initiative, compared to 40% of non–religious Londoners

The report argues that London’s leaders and policy makers should take more account of religious communities and their role in providing social welfare.

Elizabeth Oldfield, the director of Theos, said:

“When we think about London, we might think about the global city with a reputation for progressive politics. But this is only half the story. London is also a city of surprises. This polling shows that London is in fact more socially conservative than the rest of the country.

“There is no doubt religion has an impact on this. Religious Londoners drive more conservative social views, even when those views are held by a minority of Londoners overall.

“The great success story of London has been its ability to welcome and accommodate opinions from across the political spectrum. The city still has the capacity to shock us – and this is one of the things which makes London one of the most dynamic, complex and interesting cities in the world.”

[ENDS]

[Notes to editors]

1. Theos’ new report, Religious London, will be published on 24 June 2020. An advanced copy of this report and data tables are attached under embargo.

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview with the report’s author Paul Bickley please contact Lizzie Stanley, Theos Head of Communications, 07778 160 052;lizzie.stanley@theosthinktank.co.uk

3. Paul Bickley is Research Fellow at Theos. His background is in Parliament and public affairs, and he holds an MLitt from the University of St Andrews’ School of Divinity. Paul is the author of Building Jerusalem? Christianity and the Labour Party (2010), People, Place, and Purpose: Churches and Neighbourhood Resilience (2019) amongst other Theos reports.

4. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

Methodology:

Savanta ComRes interviewed 2,023 British adults aged 18+ online between 17th–20th January 2020 and 1,005 London adults aged 18+ online between 17th–23rd January 2020. GB data are weighted to be representative of all British adults by key demographic categories including age, gender, region and social grade. London data are weighted to be representative of all London adults by key demographic factors including age, gender and social grade.

You can find the data tables for this research here.

Savanta ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

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

Theos launches a new report ‘Bridging the Gap: Economic Inequality and Church Responses in the UK’.

UK churches can make a unique contribution to combatting economic inequality, and their contribution is more needed and important than ever, writes Simon Perfect in a new Theos report ‘Bridging the Gap: Economic Inequality and Church Responses in the UK’.

The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe, with the top 20% of households receiving nearly half of all disposable household income. We now face a looming economic crisis, with COVID-19 exacerbating inequalities and hitting the poor the hardest. According to the Resolution Foundation, a third of employees in the lowest 20% of earnings have lost their jobs, been furloughed or lost hours or pay.

The new report, which launches today, sets out the scale of economic inequality in the UK, the theological case against it, and the practical responses of UK churches – from using their investments to pressure companies to pay fair tax and curb excessive bonuses, to helping empower local people to tackle low pay through community organising. It also shows that churches need to do more, to become lead voices in a national conversation about how to reduce economic inequality in the aftermath of COVID-19.

Its recommendations for churches centre on using their resources to help reduce economic inequality practically; challenging the problematic assumptions about human nature and society which underpin economic inequality; and advocating for an economy with a moral purpose beyond improving individual well-being.

Simon Perfect, the author of the report, says:

Economic inequality is a spiritual as well as a social ill; Archbishop Justin Welby called it “the most destabilizing and unjust feature of our own society”. Churches have started to move beyond their traditional focus on poverty to tackle economic inequality as well. But COVID-19 shows us they need to do more. This report makes the case that churches should become champions against economic inequality, using their resources to help tackle it, and their voices to make it a national priority.

The full report and summary/recommendations are attached.

[Ends]

[Notes to editors]

1. Theos’ new report, Bridging the Gap: Economic Inequality and Church Responses in the UK, will be published on 11 June 2020. An advanced copy of this report and executive summary is attached under embargo.

2. For more information, or to arrange an interview with Simon Perfect, please contact Lizzie Stanley, Theos Head of Communications, 07778 160 052 lizzie.stanley@theosthinktank.co.uk

3. Simon Perfect is a researcher at Theos think tank and a tutor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he leads courses exploring Muslim communities in Britain and in other minority settings. Simon read History at the University of Cambridge and has an MA in the Study of Religions from SOAS.

4. Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

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

Theos Think Tank and St Paul’s Institute launch a new report examining personal, corporate, and public debt in the UK within a moral framework.

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

68 per cent of British people think lenders have too much power over borrowers. The finding comes from new online polling conducted by YouGov for the think tank Theos and St Paul’s Institute, as part of new research into debt. 

This research is being launched at a time when more than 16 million people in the UK have less than £100 in savings. Personal debt is now at 90 per cent of GDP while government borrowing is at wartime levels and unsecured debt is at an all–time high.

In the poll, over a quarter of those who have been in debt in the last two years (27 per cent) said they had been badly affected by it in their daily lives. One third (33 per cent) who had suffered debt in the last two years said that it had a negative effect on their relationships with friends and family. 

The impact of debt on our relationships is of crucial importance when evaluating debt today, according to researcher Dr Nathan Mladin who says, “Debt is ultimately a form of social interaction, so must be assessed as such. There are debt relations that clearly harm individuals and communities (e.g. payday loans with excessive interest that trap people into debt), and others that contribute, directly or indirectly, to their wellbeing.” 

The findings come ahead of the launch of a new report into the ethics of borrowing and lending, and its impact on families, communities and nations. “Forgive Us Our Debts”: lending and borrowing as if relationships matter is co–authored by Dr Nathan Mladin of Theos and Barbara Ridpath on behalf of St Paul’s Institute. 

The report argues that debt is not just an economic issue but must be seen as fundamentally about relationships between debtors and lenders, relationships which need to be reimagined. Where once a borrower went to their local bank to talk about a loan, most often now an agency provides an algorithmic credit score for that borrower, making relationships increasingly distant and anonymous and leaving the vulnerable often most disadvantaged. 

Drawing on Christian ethics and in consultation with City professionals, academics, and representatives of the debt and money advice sectors, the report suggests: 

– An investigation into greater use of debt mitigation – or forgiveness – done appropriately and without risking the foundations of our financial system ie. IVAs at the personal level, bankruptcy as an option at a small business level and debt forgiveness for the poorest countries at a national level. 

– The re–establishment of a usury rate, i.e. a level of interest above which rates are deemed exploitative. 

– Corporate debt to be put on an equal tax footing with equity, eliminating the tax deductibility of debt and considering the elimination of the tax on corporate dividends. 

– More investment (private, civic and governmental) in growing the social lending sector. 

– Increased restrictions on consumer credit advertising. 

– Rethinking UK University tuition loans including an exploration of the introduction of needs–based financing. 

The full report is available to download here. A short video explainer is available to watch here.  

Notes for Editors 

“Forgive Us Our Debts” will be launched on 30 January 2019 at St Paul’s Cathedral. The event will discuss how debt relations could be re–imagined to boost both productivity and human flourishing, recognising the intrinsic worth and dignity of the individual, and making it possible for everyone to participate in the common life. 

Speakers include Sir Hector Sants, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, Eve Poole and the report’s authors Barbara Ridpath and Nathan Mladin. 

Nathan Mladin is a Researcher at Theos. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from Queen’s University Belfast, and is the author of several Theos publications. 

Barbara Ridpath spent most of her career in finance. Until recently, she was Director of St Paul’s Institute at St Paul’s Cathedral, which works on issues of ethics in finance. 

Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society. 

For comment or further details contact Lizzie Stanley lizzie.stanley@theosthinktank.co.uk  07778 160 052 or Nathan Mladin on 07847 462 061 

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc.  Total sample size was 2054 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 17th – 18th January 2019.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+). The full set of data tables can be downloaded here. 

Commendations

“This short book is an excellent introduction to Christian thinking about debt… It offers distinct policy recommendations, with which some will certainly disagree, but because of this, is a good basis for an extended conversation on the subject. It deserves to be read widely.” 

Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, Chairman, Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics 

“This report engages with the issue of debt thoughtfully and thoroughly from a Christian perspective. It makes clear how the power of debt can shape relationships, positively as well as negatively. It avoids simplistic moralising, and it points out ways ahead. I am delighted to recommend it.” 

Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury 

Michael Gove MP delivers the Theos 2018 annual lecture on environmental justice, stewardship and the moral purpose of government.

Michael Gove delivered a detailed and passionate lecture tonight on the UK Government’s commitment to tackling climate change. Asked about his commitment to the brief he said, “half an hour is now a long time in politics… but I am very glad to have stayed where I am.” Touching on carbon emissions, food supply, and extinction of various species, Mr. Gove quoted St Francis as well as his namesake, the current Pope.

Arguing humans, “have caused environmental damage and deterioration on a dramatic scale in the last century, with pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, habitat erosion, soil depletion, soil depletion and deforestation,” Mr. Gove suggested many of the answers needed lie within religious traditions. As well as Christianity, he touched on Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Sikh concepts.

Extensively quoting from the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si which calls for Christians to work for social and environmental justice, the Secretary of State endorsed the Holy Father’s call for both individual and national action. Mentioning the former Pope, St John Paul II, Mr. Gove identified the, “pressure to tread more lightly on the planet,” which, “is coming from the young. Inter–generational solidarity is not a nice to have – it’s a basic question of justice because the world in which we live belongs also to those who will follow us.

