Despite widely reported concerns about the impact of Dan Brown’s best selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, only 4% of people said they subscribe to the idea that Jesus did not die but was resuscitated by his disciples.
Commenting on the results of the research, Paul Woolley, Director of Theos said:
"The aim of this project was to examine people's beliefs about the Easter story and the idea of resurrection.
"The fact that over half of Britons believe that Jesus rose from the dead is particularly striking and demonstrates that society is not as 'secular' as we often imagine it to be.
"Britain is arguably becoming more polarised on issues of religious faith given the exact split between people who do and do not believe in life after death.
"The fact that younger people are less clear about what they believe than older generations reflects a more general rejection of the certainties of the past amongst that age group, whether religious or atheistic.
"It is interesting that only 9% of all people and 42% of church-going Christians believe in a personal physical resurrection after death given the centrality of this belief in Christianity since its conception. The belief that after death the soul escapes to heaven is shaped by Plato rather than the Bible."
The Rt. Rev Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, added: "The results show a healthy number of people who do still believe in what the New Testament teaches both about Jesus and about their own ultimate future, but also a fair amount of predictable confusion about what 'resurrection' itself actually is.
"'Resurrection' isn't a fancy way of saying 'life after death'; it's a way of talking about a further stage, life after 'life after death'. What the survey does show, though, is that the great majority of people still clearly care about Jesus and regard him highly. It would have been much more depressing if most of them had said 'don't know, don't care'!"
