The UK is now home to more atheists than Christians. This is a conclusion from the three-year ‘Explaining Atheism’ project led by Queen’s University, Belfast.

The interdisciplinary research team surveyed nearly 25,000 people from across six countries (Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK and USA) to find out why people become atheists and agnostics. They also brought together converging results from the British Social Attitudes Survey and World Values Survey to show that the UK now has a relative majority of atheists.
Although the study focused on why people became atheists, it raises a couple of red flags which Christians must confront.

Children Follow Their Parents

The report concluded that the strongest influences on belief are parental upbringing and societal expectations regarding belief in God.

The team leader, Professor Jonathan Lanman from Queen’s, explained: ‘Our large cross-cultural surveys reveal that while many factors may influence one’s beliefs in small ways, the key factor is the extent to which one is socialised to be a theist. Many other popular theories, such as intelligence, emotional stoicism, broken homes and rebelliousness, do not stand up to empirical scrutiny.’

Observing your parents’ lack of faith and not seeing them participate in religious activities, as well as being taught that faith is not a normal part of life, has a major effect on whether a child grows up into atheism.

Learning not to be religious is the biggest factor in the rise of atheism. When unbelieving parents say that they don’t want to indoctrinate their children but are leaving them to ‘make up their own minds when they are adults’, they are actually training their children in unbelief.

Observing your parents’ lack of faith and not seeing them participate in religious activities, as well as being taught that faith is not a normal part of life, has a major effect on whether a child grows up into atheism.

The absence of religion in school also has an impact. When authority figures scorn or ignore the faith, children will follow their example. If a child’s parents, or others who are important in their life, joke about or mock Christianity, they are more likely to grow up to scorn Christians and to be anti-Christian.

The findings of ‘Explaining Atheism’ are borne out by other research. One 2023 study of parental influence on transmission of religious belief and attitudes ‘found strong parental and childhood influences on adult religiosity, religious service attendance, and belief in God. Indeed, these engagement often mirrors parental engagement for these variables.’

If the father is first to become a Christian, the probability that everyone else in the household will follow leaps to 93%.

To counter this and influence children towards God, other studies stress the primary importance of the role of the father. If the first person in a household to become a Christian is a child, there is a 3.5% probability everyone else in the household will follow. If the mother is the first to become a Christian, this rises to a 17% probability. If the father is first to become a Christian, the probability that everyone else in the household will follow leaps to 93%.

When fathers actively participate in religious activities, a higher percentage of their children not only attend religious services and engage in spiritual practices as children, but continue through to adulthood. It is impossible to overemphasise the importance of fathers in fostering a culture of faith within their families.

This forces us to ask what our congregations are doing to encourage and train young men to be the kind of Christian fathers who transmit their faith to their children. There are Young Mothers groups aplenty; how many congregations have programmes aimed at evangelising and discipling young men and fathers?

Living in an Atheist UK

‘The UK is entering its first atheist age,’ said one of the researchers, Dr Lois Lee. ‘Whilst atheism has been prominent in our culture for some time — be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot or even comedian Ricky Gervais — it is only now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the first time in our history.’ How are Christians going to live in an atheist society where the remaining traces of a Christian culture are being erased?

Today, we are moving into an era where atheists are no longer content to ignore Christians and their teaching.

We can already see that alongside the increase of the proportion of atheists there is a growing anti-Christian attitude in public life. In the last century the popular culture has changed from valuing Christianity as a social good to accepting its existence without valuing it, to ignoring it. Today, we are moving into an era where atheists are no longer content to ignore Christians and their teaching. Public opposition to the teaching of the faith is growing and the culture is becoming increasingly opposed to Christianity. In terms of parental rights, free speech, sexual morality and medical treatment, there is a growing rejection of Christian standards and an intolerance towards those who uphold them.

It is imperative that Christians today develop strategies for living in a society tomorrow which is not only atheistic but increasingly anti-Christian.

The Responsibility Is Ours

Chine McDonald, director of think tank Theos, argues that the findings of ‘Explaining Atheism’ reflect decades of growing secularisation in society. She told Premier Christian News: ‘What this collation of the data is showing is the consequence of around 50 years of a pervasive non-religion in our society, in our media and our culture; this idea that actually to believe in God is a weird thing.’

We may not condone it, we may not support it, but to our shame we have sat back and allowed it.

If a country once overwhelmingly Christian is now majority atheist, where people think of Christians as odd, we have to ask why. Whatever factors we consider, the effect of wars, the rise of cultural Marxism, the sexual revolution …. underlying them all is that the Church in the UK, the people God called to be his ambassadors, have permitted this to happen. We may not condone it, we may not support it, but to our shame we have sat back and allowed it.

The prophet Ezekiel has words of warning (Ezek 33:6) for those appointed as watchmen who do not sound a loud and clear alarm at danger: the watchmen who fail their people are held accountable for what happens.