Wales

The story of religion in the United Kingdom region of Wales is closely bound to her struggle for identity and autonomy to preserve and protect her culture and her language against the encroachments of England, her mighty neighbor to the east. Druidism is the earliest recorded religion in Wales, but the arrival of the Romans and then the spread of Christianity overwhelmed this and other native British cultures. In the 500 years before the invasion of the Normans in 1066, Welsh Christianity flourished, but the new French rulers imposed religious unity by demanding recognition of and obedience to the church headed by the Archbishop in Canterbury. This was reinforced during the Protestant Reformation, when King Henry VIII broke with the pope and the Church in Rome to assert his political supremacy in his kingdom as well as his religious authority in 1534.

To carry the new doctrines to the people, the Bible was translated into vernacular languages, and in Wales, both the faith and the language were boosted by this move. Protestantism thus became well anchored, and during the religious and political upheavals in England, the Welsh people moved closer to Puritanism. Many members of Puritan sects such as Quakers and Baptists fled to America to escape persecution. The tradition of religious dissent continued in Wales and was marked by a series of religious revivals, the first of which was the Methodist movement in the 18th century, and John Wesley himself journeyed around southern Wales preaching.

The new conditions of the Industrial Revolution changed Britain economically, politically, and socially, and Nonconformist groups, which also included the Congregationalists, moved away from the Church of England, beginning a great movement of chapel building so that the congregations might have their own places of worship. However, even as Wales underwent a last great revival around 1904 to 1905, religion and the strict moral code of the Nonconformists were being superseded by socialist movements, especially in the industrial heartlands of the southern Welsh valleys. The temporary prosperity brought by the two world wars gave way to economic depression and religious decline.

The Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920, becoming a member church of the Anglican Communion, but today technological change and increasing secularism mean that Christianity is losing its impact. Today, all the main world religions have communities in Wales. The oldest Muslim community in Britain was established by Yemeni migrants in the 1850s in Cardiff, the home of the first British mosque, of which there are now 40 in Wales. It is estimated that there are about 5,000 Hindus in the country (total population 2.9 million) and a similar number of Buddhists, most of whom live in communities in central and western Wales. The Jewish community in Wales numbers around 2,000, which is also approximately the number of Sikhs living there. In recent years, Druidism has been revived in parts of Wales where people have reverted to pre-Christian traditions and beliefs.