This statistic shows the distribution of respondents of a 2014 survey investigating which religions were followed in Great Britain. Seven of the thirteen options were Christian denominations, and in total ** percent of respondents followed a Christian denomination. Over **** of respondents were Church of England, Anglican or Episcopal.

As of August 2025, approximately 28 percent of people in Great Britain said that they believed in a God / Gods, compared with 38 percent who had no belief in God / Gods at all.

Approximately ****** prisoners in England and Wales identified as being Christian in 2024, the most of any religious faith among prisoners. A further ****** identified as having no religion, while ****** identified as Muslims.

In 2021, the largest religion in England and Wales was Christianity, with approximately 27.52 million adherents. Although Christianity was the largest religion, the number of followers has declined when compared with ten years earlier, when there were almost 33.27 million Christians.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This source hails from the earlier years of large-scale survey research in Britain, with the electronic data file created following scanning of and data capture from original survey returns. The data collection provides insight into the lifestyles and religiosity of urban young people, predominantly working-class, at the dawn of the affluent society. It comprises a stratified random sample survey of the religious, social and associational lives of young people aged 15-24 in urban England in 1957. It was designed and fielded by the Newman Demographic Survey, a private research institute directed by religious sociologist Tony Spencer, in collaboration with Young Christian Workers, a faith-based youth organisation. The investigators aimed to yield a sample of English urban youth which would include at least 1000 Catholic respondents, representing all English Catholic dioceses. 8196 was achieved, of which following some apparently random data loss 5834 were of sufficient quality for scanning and data capture in 2010. The survey instrument consisted primarily of closed-form items piloted in Gateshead, Highgate and Manchester, and was designed following correspondence with specialist survey experts: Len England (1901-1999), Director of Mass Observation; Leslie Austen, director of Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Ltd; and W.L. Readman at the National Food Survey at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. John Mandeville of the British Tabulating Machine Company, a British-based company operating under licence to IBM, also provided advice to the survey investigators. The electoral register was used as the sampling frame, using a version of the 'nth page' method. To prevent interviewer fatigue, about half of the respondents (70% of Anglicans) completed a short version of the questionnaire, covering items on leisure and religious belief, while the remainder completed a longer version including items on associational memberships, schooling, religious attendance and practice, marital status, and parental country and religion of origin. Some written-in responses (on leisure, religious affiliation, associational memberships and occupation) have been captured. Design and post-stratification weights have been calculated for users. Main Topics: The religious, social and associational lives of young people aged 15-24 in urban England in 1957; their domestic circumstances, educational background and current working status. Multi-stage stratified random sample The investigators aimed to stratify the sample, at the first stage by the populations of urban areas by standard (now Government Office) region aged 15-24 as enumerated in the 1951 Census. Within each standard region they originally stratified according to the size of total population of boroughs, districts and local authorities as of 30 June 1955 divided as follows: 500,000 and more; 100,000-499,999; 50,000-99,999; 10,000-49,999; fewer than 10,000. Due to resource constraints, a first compromise was the decision not to cover authorities with smaller populations, as essentially comprising large villages and market towns. The sample universe was accordingly 'persons, in urban areas of England with population exceeding 50,000, age 15 to 24 inclusive'. The original aspiration to sample boroughs randomly was next abandoned as too resource-intensive. It had originally been hoped that the 'flying squad method' could be used, with smaller numbers of YCW volunteers travelling to areas where they were poorly-represented by car. Instead, boroughs were identified from a list of towns where the YCW had sections strong enough to field the survey without extensive additional help. Accordingly this probably introduced some bias in that the YCW was undoubtedly stronger in towns with higher proportions of Catholics and more active churches, congregations and clergy. This may reduce external validity somewhat. Within these boroughs, the electoral register was used as the sampling frame, using a version of the 'nth page' method. Where a household hosted more than one young person aged 15-24, it is not clear from the notes for interviewers how they were sampled. The number of residents aged 15-24 was however recorded for the creation of design weights. Face-to-face interview

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in households in England and Wales by religion and by accommodation type. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

We have made changes to housing definitions since the 2011 Census. Take care if you compare Census 2021 results for this topic with those from the 2011 Census. Read more about this quality notice.

Area type

Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.

For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.

Lower tier local authorities

Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.

Coverage

Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:

• country - for example, Wales
• region - for example, London
• local authority - for example, Cornwall
• health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
• statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA

Religion

The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.

This question was voluntary and includes people who identified with one of 8 tick-box response options, including "No religion", alongside those who chose not to answer this question.

Accommodation type

The type of building or structure used or available by an individual or household.

This could be:

• the whole house or bungalow
• a flat, maisonette or apartment
• a temporary or mobile structure, such as a caravan

More information about accommodation types

Whole house or bungalow:

This property type is not divided into flats or other living accommodation. There are three types of whole houses or bungalows.

Detached:

None of the living accommodation is attached to another property but can be attached to a garage.

Semi-detached:

The living accommodation is joined to another house or bungalow by a common wall that they share.

