For Church of England vicars who worry less about what they will preach on Sunday than whether there will be any parishioners to listen to them, the latest findings of the British Social Attitudes Survey will make grim reading. For years the number of people professing religious belief in Britain has hovered around the 50 per cent mark. Now it seems to have dived decisively, plunging from 52 per cent to 47 per cent in just a year.
According to a survey we are no longer a Christian country, but then neither — for all the squeals over sharia law — are we becoming much of a Muslim country, or indeed any other religion. Just 6 per cent of us profess a faith other than Christianity, down from 8 per cent last year. Our established national church is declining fastest of all. Just 15 per cent of us now regard ourselves as members of the Church of England, down from 37 per cent 30 years ago. Thanks in large part to immigration, Roman Catholics have declined only from 10 per cent to 9 per cent over the same period, while people describing themselves as ‘other Christian’ have actually increased from 16 per cent to 17 per cent.
People will interpret these statistics how they wish. Some will see it as a symptom of national moral decline, others as a triumph of reason over superstition. Roger Harding, head of public attitudes at the National Centre for Social Research, will not be alone in interpreting it as a case of conservative social attitudes being the loser in a battle over liberal values. ‘We know from the British Social Attitudes survey that religious people are becoming more socially liberal on issues like same sex relationships and abortion,’ he says.
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