WE ARE CHRISTIAN, SAY 71% OF BRITONS More than seven out of ten Britons say they are Christians, according to an official count.
The high figure will be seen as a firm endorsement for those who argue the British public remain wedded to traditional religious values despite the fall in church attendances. It comes in the week after the Pope’s state visit which led to a battle of words between those who believe Christianity has a vital role in national life and the opposing ‘aggressive atheists’ who believe religion should be regarded as the private pursuit of a minority. [image: Surprisingly popular: Cheers as Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Birmingham last week] Surprisingly popular: Cheers for pope after his arrival in Birmingham last week The analysis produced by the Office for National Statistics suggested that a big majority of the population still believe in Christianity. Based on nearly 450,000 replies to a series of Government-backed surveys, it found that 71.4 per cent of the UK adult population call themselves Christians. They dwarfed the numbers of atheists and secularists. Just over one in five people, 20.5 per cent, said they had no religion. The analysis from the new Integrated Household Survey, which is produced from answers to the same questions put in six different established surveys, put the Muslim proportion of the population at 4.2 per cent, just under one in 20. It said 1.5 per cent are Hindu, 0.7 per cent Sikh, 0.6 per cent Jewish, 0.4 per cent Buddhist, and 1.1 per cent say they follow another religion. In Slough, the town with the highest proportion of religious people, 93 per cent of the population say they are believers in one faith or another. The lowest level of religious belief was found in Brighton, where only 58 per cent say they have a religion. Calls for religion to be pushed out of the mainstream of public life came from a number of prominent figures in advance of the Pope’s visit. Several critics argued that fewer than one in ten people in Britain go to church, and therefore Christianity should be considered as no more than the private concern of a small minority. However such arguments – and calls led by comedian Stephen Fry for the Pope’s tour to be relegated from a state visit to a mere private trip – became muted in the face of Benedict’s clear popularity. The Pope argued strongly for religion to be a major factor in public life, and for an end to attempts to censor Christian festivals such as Christmas Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314720/Only-1-100-Britons-gay-despite-myth-71-say-Christian.html#ixzz10TBV8sUm -- DEV BOREM KORUM Gabe Menezes.
