The shape of things to come
Poor Rowan Williams: wrong to the end. Christianity is not "fading away" in Britain, he says. Yes it is, as the census figures clearly illustrate.
Since the last census in 2001, the number of Britons identifying themselves, however loosely, as Christians is down 13 percentage points to 59 per cent.
The number of respondents who say they have no religious faith is up 10 points to 25 per cent. Meanwhile, staggeringly, the Muslim population has grown from 1.55 million to 2.7 million, an increase of 1.15 million from 2001 to 2011.
The surge in Islamic belief is entirely a consequence of immigration. The spread of agnosticism and atheism is (though I haven't yet seen the breakdown by age) largely generational.
It cannot be said too often: the default position of people born since 1980 is agnosticism or atheism. Meanwhile, as a commenter points out below, net migration from the UK consists largely of people who would probably have ticked the Christian or C of E box. That hadn't occurred to me, but it's an important factor.
A quick thought: these figures confirm that, saddled with shrinking congregations and (so far) dreadful leadership from Archbishops Williams and Nichols, the Churches haven't a hope in hell of stopping gay marriage. Telegraph