Trust and Other News

 

Trust (1)

Public trust in the Church of England is lower than in other non-political national institutions, according to the results of an Ipsos MORI survey for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which were published on 13 September 2014. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,008 adults aged 15 and over in Britain on 18-24 July 2014. Respondents were asked to assess their trust in 14 institutions on a scale from 0 to 10, the mean score for the Established Church being 5.36, only rising above 6 in the case of readers of mid-market daily newspapers and those broadly satisfied with the present system of government. The scores for all institutions follow:

 

Mean score

Armed forces

7.74

Charitable/voluntary sector

6.51

Police

6.49

Monarchy

6.38

Legal system

5.86

Bank of England

5.85

BBC

5.75

Church of England

5.36

Local government

4.90

Welsh Assembly

4.77

Scottish Parliament

4.67

Westminster Parliament

4.20

Westminster government

4.13

Political parties in general

3.76

The study also covered support for the protection by law of 10 rights and freedoms. Freedom of religion was ranked eighth in order of importance, although it was only seven points behind the most highly prized freedom (the right to a fair trial). Variation by demographic sub-groups ranged from 83% to 94%. Support for each of the rights and freedoms is tabulated below:

Strongly/tend to support

%

Right to a fair trial

96

Right to freedom from slavery

95

Right to a private/family life

95

Freedom of speech

95

Right to liberty

94

Right not to be tortured/degraded

92

Right to protest

91

Freedom of religion

89

Right to life

79

Right not to be charged for a non-crime

71

The data tables (pp. 1-3 and 114-16 being particularly relevant) will be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/jrrt-state-of-the-nation-tables-2014.pdf

Trust (2)

Clergy/priests are the profession most trusted to tell the truth by MPs, in a survey released by Ipsos MORI on 9 September 2014, for which 143 MPs were interviewed face-to-face between 9 June and 6 August 2014. Indeed, the proportion of MPs trusting clergy/priests completely or a fair amount was, at 86%, 20 points greater than among the general public in November 2013. Judges (83%), scientists (82%), and doctors (76%) also performed well on the MPs’ veracity index, as they did with the public, with bankers (18%), estate agents (12%), and journalists (11%) being deemed the least trustworthy by MPs.  For more information, see the slideshow at:

http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IpsosMORI/the-view-from-westminster-ipsos-mori-m-ps-survey-1978-2014/4

Religion of dependent children

Release Sup. 3 of the 2011 census results for England and Wales, dated 9 September 2014, included Table LC2123EW: religion of dependent child by sex. Fully interactive, and searchable to the lowest level of census geography, it revealed that, across the country as a whole, 51% of dependent children were recorded as Christian, 8% as Muslim, 3% as of another religion, 30% as of no religion, and 8% as not stated. However, there were many areas where Christians were in a minority, including Birmingham (the centre of this summer’s alleged Trojan Horse plot in schools), where there were more Muslim dependent children (97,100) than Christian (93,800). The table can be accessed at:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/lc2123ew

Islamic State

The polling scene has recently been dominated by the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence, but there have continued to be some surveys on the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria since our last post on 4 September 2014. Polls are arranged in chronological order of fieldwork, and were conducted online among samples of adults aged 18 and over.

21-29 August 2014

This Eurotrack survey by YouGov appears to be the first to study British attitudes to the IS crisis in a comparative context, in this case measured against those in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. There were 2,021 respondents in Britain. Six questions were posed about Iraq, with some notable differences in national opinion, including when it came to the willingness of countries to take part in air strikes against IS targets. Britain and Denmark were most likely to contemplate such action (at 42% in each case), while Finland and Germany were least enthusiastic (26%). But perhaps the most significant variations emerged when participants were questioned about giving asylum in their country to Iraqi Christians and non-Christians. As can be seen from the table below, Britons were, after the French, the least well-disposed to this scenario, with non-Christians being less welcome than Christians in all countries. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rkvalht3o6/August_Eurotrack.pdf

Approval (%) of

granting asylum to

Iraqi Christians

Iraqi non-Christians

Denmark

50

37

Finland

58

48

France

35

22

Germany

47

41

Great Britain

38

27

Norway

46

37

Sweden

61

54

3-5 September 2014

Support for some form of British military intervention against IS reached 60% in this Opinium Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph, for which 2,002 UK individuals were interviewed; only 20% were opposed to British action from the air or on the ground. Approximately four-fifths endorsed tough new powers against British jihadists fighting with IS, in the shape of seizure of their passports, stripping them of their citizenship, and banning them from re-entering the UK. Data tables are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4829_telegraph_iraq_tables.pdf

4-5 September 2014

Support for RAF air strikes against IS built to 52% in this YouGov poll among 1,961 Britons for the Sunday Times, even reaching 48% for air strikes against IS in Syria (11 points up on the week before). Opposition was voiced by 68% to the payment of ransoms for the release of British citizens held hostage by IS, with 62% in favour of a military rescue operation. Half the sample felt that British Muslim leaders should be doing a lot more to dissuade British Muslims from going to Iraq to join IS, just 22% thinking the Muslim leadership was doing all it reasonably could. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e6yfutr1ad/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140905.pdf

Household income

In an online poll by Populus on 29-31 August 2014, the 2,010 respondents were asked to provide information about their religion and total household income prior to tax. Correlating the answers to the two questions, it can be shown that non-Christians were disproportionately likely to come from the poorest households (with an income of under £14,000), while those professing no religion were to be found in above-average numbers in the richest households (with an income over £28,000). Christians were more clustered in households with a middling income. Results are summarized below, and the source data are on p. 35 of the tables at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OmFood_Fraud-income-break.pdf

