Christian nationalism in Britain driven by people who seldom go to church, says report

Original article by Aamna Mohdin Community affairs correspondent

Christian nationalism in Britain is being driven largely by people who rarely attend church and are more concerned with defending the country’s Christian heritage, according to research.

The report, by the thinktank Theos, identified five different groups within the UK in a survey that looked at their attitudes to Christianity and Britishness.

The group whose views most closely resembled Christian nationalism, termed “identity integrationists” by the researchers, accounted for 11% of respondents, making it the smallest of the five groups.

Although 81% of this group identified as Christian, just 13% attended church weekly, only slightly above the 11% average across the population surveyed. Less than a third (31%) prayed weekly, while 47% expressed an interest in the Bible.

The group was strongly hostile to immigration and Islam. Just 19% agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 30% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.

In contrast, another group in the survey with high levels of Christian affiliation, were considerably more religiously observant and less hostile to immigration and religious diversity. They comprised 13% of respondents.

Among these “belief integrationists”, 31% attended church weekly, 46% prayed weekly and 62% expressed an interest in the Bible.

Almost half (48%) agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 63% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.

Although they are the group containing the highest proportion of practising Christians, only 18% of belief integrationists think that defending Britain’s Christian culture and heritage is important for being Christian, compared with 90% of the Christian nationalist group.

At a time when crosses have been carried at Unite the Kingdom rallies and crowds have chanted “Christ is King” at protests, the research challenges the idea that the growing prominence of Christian nationalism in Britain reflects a revival of Christianity.

Instead, the findings suggest that Christianity is increasingly being invoked as a marker of British identity amid wider anxieties about immigration, Islam and cultural change.

The results are based on a survey of 1,765 adults conducted in April 2026, which identified five distinct groups according to their attitudes towards Christianity and British national identity.

More than half of Britons surveyed (55%) said they would be unhappy if their local church closed and became a mosque, including 37% who would be very unhappy.

More than a third (37%) agreed with the conspiracy theory that the white population of Europe was being deliberately replaced by migrants from Muslim countries, sometimes known as the ‘great replacement’ theory.

Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at Theos and one of the report’s authors, suggested that the difference between the two most highly affiliated Christian groups’ attitudes towards asylum seekers might partly reflect their religious practice and ethnic composition.

The more practising Christian group were the most ethnically diverse of the five groups, with 20% identifying as non-white, while identity integrationists were among the least diverse.

Spencer added that there was also “a difference between Christianity as an idea and Christianity as an embodied practice”.

“If it matters enough for you to haul yourself out of bed on a Sunday morning, to spend time with people who you don’t choose – you don’t choose who you’re sitting next to in the pew, you don’t choose who’s next to you in the communion rail – it becomes a bit more human and more humane.”

Arun Arora, Church of England bishop of Kirkstall in Leeds, said the distinction between cultural Christianity and practising faith was central to understanding the findings.

“What is it to be a disciple? It’s threefold: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me,” he said.

“And what I think’s interesting about the nationalists is that they want to take up the cross at marches, and display it, but there’s less of an interest in denying themselves and following Jesus.”

He argued that the lessons for church leaders weren’t just to encourage church attendance, but to be out in the community.

“If as the church we’re going to wait for people to come into the ark to be saved, to use Noah’s ark analogy, then we’re going to be waiting a while,” he said.

“Whereas the responsibility for us is to bring that full gospel message of discipleship, of what that requires, the costly nature of discipleship, to be able to expound and articulate that, and the passionate love of God for his people, and his world, and not just those who carry certain passports.”

The Rev Dr Helen Paynter, a theologian who has researched the far right’s use of Christianity, said the findings highlighted the responsibility of churches to welcome people across the political spectrum.

But, she added: “The church is and has been since its inception a multi-ethnic, multinational group, and may not rightly be equated with any nationality or ethnicity. In fact, the ‘average’ Christian in the world today is poor, female and black.”

For Paynter, one of most important findings is the starkly different attitudes evidenced by those who are practising Christians, compared with those who claim the label.

“The Christian faith is not just an identity that we can put on like a coat; it involves an encounter with transcendence which must be transformative of all our values.”