The United Kingdom may no longer be a majority Christian country, but 8 in 10 people there still recognize a famous Christian prayer, according to new research from the Church of England.
The survey found that more people in the U.K. recognized an excerpt from the Lord’s Prayer than recognized quotes from William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and the British national anthem.
“Overall, the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer was recognised correctly by the largest number of people (80.3%), just ahead of Star Wars (79.9%),” per a Church of England press release.
The survey, which was fielded by Savanta among more than 2,000 people in the United Kingdom from May 23 to May 26, tested participants’ knowledge of popular phrases from religion, sports, politics and culture.
People were given seven famous phrases — including “May the force be with you” from “Star Wars” — and asked to match them to their source from a list of correct answers.
“Give us this day our daily bread” was the phrase used from the Lord’s Prayer.
As the press release noted, survey participants were particularly good at recognizing the quotes from religion and pop culture.
They were particularly bad at identifying “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” a quote from Dickens.
“A minority of those surveyed (39%) correctly identified the opening line from Dickens’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’” the Church of England reported.
Text of the Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer comes from the Bible, where it appears twice: in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.
It’s widely used in Christianity, but different Christian traditions use slightly different versions of it, in part because of disagreements over how to translate the Bible passages.
Here is the text of the traditional version of the Lord’s Prayer that’s used by the Church of England:
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”
The new survey also investigated which parts of the Lord’s Prayer stand out to people in the U.K.
Survey respondents were given the text and asked to identify which lines were most meaningful to them.
“The most commonly selected line was ‘… and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ with 43% overall and more than half (56%) of Christians surveyed," the Church of England reported.
Pew survey on religion
The Lord’s Prayer survey was released just ahead of a new Pew Research Center report showing that Christianity is declining in the United Kingdom.
Pew found that the U.K. is one of four countries that stopped being majority Christian from between 2010 and 2020.
“As of 2020, Christians were a majority in 120 countries and territories, down from 124 a decade earlier. Christians dropped below 50% of the population in the United Kingdom (49%), Australia (47%), France (46%) and Uruguay (44%). In each of these places, religiously unaffiliated people now account for 40% or more of the population,” Pew reported.