New census data reveals Christianity is no longer a prevalent religion in England, Wales

New census data from 2021 released this week revealed that since a decade ago, Christianity is no longer the dominant religious preference in England and Wales, and that the number of people who describe themselves as white has gone down.

According to the 2021 census, the number of Welsh and English residents who say they are Christian has decreased from 59 percent in 2011 to only 46 percent in 2021.

Additionally, the amount of respondents who self-identified as white fell from 86 percent from the last census to 82 percent on the newest one. 

Scotland and Ireland have their own census polls that are not part of the English/Welsh census. 

The new numbers show a shift in demographics in the two United Kingdom nations, which have historically reported being predominantly Christian and white, but are now showing a particular increase in respondents who say they do not identify with any religion at all. That number was up from 25 percent in 2011 to 37 percent in 2021.

While the dominant ethnicity remains overwhelmingly white, numbers of those who identify as Asian rose to 9.3 percent in 2021. The number of those who identified as Black also rose over the last decade from 1.8 percent to 2.5 percent.

The significant drop of 5.5 million people who identify as Christian in the two nations is an important shift that shows not only is religion diversifying in the UK, but the census results pointed to a rise in religions other than the predominant ones (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh), including paganism, which drew 74,000 self-identified respondents in 2021.