Terraced:

A mid-terraced house is located between two other houses and shares two common walls. An end-of-terrace house is part of a terraced development but only shares one common wall.

Flats (Apartments) and maisonettes:

An apartment is another word for a flat. A maisonette is a 2-storey flat.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. In 2010 the Evangelical Alliance began a major research programme which would enable it to understand more fully the lives and concerns of its constituency of Evangelical Christians across the United Kingdom. In 2010 over 17,000 people, connected in some way with evangelical churches and networks, completed a questionnaire about their beliefs, religious practices, opinions on political and moral questions and on their involvement and activism in the community. Over 12,500 of them defined themselves as Evangelical Christians. Paper questionnaires were distributed at major Christian events and festivals, and through a sample of Evangelical Alliance member churches across the UK. Subsequently a research panel, recruited in the first place from the 17,000 has been asked to take part in online surveys four times each year, with each wave of the survey concentrating on a specific theme or topic known to be of interest to the Alliance and/or its member organisations and churches. In the first online survey conducted around Easter 2011 over 1,150 people responded, in the Church Life survey carried out in November 2012 over 1,864 replies were analysed. Further information is available on the Evangelical Alliance 21st Century Evangelicals webpages. End User Licence and Special Licence data: Users should note that there are two versions of each Twenty-First Century Evangelicals study. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement (SN 7787), and the other is a Special Licence (SL) version (SN 7786). The SL version contains the text responses to the open-ended questions. The EUL version excludes the text responses to the open-ended questions. The SL data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version. Therefore, users are strongly advised to order the standard version of the data. Latest edition information: For the fourth edition (February 2017), data and documentation for a new survey have been added. The survey has the theme of 'Religions, Belief and Unbelief' and covers views of secularism, religious diversity and interfaith relations. Further information is available from an article published in the IDEA magazine. Main Topics: The surveys carried out between 2010 and 2016 cover the following topics: Christian spirituality and learningemployment issueslife in the churchexperiences of and attitudes about schooling and educationevangelismfinancial matters and povertyinternational and global links and issuesuse of old and new mediaexperience of and views about contemporary familiesfaith in politics and voting intentions and issues pre-2015 electionlocal community and neighbourhoodsbasic beliefs, religious practices and civic involvementhealth and wellbeingethical consumerism church leaders and their church’s approach to Evangelismdifferent life experiences of the different generations, from boomers born before 1960 to millennials born in the 1990s'what is Evangelicalism?' to coincide with the 170th anniversary of the foundationsecularism, religious diversity and interfaith relations Simple random sample Self-completion Internet-based survey

In 2022/23 there were ***** religious hate crimes committed against Muslims in England and Wales, which was the most of any religion in that year. Jewish hate crime was the second most-common type of hate crime, at ***** recorded hate crimes.

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales by occupation and by religion. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about this quality notice.

Area type

Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.

For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.

Lower tier local authorities

Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.

Coverage

Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:

• country - for example, Wales
• region - for example, London
• local authority - for example, Cornwall
• health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
• statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA

Occupation (current)

Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.

It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation.

The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels.

Religion

The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.

This question was voluntary and includes people who identified with one of 8 tick-box response options, including "No religion", alongside those who chose not to answer this question.

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Islam is the major religion in many African countries, especially in the north of the continent. In Comoros, Libya, Western Sahara, at least 99 percent of the population was Muslim as of 202. These were the highest percentages on the continent. However, also in many other African nations, the majority of the population was Muslim. In Egypt, for instance, Islam was the religion of 79 percent of the people. Islam and other religions in Africa Africa accounts for an important share of the world’s Muslim population. As of 2019, 16 percent of the Muslims worldwide lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, while 20 percent of them lived in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Together with Christianity, Islam is the most common religious affiliation in Africa, followed by several traditional African religions. Although to a smaller extent, numerous other religions are practiced on the continent: these include Judaism, the Baha’i Faith, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Number of Muslims worldwide Islam is one of the most widespread religions in the world. There are approximately 1.9 billion Muslims globally, with the largest Muslim communities living in the Asia-Pacific region. Specifically, Indonesia hosts the highest number of Muslims worldwide, amounting to over 200 million, followed by India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Islam is also present in Europe and America. The largest Islamic communities in Europe are in France (5.72 million), Germany (4.95 million), and the United Kingdom (4.13 million). In the United States, there is an estimated number of around 3.45 million Muslims.

