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Migration has been among the most powerful forces reshaping the religious landscape of modern Britain. When people cross national and cultural boundaries they carry their beliefs, practices and institutions with them, and the result has been the transformation of a once largely Christian society into one of the most religiously plural states in the world. For the AQA dialogues this matters because religious pluralism is a defining feature of the modern secular state: it raises questions about how diverse faith communities can live together, how far the state should accommodate religious difference, and how the human right to freedom of religion is to be protected under domestic and European law. This lesson examines the waves of post-war migration, the sociology of why migrant religion is often strong, the political philosophy of multiculturalism, and the legal framework of religious freedom — together with the tensions these generate.
Key term: Diaspora — a community living outside its country of origin that maintains active ties to the homeland's culture, religion and identity. Britain's Caribbean, South Asian, East African, Jewish and, more recently, Eastern European and Middle Eastern diasporas illustrate the term.
Key term: Religious pluralism (sociological sense) — the social fact that many religions, and many positions within each religion, coexist in one society. (This is distinct from the theological pluralism of John Hick, the claim that all religions are equally valid responses to one ultimate reality.)
Britain has never been wholly homogeneous, but the decisive transformation followed the Second World War. Labour shortages and the legacy of empire drew migrants from the Caribbean, South Asia and East Africa, and successive waves since have layered further diversity on top.
| Period | Principal origins | Religions strengthened or introduced |
|---|---|---|
| 1948–1960s | Caribbean (the "Windrush" generation) | Christianity (Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic) |
| 1950s–1970s | South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) | Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism |
| 1960s–1970s | East Africa (expelled Ugandan Asians, 1972) | Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam |
| 1990s–2000s | Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East | Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox), Islam |
| 2010s–present | Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea (refugees) | Islam, Christianity |
The cumulative effect is a genuinely multi-faith society. The 2021 Census of England and Wales recorded Christians at 46.2%, Muslims 6.5%, Hindus 1.7%, Sikhs 0.9%, Buddhists 0.5% and Jews 0.5%, alongside a large and growing "No religion" category of 37.2%. Crucially, diversity exists not only between faiths but within them: British Islam spans Deobandi, Barelwi, Salafi and liberal currents; British Christianity ranges from historic Anglicanism to Black-majority Pentecostalism; and intra-faith difference is often as significant as inter-faith difference.
It would be a mistake to imagine that diversity is wholly new. Britain has long contained religious minorities — Jewish communities (readmitted in the seventeenth century), the Free Churches and Roman Catholics outside the establishment, and Huguenot and other refugees — so the relevant change since 1945 is one of scale, visibility and range rather than the bare fact of pluralism. What is genuinely new is the presence of large, settled, institutionally rooted communities of the non-Abrahamic traditions (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism) alongside a transformed Christianity and a sizeable Muslim population, together with the growth of an explicitly non-religious plurality. The result is that questions once confined to the margins — about religious dress, dietary law, faith schooling, blasphemy and the limits of accommodation — have moved to the centre of national debate. This is the social reality the rest of the lesson seeks to understand and evaluate.
A striking and exam-relevant finding is that religion frequently matters more, not less, to migrant and minority communities than to the host majority — an apparent counter-example to the secularisation thesis. Sociologists have advanced two main explanations.
Cultural defence. Steve Bruce argues that religion acquires heightened importance where it carries the identity of a community under threat. For a minority facing racism, dislocation and the pressure to assimilate, the mosque, temple or gurdwara becomes a repository of language, memory and belonging, and faith becomes a marker of resistance and dignity. Religion here defends a cultural identity rather than functioning purely as belief.
Cultural transition. Bruce also identifies a second mechanism: religious institutions ease the passage into a new society, providing welfare, contacts, advice and a familiar moral world during the disorienting period of settlement. On this account migrant religion can be expected to weaken over generations as transition is completed — though cultural defence may keep it strong where hostility persists.
The classic statement of the identity function is Will Herberg's study of the United States, Protestant–Catholic–Jew (1955), which argued that, for the children of immigrants, religious affiliation became the acceptable way of locating oneself within American society once ethnic distinctiveness had faded. Whether the same pattern holds in more secular Britain is debated, but the underlying insight — that religion can serve identity as much as belief — is central to the topic.
Key term: Cultural defence (Bruce) — the strengthening of religion where it expresses and protects the identity of a community that feels itself under external pressure, as with many minority and migrant groups.
This sociology carries a significant implication for the secularisation debate (the previous lesson). If religion is declining among the long-settled majority but remains strong, or even intensifies, among migrant and minority communities, then migration acts as a brake on, or partial reversal of, secularisation in the host society. Black-majority Pentecostal churches have brought a vigorous, experiential Christianity to British cities just as historic denominations have shrunk; British Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism sustain levels of observance well above the national average. Grace Davie observes that immigration is one of the principal reasons Western Europe is not quite as uniformly secular as the classical thesis predicted, and that it makes the religious map of Britain increasingly patchwork — secularising in some places and among some groups, devout in others. The generational question is then decisive: if Bruce's "cultural transition" mechanism dominates, migrant religiosity will erode as communities settle and assimilate; if "cultural defence" dominates, persistent racism and exclusion will keep it strong. The evidence is mixed, and varies sharply by community, which is exactly why generalisations about "minority religion" are hazardous.
