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How religious is the UK?
2011-02-22 03:53:56
21 February 2011 Last updated at 11:03 Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Census: How religious is the UK? By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine Does the Queen do fashion? 10 of your Vidal Sassoon cuts How hard do you work? The cult of lawn
A publicity drive has started for the census, now just five weeks away, but the survey is being criticised for its question on religion. So is it even possible to accurately measure how religious the UK is?
According to the Gospel of Luke, it was a Roman census that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Jesus Christ.
And more than 2,000 years later, the same kind of counting exercise is being used to gauge the religious make-up of the UK.
According to the last census 10 years ago, more than two-thirds of people in Britain regarded themselves as Christian - 72% in England and Wales, and 65% in Scotland.
More than 1.5 million in England and Wales, more than 3% of the population, said they were Muslim and nearly eight million ticked "no religion". There were also 390,000 self-proclaimed Jedi.
Continue reading the main story Is it a leading question?"It fairly allows you to answer it because you can say 'no religion' but if you wanted to make it as neutral as possible, you might ask 'Which of these would you describe yourself as?' says Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov.
"It does have a slight assumption, although not a strong one, but these wordings do make a difference."
But five weeks before the next census day, Sunday 27 March, some groups are questioning whether the religious numbers are at all accurate, and could ever be.
They prefer to use the British Social Attitudes survey, carried out annually by the National Centre for Social Research, which paints a picture of a less-religious country, with 51% describing themselves as non-religious and 43% as Christian.
The religious question in the census was first introduced in 2001, as a voluntary option. In some other countries such as France, state questions about race, ethnicity or religion are not permitted.
But in the UK, the vast majority of people answered it despite not having to, although the reappearance of the same question in the forthcoming census has prompted complaints.
Question 20 in England and Wales will say: "What is your religion?" In Scotland, question 13 will ask: "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?"
The British Humanist Association (BHA) believes they are leading questions that actively encourage people to tick a religious answer, thereby inflating the numbers, especially among Christians because many people hold a weak affiliation.
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