WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Most English and Welsh won't attend church much but still think of themselves as Christians, according to the first-ever survey of religious affiliation.
Churchmen expressed delight over the 2001 census's findings that 71.1 percent of the residents of England and Wales -- 37.3 million in all -- stated their faith as Christian. The census did not cover Scotland and Northern Ireland.
"These figure prove as a lie claims by the National Secular Society and others that England is no longer a Christian country," the Rt. Rev. Keith Sutton, Anglican bishop of Lichfield, said in a statement Friday.
The survey ranked Islam as the second-largest religion with 1.54 million adherents representing 3.1 percent of the English and Welsh populations. They are followed by 552,000 Hindus (1.1 percent), 329,000 Sikhs (0.6 percent), 144,000 Buddhists (0.3 percent) and 150,000 (0.3...