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Roman Catholics’ Attitudes Towards Homosexuality

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Ben Clements

There has been some media coverage of the deliberations of the Roman Catholic Church at its Extraordinary Synod on the Family held in Rome earlier this month, including in a recent BRIN post. The issue of the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality and its treatment of gays and lesbians, and the related divisions between liberal and conservative elements, were prominent features of the Synod. Given this wider context and the Catholic Church’s opposition to recent reforms in the area of same-sex equality in Britain, this post reviews some of the historical and more recent survey-based evidence on attitudes towards homosexuality amongst Catholics in Britain. Data are analysed from surveys specifically conducted to elicit the views of Catholics in Britain (or England and Wales), and the social and religious profiles of attitudes on this topic are examined.

Before turning to the denominationally-specific surveys, opinion polls and social surveys shed light on the attitudes of Catholics on towards homosexuality. For example, an opinion poll undertaken by Gallup in 1963-64 (based on a sample of adults aged 16 and over in several regions of England) asked a question about what society should do with homosexuals. It found that 30.0% of Catholics though that homosexuals should be punished by law, 28.0% thought they should be condemned but not punished, 31.0% said they should be tolerated, and 12.0 % did not know. Those Catholics who attended services regularly were slightly less likely to say that homosexuals should be tolerated (25.0%).

General social surveys also enable us to track attitudes over time on this issue. Table 1 presents data from the long-running British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys, based on a question asking to what extent sexual relations between two adults of the same sex are wrong. Data are presented from first and most recent BSA surveys, which cover a period of three decades. In 1983, it can be seen that only a small minority of Catholics think that sexual relations between gays and lesbians are rarely or not at all wrong (at 17.0%), and the a clear majority think they are always wrong or mostly wrong (68.0%). Over three decades there is a significant shift in attitudes. In 2013, around two-thirds of Catholics think sexual relations between same-sex individuals are rarely wrong or not at all wrong (65.0%), and just a tenth combined think that such relations are always wrong, mostly wrong or sometimes wrong.

Table 1: Attitudes towards sexual relations between gays and lesbians, Catholics in Britain (1983 and 2013)

	1983 (%)	2013 (%)
Always wrong or mostly wrong	68.0	2.0
Sometimes wrong	6.0	8.0
Rarely wrong or not wrong at all	17.0	65.0
Depends /varies or don’t know	9.0	7.0
Unweighted base	168	102

Source: BSA surveys. Weighted data.

Of course, as a minority religious group in the British population, Catholics have comprised around a tenth of the samples in the BSA series and other social surveys and opinion polls – as detailed in recent research – so it is also valuable to analyse evidence from surveys specifically targeting Catholics. Such surveys have not been frequent, however, and the first one used here is the 1978 Roman Catholic Opinion Survey, which sampled adult Catholics (aged 16 and over) in England and Wales. The survey asked the following question about homosexuality:

The Church can never, in practice, approve the homosexual act.

The full distribution of responses is shown in Table 2 for the following characteristics: sex, age group, age completed education, social grade, attendance at religious services and belief in God. There are marked differences across age groups: older age groups have more socially-conservative views; levels of agreement are highest amongst those aged 55-64 or 65 and older. Differences in view are less pronounced on the basis of socio-economic background (social grade or age finished education) or sex. Regularity of attendance at services clearly differentiates Catholics’ attitudes on this issue, with those attending church most often expressing higher levels of agreement with the question. Those never attending church services were about twice as likely to disagree as those attending on a weekly basis. Belief in God is associated with more socially-conservative views; those who do not believe in God or who had no clear opinion were more likely to disagree (amounting to a majority of former group).

