Irreligion in the United Kingdom

Religion in the United Kingdom (2011 census)

Irreligion in the United Kingdom refers to the lack of belief in religion, secularity or atheism in the country. Historically, the growth of irreligion in the UK has followed a European-wide pattern of secularisation.

The first British census to gather data on religion, in 2001, showed that there were 7.7 million irreligious people in the country. The wording of the question was criticised by humanist groups, and a revised question in the next census in 2011 counted 14.1 million irreligious people. This made irreligion the second-largest viewpoint on religion after Christianity, larger than the combined populations of non-Christian religions in the UK, and also the largest growth between the two censuses.

Freedom to be irreligious had been limited by the country's blasphemy law, which punished criticism and mockery of Christianity, particularly the state Church of England. The last conviction was in 1977, with the law being abolished in 2008.

Organized activism for irreligion in the United Kingdom derived its roots from the legacy of British nonconformists. The South Place Religious Society, which would later become associated with the Ethical movement, was founded in 1793 as an organization of Philadelphians or Universalists.

The Oracle of Reason, the first avowedly-atheist periodical publication in British history, was published from 1841 to 1843 by Charles Southwell. It suffered from numerous imprisonments of its staff, including Southwell, George Holyoake and Thomas Paterson, for missives deemed "blasphemous" by the authorities (Holyoake was the last person in Britain convicted of blasphemy in a public lecture). Holyoake took to publishing The Movement (1842-1845) following his six-month sentence, which later became The Reasoner (1845-1860) and shifted to a larger focus on social issues facing the British working class, increasing the publication's readership. It was during this time that Holyoake developed his idea for the replacement of Christianity with an ethical system based upon science and reason, terming his proposal "secularism".

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