A survey of 1900 people in England and Wales found the interesting result that while 61% of respondents said they belonged to a religion, 65% also replied “no” when asked if they were religious.
The British Humanist Association conducted this survey to illustrate the fact that the British census, which is due to be carried out soon, gives a misleading impression by asking only the first question and thereby suggesting that people are more religious than they really are. They say that people check off the boxes of belonging to religious institutions for cultural, rather than religious, reasons but that the government uses this inflated data to advocate for funding of things like faith-based schools. They are urging people who are not religious to tick the ‘none’ box when asked which religion they belong to.
Another interesting result was that “Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.” That alone would explain the above difference.
It would be really interesting to have a similar survey done in the US. I think the religiosity figures are inflated here too, though maybe not as much.
I remember the last census in Ireland. My mother put “Church of Ireland” down for my Dad’s religion even though he is an atheist. I asked her why and she said it was to offset the Catholic majority by increasing the size of the minority religions. Which in hind sight made no sense as the largest religious group listed in the census after Catholic was none (larger than all the other religious minorities combined).
The depressing thing about this is, despite these statistics, it is still illegal here to have a school with no religious denomination.
I find this very frustrating. People support monetarily and otherwise institutions which promote ideas and policies with which they do not agree. I have never been religious so I don’t want to judge those who do so for reasons of social, emotional or family pressures.
Furthermore, there is sort of an assumption that you *are* something. As a very small child I knew I was an atheist and thought Bible stories were fictional. But although we never went to church, when another small child asked me if I were Christian, I said, “Yes.” My naive and simple understanding was the Christianity=good person who cares about others. Sadly, I think many people cling to this same definition that I had as a 5 year old.