Table 2: Attitudes towards homosexuality

	Agree (%)	Neither (%)	Disagree (%)	Don’t know (%)
Sex
Male	57.8	14.0	17.7	10.6
Female	53.9	16.9	16.4	12.8
Age group
15-24	47.8	14.6	22.2	16.4
25-34	49.1	17.7	21.7	11.6
35-44	58.7	16.0	17.6	7.7
45-54	52.2	17.5	15.7	14.6
55-64	64.6	12.4	10.2	12.7
65+	74.0	12.7	5.1	8.1
Age completed education
14 or under	62.8	13.7	10.1	13.4
15 years	58.1	15.3	16.9	9.7
16 years	48.5	17.0	22.8	11.7
17-19 years	53.3	18.9	16.9	10.9
20 or over	48.6	21.1	22.0	8.2
Social grade
AB	58.5	13.4	19.5	8.6
C1	53.0	14.7	20.1	12.2
C2	60.2	15.3	12.9	11.7
DE	54.9	16.9	15.6	12.6
Attendance
Once a week / every Sunday	66.7	9.9	11.8	11.6
Most Sundays / once a month	51.2	21.1	15.5	12.2
At least once a year / special occasions	52.1	18.1	19.9	9.9
Rarely or never	45.3	18.4	22.9	13.4
Belief in God
Certainly or probably true	57.5	16.0	15.3	11.3
Certainly or probably false	21.6	8.5	52.2	17.7
Don’t know	36.8	14.1	26.1	23.0

Source: Roman Catholic Opinion Survey, February-March 1978

(England and Wales). Weighted data.

For a more recent portrait of the attitudes of Catholics towards homosexuality, we can use a survey conducted by YouGov in the run-up to the papal visit to Britain by the (then) Pope, Benedict XVI, in September 2010. The survey was conducted online and the sample comprised 1,636 adult Catholics in Britain aged 18 and over. The survey asked the following question:

Which of these comes closest to your views about consenting adults having homosexual relations?

The full set response options was as follows:

Good for them: we should celebrate loving relationships, whether gay or straight.

I’m in favour of equal rights, but in general I think straight relationships are better than gay relationships.

I don’t like homosexuality, but accept that what consenting adults do in private is their business, not mine.

Homosexual acts are morally wrong.

Don’t know.

The distribution of responses is given in Table 3 (with the response options abridged for the column headings), for the following factors: sex, age group, age completed education, social grade and attendance (no measures of religious belief are available). Generally, only small proportions in each group think that homosexual acts are morally wrong (highest amongst men, those aged 65-74 and 75 and older, those who completed education aged 15 or under, and those who attend religious services once a week or more). Women, those in the younger age groups, and those who left education aged 17 and upwards and those who attend religious services less than weekly (or not at all) are more likely to offer a positive endorsement of same-sex couples. The table does not report the proportions who responded don’t know, but these were very small across the groups.

Table 3: Attitudes towards homosexuality, Catholics in Britain (2010)

	Celebrate loving relationships (%)	Straight relationships better than gay relationships (%)	Don’t like homosexuality (%)	Morally wrong (%)
Sex
Men	30.4	17.6	35.2	16.0
Women	48.5	19.7	22.1	7.8
Age group
18-24	45.7	18.1	26.6	9.6
25-34	59.2	17.1	19.1	3.5
35-44	51.6	16.7	24.8	6.3
45-54	43.2	18.2	28.8	7.6
55-64	29.8	25.9	31.0	12.0
65-74	17.1	17.1	37.6	24.4
75+	6.4	14.9	34.0	44.7
Age completed education
15 or under	18.5	26.5	29.1	22.5
16	28.2	20.9	39.9	9.5
17-18	41.7	14.1	32.2	10.4
19	45.3	18.8	25.0	10.9
20	49.5	19.6	20.2	9.2
Still in education	45.7	15.5	26.7	11.2
Social grade
AB	43.3	18.7	24.8	11.8
C1	44.4	15.2	27.7	11.4
C2	31.5	25.3	34.0	7.2
DE	43.0	16.0	25.6	14.2
Attendance
Once a week or more	27.6	16.6	32.7	21.3
Once a month or more	46.9	21.9	21.9	8.2
Less often	46.7	21.6	24.0	6.3
Never or practically never	46.9	17.1	28.2	6.4

Source: YouGov survey of adults Catholic in Britain, August-September 2010. Weighted data.

Note: Don’t know responses not shown.

Finally, to investigate variation in Catholics’ attitudes towards the recent debate over same-sex marriage, evidence is used derived from a survey of adult Catholics (n=1,062) in Britain undertaken in June 2013. The survey was commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University) in connection with the Westminster Faith Debates. It was conducted online by YouGov. Broader analyses of findings from this survey can be found here and here. The survey asked the following question:

And do you think same-sex marriage is right or wrong?

