HALF a century ago, when British soldiers were marched off by their Anglican chaplains to attend services known as church parades, a sergeant would first bark an order for any Catholics and other idiosyncratic types to fall out. It was generally presumed that unless they belonged somewhere else, most grumbling Tommies were in some loose way sons of England’s state church.

If that assumption was once half-correct, it no longer is. According to the latest annual snapshot by the National Centre for Social Research, the share of Britons who call themselves Anglican has plunged from 40% in 1983 to 15% last year. The generation gap is massive. In the 18-24 age bracket, just 3% identify with the established church, whereas four in ten of those aged over 75 still acknowledge that tie. Over a human lifespan, Anglicanism has lost whatever claim it had to being the national default mode.

As was instantly argued by the National Secular Society, the figures make the continuing vestiges of Anglican privilege look all the stranger. The established church oversees about a quarter of England’s state-funded schools and, alone among religions, commands 26 episcopal seats in Parliament’s upper house. That sits oddly with a country in which the number of people professing no religion continues to edge upwards, now reaching 53% among the total population and 71% of the youngest cohort.