Instead, the national mood appears to be one of benign indifference. Most people give the impression of regarding religion almost as a consumer good, one to be consumed by those who happen to have a taste for it.
A majority of people in 21st century Britain neither hopes nor fears for a life after death. only about a third believes in Heaven, and even fewer in Hell and the Devil.
Marriage is no longer seen as a sacrament and even church weddings no longer find favour.
Moreover, the existing trend towards secularisation seems almost certain to continue. The incidence of religious belief has declined sharply in recent decades and young people today are significantly less religious than their elders.
More than a third of today's young people describe themselves as either agnostics or atheists. Among middle-aged people and the elderly, the figure is far smaller.
Repeating a question that the Gallup Poll asked nearly four decades ago, YouGov began by asking people, bluntly, whether or not they believed in God.
The findings, set out in the chart on Page 17, are startling. Whereas in 1968 more than three quarters of people, 77 per cent, said they did believe in God, that figure has fallen by nearly half to 44 per cent - a minority of the population.
The proportion prepared to admit that it does not believe in God has more than trebled from a mere 11 per cent in the late-1960s to 35 per cent today.
The gap between the number of believers and non-believers, once wide, has thus closed dramatically. As the figures in the chart also show, a majority of men, as well as a majority of young people, now decline to acknowledge the existence of God.
However, today's religious doubt frequently amounts to just that: doubt. one in four of YouGov's sample, asked to say whether or not they believed in God, replied "Don't know" and, even among the 35 per cent who said they did not believe in Him, considerably more described themselves as agnostics rather than outright atheists.
The nature of many people's beliefs also appears to be subtly shifting. Among the 44 per cent of YouGov's respondents who professed a belief in the Almighty, more than a tenth were clearly not monotheists in the usual sense, believing in one God and only one.
A fair proportion, three per cent, claimed to believe in more than one God and 10 per cent described themselves as believing in "some other kind of Supreme Being".
Against such a background of rising doubt and disbelief, it is unsurprising that most people recognised that Britain was becoming a more secular country, in the sense that fewer people than in the past were religious and fewer regularly attended places of worship. That view is held by no fewer than 81 per cent of YouGov's respondents.
Large numbers evidently feel that, even if they themselves are not especially religious, the country as a whole is poorer for having lost what was once a commonly shared faith.
The section of the chart headed "Religious beliefs" also attests to the gradual erosion of specific beliefs that once underpinned much of the greatest religious art. Roughly half a century ago, more than half of Britons still believed in a life after death. Today, fewer than half imagine that their souls will outlast their corporeal selves.
Similarly, only a minority now believes in Heaven and even fewer believe in the Devil. Curiously, the proportion believing in the existence of Hell has changed not at all since Gallup asked about people's belief or lack of it in the nether regions in the late-1960s.
Roughly a quarter believed in Hell then. Roughly a quarter still do. It may be that many people do not construe the idea of Hell in religious terms but, like the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, see it as pervading the human condition.
As the figures in the chart indicate, Anglicans and adherents of one of the non-Christian faiths (only a small subset of YouGov's sample) were the least assiduous in their attendance. Nonconformists and other nonAnglican Protestants - and, to a slightly lesser extent, Roman Catholics - appeared, on the face of it, to be more devout.
As for religious education, a clear majority held that "the Government should encourage the parents of children of all faiths, including Christians, to send their children to the same schools" and only a tiny minority, five per cent, believed that the state should encourage the parents of children of minority faiths to send their children to separate "faith schools".
Taken as a whole, YouGov's findings suggest that "live and let live" is the dominant British approach to religious belief as to so many things. The relative absence of religious passion in Britain probably helps to foster this country's atmosphere of easy-going religious toleration.
By Anthony King
Anthony King is professor of government at Essex University air max 90 essential hyperfuse
User login
GTranslate
