No sooner does Baroness Warsi denounce militant secularists who try to marginalise Christianity than, bang on cue, up surfaces Richard Dawkins with a survey commissioned by his Foundation for Reason and Science intended to demonstrate that Christianity is a minority pursuit.
His Ipsos MORI poll, published today, is intended to unpick that bit of the 2001 census which found that more than 70 per cent of respondents identify themselves as Christian. So — selecting from 2,107 respondents questioned the 1,136 who either said they were Christian in the census or would have done so — his poll finds that 72 per cent of them did so because they were baptised into the religion; 38 per cent of them because they are children of Christian parents; and 37 per cent because they went to Sunday school (the poll allows for more than one answer). By comparison, 28 per cent say baldly that they believe in the teachings of ‘this religion’ — as the poll refers to Christianity.
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