Who are the UK's Evangelicals?
Comments on the Evangelical Alliance’s Understanding UK Evangelicals report
Today (14 September 2026), the Evangelical Alliance UK (EAUK) published a report entitled Understanding UK Evangelicals: Who Are They? The headline statistic on the webpage for the report is that 12.3 million people in the UK (17.6% of the UK population) can be identified as ‘evangelical’.[i] Another prominent claim is “that evangelicals make up almost two-thirds of practising Christians in the UK and remain at the heart of church life every Sunday”.[ii] However, the methodology used in this research raises important questions about who should properly be identified as an ‘evangelical’ and how reliable these headline claims are.
What does the EAUK report claim?
The whole aim of this research was to quantify evangelicals. The report states the aim of the research as follows: “As the UK Evangelical Alliance, it is important to have a robust understanding of who evangelical Christians in the UK are, and how many there are. This research has been conducted to provide those answers”.[iii] As such, the central question for this report is definition. The research measured two ways of thinking about evangelical identity, one sociological and the other theological.
The sociological aspect – evangelical identification – was simply based on self-identification with the label ‘evangelical’.
The theological aspect – evangelical beliefs – was measured as agreement or strong agreement with all four of the following statements: (i) the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God; (ii) Jesus Christ died in our place to save us from our sins; (iii) belief in the need for personal conversion through faith in Christ; and (iv) the importance of putting faith into action through evangelism and good works.
Considering these two dimensions – identification and belief – the reports describes “Five groups within UK evangelicalism”:[iv]
‘Somewhat Evangelical’ – hold to the four statements or identify as evangelical or both. This is the expansive group that comprises the headline 12.3 million figure, or 17.6% of the population. It is subdivided into the following three groups.
‘Broad Evangelicals’ – hold to the four statements and identify as Evangelical. The report claims that this group comprises 5.5 million people or 7.9% of the UK population. This is the group that gives rise to the claim that almost two thirds of practising Christians in the UK are evangelicals, since 64% of participants in the research who attend church and read the Bible regularly were in the ‘Broad Evangelical’ group.
‘Belief Only Evangelicals’ – hold to the four statements but would not identify as evangelical. The report claims that this group comprises 4.3 million people or 6.5% of the UK population.
‘Evangelicals in Name Only’ – identify as evangelical but do not hold to the four statements. The report claims that this group comprises 2.5 million people or 3.5% of the UK population.
‘Classic Evangelicals’ – this is a subgroup of Broad Evangelicals who additionally identify with a Protestant church. The report found they comprise 2.6 million people or 3.8% of the UK population.
The population projections were calculated by applying the percentages found in the research sample of 3804 adults to the total UK population, meaning that they include children. This is an unusual approach in sociological research which, as the report itself acknowledges, must be born in mind when comparing these findings with other research. However, this is not my primary concern with the methodology of this research, which concerns the basis for defining who is an evangelical.
Interesting insights, but definitional ambiguity
As someone who identifies as evangelical and who has had a longstanding research interest in Evangelicalism,[v] this research is of great interest to me. It helpfully reveals some interesting trends, including indications of higher levels of faith among younger people than older people, men than women, and ethnic minorities than the majority ethnic group. It also provides insights into which denominations practising Christians are most likely to be found within. However, as I analysed the report, I could not escape the conclusion that the report is not useful in doing what it aimed to do: identifying the numbers of evangelicals in the UK.
I had the same concern about a Northern Ireland focused report published by EAUK in 2024, entitled Good News People: A report on evangelicals in Northern Ireland. That research identified “four distinct types of evangelicals”, which included practising Roman Catholics within two of the groups: ‘Catholic Evangelicals’ and ‘Classic Evangelicals’. That research did not seek to work with a theological definition at all and in that regard the 2026 research is an improvement. However, the inconsistency between the meaning of the same term – ‘Classic Evangelical’ – in these two reports should be noted. In 2024 it could include Roman Catholics, whereas in 2026 it is exclusively Protestant’. EAUK’s recent research projects are operating with different working definitions, which makes comparison difficult and introduces a degree of definitional ambiguity.
