Is Britain still a Christian country? According to the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, the answer would appear to be a resounding no. The Church of England is shown to be in its sharpest decline yet; the numbers of people identifying themselves as belonging to it having fallen from 40 per cent of the population in 1983 to just 17 per cent today. In the meantime, other religions have increased from two per cent to eight per cent, with Islam doubling its official figures to nearly five per cent of the population.
The numbers conceal demographic time-bombs of various kinds. The Muslim population, for example, is set to keep on rising both because of larger families and immigration. In some parts of the country, children from Muslim backgrounds already form a large part of the school age population. But at the same time, the Black-led churches are also growing, for similar reasons: immigration and births. People of other faiths - Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism - are also increasing (only Judaism is on the decline), so it’s not just about the expansion of Islam. Immigration has affected, to a greater or lesser extent, the numbers of all religious communities. The figures of the Roman Catholic Church are holding up, largely because of Eastern European, Asian, African and Latin American immigration. Statistics for the Church of England would be much worse, especially with the low figure in London, without the fact of substantial immigration over the last 50 to 60 years.
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