This data collection consists of 22 interview transcripts with leading researchers on topics relating to the interface between religion and security conducted in 2013. Most of the interviewees were funded under the RCUK Global Uncertainties programme. The research project examines the development of the concept of martyrdom and sacrificial death in Britain and Ireland since the outbreak of the First World War. It proceeds through archival, library and web-based research on historic sources, including books and pamphlets, newspapers and online databases, supplemented as necessary by site visits. There were also be a series of semi-structured interviews with political and religious activists, carried out in partnership with the Belfast-based Institute for Conflict Research, in four contrasting locations in Britain and Ireland, Belfast, Bradford, Dublin and London. Transcripts from these interviews are also deposited with the UK Data Service in the collection 'Religion, Martyrdom and Global Uncertainties - Part 2: Martyrdom interviews' (see Related Resources). The leadership activities sought to integrate key insights from other relevant GU projects, exploring both various understandings of religion and quasi-religion, and weighing their importance against other non-religious factors. Work proceeded by means of telephone interviews with researchers leading to an initial working paper. User responses were gathered through two seminars and the project website; and selected researchers atttended a symposium intended to distil insights and implications for users and to present them in an accessible form. A widely-circulated hardcopy summary of the outcomes (an e-copy is available in the ReadMe folder) together with online video resources was made available to users, who were invited to attend one of a series of dissemination seminars to be held at various locations around the UK. The interviews were conducted between March and July 2013, initially with 18 researchers funded under the RCUK Global Uncertainties programme. The sample was weighted towards researchers whose projects explicitly related to religion, but also included a few (eg Cameron, Farrell, Freedman) for whom the relevance of religion was more implicit than explicit. The final 4 interviews were then added to include more research relating to Ireland and to Christianity in order to address an imbalance in the initial sample which arose from the predominant focus on Islamic communities and related issues within the Global Uncertainties programme. The interviews typically lasted 20 to 30 minutes and were conducted over the telephone using a semi-structured format. Interviewees were given an indication of the main questions in advance. (The briefing document and consent form together with a list of interviewees is a available under Documentation).

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The research considered the ways that faith is experienced and negotiated by seafarers on board cargo ships as well as the provisions for faith/welfare made by charitable organisations based in ports ashore. In order to understand these areas, we used a combination of qualitative research methods, specifically, observation and interviews. Fifty-five shipboard semi-structured interviews with seafarers were carried out (representing all of those seafarers who were present while the researcher was on board). Interviews were conducted with reference to a flexible interview guide and they were digitally recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were analysed and thematically coded using Nvivo 12. Shipboard research was complemented by research in two seafarers’ centres ashore. These UK-based centres have been assigned the pseudonyms Riverside and Porton. Both centres supplied services to more than one port within their locality and were run by different faith-based charities. They were chosen with reference to the size and cargoes of the ports concerned and the organisations running them. An interview guide provided the framework for semi-structured interviews with chaplains and volunteers in these two ports. Five formal interviews were carried out with paid staff, and ten formal interviews were carried out with volunteers, at the two centres. We supplemented our research in the two ports with nine interviews with representatives from the main charitable bodies connected to seafarers’ welfare (3 in the UK and 6 based outside the UK) and with seven additional chaplains/volunteers providing welfare services for seafarers in both UK (1) and non-UK (6) ports. Chaplains were selected with reference to gender and nationality to ensure an appropriate mix. Interviews with non-Filipino seafarers and port-based centre staff and volunteers were undertaken in English. Interviews with Filipino participants were undertaken in Tagalog and were subsequently translated by the fieldworker. All seafarers on board the two ships where observational work was conducted were included in the research resulting in a full representation of all ranks on board. All seafarers on board were male which is common in the cargo shipping sector where less than 1% of the workforce is estimated to be female. Interviews were of between one and two hours duration.

From 2022 to 2060, the worldwide population of Muslims is expected to increase by **** percent. For the same period, the global population of Buddhists is expected to decrease by **** percent.

In 2023, the average weekly church attendance at Church of England services was 693,000. Between 2009 and 2019 the average weekly church attendance for the Church of England fell by approximately 218,000. Church attendance figures fell even more during 2020 and 2021, although this was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sikhism is a religion that originated on the Indian subcontinent during the fifteenth century. Sikhs follow the teachings of 'gurus', who descend from the first guru Guru Naruk who established the faith. Followers of Sikhism are monotheists, believing in only one god, and other core beliefs include the need to meditate, the importance of community and communal living, and the need to serve humanity selflessly (or 'seva'). Sikhism and the British Empire In total, there are around 26 million Sikhs worldwide, and over 24 million of these live in India. Outside of India, the largest Sikh populations are mostly found in former territories of the British Empire - the UK and Canada both have Sikh populations of over half a million people. Migration from India to other parts of the British Empire was high in the 19th century, due to the labor demands of relatively newer colonies, as well as those where slavery had been abolished. These countries also remain popular destinations for Sikh migrants today, as many are highly trained and English-speaking. Other regions with significant Sikh populations Italy also has a sizeable Sikh population, as many migrated there after serving there in the British Army during WWI, and they are now heavily represented in Italy's dairy industry. The Sikh population of Saudi Arabia is also reflective of the fact that the largest Indian diaspora in the world can now be found in the Middle East - this is due to the labor demands of the fossil fuel industries and their associated secondary industries, although a large share of Indians in this part of the world are there on a temporary basis.

n 2023, there were approximately 67,800 baptism and thanksgiving services performed by the Church of England, compared with 82,100 in 2022.

In 2022, approximately 207,004 marriages took place via a civil ceremony in England and Wales, compared with 41,915 religious ceremonies. Since 1992, there have been more civil ceremonies in every year than religious ones. There were far fewer ceremonies taking place in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdowns at the time.