Some 70 per cent of young adults in Britain don’t identify with a religion, according to a new study of young people’s religious attitudes in more than 20 countries.
Launched last week, the report – which examined levels of religious affiliation and practice among 16 to 29-year-olds in 21 European countries as well as Israel – found that 70 per cent of British young adults didn’t identify with a religion, a figure only surpassed in the Czech Republic (91 per cent), Estonia (80 per cent), Sweden (75 per cent) and The Netherlands (72 per cent).
At the other end of the spectrum, 99 per cent of young adults in Israel did identify with a religion (78 per cent of them identified with Judaism), 83 per cent did so in Poland (82 per cent with Catholicism) and 75 per cent did so in Lithuania (71 per cent with Catholicism).
The study, which was carried out by academics from St Mary’s University, Twickenham, in the UK and the Institut Catholique de Paris in France, also found that 59 per cent of young people in Britain said they never attended religious services outside of special occasions compared with 70 per cent in the Czech Republic, 60 per cent in The Netherlands and Spain, and 58 per cent in Belgium.
Meanwhile in Poland only 12 per cent said they never attended religious services while the figure was also low in Lithuania (22 per cent), Ireland (26 per cent) and Slovenia (29 per cent).
Asked how often they prayed, 63 per cent of British young adults said ‘never’ compared along with 80 per cent in the Czech Republic, 70 per cent in Sweden, 67 per cent in Denmark and Estonia, 66 per cent in The Netherlands, and 65 per cent in France and Norway. The highest levels of those who prayed weekly or more were found in Poland (50 per cent), Israel (44 per cent), Ireland (31 per cent) and Germany (25 per cent).
Author of the report, Professor Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s University, described the differences in the “religiousness” of young people in various countries as “genuinely remarkable”.
“There are, moreover, some genuine surprises in the data,” he said. “For example, Ireland’s young adults are – contrary to recent reports – still remarkably religious, at least by the standards of other highly developed European nations. Meanwhile, countries that had, until quite recently, traditionally strong religious cultures – Lithuania, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria – look to be in serious trouble, in terms of the coming generations.”
