The census of population (2001, 2011, 2021) is the main statistical source for non-Christian and other faiths and groups. Jews…
Very interesting
Where are the statistics for other religious groups? In addition, analysis on the differences between 1st to 3rd generation migrant…
As stated in our report, the comment was made by Nick Spencer of the think tank Theos. You could contact…
It does not seem hypocritical, to me, to hold the opinion that people's relationship with God is a personal matter…
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One response to “Professor Alan Gilbert”
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When I first began to take an interest in religious statistics at the end of the 1990s, I wrote to Hugh McLeod to ask him where to look. His answer was brief: Churches and Churchgoers. Even now, nearly a quarter of a century after publication, it is the single best book on British religion in numbers. If half of the reason to create BRIN was the desire to update and make accessible the work that Clive Field and colleagues produced for Reviews of UK Statistical Sources: Volume XX – Religion, the other half was an urge to build on what Currie, Gilbert and Horsley achieved.
As important as it is, this work will only be mentioned in passing in most obituaries. Alan Gilbert accomplished so much as a scholar, university leader and person that his achievements, when passed in review, crowd each out.
I was delighted to discover, shortly before I joined the University of Manchester, that the mysterious author whose work I found in the library would return from the other side of the world to become its president and vice chancellor. Others will record the contribution that he made to the institution; I can only add that he played a key role in setting up the Institute for Social Change, and without the investment that he initiated it is very likely that BRIN would be based elsewhere.
Although Alan Gilbert undoubtedly had the charismatic authority necessary to lead a large institution, he was a calm and friendly presence in meetings and informal encounters. I was invited last year to present some research at a conference of the university governors, and when everyone else had left he stayed behind to discuss religious statistics. It closed the circle that opened for me a decade earlier when I started my work by studying his.
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