Newsflash: England are Godless Heathens

Eileen McNulty · July 12, 2014

Datashine, a data visualisation platform developed by Oliver O’Brien at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analytics, has harnessed the data from the UK’s 2011 census to give us some insights into the Great British people. The interactive map allows you to explore a variety of metrics, including population, health and education.

One of the most intriguing metrics is religion. For a country with an established national religion, England is, in parts, pretty Godless. The visualisations show the density of those who specified “No religion” on the census, with Green indicating more than 39.5% specifying no religion and red indicating areas where 0% specified no religion.

Godless regions include Brighton (above), Bristol, York, Norwich and Nottingham.

Back in Berlin! Data Natives 2022, in person and online - tickets available now!

Divided areas include Bradford and Leeds (at the top of the post), Manchester and Leicester.

Towns keeping the faith include Liverpool (below) and Birmingham (who curiously get more atheist the closer you move to the centre).

Read more here.
(Image credits: Datashine)

The Author

Eileen McNulty

Eileen McNulty-Holmes is the Head of Content for Data Natives, Europe’s largest data science conference. For the past ten years, they have written, edited and strategised for companies and publications spanning tech, arts and culture. With a core focus in journalism and content, Eileen has also spoken at conferences, organised literary and art events, mentored others in journalism, and had their fiction and essays published in a range of publications. They are passionate about amplifying marginalised voices in their field (particularly those from the LGBTQ community), AI, and dressing like it’s still the ’80s

SHARE

Newsflash: England are Godless Heathens