A recent Church Times contained a brief report about the 2011 census planned for 27th March 2011. A voluntary question on religion will allow people to identify the faith group to which they belong. Although, in 1851, a separate census of religious places of worship took place, it was not until the 2001 that a question on religion was included in the main census. This will be repeated in 2011.
In 1851, a count on Mothering Sunday gave the total in the parish churches now a part of this diocese as 154,800 (42% of the population). When the other denominations are added 72% of the population was actually worshipping that Sunday.
Now let’s fast forward to this century. The population has grown from 369,300 (in 1851) to 2,701,000 (in 2001) of whom 68% now declare themselves to be Christian. On Sunday 1st October 2006 a count conducted by Christian Research led us to estimate that 9% of the population declaring itself as Christian attended a service of worship that day, a quarter in Anglican churches. Way back in 1851 most, if not all people, would have said they were Christian, so over the last 150 years the proportion of Christians at worship on a Sunday has fallen from 72% to 9%.
It will be interesting to see what the 2011 census reveals about the present population. In the meantime this graph shows what the 2001 census told us about religion in each of our 26 deaneries. It shows the percentage of the population in each deanery identifying itself as Christian. The dashed line represents the 68% average.
Canon Don Cardy
29th Oct 2010