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For comparison, UK church membership is <10% and forecast to fall to to 4% by 2025. Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60%
by nly 6y ago
For comparison, UK church membership is <10% and forecast to fall to to 4% by 2025.
Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power.
The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys.
2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting
https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html
- Milner08 6y agoOther than my Grandma who is in her 90's and one friend who joined a church later in life (his family are atheist) I don't know anyone in the UK who goes to church. At least among my friends its just not a thing. I find it bizarre how many people in America attend church, but I hold nothing against them for it.
- nprateem 6y agoYeah but they do all the gospel and dancing stuff over there. Don't tell me you don't want to FEEL THE POWER
- thinkingemote 6y agoIt's Holy Week this week (the week before Easter starts) and every day there is a service in each parish. UK, Roman Catholic churches. You have to book online to reserve a place. A quick look at a few parishes in an area for big and small churches shows that all the services for each day of the week and weekend are booked out in advance. Obviously the numbers able to fit in the churches are capped because of Coronavirus, but it appears as if there are more people who are wanting to attend than can. What I can say with some confidence is that there is at the very least more demand than the capacity.
- gpderetta 6y agoI might take my kids there. Then again I also took them to see Santa. Unfunny quip aside, it is a social gathering and it is undeniably positive for the community.
- Milner08 6y agoRoman Catholic... in the UK? That makes up a very small number of churches...
- thinkingemote 6y agoIt's bigger than you think, it's about the same size as the Church of England. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11297461 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11297461 https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html
- dghf 6y agoRoman Catholicism is the second largest Christian denomination in the UK (after the Church of England). Something like 7% of the population of England and Wales, 16% of the population of Scotland, and 40% of the population of Northern Ireland are Catholic. Catholicism is the dominant religion in many parts of Northern Ireland, and even in some parts of western Scotland.
- jedberg 6y agoYou have to get tickets to get into Temple on the Jewish High Holy Days too. I know because I take my kids. It doesn't mean we are religious though. I just like to take them for the singing and to see the blowing of the ram's horn, fond memories I have from my own youth.
- wussboy 6y agoI think part of the problem is that there is no clear tradition of “cultural Christian” like there is for “atheist Jew”. I don’t believe in God. I love the high church and choral traditions. I attend a church where the minister feels the same. Am I a Christian? No. And yes.
- tyxodiwktis 6y agoThis isn’t necessarily true outside the US. The running joke about Greeks is that they are 98% Greek Orthodox (official stats from a while ago) and 40% atheist. You might be atheist and communist (a fairly common combo in Greece) but will still probably roast a lamb on Easter with your family.
- wussboy 6y agoI agree. I first learned that Christian Atheist was possible in an Anglican Church in England.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ic0n0cl4st 6y agoTurkey is the same way. The government says 99.8% of the population are Muslim by default but it’s probably closer to 60%. Until a few years ago religion was listed on government identification cards. When you’re born your parenrs must state a religion for your birth certificate or it is automatically listed as Muslim. You had to go through a burdensome official process as an adult to change this, and once you did this you legally admitted to Apostasy, which opens you up to discrimination (and future consequences if the government were to fall to islamists or neo-ottomans). Furthermore, it was very common to be discriminated against by HR departments / hiring managers if Islam was not present on your Kimlik (government ID). This only went away with recent passport and national id standards changing in their futile attempts to join the EU. (Consider that Turkey is by far the most liberal and secular Muslim nation.)
- 6y ago
- CodeGlitch 6y agoGrowing up in the 80's (UK) as a Roman Catholic, I remember the services being full on Sunday mornings. Not been since I left home at 18, because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?). The only reason I went was to make my parents happy. Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies that 2 parent families (mother and father) give the best outcomes for children (education, jobs, etc). In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole?
- EliRivers 6y agowhere is the pull for good old family values? That's a term that everyone interprets their own way, without even realising that they have different values to the person standing next to them; different people's "family values" can conflict in significant and very incompatible ways. So what are "good old family values"? If your young, unmarried daughter falls pregnant, should you cast her out or should you double-down on helping her? Both of those are good old family values.
- jaywalk 6y agoGood old family values would discourage young, unmarried women from getting pregnant in the first place. That is absolutely not how society works today, so let's start there instead of your absurd example.
- ketzo 6y agoWell, to pick a more contentious example, how would you find a marriage partner for that young women? In many parts of the world, the answer is that her parents would either simply pick her partner or heavily influence her options. In much of the U.S., that would be unthinkable! How do we reconcile those different family values?
- 6y ago
- pratik661 6y agoUK has historically had low church membership. Even novels from the mid 1800s (Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy) talk about how village churches lay mostly empty due to lack of adherents
- codeulike 6y agoThe difference in politics is interesting too - in the USA politicians have to be shown to be religious - people discuss the possibility that Bernie Sanders' might be atheist like its a potential major scandal. In the UK its the exact opposite, we don't want our leaders to be religious. Its ok for them to go to a big church service or lay a wreath or something but if they start talking about their 'faith' (as Tony Blair did somewhat) we get weirded out. Jeremy Corbyn's atheism is an interesting example - the right wing press found all sorts of ways to vilify or criticise him, but his atheism never came up as a criticism - because atheism in the UK is a complete non issue. No-one cares. Compare with Bernie Sanders.
- zuminator 6y agoIf you're running for major office in the US, announcing your fealty to God is a kind of real-world implementation of Pascal's wager. That is, if you are openly atheist you will earn the condemnation of a large cohort of believers, and lose many votes. But if you're religious, only a small few atheists will write you off as a candidate. So it's always to your political advantage to claim religious adherence, even if you're not. Arguably patently insincere lip-service actually works better than principled devotion in this respect.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- codeulike 6y agoreal-world implementation of Pascal's wager Indeed, well put
- xioxox 6y agoYes, reading this thread as someone from the UK makes me realise the US is very different culturally from the UK. I'm sure the proportion of people for whom religion is important in their lives is much much smaller in the UK than the US. I think most British people only encounter religion at Christmas and weddings, unless they're of a religious minority group.
- cronix 6y agoThe US's First Amendment deals with that, in great part to get away from the (at the time) Church of England and prevent that (mixing church and state) from happening here. It doesn't logically surprise me that the country who left that scenario to worship freely has higher numbers of religious people 300 years later than in the country that still lived under much of the corruption for a longer period of time.
- TinkersW 6y agoIt isn't evenly distributed and the US doesn't have one culture, plenty of Americans never encounter much religion, particularly in the Western US which is overall less religious.
- incompatible 6y agoThe groups that take it seriously are more likely to observe Diwali or Ramadan.