Catholics are on course to outnumber Anglicans in Britain, with the growth spearheaded by younger churchgoers who outnumber their Anglican brethren by more than two to one, a report by the Bible Society reveals.
A “quiet revival” in UK Catholicism appears to be occurring, especially among those age groups referred to as Generation Z and younger Millennials, reports The Times of London, while noting that Catholics are rapidly catching up with Anglican numbers across all age groups.
It means that Catholicism could soon overtake Anglicanism to become the country’s largest denomination of worshippers for the first time since the English Reformation initiated by King Henry VIII in 1527. Anglicans could even slip into third place behind Pentecostals among churchgoers aged under 35 years of age.
“Our report does not challenge the well-established fact that fewer people in England and Wales are choosing to identify as Christian,” Dr Rhiannon McAleer, director of research at the Bible Society, said. “However, it is the first large-scale study to concentrate not on self-declared Christian identity but on actual Christian practice. By this measurement, the Church is in an exciting period of growth and change.”
The findings come against a backdrop of rampant secularisation across the UK, in which Christians now make up the lowest ever proportion of the population, slipping below half for the first time in 2021 to 46.2 per cent, mainly driven by the growth in people with no religion, according to census figures.
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