The full distribution of responses to this question is shown in Table 4, which again provides a breakdown in opinion by sex, age group, education (measured as highest qualification obtained), social grade, attendance and belief in God (or a higher power). Some of the broad lives of division evident in Catholics’ general views on homosexuality are also apparent on the more specific issues over the legalisation of marriage between same-sex individuals. Men are more likely than women to think it is wrong. The age gap in disapproval is also considerable here. Pluralities or majorities of the 18-24, 25-34 and 35-44 age groups think same-sex marriage is right. Those aged 45-54 are more likely to be opposed while increasingly large majorities are against in the higher age groups.

In terms of socio-economic background, variation in attitudes is more pronounced on the basis of educational attainment that it is based on social grade. Those in the DE group are less likely to approve of same-sex marriage (indeed, a majority thinks it is wrong) compared to those in the AB, C1 and C2 categories. In terms of qualifications, approval is highest amongst those with degree-level qualifications (and those with A-levels), and lowest amongst those with no formal qualifications, and those whose highest qualifications are GCSEs or others.

There are also clear differences in views based on the indicators of religious behaving and believing. Those who attend services most frequently (once a week or more) show little support for same-sex marriage, with a clear majority against. Amongst those who attend once a month or more, a plurality is against same-sex marriage. For those attending less often or not at all, pluralities are in favour of same-sex marriage.

Table 4: Attitudes towards same-sex marriage, Catholics in Britain (2013)

	Right (%)	Wrong (%)	Don’t know (%)
Sex
Men	31.5	52.6	16.9
Women	36.8	42.3	21.0
Age group
18-24	46.0	33.3	20.6
25-34	56.0	23.1	20.8
35-44	42.2	34.7	23.1
45-54	35.3	44.9	19.8
55-64	24.3	58.9	16.8
65-74	11.4	74.3	14.3
75+	8.3	86.1	5.6
Education
No qualifications	21.2	60.6	18.2
GCSE	28.4	48.9	22.7
A-Level	38.1	44.6	17.3
Degree	43.2	34.5	22.4
Other	27.7	58.0	14.3
Social grade
AB	34.3	47.4	18.3
C1	37.1	41.2	21.6
C2	37.8	45.5	16.7
DE	29.1	52.0	18.8
Attendance
Once a week or more	15.2	67.5	17.3
Once a month or more	35.8	45.9	18.3
Less often	42.6	37.7	19.8
Never	46.8	33.6	19.7
Belief in God
Definitely or probably a God or higher power	30.4	52.8	16.8
Probably or definitely not a God or higher power	51.0	29.4	19.6
Don’t know	44.1	24.6	31.4

Source: YouGov survey of adult Catholics in Britain, June 2013. Weighted data.

Summary

While social surveys provide important data about over time change in the attitudes of Catholics in Britain towards homosexuality and other social-moral issues, important evidence is also available from occasional denomination-specific surveys, some of which have been utilised here. Although they have asked different questions on the issue at different points in time, there are some broad commonalities in terms of which groups within the Catholic community have tended to have more socially-conservative views on homosexuality and gay rights. Socially, men, older people and those with lower levels of education have been those groups in the Catholic community more likely to disapprove of same-sex relations. In terms of faith, those who are more orthodox in their behaving and believing are more likely to hold socially-conservative views of homosexuality. The same patterns can be found in the most recent survey data pertaining to Catholics’ views on the same-sex marriage debate. Recent research conducted by the Pew Research Centre on the attitudes of Catholics in the United States has also demonstrated clear differences in view – towards homosexuality in general and on the issue of same-sex marriage – on the basis of age and church attendance.

Posted in Historical studies, Religion in public debate, Research note | Tagged British Social Attitudes Surveys, Gallup, gay rights, gays, homosexuality, homosexuals, Pope Benedict XVI, Religious Affiliation, religious belonging, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships, Social Surveys, Survey Data | Leave a comment

