Is there an “aggressive new atheism” in the UK?
The Claim
“Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate.”
Pope Benedict XVI, visit to the UK, 16 September 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
The Pope put it more diplomatically than his cardinal. But the well-varnished prose couldn’t quite disguise the Vatican’s fears about the state of Britain’s spiritual health. Clearly the Pontiff and his people are worried an “aggressive” secularism is undermining traditional values.
The government wants to persuade him otherwise. Conservative chairman Baroness Warsi insisted yesterday she and her compatriots – unlike the unholy Alastair Campbell – “do God”. Who’s right?
The analysis
In 2001 the Census asked about religion for the first time and 71.8 per cent of us in Great Britain said we were Christian. 2.8 per cent said they were Muslim, 1 per cent Hindu, 0.6 per cent Sikh, 0.5 per cent Jewish and 0.3 per cent were Buddhist.
In contrast those of us who replied that we had no religion totalled 15.1 per cent – the second largest group – while 7.8 per cent of people not replying to the question.
It’s the most comprehensive set of statistics around, but as it was the first time the question was asked, and the next Census isn’t due until next year, it can’t tell us much about the rise or otherwise of atheism.
And, says Jonathan Bartley from the think tank Ekklesia, you have to recognise that the Census shows those who culturally identify with religion, not those who actively practice religion.
Instead we have to rely on a series of smaller polls and church attendance figures to get a more accurate picture.
What is clear from the different samples is that those who say they have no religion has increased significantly over the last 20 to 30 years that data is available for.
An Ipso Mori poll put those who said they had no religion at 13 per cent in March 1992, compared to around 22 per cent at two separate times during April 2005.
Likewise the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey that runs from 1983 – one year after the pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982 and the last time a pontiff was on British soil – sees a jump in those saying they belong to no religion from 31.28 per cent in 1983 to 43.19 per cent in 2008.
At the same time the number of people attending Anglican churches has dropped from 39.75 per cent in 1983 to 22.51 per cent in 2008, according to the BSA (57 per cent in 1997 to 42 per cent in April 2005 according to the Ipso Mori poll).
And the Church of England’s own attendance in England figures show a similar decline, dropping from nearly 1.3m at the turn of the century to 1.187m in 2003 and then to 1.15m in 2008. Bartley’s interpretation is that the decrease has “bottomed out into a more gentle decline”, rather than bottoming out altogether.
Yet the Church of England says the number of baptisms remains “stable” with an increase in the number of child and adult baptisms (one year and older) – possibly a reflection of parents looking to get their child into church schools as a staggering one quarter of all primary schools are church schools.
In contrast, those saying they belong to the Catholic Church has remained more constant – staying around 12 per cent according to the Ipso Mori poll and fluctuating around nine per cent according to the BSA. The Catholic Church says there are around six million Catholics in Scotland, England and Wales, with weekly mass attendance around 1.1m.
This may be more due to immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe. “My impression from (statistics) is that immigration stemmed and slightly reversed the decline over 2005-09, rather than created a massive increase,” Nick Spencer from the think tank Theos said. “What will now happen will depend in some measure on the notoriously unpredictable migration trends.”
Other religions have also seen an increase in their numbers, according to the two polls, albeit with smaller numbers. The Muslim population in particular has risen from just over 0.5 per cent to around three per cent according to both polls, due to a mixture of immigration, higher birth rates and conversion.
Yet, while the UK population is turning away from organised religion, that does not strictly mean we are abandoning spirituality altogether.
In 2004, a survey of 10,000 people for the BBC found that 46 per cent of people in the UK said they “have always believed in God”, going up to a total of 79 per cent when that was widened to believing in God, a higher power or some sort of spirituality.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
There’s no doubt that atheism is on the rise and that the number of Anglicans going to church is in decline. But other faiths are faring rather better, with immigration being a significant factor. And even if people are turning away from organised religion, that isn’t the same as abandoning some form of spirituality altogether.
Philip Larkin put it pretty well in his poem Church Going. Church, he said, “never can be obsolete” because “someone will forever be surprising/A hunger in himself to be more serious/And gravitating with it to this ground…/If only that so many dead lie round.”
There are 10 comments on this post
Church attendances are falling every year, this I blame on the malaise of parents and if parents don’t attend Church then their offspring will follow suit [have done] and in turn their offspring too. Myself I was born a Catholic in Glasgow although lived in London best part of 40 years and attend mass as often as I can , I’m not advocating people should attend their church each and every Sunday [great if they can]. But believe in your faith whatever denomination and treat each other as your faith asks you to do while trying to attend Church whenever you can, remember God loves a trier. Getting back to the question in hand are traditional values being undermined by “aggressive” secularism my answer is yes, I fear the worst in years to come.
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TO be honest, Atheism is as healthy a belief as the predominately theoretical beliefs of christianity. I need not quote the thousands of atrocities that Man has committed under the baner of God, those of which still go on today. Why do you fear the worst? Religion has caused more conflict than non-belief ever could. An Atheist society could therefore be a peaceful society, look for example at the Glaswegian Football teams, the splits in Ireland, the twin towers. Which of these are Atheist caused problems. The problem with the anti evolutionary theoretical diatribe that the sunday schools will feed you, is that it answers no questions, other than to tell you that God (whomsoever he may be) has all the answers. So if Parents decide that they do not want to enter into church, or take younger children into the church, maybe it is a good thing to allow the children to find out things for themselves and ask themselves what they believe. No longer is it compulsory to accept and be told, this age is about debate and discovery. Let the Atheists be, a damn us not for our belief, for it is Atheism that is progressing the world, not the pious.
