Census finds a steep decline in religion in Exeter

Findings from the 2011 census for England and Wales have revealed the number of people who say they are Christian has dropped from 72% to 59% in ten years. The statistics also show the number of people who say they have no religion has risen from 15% to 25%.

The census figures reveal that Muslims are the second largest religious group in the country at 4.8%. The third most popular religion was Hinduism, with 1.5 per cent of the population, while 0.8 per cent were Sikhs and 0.5 per cent Jewish.

Other polling data reveals a similar shift. The 2012 British Social Attitudes Survey showed that only about half of Britons as a whole now say they have a religious affiliation, down from 20 years ago when it was two-thirds. Around a quarter of young people now identify themselves as religious.

While the numbers of Christians in Devon is slightly higher than the national average at 61.5%, so are the numbers of people saying that they have no religion at 28.5%.

However, perhaps surprisingly, Exeter with a population 117,773 has the lowest proportion of Christians in the County at 53.9%. Those with ' no religion' stand at 34.7%.

The substantial and ongoing fall in the numbers of people professing a religious faith has led to calls from secular campaigners for religious groups to have less influence on moral and political issues than in the past.

A spokesperson for Devon Humanists said ”The decline in religion in Devon appears to be accelerating. The default position of people born since 1980 is agnosticism or atheism."