He encouraged people of all faiths and none to be, “not just careful stewards of creation but also warriors for social justice” in seeking to, “protect our natural inheritance and bring a richer life to more.”

“We believe creation is a gift we must preserve,” Mr. Gove said, as he urged the 250 strong audience, “to combat poverty and restore dignity to the underprivileged at the same time as protecting nature.” He ended by stating, “as religious leaders down the ages have urged, we can be better stewards of our earth and plant a harvest for the world.”

Asked whether staying in the EU would have made the collective action now required to tackle climate change easier, he pointed out that “virtuous competition” between the EU and the UK had already led to each raising their commitment to reducing single use plastics.

Notes for Editors

Michael Gove is Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and MP for Surrey Heath. After Oxford University, he began a career in journalism, culminating in his role as a columnist on The Times. Before taking on his current role, he served as Secretary of State for Education, Chief Whip and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

For comment or further details please contact Lizzie Stanley on 07778 160 052 or lizzie.stanley@theosthinktank.co.uk

A transcript of the lecture is available on the Theos website here. Alternatively you can re–watch the live stream video on our twitter feed @theosthinktank

NB. An earlier version of this press release is available upon request.

Theos Think Tank launches a new report on the role of churches in building neighbourhood resilience – helping them overcome challenge and disruptive change.

· New polling indicates overall pessimism about the future after Britain’s departure from the European Union, with Scotland particularly gloomy about several aspects of life in Britain after we leave the EU.  Only a third of GB adults say they are optimistic about the prospects of the next generation (34%)

·  Nearly half of Scottish adults think there will be less investment in public services after Britain’s departure from the EU (47%), compared to 36% of English respondents

·  Across the English regions, the North East is the most negative about the future after Britain’s departure from the European Union, in spite of strong support in the referendum. Think tank calls for churches to help Brexit–proof the North East.

Communities across the country appear increasingly concerned about their future after Brexit, although the English are more positive than respondents in Scotland or Wales.

In England, over a third (35%) of adults thought the British economy will improve after we leave the European Union, while only three in ten (29%) Scottish adults agreed. Only 1 in 10 Scottish voters felt that, “people from different communities in my area will get on better after we leave the EU” (10%), compared to nearly one in five (17%) of English respondents.

Within England, the North East stood out as a particularly negative about the future. Adults in the North East are significantly more likely to agree there will be fewer work opportunities in their region after Brexit compared to other regions (42% agree vs. 29% in England overall). Half (51%) agree there will be less investment in public services, compared to 37% nationally.

Respondents in England were more likely to support a role for churches in helping communities get through difficult times – 44% agreed that they would like to see churches and religious help provide some of the services that local authorities can no longer afford, significantly higher than the proportion of Scottish adults who said the same (37%).

The polling has been published to coincide with the release of new research from think tank Theos which argues churches should focusing on helping communities become more ‘resilient’ overall rather than using all their resources to meet short–term emergency needs. The research also calls for the development of a new ‘Community Wealth Fund’ to upgrade existing infrastructure in vulnerable communities that are likely to suffer the most if the economy struggles after Brexit.

Other recommendations include encouraging churches to move away from simply providing short term ‘charitable’ solutions and asking local councils to encourage community groups by giving them use of better facilities.

Theos, the religion and society think tank, focused the research in Byker, Shildon, and North Ormesby in a project in partnership with the William Leech Research Fellowship – which supports research into Christian social action across the North East. Residents and church members in these communities were a core part of the research.

A comprehensive report, ‘People, Place, and Purpose: Churches and Neighbourhood’ contains a series of recommendations including:

– Churches should move away from ‘give–away’ charitable models, focus on the training and development of local leaders, and collaborate more closely with other community organisations through formal neighbourhood partnerships.

– Local authorities should conduct neighbourhood audits of community facilities, using them to build on and support facilities that are already there, including churches. Public authorities should work harder to make their own facilities available for grassroots community use and churches need to work harder to make churches more suitable for community use.

– To make significant new funds available, a new Community Wealth Fund – similar to sovereign wealth funds – could be established. A Shale Wealth Fund is already being developed to support communities near shale gas extraction sites. The Community Wealth Fund could be funded through multiple sources – the proposed post–Brexit shared prosperity fund, dormant assets, or an endowment.

Report author Paul Bickley said: “Most people are pessimistic – or at least very uncertain – about Britain’s future after our departure from the EU. Some areas – Scotland, London and now the North East – are particularly worried about jobs, investment in public services, and social cohesion.

We think community institutions like churches will play an important role in helping vulnerable communities navigate what might be a bumpy time. Local social action can make a difference between a community being a good place to live and entering into serious decline.

Active churches can really help, but they help most when they focus on long–term challenges rather than simply plugging short term needs.”

Notes for Editors

Paul Bickley is Director of Political Programme at Theos. His background is in Parliament and public affairs, and he holds an MLitt from the University of St Andrews’ School of Divinity.

Theos is the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis, and exists to enrich the debate about faith and society.

For comment or further details please contact Lizzie Stanley on 07778 160 052 or lizzie.stanley@theosthinktank.co.uk

The full report is available to download here

Methodology: ComRes surveyed 2,031 GB adults between 26th and 28th October 2018. Data were weighted to be representative of all GB adults by age, gender, region and social grade. Base sizes for some sub–regions are small and therefore should be treated as indicative: North East (n=85), Scotland (n=180).

The full set of data tables can be found here. 

Theos Think Tank launches a new report on religious violence with reference to public attitudes revealed by ComRes polling.

Nearly half of British adults (47%) agree that ‘the world would be a more peaceful place if no one was religious‘, and a remarkable 70% agree that ‘most of the wars in world history have been caused by religions’.

However, over four in five (81%) British adults think that it is religious extremists, not religions themselves, that are to blame for violence, according to a new poll from ComRes and the think tank Theos (with only 12% disagreeing with this statement). Similarly, 61% think that ‘the teachings of religions are essentially peaceful’.

The poll marks the publication of a new Theos report entitled Killing in the Name of God: Addressing Religiously Inspired Violence, written by Christian ethicist Professor Robin Gill.

The report explores the apparent rise of religious violence over the last generation, as well as media coverage of it. Professor Gill shows that there has been a great deal of confusion and caricature in the way that New Atheists, like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, talked about religion and violence.

However, Gill also argues that there are passages in religious texts that, handled badly, can lend themselves to a violent interpretation. Killing in the Name of God takes a careful look at these texts, and shows how Muslims, Jews and Christians can and should read them in a way that builds peace rather than violence.

In a blog series accompanying the report, Prof. Ian Linden, Associate Professor in the Study of Religion at SOAS, argues that although religious extremism captures the headlines, secular violence, through authoritarian and extreme nationalist ideologies, is actually far more dangerous.

Nick Spencer, Research Director at Theos who wrote a foreword to the report said:

“Many people strongly associate religion and violence, although even more think that religious teaching is essentially peaceful and that religious violence is down to extremists, not to religion itself.

“This is a confusing picture, but it still poses a real challenge to all religious people to denounce all forms of religious violence and to handle their sacred texts with care.

Robin Gill’s report provides valuable resources to do just that.” 

Notes for Editors: 

1. The full report is available to be downloaded

2. The full blog series is available at https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment

3. Data tables are available at https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/cmsfiles/Theos_Religion-Violence-June-2018_tables.pdf

4. Professor Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Kent.

5. Theos is a religion and society think tank with a broad Christian basis.

Theos Think Tank launches new research based on interviews with representatives of faith communities in the vicinity of Grenfell Tower.

As we mark the first anniversary of Grenfell, a new report from Theos Think Tank examines what the diverse faith communities around the Tower did during and after the fire, how they were able to do it, and what we can learn from it. Many commentators remarked on the level and effectiveness of the faith groups’ practical aid to those in need, particularly in the absence of a more co–ordinated official effort. At least fifteen separate centres run by faith communities responded. Aid included acting as evacuation areas, receiving, sorting and distributing donations, offering accommodation, drawing up lists of the missing, supporting emergency services, patrolling the cordon, providing counselling and supporting survivors seeking housing. In the first three days alone at least 6000 people were fed by a range of faith communities.  This is alongside the more expected provision of space for prayer and reflection and hosting interfaith services of memorial and lament.  This is the first detailed study of that response.

Based on interviews with representatives of churches, synagogues, mosques, and gurdwaras in the vicinity, as well as from statutory bodies and emergency services, the report charts the faith groups’ response in the immediate hours, days and weeks after the tragedy.

The report shows how faith groups were able to respond in the way they did for a number of key reasons.

First, they were trusted. By being embedded in the community – indeed, by being made up of people from the local community itself – the faith groups had the networks, knowledge and relationships that enabled them to mobilise volunteers to reach people quickly and confidently.

