Catholics and Protestants often make headlines in Northern Ireland but atheists rarely do.
“I heard it on the news about these Protestants who were becoming non-religious, and I am one of those, I fit that profile,” says Sheena Bradley.
“It’s nice to know that we’re not the complete minority that all the Catholics and Protestants would have us believe.”
The religious breakdown in the North is changing, and the greatest growth is not among faith groups, but those with none at all.
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The results of the 2021 census, published earlier this week, showed 17.4 per cent identified themselves as having no religion — a “marked increase”, the statisticians said, compared to the 10.1 per cent who did so in 2011.
When combined with religion of upbringing, 9.3 per cent — or 177,000 people — said they neither belonged to nor had been brought up in any religion, an increase from 5.6 per cent in the last census.
Indeed, that the number of Catholics in Northern Ireland had outnumbered the number of Protestants for the first time in the North’s history was the result not of strengthening religious affiliation, but of a decline in those from a Protestant background, which dipped from approximately 48 per cent in 2011 to 44 per cent last year. Catholics increased from 45 per cent to 46 per cent.
This is one of the “big stories” of the census, says Dr Ian Shuttleworth, a population geographer at Queen’s University Belfast. “Northern Ireland is still far more religious in terms of self-reported religion in the census than elsewhere on these islands, but in common with the Republic and other parts of the UK the share of people who state they have no religion is actually increasing through time.”
“It shows there’s this larger, diverse group [of people who are non-religious], but we’ve known this for quite some time,” says Boyd Sleator from the Northern Ireland Humanists.
In last year’s Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, by Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, 29 per cent said they had no religion. “You’re looking at a much bigger percentage of people in Northern Ireland that have those sort of non-religious or humanist values,” says Sleator.
“I’m enormously pleased,” says veteran journalist, campaigner and atheist Eamonn McCann. “For people like me,” he says, this is the “most dramatic change indicated by the census figures and a very hopeful one.
“The number of people signalling that they’re not part of any organised religion may have reached critical mass ... it can now be taken as a viable option.”
Many atheists, he says, “didn’t really think of that influencing them in their voting because they assumed they were merely a marginal section of people” and many who would have been tempted to define themselves as such “will now say, it’s okay to do this, we’re not alone, we’re not just a scattering of eccentrics across Northern Ireland, we’re a sizeable section of the population”.
“I think you’ll find a more assertive band of atheists in the wake of the release of these figures, and I think that’s a wholly good thing in Northern Ireland where belief in religion has destroyed so much.”
Nuala McAllister grew up as the daughter of a “working class, north Belfast Catholic woman who had eight children, I was made to read at Mass until I was 16 and go to Mass every single Sunday ... at quite a young age I’d already begun to question everything”.
“Why was always a question for me and, quite quickly, I just didn’t believe.”
Now an Alliance Assembly member (MLA) and a former lord mayor of Belfast, she recalls the criticism but also the support she received in 2017 when she chose not to say a prayer at her investiture “because why would I? I’m an atheist, it would be a bit hypocritical”.
In 2015 the BBC asked each of the North’s 108 Assembly members if they were a person of faith, regardless of denomination. Of those who answered, 62 said they were and seven said they were not. Of those seven, six asked to remain anonymous; only one, then Alliance MLA and humanist Anna Lo, agreed to be identified.
“I think in Northern Ireland so many of our politicians use their faith as almost [an] attraction for voters,” she said at the time.
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That McAllister can openly admit to being an atheist demonstrates how much has changed. “We are now a number of minorities in Northern Ireland, we now have this almost 40/40/20 population, and it excites me that we have difference now,” she says.
“While your religion does not necessarily dictate how you vote, we have seen in the previous election that the amount of people not ascribing to a particular identity to be pigeonholed is being reflected in votes for parties like ours, like Alliance, and I do think that’s great progress for Northern Ireland.”
Where progress needs to happen, she says, is in the education system. She and her partner — who is also an atheist and from a Protestant background — have two young children. “All schools here have to by law have a Christian ethos when it comes to religion, and it is deeply frustrating as a parent who wants to opt out of religion classes for their child.”
Earlier this year, in a case taken by a non-religious father and child, the High Court in Belfast ruled that the legal requirement for all schools in Northern Ireland to provide Christian-based religious education and workshop was in breach of human rights legislation.
Sleator works with the Northern Ireland Inter-Faith Forum on “trying to think about what inclusive education looks like, what a secular school system looks like, for me the word secularism is about space for everybody and nobody getting a privileged position”.
“We also make sure the curriculum is very inclusive, currently it’s written by the four main churches. The court case that happened a few weeks ago said it’s breaching human rights law and it’s not objective, it’s not plural, it’s not critical.”
Asked if there is discrimination in Northern Ireland against those who are not religious, he says: “Yes ... I guess it’s quite indirect in a way.”
Bradley has first-hand experience of how Northern Ireland is changing. She grew up in a Church of Ireland background and spent much of her adult life as a “committed Christian” but is now a humanist celebrant who conducts non-religious funerals, baby namings and weddings.
“I get an awful lot of young people coming who are one Protestant, one Catholic and they want a humanist ceremony because they don’t want to pick, and couples who are atheist.”
She has seen the increase in not just those who are non-religious, but who belong to other, non-Christian faiths in Northern Ireland. “That’s how it’ll change.”
