Religion in England is characterised by a variety of beliefs and practices that has historically been dominated by Christianity. Christianity remains the largest religion, though it makes up less than half of the population. As of the 2021 census, there is an increasing variety of beliefs, with irreligious people outnumbering each of the other religions. The Church of England is the nation's established state church, whose supreme governor is the monarch.
Other Christian traditions in England include Roman Catholicism, Methodism, Presbyterianism, Mormonism, and the Baptists. After Christianity, the religions with the most adherents are Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, modern paganism, and the Bahá'í Faith. There are also organisations promoting irreligion, including humanism and atheism. In the 2021 census, Shamanism was the fastest growing religion in England.
Many of England's most notable buildings and monuments are religious in nature: Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul's Cathedral. The festivals of Christmas and Easter are widely celebrated in the country.
Statistics The 2001 and 2011 censuses in England and Wales did not include a question on adherence to individual Christian denominations; this was asked only in Scotland and Northern Ireland.Guidance and Methodology, Religion, retrieved 31 January 2014. Using the same principle as applied in the 2001 census, a 2008 survey by Ipsos MORI and based on a scientifically robust sample, found the population of England and Wales to be 47.0% affiliated with the Church of England, which is also the state church, and 9.6% with the Roman Catholic Church.
8.7% were other Christians, mainly Free Church Protestants and Eastern Orthodox. Muslims were 4.8%, and 3.4% were members of other religions. 5.3% were agnostics, 6.8% were atheists and 15.0% were not sure about their religious affiliation or did not answer the question.
Religion200120112021Number%Number%Number%Christianity35,251,24471.731,479,87659.426,167,89946.3No religion7,171,33214.613,114,23224.720,715,66436.7Islam1,524,8873.12,660,1165.03,801,1866.7Hinduism546,9821.1806,1991.51,020,5331.8Sikhism327,3430.7420,1960.8520,0920.9Judaism257,6710.5261,2820.5269,2830.5Buddhism139,0460.3238,6260.5262,4330.5Other religion143,8110.3227,8250.4332,4100.6Religion not stated3,776,5157.73,804,1047.23,400,5486.0Total population49,138,831100.053,012,456100.056,490,048100.0
Abrahamic religions Christianity
Demographics
+British Christians by Ethnic group and nationality Ethnic group2021NumberChristians as% ofethnic groupEthnic groupas % ofChristiansWhite 23,402,349 51.12% 89.43% – British 20,506,667 49.36% 78.37% – Irish 354,595 71.74% 1.36% – Roma 71,268 71.89% 0.27% – Irish Traveller 40,352 62.84% 0.15% – Other White 2,152,950 60.05% 8.25%Mixed 611,454 36.63% 2.34% – White and Black Caribbean 191,402 38.33% 0.73% – White and Asian 130,061 27.43% 0.50% – White and Black African 119,377 49.43% 0.46% – Other Mixed 170,614 37.55% 0.65%Asian 555,733 10.24% 2.34% – Indian 220,688 11.97% 0.84% – Pakistani 11,953 0.76% 0.05% – Bangladeshi 2,119 0.34% 0.01% – Chinese 74,637 17.31% 0.29% – Other Asian 246,336 25.87% 0.94%Black 1,598,363 67.11% 6.11% – African 967,405 65.88% 3.69% – Caribbean 428,150 69.12% 1.64% – Other Black 202,448 68.90% 0.77%Other 276,517 22.49% 1.06% – Arab 13,278 4.15% 0.05% – Other Ethnic group 263,239 28.96% 1.01%
History of Christianity
Saint George is recognised as the patron saint of England and the flag of England consists of his cross. Prior to Edward III, the patron saint was St Edmund. St Alban is also honoured as England's first martyr. Other notable saints from the early period of Christianity in England include Saint Ethelbert and Saint Morwenna.
Protestantism Church of England (Anglicanism)
The established church of the realm is the Church of England, whose supreme governor is the British monarch, currently . In practice, the church is governed by its bishops under the authority of Parliament. Twenty-six of the church's 42 bishops are Lords Spiritual, representing the church in the House of Lords. The dioceses of England are divided between the two provinces of Canterbury and York, both of whose archbishops are considered primates.
The church regards itself as the continuation of the Catholic church introduced by St Augustine's late 6th-century mission to Kent as part of the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, although this is disputed owing to procedural and doctrinal changes introduced by the 16th-century English Reformation, particularly the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer. In 2010, the Church of England counted 25 million baptised members out of the 41 million Christians in Great Britain's population of about 60 million. In 2009, it claimed to baptise one in eight newborn children.
