Religions in the UK

ENGLISH PRESENTATION : Religions in the UK

PB : Is the United Kingdom still a Christian country ?

David Cameron, the ex prime minister said in a message he delivered in 2015, that Britain is a christian country whose religious values have made it a « home to people of all faiths and none ».

Indeed religion in the UK has been dominated for over 1400 years by various forms of christianity.

Since the 1534 Act of Supremacy, England's official state church has been the Church of England, the monarch being its supreme governor and 'defender of the faith'.

However, according to the 2001 Census, even if christinanity is the major religionin the UK, it is followed by many other religions also present such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism.

Indeed The United Kingdom, comprised of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens and residents. Indeed The United Kingdom is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides in Article 9 a right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

Therefore we can ask ourselves if the uk is still a Christian Country. At first, we’ll see the decline of the Christian religion, which is a consequence of the rise of the diversity and multiculturalism of religions in the UK.  

I) the decline of the christian religion

The Great Britain was for long a country of christian tendency.

Indeed, there is an established Church which is the church of england, whose supreme governor is the Monarch of England which is currently queen Elizabeth the 2nd. The Church of england is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. Other christians traditions include Roman Catholicism , Methodism and Baptists.

The Church of England is divided into two provinces - Canterbury in the South of England and York in the North.

It separated from the Catholic Church in 1534 and became the established church by an Act of Supramacy, beginning a series of events known as the English Reformation.[80] Historically the Anglicanism has been the predominant Christian denomination in England and Wales, in terms of both influence and number of adherents.

The church of England being the established church means that the Monarch is the Supreme Governor of the church. The Church performs a number of official functions and the Church and the State are linked.

However if for long now, christianity remained the major religion in the UK, it has known a great decline since the last decade.

Indeed a recent analysis by the Pew research center in the US suggested that that in the UK, if current religious trends continue, the proportion of the population identifying themselves as Christians will fall from 64% in 2010 to 45% by 2050, while the proportion of Muslims will rise from 5% to 11%.

The proportion of the population claiming no religion in the UK - the "unaffiliated" - will also rise significantly, from 28% to 39%.

According to the UK Census, between 2001 and 2011 the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million - about 10,000 a week. With a continued rate of decline at this level, the number of UK-born Christians would reduce to zero by 2067.

The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) indicates that Anglicanism is declining faster than any other major denomination. With the current rate of decline, it would be set to disappear from Britain by 2033.

As a result of this Census Effect in the 2011 National Census, 59.3% put their religion down as "Christian". 

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