Second, they were committed. The faith groups had history and roots in the area that went back decades, and were known to be there for the long haul. This enabled them to respond in the medium and longer term, just as much as the short term.

Third, they were invested. Most faith groups in the area had not only been around for a long time but had invested in and run buildings and facilities that they could make available quickly and flexibly.

In addition to this, the distinctive faith ethos of these groups enabled and encouraged them to respond with openness, hospitality and religious sensitivity to those in need.

The report outlines this activity, and while acknowledging that no response to a tragedy of this nature is foolproof, offers a number of lessons for faith groups and any others wanting to serve their community in the case of a tragedy. These include be visible, be flexible, and intentionally build networks within the community and with statutory bodies and emergency services.

Yvette Williams, Justice4Grenfell said:

“This is a welcome report and I hope it will stand as a timely insight for the future. The community has leant on many local faith leaders for strength and support following the disaster.  All faith leaders should recognise the fantastic response they gave to the fire.”

Elizabeth Oldfield, Director of Theos said:

“Grenfell was a horrendous tragedy, which ended over 70 lives, damaged hundreds more, and shocked millions. Yet, while it revealed signs of vulnerability, inequality and even indifference, it also showed a community, including diverse people of faith, that could respond with real courage and commitment. We hope this report will help us learn the lessons of this tragedy, and equip faith communities elsewhere to best serve those around in times of crisis as well as day–to–day.”

The report includes commendations from Abdurahman Sayed, CEO of Al–Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre and Dr Alan Everett, Vicar of St Clement and St James.

Notes for editors

1.      Theos is a religion and society think tank with a broad Christian basis

2.      The report will be launched at an event at St Clement and St James on the evening Wednesday 6th June at 6pm. For more details see here

3.      A full copy of the report is available for download here

4.      The author of the report, Amy Plender, is available for interview. Please email amy.plender@theosthinktank.co.uk or call 07875343554

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP gives the Theos annual lecture 2017. Read the full text of his speech below:

This is the full text of the Theos Annual Lecture 2017. It was given by former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP on the 28/11/17

There was an indie band in the 80s and 90s called Pop Will Eat Itself.  The name of the band is a fascinating hypothesis and one for a different lecture for a different think tank…and indeed one that I would absolutely love to give.  But my hypothesis today is that in this country and across the world, Liberalism will eat itself.  Is eating itself.  May already have eaten itself.

Why? Because if you say you favour diversity and pluralism, then you must oppose all attempts at assimilation and forced conformity.  You may like the idea that people will think the same as you, but you must not aim to build a society where you engineer that via legal or social pressure.  And it is especially on this this latter point that liberalism is at risk.

John Stuart Mill is the father of modern liberalism.  He spoke of many threats to liberty.  Amongst the greatest that he identified, is the tyranny of opinion.  In ‘on Liberty’, he says the following.

“In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.  Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.  Eccentricity has always abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage which it contained.  That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.’  

Written in 1859.  Spine–tinglingly relevant to 2017.

Mill says that the quality of our ideas and of our society is enhanced by free expression of competing world views.  Society is stale without that.  He is clear that our liberty is at risk when we all feel a pressure to start thinking the same things.  Even more at risk when it is the express intention of those who hold those views to encourage this universal assimilation. 

Social media feeds this.  Maybe ten years ago we thought social media would lead to a greater democracy, greater individual empowerment, the flowering of thousands of unmediated, unfiltered, unspun viewpoints and opinions.  How naïve does that sound now?  Today social media fuels groupthink, pack mentality and depressing conformity – not to mention a disgraceful lack of civility and decency.  The tyrants of opinion have their secret police behind millions of keyboards.

Christians have more reason than most to be alarmed.  Christians also have a history which gives us a clue as to where this may be going. 

When I was a young Christian at University, there was a challenge we used to hear at Christian Union meetings.  It went like this.  If it was against the law to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?  

It’s a good challenge.  We are told not to be ashamed of Christ, not to do a Peter and disown him, or do a Judas and discard him.  We are told not to hide our light, to live and speak in ways that will draw people to ask us about our faith – and then we are told that we should always be ready with an answer for anyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that we have.  

In other words, live openly as a Christian, and seek to share the gospel when you can because the Bible makes it crystal clear that this is a matter of eternal life and death.

It’s a good challenge, but of course in reality it’s not against the law to be a Christian.  On Sunday I go to church with my family, I do so freely.  My pastor preaches faithfully from the Bible without compromising or watering it down, and he does so freely. 

 I am open about being a Christian and I serve in the British Parliament as such with no threat to my liberty.

If anyone tries to threaten my life or liberty for seeking to live as a Christian, I can count on the state to protect me.

If you want to live freely as a Christian, you would struggle to find a country as committed to your liberty as this one.  Christians who complain about a loss of liberty need to start by acknowledging that reality.  And being grateful for it.  So let me make it clear now that I do acknowledge this and I am grateful.

But genuine Christianity has always has been countercultural.  It will always go against the norms of the day.  

In Revelation 17, we read about the future final fall of Babylon.  Babylon: materialistic, complacent, ambivalent towards the poor and vulnerable, self–satisfied and proud.  

Revelation was written by John in about 90 AD.  The Babylonian empire had been dead for hundreds of years by then, so why mention it?  

Because Babylon stands for every empire, every society where human beings choose to live for themselves and not for God.  So, Babylon in 90 AD was Rome, and today its…well, its us. Its this.  Its our society.  

And as Christians, we are to live as aliens in such a land.

Why, well because the first commandment is this ‘ I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me’.  So, your god shall not be your money, your career, your opinion of yourself, your sex life, your image, your identity, your comfort, your holidays, your friends or family, your possessions, your life..’

To be a Christian is to deny yourself and follow Christ, so Christianity rubs against every earthly culture.  It is meant to.  You should be a decent, good mannered citizen in Babylon, but you should never feel at home.  You are to be a resident alien.

Five minutes on social media will give you a window into a society which condemns and judges, that leaps to take offence and pounces to cause it – liberals condemning those who don’t conform as nasty and hateful, the right condemning liberals as fragile snowflakes; but Christianity rebukes both sides: don’t judge, show kindness, show gentleness, show patience – especially to those who don’t deserve it.  

Five minutes in the high street, now in the run up to Christmas, will show you a society hooked on materialism, five minutes eavesdropping in the cafes or glancing at peoples facebook updates will show you a society hooked on individual achievement, on the achievement of your children, a society hooked on self–worth and pride.  

Christianity tells you that everything and everyone you have in your life is a temporary gift from God and that we should worship the giver, not the things that have been given.  

Five minutes surfing TV channels will show you a society hooked on self–esteem, self–worth, living to be true to ourselves… Christianity says that you are worth a vast amount to the God of the universe, but that you must humble yourself before him and live for him and others, not for yourself.

Christianity is deeply counter cultural.  It offends us because it tells us that we are not our own, that we belong to God.  It tells us that we are not good, that our biggest need is not food, water, money, relationships, success or acceptance by society… our greatest need is forgiveness from the God who made us.  Christianity is a two–fingered salute to your ego.  

So, what earthly help can this countercultural belief system call upon as it battles against inevitable disdain?  The answer is simple.  The answer is Liberalism.

British Liberalism is founded in the battle for religious liberty.  The non–conformist, evangelical Christian groups that were persecuted by a society which favoured adherence only to the established church, built a liberal movement that championed much wider liberty, for women, for other religious minorities, non–religious minorities, for cultural and regional minorities, for the poor and vulnerable. 

I think Liberalism is better than Conservativism because it doesn’t accept the status quo, the absence of freedom for the sake of tradition and the convenience of the powerful, instead Liberalism asks tough questions and doesn’t accept glib answers.  I think Liberalism is better than socialism because Liberalism dictates that we must all be free, but that we must not all be the same.

Liberalism has apparently won.  Even members of the Conservative and Labour parties call themselves liberals today.  Let’s be honest, you can’t work in the media without being a liberal. Even most of the journalists who write for the right wing press are in truth liberals.  

Despite my best efforts, the Liberal Democrats have not won.  But irrespective of my efforts, Liberalism has.

In the 4th century, in Rome, Christianity won, in that it became the establishment world view.   Up to that point there had been three hundred years of persecution and exclusion for the followers of Jesus Christ.

Christianity was an emancipationist doctrine at that time, it then became adopted as the official religion of the empire and within a few years it goes from being emancipationist to – at the centre of the empire at least – being oppressive in its worst forms.

But the church morphed from persecuted to dominant in a short time, and in doing so it lost sight of its own internal truth of reliance on Christ alone and self–sacrificing love.  The state with which that church merged began to oppress different minorities, to show the same intolerance and violence towards other groups that Christians had endured for so many years.

Liberalism faces the same fate today.

Although I am giving this year’s Theos lecture, I don’t want to make it all about me.  But the truth is that I am an uncomfortable case study.  I suspect that this is why you asked me!

