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Religion in the United Kingdom

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Through Christianity, Religion and United Kingdom

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In the most recent 2021–2022 censuses, Christianity was the largest religion in the United Kingdom (at 46.5% of the population), followed by no religion (37.8%), Islam (6.0%), Hinduism (1.6%), Sikhism (0.8%), Buddhism (0.4%), Judaism (0.4%), Other (0.6%) and a further 5.9% who did not state a religion. Among Christians, Anglicanism is the most common denomination, with 53% of Christian believers in the UK identifying with it as of 2023, followed by Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism, and Baptists.

The Anglican Church of England is the state church of England, whilst the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is the national church of Scotland. The Monarch of the United Kingdom is the supreme governor of the Church of England. Both Northern Ireland and Wales have no state religion since the Irish Church Act 1869 and the Welsh Church Act 1914, respectively.

A large number of individuals have no religious affiliation, and many others are only nominally "affiliated", defined as persons claimed by a faith (e.g. through baptism for Christians), and neither believe nor practice.

History

Prehistory–11th century: Paganism and Christianisation

Before the Roman conquest of Britain, various types of British paganism were practised which included ancestor worship. The history of Christianity in Britain begins at the latest in the 3rd century, when groups such as tradesmen, immigrants and soldiers introduced it to Roman Britain. Christianity seems to have stayed a minority religion throughout the 4th century, with evidence supporting the continuation of the Romano-Celtic religion during this time, and in the early 5th century there are records of British bishops asking for help from Gaul to deal with Pelagianism.

During the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries, Anglo-Saxon forms of Germanic paganism were introduced which became the dominant religion in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. While Bede stated that Christianity was completely absent from these areas, evidence suggests the continuation of small communities. The process of Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England began in the late 6th century with the Gregorian mission, which was later followed by the Hiberno-Scottish mission. The kings in England converted over the course of the 7th century, with Æthelberht being the first to adopt the new religion around 600 whilst Arwald of Wihtwara died as the last heathen Anglo-Saxon king during an invasion in 686 by Cædwalla of Wessex. Nordic forms of Germanic paganism closely related to the Anglo-Saxon traditional religion were introduced to regions of the British Isles in the 9th and 10th centuries by Scandinavian settlers who established the Kingdom of the Isles and the Danelaw. It is generally thought that the settlers in England converted within several generations, with Erik Bloodaxe, the last potentially heathen king in England, dying in 954, however it was adopted more slowly in other parts of the region. 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. Some practices conceived of as heathen such as the worship of heathen gods and the leaving of offerings at trees, were made illegal in law codes in England beginning in the 640 and continuing into the 11th century, with punishments ranging from fines to execution. 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.

Insular Christianity as it stood between the 6th and 8th centuries retained some idiosyncrasies in terms of liturgy and calendar, but it had been nominally united with Roman Christianity since at least the Synod of Whitby of 664. Still in the Anglo-Saxon period, the archbishops of Canterbury established a tradition of receiving their pallium from Rome to symbolise the authority of the pope.

12th–16th centuries: High Middle Ages and the Reformation

The Catholic Church remained the dominant form of Western Christianity in Britain throughout the Middle Ages, but the (Anglican) Church of England became the independent established church in England and Wales in 1534 as a result of the English Reformation. It retains a representation in the UK Parliament and the British monarch is its supreme governor.

In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, established in a separate Scottish Reformation in the sixteenth century, is recognised as the national church. 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 accession.

The adherence to the Catholic Church continued at various levels in different parts of Britain, especially among recusants and in the north of England, but most strongly in Ireland. This would expand in Great Britain, partly due to Irish immigration in the nineteenth century, the Catholic emancipation and the Restoration of the English hierarchy.

17th–19th centuries: Modernity

Particularly from the mid-seventeenth century, forms of Protestant nonconformity, including Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and, later, Methodists, grew outside of the established church. The (Anglican) Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920 and, as the (Anglican) Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1870 before the partition of Ireland, there is no established church in Northern Ireland.

The Jews in England were expelled in 1290, readmitted in the 1650s and only emancipated in the 19th century. British Jews had numbered fewer than 10,000 in 1800 but around 120,000 after 1881 when Russian Jews settled permanently in Britain.

20th–21st centuries: Secularisation and multiculturalism

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. Buddhism in the United Kingdom experienced growth partly due to immigration and partly due to conversion (especially when including Secular Buddhism).

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, as "multi-faith", or as secularised. Scholars have suggested multiple possible reasons for the decline, but have not agreed on their relative importance. Martin Wellings lays out the "classical model" of secularisation, while noting that it has been challenged by some scholars.

The familiar starting-point, a classical model of secularisation, argues that religious faith becomes less plausible and religious practice more difficult in advanced industrial and urbanised societies. 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".

Since 2018 the United Kingdom has been classified by some as a secularised, post-Christian society that is predominantly irreligious. Surveys since 2018 have indicated that a large majority of Britons do not believe in God, an afterlife, or regularly attend religious services. Since 2019 most surveys have also pointed to agnosticism, nontheism, or atheistic beliefs being shared by a majority of Britons. A 2020 YouGov poll found that 27% of Britions believed in a "a god" and 16% believed in another form of higher power.

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