ABSTRACT
The British have always been an ethnically diverse people. Over the centuries Celts, Picts and Scots, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Danes, and Normans settled here. More recently a number of ethnic groups from Europe, Asia and the Americas have made Britain their home. It is only in the last century, however, that Britain has experienced the growth of a complex form of religious as well as social pluralism. It is true that we have remains of Roman Mithraic temples which predate the arrival of Christianity on our shores. In addition, it is undeniable that Britain had a Jewish population before its expulsion in 1290. By and large, though, the countries of the British Isles have been 'Christian' for over a thousand years. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the rise in Nonconformity, the geographical spread of Irish Catholicism and the fast growth of the Jewish population following the migrations from Eastern Europe, that Britain became a nation of religious diversity.
