The Associated Press is reporting that, according to the most recent census, fewer than half the people in England and Wales consider themselves Christian. This is the first time that Christianity, the country’s official religion, has fallen to minority status.
Some 46.2% of the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian in the 2021 census, down sharply from 59.3% a decade earlier, in 2011. The Muslim population grew from 4.9% to 6.5% of the total, while 1.7% identified as Hindu, up from 1.5%.
More than 1 in 3 people — 37% — said they had no religion, up from 25% in 2011.
The other parts of the U.K., Scotland and Northern Ireland, report their census results separately.
The U.K. has state-funded Church of England schools, some Anglican bishops sit in Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, and one of the king’s official titles is “defender of the faith.” But obviously the official establishment of Christianity has not caused England to remain a Christian country.
Christianity is also on the wane in the United States. Although two thirds of the American population still identify as Christian of some variety, the “nones”—those claiming no religion—have grown rapidly in recent years, to about 25% of the population. We are on the same trajectory as England, but about a generation higher on the curve.
Quoting Scripture in England is Now A Crime
The news that Christianity is no longer the majority persuasion in England helps explain another news story out of the sceptered isle being reported by Breitbart. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which prosecutes criminal offenses [or offences, as the Limeys write it], is taking the position that it is a crime to quote certain parts of the Bible.
Lawyers for the CPS of England and Wales tried to have a Christian street preacher convicted for quoting the Bible to a lesbian couple, insisting that scripture is “no longer appropriate in modern society.”
The extraordinary case, mounted in what is still nominally a Christian country with an established church, the Church of England, in which the monarch serves as Supreme Governor, was brought against a Swindon street preacher, John Dunn. The police referred Dunn to prosecutors for telling a lesbian couple that it “says in the Bible that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
“Whether a statement of Christian belief or not, the court is being asked to consider whether the language has the potential to cause harassment, alarm or distress,” the CPS wrote in pleadings quoted by the Belfast News Letter.
The CPS is quite critical of the Bible, arguing that it “contains other material recognising slavery (Exodus 21:7), the death sentence (Exodus 35:2 and Leviticus 24:16) and cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:27),” the prosecutors asserted — although Deuteronomy 28:27 makes no reference to cannibalism.
“There are references in the bible which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be deemed offensive if stated in public,” the CPS insisted.
“The suggestion by the Crown that there are parts of the Bible ‘which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be deemed offensive if stated in public’, is one that if accepted would have significant constitutional implications,” a Christian theologian consulted by Dunn’s lawyers argued. The Bible “has had a unique status within British constitutional history” and was, for example, presented to the late Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation.
“Our Gracious Queen: To keep your Majesty ever mindful of the Law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is Wisdom; This is the royal Law; These are the lively Oracles of God,”
Queen Elizabeth was told as the Bible was presented to her.
Ultimately, the case against Mr Dunn was dropped, but not because the CPS prosecutors had a change of heart. Rather, the lesbian complainants “refused to engage with the case.”
The large churches took no interest in the case. The Church of England, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and English Catholic Church all declined to comment — the last of these in particularly disingenuous terms, suggesting that “as this case didn’t result in a conviction, there is nothing we can add at this point.”
It was also troubling that the prosecution services Scotland and Northern Ireland refused to disavow the England-Wales CPS’s position.
The Belfast News Letter asked the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland — Northern Ireland and Scotland retain criminal justice systems separate from that in England and Wales due to their history as independent kingdoms — if they shared the CPS’s view on biblical quotes being criminal, but it would only say that “[t]his is not a PPS case so we are not in a position to provide comment.”
Mr Dunn was “relieved and grateful that the case has been dropped.” He plans to continue to preach on the streets of Swindon.
“When I preach, I only ever say what is in the Bible. When [the lesbians] told me they were in a same-sex marriage, I was concerned for them. I had to communicate the consequences of their actions based on what the Bible says. I wanted to warn them, not out of condemnation, but out of love. I wanted … them to know that there is forgiveness through the love of Jesus.”
Christian Legal Centre chief executive Andrea Williams lamented that the prosecution had ever been attempted, saying that it was “extraordinary that the prosecution, speaking on behalf of the state, could say that the Bible contains abusive words which, when spoken in public, constitute a criminal offence.”
The CPS’s decisions about where to apply its resources are especially strange in light of England’s serious problem with property crime. Property crimes such as shoplifting, burglary, theft, etc. have essentially been legalized by the failure to investigate and prosecute them. Even those friendly to police and prosecutors admit that 97% of property crimes go unresolved; critics say the percentage is more like 99.7%