%

Up to £14k

£14k-£28k

Over £28k

All

23

43

33

Christians

21

50

29

Non-Christians

30

35

35

No religion

24

36

39

Premier Christian Radio audience

Premier Christian Radio, the evangelical (and sometimes controversial) station broadcasting primarily in London and South-East England (but also receivable on Freeview and the national DAB multiplex) has announced that it reached its biggest ever audience in its twenty-year history during the second quarter of 2014. According to official RAJAR figures, its average weekly listening by adults aged 15 and over in London and the South-East was 240,700 in this period, equivalent to 2% of the population served. The rise follows a rebranding exercise and the launch of a new website (incorporating listen again features) earlier in the year. However, historic data back to 2010, tabulated below, indicate that there has been some volatility in Premier’s audience, so it is too soon to say whether this increase will be sustained. These statistics can be examined in more detail, including for the pre-2010 era, at:

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

Period

Weekly

audience

persons

Weekly

audience

hours

Hours

per

listener

2010 Q1

141,000

1,456,000

10.4

2010 Q2

143,000

1,708,000

12.0

2010 Q3

213,000

2,405,000

11.3

2010 Q4

164,000

1,833,000

11.2

2011 Q1

135,000

808,000

6.1

2011 Q2

235,000

2,339,000

9.9

2011 Q3

181,000

1,461,000

8.1

2011 Q4

89,000

1,076,000

12.0

2012 Q1

153,000

1,147,000

7.5

2012 Q2

172,000

1,881,000

10.9

2012 Q3

164,000

1,568,000

9.6

2012 Q4

175,000

2,069,000

11.8

2013 Q1

138,000

979,000

7.1

2013 Q2

156,000

1,522,000

9.8

2013 Q3

147,000

1,373,000

9.3

2013 Q4

160,000

1,141,000

7.1

2014 Q1

97,000

865,000

8.9

2014 Q2

241,000

2,435,000

10.1

Education of Anglican bishops

The Church Times has surveyed the secondary and tertiary educational backgrounds of the Church of England’s 112 serving bishops. One half were found to have been educated at an independent school, with 36% attending a grammar school and 13% a comprehensive school. Two-fifths (42%) had taken their first degree at Oxford or Cambridge, with Durham University accounting for a further 17%. The newspaper collected the data following the recent publication of a report on Elitist Britain? by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which documented a bias towards independent and Oxbridge backgrounds among other national leaders. Details are available for each individual bishop at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/5-september/news/uk/half-the-bishops-in-the-c-of-e-were-educated-privately

 

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General Election Wash-Up

Prior to the general election we made a number of posts touching on the relationship between religion and politics/voting. Now that the results are in, we can report a few more snippets of information which touch on this theme.

On 10 May the Westminster 2010 Declaration of Christian Conscience, which has attracted almost 65,000 signatures (and about double that number of visitors to its website), issued a press release claiming that the general election had resulted in a House of Commons which was ‘better balanced on Christian conscience issues’. The release can be found at:

http://www.westminster2010.org.uk/news/election-results-in-more-mps-supportive-of-christian-conscience—mond/

Of the 491 MPs who were standing for re-election, 32% had been categorized by Westminster 2010 as being supportive of Christian conscience issues, in terms of their Parliamentary voting record. 412 of them were re-elected, of whom 36% had pro-Christian voting records. ‘So overall we lost 63 MPs with poor voting records but only 10 MPs with good voting records.’

The 237 new MPs were assessed in the light of their public statements, email correspondence and their willingness to make the Westminster 2010 pledge to ‘respect, uphold and protect the right of Christians to hold and express Christian beliefs and act according to Christian conscience’. On this basis 70 (30%) were judged to be supportive.

Overall, Westminster 2010 claims that 34% of the 2010 intake of MPs are supportive of Christian conscience issues, 37% are unsupportive and the views of the remaining 29% are unclear or unknown.

Westminster 2010 made light of the poor showing of the Christian Party, which polled fewer than 18,000 votes in total for its candidates. Rather it highlighted the successes of Christians standing for the main political parties, including the evangelical Nicola Blackwood who unseated the secularist Evan Harris in Oxford West and Abingdon.

Meanwhile, The Muslim News for 7 May reported that the number of Muslim MPs had doubled from four (in the 2005 Parliament) to eight, equivalent to 1.2% of all seats, less than half the proportion of Muslims in the population at the 2001 census (2.8%). The eight comprise six Labour MPs (three of them women) and two Conservatives. More than 90 Muslim candidates stood for election in all. The Muslim News has subsequently published tables of the performance of all Muslim candidates at:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=4647

The number of Jewish MPs elected was 21, according to The Jewish Chronicle for 14 May. They represent 3.2% of the new House of Commons, more than six times the proportion of Jews in the country in 2001. The new MPs comprise 12 Conservatives, 7 Labour and 2 Liberal Democrats. The most famous unsuccessful Jewish candidate was Andrew Dismore, who lost his seat in Hendon to the Conservatives by just 106 votes. The Muslim Public Affairs Committee has claimed it campaigned for his downfall.

The Catholic Herald for 14 May stated that the number of Roman Catholic MPs had risen from 64 to 68 (17 of them newly elected), despite prominent figures such as Ruth Kelly and Ann Widdecombe stepping down. This is 10.5% of the new House of Commons, a similar figure to the number of Catholics in the adult population as measured by opinion polls. The 68 comprise 40 Labour MPs, 19 Conservatives, 5 Liberal Democrats, 3 Northern Ireland SDLP and 1 Scottish Nationalist. The pro-Labour bias of Catholics was demonstrated in Ipsos MORI data in the run-up to the general election, as featured by BRIN on its website on 4 May.

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