Unnoticed growth?

Eastern Europeans migrating to the UK in the 21st century have had more religious impact than we often realise.

Take the Poles for instance, who have come to the UK in hundreds of thousands over the last ten or 15 years, encouraged by the EU agreement that borders can be crossed by those from any member country.

Catholic and Orthodox

A large number of Polish men have moved to Scotland to work with the oil industry in and around Aberdeen, or with the UK military establishments on its north coast. Many of these are active Roman Catholics – so many in fact that the Roman Catholic Church has started 27 Polish churches in Scotland – 25 in and around Aberdeen, one in Dundee, one in Edinburgh and with one Glasgow church holding a Polish service.

Something similar has happened with Russians and Romanians. Wikipedia estimates that there were probably about 300,000 Russians in the country in 2005, and the Population Censuses in 2001 and 2011 show that numbers more than doubled in this initial decade. The Office for National Statistics indicates their numbers have stayed at roughly the same level since. Numbers joining a church have been high also. There were some 75,000 Russian Orthodox Church members in the UK, mostly (88%) in England, in 2015.

Likewise the number of Romanians coming to the UK has increased dramatically. The 2001 Census recorded just under 8,000, which rose tenfold to 83,000 by 2011. The number had increased further to over a quarter of a million by 2015 and 450,000 in 2019, making them the second largest group of non-British nationals in the UK (after the Poles).

Driven by poverty

Why come? According to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency, more than a third of Romanians are at risk of poverty and social exclusion and almost half of the country’s children are borderline poor. So they come to the UK for work such as fruit picking and vegetable harvesting, sometimes being housed in appalling conditions by people traffickers and subject to human slavery. The graph shows that many are at least nominal members of the Romanian Orthodox church.

There are three broad groups of Orthodox Church members represented in the UK. The Eastern Orthodox, which includes the Greeks, Russians and Romanians, is by far the largest component, 90% in 2020 in the UK. The smaller Oriental Orthodox makes up the large majority of the remainder. The Other Orthodox is just 0.1% of the UK total.

10% of all UK church members

The graph shows that the Greek Orthodox Church is the largest in the UK, growing steadily during the second half of the 20th century. The Russians and the Romanians, however, have between them doubled the number of Orthodox believers in the UK, with a grand total of some 480,000 in 2020, about a tenth of all church members in the UK. The graph also shows that the Oriental Orthodox has been growing in the last few years. These are especially Armenians and the rapidly growing number of Syrian refugees. There were 9,000 in the UK at the 2011 Census and some 47,000 in 2019.

Hospitality and a welcome to strangers is part of the Christian faith, difficult during the days of coronavirus, but even more essential for those desperate for security and employment.