I am a liberal to my finger tips.  I’m not pretending to be a liberal. I didn’t become a liberal as a cunning career move, or to impress a girl or to boost my social standing.  I joined the liberals when I was sixteen because I am a liberal, funnily enough.  I believe in the equal worth and value of every person, I believe that every person should be free to live as they see fit, to hold their beliefs, their conscience, their world view and to express them as they wish.   I reject forced conformity whether that comes from the law or from social pressure.

As Liberal Democrat leader I spent much of the time I should have been using to set out the party’s case, batting away questions to do with my faith.  ‘Yes, we see how you’ve voted Mr Farron, and we hear what you say…but what do you think…?’  

Well, as a Christian, I hold to the Bible’s teaching.  

I also hold to my liberalism, to the need to treat every person as equally valuable and equally deserving of freedom.  That’s John Stewart Mills liberalism, that is Gladstone’s liberalism, that is Hobhouse’s liberalism, that is Grimond’s liberalism. 

Look through history.  Where the gospel is preached, other freedoms follow.  The abolition of slavery led by evangelical Christians most notably Wilberforce, the laws to prevent industrial exploitation led by committed Christian Lord Shaftesbury, the ending of the cruel practice of Sati in India after campaigning by Christian missionaries especially William Carey.

This is not a coincidence.  If you believe that you have been saved by grace, by a God who commands that you then show that same selfless love to others, if you believe that God created every person of equal value and dignity and in his own image, and if you believe that you are answerable to that God, then that belief will not leave you unmoved.  That belief will define your values and it will define your actions.  Christianity, then, is the essential underpinning of liberalism and, indeed, of democracy.  

If our values are relativistic, if they are shifting, if they depend upon the temporary norms of this age, then the freedoms you bank upon today, cannot be guaranteed tomorrow.  Our liberties are in the hands of unstable forces, we cannot have confidence that our rights will still be our rights from one generation to the next because we cannot call upon any authority in support of those rights.  

Christianity provides the values that permit liberalism to flourish.

In discarding Christianity, we kick away the foundations of liberalism and democracy and so we cannot then be surprised when what we call liberalism stops being liberal.

My experience is that although liberalism has won, it is now behaving like the established church of the empire in 4th and 5th centuries.  It has gained ascendancy and lost itself in the process.  It isn’t very liberal any more.  

So many who declare themselves to be liberals, really aren’t.  

John Stuart Mill may be spinning in his grave.

Some criticised Mill – especially at the time – saying that because he wasn’t especially religious that his thinking didn’t account for those who have convictions that drive them to believe that there is ultimate truth and that they therefore have a duty to impose those truths on society.

That is a view that some conservative philosophers have used to dismiss Mill’s liberalism.  And it’s actually an assumption that is at the core of the questions I received during the election from people who would be appalled to be bracketed with right wing Victorian philosophers.

I believe in God.  I believe that Jesus is His long promised Christ or Messiah.  When Jesus says that all who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life; and that he is the only way to the Father, I believe him.  

I share God’s wish that everyone would come to believe this.  It breaks my heart that people don’t.  But God hasn’t created us robots, we have real choices, you and I matter and every human being is accountable, the decisions we make are real decisions, He allows us to reject Him and who am I to disagree with that? Edmund Burke said that all the laws against the Godless have not saved one single soul.  To put it another way, what is the point in legislating to make people who are not Christians behave as though they were?

It isn’t liberal, it is counterproductive and it does not follow the Bible’s teaching.

One of the most famous stories about Jesus’ life is recorded in Luke 19.  Zacchaeus is a tax collector – in that society, that would have made him a collaborator and an extortionist. More unpopular than politicians and journalists combined!  Zacchaeus worshipped the god of materialism.  But Zacchaeus is interested in Jesus. He’s not a tall man so he climbs a tree to get a glimpse as Jesus goes by, and Jesus spies him out and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house.  Zacchaeus is delighted.  You see, Jesus doesn’t push him away because of his wrong doing, he accepts him as he is, but he doesn’t expect him to stay as he is.  Zacchaeus’ response is to seek to put right what he has done wrong – to offer to repay four–fold anyone he has cheated and to give away half his possessions to the poor.  

You see, that’s the Biblical pattern.  You come to Jesus in your wretched state, you don’t contribute to your forgiveness or salvation one jot, you receive that forgiveness… and then you must go and turn away from your previous life, deny yourself and seek to follow Christ and his teaching.  You don’t have to clean yourself up first, you don’t have to be good for a bit and then try applying to become a Christian to see if you’ve made the grade.  The point is that none of us has made the grade, but that’s OK, because Jesus has made the grade, and he chose to die in your place.

That passage also reminds us of two really important Biblical truths.  One, we are all equal under God and we must not judge others or else we bring judgement on ourselves.  Two, God will judge. He is not indifferent to our choices.  It is not unloving or judgemental for Christians then to point that out.

But making people live as Christians when they aren’t, is unwise, ungodly, counterproductive and illiberal.  As a Liberal I say it is wrong, and as a Christian I say it is wrong and it doesn’t even work!

To believe in the Bible’s teaching and to also believe in people’s right to reject it and to live as they choose, is about as close to a pure application of liberalism as you could get.  

And yet so many people who count themselves as liberals can’t or won’t grasp this.  In part this is down to the growth of religious illiteracy in many parts of our society, but that’s not a good enough excuse.

The questions to me came thick and fast during those seven weeks of the campaign, mostly they went along the lines of…’ but how can you believe what the Bible says and lead a liberal party?’  Answer: easy, you just need to be a liberal.  That people asked that question, makes me seriously doubt that they understand liberalism even though they may preach it.   Liberalism has eaten itself.

When Jacob Rees Mogg declares his views on the application of faith, he gets mocked, but no one is surprised or confused – he is a traditional conservative, of course he believes those things. Or so the thinking goes.

When a liberal turns out to be an evangelical Christian, people are surprised or confused.  If you are one of those who are surprised and confused… then you are a victim.  A victim of liberalism’s comprehensive triumph… where the main loser, is liberalism.  

Now let me be very clear, I handled loads of the questions that I got, badly, I sometimes demonstrated a lack of wisdom, please don’t think that I see myself as some sort of noble victim.  

I took on the leadership of the Liberal Democrats at the lowest point in our history.  It was like becoming the manager of a newly relegated football club.  The board, the players and the fans were shell–shocked and devastated.  I had no transfer kitty.  You might, if you were being generous, say that I avoided further relegation, prevented us plunging down through the divisions, stabilised things, stopped the rot, gave us self–belief, purpose and increased the attendances… and what with Witney, Richmond park and local election results we had a really impressive and morale boosting FA cup run… but it would also be fair to say that immediate promotion back to the premier league was an achievement I didn’t deliver.  

What is certain is that following our annihilation in 2015 after the coalition, I was the first liberal leader in history to lead a party that wasn’t even the third party in British politics.  That meant that every second of media exposure I got was precious, and every second spent batting away theological questions was a second wasted.  I could have given bigger, better answers but that would have eaten up even more time.  And anyway, I was running for Prime Minister not Pope!  But I realised that my lot would be either to compromise my faith and say easy things to fit with current secular thinking; or else to continue to be the party’s main spokesperson but incapable of getting the message across because of all these questions.  

So I knew that stepping down was the only thing to do.  I was right to do it.  I don’t regret it.  

It now gives me the chance to challenge the tyranny of opinion, to seek to redeem liberalism.  

John Stuart Mill talks of the value of eccentricity, using the word in the sense it would have been understood in the mid–19th century, eccentricity meaning to be off centre, not the norm.  But let’s use it in its current sense, eccentricity meaning something whacky, peculiar, probably ridiculous but essentially harmless.  

My observation is that for many years now our culture has considered that the absence of faith is the neutral position, and that the holding of a religious faith is eccentric.  In other words, an absence of faith is the standard assumption around which we build our social structures, and if you have a faith we will consider you to be eccentric in the whacky and harmless sense… so we will tolerate you, as long as you remain on the edges.  

What appears now to be happening is that while the absence of faith is still thought to be the neutral position, holding a faith is only considered to be tolerably eccentric if it is merely cultural.  But if your faith actually affects your world view in any way that puts it at odds with the mainstream, then your faith is considered to be malign and intolerable.  

I want to first say that this viewpoint is not only clearly prevalent, but staggeringly arrogant – and obviously wrong.  There is absolutely no such thing as neutrality.  The godless world view is no more nor less valid than one that trusts for example in the God of the Bible.  Every human being has a world view.  You will acquire that world view in different ways and from different sources, maybe you get it fully or in part from a book that you consider to be holy, or from your parents, from your peer group, your teachers, the media or the culture in which you are immersed.

You can’t on the one hand think that Trump or Brexit were aided by fake news and troll factories and then on the other hand believe that you have total control and critical independence over every notion or view point that you hold.  Not without being conceited in the extreme.  

So there is no neutrality.  Absence of faith is a valid world view, but it has no right to supremacy.  If you believe it does have that right, then I respect your view, but you are not a liberal.   I have often been encouraged – by well–meaning people – to make sure that my faith doesn’t influence my decisions or actions as a politician.  The more I think about it, the more daft that sounds.  Do you leave your world view at the door before you enter a room?  Do you enter every situation empty–headed and value–free?  Nope?  Well neither do I.  And neither will I.

