大部分英国人现在不信教 [英国媒体]

A majority of Britons now follow no religion

大部分英国人现在不信教



Only 15% call themselves Anglicans. But don’t bet on the Church losing its official role any time soon

只有15%的英国人自己是圣公会（基督新教主要宗派之一）信徒。但不要指望教会会很快失去其国教地位。

HALF a century ago, when British soldiers were marched off by their Anglican chaplains to attend services known as church parades, a sergeant would first bark an order for any Catholics and other idiosyncratic types to fall out. It was generally presumed that unless they belonged somewhere else, most grumbling Tommies were in some loose way sons of England’s state church.

半个世界前，当英国士兵被圣公会牧师带领着参加名为朝圣游行的活动时，一名军士会首先命令有天主教和其他特殊信仰的士兵退出队伍。人们普遍认为除非他们来自其他国家，大部分牢骚满腹的英军士兵都是英国国教的泛信徒。

If that assumption was once half-correct, it no longer is. According to the latest annual snapshot by the National Centre for Social Research, the share of Britons who call themselves Anglican has plunged from 40% in 1983 to 15% last year. The generation gap is massive. In the 18-24 age bracket, just 3% identify with the established church, whereas four in ten of those aged over 75 still acknowledge that tie. Over a human lifespan, Anglicanism has lost whatever claim it had to being the national default mode.

那时这种估计半数情况下是对的，但现在不一样了。英国国家社会研究中心的年度报告显示，宣称自己是圣公会信徒的英国人比例已经从1983年的40%降到了去年的15%。信仰的代沟很明显。在18-24这一年龄段中，只有35%的人确定了信仰，而75岁以上年龄者中十分之四的人有明确的信仰。在一个人生老病死的过程中，圣公会已经失去了它作为国教的地位。

As was instantly argued by the National Secular Society, the figures make the continuing vestiges of Anglican privilege look all the stranger. The established church oversees about a quarter of England’s state-funded schools and, alone among religions, commands 26 episcopal seats in Parliament’s upper house. That sits oddly with a country in which the number of people professing no religion continues to edge upwards, now reaching 53% among the total population and 71% of the youngest cohort.

正如英国世俗协会提出的观点那样，这些数字使英国圣公会残留的特权看起来很奇怪。已成立的教会管理着英国四分之一的公立学校，在上议院中占有26个宗教席位。奇怪的是英国自称没有宗教信仰的人持续增加，占了总人口的53%，年青一代的71%。

The rise of what sociologists call “religious nones” is a feature of every rich Western country, including fairly pious America, where they now amount to a quarter of the population. But in Britain as elsewhere, the mass doffing of conventional religious labels still leaves some place for the spiritual. In a report published in May on British religious nones, Stephen

社会学家称作“无信者”的现象在每一个富裕西方国家中出现，包括相当虔诚的美国，其四分之一人口也自称没有信仰。但英国像其他地方一样，脱落的宗教标签仍在人们心中留下了烙印。五月蒂芬撰写的英国无信者报告中提到了这点。

Bullivant, a sociology professor at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, found that about a quarter of these unaffiliated folk say they sometimes pray. The same share admit to being somewhat religious, and around 20% say they are open to the existence of God.

布利万特，圣玛丽大学的社会学教授在特威克南发现大约四分之一的独立信徒有时会祈祷。相同的人也承认自己有一些宗教信仰，大约20%的人说他们愿意接受上帝存在的事实。

Including Catholics, Pentecostals and non-denominational sorts, the number of Britons who call themselves Christian still exceeds 40%. The 2011 census, by posing a slightly different question, gave a figure of nearly 60%. But whatever the baseline, these numbers seem destined to fall steeply as a new generation rises.

包括天主教，圣灵降临教和泛信仰教在内，宣称自己是基督徒的英国人超过了40%。2011年的调查中通过提出一些略有区别问题，得出了约有60%信教者的数字。但无论在哪种基础中的调查都显示随着年轻一代人的成长，信徒的人数注定迅速减少。

Mr Bullivant confirmed that there had been an exodus from Christianity—with the exception of Catholicism, which was holding its own quite well, largely thanks to immigration from countries such as Poland and the Philippines. People brought up Christian who now professed no faith were 26 times more numerous than those raised in faithless homes who went on to embrace Christianity.

布利万特先生强调有大批人脱离了基督教——不包括天主教，由于有来自波兰和菲律宾的天主教移民补充，其人数大致不变。那些出身在基督教家庭却不信仰基督教的人是那些不出身在基督教家庭却信仰基督教的人总数的26倍。

None of this implies that England’s state religion is destined to be dethroned soon. Grace Davie, a religion writer and sociology professor, thinks the status quo may be saved by the sheer complexity of disentangling church-state ties in a land where, for example, ecclesiastical or canon law is intertwined with the secular legal system. “The Church of England is more than a statistic, and unpicking its role could be trickier than it looks,” she says—“a bit like Brexit.”

这并不意味着英国国教注定将失去其统治性地位。作为一名宗教作家和社会学教授，格瑞斯·戴维认为这一现状可以通过解除宗教与国家捆绑的方式解决，例如，解决教会法与世俗法律交织在一起的问题。“英国教会的意义不仅仅体现在统计数字中，其作用可能要比看上去的复杂的多，”她说：“有点像英国脱欧。”