This ambiguity is not a minor problem – it goes to the heart of the research’s methodology. When examined closely, the approach taken in the 2026 report makes the results difficult to interpret and, therefore, raises questions about their usefulness. I suggest that both the self-identification and doctrinal or belief criteria approaches used in Understanding UK Evangelicals are unclear.
First, the usefulness of self-identification depends on what people understand by the term ‘evangelical’.
The research asked people to say whether they considered themselves to be “an evangelical Christian” without providing a definition of what “evangelical” means.[vi] People chose this identification or not based on their own understanding of the term. However, the term ‘evangelical’ may mean different things to different people.
In the media, ‘evangelical’ is increasingly used as an adjective to describe someone who is passionate about any cause and seeks to persuade others to join it. This is even presented as a secondary meaning of the word in some dictionaries.[vii] It seems likely that this could be what some of those in the ‘Evangelicals in Name Only’ group thought they were saying by identifying with the term. They are passionate about being Christian and want others to share that passion.
It is also likely that some of those who did not accept the label ‘evangelical’ would agree theologically with EAUK. The term ‘evangelical’ has become associated – primarily in the USA –a brand of right-wing politics that many UK Christians are uncomfortable with.[viii] Meanwhile, some theologically conservative Christians in the UK may reject the label ‘evangelical’ because it is sometimes used (including in EAUK reports) to include people with whom they would not wish to identity theologically.
Interestingly, some research in the Northern Ireland context has found that ‘born-again’, rather than ‘evangelical’, may be the most useful term of self-identification to identify a distinctive morally and theologically conservative group of Protestants in Northern Ireland.[ix]
In short, self-identification as ‘evangelical’ is not a helpful indicator of evangelical identity since any identify-based measure is unreliable when a term is contested or politicised.
Second, the four statements used to identify evangelical beliefs are too broad to be useful.
The four statements are based on seminal work by historian David Bebbington.[x] Setting out to write a history of Evangelicalism, he identified these four qualities as features that run across a diverse movement within historically orthodox Protestantism. His approach was descriptive: evangelicals tend to show these qualities. It was not prescriptive, saying ‘these qualities define what it is to be evangelical’.
In my view, the four statements are too broad to function as a definition of what an evangelical is. They could find agreement from members of non-trinitarian groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, or people within traditions that value the Bible but do not recognise it as the supreme authority for matters of belief, such as Roman Catholicism. Indeed, the report indicates that 19% of its ‘Broad Evangelicals’ were Roman Catholic. Bebbington’s four criteria have proven to be a remarkably helpful tool in describing Evangelicalism, but they were not designed as a checklist, and in my view they are not well suited to being used in that way.
The breadth of the statements means that the report’s ‘Belief Only Evangelicals’ and ‘Broad Evangelicals’ may include many people who deny aspects of historic Christian orthodoxy or the ‘Reformation solas’ that were agreed by historic evangelicals. Even the ‘Classic Evangelical’ group, whilst excluding Roman Catholics (who were included under the same category in the 2024 Good News People report), are defined only by adherence to these four statements along with accepting the label ‘evangelical’ and participating in a Protestant Church. Some of these people may also hold to heterodox theology and the fact that only 77% of them are weekly practising Christians may suggest that a significant proportion may not be active evangelicals.
EAUK’s own basis of faith is considerably narrower than the statements, reflecting both creedal orthodoxy and the Reformation solas. As such, EAUK’s Basis of Faith would exclude many of the people this report includes as ‘Broad Evangelicals’ including the 19% of people in that group who are Roman Catholics, assuming they hold to their own Church’s teaching. For example, it includes a trinitarian statement, describes Scripture as the “supreme authority”, and “justification of sinners solely by God’s grace through faith in Christ”.[xi]
In the Understanding UK Evangelicals report, EAUK does not explain why it uses a different standard to define evangelical beliefs in this research than in its own Basis of Faith. One might speculate that EAUK is seeking to be generous, recognising that it is not the sole custodian of the evangelical identity. That would certainly be a commendable aim, but the statements used in this research are so broad that it is hard to imagine that any person who identifies as ‘Christian’ in anything more than a purely cultural sense would not agree with them.
Not only is self-definition as ‘evangelical’ an unclear criterion, so too is adherence to the four statements included in the research. As a result, I maintain that this lack of definitional consistency and clarity makes it very difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from the results.