I believe in pluralism, I am not a secularist but I believe in a secular society where there is no ‘state faith’.  That in Britain we have a church trapped as part of the furniture of the state is a waste of a church.  A boat in the water is good.  Water in the boat, is bad.  A church in the state is good, the state in the church is bad.  Really bad.  It pollutes the message of that church.  It compromises it.  Weakens its witness.  

And let’s be clear.  It is just as illiberal, and just as silly, to make atheism the state religion.  

But the threat to liberalism is far greater than faith being relegated in social standing below the absence of faith.  If you actively hold a faith that is more than an expression of cultural identity, a faith that forms the centre of your world view, you are deemed to be far worse than eccentric.  You are dangerous.  You are offensive.

And here we have the great issue.  We live in a time of identities.  People don’t choose to do things, they are things.  So, to challenge an identity is to commit a personal assault.  The rise of nationalism in this country and others, is a case in point.  We have in an extremely short time, found ourselves in a situation where it is considered that causing offence is to commit violence.

What is at the heart of a liberal society?  It is to uphold that we have a right to offend and a duty to tolerate offence.  George Orwell said ‘if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

But as Christians, we also have a duty and a desire to be kind and gentle.  Now where have we heard that before?  

So be bold in saying things that may cause offence, but do not be offensive.  

Jesus is your example.  How calmly he speaks and with such grace.  With such respect for the people he speaks to.  What patience he shows to people who reject him.  How meekly he subjects himself to their violence… and how clearly he speaks in ways that wither.  That exposes hypocrisy, that exposes lies, that exposes truth.  He launches ferocious verbal assaults on the Pharisees, he calls them hypocrites, a brood of vipers, ‘white washed tombs’ in other words, clean and attractive on the outside but full of rotting corpses on the inside.  And he spends his time with outcasts, loves the unlovable, heals the hopeless, opens up the Kingdom of God to those who don’t deserve it, but who nevertheless seek it.

Jesus was full of grace and truth.  Crucified truth oppresses nobody, but it weighs heavily upon us when we consider it – and amongst other things it is the raw fuel for liberalism.  Because if Jesus died for me, then he also died for you.  Which means that you must matter.  It means you must really really matter.

So, if we relegate Christianity then we hollow out liberalism.

Liberalism has eaten itself because it has eaten the very world view that gave birth to it, that made it possible, that makes it possible.  It’s a bit like Michael J Fox in Back to the Future, erasing himself by accidentally preventing his parents getting together.

Lets bring liberalism back to life.

Lets start by saying something gently, but which may cause offence, just to see where that gets us!

Its this.  We don’t really have shared values.  There is no unifying set of British values.  It’s a myth.  

We are fooling ourselves.  

As a Christian of course I think there are common values to all human kind, we see them in the commandments, and in one sense we don’t need to be told them because we know instinctively what is wrong and what is right – it’s one of the key proofs that God exists.  

But are there common secular values that we collectively hold here in Britain?  No, I don’t think so.  

Our values are diverse, atomised and not fully shared at all, not even within our own towns or our own families.  And don’t be surprised about this.  Secularism is a totalising creed that reduces everyone down to either consumer or regulatory units.  It speaks the language of equality and diversity but it doesn’t do it.  We’ve been atomised.  

Let me quote from the book of Judges  ‘in those days Israel had no King; everyone did as they saw fit’.  Everyone did has they saw fit.  If we have no king, no unifying code, then we will make it up as we go along.  Values are a relativistic mist that come and go.  What is true for you may be true for me, or it may not.  And it might all change tomorrow.  There is such a thing as society but it is like a ship with neither an anchor nor a rudder – just a load of people running around on deck following a few loud voices that sound temporarily convincing.  Meanwhile the boat heads in any old direction.

I am a liberal, in economic terms I am a moderate social democrat, I believe climate change is real and I want to stop it, I am a patriotic Englishman but I am also a passionate European and internationalist, I am a Bible believing Christian who seeks to live obediently to God and who actively supports the freedom of everyone to either accept or reject that.   That sums up my values.  Are we seriously saying that they are shared by the majority of British people?

People talk about shared values today – I’ve done it myself.  But when they do, what they mean is ‘these are my values – and I am going to act as though they are also yours, and will demonstrate contempt for you if you depart from them’.  

It’s time to be honest with each other.  We do NOT have shared values and the assumption that we do is dangerous.  

The phrase ‘the liberal elite’ is usually bandied about by people who aren’t liberal but who are the elite.  

Whereas I am a liberal but am not the elite.  

But the cultural leaders of our day have made the arrogant and fatal assumption that we have these shared liberal values, and have sought to enforce them via Mill’s hated tyranny of opinion and the consequences are… well,  Trump and Brexit to name two!  

Because every tyrant feeds and inspires the resistance that threatens to overthrow them, as a result of their own arrogance.  The handwringing elite in our politics, media, education and business are as guilty of creating the reactionary politics of populism as much as Murdoch and Dacre.  Why?  Because they / we assumed everyone thought the same, and dismissed with ridicule and contempt any sign of eccentricity.  

I am sometimes asked, what should a Christian be doing in politics?  Should a Christian even be involved in politics at all?  The 5th century monk Simeon Styletes, was so determined to keep away from being corrupted by the world that he lived his life for 37 years on the top of a pole in Aleppo!  I was told about this at primary school and our teacher Mrs Deakin was keen to explain that this was an example of a hermit seeking to separate himself from society…whereas we were just keen to know exactly how he managed to go to the toilet.

And I still don’t know the answer to that question… But either way, Styletes was wrong.  As Christians we are told not to be of the world, but to be in it.  So I shall not be following his example.

My aim now is to be the best constituency MP anyone has ever known, to live out my faith by loving my enemies, displaying grace and gentleness, serving those who I represent and being a voice in parliament for those who are the least powerful.  

And sometimes it will involve taking the opportunity to give a reason for the hope that I have…

You see, I am a liberal, reasonably intelligent bloke, brought up in a secular society, in a family that mostly didn’t embrace an active religious faith.  I knew people who were Christians but I prided myself on being far too strong minded to fall for all that religious nonsense.  

So how does a reasonably intelligent, modern, liberal bloke end up believing in Jesus Christ?

Well look, atheism is not the absence of belief, it is a belief in absence and therefore the absence of common values.  It’s a belief in there being no unifying truth.  But if there is no unifying truth then, by its own standard, the belief that there is no unifying truth must also be bogus.  If you declare that there is no unifying truth then it stands to reason that this declaration isn’t true either.  Ergo, atheism doesn’t exist.  And I refuse to believe in something that doesn’t exist.

In short, it occurred to me that Christianity is true.  The claims that Christ makes are so direct and so clear that we can’t pretend that Christianity is just a nice philosophy – its either horribly wrong or life–changingly right.  Its claims to ultimate truth are insistent and deliberate.  Those New Testament documents are written so soon after the events, by so many eye witnesses, and with astonishingly early copies of those original eye witness accounts that testify to their validity and reliability, that drawing the conclusion that it’s all a myth seemed to me to fly in the face of all the evidence.  So I concluded that it’s certainly not a myth, it might be a hoax but it’s probably true.  And if its true, I had to make a choice.  Accept or reject.  By the grace of God, I accepted.

So, look, this isn’t an evangelistic talk, but I’d want to persuade you that it is rational and reasonable to take Christianity seriously.  I also want the freedom to be able to commend Christianity as the best foundation for a plural, liberal society.  A foundation that holds to objective truths about what a flourishing human life is, but one that holds those objective truths with generosity, grace, respect and love.

But I know that to allow people more gifted than me the opportunity to get the message of Christianity across, we need a society that permits this to happen.  That is open minded and prepared to accept the potential truth of all belief systems, to test them and see if they are true.  That’s the heart of what Mill is getting at.  No idea should be stifled, that includes being stifled by social conventions, by shaming its adherents by intolerance towards difference.

If people aren’t able to choose to deny themselves, to instead live as they see fit, then we aren’t a liberal society.  

If people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is exactly who he said he is, are excluded, then we aren’t a liberal society.  

If people with differing world views cannot serve together with mutual respect, then we are not a liberal society.  

Any self–interested person can fight for their own liberty or for the advancement of their own world view.  That doesn’t make you a liberal one bit.  Fighting for the rights and liberties of others, and for the space for a world view that you do not accept, that is what makes you a liberal.  I continue to seek to be a consistent liberal.  