Anglican Clergy Poll and Other News

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Anglican clergy poll

As anticipated in our post of 12 October 2014, the complete results of the YouGov survey of Anglican clergy were published on 23 October. The poll was designed by Professor Linda Woodhead and commissioned on behalf of Lancaster University, Westminster Faith Debates, and other partners in connection with the current series of debates on the Future of the Church of England. Respondents comprised 1,509 clergy aged 70 and under from the Anglican Churches in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland who answered 30 questions online between 14 August and 8 September 2014. They had been selected on a random basis (every third name) from Crockford’s Clerical Directory, and questionnaires sent to the 5,000 of the resulting sample of 6,000 for whom email addresses were available. The response rate thus appears to be around 30%. Full tables (with breaks by gender, age, year of ordination, country, and ministerial role) are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/5f5s31fk47/Results-for-Anglican-Clergy-Survey-08092014.pdf

Additionally, a press release has been issued in which Woodhead makes the following points:

Anglican clergy are united by a strong faith in a personal God and commitment to the parish system, 83% in each case
They are marked out from lay Anglicans and the rest of the population by their left-wing, ‘old Labour’, views, including attachment to a generous welfare system
They tend towards morally conservative positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and – especially – assisted dying
Attitudes are often sharply split between the third of clergy who are evangelical and the rest, the former tending to dissent from the official Church line that Anglicans should learn to ‘disagree well’

An abbreviated version of the press release can be found at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2014/cofe-clergy-concerned-with-protecting-the-welfare-budget/

Some of the questions were specific to the clergy, but others replicated those put to a sample of adult Britons by YouGov on behalf of Westminster Faith Debates in June 2013. This permits comparisons between the clergy, the general population, and the Anglican section thereof, as follows:

% down	Clergy	Britons	Anglicans
Since 1945 British society has become
better	38	27	25
worse	34	51	60
Britain has benefited from immigration in
some ways	96	60	52
no ways	2	32	41
Welfare budget should be
reduced	17	46	52
maintained	31	24	23
increased	44	15	13
Abortion time limit of 24 weeks should be
increased	5	6	5
kept	32	40	39
reduced	43	29	33
Same-sex marriage is
right	39	46	38
wrong	51	37	47
Legal prohibition on assisted suicide should be
kept	70	14	14
changed	22	76	77

Other surveys of Anglican clergy have been carried out in the past, but have mostly had a different focus, on religious beliefs, aspects of ministry, or psychological type. Comparisons with the current YouGov study are therefore difficult. However, we may note that clerical support for disestablishment appears to have diminished somewhat over the years. Whereas Gallup found it running at 30% of full-time clergy in December 1984 and 35% in August 1996, it had fallen to 14% 30 years later, 81% wishing to retain all or some of the trappings of establishment.

Heritage at risk

The latest debate in the Future of the Church of England series was devoted to heritage, and it was fitting that, on the very same day the debate took place (23 October 2014), English Heritage published the 2014 Heritage at Risk Register. This is the first since the register began in 1998 to include a fairly comprehensive inventory of places of worship judged to be at risk. In the past year the organization has visited all those considered to be in poor or very bad condition on the basis of local reports. As a result, it is now known that, of the 14,775 listed places of worship in England, 887 or 6.0% are at risk, accounting for 15.4% of all 5,753 sites on the at risk register. The greatest number (805) are Anglican. The regional breakdown of at risk places of worship is shown below. To search the register, and for more information about it, go to:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/heritage-at-risk-2014/

	Places of worship at risk	As % of all sites at risk
South-West	163	9.6
South-East	116	20.9
London	73	11.3
East	115	25.8
East Midlands	105	26.1
West Midlands	76	17.4
North-West	115	24.0
Yorkshire	98	12.6
North-East	26	9.1
ENGLAND	887	15.4

In a complementary move, ChurchCare, the Church of England’s national agency for supporting its places of worship, has been working, with the financial assistance of English Heritage, to develop the Church Heritage Record, a publicly accessible database of church buildings integrated with a Geographic Information System. This will have an educational and engagement mission alongside its primary role in church planning. When launched in Spring 2015, it will contain over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England, covering a wide variety of topics from architectural history and archaeology to worship and the surrounding natural environment.

