by Tim Wyatt, The Critical Friend (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Some academic meat on the bones of a contentious phrase, while yet more bishops fall under clouds both north and south of the border
Hello! We’ve all been talking a lot about Christian Nationalism in recent years without having a clear grasp on what it means. Now, ground-breaking research has shone a light on what the British public really think about the relationship between Christianity and Britishness, and the results are fascinating, possibly encouraging, but certainly revealing.
I have to be honest: when I started writing this newsletter almost three years ago, I basically zero expectation we’d ever end up discussing Christian Nationalism (except perhaps to roll our eyes at the American version and shudder). And yet without anyone really expecting it, that has become one of the major talking points of this current moment in British church life too.
We can all point to examples of what we think we mean when we say Christian Nationalism, but there has been precious little consensus or clarity who British Christian Nationalists are and what they actually believe. Peter Lynas from the Evangelical Alliance made an interesting stab at delineating four different kinds of Christian Nationalism, depending on whether the ‘Christian’ bit or the ‘Nationalist’ bit was emphasised, back in 2025.
There’s also been oceans of ink spilled about to what extent figures like James Orr (the Cambridge theologian who now writes Reform’s policies) or Danny Kruger (the ex-Tory MP who gave a significant Commons speech about England and faith) encapsulate modern British Christian Nationalism (I’m getting a bit bored of typing that and it’s going to come up a lot, so from here on let’s just say CN). Conversely, another theologian (Oxford’s Luke Bretherton) recently told the bishops of the Church of England that, theologically-speaking, there wasn’t really any such thing as CN.
Now, the thinktank Theos has made a huge contribution to the debate by publishing some original research into the subject. Their report begins by noting the almost total absence of academic study into CN in Britain (in contrast to the United States where it is both more prominent and better examined). And so Theos commissioned a pollster to survey nearly 11,000 across six European countries including the UK. The British sample was 1,765 folk and their data informed this report (there will be other research published later on the findings from the other countries).
Read also: Can you be both a Christian and a nationalist? from Christian Concern