This is a disaster for the Church of Scotland

May 22, 2024

After the last Scottish census in 2011, we knew that the “No religion” group was on the rise, as we’ve seen with most western countries. 36.7% of the country said they had no organized religious affiliation. That was a sizable increase from the 2001 census when only about 28% of the country said the same thing.

The same year those results came out, we learned that more than half of all marriages in Scotland (52%) were done through civil ceremonies (conducted by local government officials) rather than through traditional religious weddings. That was up from 31% in 1971.

But that was all years ago. What’s happening now?

The results from the 2022 Scottish Census have just been released and, for the first time ever, a majority of citizens—51.1%—have no religious affiliation. Specifically, 2,780,900 of Scotland’s 5,439,842 people cited no religion.

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That rise coincides with a massive drop in membership for the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland:

The increase in people with no religion in Scotland coincided with a decrease in people who said they belong to the Church of Scotland. In 2022 20.4% responded ‘Church of Scotland’, down from 32.4% in 2011 and from 42.4% in 2001. This is a fall of 610,100 people since 2011, and over 1 million since 2001. However ‘Church of Scotland’ remained the largest group among those who said they had a religion.

The next largest religious groups were ‘Roman Catholic’ (13.3%), ‘Other Christian’ (5.1%) and ‘Muslim’ (2.2%). These groups saw smaller changes since the last census than ‘Church of Scotland’. The number of people who described themselves as Roman Catholic decreased by 117,700 since 2011, whilst the number in the Other Christian category decreased by 12,000. The number of people who described themselves as Muslim increased by 43,100 over the same period.

    Not only did No Religion rise throughout Scotland, it rose throughout every part of Scotland’s 32 council areas, with only two exceptions (the Western Isles and Inverclyde, where “Church of Scotland” and “Roman Catholic,” respectively, remain the most popular options).

Among the non-religious, men and women are mostly balanced. And every single age group saw a rise in the “nones,” with over 62% of people under 24 choosing no religious label. That means the dramatic rise isn’t just the result of young people abandoning religion while older ones stay put; every group is ditching the sinking ship of organized faith.

6% of respondents didn’t answer it. It’s possible that some people who are no longer religious chose to avoid that question because, despite the anonymity, they didn’t want to admit their non-religiosity in a technically public way.

Second, and more importantly, the question assumed they had a religion. It asked, “What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?” That assumes they have one, making it more likely that people on the fence might just say they share the religious label of their parents, or the faith in which they were baptized, or the label of a religious school they may have attended. (The census would get more accurate results by asking, “Are you religious?” Then, “If so, what is your religious label?” Or something like that.)

When you combine these flaws, it’s likely that these problems lead more people to identify as Christian than we would expect to see. (We saw something similar in Ireland.)

Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson celebrated the results nonetheless while pointing out how religion is still baked into UK politics and culture:

With Scotland’s Census results, we now have the full picture. The growth of the non-religious population is the biggest demographic change in the UK today.

And yet the UK remains a very religious state, including in its institutions that every country is subjected to. We still have daily prayers in the UK Parliament, with those who attend more able to get seats and participate in subsequent debates. We still have bishops in the House of Lords. We still have compulsory school prayers. And we still have schools that divide children based on religion.

Those thoughts were echoed by the leader of the Humanist Society Scotland:

Fraser Sutherland, the chief executive of the Humanist Society Scotland, said the data bolstered the argument that churches should no longer be allowed to sit on council education committees, and that state schools should no longer promote religious observance.

“When the current census survey was sent round in 2022, we encouraged respondents to be honest about their beliefs if they were non-religious,” he said. “These results bear out the fact that more people feel confident and open about expressing an atheist, secular or agnostic worldview than ever before.”

People in power are continuing to cling to tradition even though most of the country has moved on. By not loosening their grip, they’re only contributing to their own irrelevance.

The Church of Scotland attempted to put a spin on the bad news, suggesting that the numbers are “hurtful” but also meaningless.

The Reverend David Cameron, from the Church of Scotland, said the decline in membership numbers had been identified as an area of considerable concern by the church.

He said: “It is sobering, and we know that when the church is measured in this way it can feel hurtful for our members and be a source of anxiety for many.

“But our faith and our relevancy cannot be expressed simply as a set of numbers in a table."

The dropping numbers are absolutely an expression of the Church of Scotland’s decreasing relevancy.

It’s telling that a leader in the largest religious group in the country has nothing to say about how the beliefs themselves may contribute to why people want nothing to do with them. The longer they refuse to admit the obvious, the more these trends will continue.

It’s not like politicians are any better. In 2011, then-Prime Minister David Cameron said, “We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” He was wrong then, and he’s really wrong now. When a majority of Scotland has no religious affiliation, and England and Wales are heading in the same direction, it’s beyond time to stop pretending the UK’s present is “Christian” in any meaningful way.