Faith survey isn’t so hard to believe

‘We are now firmly a non-religious country’

A University of Kent religious affairs expert says it should come as no surprise that more than half of British people say they are of no faith.

Dr Lois Lee, an international expert in “unbelief”, says the latest figures from the British Social Attitudes Survey simply reinforce a trend that stretches back a quarter of a century.

The data show that non-religious people have been the largest group in the UK since 1993 and passed the 50% mark in 2010.

“We are now a very firmly nonreligious country, but there’s no doubt that we have a strange blindspot about this,” Dr Lee said.

“We’re still surprised by the latest data hammering home this long-term trend. The reaction to this research is a case in point.

“I think an underlying issue here is that we know the num- bers, but we don’t really know what to make of them.

“It’s astonishing to think that, though a third of the world’s population do not affiliate with a religion, what we know about religious unbelievers comes from just a handful of studies, most of which focus on the US and the UK, or even more narrowly on the writings of a tiny number of prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins.

“And this means we often struggle to make space for nonreligious world views in schools, the media and the law.”

Dr Lee says it is important to recognise that not having a religion and being an atheist are not the same thing.

But she adds that most nonreligious people are nevertheless content to refer to themselves as atheist or agnostic.

“I think we’ll look back on this as a major milestone in our understanding of the nonreligious – and of the religious, too, in fact,” she said.

Dr Lois Lee, of the University of Kent