The main faith in Britain has been Christianity for the past millennium and a half, yet the past few centuries have witnessed the growth of sizeable communities of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs living in the British Isles. The stories of how these religions reached – and at times left – British shores is a fascinating narrative of waves of immigration, often caused by conflict and persecution but also by trade, travel and the human spirit of adventure.

Christianity
The story of Christianity in the British Isles is long and complex. Considering the centuries it took for the faith to establish itself and the periods of religious turmoil and persecution that many Christian denominations have faced (not to mention warnings that 21st-century society is becoming less and less ‘religious’), it is almost surprising that around 60% of the population today still describe themselves as Christian.

Many of us are vaguely familiar – perhaps recalling from school history lessons – with stories about missionaries introducing Christianity to Ireland and Wales, and St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, bringing the faith to Britain in the late 500s. Yet a fledgling Christianity, mixed with superstition, Roman deities and paganism, had been introduced a long time before this by Roman traders and travellers. However, the Romans’ departure from Provincia Britannia also largely marked the departure of Christian influences until Augustine’s late-sixth-century mission. What we know of this time comes largely from St Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, which does not paint a picture of a Christianised island. Superstition and pagan beliefs still had a strong hold in many people’s minds. Yet Christianity survived the Viking invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries and was reinforced by the Christian King Alfred. It wasn’t until the tenth and 11th centuries that Christianity took a firm foothold and the beginnings of parishes and the parish system, so important to genealogists, began.

The story of Christianity in Britain is, of course, far more complicated than these few paragraphs would suggest – in the 16th century the European Reformation saw the Christian church split in two, changes that resulted in the establishment of Protestant churches and, in England, the creation of the Church of England by Elizabeth I. In many ways a via media between Roman Catholicism and strict Protestantism of reformers like John Calvin (whose ideas were brought to Scotland by John Knox), the Elizabethan Church’s broadness allowed those with more Catholic and more reformed views to be included. However, for some, it wasn’t inclusive enough. Roman Catholicism was practised in secret, and those who felt that the Church wasn’t reformed enough broke away and formed Nonconformist or Dissenting churches, such as the Baptists, Quakers and, later, Methodists.

After the short reign of the Catholic King James II, the succession of Protestant William III (of Orange) saw the 1689 Act of Toleration finally granting freedom of religious worship to Dissenters, although not to Catholics.

The Act was a significant step towards religious freedom for many, but it also aimed to unite Anglicans and Dissenters against Roman Catholics. The Act granted freedom of worship to those Dissenters who would take oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. It did not, therefore, apply to non-Trinitarians or atheists. It was 1813 when the Doctrine of the Trinity Act removed penalties against non-Trinitarians. Catholics were not emancipated until 1829, when the Roman Catholic Relief Act removed most of the legislation against them.

Judaism
The first Jewish immigrants we know of were Jews from Rouen who were invited to England after the Norman Conquest in order to establish trade links with France. However, despite this initial welcome, Jewish settlers in England faced rising persecution for two centuries until the 1275 Statute of the Jewry issued penalties against them. They were expelled by King Edward I in 1290 and were not allowed to return until Oliver Cromwell unofficially allowed them to do so in 1657. It is likely, though, that Jews remained in the interim and practised their religion in secret.

British comparative tolerance towards Jewish settlers saw many immigrate during the 18th and 19th centuries, including those escaping Russian pogroms and famines.

The earliest Jewish immigrants were mainly traders, but some worked as moneylenders, scribes, clerks and doctors. Later Jewish immigrants were largely involved in textile trading and manufacture, boot making, tailoring, and banking and financial services. The majority lived in London, but communities also formed in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Gateshead, Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

Before 1753 Jews were not allowed to become legally British, but the passing of the ‘Jew Bill’ allowed them (especially those from the wealthier classes) more rights. The passing of the 1858 Jewish Relief Act and repeal of laws throughout the 19th century allowed Jews to play larger roles in public life and Jewish politicians such as Benjamin Disraeli and Lionel Rothschild took office. Sadly, in the 1920s and 1930s the rise of Fascism and anti-Semitism in Europe saw a rise in anti-Jewish sentiment in Britain and, while some Jews did travel to escape the horrors of the Nazi regime, these numbers were limited.