But finally, if I can’t appeal to your liberalism.  Can I at least appeal to a bit of empirical common sense?  Today we look back at the 1950s or the 1970s and we laugh and we sneer – such naivity, such backwardness.  But if those societies were able to look forward to us, they would be shocked and appalled by our take on what counts as right and wrong.  Can I also assure you, though, that the Britain of 2070 will look back at this generation and laugh at us, be contemptuous of us.  I don’t know on what basis, or which features will be especially seen as unacceptable or ridiculous… but we can be certain that we will be mocked and derided by our great grandchildren’s generation.  What’s my point here?  It’s just that we are fools if we slip into what CS Lewis calls the snobbery of chronology, of lacking self–awareness to the extent that we arrogantly assume that our era, our generation is comprehensively, morally and culturally superior to those that have gone before.  In other words, you must surely accept the possibility that your world view might, just might, be wrong!  

So hold it with humility and tolerate those whom you find intolerable.  Stand full square behind those whom you find offensive.  Accept with grace, the offence you may feel in the knowledge that you are earning the right to respectfully cause offence to those who look at the world quite differently to you.

If you are a Christian, crave pure, pluralistic liberalism.  If you are a liberal, don’t be one whose liberalism eats itself, leaving nothing more than a respectable tyranny.

The Theos Annual Lecture 2017 was given by former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP on the 28th November 2017 at The Law Society, London. The lecture was chaired by Theos’ Director Elizabeth Oldfield.

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

There was an indie band in the 80s and 90s called Pop Will Eat Itself.  The name of the band is a fascinating hypothesis and one for a different lecture for a different think tank…and indeed one that I would absolutely love to give.  But my hypothesis today is that in this country and across the world, Liberalism will eat itself.  Is eating itself.  May already have eaten itself.

Why? Because if you say you favour diversity and pluralism, then you must oppose all attempts at assimilation and forced conformity.  You may like the idea that people will think the same as you, but you must not aim to build a society where you engineer that via legal or social pressure.  And it is especially on this this latter point that liberalism is at risk.

John Stuart Mill is the father of modern liberalism.  He spoke of many threats to liberty.  Amongst the greatest that he identified, is the tyranny of opinion.  In ‘on Liberty’, he says the following.

“In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.  Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.  Eccentricity has always abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage which it contained.  That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.’  

Written in 1859.  Spine–tinglingly relevant to 2017.

Mill says that the quality of our ideas and of our society is enhanced by free expression of competing world views.  Society is stale without that.  He is clear that our liberty is at risk when we all feel a pressure to start thinking the same things.  Even more at risk when it is the express intention of those who hold those views to encourage this universal assimilation. 

Social media feeds this.  Maybe ten years ago we thought social media would lead to a greater democracy, greater individual empowerment, the flowering of thousands of unmediated, unfiltered, unspun viewpoints and opinions.  How naïve does that sound now?  Today social media fuels groupthink, pack mentality and depressing conformity – not to mention a disgraceful lack of civility and decency.  The tyrants of opinion have their secret police behind millions of keyboards.

Christians have more reason than most to be alarmed.  Christians also have a history which gives us a clue as to where this may be going. 

When I was a young Christian at University, there was a challenge we used to hear at Christian Union meetings.  It went like this.  If it was against the law to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?  

It’s a good challenge.  We are told not to be ashamed of Christ, not to do a Peter and disown him, or do a Judas and discard him.  We are told not to hide our light, to live and speak in ways that will draw people to ask us about our faith – and then we are told that we should always be ready with an answer for anyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that we have.  

In other words, live openly as a Christian, and seek to share the gospel when you can because the Bible makes it crystal clear that this is a matter of eternal life and death.

It’s a good challenge, but of course in reality it’s not against the law to be a Christian.  On Sunday I go to church with my family, I do so freely.  My pastor preaches faithfully from the Bible without compromising or watering it down, and he does so freely. 

 I am open about being a Christian and I serve in the British Parliament as such with no threat to my liberty.

If anyone tries to threaten my life or liberty for seeking to live as a Christian, I can count on the state to protect me.

If you want to live freely as a Christian, you would struggle to find a country as committed to your liberty as this one.  Christians who complain about a loss of liberty need to start by acknowledging that reality.  And being grateful for it.  So let me make it clear now that I do acknowledge this and I am grateful.

But genuine Christianity has always has been countercultural.  It will always go against the norms of the day.  

In Revelation 17, we read about the future final fall of Babylon.  Babylon: materialistic, complacent, ambivalent towards the poor and vulnerable, self–satisfied and proud.  

Revelation was written by John in about 90 AD.  The Babylonian empire had been dead for hundreds of years by then, so why mention it?  

Because Babylon stands for every empire, every society where human beings choose to live for themselves and not for God.  So, Babylon in 90 AD was Rome, and today its…well, its us. Its this.  Its our society.  

And as Christians, we are to live as aliens in such a land.

Why, well because the first commandment is this ‘ I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me’.  So, your god shall not be your money, your career, your opinion of yourself, your sex life, your image, your identity, your comfort, your holidays, your friends or family, your possessions, your life..’

To be a Christian is to deny yourself and follow Christ, so Christianity rubs against every earthly culture.  It is meant to.  You should be a decent, good mannered citizen in Babylon, but you should never feel at home.  You are to be a resident alien.

Five minutes on social media will give you a window into a society which condemns and judges, that leaps to take offence and pounces to cause it – liberals condemning those who don’t conform as nasty and hateful, the right condemning liberals as fragile snowflakes; but Christianity rebukes both sides: don’t judge, show kindness, show gentleness, show patience – especially to those who don’t deserve it.  

Five minutes in the high street, now in the run up to Christmas, will show you a society hooked on materialism, five minutes eavesdropping in the cafes or glancing at peoples facebook updates will show you a society hooked on individual achievement, on the achievement of your children, a society hooked on self–worth and pride.  

Christianity tells you that everything and everyone you have in your life is a temporary gift from God and that we should worship the giver, not the things that have been given.  

Five minutes surfing TV channels will show you a society hooked on self–esteem, self–worth, living to be true to ourselves… Christianity says that you are worth a vast amount to the God of the universe, but that you must humble yourself before him and live for him and others, not for yourself.

Christianity is deeply counter cultural.  It offends us because it tells us that we are not our own, that we belong to God.  It tells us that we are not good, that our biggest need is not food, water, money, relationships, success or acceptance by society… our greatest need is forgiveness from the God who made us.  Christianity is a two–fingered salute to your ego.  

So, what earthly help can this countercultural belief system call upon as it battles against inevitable disdain?  The answer is simple.  The answer is Liberalism.

British Liberalism is founded in the battle for religious liberty.  The non–conformist, evangelical Christian groups that were persecuted by a society which favoured adherence only to the established church, built a liberal movement that championed much wider liberty, for women, for other religious minorities, non–religious minorities, for cultural and regional minorities, for the poor and vulnerable. 

I think Liberalism is better than Conservativism because it doesn’t accept the status quo, the absence of freedom for the sake of tradition and the convenience of the powerful, instead Liberalism asks tough questions and doesn’t accept glib answers.  I think Liberalism is better than socialism because Liberalism dictates that we must all be free, but that we must not all be the same.

Liberalism has apparently won.  Even members of the Conservative and Labour parties call themselves liberals today.  Let’s be honest, you can’t work in the media without being a liberal. Even most of the journalists who write for the right wing press are in truth liberals.  

Despite my best efforts, the Liberal Democrats have not won.  But irrespective of my efforts, Liberalism has.

In the 4th century, in Rome, Christianity won, in that it became the establishment world view.   Up to that point there had been three hundred years of persecution and exclusion for the followers of Jesus Christ.

Christianity was an emancipationist doctrine at that time, it then became adopted as the official religion of the empire and within a few years it goes from being emancipationist to – at the centre of the empire at least – being oppressive in its worst forms.

But the church morphed from persecuted to dominant in a short time, and in doing so it lost sight of its own internal truth of reliance on Christ alone and self–sacrificing love.  The state with which that church merged began to oppress different minorities, to show the same intolerance and violence towards other groups that Christians had endured for so many years.

Liberalism faces the same fate today.

Although I am giving this year’s Theos lecture, I don’t want to make it all about me.  But the truth is that I am an uncomfortable case study.  I suspect that this is why you asked me!

I am a liberal to my finger tips.  I’m not pretending to be a liberal. I didn’t become a liberal as a cunning career move, or to impress a girl or to boost my social standing.  I joined the liberals when I was sixteen because I am a liberal, funnily enough.  I believe in the equal worth and value of every person, I believe that every person should be free to live as they see fit, to hold their beliefs, their conscience, their world view and to express them as they wish.   I reject forced conformity whether that comes from the law or from social pressure.

As Liberal Democrat leader I spent much of the time I should have been using to set out the party’s case, batting away questions to do with my faith.  ‘Yes, we see how you’ve voted Mr Farron, and we hear what you say…but what do you think…?’  

Well, as a Christian, I hold to the Bible’s teaching.  

I also hold to my liberalism, to the need to treat every person as equally valuable and equally deserving of freedom.  That’s John Stewart Mills liberalism, that is Gladstone’s liberalism, that is Hobhouse’s liberalism, that is Grimond’s liberalism. 

