Guardian: 44% increase in the number of Muslims in England and Wales

The British Guardian newspaper said that Christians are now a minority in both England and Wales, according to the 2021 census, which also showed that the cities of Leicester and Birmingham became the first cities in Britain to have a so-called minority majority, which means a majority made up of a group of small minorities.

The newspaper pointed out that the census also revealed a decline of 5.5 million people in the number of Christians, as well as an increase of 44% in the number of Muslims, and this is the first time in the census of England and Wales that less than half of the population identify themselves as Christians.

And 34.2% of the population, equivalent to approximately 22.2 million people, declared that they do not follow a specific religion, which is the second most common group after Christians. This means that over the past 20 years the number of people who say they do not follow a religion has increased by 14.8%.

The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said the results of the census challenged them “not only to trust that God will build His kingdom on earth, but also to play their part in making Christ known”.

And one of the most remarkable things about the census results is how different the population is from the country itself, said Andrew Cobson, chief executive of Humanist Britain. There is no country in Europe that has this religious structure like Britain in terms of law and public policy, and at the same time it has this amount of non-religious people.

The Guardian stated that the decline in religion and the emergence of ethnic minorities that together represent a majority in England and Wales was revealed in data on ethnicity, religion and language for about 60 million people gathered in an electronic census conducted on March 21, 2021.