The God inherited over generations from Henry VIII’s day has long ceased to represent an exclusive franchise.

For Christian believers, the most alarming news came in recent days in a report based on a British Social Attitudes survey, which concluded that, for the first time, the number of people in England and Wales identifying themselves as having no religious affiliation (49 percent) exceeded those who cleaved to Christianity (44 percent). And within that decline, the Anglican Church had lost the greatest share of adherents. (The Roman Catholic minority, the study said, fared better in maintaining its share of souls.)

“A cultural shift is to blame,” the columnist and historian Tim Stanley wrote in The Daily Telegraph. “People raised in the faith but who don’t practice it have ceased to identify with it. In other words, they are just being honest. Church attendance has been plummeting since the 1960s; hardly anyone baptizes their kids anymore. Britain is slouching toward Gomorrah.”