Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Countries

United Kingdom

Also Known As British
Europe

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

The Church of England, established by Henry VIII's sixteenth century break with Rome, remains the state church in England with the monarch as its supreme governor, while Scotland's established church is Presbyterian and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own distinct religious histories, the latter marked by longstanding Protestant-Catholic sectarian division. England was also the birthplace of significant esoteric and occult movements, including the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, whose membership included figures such as Aleister Crowley and W. B. Yeats and whose ritual system influenced most subsequent Western ceremonial magic. Stonehenge and other Neolithic monuments attest to prehistoric ceremonial activity whose specific beliefs remain unknown, and modern Druidry and Wicca, both twentieth century revivals rather than unbroken survivals of ancient practice, are traditions founded in Britain with worldwide followings today. Substantial Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jewish communities, formed mainly through twentieth century migration from the former empire, make the country religiously diverse well beyond its historic Christian establishment.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Varies by Province 3
The Church of England is the established church in England, with the monarch as Supreme Governor and reserved bishops' seats in the House of Lords. The Church of Scotland holds separate recognised national status as the national church rather than an established one, and Wales and Northern Ireland have no established church at all, so establishment in the United Kingdom varies by nation rather than applying uniformly.
State Funding Mechanism
The United Kingdom has no tax-funded state channel for religion. The established Church of England draws its core support from the Church Commissioners for England, the body that manages its own permanent endowment fund, valued above eleven billion pounds and built from historic land and investment holdings rather than the Exchequer; investment returns from that fund cover roughly a fifth of the Church's annual running costs, with the remainder raised through voluntary giving and donations, not general taxation. 4
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
The United Kingdom has no live blasphemy law in England and Wales: section 79 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, in force from 8 July 2008, states plainly that "the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under the common law of England and Wales are abolished," ending a common-law offense that had gone unprosecuted for decades but remained a live threat used in private prosecution attempts, most recently in 1977. The abolition applied only to England and Wales; Scotland repealed its own equivalent common-law offense separately in 2024, and Northern Ireland has not repealed its residual common-law blasphemy offense, though it has not been used in the modern era. The UK has no apostasy law anywhere in its jurisdictions; leaving any religion carries no legal consequence. 5
Registration or Recognition Regime
No registration is required for a religious group to exist, meet or worship. A religious body that meets the legal test for advancing religion for the public benefit is a charity in law regardless of whether it appears on the Charity Commission's public register; an "excepted charity" with annual income under 100,000 pounds, a category that covers many ordinary congregations, keeps charitable status with no active register entry, and only takes on a mandatory registration duty once its income passes that threshold. 3
Ban or Official Watchlist
The United Kingdom does not ban religious denominations as such, but the Home Secretary can proscribe an organization under the Terrorism Act 2000 when its ideology is judged to concern terrorism, and proscription has reached at least one group organized around an explicitly religious political program. Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international movement seeking to unite Muslims under a single Islamic caliphate, was proscribed on 19 January 2024 after Home Secretary James Cleverly brought the order before Parliament, making membership a criminal offense carrying up to fourteen years in prison. 6
Concordat BasisSourced to the subject's own account
The United Kingdom holds no concordat with the Holy See. Relations date to 1479 and were broken twice, under Henry VIII in 1536 and again under Elizabeth I after the 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, before a legation opened in 1914 and full diplomatic relations followed only in 1982. No concordat has ever accompanied that long history. The Church of England's established status and the UK's dualist constitutional practice, under which an international treaty needs parliamentary implementation to bind domestically, make the absence a structural feature of the relationship rather than an oversight. 7
Geography
Latitude
55.4 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
3.4 degrees west 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Status
Legal Status
The Church of England is the established church in England, with the monarch as Supreme Governor and reserved bishops' seats in the House of Lords; the Church of Scotland holds separate recognized national status; Wales and Northern Ireland have no established church. 3
Demographics
Religious Composition
2021 census (England and Wales): just under half Christian; religiously unaffiliated plurality over a third; Muslim population around 6.5%; smaller Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist communities (UK census; Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Government
Capital
London 2
Government Type
parliamentary constitutional monarchy; a Commonwealth realm 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Location
Location of United Kingdom Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
Learn More
Religion and History in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom's population is religiously diverse and increasingly unaffiliated, with the 2021 census recording just under half of respondents in England and Wales as Christian, a substantial religiously unaffiliated plurality of over a third, a Muslim population of around 6.5 percent, and smaller Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist communities, figures broadly reflected in Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020.

