Theos Think Tank

27/05/2026

Last chance to attend!

We can't wait for next week's lunchtime discussion 'Exploring Sacred Stories in a Secular Age' in with The Fetzer Institute and LSE Faith Centre.

We'll hear two fascinating panel discussions:

1. The Sacred Dimension with Mark Vernon, Elizabeth Oldfield, Luqman Ali and Bill Vendley.

2. The Sacred Direction with Chine McDonald, Prof. Linda Woodhead, David Smith MP and Daisy Scalchi.

🔗 Find out more and reserve your place here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1988317105988?aff=oddtdtcreator

How do we rediscover the sacred in a world that often ignores it - and why does it matter now more than ever?

26/05/2026

Buddhism is often seen in the West as a religion of peace and serenity - rarely, if ever, associated with violence. But that comforting image has obscured a darker and more complex reality playing out across Southeast Asia.

Journalist and author Sonia Faleiro joins Nick Spencer to explore her latest book 'The Robe and the Sword', which examines how Buddhist nationalism has fuelled ethnic tension, discrimination, and outright genocide in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand.

From the militant monks who emerged out of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, to the Facebook-driven hatred that preceded the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, the patterns Faleiro uncovers are uncomfortably familiar to anyone watching the rise of religious nationalism elsewhere in the world.

23/05/2026

Research identifies ‘warm but passive’ attachment of general public

22/05/2026

Cathedral deans are to meet MPs next month to discuss the financial sustainability of cathedrals in light of the report, it was announced at the National Cathedrals Conference on Tuesday

Read more 👇

22/05/2026

"Beneath the flags and headlines of a 'racist and xenophobic' march, then, we observed something much more complex than social media clickbait or political polarisation will allow."

Last weekend, a team of Theos researchers attended Tommy Robinson's Unite the Kingdom rally to see how Christianity and nationalism intersect.

Find out what Coco Huggins and George Lapshynov discovered here 👇
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2026/05/22/christ-culture-country-unfurling-the-flags-of-the-unite-the-kingdom-rally

A team of our researchers attended the last Unite the Kingdom rally last weekend to investigate the rise of “Christian nationalism”. 22/05/2026

21/05/2026

Join George and Nathan to discover the 3 ways they collected data for their Cathedrals project fieldwork.

Our new report 'Living Stones' with Association of English Cathedrals draws on qualitative and quantitative research from six representative cathedrals (Carlisle Cathedral, Derby Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, Rochester Cathedral, St Albans Cathedral and York Minster)

Their qual fieldwork involved almost 150 in‑depth interviews across the six Anglican cathedrals. But there's more to fieldwork than interviews alone…

20/05/2026

One of England's oldest institutions is facing immense pressure.

Our new report with Association of English Cathedrals, Living Stones, explores the essential role of cathedrals today and the challenges they face.

If cathedrals matter to you, what does caring for them look like and who should be involved?

Join the conversation and let us know in the comments below 👇

19/05/2026

Living Stones, our new report with The Association of English Cathedrals, came to life through the lens of analogue and digital photographer Emma Ledwith.

Many of the photographs in this report use a technique called multiple exposure, where two or more photographs are overlayed in a single shot. The layered images portray the vast, changing, and overlapping roles that cathedrals play in the twenty-first century. Cathedrals are simultaneously:

Local and national.
Sites of Christian worship and open to all.
Hubs for community life and places of quiet contemplation.

Each image tells a different story of the complex reality that England’s cathedrals face today. These photographs were taken across four of the six cathedral case studies from this research (York Minster, Carlisle Cathedral, Rochester Cathedral and St Albans Cathedral).

Here's a taster of the sensitive, beautiful way in which Emma has captured the spirit of these cathedrals.

19/05/2026

European Christian politics is not new. Indeed, the religion has been an integral political factor for 1700 years. But something has changed over the last 20 years.

Increasingly, a secularised form of Christian politics is taking centre-stage, in which populist leaders celebrate Christianity, but without the Christ bit.

What forms does this secular Christianity take? How does it differ between Europe's major nations? And why may we be seeing not the Americanisation of European politics (as many claim) but the Europeanisation of American politics?

This week on Reading Our Times, Nick Spencer speaks with Tobias Cremer, author of 'The Godless Crusade: Religion, Populism and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West'

19/05/2026