Look through history.  Where the gospel is preached, other freedoms follow.  The abolition of slavery led by evangelical Christians most notably Wilberforce, the laws to prevent industrial exploitation led by committed Christian Lord Shaftesbury, the ending of the cruel practice of Sati in India after campaigning by Christian missionaries especially William Carey.

This is not a coincidence.  If you believe that you have been saved by grace, by a God who commands that you then show that same selfless love to others, if you believe that God created every person of equal value and dignity and in his own image, and if you believe that you are answerable to that God, then that belief will not leave you unmoved.  That belief will define your values and it will define your actions.  Christianity, then, is the essential underpinning of liberalism and, indeed, of democracy.  

If our values are relativistic, if they are shifting, if they depend upon the temporary norms of this age, then the freedoms you bank upon today, cannot be guaranteed tomorrow.  Our liberties are in the hands of unstable forces, we cannot have confidence that our rights will still be our rights from one generation to the next because we cannot call upon any authority in support of those rights.  

Christianity provides the values that permit liberalism to flourish.

In discarding Christianity, we kick away the foundations of liberalism and democracy and so we cannot then be surprised when what we call liberalism stops being liberal.

My experience is that although liberalism has won, it is now behaving like the established church of the empire in 4th and 5th centuries.  It has gained ascendancy and lost itself in the process.  It isn’t very liberal any more.  

So many who declare themselves to be liberals, really aren’t.  

John Stuart Mill may be spinning in his grave.

Some criticised Mill – especially at the time – saying that because he wasn’t especially religious that his thinking didn’t account for those who have convictions that drive them to believe that there is ultimate truth and that they therefore have a duty to impose those truths on society.

That is a view that some conservative philosophers have used to dismiss Mill’s liberalism.  And it’s actually an assumption that is at the core of the questions I received during the election from people who would be appalled to be bracketed with right wing Victorian philosophers.

I believe in God.  I believe that Jesus is His long promised Christ or Messiah.  When Jesus says that all who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life; and that he is the only way to the Father, I believe him.  

I share God’s wish that everyone would come to believe this.  It breaks my heart that people don’t.  But God hasn’t created us robots, we have real choices, you and I matter and every human being is accountable, the decisions we make are real decisions, He allows us to reject Him and who am I to disagree with that? Edmund Burke said that all the laws against the Godless have not saved one single soul.  To put it another way, what is the point in legislating to make people who are not Christians behave as though they were?

It isn’t liberal, it is counterproductive and it does not follow the Bible’s teaching.

One of the most famous stories about Jesus’ life is recorded in Luke 19.  Zacchaeus is a tax collector – in that society, that would have made him a collaborator and an extortionist. More unpopular than politicians and journalists combined!  Zacchaeus worshipped the god of materialism.  But Zacchaeus is interested in Jesus. He’s not a tall man so he climbs a tree to get a glimpse as Jesus goes by, and Jesus spies him out and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house.  Zacchaeus is delighted.  You see, Jesus doesn’t push him away because of his wrong doing, he accepts him as he is, but he doesn’t expect him to stay as he is.  Zacchaeus’ response is to seek to put right what he has done wrong – to offer to repay four–fold anyone he has cheated and to give away half his possessions to the poor.  

You see, that’s the Biblical pattern.  You come to Jesus in your wretched state, you don’t contribute to your forgiveness or salvation one jot, you receive that forgiveness… and then you must go and turn away from your previous life, deny yourself and seek to follow Christ and his teaching.  You don’t have to clean yourself up first, you don’t have to be good for a bit and then try applying to become a Christian to see if you’ve made the grade.  The point is that none of us has made the grade, but that’s OK, because Jesus has made the grade, and he chose to die in your place.

That passage also reminds us of two really important Biblical truths.  One, we are all equal under God and we must not judge others or else we bring judgement on ourselves.  Two, God will judge. He is not indifferent to our choices.  It is not unloving or judgemental for Christians then to point that out.

But making people live as Christians when they aren’t, is unwise, ungodly, counterproductive and illiberal.  As a Liberal I say it is wrong, and as a Christian I say it is wrong and it doesn’t even work!

To believe in the Bible’s teaching and to also believe in people’s right to reject it and to live as they choose, is about as close to a pure application of liberalism as you could get.  

And yet so many people who count themselves as liberals can’t or won’t grasp this.  In part this is down to the growth of religious illiteracy in many parts of our society, but that’s not a good enough excuse.

The questions to me came thick and fast during those seven weeks of the campaign, mostly they went along the lines of…’ but how can you believe what the Bible says and lead a liberal party?’  Answer: easy, you just need to be a liberal.  That people asked that question, makes me seriously doubt that they understand liberalism even though they may preach it.   Liberalism has eaten itself.

When Jacob Rees Mogg declares his views on the application of faith, he gets mocked, but no one is surprised or confused – he is a traditional conservative, of course he believes those things. Or so the thinking goes.

When a liberal turns out to be an evangelical Christian, people are surprised or confused.  If you are one of those who are surprised and confused… then you are a victim.  A victim of liberalism’s comprehensive triumph… where the main loser, is liberalism.  

Now let me be very clear, I handled loads of the questions that I got, badly, I sometimes demonstrated a lack of wisdom, please don’t think that I see myself as some sort of noble victim.  

I took on the leadership of the Liberal Democrats at the lowest point in our history.  It was like becoming the manager of a newly relegated football club.  The board, the players and the fans were shell–shocked and devastated.  I had no transfer kitty.  You might, if you were being generous, say that I avoided further relegation, prevented us plunging down through the divisions, stabilised things, stopped the rot, gave us self–belief, purpose and increased the attendances… and what with Witney, Richmond park and local election results we had a really impressive and morale boosting FA cup run… but it would also be fair to say that immediate promotion back to the premier league was an achievement I didn’t deliver.  

What is certain is that following our annihilation in 2015 after the coalition, I was the first liberal leader in history to lead a party that wasn’t even the third party in British politics.  That meant that every second of media exposure I got was precious, and every second spent batting away theological questions was a second wasted.  I could have given bigger, better answers but that would have eaten up even more time.  And anyway, I was running for Prime Minister not Pope!  But I realised that my lot would be either to compromise my faith and say easy things to fit with current secular thinking; or else to continue to be the party’s main spokesperson but incapable of getting the message across because of all these questions.  

So I knew that stepping down was the only thing to do.  I was right to do it.  I don’t regret it.  

It now gives me the chance to challenge the tyranny of opinion, to seek to redeem liberalism.  

John Stuart Mill talks of the value of eccentricity, using the word in the sense it would have been understood in the mid–19th century, eccentricity meaning to be off centre, not the norm.  But let’s use it in its current sense, eccentricity meaning something whacky, peculiar, probably ridiculous but essentially harmless.  

My observation is that for many years now our culture has considered that the absence of faith is the neutral position, and that the holding of a religious faith is eccentric.  In other words, an absence of faith is the standard assumption around which we build our social structures, and if you have a faith we will consider you to be eccentric in the whacky and harmless sense… so we will tolerate you, as long as you remain on the edges.  

What appears now to be happening is that while the absence of faith is still thought to be the neutral position, holding a faith is only considered to be tolerably eccentric if it is merely cultural.  But if your faith actually affects your world view in any way that puts it at odds with the mainstream, then your faith is considered to be malign and intolerable.  

I want to first say that this viewpoint is not only clearly prevalent, but staggeringly arrogant – and obviously wrong.  There is absolutely no such thing as neutrality.  The godless world view is no more nor less valid than one that trusts for example in the God of the Bible.  Every human being has a world view.  You will acquire that world view in different ways and from different sources, maybe you get it fully or in part from a book that you consider to be holy, or from your parents, from your peer group, your teachers, the media or the culture in which you are immersed.

You can’t on the one hand think that Trump or Brexit were aided by fake news and troll factories and then on the other hand believe that you have total control and critical independence over every notion or view point that you hold.  Not without being conceited in the extreme.  

So there is no neutrality.  Absence of faith is a valid world view, but it has no right to supremacy.  If you believe it does have that right, then I respect your view, but you are not a liberal.   I have often been encouraged – by well–meaning people – to make sure that my faith doesn’t influence my decisions or actions as a politician.  The more I think about it, the more daft that sounds.  Do you leave your world view at the door before you enter a room?  Do you enter every situation empty–headed and value–free?  Nope?  Well neither do I.  And neither will I.

I believe in pluralism, I am not a secularist but I believe in a secular society where there is no ‘state faith’.  That in Britain we have a church trapped as part of the furniture of the state is a waste of a church.  A boat in the water is good.  Water in the boat, is bad.  A church in the state is good, the state in the church is bad.  Really bad.  It pollutes the message of that church.  It compromises it.  Weakens its witness.  

And let’s be clear.  It is just as illiberal, and just as silly, to make atheism the state religion.  

But the threat to liberalism is far greater than faith being relegated in social standing below the absence of faith.  If you actively hold a faith that is more than an expression of cultural identity, a faith that forms the centre of your world view, you are deemed to be far worse than eccentric.  You are dangerous.  You are offensive.

