CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Head of Research and Statistics for the Church of England revd Lynda Barley states that the UK is not becoming a secular country: “There’s faith bubbling under the surface. Unfortunately in the area of sociology of religion there’s been very little good research on this over the last 20 or 30 years.”

Revd Barley thinks Christianity is not in crisis... (47 sec)

ATHEISTS

Despite that non-religious people in the UK claim that there is a very significant decline in the number of religious believers, it’s still very difficult to measure. British Humanist Association chief executive Hanne Stinson says that these are just the views that people express: “These surveys vary a great deal depending on the exact wording of the question.”

“Churches work very hard to try to show that there isn’t a decline but actually year on year even their own figures show a decline. Alpha Course is supposed to be bringing young people to Christianity but if you look at the figures for church attendance of young people it’s very obvious that they don’t work”, she said.

73% of those who identify as Christians only attend church once every few months or less, according to the British Humanist Association.

Mrs Stinson has been campaigning for different questions in the census. In Scotland they asked what religion they were brought up with and what religion they are now: “They got 29% non-religious and when you bear in mind that Scotland is more religious than the rest of the UK that’s quite a significant difference.”

Population of Great Britain by religion (%):

Christian 71.8

Muslim 2.8

Hindu 1.0

Jewish 0.5

No religion 15.1

Source: National Statistics 2001