The decline of Christianity in Britain could be coming to a halt, temporarily at least, new figures from this year's British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) suggest.
The figures, not yet released but reported in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, show that the overall proportion of Britons who describe themselves as Christian rose by one percentage point in the last year, from 42 per cent to 43 per cent.
At the same time, "nones" – those who describe themselves as having no religion – fell from 49 per cent to 48 per cent.
Further, the number of people who are under 25 identifying themselves as non-believers fell by three points. However, this category is still large, falling from 65 per cent to 62 per cent.
The proportion describing themselves as Christian is now at the same level as it was seven years ago, when "no religion" came the largest group in the survey, reaching 51 per cent.
The new report also finds that young pensioners – including members of the baby boomer generation – are more than 40 per cent more likely to be non-religious than those who are over 75.
Ian Simpson, senior researcher at NatCen Social Research, which carries out the BSA survey, said: "The proportion of people saying they have no religion peaked at 51 per cent in 2009 and has plateaued since then. It appears that the steady decline of religion in Britain has come to a halt, at least for now. This is partly due to a stabilisation in the proportion of people describing themselves as a Christian of some kind, since 2009. However, this also appears to mask a small increase in the number of those with a non-Christian religion offsetting a small decrease in the number of Anglicans".
However Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster and co-author of 'That was the Church that was' charting the decline of the Church of England, dismissed the figures.
Professor Woodhead told Christian Today the one per cent rise in those identifying themselves as 'Christian' was "completely meaningless" and "completely insignificant". She added: "One per cent means nothing".
Recent years have seen a drop in the numbers of people identifying themselves as Church of England or Anglican, from 22 per cent in 2006 to 17 per cent last year.
Professor Woodhead stressed to the Sunday Telegraph that the overall picture was one of decline. "The decline of religion – particularly Christianity – and the rise of no religion has always been a very slow, long-term process," she said. "It probably goes back a century, although we don't have the data. We shouldn't be looking to see a collapse in numbers in a few years, we have got to look at the long-term picture. But I can't imagine any factor that would lead this long-term trend to change. If you look at the things that really matter to people – what they do with their babies, how they get married and how they deal with their dead – the rise of non-religious funerals, civil weddings and non-church baby-namings is very steady as well...The move from CofE to nones continues".
Dr Abby Day, a sociologist and expert on religion in society at Goldsmiths, University of London, warned that "[there] is a huge difference between the pre-war and baby-boomer generations". She added of the new figures: "I think this could be the pause at the edge of the cliff."
The 2015 British Social Attitudes survey consisted of 4,328 interviews with a representative, random sample of adults in Britain with a response rate of 51 per cent.
