Religion in Wales has become increasingly diverse over the years. Christianity was the religion of virtually all of the Welsh population until the late 20th century, but it rapidly declined throughout the early 21st century. Today, a plurality (46.5%) of people in Wales follow no religion at all.

Representing 43.6% of the Welsh population in 2021, Christianity is the largest religion in Wales. Wales has a strong tradition of nonconformism, particularly Methodism. The Church of England was the established church until 1920 when the disestablished Church in Wales, was set up as a self-governing, though still Anglican, church.

Most adherents to organised religion in Wales follow one of the Christian denominations such as the Presbyterian Church of Wales, Baptist and Methodist churches, the Church in Wales, Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Other religions Welsh people may be affiliated with include Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and Druidism, with most non-Christian Welsh people found in the large cities of Cardiff and Swansea. Some modern surveys have suggested that most Welsh people do not identify with any religion and record significantly less religious feeling in Wales than in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Census statistics

Religion200120112021Number%Number%Number%No religion537,93518.5982,99732.11,446,39846.5Christianity2,087,24271.91,763,29957.61,354,77343.6Islam21,7390.745,9501.566,9472.2Hinduism5,4390.210,4340.312,2420.4Buddhism5,4070.29,1170.310,0750.3Sikhism2,0150.12,9620.14,0480.1Judaism2,2560.12,0640.12,0440.1Other religion6,9090.212,7050.415,9260.5Religion not stated234,1438.1233,9287.6195,0416.3Total population2,903,085100.03,063,456100.03,107,494100.0

Christianity

History

Roman origins Although Christianity arrived in Wales sometime in the Roman occupation, it was initially suppressed. The first Christian martyrs in Wales, Julius and Aaron, were killed around AD 304. The earliest Christian object found in Wales is a vessel with a Chi-Rho symbol found at Caerwent. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. After the Roman legions withdrew in the 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders gradually conquered eastern and southern Britain but were unable to make inroads into Wales, cutting off Wales from the Celts in Scotland, Cornwall and Cumbria. The writer Gildas drew sharp contrasts between the Christian Welsh at this time and the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders.

Emergence

The Age of the Saints (about AD 500–700) was marked by the establishment of monastic settlements throughout the country by religious leaders such as Saint David, Illtud, and Teilo. This was the period when the Welsh developed a shared national identity arising from their language and religious beliefs.

The Welsh bishops refused to cooperate with Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the Anglo-Saxons. However, a combination of Celtic Christianity's reconciliation with Rome and the English conquest of Wales meant that from the Middle Ages, the Welsh dioceses became part of the Province of Canterbury. They were all Catholic until the Reformation broke with Rome and created the Church of England under the control of King Henry VIII. The Established Church in Wales was the Church of England until it was disestablished in Wales in 1920. The old Welsh dioceses became the new Church in Wales. It created two new dioceses: the Diocese of Monmouth in 1921, and the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon in 1923.

Reformation

Bishop Richard Davies and dissident Protestant cleric John Penry introduced Calvinist theology to Wales. They used the model of the Synod of Dort of 1618–1619. Calvinism developed through the Puritan period, following the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, and within Wales' Methodist movement. However, few copies of Calvin's writings were available in Welsh before the mid-19th century.D. Densil Morgan, "Calvinism in Wales: c.1590-1909," Welsh Journal of Religious History (2009), Vol. 4, p22-36

Welsh as liturgical language Some books of the Bible and the Apocrypha had been translated in the Middle Ages, but the Acts of Union (1536–43) passed under King Henry VIII effectively banned the Welsh language from official use. However, under Queen Elizabeth I, the English Parliament passed the An Act for the Translating of the Bible and the Divine Service into the Welsh Tongue 1563. In 1567 William Salesbury, Richard Davies and Thomas Huet completed the first modern translation of the New Testament into Welsh and the first translation of the Book of Common Prayer (). Then, in 1588, William Morgan completed a translation of the whole Bible. These translations were essential to the survival of the Welsh language and had the effect of conferring status on Welsh as a liturgical language and vehicle for worship. This had a significant role in its continued use as a means of everyday communication and as a literary language down to the present day despite the pressure of English.

Abuses did occur, and in the 18th century some bishops granted benefices in Welsh-speaking areas to English clergy who did not speak Welsh. This contravened Article XXIV of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England: It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people. In 1766 the churchwardens of the parish of St Beuno, Trefdraeth on Anglesey, supported by the Cymmrodorion, began a test case against an English clergyman, Dr Thomas Bowles, who could not conduct services in Welsh and whose attempt to do so had ended in ridicule. In its verdict in 1773 the Court of Arches refused to deprive Dr Bowles of his living, but did lay down the principle that clergy should be examined and found proficient in Welsh in order to be considered for Welsh-speaking parishes.

