by Dr Austin Tiffany and Dilwar Hussain
Nearly two thirds of Britons say the country feels divided . Interfaith infrastructure has weakened, community tensions have risen since October 2023, and demographic change is making cross-community understanding more necessary. In that context, Virtues of Faith: A Better Conversation asks a simple question – can virtues give Britain’s faith and belief communities a shared vocabulary?
The report is the product of a two-year project, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust and led by the Good Faith Partnership, with the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues as research partner. It combines expert interviews, intra- and interfaith focus groups, and a national survey of 5,167 respondents across six cohorts: Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and those who are non-religious.
What we found
There is genuine common ground between faith and belief communities. Kindness and honesty were the two virtues in every cohort’s top eight selected in the survey. Each tradition reaches them by its own route. Kindness appears as chesed in Judaism, seva in Sikhism, khidmah in Islam and “love in action” in Christianity. Honesty appears as emet in Judaism, satya in Hinduism, sat in Sikhism and, for non-religious respondents, “critical inquiry”. These two virtues are useful as connective tissue between cohorts because they are defined and owned by each faith community rather than imposed externally.
The virtues with the greatest breadth diverge from those held with the greatest depth. We measured both how often a virtue was chosen and, among those selected, invited respondents to rank them. Kindness is the most widely selected virtue but one of the sharpest fallers in intensity. Devotion appears in only two cohorts’ top eight by frequency, yet ranks in every cohort’s top eight by intensity. Honesty alone is both broadly chosen and deeply held.
Inward conviction and civic orientation move together. Devotion, citizenship and civility are the three largest risers from frequency to intensity. This should be read as suggestive rather than conclusive but challenges a common assumption that religious depth correlates with social withdrawal. On this evidence, those most committed to their tradition are among those most invested in the civic fabric.
Nevertheless, disagreement between cohorts is real. There are genuine fault lines between the groups, and different opinions on justice and charity, for example. A shared vocabulary of virtue does not dissolve this. However, virtues can help communities understand one another and identify important common ground. Therefore enabling us to disagree well.
Why this matters for policy today
The government’s cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters, published in March 2026, sets the national direction on community cohesion. Six months on, Virtues of Faith offers four steers on the implementation of this strategy.
- Support shared practice, not just dialogue. Across every cohort, virtues are transmitted through family, ritual, story and communal service rather than doctrine. Examples include the langar, Shabbat, khidmah and church responses to community needs. Programmes under the Common Ground Resilience Fund and similar schemes should prioritise joint volunteering, food provision and crisis response over discussion-only formats.
- Refine faith literacy. The strategy commits to boosting faith and belief literacy. Potted facts about the Five Pillars or the Ten Commandments are a first step at best. Durable literacy means understanding each tradition’s exemplars, formative stories, practices and priorities. It also means knowing how context shapes religious communities for example that justice carries particular weight for Jewish and Muslim communities, who experience the highest recorded rates of religious hate crime in the UK.
- Treat local faith and belief organisations as key delivery partners. In many neighbourhoods, faith communities already provide the intergenerational, practice-based infrastructure that government policy is trying to build from scratch. Programme designers should see faith communities as vital delivery partners with a headstart rather than one more community group to be consulted.
- Invest deliberately in linking capital. The civic virtues are held by a smaller group but with strong conviction. Growing the connection between communities and institutions may need a dedicated programme strand aimed at that constituency, rather than an assumption that local bonding between faith groups will naturally develop into linking capital at a structural level.
The bottom line: a modest, durable claim
The report does not argue that Britain’s communities secretly agree. It argues something more achievable: they have more practical ground to build on than our adversarial public debate suggests. Cohesion is built by recognising virtue in one another, not only by agreeing on it in advance. It is about disagreeing well together, so that we can live well together.