What the census reveals about Medway
by Dan
Bloom
The force is strong in Medway -
with 1,068 Jedi knights walking our streets.
A record number of people listed
themselves under the faith from the Star Wars films in last year’s
census.
It followed a long-running joke
campaign to poke fun at the government and undermine organised
religion.
Perhaps it has worked. While
telekinetic masters are on the rise, the number of Christians
plummeted from 72% of residents in 2001 to 57.8% last year.
The number of people listing
themselves as “no religion” almost doubled, from 16.7% of residents
to 29.9%.
The Dean of Rochester, the Very Rev
Mark Beach, claimed the new figure was more accurate because the
question was more specific than 11 years ago.
“There are people who call
themselves Christian because it’s an inherited thing,” he said:
“A lot of people want to
acknowledge some kind of spiritual dimension to life but don’t
actually go to church.”
But he added: “I don’t think you
can divorce this from the church’s struggle with contemporary
issues, by which I mean the role of women in the church and gay and
lesbian people.”
However, 58% is still “more than go
to a football match on Saturday”, he said, adding cathedrals like
Rochester have been thriving even if churches struggle.
Elsewhere the census found the
percentage of divorced people has risen from 6.9% to 9.2%.
The number of single-parent
households with dependent children has also risen from 6,791 to
8,389.
And while Medway was 92.2% white
British 11 years ago, last year that figure had dropped to
85.5%.
One of the biggest influxes came
from Poland after the nation joined the EU in 2004. In 2001 just
123 Polish people lived in Medway - last year it was
1,731.
More on this story in the
Medway Messenger on Monday.
14/12/12
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