Number problems

The current issue (Vol. 16, No. 2, 2014) of DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions is a theme issue devoted to ‘The Problem with Numbers in the Study of Religions’. Guest edited and introduced by Bettina Schmidt, it contains seven substantive research articles offering case studies of Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, and the British Isles (the latter including a further essay by Martin Stringer on superdiversity with reference to religion in Handsworth, Bitmingham in the 2011 census, as well as a qualitative study by Simeon Wallis of English adolescents who identify with no religion). There is an insightful afterword by BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas (pp. 116-24), which both offers a commentary on the individual papers and, drawing on his own research, illuminates the ‘serious problems of validity and reliability in measuring religion’ while simultaneously advancing a compelling case for quantification. The issue is freely available online at:

http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/DISKUS/index.php/DISKUS/issue/view/8

From the British perspective, perhaps the single most important contribution is by Kevin Brice on ‘Counting the Converts: Investigating Change of Religion in Scotland and Estimating Change in Religion in England and Wales Using Data from Scotland’s Census, 2001’ (pp. 45-69). Factoring in ethnicity, this cross-references the questions on religion of upbringing and current religion asked in Scotland in 2001 (but not in 2011, when only current religion was investigated) in order to quantify life-cycle change in religion, albeit not differentiating between Christian denominations. The overall extent of religious change was 13.5% in Scotland in 2001 (ranging from 2.2% for Pakistanis to 21.1% for Black Caribbeans), with 85.7% of all changes involving a move to no religion, and with leaving Christianity for no religion a very dominant trend for almost all ethnic groups. Notwithstanding, there were also subsidiary trends, including a not insignificant movement from none to Christian. This is a valuable piece of historical analysis, with the detail embedded in 11 tables, but its subsequent application to produce estimates for religious change in England and Wales in 2011 inevitably raises some doubts, with Brice himself conceding that some of the estimates are ‘far from robust’. As Voas suggests in his afterword, perhaps greater recourse to the potential of sample surveys for measuring religious change would have been revealing.

Church growth

Further to the release of its substantive findings at the beginning of 2014, the Church Growth Research Programme of the Church of England has been conducting some follow-on work. Particular mention should be made of a new report from Fiona Tweedie entitled Stronger as One? Amalgamations and Church Attendance. She finds that in urban areas benefice structure does not have any statistically significant effect on the likelihood of growth or decline in attendance, and that in other areas the relationship between the two variables is complex, but with no evidence to suggest that the more churches are amalgamated, the greater the chances of numerical decrease. Moreover, attendance patterns in parishes with a team ministry do not differ substantially from those without. In letters to the Church of England Newspaper (17 October 2014) and Church Times (24 October 2014), her conclusions have been challenged by David Goodhew and Bob Jackson, who point to ‘problematic data’, ‘technical statistical issues’, and failure to distinguish between different sizes of church as the source of their misgivings. The 45-page Stronger as One? report can be read at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Reports/Stronger_as_One1.pdf

A further conference in connection with the Church Growth Research Programme has now been scheduled for 4 December 2014, at the Cutlers Hall, Sheffield, with BRIN’s David Voas as one of the keynote speakers. Entitled ‘From Evidence to Action’, conference details can be found at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/news/23

Islamic State

The so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria was the fifth most noticed news story of last week, mentioned by just 7% of 2,038 Britons interviewed online by Populus on 22 and 23 October 2014. It had been in second position the previous week and in the top spot (currently occupied by the Ebola outbreak) for several weeks before that. In third place last week was the (Islamist-related) shooting in Ottawa, noted by 9%.

In another newly-released Populus poll for We Believe in Israel and the Jewish Leadership Council, and principally concerned with British attitudes toward Israel, 77% entertained a very cold and unfavourable view of IS (the bottom of a 10-point scale), with a further 11% regarding them unfavourably (points 1-4). Nevertheless, 5% held IS in a favourable light (points 6-10), rising to 14% among the 18-24s. The word most often used to describe Israel was Jewish (40%), 63% endorsing Israel’s right to exist as a majority Jewish state, albeit more than two-thirds of these qualified their support with the proviso that Israel should agree to the existence of a separate Palestinian state. Fieldwork was conducted online between 10 and 12 October 2014, among a sample of 2,067. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/OmIsrael_BPC.pdf

The latest Ipsos MORI Political Monitor asked a half-sample of 501 adults, interviewed by telephone on 11-14 October 2014, what role the British military should play against IS. In reply, 59% backed their deployment abroad to fight IS, 17% giving as their reason the direct threat to British interests and 42% the threat to other people’s rights and freedom. Opposition to the intervention of Britain’s armed forces against IS stood at 34%. The question was somewhat ambiguous because intervention could have been interpreted to mean RAF bombing of IS, the engagement of British troops in Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, or the commitment of British ground troops in direct combat with IS, the first two of which are already happening. Data tables are at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Oct2014_PolMon_Tables_Web_foreignpolicy.pdf

