MANY non-religious people hold all kinds of spiritual and
religious beliefs, a new report suggests.
Post-religious Britain? The faith of the
faithless, published by Theos,
draws on the results of a poll of 1749 British adults, who were
interviewed by ComRes during the summer. The report looks at the
beliefs espoused by those defined as non-religious: those who never
attend church, or describe themselves as "atheist" or
"non-religious".
"Overall, the proportion of people who
are consistently non-religious, i.e. who don't believe in God,
never attend a place of worship, call themselves non-religious, and
don't believe life after death, the soul, angels, etc., is very
low, at nine per cent."
More than one third (35 per cent) who
"never attend church" - defined as less than once a year - believed
in God or a Higher Power, the report says. Thirty-one per cent of
people in the same category identified themselves as "Christians",
as did 11 per cent of atheists. Among this group, 21 per cent said
that they believed in angels; 23 per cent believed in the human
soul; and 15 per cent believed in life after death.
Twenty-four per cent of those who
described themselves as non-religious believed in heaven, and 29
per cent "in some sense of God".
Nick Spencer, the research director of
Theos, said: "We are becoming less institutionally religious as a
nation, but that doesn't mean that we are necessarily becoming more
atheistic. This study shows that while there is certainly a small
minority who are consistent in their rejection of all forms of
spiritual and religious belief, most people in Britain have some
form of belief."
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