Islam
Although Muslim scholarship was known in Britain from the Middle Ages and Muslim traders and travellers visited Britain for centuries, the first Muslim immigrants to arrive and stay in numbers were sailors from the Bengal region of India who worked for the British East India Company. These Lascars, as they were known, began to set up permanent homes in larger ports from the early 1800s.

Since the 19th century there have been a number of waves of Muslim immigration. The first followed the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869, when the effects this had on trade necessitated port and ship workers. Many came from Yemen and the key port of Aden. Most Muslim immigrants, though, arrived in Britain in the 20th century. Those who travelled from India and Pakistan in the 1950s and 60s, often with their families, typically did so for work and better pay and conditions. Similarly to many Sikhs and Hindus, others left the region between the newly created India and Pakistan to escape the upheaval and displacement that partition caused.

Many other Muslim immigrants come from Bangladesh, again coming to Britain for work. Construction of the Mangla Dam in Mirpur in the 1960s led to over 100,000 people, mainly Muslims, being displaced. Many came to Britain, a large proportion (around 75%) settling in Bradford.

Others who had been living in African countries that had begun policies of Africanisation, including Idi Amin’s Uganda, also made Britain their home.

Hinduism
Hindus form the third-largest religious group in Britain today. Ironically, the term Hindu is modern and was coined in the West to refer more to Indian cultural traditions than to a religion, hence many practitioners of the Hindu way of life prefer to call their faith Sanatana Dharma, or the ‘eternal way’.

There have been Hindus in Britain since the 1800s, often due to Britain’s links with India. Victorian England was fascinated by India and Indian culture. Small numbers of Indian Hindu students have come to study since the later 1800s and occasionally Hindu lecturers and academics taught at universities.

Large numbers of Hindu immigrants came to Britain in three main waves: before India’s independence in 1947; in the early 1960s, when a large number of medical professionals came to live and work in Britain; and in the 1990s, including Tamil refugees fleeing from Sri Lanka, and professionals such as doctors and software engineers from India.

Sikhism
The story of Sikh immigration is largely 20th century, with early migrants from the Punjab arriving in 1911 – when the first Sikh gurdwara, temple, was founded in Putney – and larger numbers in the 1950s. Most came seeking skilled work, often in textile mills, or, like many Hindus and Muslims, to escape the chaos caused by the partition of India into the largely Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan from 1947. Lines of divisions ran through the Punjab; many Sikhs were caught up in the violence that followed and emigrated to set up homes in the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and areas of London. Further division of the Punjab in the 1960s resulted in further emigration of Sikhs. Significant Sikh populations also left East Africa, where they had been working, as policies of Africanisation displaced Indian immigrants.

While some earlier Sikh immigrants to Britain may have discarded visible signs of their religion in order to blend in and avoid discrimination, others stood firm and continued to display signs of their being Khalsa (initiated) Sikhs, including long, uncut hair, kept tidy by a turban.

Buddhism
Buddhism encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices largely based on teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, ‘the Buddha’ (‘the awakened one’). Despite being around 2,500 years old, it has only really been known in Britain since the later 19th century and the work of the Theosophical Society. This was (and still is) an organisation founded to study ‘God’s wisdom’ (the literal meaning of theosophy), the nature of God and the mysteries of the universe.

Unlike for other religions, the story of Buddhism is not so much one of Buddhist immigrants introducing the faith to Britain. Rather, it is one of British people becoming more knowledgeable about and interested in Buddhism and Eastern philosophies. Although information about Buddhism was still quite limited, a few people began to practise it as a way of life from the end of the 1800s. By 1907 the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland had been founded.

In the 1960s interest in Eastern religions was sparked again, in particular after Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 led to the exodus of thousands of Tibetans with their Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, in 1959.