I’ve been looking forward to 2022 for some time. It’s a huge year for British Jewish research — the year in which the results of the 2021 Census will be released. And whilst that might not sound like a terribly thrilling prospect to most people, for us data wonks, it’s pretty much the most exciting thing to have happened for a decade. Don’t let anyone ever say we don’t know how to have fun.
The thing is, those data will tell us more about the British Jewish population than we have ever previously known. For just the third time in history, we’ll have access to a huge national dataset about British Jews that holds vast swathes of information critical to the future of our community. It will keep us busy for years, helping to answer numerous policy questions facing the Jewish charitable sector, and honestly, we can’t wait to get started.
But there’s one data point that causes me more unease than excitement. And it’s not even about Jews. Not at first sight, anyway. Yet it could have huge implications for the country as a whole — the kind of finding that could spark a major national debate, and potentially prompt considerable change across Britain.
It’s about Christians.
The 2001 Census found that 72 per cent of people living in Britain identified as Christian. The next census, in 2011, showed that proportion had fallen to 59 per cent. A decade on, and we may well be about to learn that Britain is no longer a majority-Christian country.
Where did all the Christians go? Firstly, more and more people are identifying as having “no religion” — the proportion rose from 15 to 25 per cent between 2001 and 2011, and has continued to climb since. Secondly, the number of babies and children being initiated into the Christian faith has consistently been lower than the number of elderly Christians dying, causing the overall size of the Christian population to fall. And thirdly, following Brexit and a global pandemic, many Christian immigrants from EU member states like Poland and Romania, have left the UK, and are not coming back.
It’s not just the decline that matters. A finding below 50 per cent would be tremendously symbolic, prompting demands to re-think, well, more or less everything. A Britain in which Christians are outnumbered by non-Christians will be urged to ask itself numerous questions about its nature and identity. British traditions grounded in Christianity could well be challenged. Pressure to diminish Christian influence in public life could increase. Demands to reduce funding for Christian institutions could follow. And as this happens, Christians could feel increasingly at odds with their country — uncomfortable, even unwelcome, in their own home.
There have been many times in Jewish history when a reduction in Christianity’s power would have been welcomed warmly by Jews. But I don’t think this is one of them. Because where Christians go, Jews follow. Not only will calls for the de-Christianisation of British life affect other forms of religious expression, perhaps faith schools in particular, but the mainstream Jewish population — by which I mean everyone who is not strictly Orthodox — is demographically remarkably similar to the Christian population. It’s also losing ground because more people born Jewish report ‘no religion’; and it also shows more deaths than births, so it too is declining both numerically and proportionally. The only reason the size of the total Jewish population of this country is stable, even growing, and that levels of religious observance among Jews seem to be reasonably healthy, is because the growing Charedi population completely changes the overall picture.
Societal change, of course, is inevitable, and not necessarily a bad thing. But new challenges to British and Jewish life are coming, forged by an evolving national context and a declining Christian population. If the 2021 Census brings that sub-50 per cent finding, things could get very worrying indeed.
