Nearly half of Britons raised Catholic or Protestant no longer identify with the denomination they were brought up in. Survey results from the Pew Research Center shows that 51 per cent of respondents in Britain said they had been raised Protestant but only 31 per cent still identified as such. Catholic affiliation also fell, from 16 per cent raised in the faith to 11 per cent in adulthood.

Of those who left Christianity altogether, the overwhelming majority did not convert to another religion but instead became religiously unaffiliated.

The Pew research shows that, of Britons who were raised Protestant but no longer identify as such, 4 per cent became Catholic, 8 per cent adhered to another faith, and 87 per cent became non-religious. Of lapsed Catholics, 71 per cent became non-religious while 14 per cent became Protestant and an equal percentage found another religion.

The findings suggest that the principal challenge facing Christianity in Britain may now be less conversion to other faiths than the inability to retain those raised within the Church. While public discussion has focused on signs of renewed religious interest among younger adults, the survey points to the continuing long-term effects of secularisation.

Earlier surveys have charted a long-term decline in affiliation with Christianity and in attendance at church services since the 1960s. Census data for England & Wales in 2021 showed that, while Christians are still the largest religious group, they account for less than half the population for the first time. The proportion reporting “no religion” continues to rise.

Britain is far from alone in this phenomenon: several Western European countries have experienced a decline in religious affiliation according to the Pew research. Hungary is unique in being the only European country where more people joined the Catholic Church than leaving it, while Protestantism has made strong inroads in both Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

The survey focuses attention on the poor rates of retention among Britons raised as Christians, even amid evidence of increased conversion – or “religious switching”, in the language preferred by researchers – to Christianity, and to Catholicism in particular, across many western countries.

Earlier this year the former minister David Frost – having himself been received into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2025 – said that Britain was turning back towards “full-fat supernatural Christianity. Research in the United States, meanwhile, has suggested that growing interest in religion is being driven in particular by younger men.

The survey is likely to intensify debate within the Churches over catechesis, family life and the transmission of faith in an increasingly secular society.