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The first one is believed to be the Return of "Jesus Christ" while the other one (Baha'u'llah) has claimed himself to be the "Sender of Prophets", the "God of Gods". |
How have England & Wales changed in the last decade? Today we get a pretty good idea as the Office for National Statistics releases the first detailed results of the 2011 census. If you want to find out what religions Britons practice, how many of them are mixed-race, where they come from or whether they work, this is the place you can find out :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education
At one other place the blogger of
"Heresy Corner" writes thus about the "OTHER RELIGIONS"
Officially, around 241,000 people in England and Wales listed their religion as "other" on last year's Census form, the results of which were released yesterday. This doesn't include the 177,000 self-declared Jedi, who are counted separately (the Census people assume, for some reason, that it's not a proper religion). In 2001 there were 390,000 Jedi Knights, who were put down as No Religion, as were people who called themselves atheists, humanists and even heathens. This was problematic because many, perhaps most, "Heathens" are followers of Norse gods rather than atheists. This year, following a campaign, Heathens were listed as "Other religion". Otherwise, the figures were calculated in much the same way.
The total represents a big increase on the 151,00 Others in 2001 - even allowing for the misidentified Heathens. It mirrors, almost exactly, the percentage increase in those of No Religion, which rose from under 15% to over 25%. It's up by two thirds. It's a smaller increase, in both absolute and percentage terms, than Buddhism has enjoyed - Buddhists leapfrogged Others to go from 144,000 to 248,000, an increase of 72%. It also trails behind Islam, up 75%. But Islam's increase can largely be attributed to immigration and birthrate. It's dramatic when set against the huge fall in Christianity (down from 72% to 59%), the modest rise in numbers of Hindus and Sikhs and the flatlining Jews.
Further.....
The Category "Others" also includes well-established
faiths, some of great antiquity, others just about long-enough
established to count as "proper" religions. These can be broken down as
follows:
Minority Indian religions:
Jain: 20,288
Ravidassia: 11,058
Total: 31,346
Baha'i: 5,021
Traditional Chinese Religion:
Taoist: 4144
Chinese: 182
Confucian: 124
Total: 4450
(I suspect that the majority of UK Chinese put themselves down as Buddhists or Christians)
Zoroastrianism: 4,105
Shinto: 1075
Druze: 515
Traditional African, Voodoo, Animist: 1290
Native American Church: 127
The grand total of "minor faiths" is 47,929: well behind the
number of pagans and very similar to that for the religious
freelancers. No Mormons are listed, incidentally. I assume that all
the Mormons described themselves as Christians.
Finally, New Religious Movements, some of which come under the rubric of cults. By far the largest (and certainly no cult) is Rastafarianism,
with 7,906 adherents, more than the Baha'i, Zoroastrianism or all the
traditional Chinese faiths combined. The others that make the list are:
Scientology (2418), Moonies (452), Brahma Kumari (442), Eckankar
(379). This brings a total of 11,597, or just 3691 if you exclude the Rastafarians.
SOURCES :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafari_movement
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/12/significant-others.html