Britain’s archaic Church-state settlement could enable Reform’s Christian nationalism

Originally published on the website of the National Secular Society on 11 September 2026 and republished here with their permission.

I spent a fair amount of time listening to Danny Kruger at Reform UK’s conference. The former Conservative MP, who defected to Reform last year, is one of the party’s most prominent intellectual voices – and a committed Christian whose faith clearly runs deep.

But at Reform’s conference, he went noticeably light on the God stuff. He spoke several times, yet unless directly asked, said remarkably little about one of his more striking political convictions: that Britain should be an explicitly Christian country.

Perhaps he knows his audience. Among those who voted Reform at the 2024 general election, a substantial 41% said they had no religion. That said, the appeal of Christian nationalism does not seem to depend on its supporters being particularly religious themselves. More than 90% of Reform members agree that “the Christian faith is an important part of Britain’s culture and should continue to be so”, compared with 44% of the public as a whole.

For many on the populist right, Christianity appears to be valued less as a faith to be practised than as a marker of culture, heritage and national identity.

Kruger has become one of the clearest advocates in British politics for Christianity being the basis of national identity. Speaking in Parliament last year, he said the country needs “a revival of faith” and a recovery of “Christian politics”.

In his recent “Doctrine for Government“, he argues that Britain urgently needs “a singular national identity to which all citizens subscribe” and a programme of “compulsory integration”. He says the Church of England should remain privileged in the constitution and describes Christianity as the “cultural technology” which created our institutions and worldview.

His version of pluralism is revealing. Other religions, he says, can be “easily tolerated” within a Christian country, provided they remain minorities. That’s not equal citizenship. It is a hierarchy of belonging: Christianity defines the nation, while everyone else is accommodated within it. Non-Christians may be tolerated, but it’s Christians who truly belong.

Kruger’s argument contains a basic contradiction. He wants a shared national identity to which all citizens can subscribe, while insisting that identity must be explicitly Christian. But in a country that is increasingly religiously diverse and largely nonreligious, a national identity built around one religion cannot plausibly unite a population that does not share it.

Reform’s drift towards Christian nationalism has also been driven by Cambridge theologian and JD Vance ally James Orr. Orr stood down as Reform’s head of policy following an undercover investigation into alleged attempts to circumvent rules on overseas political funding. He denies wrongdoing. It will be interesting to see whether his departure slows the party’s Christian nationalist turn, or whether the ideas he helped cultivate have already taken root.

Signs are that they have. Reform’s education spokesperson Suella Braverman used the conference to promise that every school would be required to sing God Save the King and “our great hymns”. These requirements would be imposed through law and guidance, with “consequences” for schools that did not comply.

There were also signs of a growing religious-right ecosystem around the party. The few civil society conference stallholders at the conference included Christian Concern and the anti-assisted dying group Care Not Killing. A Christian Fellowship for Reform event was addressed by Rupert Evans from Right To Life and Simon Calvert from Christian Institute, two organisations that campaign against abortion. None of this alone makes Reform a Christian nationalist party.

But alongside the rhetoric of Kruger, Orr and Braverman, it is reasonable to ask where the party is heading.

Kruger offers a familiar justification. Speaking in Parliament, he argued that “in abandoning one religion we simply create a space for others to move into as the dominant faiths”. He went on to identify Islam as one of those religions.

The argument goes that a muscular Christian state is needed as a bulwark against Islamism. It’s a false choice.

The rhetoric is increasingly visible among anti-immigration activists and politicians. But it remains a fringe view. Recent polling from the Christian think tank Theos found that 83% of the public reject the idea that someone must be Christian to be truly British. Just 1% regarded Christianity as the most important component of Britishness.

Nevertheless, figures such as Danny Tommo, whose balaclava-clad followers chant “Christ is King” during anti-migrant protests, Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain are leaning into a combative form of cultural Christianity as the answer to Islam’s growing presence in Britain. Christianity becomes less a matter of personal faith than a marker of who belongs – and a political weapon against those deemed not to.

