Have you heard this?
Only 1% of people aged 18-24 identify as Church of England, according to the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey for 2018. Even among over-75s, the most religious age group, only one in three people describe themselves as C of E.
As these 18-24 year-olds age, they are bound to see their ends looming and so, as usually happens, some will become religious. Which is to say, some will adopt the religion of their parent’s youth. Others will adopt the new religion which is all the rage in the West. Save that for below.
Fifty-two percent of the public say they do not belong to any religion, compared with 31% in 1983 when the BSA survey began tracking religious belief. The number of people identifying as Christian has fallen from 66% to 38% over the same period.
“Britain is becoming more secular not because adults are losing their religion but because older people with an attachment to the C of E and other Christian denominations are gradually being replaced in the population by younger unaffiliated people,” says the report.
As all know, the Church of England was formed in the European wave of protests against the Church early in the Sixteenth Century. The CofE protest was virulently anti-Catholic back in its early years. And now you have to wonder what the fight was about. Anyway, the protest in England is almost over.
The BSA survey reveals 40% of all Brits were CofE in 1983, dropping to 22% in 2008, and plummeting to 12% in 2018. If these downward rates hold, and given the 1% figure of the present youth, in 10 years there will be no Church of England. Except as yet another bureaucracy of the government.
Catholic church rolls also dropped over that same period, from 10% to 7%, with other evidence indicating a slowing rate of descent. Muslims went from 1% to 6% over the same period.
Combing Catholics with all other protesting Christians, we see 66% of Brits identified as Christian in 1983, 50% in 2008, and 38% in 2018. That makes maybe a quarter of all Brits left as Christians in a decade. But, as things accelerate near the end, and as many current Christians identify themselves as without a denomination, a better guess may be 1 in 10. That would match the number of Muslims. Feel free to bet against these numbers.
Those who call themselves of “no religion” went from 31% to 43% to 52%. In a decade, these folks will be between, say, two-thirds and three fourths of all Brits.
As I hinted above, “no religion” does not mean no religion. It means instead, for most, a religion without a supernatural deity. The religion of Man. For a smaller number, the deities are supernatural, as with the pagans. They are just not these days especially formal deities. Think modern-day purple-haired witches. For the Jeff Epsteins of the world, a distinct minority, formality once again arises.
Unfortunately, the BSA survey doesn’t break down some rather interesting questions by religious affiliation. Such as belief in Heaven, Hell, and miracles. About a quarter or more of all Brits believe in these. Now there’s 38% Christians, so this one quarter could be all Christians, but there’s bound to a good chunk of Muslims and “no” religion folks, too. How many we just don’t know.
Oddly, more people trust Parliament than they do “Churches and religious organizations.” Maybe 15% have no trust at all in the government, rising to over 20% for churches. Yet only a sliver of the population does distrust “Schools and the educational system”, which only proves what we already knew; i.e., that propaganda works.
Funnily (if not again oddly), 20% and growing of religious people think religious organizations have too much power. This jumps to 48% for the nones.
Muslims are looked at most negatively, with 22% of all Brits giving them the thumbs down. This is followed by Jews and then atheists. Christians are looked at as negatively as Buddhists, which is some sort of consolation.
So, to placate the politically correct in all of us, the worst sins in order are: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, atheistophobia, Christophobia, and Buddhistophobia. You can’t be suspicious of any religion without it being a mental pathology.
The CofE has of course seen these numbers, and their marketing department is concerned. Which is why they are rapidly folding on all Christian dogma, sexual matters falling first. The even jumped on the tranny madness bandwagon.
Hasn’t anyone told them if you offer the same stuff the world already has, there is no reason for the world to come to you?
At any rate, in less than 10 years the largest sect of Christians will again be Catholics in England. The Great Protest is drawing to a close. And it only took 500 years.
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The CofE stopped being a Christian church decades ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury announced that he did not believe in the resurrection. He also stated that Islam was a better, more admirable religion than Christianity.
If the building flies a rainbow flag, it is not a church.
If the building has a woman “priest”, it is not a church.
If the building has a gay “priest”, it is not a church.
If the building hosts “gay ‘weddings'”, it is not a church.
If the building hosts lectures on cultural Marxism instead of the Gospels, it is not a church.
Which archbishop was that? I can’t remember anything as overt being said although the bishop of Durham said something similar.
I was raised Anglican prior to my renunciation of heresy a few years ago. My family were not religious, but we would make a point of asserting “Anglican” when our peers would try and call us “Episcopalian”, being as we were, you know, Americans. Anglicanism was of course the more conservative branch. But the Anglican Communion allows both Women “priests” to officiate pretend marriages in barns while wearing rainbow shawls (as Episcopalians are allowed to do), and Anglicans who by all appearances seem very Catholic* and who shower their Episcopalian counterparts with scorn. Both cannot be part of the same religion and both cannot be right. But I guess it was never about coherence.
Is there any leading indicator about some of these “none’s” joining a side? I’ve always held that there’s a critical mass of no-religion vs. non-christian where people will start to turn to Christianity in reaction to rising Islam or other ideology which desires the abject destruction of their host culture. I’ve held this as true, with my sparse anecdotal evidence, but I don’t believe the data exists to support it. Nevertheless, as an optimist, I can’t help but think these trends won’t last forever.
This is not about the Reformation. The RCC numbers are inflated by recent immigrants and migrants from especially Poland. Among native English the Only serious Christian ‘churches’- with big, young, family congregations; where people are active and different from mainstream seculars – are conservative evangelicals – Protestants. But there are very few serious Christians of any kind, and shrinking. The US should not – however – be complacent. As so often, England are ahead of the curve, or further down the slope, that all the West is following.
This summer the Anglican Church of Canada will hold the vote on gay marriage. It will pass. Numbers will drop…again. Bad news is the Church as an institution will learn nothing because it is in the process of turning itself, quite consciously, into a social group. Good news is there are factions within the Church (Anglo-Catholics, Charismatics) who will resist as individual congregations. Of course sooner or later the progressives in control will not allow this benign protest to continue and those congregations will be cast off to join Catholic or Orthodox Churches, or become independent. It’s a shame really because Anglicanism has much to recommend it. Possibly the most beautiful liturgy, more local control of congregations, priests who have time to say hi, and the music. Ah well.
@Bruce, what is happening is that there is a return to faith — but people are quiet about it. It’s generally not in the “mainline” (read liberal) churches but at the crunch end — the AngloCatholics, the Latinate Traditionalist Papists, the Observant Orthodox, and what a fellow blogger called the Bapticostals. They tend to be serious about their faith, and as a result more sober, more fertile and more well read.
Which, in a failing secular state, is a very low bar. So, yes, it is not the Reformation. it is Christ, and avoiding a wordly, secularized, saltless church. Functionally, the fact that this Calvinist is writing on a Catholic blog shows that it is the seriousness of the faith that matters.
@Plantagenet: for the sake of your soul, jump somewhere else. I worship with the Pentecostals despite my BCP being well worn.