Religion and belief: some surveys and statistics
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Numerous surveys indicate that the proportion of individuals who do not hold religious beliefs is steadily increasing.
Religions and beliefs are notoriously difficult to measure, as they are not fixed or innate, and therefore any poll should be primarily treated as an indication of beliefs rather than a concrete measure.
However, one of the foremost respected measures of religious attitudes is the annual British Social Attitudes Survey, further details of the latest report may be found on NatCen’s website.
Surveys and polls on religion and belief in the United Kingdom
Census data
The English and Welsh Census uses the highly leading question ‘What is your religion?’ By assuming that all participants hold a religious belief, the question captures some kind of loose cultural affiliation, and as a result over in 2001 70% of the population responded ‘Christian’; a far higher percentage than nearly every other significant survey or poll on religious belief in the past decade.
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