Census: Christians, a minority in England while non-religious increase

Census: According to the most recent census, less than half of the people in England and Wales consider themselves Christian, marking the first time that the country's official religion has been followed by a minority of the population.

The Office for National Statistics released data from the 2021 census on Tuesday, revealing that Britain has gotten less religious – and less white — in the decade since the last census.

On the day of the 2021 census, 46.2% of the population of England and Wales identified as Christian, down from 59.3% a decade earlier. The Muslim population increased from 4.9% to 6.5% of the population, while the Hindu population increased from 1.5% to 1.7%.

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One-third of adults indicate they had no faith

More over one-third of adults (37%), up from 25% in 2011, indicated they had no faith.

Other areas of the United Kingdom, such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, report their census findings separately.

Campaigners for secularism said the change should prompt a reconsideration of religion's place in British society.

The monarch is the "defender of the faith" and ultimate governor of the church in the United Kingdom, and Anglican bishops sit in Parliament's upper chamber.
According to Andrew Copson, chief executive of the organisation Humanists UK, the UK has become "almost certainly one of the least religious countries on the planet" due to "the tremendous expansion of the non-religious."

“One of the most striking things about these results is how at odds the population is from the state itself, No state in Europe has such a religious set-up as we do in terms of law and public policy, while at the same time having such a non-religious population,” he remarked.

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"Not a tremendous surprise," Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell

The data, according to Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, one of the Church of England's most senior clerics, was "not a tremendous surprise," but it was a call to Christians to strive harder to promote their faith.
“We have left behind the era when many people almost automatically identified as Christian, but other surveys consistently show how the same people still seek spiritual truth and wisdom and a set of values to live by,” he added.
In the census, about 82% of persons in England and Wales identified as white, down from 86% in 2011. 9% classified as Asian, 4% as Black, 3% as "mixed or many racial backgrounds," and 2% as another ethnic group.

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