Secular UK: Number of Christians is down 10% in just five years

• Christians also less likely to attend place of worship compared to other religions, state survey reveals
• Comes days after David Cameron urged Church of England to restore moral values

By Steve Doughty

 

Christianity is slowly, but surely losing ground in England and Wales, according to an official survey yesterday.
The number who declare themselves to be Christian has dropped by nearly 10 per cent in five years, while the number of non-believers is growing.
The state research into race and religion also showed that Christians are less than half as likely to attend a place of worship as followers of other traditions.
The Citizenship Survey showed that Christianity remains the faith of the great majority of the population. But its share dropped from 77 per cent to 70 per cent between 2005 and 2010.
Over the same period the numbers who say they have no religion went up from 15 per cent to 21 per cent.
The findings were published days after David Cameron’s speech on the importance of Christianity to Britain, in which he urged the Church of England and its leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to take a lead in restoring moral values.
The Citizenship Survey is the sixth and last in its ten-year history. Labour launched the research effort in 2001 in the hope of charting levels of prejudice and neighbourhood tensions and finding ways to help ease them. 

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles ordered the end of the project earlier this year because ministers considered the £4million cost of each survey could not be justified.
The findings were based on questionnaires answered by 10,000 people, with further groups of 5,000 ethnic minority members and 1,200 Muslims consulted to shore up findings among smaller groups of the population.

Questions covered issues including fear of crime, giving to charity, the state of neighbourhoods and experiences of the downturn as well as matters of religion and race.
The results on the decline of Christianity come at a time when many Christians feel that equality laws are attacking some of their core beliefs.
Four test cases on the rights of Christians, including two involving people refused the right to wear crucifixes at work and two which centre on Christians who refused to acknowledge same-sex relationships, are to be decided by the European Court of Human Rights in coming weeks.
The report said: ‘While Christianity remained the most prevalent faith in England and Wales, between 2005 and 2010 there was a steady decrease in the proportion of people who identified themselves as Christian.
‘Christian people were much less likely than all the other main religions to say that they practised their religion, while Muslim people were most likely to practise their religion.’

However there were signs that, as Christian numbers dwindled, their commitment increased.
A third of Christians said they went to church regularly. The figure was 33 per cent, up from 31 per cent in 2005.

Fewer than half the population now think racial prejudice is on the increase. In the two years to 2010, numbers who believe racism is getting worse went down from 56 per cent to 47 per cent.
The authors of the survey, produced by the Communities Department, said: ‘The positive shifts over time were generally observed across all ethnic and religious groups, and were often most pronounced among minority groups.’
Seven per cent of the whole population thought racial or religious harassment was a problem in their neighbourhood, and 4 per cent of people had actually experienced racial bullying, in most cases consisting of verbal abuse.

This was down from 5 per cent in the previous year.
Asian people broadly said they had suffered less racial harassment over the past two years. For example, among Pakistanis the numbers who said they had experienced racial harassment in the past two years dropped from 20 per cent in 2009 to 13 per cent last year.
However, Caribbeans and Black Africans said their experience of racial harassment had risen.

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