Why ‘no religion’ is the new religion

This is the first in a series of British Academy lectures and other events on faith.

Speaker: Professor Linda Woodhead MBE DD

Chair: Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch Kt, DD, FBA

Britain is one of only a handful of countries in the world which is rapidly moving from having a Christian majority to a ‘no religion’ majority. But we are not becoming secular – only a quarter of us are confident there is no God; fewer than one in ten report being influenced by secularism. The lecture approaches this apparent paradox by excavating the category of ‘no religion’, and showing how and why the categories of the religious and the secular are losing their analytic power in relation to the current cultural situation. Drawing on new research, it traces the emerging outlines of a new, post-Protestant, moral paradigm.

About the speaker:
Professor Linda Woodhead MBE DD is co-director of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University, and co-founder of the Westminster Faith Debates. Recent books include That was the Church, that was: How the Church of England lost the English People, A Sociology of Prayer, Christianity: A Very Short Introduction, and Everyday Lived Islam in Europe.