Calls grow to disestablish Church of England as Christians become minority

According to the most recent census, less than half of the people in England and Wales consider themselves Christian, marking the first time that a minority of the population has adhered to the country’s official religion.

The Office for National Statistics released data from the 2021 census on Tuesday, revealing that Britain has become less religious — and less white — in the decade since the last census.

On the day of the 2021 census, 46.2% of the population of England and Wales identified as Christian, down from 59.3% a decade earlier. The Muslim population increased from 4.9% to 6.5% of the total, while Hindus increased from 1.5% to 1.7%.

Other parts of the United Kingdom, such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, report their census results separately.

Campaigners for secularism said the change should prompt a reconsideration of religion’s place in British society. The U.K. has state-funded Church of England schools, Anglican bishops sit in Parliament’s upper chamber, and the monarch is the church’s “defender of the faith” and supreme governor.

According to Andrew Copson, CEO of the charity Humanists U.K., “the dramatic growth of the non-religious” has made the U.K. “unquestionably one of the least religious countries on the planet.”

“One of the most striking aspects of these findings is how disconnected the population is from the state,” he said. “No other state in Europe has such a religious setup in terms of law and public policy as we do, while also having such a non-religious population.”

The data, according to Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, one of the Church of England’s most senior clerics, was “not a great surprise,” but it was a challenge to Christians to work harder to promote their faith.

“We have passed the era in which many people almost automatically identified as Christian, but other surveys consistently show that the same people are still seeking spiritual truth and wisdom, as well as a set of values to live by,” he said.

Campaigners have called for the King to be officially divorced from the Church of England after official figures this week revealed that the country is no longer majority Christian.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of people identifying as Christian in England and Wales has fallen below 50% for the first time, to 27.5 million, or 46.2% of the population, down from 33.3 million, or 59.3%, in 2011.

The data also revealed that the number of people who claimed to have “no religion” had increased significantly to 22.2 million, or roughly one-third of the population.

Anti-monarchists and non-religious organisations are now questioning King Charles’ role as supreme governor of the Church of England.

Graham Smith, CEO of the Republic campaign group that wants to see the monarchy abolished and the King replaced with an elected head of state, said the data shows the current system is unsustainable.

“How can a head of state be said to be impartial and representing all of us when they are so closely linked to one religion, a religion that is increasingly a minority interest… Clearly the head of state being head of church is unsustainable,” Smith told Yahoo News UK.

“It has never been right that one religion is given a privileged place in our constitution, but now more than ever that needs to end.

“Charles has a unique opportunity, in the run-up to the coronation, to agree to a separation of his role from the church, allowing a wider debate to be had about separation of church and state.”

Stephen Evans, of the National Secular Society, said it was “absurd and unsustainable for the head of state to swear to uphold and promote a single religion which less than half the population follow”.

Charles said the Anglican Church “has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country”.

For some campaigners, this isn’t enough. Instead, they want to see a complete separation of the church from the state.

Humanists UK, which ran a campaign ahead of the two most recent censuses encouraging non-religious people to tick the form’s “no religion” box, said the result should be a “wake-up call which prompts fresh reconsiderations of the role of religion in society”.

CEO Andrew Copson said: “No state in Europe has such a religious set-up as we do in terms of law and public policy, while at the same time having such a non-religious population. Iran is the only other state in the world that has clerics voting in its legislature.”

He added: “This census result should be a wake-up call which prompts fresh reconsiderations of the role of religion in society.”