The 2021 census is likely to show a decline in the proportion of the population selecting Christianity as their religion. In the 2011 census, 59% identified as Christian which was down from 72% ten years earlier. It is thought that when results from the 2021 census are released later this year, the proportion reporting as Christian could be fewer than half.
In fact, the proportion of people who say they have no religion at all could well be over half the population.
Some indication of the move towards a more secular society can be seen through the British Social Attitudes survey (BSA). The BSA asks whether people regard themselves as belonging to a religion so is a different question to that used in the census (What is your religion?) but it gives a good indication of how things are moving. In 2011, 46% said that they did not belong to any religion. By 2018 that had increased to 52%.
The extent to which people search online for information about religious events is another useful indicator of trends. Care has to be taken with search data because Christian festivals such as Christmas and Easter are also major secular festivals and analysing trends for these terms is unlikely to provide much insight into religious allegiance.
With this in mind, we have looked at trends in search volumes for Lent (specifying the religious observance rather than the past tense of the verb to lend) and a specific part of Lent that signifies the end of the observance but is not a secular holiday: Maundy Thursday. We have also compared Lent with Ramadan (along with Eid which marks the end of Ramadan) and Diwali (along with Bhai Dooj which is celebrated during Diwali) to see how trends compare.
The graphics below use data from Google Trends for 2011 to 2021. Google Trends displays the volume of searches relative to the highest point in the timescale. A value of 100 represents the peak popularity of the search term. A value of 50 means that the search was half as popular at that time. We have added a linear trend line to each chart to highlight the direction of travel.
Volume of searches for key religious events, 2011 to 2021, Google Trends
The charts show that the volume of searches for Lent and Maundy Thursday have both experienced a similar decline over the 10 year period. Ramadan and Eid, on the other hand, show a sharp increase in the volume of searches throughout the 10 years. Searches for Diwali and Bhai Dooj also show an upward trend.
Based on this we can speculate that when the 2021 census results are released we will see a decline in the percentage who are Christian and an increase (and possibly a substantial one) in those whose religion is Islam (5% in 2011), Hindu (2% in the last census) or Sikh (less than 1% in 2011).
Of course, searching for information about a religious event does not necessarily mean that people belong to that religion. There could be all sorts of reasons why a search is undertaken (general interest, an educational reason, curiosity) and so we cannot apply trends in search terms to religious allegiance with any great precision.
That said, analysis of Google Trends data supports the findings of the BSA that formal allegiance to Christianity is on the decline in the UK.
This further brings up a question of whether it is still appropriate to ask people about religious allegiance in the census and in surveys. People might be turning their backs on formal Christianity but that does not mean that they are also turning away from the values that underpin it (compassion, love, truth, goodness). You only have to look at our response to world emergencies and the way the majority helped each other during the pandemic to note that our values haven't weakened. Would it be better to report values rather than religious allegiance?
Perhaps people are not losing 'religion' but expressing their beliefs differently.
