Contrary to popular opinion, the belief in God is declining even faster than attendance in church, a new study claims.

The academics who conducted the survey argue that the results dispel the widely accepted theory of “believing without belonging”. This theory held that religious belief was fairly well-grounded despite shrinking congregations. The academics allege that all measures of religiousness have now fallen.

The research was carried out by the University of Manchester, who also found that between 1991 and 1999 actual belief in God has decreased even more than affiliation to a particular religion and attendance in services.

The number affiliated to a particular religion fell 2.9 per cent to 59.1 per cent, while attendance fell 3.5 per cent to 16.8 per cent. Belief in God dropped a considerable 5.3 per cent to 32.5 per cent overall.

The study also showed that the religious behaviour of parents has a highly significant impact on children. The academics found that institutional religion has a “half-life” of one generation meaning that two religious parents have a 50-50 chance of passing on their beliefs.

Likewise children are more likely to grow up with no faith at all if both parents are non-religious, while ‘one religious parents’ do half as well as two religious parents.

One factor which might be able to slow down the rate of declining faith is that religious parents tend to have more children, said the study, which also used figures from the British Household Panel and British Social Attitudes surveys.

The study said that “believing without belonging” had become the “catchphrase” of much European work on religion in the past decade.

Dr David Voas, who led the research team, predicted that although religion in Britain would not die out completely, it would reach “fairly low levels” before very long.