Thanks for your query. There are no recent British data on these topics which spring to mind, at least so…
Is there any data on the number of converts to Christianity from Islam and vice versa in the UK?
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…
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8 responses to “Costing the Heavens”
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Clive – are you going to comment on whether you consider this anaysis to have any merit. In my view it is rather like comparing the amount a school spends on sport with their maths GCSE results, then arguing that sport has no benefit as it does not improve maths results. It was described by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, director of mission and public affairs for the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, as ‘a laughable misuse of statistical information’.
I wonder whether you agree.
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Dear Mouse, BRIN naturally seeks to be impartial in such matters. I have deliberately kept my powder dry at the moment, pending responses to the report from faith communities, when I may well post again. All I would do at present is to make the obvious point that the methodology employed by NSS (which is probably the only one they could have used at national level) can do no more than suggest possible indirect linkages betwen chaplaincy spend and health outcomes. Direct links of cause and effect would inevitably be harder to establish, not least because chaplaincy spend constitutes such a tiny proportion of the total NHS budget and because health outcomes are affected by a wide range of clinical and other inputs. Ideally, we would need multivariate rather than bivariate analysis. But perhaps the NSS itself would wish to respond to Mouse’s challenge?
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Further to my response to Church Mouse on 2 March, I have been trying to keep an eye on Christian reactions to the NSS report on hospital chaplaincy, but they seem to have been relatively muted. However, BRIN readers may like to note a letter to the editor of the CHURCH TIMES (18 March 2011, p. 13) from three members of staff of the Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation at King’s College London. They describe the NSS report as “flawed and an oversimplistic attempt to measure the ability of health-care chaplains to influence directly the overall quality of a trust’s performance and mortality ratio”. Their reasons for suggesting this are set out in some detail. Unfortunately, the letter is only available online to subscribers of the newspaper at:
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=109385 -
The NSS, through Robert Stovold, issued a two-page statement on 31 March 2011 in response to the criticisms contained in the CHURCH TIMES letter which is referred to in the preceding response. The statement can be found at:
Some points in the NSS statement are also summarized in Stovold’s letter printed in the CHURCH TIMES of 8 April 2011 (p. 15). One of his main arguments is that the burden of evidential proof lies with those who claim that hospital chaplains are associated with positive health outcomes.
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The letter written by me with colleagues at King’s College London and published in the Church Times is available here: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=109385
If you can’t access it, I am happy to send it to you (my email address is available on our webpage at King’s College London). We have written a reply to Mr Stovold’s statement, focussing on the scientific flaws in the NSS report’s metholodogy. We hope it will be published by the Church Times next week.
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Further to Lucy Selman’s post of 14 April 2011, the second letter by the King’s College London team, prompted by Mr Stovold’s statement of 31 March, was published in the CHURCH TIMES of 21 April (p. 15). It argues that the outcome measures used by the NSS are inappropriate for the purpose. The letter is available online to the paper’s subscribers at:
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Thanks for posting, Clive. The letter is open access now should anyone else be interested in reading it.
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[…] seen from our recent coverage of the National Secular Society’s survey of hospital chaplaincy – http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=905 – the links between faith and health outcomes are, indeed, a matter for vigorous […]
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