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.
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