In 2018, research conducted by YouGov found that 56% of Christians in England identified as members of the Church of England. The same study found that 63% of those identifying with the Church of England "never or hardly" attend church. In 2016, according to a research survey, 19.8% of the population of England and Wales identified as Anglican; additionally half of those who reported being raised Anglican identified as 'No religion.' Generally, anyone in England may marry or be buried at their local parish church, whether or not they have been baptised in the church.See the pages linked from . Actual attendance has declined steadily since 1890,. with around one million, or 10% of the baptised population attending Sunday services on a regular basis, defined as once a month or more. Three million- roughly 15%- join Christmas Eve and Christmas services. In 2012, there were around active and ordained clergy..
The Free Church of England is another Anglican denomination which separated from the Church of England in the 19th century in opposition to shifts in doctrine and ceremony which brought the established church closer to Roman Catholicism. The Free Church of England is in communion with the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States and Canada.
No other church in England has more than a million members, with most quite small.
Pentecostal churches are growing and, in terms of church attendance, are now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.'Fringe' Church winning the believers The Times, 19 December 2006 There are three main denominations of Pentecostal churches: the Assemblies of God in Great Britain (part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship), the Apostolic Church, and the Elim Pentecostal Church. Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion is a small society of evangelical churches, founded in 1783, which today has 23 congregations in England. There is also a growing number of independent, charismatic churches that encourage Pentecostal practices at part of their worship, such as Kingsgate Community Church in Peterborough, which started with 9 people in 1988 and now has a congregation in excess of 1,500.
Various forms of Protestantism developed from the ferment of the English Civil War onwards. The Quakers (formally, the Religious Society of Friends) were founded by George Fox in the 1640s. Following the Great Ejection of 1662, about a tenth of Church of England ministers gave up their livings to lead the newly formed dissenting churches. Notable dissenting groups were the Presbyterians, the Independents (or Congregationalists) and the Baptists. In the 18th century some Presbyterians favoured ideas known as Rational Dissent which evolved into, among others, Unitarianism, which still has more than 100 congregations in the 21st century.
Methodism developed from the 18th century onwards. The Methodist revival was started in England by a group of men including John Wesley and his younger brother Charles as a movement within the Church of England, but developed as a separate denomination after John Wesley's death. The primary church in England is the Methodist Church of Great Britain. The Salvation Army dates back to 1865, when it was founded in East London by William and Catherine Booth. Its international headquarters are still in London, near St Paul's Cathedral. There is one Mennonite congregation in England, the Wood Green Mennonite Church in London.
Catholicism
The Catholic Church in England and Wales is directed by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, whose current president is Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster. To highlight the historical Catholic continuity of Nichols' office, dating back to Pope Gregory I's appointment of St. Augustine and that pope's sequent bestowal of the pallium on the appointee, the installation rites of pre-Reformation Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury and earlier Archbishops of Westminster were used at his installation as Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.Elenna Curti and Christopher Lamb, "Cathedral countdown to installation," The Tablet, 16 May 2009, 39.Lucy Wooding, "Binding Identities," The Tablet, 26 June 2011, 26."Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols is made cardinal," The Telegraph, 22 February 2014.
In 1851, the Catholic Church was formerly forbidden from using the names of the Anglican dioceses by the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. It is divided among five provinces headed by the archbishops of Westminster, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Southwark in England and Cardiff in Wales. The Catholic Church considers itself a continuation of the earliest Celtic Christian communities, although its formal hierarchy needed to be refounded by the Gregorian mission to the Saxon kingdoms in the 6th and 7th centuries and again following the English Reformation.William Maziere Brady, Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland A.D. 1585-1876 (London: J.M. Stark, 1883).
In 1766, Papal recognition of George III as the legitimate ruler of Great Britain opened the way for the Catholic Emancipation, easing and ultimately eliminating the anti-Catholic Penal Laws and Test Acts. This process sometimes faced great popular opposition, as during the 1780 Gordon Riots in London. Daniel O'Connell was the first Catholic member of Parliament.Bishop, Erin I. My Darling Danny': Letters from Mary O'Connell to Her Son Daniel, 1830–1832. Cork: Cork University Press, 1998 Considering the "actual condition of Catholicism in England," the number of Catholics, and the obstacles "removed which chiefly opposed" it, Pope Pius IX issued in 1850 the bull Universalis Ecclesiae to restore "the normal diocesan hierarchy."William Maziere Brady, Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland A.D. 1585-1876 (London: J.M. Stark, 1883). More recently, the royal family has been permitted to marry Roman Catholics without fear of being disqualified from succession to the throne.
The number of Catholics peaked in the 1960s, but has been on a gradual decline ever since. Recent immigration from Catholic countries, particularly Poland and Lithuania, has slowed the church's decline. Polling in 2009 suggested there were about 5.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, about 9.6% of the population,"Numbers Game," The Tablet, 31 October 2009, 16. concentrated in the northwest. In 2018, research conducted by YouGov found that 17% of all Christians in England identified as Catholic. In 2016, 8.3% of the population of England and Wales identified Catholic. In 2007, some studies showed that weekly attendance at Catholic masses exceeded that of the Anglican services.
Orthodox