Now just four in ten of us say we’re Christians
Faith is in a minority for the first time on record, census shows
CHRISTIANS make up less than half of the population for the first time on record.
Only four in ten now profess the faith after a dramatic decline over the past decade, landmark census figures showed yesterday.
More than a third of people in England and Wales say they have no religion, up eight million in a decade. Non-believers outnumber churchgoers in Wales.
Other faiths continue to grow in popularity with the census recording almost four million Muslims and a million Hindus. The number of believers in ancient traditions such as Shamanism and Paganism has also grown.
‘We have left behind the era when many people almost automatically identified as Christian,’ admitted the Archbishop of York. ‘It’s not a great surprise that the census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past, but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known.’
Census deputy director Jon Wroth- Smith said: ‘More than 22million people – an increase of eight million since 2011 – said they had no religion. And for the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population reported their religion as Christian, although it remained the most common response.’
Campaigners said the watershed moment should spell the end of the Church of England as the country’s established religion. Dozens of bishops sit in the House of Lords, schools are required by law to have daily collective worship and humanist marriages are not legally recognised.
Andrew Copson of Humanists UK said: ‘These results confirm that the biggest demographic change in England and Wales of the last ten years has been the dramatic growth of the non-religious. They mean the UK is almost certainly one of the least religious countries on earth.
‘This census result should be a wake-up call which prompts fresh reconsiderations of the role of religion in society.’ Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society said: ‘It’s official – we are no longer a Christian country. The current status quo, in which the Church of England is deeply embedded in the UK constitution, is unfair and undemocratic – and looking increasingly absurd and unsustainable.’
When the survey of every household in England and Wales was last carried out, in 2011, 59.3 per cent – or 33.3million – described themselves as Christian.
But the first results from last year’s census, published yesterday, revealed that figure had fallen by 22 per cent to only 46.2 per cent of the population (27.5million).
At the same time, the proportion ticking the box to say they did not believe in any god rose from one in four (25.2 per cent or 14.1million) to more than one in three (37.2 per cent or 22.2million).
The shift was even more dramatic in Wales, with 46.5 per cent saying they had no religion last year and only 43.6 per cent calling themselves Christians.
Muslims now account for 6.5 per cent of the population (3.9million people, up from 2.7million in 2011) followed by Hindus (1.7 per cent or 1million) and Sikhs (524,000).
Buddhists (273,000) outnumber Jews (271,000) for the first time.
London is the most religiously diverse part of the country, with four in ten residents of Tower Hamlets followers of Islam.
A spokesman for Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first Hindu Prime Minister, said: ‘The UK is a diverse country, and that has got to be welcomed. That includes diversity of religion as well.’
Outside of the major faiths, residents were allowed to write in the name of any other religion they
‘It throws down a challenge’
followed. Some 405,000 people did so, listing everything from Confucianism (76) to Satanism (5,054) and ‘own belief system’ (2,199).
The biggest increase since the last census was among those believing in Shamanism – the ancient tradition of healing through trance – up from 650 to 8,000 in the past decade.
There were another 74,000 Pagans, 13,000 Wiccans, 6,000 Rastafarians and 4,000 Zoroastrians.
When the voluntary question on religion was first asked in 2001, almost 400,000 people claimed to be Jedis. But the joke appears to have worn thin with only a handful still saying they follow the philosophy of the Star Wars films.
‘It’s not so much Return of the Jedi, more the Demise of the Jedi, with fewer than 1,600 responses this time,’ the Office for National Statistics said.
More data will be published in stages over the next two years.
CHriStianitY is more than a religion in this country. it provides the moral code that underpins our society, institutions and legal system. Over centuries, its creed of faith, understanding and charity has served us well.
So the news that fewer than half of us now regard ourselves as Christian will be seen by many as a sad moment. in the absence of a common morality, shrill, selfrighteous minorities take over. the present culture wars, in which reason is too often drowned out by cacophonous dogma, are a baleful example of that fragmentation.