According to the new study “The ‘No Religion’ Population Of Britain,” more than half of British people identify as non-religious.
Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, claims that non-religious people, known as “nones,” make up 48.6 percent of Britains population.
As reported by RT, secularization has been on the rise in Britain for a while, but the numbers also show that Islam and Hinduism are on the rise.
Between 1983 and 2015 the percentage of people that identify as Christian has dropped from 55 percent to 43 percent, however, non-Christian believers such as Muslims have quadrupled.
“The rise of the non-religious is arguably the story of British religious history over the past half-century or so,” the professor said.
According to the report “Looking at the long-term pattern, the non-religious share of the population has shown strong growth over our whole period.”
It also states that, “The year 2009 was the first in which nones outnumbered all Christians put together.”
“With the single exception of 2011, this pattern has held ever after. In two years, 2009 and 2013, nones formed a majority of the adult British population.”
The research also highlights that the decline of Christians in the UK has stabilized. Bullivant believes that this is due to patriotism as Englishness and Christianity go hand in hand.
According to the Times, Bullivant believes that “People see Christianity as an expression of Englishness. There has been more rhetoric around Britain being a Christian nation.”
“I suspect a larger proportion of people who do say they are Anglican tend to be patriotic,” he said.
