We’ve lost our religion, and there’s no point making room for religion in public life. That might be one way to interpret new British Social Attitudes data that was released last week by the independent social research agency, ‘NatCen’. It showed more adults in Britain identify as ‘No religion’ than those who identify with a religion1. At 53%, the ‘Nones’ outnumber all of the religions combined.
But it might be a blip.
It’s the first time the figure has been this high, although we’ve seen broadly half and half for the last few years. In 2009, the figure hit 51% but then from 2010 to 2015 we saw the figure settle between 46% and 50%, leading NatCen’s own analysis only a year ago to suggest that religious decline had halted.
Here are the No Religion figures for the last six years:
2010 – 50.3%
2011 – 46.1%
2012 – 47.7%
2013 – 50.6%
2014 – 49.2%
2015 – 48.6%
The plateau now appears to be over, but it’s too early to tell if it’s the start of a clear trend or a one-off.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of existing trends this data appears to confirm.
We describe ourselves differently now
In our qualitative work at ComRes, we often find that people today don’t default to a religious identity as they might have done a few years ago. It used to be that people in England, for example, would identify as Church of England without much deliberation. North of the border it would be Church of Scotland and that would be as much (and possibly more?) from national identity as religious conviction.
Now, however, Brits appear less likely to identify with religion as a cultural or inherited norm. It’s not unusual for people to say something like ‘Well I was born Catholic, but I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. Put me down as…’ and then they might choose Christian or No Religion.
Generation gap – 72% of adults aged 18-24 do not identify with a religion
Also last week, UnHerd published ComRes data showing that, while 74% of those aged over 65 thought there should be MORE Christianity in the nation, 61% of 18-24s thought there should be LESS. Consistent with other surveys, this poll showed that attitudes to political and social issues, including religion, are polarised by age groups.
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