The Church of England, established by Henry VIII's 1534 Act of Supremacy after his break with Rome over the pope's refusal to annul his marriage, remains the officially established church in England, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor, while the Church of Scotland, Presbyterian in structure, holds a separately recognized national status without formal establishment in the same legal sense, and Wales and Northern Ireland have no established church at all. Britain's long and often violent religious history includes the Reformation-era persecution of both Catholics and Protestant dissenters depending on the reigning monarch's faith, the 1605 Gunpowder Plot by Catholic conspirators against a Protestant king, and centuries of legal disability for Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants only fully removed through nineteenth-century emancipation acts.

Religion, Northern Ireland and the Politics of Establishment

Northern Ireland's Troubles, a violent conflict from the late 1960s until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that killed over 3,500 people, was fundamentally a political conflict over the region's constitutional status within or outside the United Kingdom rather than a theological dispute, but its two sides divided almost entirely along the province's Catholic and Protestant communal lines, with Catholic nationalist and republican paramilitaries such as the Provisional IRA seeking union with the Republic of Ireland and Protestant unionist and loyalist paramilitaries seeking to remain within the United Kingdom, making religious identity the primary marker of political allegiance throughout the conflict.

The Church of England's establishment gives it privileges unavailable to other faiths, including reserved seats for its bishops in the House of Lords and a constitutional role in coronating the monarch, an arrangement that has drawn periodic calls for disestablishment given Britain's now-minority Christian practice and its religiously diverse population; the 2023 coronation of King Charles III, while retaining the traditional Anglican rite, notably incorporated for the first time acknowledgments and blessings from leaders of other faiths present, reflecting pressure to represent a more religiously plural Britain within a still-established church.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names United Kingdom directly: "for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and continental Europe."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "The United Kingdom government's official legislation archive publishes the surviving text of the 1592 Act for Abolishing of the Acts Contrary the True Religion, the Parliament of Scotland's statute..."

The empire was ruled from a state with an established Protestant church, and its abolition campaign was organised largely by evangelicals and Quakers.

This source names United Kingdom directly: "Pagan camps and gatherings around the United Kingdom; the original composers of most individual pieces are not recorded."

The Church of England remains the state church in England, with Scotland's established church Presbyterian.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names United Kingdom directly: "United States and about 120,000 in the United Kingdom, a figure independently repeated in later scholarship citing this volume by page."

Fought across England, Scotland and Ireland; the Restoration settlement of 1662 divided English Protestantism permanently between church and dissent.

Source The Nature of the English RevolutionJohn Morrill

He spent his career at Oxford, where he edited the Sacred Books of the East in fifty volumes.

This source names United Kingdom directly: "the United States and 120,000 in the United Kingdom, priestess and priest as the movement's named roles, and stating that the article names no particular sacred site, a continuously revised..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "in the United States but not in the United Kingdom; see the note on the translation record."

Source The Prose Edda of Snorri SturlusonArthur Gilchrist Brodeur

This source names United Kingdom directly: "the Holy See and England or the United Kingdom from the first resident ambassador in 1479 through the 1536 and 1570 ruptures under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I to the 1914 legation and the..."

The English crown claimed France from 1337 and held Paris and Normandy in the 1420s before losing everything but Calais.

This source names United Kingdom directly: "further countries including India, the United Kingdom and Germany, gathering around the Jain principles of nonviolence, many sided viewpoints and non possessiveness in what organizers called one of..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "Wikipedia's article on Jainism in the United Kingdom, community-edited."

Source Jainism In The United Kingdom (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names United Kingdom directly: "a copy of every work published in the United Kingdom and Ireland, a status with roots in English law reaching back to 1662 and now extended to digital as well as print publication."

Source Legal Deposit, Cambridge University LibraryCambridge University Librarythe holders' own account

This source names United Kingdom directly: "legislation.gov.uk is the United Kingdom government's official portal for the statute book, maintained by The National Archives, publishing the authoritative enacted text of Acts of Parliament..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "in France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "States and Universal Pictures in the United Kingdom, running 145 minutes."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "article on Modern Paganism in the United Kingdom, tabulating the 2011 England and Wales census write-in religion counts by country: 56,620 people wrote in "Pagan" across England and Wales combined..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "in Germany and Gracehill in the United Kingdom, joining the already-inscribed Christiansfeld in Denmark."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "one on both the United States and United Kingdom charts."

