Almost half of Britons believe in life after death, Easter poll reveals

Almost half of Britons believe in some form of life after death, a poll has revealed.

The ComRes survey commissioned by the BBC asked 2,010 adults – Christians and non-Christians – for their views ahead of Easter.

Of those polled, 46% said they believe in life after death – the same percentage said they did not. The remaining 8% said they didn’t know.

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The survey also revealed that a quarter of Christians do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

One in ten people of no religion said they believe the Easter story but that they think it contains ‘some content that should not be taken literally’.

Only a fifth of non-religious people believe in life after death.

The survey also found that 17% of all Britons believe the Bible version of the Easter story word-for word.

Almost six out of ten (57%) ‘active’ Christians, who go to a religious service at least once a month, believe the Bible’s Easter story word-for-word.

Exactly half of those surveyed said they did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus at all.

Of non-religious people, 9% believe in the resurrection.

Reverend Dr Lorraine Cavanagh, acting general secretary for Modern Church, told the BBC: ’An adult faith requires that it be constantly questioned, constantly re-interpreted, which incidentally is very much what Modern Church is actually about.

‘Science, but also intellectual and philosophical thought has progressed. It has a trickle-down effect on just about everybody’s lives.

‘So to ask an adult to believe in the resurrection the way they did when they were at Sunday school simply won’t do and that’s true of much of the key elements of the Christian faith.’

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend David Walker, told the BBC: ‘This important and welcome survey proves that many British people, despite not being regular churchgoers, hold core Christian beliefs.

‘Alongside them it finds surprisingly high levels of religious belief among those who follow no specific religion, often erroneously referred to as secularists or atheists.’