Many UK adults link Britishness with being Christian – report

A latest study by Christian think tank Theos suggests that strongly defined types of Christian nationalism remain a minority position within the UK, although many Brits are supportive of some link between Christianity and Britishness. 

The preliminary findings, published by Theos researcher Nick Spencer, draw on fresh polling data examining how closely Britons connect Christianity with national identity and public life. It comes amid growing public discussion around religion, identity and national culture.

To explore the difficulty, researchers commissioned a web based survey examining attitudes toward religion, immigration, ethnicity and national identity. 

Researchers caution that the term ‘Christian nationalism’ itself stays highly contested and difficult to define, noting that it is commonly used inconsistently and sometimes pejoratively in political debate.

In the report, Spencer argues that Christian nationalism is best understood through the concept of “co-terminosity” – the idea that Christianity and national identity are closely intertwined or depending on each other. 

The study due to this fact focused heavily on whether respondents believed Christianity was essential to being “truly British”.

According to the polling, 17% of UK adults agreed with the statement that an individual should be Christian to be genuinely British – 8% of that figure strongly agreed. Over half disagreed. 

When participants were later asked to discover the only most vital characteristic for being British from a wider list of options, only one% chosen being Christian.

The survey also tested attitudes toward Christian values and belonging. 

Around 16% agreed – 7% of them strongly – that individuals who don’t discover with Christian values “don’t belong in Britain”, although most respondents rejected the statement and over 40% strongly disagreed with it. 

Researchers said these figures suggest that more hardline expressions of Christian nationalism remain relatively limited in Britain, even while broader support exists for maintaining some official relationship between Christianity and national life.

The polling found significantly higher levels of support for statements linking Christianity to British institutions and public culture. 

Two in five UK respondents (41%) agreed that British law “must be based on Christian values,” while 40% supported prioritising Christianity inside religious education over other faiths. 

Meanwhile, 37% said the federal government should formally describe “Britain as a Christian country”, including 22% who strongly supported that view.

Support was lower when it got here to political leadership, with 26% agreeing that “it is necessary for the country’s leader to be Christian,” and just 14% expressing strong agreement.

The report stresses that holding such views shouldn’t mechanically be classified as Christian nationalism, and that there’s a crucial distinction between believing Christianity has historical or cultural significance in Britain, and believing Christian identity should determine who truly belongs to the nation.

The report also compares the findings with previous studies from organisations including Pew Research Center, Ipsos, the British Social Attitudes survey and Premier Christian News, which similarly found that while some Britons support a continued connection between Christianity and national identity, only a minority consider being Christian is important to being truly British.

One of the clearest long-term trends identified within the evaluation is a gradual decline within the proportion of Britons who consider Christianity is very important to national identity. 

British Social Attitudes data cited within the report found that the proportion of people that considered being Christian vital to being “truly British” fell from 32% in 1995 to 19% in 2023.

Even so, Spencer cautions against drawing simplistic conclusions from the info, arguing that Christian nationalism is “a posh social, cultural, political and non secular phenomenon” that exists in various degrees reasonably than as an easy yes-or-no category. He also recognises a necessity for “taking care with numbers”, and the potential for “distorting” and even “exaggerating” the true proportion of Christian nationalists. 

“Christian nationalism … is a slippery term, with plenty of different definitions flying around,” he said.

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

The report concludes that only a really small proportion of the British population – perhaps around 1% – holds what researchers describe because the strongest types of Christian nationalist belief. 

A somewhat larger group, estimated between 7% and 15%, holds views more recognisably aligned with Christian nationalism, while a broader section of the general public – between 15% and 25% of the population – supports a looser yet still formal relationship between Christianity and British public life while not seeing the 2 identities as essentially linked.

The research forms a part of an ongoing project exploring the size and character of Christian nationalism in Britain and across Europe. The questionnaire was conducted last month across six European countries – the UK, France, Germany, Romania, Poland and Hungary – using nationally representative samples of adults. 

Theos said the findings remain provisional and can proceed to be refined through further evaluation and future research.