I always have a look at the census results whenever they’re published, and the articles never report the Pagan numbers properly as they only look at people who write “Pagan” or “Wicca” (they never think to include Druidry and Heathenry in the total). So I always go to the detailed spreadsheets and make my own list.

Here it is:

England and Wales census results 2021

Pagan and Pagan-adjacent

Animism …. 798
Druid …. 2489
Heathen ….4722
Pagan …. 73737
Shamanism …. 7889
Wicca …. 12819
Witchcraft …. 1056
Pantheist …. 2299

Total: 105,809

I would categorize Animism, Shamanism and Pantheism as “Pagan-adjacent” rather than Pagan. And Heathens don’t usually call themselves Pagan.

Other related categories

New Age …. 387
Occult …. 501
Reconstructionist …. 738
Satanist …. 5,039
Spiritual …. 31,611
Thelemite …. 232
Vodun …. 258

Total of related categories = 38766

I’m not sure if the people who put Reconstructionist meant polytheist reconstructionism or something else. Also I’m surprised that no-one wrote “polytheism” in the “other” box. Also I somehow doubt that the 5,039 people who wrote “Satanism” are actually serious practitioners of Satanism. And what happened to all the people who put Jedi knight in as their religion on the previous census?

Nature-based religions from other cultures

Taoism …. 3,724
Shinto …. 1,382
Traditional African Religion …. 658
Hinduism …. 1,032,779

The Scottish results will be published later, apparently.

Another statistic of interest is that the percentage of the population who identify as Christian has now dropped below 50%. The proportion identifying as “no religion” has increased.

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Update: here’s my post from 2012 comparing the 2011 census results to the 2001 census results.

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