A recurring exam theme is how the religion of the children and grandchildren of migrants differs from that of the first generation. Three broad patterns are observed, and a single family may contain all three:
The first generation's religion is often bound up with the homeland and its language; later generations, fluent in English and at home in Britain, frequently seek a version of the faith detached from a specific ethnic culture and articulated as universal principle — a shift with large consequences for how the tradition is transmitted and understood. This "de-ethnicising" of religion is double-edged. It can make a faith more portable, more reflective and more able to speak to the wider society; but it can also strip away the warm, customary, family-based religiosity of the first generation and replace it with something more austere and text-centred, and in a minority of cases the search for an "authentic", culture-free version of the faith has been a pathway towards radicalisation. The generational dynamics of migrant religion are therefore not a footnote but central to some of the most pressing debates in contemporary Britain.
Key term: Transnational religion — religious identities, networks and practices that cross national borders, linking diaspora communities to their countries of origin and to co-religionists worldwide (through pilgrimage, satellite media, the internet and global movements), so that a British believer's religious world is not bounded by Britain.
It is vital to keep two senses of "pluralism" distinct, since the AQA dialogues touch both.
Sociological pluralism is the simple fact, described above, that many faiths (and many positions within each) coexist in one society. This is a feature of the modern secular state and the immediate product of migration.
Theological pluralism is a normative claim about truth and salvation: the view, most influentially defended by John Hick (1922–2012), that the great world religions are equally valid human responses to a single ultimate reality (which Hick calls "the Real"), so that none is uniquely true. Hick contrasts this with exclusivism (only one religion is true and saving — in Christian terms, grounded in texts such as John 14:6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life") and inclusivism (one religion is the fullest truth, but God's grace reaches sincere followers of others — Karl Rahner's "anonymous Christians"). Sociological pluralism does not entail theological pluralism: a society can be religiously diverse while most of its members remain exclusivists about their own faith. But the experience of living alongside devout, admirable neighbours of other faiths exerts real pressure towards inclusivist or pluralist attitudes — which is one reason Bruce thinks diversity is corrosive of confident, exclusive belief. This is the mechanism Berger named the erosion of a "plausibility structure": a belief is easiest to hold when everyone around shares it and hardest when one is daily confronted by sincere, intelligent people who hold something quite different. Migration, by manufacturing exactly this confrontation on a mass scale, thus feeds directly into the secularisation debate — though, as the cultural-defence thesis shows, the same confrontation can also harden a threatened minority's faith rather than soften it, so the effect of diversity on belief is genuinely two-edged. The interfaith and dialogue lessons develop Hick's position and its critics (notably Gavin D'Costa, who argues that pluralism is itself a covert exclusivism) in detail; here the point is that migration-driven diversity raises, in an everyday and unavoidable way, the question of how to regard the truth-claims of others.
Multiculturalism is both a demographic description and a normative political philosophy. As a philosophy it holds that cultural and religious diversity should be positively valued and reasonably accommodated by the state, rather than suppressed in favour of uniform assimilation.
Key term: Multiculturalism — the view that a society should recognise, respect and accommodate the cultural and religious diversity of its members, rather than requiring all groups to conform to a single dominant culture.
Tariq Modood (b. 1952) is the leading British theorist of religion and multiculturalism. In Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (2007) he argues for multicultural citizenship — full inclusion of ethnic and religious minorities in the public and political life of the nation combined with the freedom to sustain distinct identities. He distinguishes three responses to diversity:
Modood rejects both coercive assimilation and "laissez-faire" multiculturalism that simply leaves communities to themselves; he argues the state must actively foster dialogue, mutual respect and civic participation across religious lines. He also insists, against strict secularists, that religious identity deserves the same public recognition that ethnic and gender identities receive — a "moderate secularism" that gives faith a legitimate public voice rather than confining it to the private sphere.
Lines of criticism. Modood's model is widely admired for its balance, but critics on the right charge that it privileges group identity over individual rights and national cohesion, while critics on the left warn that it risks essentialising cultures — treating "the Muslim community" or "the Hindu community" as fixed, homogeneous blocs when each is internally plural and constantly evolving. Liberal critics such as those following Susan Moller Okin ("Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?", 1999) argue that group accommodation can shelter practices that subordinate women, setting the rights of the vulnerable inside a community against the recognition of the community as a whole.
Against multiculturalism, several prominent figures have argued that it has bred separation rather than belonging. Trevor Phillips (2005), then chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that Britain was "sleepwalking to segregation". David Cameron (Munich, 2011) declared that "state multiculturalism has failed", calling instead for a "muscular liberalism" built on shared values. The Casey Review (2016) found persistent residential and social segregation in some areas and urged stronger measures to promote integration and English-language acquisition.
Migration has both introduced new traditions and revitalised old ones:
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