Note: I wrote this some time ago and more statistics have popped up showing the secular nonreligious nature of the UK. There’s also been a further decline in Church attendance (for the Church of England) with statistics falling below 1 million. When I dig the statistics out from my bookmarks, I’ll update the post.
The statistics about religion among the UK population are not as faith bound as some would have us believe.
In the last census 72% of people responded Christian to the question ‘what is your religion?’ The second largest majority was the 15.5% of people who responded ‘no religion’ and the third largest, at 8%, were those who choose not to respond at all.
Taking the Census as fact for a moment (although I doubt it is for a number of reasons), what it shows is that the second largest majority are indeed the irreligious, hence ideas such as giving other faith groups seats in the lords, opening up more faith schools or stealth faith schools in the form of academies (not all but some), actually discriminates against a large portion of the country.
In my view however this irreligious portion is far larger than the Census suggests. Firstly we have the problem of children been included within the figures; children who are not of the age to make the decision for their self (also note the fact the Church actually fabricates its membership figures using baptism figures). Not including children in the figures would give a much clearer picture of those certain in their views.
Now there are a few problems with people considering themselves ‘Christian’ in the Census. A good case can certainly be made to suggest that a lot of the people who responded ‘Christian’ are not in fact Christians in any real sense of the term. Firstly a lot of people I’ve spoken to about religion will claim to be ‘C of E’, but pressed as to why, they do not respond that they have taken Christ as their saviour, it is normally because they were baptised as infants. They see it as some sort of mark. Other people it seems view themselves as Christians as a sort of nationalist thing. It is seen as some type of sign of ethnicity. This is also curious as the question of religion was placed in the context of ethnicity.
Other polls seem to suggest a less religious population. A YouGov poll taken in 2004 revealed that 56% of people claimed not profess a belief in god. An earlier ‘British Social Attitudes survey’ taken in 1992 revealed 31% of those questioned did not profess a belief in god. The number seems to have increased over the years as in 2000 when the ‘British Social Attitudes survey’ was repeated; the number shot up to 44%.
The unimportance of religion to people in the UK was also highlighted by the “Home Office Research Study 274: Religion in England and Wales: findings from the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey (March 2004)”. The study revealed religion is the 9th most important characteristic that respondent’s state says “something important” about them. This came after such things as family, employment, age, interests, level of education, nationality, gender and level of income. You’d expect if religion was some pressing issue to people in the UK that they’d have placed it in at least the top 3 however they did not. Another survey show “42% of the population think the Government pays too much attention to religious groups”, this was second only to leaders of other countries by a mere 2% (MORI poll 2006). It is clear from this that the public at large doesn’t take religion seriously.
Among the youth atheism and irreligion seems to be growing even faster. The National Centre for Social Research study highlights this. 55% of those questioned (12-19 year olds) in 1994 stated they did not belong to any religion. In 2003 when the same question was asked, 65% of respondents stated they did not belong to any religion. That is an increase of 10% in less than 10 years.
Church attendance in the UK is also at a mere 7% of the adult population. A religious population would surely be attending church like in the US where 41% (Gallup poll) attends church every Sunday yet among the UK population we see no such thing.
Now in terms of issues, the British public time and time again seems to disagree with the Church. Take the recent euthanasia bill, while 82% of the public supported the Bill (NOP poll, 2004), all the “I shouldn’t be there” Bishops in the Lords voted against it. The church is also an advocate of faith schools but 80% of the public believe all schools should be open to anyone of any faith (MORI poll 2001), compare this with 64% of public stating they’re against faith schools (ICM poll 2005) and another 80% opposing the expansion of faith schools (YouGov poll 2001) and you hardly see an agreement between the public and the church. Also note the fact that while the Bishops try to make out they represent the views of the public – only 3 of them turned up to vote against the casino bill while all of them show up to support the Catholics over the adoption vote.
Although probably wrong to claim this is a “country of atheists”, it certainly is a country made up of a secular and irreligious population.