Beverley - Religion

Religion

Beverley's largest religious denomination is Christianity; 79.9% of the people in the area polled as part of the United Kingdom Census 2001 professed the Christian faith, 8% above the national average. Beverley Minster is regarded as the most impressive church in England that is not a cathedral. It contains a tomb said to contain the bones of Saint John of Beverley who founded a monastery here and with it the town; another notable saint from Beverley is Saint John Fisher.

The Church of England are in the majority with three parishes; the ancient Beverley Minster, St. Mary's Church and St. Nicholas Church. Beverley is a suffragan bishopric of the Diocese of York represented by the Bishop of Beverley, created in 1994 to provide a provincial episcopal visitor for the Province of York. The form of Anglicanism in Beverley is more on the Anglo-Catholic side of the scale, represented with the bishop being a member of the Society of the Holy Cross. There is one Roman Catholic church in Beverley called St. John's, it is covered by the Diocese of Middlesbrough; when the Catholic Emancipation was complete in 1850 the Diocese of Beverley was inserted to cover all of Yorkshire, but it was later broken up into smaller dioceses. Methodism is also represented in Beverley with around three places of worship.

Since their suppression in the seventeenth century, Quakers established a Meeting House and have worshipped in Beverley ever since. Their present Meeting House - the third - in Quaker Lane - was built in 1961

Missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the United States first arrived in Beverley in 1850 and quickly established a local congregation. In 1963 a large new chapel on Manor Road was built by local Church members. Due to the continued growth of the Beverley congregation both the building and car parks were enlarged in the late 1990s.