Denmark’s ‘spiritual rearmament’ offers important lessons to UK

Earlier this year Denmark’s prime minister spoke of the need for a spiritual form of "rearmament" in the country, a stunning statement from the leader of one of the most secular countries in Europe.

“We will need a form of rearmament that is just as important [as the military one]," Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a group of university students. "That is the spiritual one.”

Few expected such words from the leader of the Social Democrats, a party which spent much of the 20th century reducing the Church of Denmark’s influence in public life, Iben Thranholm writes for the Spectator.

The surprising remarks followed the announcement by Frederiksen a few days earlier of a major military build-up –including increased conscription, a sharp rise in defence spending and intensified strategic readiness – as Denmark, like the rest of Europe and Nato, prepares for what appears an increasingly more dangerous world.

“But there’s a deeper problem, one that Frederiksen – unusually for a western leader – has dared to identify,” Thranholm says. “Many young Danes are unwilling to fight. Some openly admit they wouldn’t die for Denmark – not for democracy, not for the flag, and certainly not for a modern welfare state that promises everything but inspires nothing.”

This is not just Denmark’s crisis, she notes, explaining that it affects all post-Christian societies and “raises a question that Britain, too, must confront. What binds a people together when the systems they trusted start to falter?”

Thranholm describes how striking the move by Denmark is, given "it is among the most secular nations on Earth". She explains that though the Church still exists by law, it plays little role in the daily lives of most citizens, with religion viewed as a private matter. For generations, Thranholm explains, the state has quietly absorbed the Church’s traditional functions: care for the poor, moral formation, rites of passage, community.

"But now the country’s prime minister is now calling on the Church to return," Thranholm says, and at a time when Denmark holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union until 31 December 2025.

In an interview with the Christian newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, Frederiksen went even further, urging the Church of Denmark to step up not merely as a cultural institution, but as a vital part of national life.

Frederiksen said: "I believe that people will increasingly seek the Church, because it offers natural fellowship and national grounding … The church room has helped people through many crises. I believe the Church will find that these times call for such a space.”

This, Thranholm argues, shows a recognition that rights, services and social protections cannot sustain a society on their own.

“People are not willing to suffer for tax models," she says. "They do not risk their lives for procedural democracy. But they will fight for what they hold sacred.

“Denmark is discovering what many nations in the West are about to learn: that a system built on comfort, entitlement and personal freedom leaves nothing to defend when hardship occurs. And hardship – in the form of war, threat and sacrifice – is returning to the European Continent.”

Thranholm argues that Britain is in a similar situation: military recruitment is declining, while political leaders speak of new global threats and of boosting defence spending.

But, unlike Denmark, the UK's politicians "say nothing of belief, meaning or moral courage".

“No one [in the UK] seems to be asking the fundamental question: do we have anything left that people would die to protect? That is the real crisis.”

Thranholm goes on to say that the situation in Denmark is evidence of the limit of secular governance:

“Rights and freedoms, as noble as they are, do not exist in a vacuum. They are the fruit of a deeper moral vision, one rooted in transcendence, in religion, in a shared understanding of truth and goodness. Cut off from those roots, the tree will not stand.”

And this is why Frederiksen’s words matter, Thranholm says, as they are an "admission that faith itself is necessary, as no civilisation can survive, let alone defend itself, without something sacred at its foundation".

Britain, she says, still retains symbols of faith, such as its cathedrals, bishops and coronation liturgies.

"But without conviction, those symbols will become museum pieces: objects of nostalgia, not sources of strength," Thranholm says.

"In the end, the question facing every western democracy is not how to govern, but why it exists."

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‍Photo: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen gives a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, 8 July 2025. (Photo by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP via Getty Images.)

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