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Factcheck, I don’t like your facts. You skipped straight from Muslim (2.8%) to Hindu (1%) and ignored the 1.79% of Jedi believers who responded to the 2001 census.
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Danny- ‘trying’ doesn’t quite do it to earn God’s approval. The bible clearly says we’re saved by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). No amount of good deeds or church attendance can make us good with God, and restore the broken relationship with him due to all the bad in our lives. Jesus did that on the cross for us, there is no debt left to pay, and ‘being good’ is a response to Jesus’ love more than following a bunch of rules.
The pope wore a golden crown, while Jesus wore a crown of thorns,
the pope was paraded through the streets in a £200,000 car, while Jesus rode a donkey,
the pope sat amongst the bishops, priests, royalty and politicians, while Jesus spent his time with tax-collectors and prostitutes.
I could not see God being glorified in today’s proceedings, only a man and hollow tradition. Mark 7:6
That’s just my humble opinion though, I don’t intend to offend. Peace!
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Ever one to bask in the glow of kicking up a hornets nest (if you’ll forgive me mixing metaphors) I outwardly rejoice that Atheism or flagging spirituality is on the up, and I condemn your first respondent’s remark that this somehow undermines ‘traditional values’ as if that’s such a bad thing. This point of view is simplistic and is wholly dependent on the argument that we all gain our ethics and sense of morality from scripture, which we do not.
Also, should parents refrain from attending church and their children follow suit, all the better; their children should not, for one thing, be treated as if their parents’ religion is automatically their own simply by dint of birth. If this is one of the first ‘traditional values’ to go, then good!
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The point isn’t really about numbers – it’s about the influence (crudely, the amount of media coverage). And on this measure, the majority – agnostic, non-practising with christian upbringing, moderate moslem, etc, don’t get much of a look in. All we hear are the shouts from the extremes. The more lurid the position, the better the story.
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I am not sure one can correlate the falling numbers attending Christian religious services with a decline in Christian religious beliefs.
Not going to church does not make an atheist or an agnostic it simply shows that some people no longer need churches, vicars or other (supposedly) holy people to dictate their personal ethics, morals and codes of behaviour.
Some people have reached a level of maturity and education to know they don’t need to go to church to have anyone preach to them about righteousness or a need to be ostentatious about their personal religious beliefs or need to sing, sway or even bark at the moon to “know their God!” and feel they have a religion.
I may believe in a God (or not) as I so choose but I don’t have to go to Church to be told how to worship my God if I choose so to believe in one.
What this means is that it is no business of anyone other than me whether I am Christian, Hindu, Moslem, Agnostic, Athiest or even a Jedi Knight – even the Catholic Pope cannot know what I believe!
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i found the pope’s opening statement at hollyrood worryingly racist.it was provocative to embed the term multicultural in a sentence about secularism under attack given his nazi youth past and recent german colleagues disparaging remarks about 3rd world britain.secularism has never been a problem for the majority of the deeply religious multicultural communities he refers to,with the biggest independent church growth compared to the established church,and other long practiced immigrant faiths in temples and mosques central to ethnic community life.terrorism both islamic and catholic paramilitarism,not secularism are our current dangerous evil,an astonishing ommission in his appraisal to queen and country given iraq and afghanistan.does he not know?! the threat is not from atheism or secularism but religious fanaticism.minority multiculturalism in britain did not stop the majority indigenous from attending church,but most of white britain binned the bible or the pope all by itself.for the pope to now manipulate a multicultural uk is therefore a scapegoat & redherring.darwin isnt,nor hitler,both white europeans with major heresies impacting faith,values & beliefs in postwar britain.
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Is not thought attempting to make itself invulnerable? To secure itself in words, images, symbols, practices, dogma, belief, superstition, worship, status, position etc?
Simply observed we are all human. We are heavily conditioned by the past, in the form of tradition, expectation, desire, will, faith, the search for security, violence, suffering and so on.
This has been going on for thousands of years and we accept carrying these old burdens.
Unfortunately we turn these burdens into life, we accept them and rarely deeply question? Deeply questioning it with the patience to inquire, to find out for yourself what is life in your eyes clearly and facing it directly.
We have divided ourselves within and so without, we fragment our world through division and conflict. We do not share, we merely dole out and defend. We do not profoundly realise our existence in relationship, we tarnish it with nonsense and escapism, we add to our conditioning more weight and complexity.
Organised religion is just one of those escapes and unnecessary complications. There are equally secular ones as well.
Understand that the mind is seeking security and in doing so is creating…
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What is meant by “some sort of spirituality” as a question?
Didn’t Richard Dawkins himself say that he was spiritual in a sense of camaraderie with other humans, so presumably he would be in that 79% measure. That can’t be right.
How can anyone take seriously any response to such a badly formed question.
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