The UK Religion.doc

The UK Religion

The Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in England and Wales is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope. Catholic Christianity was established in what are now England and Wales in the first century AD and in 597, the first authoritative papal mission, establishing a direct link from the Kingdom of Kent to Rome and to the Benedictine form of monasticism, was carried into effect by Augustine of Canterbury.
England adhered to the Catholic Church for almost a thousand years from the time of Augustine of Canterbury but in 1534, during the reign of King Henry VIII, the greater part of the Church in England, through a series of legislative acts between 1533 and 1536 was separated from the broader Catholic Church, and a new ecclesial entity, the Church of England, was created with Henry as its 'supreme governor'. Under his son, Edward VI, the Church of England became more influenced by the European Protestant movement. It rejoined the Catholic Church during the reign of Queen Mary I in 1555 but the reunion was short-lived. Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, re-established the Church of England's independence from Rome in a 1559 settlement and reformulated its teaching and practice in the Act of Uniformity. The Catholic Church (along with other non-established churches) continued in England, although it was at times subject to various forms of persecution, with most recusant members (except those in diaspora on The Continent or part of the aristocracy) going underground for all practical purposes until 1832 when the Catholic Emancipation Act came into force. Dioceses (replacing districts) were re-established by Pope Pius IX in 1850. Apart from the 22 Latin Rite dioceses, there is the Eastern Catholic diocese of the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainians.
In the last UK census in 2001, there were 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, some 8 per cent of the population. One hundred years earlier, in 1901, they had represented only 4.8 per cent of the population. The percentage of Catholics was at its highest in the 1981 census, with 8.7 per cent. In 2009 an Ipsos Mori poll found 9.6 percent, or 5.2 million, Catholics in England and Wales. Sizeable Catholic populations include North West England where one in five is Catholic. This includes Liverpool which has the highest proportion of any city in Great Britain at 46 per cent; historically, this is due both to a large influx of Irish people after the 1800 Act of Union, in which Ireland became part of the United Kingdom, as well as a high concentration of native English recusants.
Other christian Denominations
According to the 2001 UK census, Christianity is the major religion, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Neo-Paganism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism in terms of number of adherents. This, and the relatively large number of individuals with nominal or no religious affiliations has led commentators to variously describe the UK as a multi-faith, secularised, or post-Christian society.
Due to the United Kingdom having been formed by the union of previously independent states from 1707, most of the largest religious groups do not have UK-wide organisational structures. While some groups have separate structures for the individual countries of the United Kingdom, others may have a single structure covering England and Wales or Great Britain. Similarly, due to the relatively recent creation of Northern Ireland in 1921, most major religious groups in Northern Ireland are organised on an all-Ireland basis.