The recently revealed Office for National Statistics 2021 census showed, for the first time, that less than half the country consider themselves Christians.
While in 2011 59.3% described themselves as Christians, ten years later only 46.2% do so. You only have to go back to 2001 to have seen 71% of the population ticking the Christian box.
Most of us, as evangelicals, are not surprised by the statistics. An earlier report published by the Evangelical Alliance had already produced similar figures. High numbers declaring themselves Christians in the past would have been inflated by a nominal sense of being a Christian regardless of actual beliefs or practice. Much of the decline represents a decline in identification with Christian culture.
However, if people don’t identify with the Christian faith, what do they identify with? On this question, the census is of less help. The next highest response was ‘no religion’, at 37.2%. But what does it mean to identify as ‘no religion’?
The census certainly reveals a growing diversity of beliefs in the UK. Apparently, those identifying as Shaman has risen from 650 to 8,000. The numbers of Muslims and Hindus have risen significantly. But it remains obvious that more and more people prefer not to identify with any religion.
Some misreporting in popular media took the rising numbers of non-religious to represent a rise in atheism or agnosticism. Accordingly, Caerphilly was described as the most godless city in the United Kingdom – closely followed by Brighton and Hove. But this was misreading the ‘non-religious’ option. Those identifying themselves as atheist, agnostic or humanist actually declined. Only a few thousand identified as atheist – a decline of 52.7%. To be fair, the British Humanist Association have always been critical of this way of measuring atheism and it certainly undercounts the numbers. But it also indicates that the ‘no religion’ option (37.2%) must sweep together a wide range of people, often referred to as ‘spiritual nones’.
So the one category most likely to continue increasing in the years ahead is that of the ‘nones’ and our evangelism must take note of this. There are two important points that stand out for apologetics.
First, religion has a bad reputation. Whether it is a historic church tradition or an obscure eastern religion, for many people a religion by its very nature is corrupt and corrupting. Better to be apart from it than a part of it. Our evangelism must take note of this and not allow the claims of Christ to be muddied by the often murky waters of church history. We are calling men and women to follow Jesus, not to sign up to a particular denomination.
Second, the task of the Christian in the contemporary West is increasingly that of a missionary. Christian training and discipleship must produce missionaries for secular industry and local neighbourhoods. The Christian cultural capital is being rapidly eroded and we can make less and less assumptions regarding the beliefs and values of our neighbours.
Do these latest census figures make depressing reading? Not at all. They state the obvious. They also describe a culture that looks less post-Christian and more pre-Christian. If the modern West resembles classical Rome then it resembles a culture with an expiry date, and history shows that in exactly that kind of culture the church was able to take root, grow, and bring blessing.
