The latest YouGov polling, published in July 2026, suggests that few Britons would be willing to participate directly in the military if the UK faced an imminent threat of invasion. Just 6% of respondents said they would volunteer for military service, while a further 14% stated that they would serve only if conscripted. In contrast, 17% said they would refuse to serve, even if called up and 11% were unsure of how they would respond. The largest group, comprising 52% of respondents, believed that the armed forces would be unlikely to accept them because of their age or a disability.
Christians will be cautious of YouGov polling, following the company’s admission that data supplied for the Bible Society’s ‘Quite Revival’ report of 2025 was flawed. However, these findings closely mirror those recorded in a 2024 YouGov survey and while historic YouGov polling limits us to 2022, we can observe from the long-term source of World Values Survey (1981 to present), and recorded attitudes in World War Two and during conscription, that the latest YouGov results look less like a sudden collapse in a willingness to fight and defend the UK, and more like a drift in national patriotism over decades.
When the UK last fought against invasion in 1940, the Home Guard alone attracted around 1.5 million volunteers. Estimates place Christian identification at well over 90% of the population during World War Two, with very small numbers identifying with other religions or none. In the 2021 Census, Christianity dropped to 46% of the UK population – the first time in living memory that the majority did not identify as Christian.
Such findings raise important questions about what influences British citizens and their willingness to defend their country. Observers have suggested multiple contributing factors such as: (1) demographic changes, including an ageing population, which may help explain the large proportion who believe they are unsuitable for military service; (2) declining patriotism and changing perceptions of national identity; (3) growing distrust in Government and the integrity of institutions; (4) negative attitudes towards war as a political tool and the legacies of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; (5) social changes, with individual rights being prominent over collective responsibilities and thereby unwillingness to volunteer or accept conscription; and (6) a reduced connection between the civilian population and our armed forces, as the number of troops has declined and population grown.
A question for Christians is, however, how much does faith matter? Using an evangelical understanding of Aquinas’ theological and cardinal virtues, I analyse their deterioration, the consequences and hope for the future.
Three Theological Virtues
Data shows that Britain in 1939 was a much more religious society than today – more faith, hope and charity – epitomised by a total of seven National Days of Prayer during World War Two, called by King George VI and where millions participated. Several were for specific events such as Dunkirk, which were followed by major Allied successes; most at the time had little doubt of God’s intervention.
Along with this Christian identity came Christian virtues and concepts such as duty, service and sacrifice that were routinely reinforced through churches, schools and communities. From biblical virtues, the Christian just-war tradition provided a moral framework that made military service and sacrifice easier to understand and justify, particularly in conflicts of national survival. There have been consequences to our nation’s erosion of Christian virtues, which I now examine.
Four Cardinal Virtues
Prudence
As the virtue that orders individuals and nations toward the common good across generations, prudence is the sense that preserving the UK’s institutions, culture and heritage is a moral duty and not merely a policy preference.
Over centuries, the UK has developed a mythos, rooted in Christianity, and realised a national inheritance of Church, family and nationhood. Similarly, Bible-based values and standards matured in institutions such as our armed forces, civil service, education, politics, media etc.
However, as they began to compromise their foundation, for example in churches the gospel, biblical marriage, family structures and human sexuality, so citizens began to identify less with a shared historical narrative and more with individual or global identities.
Objective truth was replaced by ‘my truth’ and so wisdom and discernment could not be anchored in reality. Men could become women just by saying so and truth became subordinate to feeling.
It is unsurprising, therefore, that a consequence has been the demise of the moral and practical good of the building blocks of family, community, town or city, and nation and the promotion of individualism.
In turn, it has lessened the willingness to sacrifice for them.
Justice
If Christian justice is the will to give each person what is due within relationships of families, communities and society, then a nation is not simply a collection of individuals without obligations and duties. For historic Christian Britain, duties owed to God, King and Country were acknowledged as a common good, evidenced by having confidence in and obeying just laws, preserving trusted public institutions, respecting and assimilating cultural inheritance, and passing on our shared story to future generations.
Through diminished faith, UK justice has become understood more as individual autonomy, fulfilment and rights, thereby diluting the concept of moral obligations, reciprocal duties and personal sacrifice for a greater common good.
A nation that lacks historic common bonds, distrusts its institutions, witnesses two-tier law enforcement, persecutes its combatants when they act legally, and does not generate warriors, volunteers or otherwise.
Without justice being a shared will for the collective and common good, few will sacrifice themselves other than for themselves.
Fortitude
To remain steadfast in pursuing good despite fear, hardship or opposition, fortitude is most easily recognised by bravery in battle, but it is much more; it is the moral and physical courage to do what is right, even when it is difficult, unpopular or costly.
For most of our history, our morality has been grounded in Christianity and its teaching. As fortitude weakens, citizens become less willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve moral institutions, culture and historical inheritance, leading to a diminished obligation and sense of duty toward our heritage.
Militarily, ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the downfall of the Soviet Union, the UK has continued to reduce its military capability in terms of personnel and equipment, from 5% of GDP in 1989 to between 2% and 3% from around the 1990s. Our three Services are undermanned again this year and they have not met their recruitment targets for many years.
Without sufficient fortitude to do the right thing for our nation, we jeopardise our security and defence – the first responsibility of government.
Temperance
As a virtue, temperance moderates desire and enables people to place common good above self-interest. It encourages restraint, stewardship and responsibility rather than excessive consumption, individualism or barbarism in war. The Christian understanding of the sanctity of life, sexual ethics, silent prayer etc is not only ridiculed today but often maliciously confronted.
Without Christian temperance, personal choice is considered the highest good and duties are optional, with no inherited or shared obligation. While social researchers Dennis and Erdos showed decades ago that children from stable, traditional married families tended, on average, to have better educational, social and behavioural outcomes, the rise of individualism has contributed to a consumer view of family life that does not consider children’s wellbeing and futures first.
Being less willing to restrain ourselves, delay gratification and actively share our inheritance, is unlikely to promote patriotic self-defence. If our national story is not worth passing on, no one will be interested in fighting for it.
Conclusion
Analysing the willingness of British people to fight for their country shows that eroding Christian virtues weakens civic responsibility, leading to a diminished capacity to sustain a strong sense of duty toward fighting for family, community, nation and cultural inheritance.
Thankfully, all is not lost because we have an all-powerful God, who listens to His faithful followers’ prayers, and wills the salvation of His people. While the above data and observations look bleak, there is objective evidence of people, particularly young people and within our armed forces, who are seeking meaning and purpose in their lives, which individualism and the combination of identity politics, critical theory, progressivism, climate change and so on do not satisfy.
More armed forces personnel are recognising that the material world is not all that there is and we at SASRA, supporting military chaplains, share that transcendent missing piece by revealing the gospel of the one true Lord Jesus Christ.
God has grown SASRA by nearly two-thirds in two years, and we are having more gospel conversations with more troops, and witnessing many more baptisms, and increased attendance at Bible studies and services on camps.
If you would like to know more about our growing work with troops then visit www.sasra.org.uk. You are also welcome to attend our annual event ‘Our Day’ at Duke Street Church, Richmond, TW9 1DH, at 1400 hours, Saturday 03 October 2026, and see what God is doing through SASRA.
