‘Christian Nationalism’ or Christian Renewal?

Humanists UK’s report Rising Christian Nationalism: A Threat to Us All (17 September 2025) treats Christian conviction in public life as if it were inherently extremist. The argument is framed in stark terms: ordinary believers who oppose abortion or euthanasia, who defend the family, or who affirm Britain’s Christian heritage are accused of plotting to “fuse politics with Christianity” and to roll back rights. Yet the evidence presented amounts to little more than guilt-by-association, invoking American figures such as Donald Trump, JD Vance, or Elon Musk as though British Christians were taking instructions from across the Atlantic. What is actually happening in Britain is far less sensational, and far more significant: a quiet but real renewal of Christian belief among young people.

The Straw Man of ‘Christian Nationalism’

Humanists UK present “Christian nationalism” as opposition to pluralism and the enforcement of a theocratic politics. This is a convenient straw man. In fact, there is no political party in the United Kingdom — not even Reform UK — campaigning to repeal same-sex marriage legislation or to establish a confessional state. Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since 2013, in Scotland since 2014, and in Northern Ireland since 2020.¹ Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage has expressed personal misgivings about the legislation, describing it as “wrong,” but has also stated that it is now settled law and has proposed no move to overturn it.² Polling data confirms that even among Reform UK voters, a clear majority — some 65% — support the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.³

The picture is clear: there is no campaign, mainstream or otherwise, to reverse same-sex marriage or LGBT protections. To suggest otherwise is misleading. What opponents of secular ideology actually defend are perennial moral truths: the sanctity of human life, the protection of the family, and the rejection of cultural nihilism. These positions are not “nationalist” but universal, rooted in divine law.

The Quiet Revival

While the spectre of Christian nationalism haunts secularist imagination, the real story is the quiet revival under way across Britain. The Bible Society and YouGov’s Quiet Revival report (2025) demonstrated that 46% of young people aged 18–24 now describe themselves as Christian, compared to 35% of the general population.⁴ One in five in this age group report reading the Bible weekly or more.⁵

Church attendance figures, long in decline, are also reversing among the young. In 2018 only 4% of 18–24 year-olds attended monthly; by 2024, that number had risen to 16%.⁶ The change is especially marked among young men: 21% of men aged 18–24 now attend monthly, compared to 12% of women in the same age bracket.⁷ This quiet revival is also reshaping the demographic character of churchgoing in Britain, with a third of younger churchgoers coming from ethnic minority backgrounds.⁸

These are not the hallmarks of a militant political movement. They are the signs of a generation discovering that secular humanism has failed to provide meaning or hope. What the critics fear is not authoritarianism, but conversion.

Christian Nationalism or Christian Patriotism?

Much of the rhetoric around “Christian nationalism” deliberately blurs the distinction between an ideology of domination and a natural love of one’s country informed by faith. True Christian nationalism — in the American sense — seeks to fuse political power with confessional identity, often at the expense of pluralism. Christian patriotism is something altogether different: the love of one’s homeland tempered by virtue, grateful for God’s providence in history, and conscious of the duty to seek the common good.

This difference was visible at the Unite the Kingdom march. While critics hastened to label the event “nationalist” because preachers denounced secular humanism, the tone was not one of political domination but of cultural and moral witness. Participants affirmed that Britain’s civic and national identity is inseparable from its Christian roots. Far from calling for a theocracy, the emphasis was on shared heritage and the need for moral renewal grounded in Christian truth.

Patriotism, St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, is a species of piety — an expression of gratitude to God for the order of family and fatherland. It is right and fitting for Christians to love their country and to desire its flourishing under God’s law. Nationalism, by contrast, elevates the nation itself as an idol, displacing divine authority. To confuse the two is to mistake the virtue of Christian patriotism for a vice it does not entail.

Britain’s Christian Identity

Humanists UK claim that Britain has “worn religion lightly.” At best, this is a half-truth. It is true that regular churchgoing declined in the late twentieth century, yet Britain’s national identity, institutions, and liberties remain deeply marked by Christianity. The very language of justice, charity, and human dignity was shaped by centuries of Christian thought and practice. To acknowledge this inheritance is not extremism but honesty.

When councillors and parliamentarians begin meetings with prayer, they are not inaugurating a theocracy; they are continuing a custom as old as civic life itself. The observance of Christian festivals in public life, the prominence of church buildings at the heart of our communities, and the role of clergy at national occasions are signs of continuity, not coercion. To present such expressions as precursors to “LGBT-free zones” is scaremongering, detached from both fact and proportion.

Pluralism, rightly understood, does not mean the erasure of Christianity from public life. It means the coexistence of convictions — and among those convictions is the Christian claim that truth is objective and binding. If “pluralism” is redefined to exclude that claim, it ceases to be pluralism and becomes coercion.

Faith and Politics

Christian faith cannot be confined to a private sphere. Lived authentically, it shapes families, communities, and political life. This does not constitute theocracy, but the natural outworking of conversion. Britain’s constitutional and civic order already presumes as much. The Coronation Oaths bind the Sovereign to uphold the Protestant Reformed Religion by law established. The Church of England remains the Established Church, its bishops seated in the House of Lords. Every maintained school in England and Wales is required by statute to provide daily collective worship “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.”

Nor is Christianity absent from the rhythms of civic life. Remembrance Sunday is marked by services of prayer; memorials to the fallen are kept in parish churches and cathedrals; and the Guards Chapels remain central to the religious life of the Armed Forces. These are not the innovations of zealots, but the settled customs of a Christian nation.

To portray such institutions as symptoms of an encroaching “Christian nationalism” is to confuse continuity with extremism. As Danny Kruger MP told the House of Commons in July, “we need a revival of the faith, a recovery of Christian politics, and a refounding of this nation on the principles that made it strong in the first place.”⁹ Such words are not a nationalist fantasy but a plea for moral renewal — rooted in traditions woven deep into the very fabric of British life.

Conclusion

The supposed rise of “Christian nationalism” in Britain is a manufactured menace. No party seeks to roll back marriage equality; no movement plots to impose a confessional state. What is taking place is something far more profound: a quiet revival among the young, a recovery of faith after decades of decline.

The real threat to Britain lies not in an imaginary Christian nationalist lobby, but in the hollowing out of moral foundations under the guise of secular pluralism. The revival under way is not a political programme but a spiritual awakening. If it changes politics, it will do so not by coercion but by conversion.

Here lies the true distinction: nationalism idolises the nation, but patriotism — as Aquinas taught — is a form of piety, gratitude to God for the fatherland He has given. To defend Britain’s Christian inheritance, and to love one’s country as a gift of Providence, is not extremism but virtue. What Humanists UK truly fear is not nationalism, but the return of Christ.