Christianity is the most widely practiced and declared religion in England. The Anglican Church of England is the established church of England holding a special constitutional position for the United Kingdom. After Christianity, religions with the most adherents are Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, the Bahá'í Faith, the Rastafari movement and Neopaganism. There are also organisations which promote irreligion, atheist humanism, and secularism.
In the past, various other religions (usually "pagan") have been important in the country, particularly Celtic polytheism, Roman polytheism, Anglo-Saxon paganism and Norse paganism. The only religion that was created in England is the neopagan Wicca.[1]
Many of England's most notable buildings and monuments are religious in nature, including Stonehenge, the Angel of the North, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral. The festivals of Christmas and Easter, both of which are religious in origin, are still widely commemorated in the country.
Christianity was first introduced through the Romans (English mythology links the introduction of Christianity to England to the Glastonbury legend of Joseph of Arimathea; see also the legend of Saint Lucius). Archaeological evidence for Christian communities begins to appear in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Romano-British population after the withdrawal of the Roman legions was mostly Christian.
The Durham Gospels is a Gospel Book produced in Lindisfarne
The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons introduced Anglo-Saxon polytheism to what is now England.
Christianity was re-introduced into England through missionaries from Scotland and from Continental Europe; the era of St. Augustine (the first Archbishop of Canterbury) and the Celtic Christian missionaries in the north (notably St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert). The Synod of Whitby in 664 ultimately led to the English Church being fully part of Roman Catholicism. Early English Christian documents surviving from this time include the 7th-century illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the historical accounts written by the Venerable Bede.
Norman nobles and bishops had influence before the Norman Conquest of 1066, and Norman influences affected late Anglo-Saxon architecture. Edward the Confessor was brought up in Normandy, and in 1042 brought masons to work on Westminster Abbey, the first Romanesque building in England. The cruciform churches of Norman architecture often had deep chancels and a square crossing tower which has remained a feature of English ecclesiastical architecture. Hundreds of parish churches were built and the first great English cathedrals. England has many early cathedrals, most notably York Minster (1080), Durham Cathedral (1093) and Salisbury Cathedral (1220). After a fire damaged Canterbury Cathedral in 1174 Norman masons introduced the new Gothic architecture. Around 1191 Wells Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral brought in the English Gothic style.
Pope Innocent III placed the kingdom of England under an interdict for seven years between 1208 and 1215 after King John refused to accept the pope's appointee as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Anglicanism
In 1536, the Church in England split from Rome over the issue of the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon. The split led to the emergence of a separate ecclesiastical authority. Later the influence of the Reformation resulted in the Church of England adopting its distinctive reformed Catholic position known as Anglicanism.
Roman Catholicism
The English Church was heavily influenced by Rome from the arrival of St Augustine of Canterbury who arrived in AD 588, until the final break with Roman control at the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558.
Methodism
A strong tradition of Methodism developed from the 18th century onwards. The Methodist revival was started in England by a group of men including John Wesley and his younger brother Charles as a movement within the Church of England, but developed as a separate denomination after John Wesley's death.
Pentecostal
Pentecostal churches are continuing to grow and, in terms of church attendance, are now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. There are three main denomination of Pentecostal churches;
Assemblies of God in Great Britain are part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship.
Apostolic Church.
Elim Pentecostal Church.
The is also a growing number of independent, charismatic churches that encourage Pentecostal practices at part of their worship, such as Kingsgate Community Church in Peterborough which started with 9 people in 1988 and now has a congregation in excess of 1,500.
Salvation Army
The early years of the UK were difficult for English adherents of the Roman Catholic Church, although the persecution was not violent as they had experienced in the recent past, for instance under the Popery Act 1698, that affected adherents in England and Wales. The civil rights of adherents to Roman Catholicism were severely curtailed, and there was no longer, as once in Stuart times, any Catholic presence at court, in public life, in the military or professions. Many of the Catholic nobles and gentry who had preserved on their lands among their tenants small pockets of Catholicism had followed James II into exile, and others at last conformed to Anglicanism, meaning that only very few such Catholic communities survived.
In the late 18th and early 19th century most restrictions on Catholic participation in public life were relaxed under acts such as the Papists Act 1778, Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and Catholic Relief Act 1829. This process of Catholic Emancipation met violent opposition in the Gordon Riots of 1780 in London. In the 1840s and 1850s, especially during the Great Irish Famine, while the bulk of the large outflow of emigration from Ireland was headed to the United States, thousands of poor Irish people also moved to England, establishing communities in cities and towns up and down the country such as London and Liverpool, thus giving Catholicism a huge numerical boost. In 1850, the Catholic Church in England and Wales re-established a hierarchy.
The Salvation Army dates back to 1865, when it was founded in East London by William and Catherine Booth. Its international headquarters are still in London, near St Paul's Cathedral
Judaism
Until the 20th century Judaism was the only noticeable non-Christian religion having first appeared in historical records during the Norman Conquest of 1066. In fact, from 1290 to 1656, Judaism did not officially exist in England due to an outright expulsion in 1290 and official restrictions that were not lifted until 1656 (though historical records show that some Jews did come back to England during the early part of the 17th century prior to the lifting of the restriction). Now, the presence of the Jewish culture and Jews in England today is one of the largest in the world.
Hinduism
Early Hindus in England were mostly students during the 19th century. There have been three waves of migration of Hindus to England since then.
Before India's Independence in 1947, Hindu migration was minuscule and largely temporary. The second wave of Hindu migration occurred in the 1970s after the expulsion of Gujarati Hindus from Uganda. Initially, Hindu immigration was limited to Punjabi and Gujarati Hindus, but, by 2000, small Hindu communities of every ethnicity could be found in England. England is also host to a large immigrant community of Sri Lankan Hindus who are mostly Tamils. The last wave of migration of Hindus has been taking place since the 1990s with refugees from Sri Lanka and professionals from India. However,there is becoming an increasing number of English Western Hindus in England,who have either converted from another faith or been an English Hindu from birth.
Buddhism
The earliest Buddhist influence on England came through the UK's imperial connections with South East Asia, and as a result the early connections were with the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The tradition of study resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society, which undertook the task of translating the Pali Canon of Buddhist texts into English.
In 1924 London's Buddhist Society was founded, and in 1926 the Theravadin London Buddhist Vihara. The rate of growth was slow but steady through the century, and the 1950s saw the development of interest in Zen Buddhism.
