A new study by the think tank Theos has found Christianity is being invoked as a marker of British identity amid wider anxieties about Islam immigration, cultural change and what it means to be British.
Beyond “Christian Nationalism”: Measuring Attitudes Towards Christianity and Britishness Today suggests that what is increasingly being described as “Christian nationalism” in Britain is not simply an import from the United States, but a distinctively British phenomenon bound up with questions of culture, heritage, political views, and immigration as much as Christian belief and practice.
But the report authors say this doesn’t reflect a renewal of Christian practice, because the group that comes closest to “Christian nationalist” – termed ‘Identity Integrationists’ by the researchers – is the one most likely to contain nominal or non-practising Christians.
People in this group identify strongly with Christianity and overwhelmingly want to see it embedded in British national life, but their Christianity is particularly associated with identity, culture and heritage. It’s the smallest of five groups identified by the researchers.
A separate group, ‘Belief Integrationists’ contains the highest proportion of practising Christians and wants to see a close connection between Christianity and Britishness, but is more motivated by promoting Christian faith than preserving a particular cultural inheritance. Although they are the group containing the highest proportion of practising Christians, only 18% of Belief Integrationists think that defending our Christian culture and heritage is important for being Christian, compared to 90% of the Identity Integrationists.
The study also found that 8% of Britons strongly agree that to be truly British you should be Christian, while just 1% say being Christian is the most important factor in being British.
10,848 adults took part in the study across the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania, with 1,765 UK adults surveyed.
The research found that more than half of Britons (55%) would be unhappy if their local church closed and became a mosque and over a third (37%) believe in the conspiracy theory that “the white population in Europe is deliberately being replaced by migrants from Muslim countries”, otherwise known as the Great Replacement Theory.
Yet the research also found that almost two-thirds (64%) would be happy if an asylum seeker came to their aid after an assault and Britons are more than twice as likely to be happy (32%) as unhappy (14%) about someone from another religion marrying into their family.
Theos' Senior Fellow Dr Nick Spencer, who was lead researcher on the project, told Premier Christian News:
“There is a subtle but important difference between Christianity as an idea and Christianity as a practice. Christianity as an idea could and should and has been used for many positive ways, but it can be weaponised and it can be used in an exclusionary way. Christianity as a practice means that you find yourself in a prayer group or sharing your space with people whom you haven't chosen who are going to be there. They're different people from different walks of life, different ethnic groups, and that kind of shared communion type experience is the kind of thing that will bring out the humanising dimension of Christianity. So I would say that if there is this interest in keeping Britain Christian amongst certain groups of people, great, but it's a question of what you do with it in practice, in your lives, in your communities”.