Religion does more harm than good - poll

The myth peddled by politicians and by certain newspapers is that here in Britain we are a "Christian country". It is this same Christian country that these same papers and MP's always lament is being overrun and in danger of disappearing.

The bad news for them is that most of us do not feel that Britain is even Christian at all. Indeed, a new poll has shown that a majority of people in Britain see religion as a cause of division and tension.

The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a sceptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities.

Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian.

Older people and women are the most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they are religious, compared with 29% of men.

The findings come at the end of a year in which multiculturalism and the role of different faiths in society has been at the heart of a divisive political debate.

I am not remotely surprised by the findings of this poll as church attendance in the UK has been falling consistently year on year. Indeed, whereas parents who believe have only a fifty-fifty chance of passing their faith on to their children, non-believers are highly successful in producing a generation of non-believers.

Indeed, another study has found that belief in God is falling faster than church attendance.

Dr David Voas, who oversaw the study at the University of Manchester, said religion would reach "fairly low levels" before very long.

"The dip in religious belief is not temporary or accidental, it is a generational phenomenon - the decline has continued year on year," he said. "The fact that children are only half as likely to believe as their parents indicates that, as a society, we are at an advanced stage of secularisation."

The findings appear to contradict the commonly accepted theory that people "believe without belonging" - the idea that religious belief is robust even though churchgoing is in longer-term decline.

According to the survey, which was based on 14 years of data from 10,500 households, the importance of belief in God fell by 5.3 per cent to 32.5 per cent between 1991 and 1999.

This compared with a fall of 3.5 per cent in the proportion of people who attended church services over the same period and a 2.9 per cent decrease in the proportion who said they were affiliated to a particular religion.

I find this especially interesting as we are currently told that we are in the middle of a war of civilisations, with the Christian west facing the Muslim east. Perhaps this explains why President Bush got away with this rhetoric much longer that Blair ever did, as church attendance and the importance of religion remains much higher in the US than it does in Britain.

53% of Americans consider religion to be very important in their lives. This compares with 16% in Britain, 14% in France and 13% in Germany.

When Blair made his TV announcement declaring that Britain and the US were about to invade Iraq, he wanted to end the broadcast by saying, "God bless you." Alastair Campbell famously rebuked him by saying, "We don't do God."

According to this most recent poll, Campbell was bang on the money.

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