Research Note Examining non-religious groups in Britain: theistic belief and social correlates

Abstract

Major changes in religious belonging in Britain in recent decades have included a marked decline in levels of Christian affiliation and a growing segment of society who profess no affiliation—the ‘religious nones’. This research note uses a contemporary opinion poll to examine the groupings within the broad ‘religious nones’ category, focusing on those who identify as atheist or agnostic or who profess some other non-religion identity. This research note examines the patterning in theistic belief across these groups and assesses the socio-demographic correlates of these groups. At each stage, the non-religious groups are compared with those who profess a religious affiliation. These empirical findings are of note, given trends in the British religious landscape and wider scholarly debates about the nature and extent of secularisation, and should encourage future research in the area of non-religion.

Keywords:

• Secularity
• non-religion
• theistic belief
• social correlates
• Britain
• survey research

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to YouGov for supplying the opinion poll dataset used in this research note. All analyses and interpretations of the data are, of course, the author’s own. The author would also like to thank Dr Clive Field for commenting on an earlier version of this research note and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for their constructive feedback.