What Are The Predictions for the Future of Religion in Britain?

Major shifts within British society, and the increasing abandonment of Christianity by half of Britons, despite being the only country in Europe where the king heads the church, have raised questions about the causes and implications.

The Office for National Statistics clarified on November 29, 2022, that Christianity was no longer the majority religion, and had fallen below half, an unprecedented event in UK history.

For the first time in history, the figures show that both England and Wales are no longer predominantly Christian, with a marked rise in atheist numbers and an increase in the proportion of the Muslim minority, according to the official count.

 

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In contrast, the figures show that Islam has been the fastest-spreading religion in Britain over the past decade.

The National Census revealed a significant increase in the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim by 44 percent over the past decade.

The number of British Muslims rose from 2.7 million in 2011 to 3.9 million in 2021, an increase of 1.2 million Muslims in 10 years, and Muslims now make up 6.5 percent of Britain’s total population.

The findings have revived the debate that has been repeated since 2016 about the impact of this decline in the fact that the majority of Britons consider that the Anglican Church does not represent them and do not believe in it on the country’s political, social, and economic conditions.

Calls are growing for the government not to fund Christian religious schools, to reduce the share of the ecclesiastical presence of bishops in the British Parliament, and to end the role of the church in the British Crown as long as the majority of the people do not believe in it and become “non-religious.”

The religion of England is Anglican, and the Church of England is the national church of the people of England and Wales.

The Church of England is one of the legislative bodies in England and Wales, while King Charles II is the head of the church and holder of the title of Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

According to data from the Office for National Statistics for 2022, the proportion of Christians in England and Wales fell to only 46.2 percent for the first time in the history of the kingdom, up from 59.3 percent during the 2011 census.

People who identify as irreligious now make up 37.2 percent of the UK’s population, making them the second largest bloc after Christians, at 22.2 million.

The results of the census also showed that London, by virtue of being the most diverse city in terms of cultures and religions, Christians make up only 25.3 percent, and the rest of the percentages are distributed among followers of other religions or those who have declared that they do not profess any religion.

In contrast, the southeast of Britain was described as the least diverse, with a majority saying they were Christian, at more than 96 percent.

Wales leads the kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) in terms of the percentage of citizens who said they did not profess any religion at 46.5 percent, up from 32.1 percent in 2011.

One of the drawbacks of the census is that it does not elaborate further on the belief of people who say they do not profess any religion, nor does it say whether they are atheists (do not believe in the existence of gods at all) or irreligious people (who do not believe or care about a particular religion), according to the Associated Press.

 

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On September 22, 2022, the Religion Media Centre in London quoted Professor Linda Woodhead saying at the annual lecture at St. Bride’s Church about the future of religion, “a rise in Islam as Christianity declines. And then there’s magic….”

She predicted that Britain would witness a continued decline of Christianity, the return of fundamentalism and puritanism, the emergence of irreligious, and the spread of “British Islam.”

In the same lecture, Linda Woodhead, specializing in the religious studies and sociology of religion at King’s College London, presented four predictions or trends for the future of religion in Britain in the coming decades.

The first is the spread of fundamentalism and ecclesiastical puritanism, the second is that Christianity wins the battle, but the war is lost, the third is that Muslims and Islam establish their place in Britain, and the fourth is the decline of the church, the sale of churches, the growth of irreligion, and the spread of magic.

“The failure of liberal Christianity and…intellectual theology, I suppose even university-based theology, to provide really credible answers” had it lose its cultural capital, says Woodhead.

Woodhead said Islam in Britain was not visible until the seventies when the first generation of South Asians had to build their infrastructure from scratch in mosques and the proliferation of halal butchers and Islamic schools.

The second generation then founded civil society organizations and charities, and British Muslims amplified their voices with Muslim MPs and young people with higher education who are creating a new cultural genre of “British Islam,” she says.

The head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at College London said: “British Muslim cultural production is remarkable around the world and is world-renowned.

 

Christianity is Behind

Commenting on these figures, the Bishop of York Church, Stephen Cottrell, told the British newspaper The Guardian on November 29, 2022, that the result of the census “throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known.

“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,” the British pastor admits.

However, these figures cited by the Office for National Statistics on the shrinking number of Christian believers in Britain to 46.2 percent are unsurprising. Previous statistics have continued to indicate the same abstention from the church in Britain gradually.

The British magazine The Economist confirmed on September 9, 2017, that the percentage of Britons calling themselves Anglicans fell from 40 percent in 1983 to 15 percent in 2016, according to the National Annual Social Research Report.

“Anglicanism has lost any claim on which it was based as a supposed national reality,” the magazine said so that only 3 percent of 18-24-year-olds believe they are connected to them, compared to 4 in 10 over the age of 75 who still acknowledge the association.

This was also preceded by a report published by the Guardian on July 11, 2019, asserting that “secularism is on the rise in the UK to the extent that it can be said that more than half of Britons have no religion.”

Only 1 percent of young English people aged 18 to 24 belong to the Church of England, and atheism is on the rise, according to a 2018 survey by Social Attitudes UK.

The survey confirmed that 52 percent of Britons confirmed (in 2018) that they did not belong to any religion, compared to 31 percent in 1983 when the poll began tracking religious belief.