In its most recent poll for The Sunday Times, undertaken on 23-24 October 2014 on the basis of 2,069 online interviews, YouGov found that 76% of the population supported the removal of British citizenship from those who possess dual nationality or are naturalized Britons and who have been fighting with IS, with only 10% opposed. Two-thirds (with 19% against) also wanted to see Parliament change the law so that British citizenship could be removed from people born in Britain and who have no other nationality but have been fighting with IS. Responding to the Islamist gun attack on the Canadian Parliament, 77% thought there was a risk of a similar attack occurring in this country. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tg001pwhwn/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-241014.pdf

Media coverage

Thanks and congratulations are due to regular BRIN contributor Ben Clements for his two recent posts on religion data in the British Election Study 2015 panel. These seem to have excited some media interest, with coverage thus far in The Catholic Herald, 24 October 2014, p. 6 (also quoting BRIN co-director David Voas); The Tablet, 25 October 2014, p. 29; and The Times, 25 October 2014, main section, p. 92.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Ben Clements, Bettina Schmidt, British Association for the Study of Religions, British Election Study, census of population, church attendance, church growth, Church Heritage Record, Church of England, ChurchCare, clergy, David Voas, DISKUS, English Heritage, Fiona Tweedie, Heritage at Risk Register, Ipsos-MORI, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jewish Leadership Council, Kevin Brice, Linda Woodhead, places of worship, Populus, Religious Affiliation, Religious change, Scotland, Sunday Times, Syria, We Believe in Israel, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

The British Election Study 2015: Religious affiliation and attitudes

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Ben Clements

This second post, based on analysis of the British Election Study (BES) 2015, looks at selected attitudes of religious groups in Britain. Two waves of panel data (conducted in, respectively, February-March 2014 and April-June 2014) have so far been made available from the BES 2015 for wider analysis. The datasets and accompanying documentation can be found here. As with the first post, this post analyses data from wave 1 of the BES 2015 panel study. The analysis is based on a core sample size of 20,881 and the data are weighted accordingly. This post looks at party support and social attitudes. The party support questions concern how respondents’ voted in the 2005 and 2010 general elections and their current vote intention. The social attitude questions concern equal opportunities for different groups.

Party support

First, we can look at the pattern of voting for religious groups at the two most recent general elections, in 2005 and 2010. Data on which party a respondent voted for – Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or some other party – are provided in Table 1. The top half of Table 1 shows reported voting behaviour in the 2005 election and the bottom half shows reported voting at the 2010 election. A parsimonious set of religious affiliation categories is used. Befitting, their historical linkages with the party, Anglicans were more likely to support the Conservatives at both recent elections, although the gap over Labour is more pronounced at the 2010 contest. For Catholics, historically seen as a key electoral constituency for the Labour Party, support for Labour was more pronounced at the 2005 contest, while their support for the two largest parties was much closer at the 2010 election. Other Christians, which includes those belonging to the Nonconformist churches and those identifying as Church of Scotland / Presbyterian, show a more balanced picture of Lab-Con party support at both elections, although with voting for Labour more common than supporting the Conservatives.

Those belonging to other religious traditions – another electoral constituency which has traditionally shown a greater propensity to vote for the Labour Party – show higher levels of support for Labour compared to the Conservatives, which was more apparent in 2005. Those with no religion show interesting variation at the two contests. In 2005, they were much more likely to have voted for Labour, but in 2010 the vote shares for Labour and the Conservatives are almost identical. At both elections, those with no religious affiliation register higher levels of support for the Lib Dems compared to all of the religious groups, which may reflect the more youthful demographic profile of the non-religious. The higher level of support for minor parties amongst other Christians partly reflects voting for the Scottish National Party amongst those identifying as Church of Scotland / Presbyterian.

