Religion in the United Kingdom
Results of the 2021 Census for England and Wales showed that Christianity is the largest religion (though makes up less than half of the population), followed by the non-religious, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
[14][15] Orkney, for example, was not nominally Christianised until around 995 when, according to Orkneyinga Saga, Olaf Tryggvason ordered that if the earl and his subjects did not convert, he would be killed and the islands ravaged.
[13][17] Other aspects of the pre-Christian culture blended with the incoming customs, however, such as the usage of Germanic words to refer to Christian concepts such as "god", "heaven" and "hell", and the belief in beings such as dwarfs and elves, which continued into the modern period.
It is not subject to state control and the British monarch is an ordinary member, required to swear an oath to "maintain and preserve the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government" upon his or her accession.
This would expand in Great Britain, partly due to Irish immigration in the nineteenth century,[28] the Catholic emancipation and the Restoration of the English hierarchy.
[31] The substantial immigration to the United Kingdom after World War II has contributed to the growth of foreign faiths, especially of Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism.
[33] As elsewhere in the Western world, religious demographics have become part of the discourse on multiculturalism, with Britain variously described as a post-Christian society,[34] as "multi-faith",[35] or as secularised.
The breakdown or disruption of traditional communities and norms of behaviour; the spread of a scientific world-view diminishing the scope of the supernatural and the role of God; increasing material affluence promoting self-reliance and this-worldly optimism; and greater awareness and toleration of different creeds and ideas, encouraging religious pluralism and eviscerating commitment to a particular faith, all form components of the case for secularisation.
Applied to the British churches in general by Steve Bruce and to Methodism in particular by Robert Currie, this model traces decline back to the Victorian era and charts in the twentieth century "a steady ebbing of the sea of faith".
[102] There is a disparity between the figures for those identifying themselves with a particular religion and for those proclaiming a belief in a god: In the 2001 census, 390,127 individuals (0.7 per cent of total respondents) in England and Wales self-identified as followers of the Jedi faith.
The phenomenon of immigrant churches and congregations that began with the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush from the West Indies in 1948 stands as a unique trend.
Foremost among these are Matthew Ashimolowo from Nigeria and his Kingsway International Christian Centre in London that may be the largest church in Western Europe.
Adherents of Oriental Orthodox Christianity in the United Kingdom are also traditionally organised in accordance with their patrimonial ecclesiastical jurisdictions, each community having its own parishes and priests.
The biggest groups of Muslims are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian and Arab origins,[154] with the remainder coming from Muslim-dominated areas such as Southwest Asia, Somalia, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
[165] According to United Kingdom's Office of National Statistics, of all ethnic minorities in Britain, the British Hindus had the highest rate of economic activity.
Buddhism as a path of practise was pioneered by the Theosophists, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, and in 1880 they became the first Westerners to receive the Three refuges and Five precepts, the formal conversion ceremony by which one traditionally accepted and becomes a Buddhist.
For the first time, respondents were able to write in an affiliation not covered by the checklist of common religions, and a total of 42,262 people from England, Scotland and Wales declared themselves to be Pagans by this method.
[178] Heathenry consists of a variety of modern movements attempting to revive Germanic paganism, such as that practiced in the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon and Norse peoples prior to Christianisation.
The Church of England also has the right to draft legislative measures (related to religious administration) through the General Synod that can then be passed into law by Parliament.
The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced a further requirement that the majority of collective worship be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character".
[200] According to a 2003 report from the Office for Standards in Education, a "third of governing bodies do not fulfil their statutory duties adequately, sometimes because of a failure to pursue thoroughly enough such matters as arranging a daily act of collective worship".
[205][206][207] Every three months, the Ministry of Justice collects data, including religious affiliation, of all UK prisoners and is published as the Offender Management Caseload Statistics.
Open disbelief of, or even mockery of organised religion, is not regarded as a taboo in the British media, though it has occasionally provoked controversy – for example, the movie Monty Python's Life of Brian,[213] the poem "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name",[214] and the musical Jerry Springer: The Opera,[215] all of which involved characters based on Jesus, were subject to public outcry and blasphemy allegations, while The Satanic Verses, a novel by British Indian author Salman Rushdie which includes a fantasy sequence about Muhammed, caused global protests including several by British Muslims.
[218] Ecumenical friendship and cooperation has gradually developed between Christian denominations and where inter-sect prejudice exists this has via education and employment policy been made a pressing public matter in dealing with its two prominent examples – sectarianism in Glasgow and Northern Ireland – where segregation is declining.
The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished with the coming into effect of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 on 8 July 2008.
2005–2010 polls have shown that public opinion in the United Kingdom generally tends towards a suspicion or outright disapproval of radical or evangelical religiosity, though moderate groups and individuals are rarely subject to less favourable treatment from society or employers.
[219] The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of religion, in the supply of goods and services and selection for employment, subject to very limited exceptions (such as the right of schools and religious institutions to appoint paid ministers).
[223] In 2011, two judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales upheld previous statements in the country's jurisprudence that the (non-canon) laws of the United Kingdom 'do not include Christianity'.
Therefore, a local authority was acting lawfully in denying a Christian married couple the right to foster care because of stated negative views on homosexuality.
[225][226][227][228] Northern Ireland remains one of the most religious nations in western Europe[citation needed] with 82.3% of the population claiming Christian affiliation, with a decline of only 3.5% by the 2011 census, while "other religions" have increased in membership.
