Census of England and Wales

Religious affiliation in England and Wales, 2011 and 2021

A full breakdown of every response category recorded by the census religion question, including the write-in groups and the non-religious write-ins such as agnostic and atheist.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Census 2011 (table KS209EW / QS210EW) and Census 2021 (tables TS030 and TS031). Compiled 15 September 2026.

What this measures — and what it doesn't. The census asks “What is your religion?” ONS defines the answer as the religion a person connects or identifies with, whether or not they practise it or believe in it. It is a measure of affiliation, not of belief or attendance.

The question is voluntary, and there is no tick box for atheist or agnostic. Anyone holding those positions almost always ticked “No religion”. The atheist and agnostic counts further down come only from free-text write-ins and should not be read as counts of atheists and agnostics.

1. The main response categories

All usual residents, England and Wales. Percentages are of the total population, including those who did not answer.

Table 1 — The eight tick-box options plus non-response
Response	2011	% 2011	2021	% 2021	Change in people
Christian	33,243,175	59.3	27,522,672	46.2	−5,720,503
No religion	14,097,229	25.1	22,162,062	37.2	+8,064,833
Muslim	2,706,066	4.8	3,868,133	6.5	+1,162,067
Hindu	816,633	1.5	1,032,775	1.7	+216,142
Sikh	423,158	0.8	524,140	0.9	+100,982
Jewish	263,346	0.5	271,327	0.5	+7,981
Buddhist	247,743	0.4	272,508	0.5	+24,765
Any other religion ^a	240,530	0.4	~354,000	0.6	+113,000
Question not answered	4,038,032	7.2	~3,596,000	6.0	−442,000
All usual residents	56,075,912	100.0	59,597,300	100.0	+3,521,388

Read across the two years: Christianity lost roughly 5.7 million identifiers in a decade and fell below half the population for the first time. “No religion” gained over 8 million. Every other tick-box group grew, but their combined growth (about 1.5 million) accounts for only a fraction of the Christian decline — the movement was overwhelmingly from “Christian” to “No religion”.

2. Belief systems written in under “Any other religion”

Respondents who did not use a tick box could write their own answer. ONS codes these into a detailed classification of 58 groups.

2021: the largest write-in religions

Table 2 — England and Wales, 2021, as published by ONS (rounded)
Written-in religion	2021 count
Pagan	74,000
Alevi	26,000
Jain	25,000
Wicca	13,000
Ravidassia	10,000
Shamanism	8,000
Rastafarian	6,000
Zoroastrian	4,000

Shamanism was the fastest-growing named group in the whole classification, rising more than tenfold from around 650 people in 2011.

The non-religious write-ins

These responses are coded by ONS into the “No religion” total in Table 1, not into “Any other religion”.

Table 3 — England and Wales
Written-in response	2011	2021
Agnostic	32,382	32,114
Atheist	29,267	13,851
Humanist	15,067	10,246
Jedi Knight	176,632	not published separately
Heavy Metal	6,242	not published separately

Handle these three with care. Atheism, agnosticism and humanism are not religions, so anyone writing one in had to tick “Other religion” to do so — a self-contradictory act that the overwhelming majority of atheists and agnostics did not perform. The apparent halving of “Atheist” between 2011 and 2021 reflects changes in form design and write-in behaviour, not a decline in atheism. The 22.2 million in the “No religion” row of Table 1 is the meaningful figure.

3. The full detailed classification

England only. ONS published the 58-group detailed breakdown at country level; the figures below are for England, which holds roughly 95% of the England and Wales population.

Table 4 — Modern pagan religions, England
Group	2011	2021
All modern pagan religions	83,762	95,931
Pagan	53,172	68,629
Wicca	11,026	11,952
Shamanism	612	7,623
Heathen	1,867	4,479
Druid	3,946	2,269
Witchcraft	1,193	975

Table 5 — Spiritualism and new religious movements, England
Group	2011	2021
All spiritualism and NRMs	67,666	78,851
Spiritualism ^b	49,361	60,912
Rastafari	7,657	5,802
Satanism	1,800	4,751
Pantheism	2,105	2,158
Scientology	2,361	1,833
Animism	487	733
Universalism	862	721
Occult	474	457
New Age	665	373
Eckankar	367	319
Brahma Kumaris	434	229
Thelemite	176	209
Unification Church	435	195
Mysticism	192	137
Church of All Religions	380	22

Table 6 — Other named traditions, England
Group	2011	2021
Indian religions (excl. tick boxes)	31,238	35,485
Jainism	20,193	24,887
Ravidassia	11,045	9,564
Valmiki	—	1,034
Alevism	—	25,460
Iranian religions	8,801	8,910
Bahá'í Faith	4,746	4,489
Zoroastrianism	4,055	4,029
Yazidism	—	392
East Asian religions	5,247	5,287
Taoism	3,916	3,525
Shinto	1,041	1,337
Chinese religions	174	109
Confucianism	116	76
Mixed religion(s)	21,907	10,981
Other religions	21,060	71,760
Theism ^c	3,618	3,143
Own belief system	1,842	2,067
Deism	1,142	1,036
Reconstructionism	223	697
Traditional African religion	584	651
Druze	504	619
Vodun	198	246
Native American Church	119	74
Other / uncoded	12,830	63,227

4. Points to watch when quoting these figures

Affiliation, not belief. A large share of the 27.5 million Christians are cultural or nominal identifiers. Surveys that ask directly about belief in God — British Social Attitudes, the European Values Study — return far lower religious numbers than the census does.
The question is voluntary. Around 3.6 million people gave no answer in 2021 and 4.0 million in 2011. Because percentages here are calculated out of the whole population, every group's share would rise if non-responders were excluded.
Response rates changed. 94.0% answered in 2021 against 92.9% in 2011, so part of the growth in every category is simply more people answering.
Christian denominations were not asked. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, England and Wales offered a single “Christian” box — no Anglican, Catholic or other split.
Wales differs sharply from England. In Wales “No religion” (46.5%) overtook “Christian” (43.6%); in England, Christian (46.3%) still led “No religion” (36.7%).

Notes and sources

^a The 2021 counts marked with a tilde are derived by adding the separately published England and Wales figures; small discrepancies against ONS totals arise from cell-key perturbation, the deliberate small adjustment ONS applies to protect confidentiality. ONS separately reports that about 405,000 people wrote in an answer under “Any other religion”; that larger number includes the non-religious write-ins in Table 3, which are then coded into “No religion”.
^b Includes people who wrote “spiritual”.
^c Includes people who wrote “believe in God”.
A processing error in the 2011 census overstated the “religion not stated” count by about 62,000 across Camden, Islington and Tower Hamlets. ONS corrected the tick-box figures but could not correct the detailed classification, so 2011 figures in Tables 4 to 6 are uncorrected and 2011 percentages in Table 1 differ by 0.1 point from ONS's corrected versions.
Primary sources: ONS, Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 (29 November 2022); ONS datasets TS030 (Religion) and TS031 (Religion, detailed); ONS 2011 Census tables KS209EW and QS210EW; ONS FOI response FOI-2023-1268 on agnostic, atheist and humanist write-ins.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.