According to the census, one in 10 people under 25 in Britain are Muslim, while Christianity is in the decline.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) carried out a new analysis of the 2011 census, finding that the number of Christians was falling 50 percent faster than had previously been thought.
Earlier analysis of the statistics showed only a 15 percent decline, but the ONS found that this figure had been beefed up by 1.2 million foreign-born Christians.
Furthermore, the re-analysis showed that the majority of Christians were over the age of 60 and for the first time less than half of young people describe themselves as Christian.
As a result the ONS has calculated that in a decade only a minority will classify themselves as Christians in England. Christianity is still the dominant religion in the UK with over 50 percent of the population regarding themselves as believers.
However, this may be set to change as the British Muslim population has surged dramatically over the past 15 years, increasing by 75 percent in England and Wales.
The 2011 census puts the Muslim population of the UK at around 5 per cent, a total that has been boosted by around 600,000 Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the UK over the past decade.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said to UK daily the Telegraph that the decline of Christianity is “inevitable.”
“In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.
Moreover the number of people identifying themselves as atheists has increased by 10 per cent, rising from 15 per cent to 25 per cent.
The change has been dubbed as a “significant cultural shift” by the British Humanist Association, while the Church of England has shrugged off the statistics, maintaining they still retain a strong base of believers.
The rising number of immigrants and different ethnicities in the UK has given rise to increasing levels of segregation. Think tank ‘Demos’ has labeled the phenomenon ‘white flight’, citing the falling number of ethnic whites in areas where they are minorities.