We need to be clear-eyed about the threat from Islamic extremism and the challenges posed by uncontrolled migration and the importation of sexist attitudes shaped by societies that systematically devalue women. We need to be willing to defend freedom of expression, equality between men and women, freedom of religion or belief, liberal democratic government, and the rule of law robustly. But these values are strengthened by belonging equally to everyone – not by flocking to a tribal form of Christianity.

The best defence against Islamism isn’t Christian nationalism. It is a secular constitution which applies the same principles to every religion and belief. It should prevent Islamists from imposing their beliefs on others, but place precisely the same limits on Christian nationalists.

The problem is that Britain does not have a fully secular settlement. It has a network of religious privileges, often dismissed as quaint or ceremonial, which could become far more consequential in the hands of a government committed to asserting a Christian national identity.

The Church of England is established by law, the monarch is its Supreme Governor, and its bishops sit and vote in Parliament as of right. Both Houses begin their sittings with exclusively Christian prayers. Conservative-backed legislation passed in 2015 (in response to an NSS court victory) expressly allows councils to include religious observance in their formal meetings. Ironically, this has opened the door to Islamic prayers at some local authorities.

This illustrates a wider problem with religious privilege. Once the state gives one religion a privileged place in public life, others will understandably demand equivalent treatment. Christian privilege therefore opens the door to sectarian squabbling and broader religious influence in public life.

The same is true in education, where Christianity is baked into the system. Laws require every state-funded school in England to provide a daily act of collective worship – even in schools without a religious designation. Meanwhile, thousands of publicly funded schools are now controlled by religious groups, which enjoy equality law exemptions that allow them to impose their beliefs (not to mention religious modesty codes) on pupils and discriminate against nonbelievers in admissions and employment.

A Reform government intent on establishing a Christian state would not be starting with a blank sheet of paper. It would inherit an established church, bishops in the legislature, Christian privilege in Parliament and schools, statutory provision for council prayers and an extensive state-funded faith school sector.

What is currently sometimes regarded as a benign or largely symbolic Christian establishment could be hardened into a much more assertive programme. Ministers could enforce collective worship more aggressively, prescribe an explicitly Christian curriculum in schools, impose religious observance in civic life and instrumentalise the Christian state as the guardian of national values – putting hard-won freedoms, from women’s reproductive rights to equality for gay people, increasingly at the mercy of religious politics.

Our laws and institutions already concede the central Christian nationalist idea that Christianity is entitled to a privileged place within the state.

Church of England figures have spoken out about rising Christian nationalism, suggesting Christian nationalists are “neither patriots nor Christians”. But the Church is unlikely to relinquish the privileges which give constitutional expression to the very idea that Christianity should enjoy a special place in the life of the nation.

Reform would not need to create a Christian state from scratch. It would merely need to utilise and expand the one we already have.

That is why the Government’s defence of the status quo is so complacent. Its position is that the Church of England is “by law established as the Church in England”, that the monarch is its Supreme Governor, and that this relationship is “a core part of our constitutional framework that has evolved over centuries”. It has no plans to change it.

But the fact that an arrangement has evolved over centuries does not make it suitable for the century we are living in – and nor does it mean that it will always remain benign.

Politicians who defend religious privilege on the basis of tradition cannot assume it will only ever be used inconsequentially. Constitutional arrangements and public institutions must be judged partly by what a future government could do with them.

A secular constitution is not an attack on Christianity and it does not require us to deny Christianity’s influence on British history. It is a safeguard against any religious movement claiming ownership of the nation or using the state to advance its beliefs.

If Britain needs a stronger shared identity, it should be based on equal citizenship, democratic freedoms and the rule of law. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and atheists alike can embrace those principles.

With American-style Christian nationalism gaining ground in a party with serious political ambitions, it is time to stop treating Britain’s archaic church-state settlement as harmless.