Perhaps the most striking fact about religion in Britain is that over half of the adult population say that they don’t belong to one.
For the first time in – well – ever, half of the British population say that they have no religion. Public opinion polling, such as the survey on which this report is based, commonly reports that more than half of the population has no religion.
Not only is this historically unprecedented but it is also geographically highly unusual. Some countries – Czech Republic, China, North Korea and Japan for example – have long boasted more than half of their population as nonreligious (or ‘unaffiliated’). Nevertheless, this level of Nones is still high by European standards let alone by the standards of a world that is not only predominantly religious but also growing more so. The raw data themselves, however, pose more questions than they answer, and perhaps the most significant of these is: what does this actually mean?
This report from the thinktank Theos is a valuable new source of both data and insight in making sense of the (non)religious lives of over half The Nones (and a significantly higher percentage than that of the younger segments) of British adults.