More than half of British people are non-believers

BRITAIN is losing its religion, research has found, with the proportion of non-believers the highest it has ever been.

More than half of the population has no faith and the share who say they are Church of England Christians has fallen to just 15 per cent – the lowest recorded.

Just three per cent of those aged 18 to 24 said they were COE, while the proportion overall of non-christians has tripled from two to six per cent.

Half of those aged 55 to 64 said they had no religion.

Church of England leaders said the findings were “troubling”, but expressed optimism that the Church could still attract some of the 53 per cent who said they had no religion. The Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev Paul Bayes, said: “Saying ‘no religion’ is not the same as a considered atheism. People’s minds, and hearts, remain open.”

But Andrew Copson, the Humanists UK chief executive, said the figures were proof that the Church was undergoing an “ongoing and probably irreversible collapse”. Of the overall six per cent belonging to other faiths, half were Muslim and a third were Hindu, with Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist and other groups all smaller.

The figures from the British Social Attitudes Survey were first produced in 1983, when more than two thirds of the population said they were Christian. This has fallen to 41 per cent.