Sutton Hoo, Lindisfarne and the Northumbrian missions to Frisia all belong to its western shore.

This source names United Kingdom directly: "not the right source for a precise United Kingdom arrival date, which the article does not give."

Source Rastafari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names United Kingdom directly: "The Coronation Regalia of the United Kingdom, commonly called the Crown Jewels, includes St Edward's Crown, the Sovereign's Orb and Sceptres and the Ampulla and Anointing Spoon, all used in the..."

Source Liber Regalis (the Westminster coronation order)Anonymous (Westminster Abbey)

This source names United Kingdom directly: "on location in Spain, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "Wilson, filmed in Spain, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States; and Letterboxd's film record, confirming director Bob Hercules, the 2018 release year, and that the documentary "explores..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "different historical stages in the United Kingdom, finding its following there has grown more slowly than in countries such as Taiwan."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "institutes including bodies from the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Wales and Tuvalu."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "Between Church and State in the United Kingdom, David Torrance's House of Commons Library research briefing, paper CBP 8886, in circulation since at least December 2018 and updated regularly since..."

Source The Relationship Between Church and State in the United KingdomDavid Torrance, House of Commons Library

Every English coronation since 1066 has taken place in the abbey beside this river.

Source Anglo-Saxon PaganismDavid Wilson
The Troubles, Wars & Conflicts

Northern Ireland is a constituent part of the United Kingdom, whose continued union the loyalist and unionist side of the conflict sought to preserve and whose Army and police were combatants throughout.

This source names United Kingdom directly: "survey figures on Christianity in the United Kingdom, stating that 17 percent of persons identified as Anglican in the 2014 wave of the survey, a fall of 23 percentage points since the survey began..."

Source UK Christianity

This source names United Kingdom directly: "and Gracehill in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, founded in 1759, to Christiansfeld in Denmark, founded in 1773 and already inscribed on its own in 2015."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "further countries including India, the United Kingdom and Germany."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "culture, Rastafari among it, into the United Kingdom."

Source Windrush Generation (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names United Kingdom directly: "FaithInvest, an independent United Kingdom based charity working on faith consistent investing, reporting on the World Federation of Daoism's first council meeting in Luyi in 2024, quoting its..."

This source names United Kingdom directly: "in Monrovia, California and London, United Kingdom, and its staff draw on various Christian traditions and other faiths."

Source World Vision International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names United Kingdom directly: "in Monrovia, California and London, United Kingdom."

Source World Vision International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Contains

Source A Dictionary of Celtic MythologyJames MacKillop
Durham, Cities
London, Cities
Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)
St Albans, Cities
Whitby, Cities

Whitby is a harbour town on the North Yorkshire coast of England.

Namesake Of

Strontium is named for Strontian, a village in the Scottish Highlands. The mineral strontianite was found in a lead mine there in the 1790s. It is the only element named for a place in Scotland.

Originated Here

Anglo-Saxons, Cultures

Their settlement area lies within the modern United Kingdom.

Celts, Cultures

Britain holds the Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish and Manx strands of the Celtic inheritance.

Source Celtic Culture: A Historical EncyclopediaJohn T. Koch (ed.)

Born in Glasgow and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for the rest of his life.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Saxons, Cultures

Spread Events Here

Source Reggae (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Anchored to the United Kingdom, the metropole from which the colonial episcopate and, later, the Lambeth Conference itself were organised; the dioceses this event describes were founded across British India, Africa, Australia, the Pacific and North America, named in the description rather than split across many edges.

Source A History of Global AnglicanismKevin Ward

Wesley's Chapel, London, where the 1881 Ecumenical Methodist Conference met; the delegates it united came from thirty Methodist bodies across Britain, America and the mission field, named in the description rather than split across many edges.

Source About Us (World Methodist Council)World Methodist Council
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
4. The Relationship Between Church and State in the United Kingdom
David Torrance, House of Commons Library, House of Commons Library (briefing paper CBP-8886)View the Source
5. legislation.gov.uk: Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, Section 79
The National Archives, official UK legislation portalView the Source
6. Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism, Hansard, UK Parliament, 18 January 2024
UK Parliament, Hansard
7. Holy See-United Kingdom Relations (Wikipedia)
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.