Caius Nocturne

The Level is a somewhat small park in Brighton's city center. It's pretty nice. It has a sizeable modern play area, a splash park and a skate park. It's an important space in an area of the city that can be quite lacking in greenery and public space.

I don't go there that often but the two times I've been there in the past 3 days, creepy evangelical Christians have been making their moves in the space and generally just bothering normal people.

• Friday afternoon: There were like a dozen or so creepos in bright blue shirts, announcing a free Texan barbecue and handing out 'literature', some of them even decided to go and talk to some of the poor normal people who were just hanging out in the park, sometimes two to one. I'm sure that felt great.
• Sunday evening: An incredible douchebag, apropos of nothing decided to set up a projector and loudspeakers to bombard the whole park with some Christian concert nobody came to see, being an absolute nuisance to everyone else just having a nice evening.

As the lord says...

Be as annoying and in other peoples' shit as you can. This is 100% the best way that people will like you and ascribe to your cheesy ideology

If they had some regressive ideologies they would have been absolutely swarmed in queer and anti-fascist protesters, but tbh, these people could really do with a morale drop regardless. There aren't many parks in the city center, it's none of your business whether or not someone is a Christian, go fuck yourselves.

England and Wales are no longer majority-Christian nations according to the 2021 Census! 🎉

• Christianity dropped from 59.3% to 46.2%
• No religion increased from 25.2% to 37.2%

(Like sexuality and gender, religion is an optional field in the UK census. 6% of respondents did not give an answer.)

The British Social Attitudes Survey has been ahead of the curve on this in their much more detailed surveys, the national Census lagged behind, perhaps because it's on a household basis and because the questions are less complex.

Like, the British Social Attitudes Survey is good at teasing out the differences between people who say they are Christian as a cultural identifier, and those who actually practice it. It also asks people specifics on the nature of their beliefs and the strength of their religiosity. This is something the national Census is not able to do.