18th century conditions The condition of religion in Wales was bleak from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century. The established Church of England recovered slowly from the widespread damage brought about by the English Civil War, and the Puritan Commonwealth of Cromwell, in the mid-17th century. Poverty was widespread in the overwhelmingly rural country. The clergy were impoverished and subsisted on their own farm work on their glebes. Facilities from personages to graveyards to churches to cathedrals were commonly in physical disrepair. Membership and participation was falling.Alfred George Edwards, Landmarks in the History of the Welsh Church (1912) pp. 161ff

Nonconformity, membership and revivals

Nonconformity grew rapidly and came to dominate the religious life of Wales from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The Welsh Methodist revival of the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the history of Wales. The revival began within the Church of England in Wales and at the beginning remained as a group within it, but the Welsh revival differed from the Methodist revival in England in that its theology was Calvinist rather than Arminian. Welsh Methodists gradually built up their own networks, structures, and even meeting houses (or chapels), which led eventually to the secession of 1811 and the formal establishment of the Calvinistic Methodist denomination in 1823 (which assumed as its alternative name the Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1928). Emotionalism had free rein; in contrast to Scotland with its four universities, good schools, and a strong theological tradition, Wales had no universities and widespread illiteracy.

The Welsh Methodist revival also had an influence on the older nonconformist churches, or dissenters – the Baptists and the Congregationalists – who in turn also experienced growth and renewal. As a result, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Wales was predominantly a nonconformist country.

Statistics of membership between 1680 and 1840 demonstrate that the established Church of England lost one-fifth of its membership. In addition, an ever-increasing number of nominal Anglicans also ceasing to practise. Nonconformity more than quadrupled, mainly from 1760 and especially after 1800. In 1800 there were twice as many Anglican churches as Nonconformist chapels; in 1850, chapels outnumbered churches by a ratio of 5 to 2. Roman Catholicism kept pace with demographic growth, but, even reinforced by Irish immigration, remained a limited force in 1840. Judaism and overt irreligion were both rare.Clive D. Field, "Counting Religion in England and Wales: The Long Eighteenth Century, c. 1680–c. 1840." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63#4 (2012): 693-720.

In 1910, the nonconformist bodies numbered 550,000 members, as against 193,000 in the established Church of England. Nonconformists, led by Liberal David Lloyd George, increasingly controlled the politics of Wales, although the elite sectors were still dominated by the Anglicans.

The 1904–1905 Welsh Revival was the largest full scale Christian Revival of Wales of the 20th century. At least 100,000 people became Christians during the 1904–1905 revival.E. Cynolwyn Pugh, "The Welsh Revival of 1904–1905." Theology Today 12.2 (1955): 226-235. Even so, it did not put a stop to the gradual decline of Christianity in Wales, only holding it back slightly.Clive D. Field, "'The Faith Society'? Quantifying Religious Belonging in Edwardian Britain, 1901–1914." Journal of Religious History 37.1 (2013): 39-63. Despite this, by 2011 South Wales (and especially settlements in the former coalfield area) showed the highest proportions of no religion anywhere in the country, rising in places to over 50%.2011 Census Religion tables for Urban Areas. The reasons for this are unclear.

Disestablishment – creation of the Church in Wales

In reaction to the rise of nonconformity, some Anglicans came to recognise the weaknesses of the established church and its failure to counteract the popular aspects of nonconformity. The rigidity of the parish system and the distance between churches were quoted as examples of the failure of the church to adapt.

The Welsh Church Act 1914 provided for the separation of the four dioceses of the Church of England located in Wales (known collectively as the Church in Wales) from the rest of the Church, and for the simultaneous disestablishment of the Church. The Act came into operation in 1920. Since then there has been no established church in Wales. Between 1996 and 2016, the number of signed-up Church in Wales members dropped from 91,247 to 45,759, or 1.5% out of a total population of 3,113,150. The number of Church in Wales members on the "Electoral Roll" dropped further to 42,441 in 2018, or 1.4% out of the total Welsh population of 3,187,203. In 2018, research conducted by YouGov found that 56% of Christians in Wales identified as members of the Church in Wales; Christians were 41% of the population according to the same survey in 2018. In 2021, the World Christian Database, produced by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, published data from 2020 estimating there were 1.1 million baptised Anglicans in Wales.

Present-day Catholic Christianity