Is England a minority Christian country?

The headline this week was that in last year’s census, for the first time since Saxon times, less than half the population of England and Wales ticked the box saying “Christian”.

For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question. “No religion” was the second most common response, increasing by 12.0 percentage points to 37.2% (22.2 million) from 25.2% (14.1 million) in 2011.

Norwich’s growing population of 145,000 , labelled the “most godless” city in 2011, is now second only to Brighton, with 52% ticking the “no religion” box – although wider Norfolk’s percentage was more like the national figures above.

The census data have led to claims that Christianity is now a minority religion and to calls for disestablishment of the Church of England.

However a more careful look at the results, and comparison with the survey “Talking Jesus” published a few months ago, paints a rather different picture. We can summarise the real conclusions:

• Whilst nominal Christianity is declining, and has been doing so for 50 years, the percentage of practising Christians is fairly steady
• Sunday attendance across denominations remains at about 3.5 million, nearly five times the weekly attendance at football matches in the top four divisions (being 720,000)
• Other religions have increased (largely by migration) but by far the biggest increase is among the “no-religion” group
• given that the last census was ten years ago it is reasonable to estimate that most of these “no-religion” people are young adults who were not surveyed last time
• many in this group are spiritually interested agnostics, and few are atheist – “spiritual but not religious” is the second-most common attitude after “Christian”, a long way ahead of “Muslim” or “Hindu”, and even further ahead of “atheist”
• consequently, it is also reasonable to assume that the headline should be “young adults open to religion” and not “people leaving Christian faith”
• The fall in religious affiliation has been welcomed by some humanist movements but is a cause of concern to more thoughtful atheists who realise that the values of respect, service and humility in UK culture stem not from humanism but from Christianity, and wonder where such community-building and stabilising values will come from in a more secular culture

Here at Holy Trinity we have seen our congregation in person (and those joining online) continue to flourish and grow under the Lord’s goodness despite the pandemic, a picture seen at many other gospel-preaching churches across our city and country.

The census should I believe encourage us that there are more young people and adults open to the gospel where once many older adults had been put off by a bad experience of “religion”. This should drive us to our knees to pray for a revival of repentant, bold churches across our nation, leading to the salvation of many through faith in Christ.