And here we have the great issue.  We live in a time of identities.  People don’t choose to do things, they are things.  So, to challenge an identity is to commit a personal assault.  The rise of nationalism in this country and others, is a case in point.  We have in an extremely short time, found ourselves in a situation where it is considered that causing offence is to commit violence.

What is at the heart of a liberal society?  It is to uphold that we have a right to offend and a duty to tolerate offence.  George Orwell said ‘if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

But as Christians, we also have a duty and a desire to be kind and gentle.  Now where have we heard that before?  

So be bold in saying things that may cause offence, but do not be offensive.  

Jesus is your example.  How calmly he speaks and with such grace.  With such respect for the people he speaks to.  What patience he shows to people who reject him.  How meekly he subjects himself to their violence… and how clearly he speaks in ways that wither.  That exposes hypocrisy, that exposes lies, that exposes truth.  He launches ferocious verbal assaults on the Pharisees, he calls them hypocrites, a brood of vipers, ‘white washed tombs’ in other words, clean and attractive on the outside but full of rotting corpses on the inside.  And he spends his time with outcasts, loves the unlovable, heals the hopeless, opens up the Kingdom of God to those who don’t deserve it, but who nevertheless seek it.

Jesus was full of grace and truth.  Crucified truth oppresses nobody, but it weighs heavily upon us when we consider it – and amongst other things it is the raw fuel for liberalism.  Because if Jesus died for me, then he also died for you.  Which means that you must matter.  It means you must really really matter.

So, if we relegate Christianity then we hollow out liberalism.

Liberalism has eaten itself because it has eaten the very world view that gave birth to it, that made it possible, that makes it possible.  It’s a bit like Michael J Fox in Back to the Future, erasing himself by accidentally preventing his parents getting together.

Lets bring liberalism back to life.

Lets start by saying something gently, but which may cause offence, just to see where that gets us!

Its this.  We don’t really have shared values.  There is no unifying set of British values.  It’s a myth.  

We are fooling ourselves.  

As a Christian of course I think there are common values to all human kind, we see them in the commandments, and in one sense we don’t need to be told them because we know instinctively what is wrong and what is right – it’s one of the key proofs that God exists.  

But are there common secular values that we collectively hold here in Britain?  No, I don’t think so.  

Our values are diverse, atomised and not fully shared at all, not even within our own towns or our own families.  And don’t be surprised about this.  Secularism is a totalising creed that reduces everyone down to either consumer or regulatory units.  It speaks the language of equality and diversity but it doesn’t do it.  We’ve been atomised.  

Let me quote from the book of Judges  ‘in those days Israel had no King; everyone did as they saw fit’.  Everyone did has they saw fit.  If we have no king, no unifying code, then we will make it up as we go along.  Values are a relativistic mist that come and go.  What is true for you may be true for me, or it may not.  And it might all change tomorrow.  There is such a thing as society but it is like a ship with neither an anchor nor a rudder – just a load of people running around on deck following a few loud voices that sound temporarily convincing.  Meanwhile the boat heads in any old direction.

I am a liberal, in economic terms I am a moderate social democrat, I believe climate change is real and I want to stop it, I am a patriotic Englishman but I am also a passionate European and internationalist, I am a Bible believing Christian who seeks to live obediently to God and who actively supports the freedom of everyone to either accept or reject that.   That sums up my values.  Are we seriously saying that they are shared by the majority of British people?

People talk about shared values today – I’ve done it myself.  But when they do, what they mean is ‘these are my values – and I am going to act as though they are also yours, and will demonstrate contempt for you if you depart from them’.  

It’s time to be honest with each other.  We do NOT have shared values and the assumption that we do is dangerous.  

The phrase ‘the liberal elite’ is usually bandied about by people who aren’t liberal but who are the elite.  

Whereas I am a liberal but am not the elite.  

But the cultural leaders of our day have made the arrogant and fatal assumption that we have these shared liberal values, and have sought to enforce them via Mill’s hated tyranny of opinion and the consequences are… well,  Trump and Brexit to name two!  

Because every tyrant feeds and inspires the resistance that threatens to overthrow them, as a result of their own arrogance.  The handwringing elite in our politics, media, education and business are as guilty of creating the reactionary politics of populism as much as Murdoch and Dacre.  Why?  Because they / we assumed everyone thought the same, and dismissed with ridicule and contempt any sign of eccentricity.  

I am sometimes asked, what should a Christian be doing in politics?  Should a Christian even be involved in politics at all?  The 5th century monk Simeon Styletes, was so determined to keep away from being corrupted by the world that he lived his life for 37 years on the top of a pole in Aleppo!  I was told about this at primary school and our teacher Mrs Deakin was keen to explain that this was an example of a hermit seeking to separate himself from society…whereas we were just keen to know exactly how he managed to go to the toilet.

And I still don’t know the answer to that question… But either way, Styletes was wrong.  As Christians we are told not to be of the world, but to be in it.  So I shall not be following his example.

My aim now is to be the best constituency MP anyone has ever known, to live out my faith by loving my enemies, displaying grace and gentleness, serving those who I represent and being a voice in parliament for those who are the least powerful.  

And sometimes it will involve taking the opportunity to give a reason for the hope that I have…

You see, I am a liberal, reasonably intelligent bloke, brought up in a secular society, in a family that mostly didn’t embrace an active religious faith.  I knew people who were Christians but I prided myself on being far too strong minded to fall for all that religious nonsense.  

So how does a reasonably intelligent, modern, liberal bloke end up believing in Jesus Christ?

Well look, atheism is not the absence of belief, it is a belief in absence and therefore the absence of common values.  It’s a belief in there being no unifying truth.  But if there is no unifying truth then, by its own standard, the belief that there is no unifying truth must also be bogus.  If you declare that there is no unifying truth then it stands to reason that this declaration isn’t true either.  Ergo, atheism doesn’t exist.  And I refuse to believe in something that doesn’t exist.

In short, it occurred to me that Christianity is true.  The claims that Christ makes are so direct and so clear that we can’t pretend that Christianity is just a nice philosophy – its either horribly wrong or life–changingly right.  Its claims to ultimate truth are insistent and deliberate.  Those New Testament documents are written so soon after the events, by so many eye witnesses, and with astonishingly early copies of those original eye witness accounts that testify to their validity and reliability, that drawing the conclusion that it’s all a myth seemed to me to fly in the face of all the evidence.  So I concluded that it’s certainly not a myth, it might be a hoax but it’s probably true.  And if its true, I had to make a choice.  Accept or reject.  By the grace of God, I accepted.

So, look, this isn’t an evangelistic talk, but I’d want to persuade you that it is rational and reasonable to take Christianity seriously.  I also want the freedom to be able to commend Christianity as the best foundation for a plural, liberal society.  A foundation that holds to objective truths about what a flourishing human life is, but one that holds those objective truths with generosity, grace, respect and love.

But I know that to allow people more gifted than me the opportunity to get the message of Christianity across, we need a society that permits this to happen.  That is open minded and prepared to accept the potential truth of all belief systems, to test them and see if they are true.  That’s the heart of what Mill is getting at.  No idea should be stifled, that includes being stifled by social conventions, by shaming its adherents by intolerance towards difference.

If people aren’t able to choose to deny themselves, to instead live as they see fit, then we aren’t a liberal society.  

If people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is exactly who he said he is, are excluded, then we aren’t a liberal society.  

If people with differing world views cannot serve together with mutual respect, then we are not a liberal society.  

Any self–interested person can fight for their own liberty or for the advancement of their own world view.  That doesn’t make you a liberal one bit.  Fighting for the rights and liberties of others, and for the space for a world view that you do not accept, that is what makes you a liberal.  I continue to seek to be a consistent liberal.  

But finally, if I can’t appeal to your liberalism.  Can I at least appeal to a bit of empirical common sense?  Today we look back at the 1950s or the 1970s and we laugh and we sneer – such naivity, such backwardness.  But if those societies were able to look forward to us, they would be shocked and appalled by our take on what counts as right and wrong.  Can I also assure you, though, that the Britain of 2070 will look back at this generation and laugh at us, be contemptuous of us.  I don’t know on what basis, or which features will be especially seen as unacceptable or ridiculous… but we can be certain that we will be mocked and derided by our great grandchildren’s generation.  What’s my point here?  It’s just that we are fools if we slip into what CS Lewis calls the snobbery of chronology, of lacking self–awareness to the extent that we arrogantly assume that our era, our generation is comprehensively, morally and culturally superior to those that have gone before.  In other words, you must surely accept the possibility that your world view might, just might, be wrong!  

So hold it with humility and tolerate those whom you find intolerable.  Stand full square behind those whom you find offensive.  Accept with grace, the offence you may feel in the knowledge that you are earning the right to respectfully cause offence to those who look at the world quite differently to you.

If you are a Christian, crave pure, pluralistic liberalism.  If you are a liberal, don’t be one whose liberalism eats itself, leaving nothing more than a respectable tyranny.