Category Archives: Other

Religious Studies A Levels, 2012

The number of UK students sitting for an A Level in Religious Studies (RS) in June 2012 was 3.2 per cent more than in June 2011, maintaining the steady upward trend since the early 1990s, albeit the rate of growth … Continue reading

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The Value Orientation of Contemporary Pagans

Many new religious movements have emerged since the mid-twentieth century and Paganism is an important strand. This emergence coincided with the emergence and growth of post-materialist attitudes. As a sociologist of religion based at the University of Tampere with particular interests in Paganism, I am following this weekend’s Census with great interest. Continue reading

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The Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES)

This BRIN post reports various attitudes and behaviour for the May 2010 general election by ethnic group in a series of cross-tabulations, using the EMBES survey. It looks at interest in the electon, voting rates, how the respondent voted, party choice in 2010 and 2005, and likeability ratings of major and minor political parties.
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Halloween

Halloween this year falls on Sunday, 31 October. The festival is a curious hybrid of paganism and a Christian feast of the dead, but mainly the former. As Ronald Hutton has shown in chapter 37 of his The Stations of … Continue reading

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A Levels in Religious Studies

On 19 August the Joint Council for Qualifications (an umbrella body for the seven largest providers of qualifications in the UK) released the summer 2010 results for A Levels and seven other advanced qualifications. They will be found at: http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1297/JCQ-A%20LEVEL%20RESULTS.pdf … Continue reading

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Professor Alan Gilbert

It is with great sadness that British Religion in Numbers records the death of Professor Alan David Gilbert in hospital in Manchester on 27 July, having suffered from a serious illness for the last few months. He was just 65 … Continue reading

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Getting Data on Scientology

Scientology appears to be in the news at the moment so it seems timely to offer some ideas on how to count Scientology in the UK. Continue reading

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“Islamist Terrorism”

Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of 7/7, the summer’s day in 2005 when four young Muslim male bombers unleashed co-ordinated attacks on London’s public transport system, killing 52 civilians as well as themselves. These were the first suicide-bombings on British … Continue reading

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Peter Kaim-Caudle (1916-2010)

Peter Robert Kaim-Caudle, the German Jewish refugee from Nazi persecution who became one of Britain’s leading sociologists (holding a chair at the University of Durham for many years), died on 18 May, aged 93. Kaim-Caudle was best-known for his writings on … Continue reading

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Janet Eccles on Statistical Approaches to the Study of Religion

How much can statistics tell us about the state of ‘religion’ in Britain today, or in the past? Piety or religiosity may be expressed in many different ways – and outside conventional church traditions altogether. Some forms of religiosity are beyond practical forms of measurement. Continue reading

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