The Nones: Unpacking non–religious Britain
from Theos:
Hannah Waite unpacks her latest report ‘The Nones: who are they and what do they believe?’.
“Perhaps the most striking fact about religion in Britain is that over half of the adult population say that they don’t belong to one.” Says Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St Mary’s and co–author of the Dictionary of Atheism:
Over the last fifty years, there has been a lot of noise about the growth of the non–religious population, often referred to as ‘Nones’. In fact, they are now the fastest growing group in the UK, with 53% Britons now identifying as non–religious. Although not yet published, it is widely expected that the upcoming 2021 census results will find a similar trend.
Understanding this half of the population, is the focus of our newest Theos report, The Nones: who are they and what do they believe?
The report shows that only 51% of those who identify as a None say they don’t believe in God. With 27% agreeing with the statement that “I don’t know whether there is a God, and I don’t believe there is any way to find out”, and a further 14% believing not in a personal God but a higher power of some kind. In this way, we have hard data to show that selecting the non–religious box (i.e. identifying as a None) on surveys does not necessarily mean that an individual is always hostile to religion or an atheist.
Rather, our data identifies three clear and distinct groups of Nones that emerge. All self–identify as Nones but each group demonstrates quite a remarkable degree of difference in attitudes, beliefs and outlook.
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