Many Brits who were raised as Christians have abandoned their faith, according to a report by the Pew Research Centre. The survey found that 38 per cent of those brought up as Christians are ‘religiously unaffiliated’, while 4 per cent had converted to other religions. The verdict on religion seems gloomy. But I have a slight quibble with this finding: were these people really raised as Christians? Or did they just glance in its direction now and then as children?
The average British agnostic has a similar story to Richard Dawkins
Consider the evolution of Richard Dawkins. He would have us believe that he thought his way out of the shackles of religion. In reality, he went to a public school – Oundle – where there was some vague Anglicanism, mixed with imperial pride. Dawkins, it seems, felt a bit pious for a while, and the fading of this piety gave him a heroic self-image, for decades to come, that he was a free-thinker, trusting in science rather than myth.
The average British agnostic has a similar story. Maybe he attended a nominally church school, or was taken to church a few times by granny. He or she chooses to spin this as being indoctrinated – for then they can feel they have chosen a noble path of rejecting an oppressive orthodoxy. Doing so brings meaning.
The more mundane reality is that Mr or Ms Agnostic has simply gone with the flow of secular liberal culture, shrugging at the question of meaning, because no other response is required. Instead of honestly saying: ‘I’ve never really engaged with religion, just drifted along with the dominant agnosticism of my culture’, he or she would rather sound purposeful and brave: ‘I have seen through the oppressive delusion that was foisted on me, and dared to think for myself.’
Plenty of these people don’t move very far from the cultural Christianity they were exposed to. They might tick the ‘no religion’ box in surveys, but they still feel a slight affection for Christmas carols and country churches. Even Dawkins has recently admitted that he is a cultural Christian, of sorts. He likes old churches, and he acknowledges an affinity between Christianity and Britain’s political culture.
The survey found that 46 per cent of Britons have no religious affiliation, outnumbering the 43 per cent who are Christian. It also found that 5 per cent are Muslim, 1 per cent Jewish and 1 per cent Hindu, while 2 per cent follow other faiths and a small number prefer not to say. This is roughly in line with other recent surveys: the 2021 census found that 37.5 per cent were non-religious; a recent British Social Attitudes survey put that figure at 53 per cent. So it seems that forty-something per cent of us say that we have no religion, and forty-something per cent of us say that we are Christian, and about seven per cent belong to other religions.
You might want to draw the same-old conclusion that religion’s in decline. But, as I see it, the stats show that most of us are religious, and that’s pretty surprising.
It’s surprising because our media seems to assume that nearly all of us are non-religious. Nearly all of culture is basically run by Mr and Ms Agnostic, with their slightly heroic narrative about breaking free from the shackles of religion. Once a year, they remember that something religious should be commissioned, to show how open-minded we are. As a result, some programme is made about the spiritual struggles of someone from this or that minority group, so that religion is presented a modern and edgy. But there is very little interest in commissioning intelligent stuff about religion. Radio 4, for example, just assumes that intelligent discussion must focus on science, psychology, the arts – and offers us dull worthy programmes with edgy podcasty trappings. I still sometimes listen to Radio 4 in the morning, but there is a world out there. So, let me take this opportunity to recommend the brilliant morning prayer service that the Church of England puts out every day. It feels like the best of our national religion.
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