Who is an evangelical then?
I do wish to be clear that there is a legitimate question here about how ‘evangelical’ should be defined. My own perspective on that can be found in a brief paper What is An Evangelical? on my website.[xii] Without including my proposal in full, I go back to the root meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ – of the gospel – and suggest a set of criteria derived from 1 Corinthians 15. That approach is broadly consistent with many other authors such as John Stott, D.A. Carson, and Mike Reeves,[xiii] and also with EAUK’s own basis of faith. EAUK was founded originally to unite orthodox Protestants who recognised the need to defend the authority of Scripture and preaching of the gospel at a time when Roman Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism were on the increase.[xiv] Its Basis of Faith defines a core of shared belief that is intended to unite members and to give definition to what EAUK means by 'evangelical'.
The Understanding UK Evangelicals report does not refer to EAUK's Basis of Faith and defines 'evangelical' much more broadly than its own doctrine does. It is not clear from this report whether EAUK still considers an evangelical identity distinct from Roman Catholicism to be necessary. The report recognises that “Catholicism has traditionally been considered a separate strand of Christianity to evangelicalism, particularly in areas such as the authority of scripture and the nature of salvation”.[xv] Yet it includes many Roman Catholics within its definition of evangelical.
There is an important distinction to draw here. Many membership organisations legitimately speak for a wider constituency than their paying membership. A trade body might claim to represent ‘the industry’ even though most firms have simply chosen not to join. In that case the boundary of representation and the boundary of eligibility are the same; non-members are non-members by choice. EAUK's position is different. Membership – personal, church, or organisational – requires affirming the Basis of Faith, which is considerably more specific statement than the statements used in this research.
A meaningful share of those counted as ‘Broad Evangelicals’ would not be eligible to join EAUK even if they wished to. The report's own data shows 19% of the 'Broad Evangelical' group identify their denomination as Roman Catholic. A Roman Catholic who holds to their church's teaching on justification and priesthood could not affirm a Basis of Faith that specifies "the justification of sinners solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ" and "the priesthood of all believers." This is not a matter of choosing not to apply; the categories used in the research and the criteria used for membership simply diverge.
EAUK claims that “this report offers a firmer foundation for [its] work: a clearer picture of who evangelicals are, and a confident basis for representing them well in the years ahead”.[xvi] But how can a membership organisation claim to represent people who would not be eligible for membership? Unless EAUK intends to revise its Basis of Faith to encompass a wider range of traditions, this approach risks creating long-term confusion about what EAUK means by ‘evangelical’ or whether it can truly claim to speak for all the people these reports define as evangelicals.
Conclusion: the need for clarity
This report provides some helpful insights into the shape of evangelicalism and EAUK is right to ask how evangelical identity is understood today. My concern is simply that the tools used in this report are inadequate to answer that question. I am convinced that the term ‘evangelical’ becomes meaningless if it encompasses people who are not theologically orthodox and Protestant or who do not subscribe to the supreme authority of the Bible as the decisive principle in their theology.
Importantly, that is not necessarily to say that people outside that group are not ‘Christian’ – what it means to be ‘Christian’ is a whole other question. It is simply to say that evangelicals have no basis from which to engage in dialogue with others about what it means to be ‘Christian’ if we are unclear about what beliefs unite us as evangelicals and distinguish us from others.
[ii] EAUK (2026) Understanding UK Evangelicals: Who Are They? p.2.
[iii] EAUK, Understanding, p.6.
[iv] EAUK, Understanding, p.7.
[v] This was a key aspect of my PhD research.
[ix] Mitchell, Claire and James R. Tilley (2008) ‘Disaggregating Conservative Protestant Groups in Northern Ireland: Overlapping Categories and the Importance of a Born-Again Self-Identification’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47(4): 738-752
[x] Bebbington, David W. (1989) Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: History from the 1730s to 1980s. London: Unwin Hyman.
[xiv] Randall, Ian, and David Hilborn (2001) One Body in Christ: The History and Significance of the Evangelical Alliance. Carlisle: Paternoster Press. p.30.
[xv] EAUK, Understanding, p.23.
[xvi] EAUK, Understanding, p.26.
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