Table 1: Voting in the 2005 and 2010 elections by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
2005
Con	42.8	28.7	31.2	29.0	26.2
Lab	36.4	48.1	38.0	47.0	41.1
Lib Dem	16.7	15.7	16.4	17.1	23.5
Other party	4.2	7.5	14.4	7.0	9.2
2010
Con	47.7	34.4	33.0	29.0	29.9
Lab	26.2	39.1	33.7	38.9	29.8
Lib Dem	21.9	19.3	19.2	24.1	32.0
Other party	4.3	7.2	14.1	8.0	8.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Are the patterns evident above reflected in the current vote intentions of the religious and non-religious? The following question was used in the BES 2015 to gauge current voting preferences: ‘And if there were a UK General Election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?’ Data are reported in Table 2, using the same sets of categories for party choice and religious affiliation. Anglicans are still more likely to report that they would vote for the Conservatives if a general election were to be held, although a fifth report they would vote for another party, which reflects some level of support for UKIP. Catholics show a strong propensity to support Labour again compared to the Conservatives. Those in the other Christian category show a slightly higher level of support for Labour. Those who belong to other religious traditions show strong support for Labour, at a slightly higher level that that registered amongst Catholics. Around half would vote for Labour and a quarter would support the Conservative Party. Amongst those with no religion, support is clearly higher for Labour, with about two-fifths declaring they would vote for them compared to just over a quarter who would support the Conservative Party. Across all groups, support for the Lib Dems is very low compared to the reported voting patterns at the 2005 and 2010 general elections – highest at about a tenth for those with no affiliation.

Table 2: Current vote intention by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Con	39.3	29.5	31.1	25.0	26.7
Lab	32.1	45.3	35.6	49.6	39.7
Lib Dem	7.5	5.1	8.1	7.1	10.5
Other party	21.1	20.2	25.2	18.3	23.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Table 3 provides another look at current voting patterns based on affiliation, providing data for a more detailed set of religious traditions. Given recent party-political and electoral developments, it also provides separate vote share data for UKIP (whereas, in Tables 1 and 2, they were included as part of the other party category).

Given that some of these religious groups – both Christian and non-Christian – are very small in terms of the numbers belonging to them, the unweighted bases for the weighted data are also presented. Extra care should obviously be taken with the party vote share figures for those religious traditions with relatively few or very few cases in the sample (United Reformed Church, Free Presbyterian, Brethren, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism).

The more detailed breakdown shows party support amongst some of the other Christian traditions and amongst different non-Christian faiths. Looking first at the Nonconformist churches, we can see that Methodists show somewhat higher support for the Conservatives than for Labour, while Baptists are more likely to favour the Labour Party, as are those who belong to the United Reformed Church. Those who identify as Church of Scotland / Presbyterian show greater support for Labour than for the Conservatives but a significant minority would vote for the SNP (captured in the other party category).

Amongst non-Christian religions, those belonging to Islam show very high support for Labour – at nearly three-quarters, this is highest across all of the groups in Table 3. Jews are more likely to support the Conservatives than Labour – a finding from other recent survey-based research – while adherents of all other faiths – in particular, Sikhism and Buddhism – show markedly higher levels of support for Labour. There is also a considerably higher propensity to vote Labour within the other category. Looking at intention to vote for UKIP, this is more prevalent amongst Anglicans than it is amongst Catholics

Table 3: Current vote intention by religious affiliation (full set of categories)

	Con	Lab	Lib Dem	UKIP	Other party	*Unweighted base*
Anglican (%)	39.3	32.1	7.5	18.3	2.9	4,884
Roman Catholic (%)	29.5	45.3	5.1	12.9	7.3	1,535
Presbyterian/Church of Scotland (%)	24.5	34.9	5.3	7.7	27.7	1,032
Methodist (%)	40.5	34.8	10.5	10.0	4.1	423
Baptist (%)	32.3	36.7	9.7	15.9	5.3	255
United Reformed Church (%)	27.2	35.8	12.3	7.5	16.3	73
Free Presbyterian (%)	21.7	47.8	4.3	17.4	8.7	25
Brethren (%)	15.4	53.8	0.0	30.8	0.0	11
Judaism (%)	46.3	29.9	5.4	11.6	6.2	134
Hinduism (%)	30.9	57.7	3.1	6.2	2.1	65
Islam (%)	14.9	73.0	7.3	0.8	3.6	153
Sikhism (%)	15.4	63.5	5.8	5.9	7.8	34
Buddhism (%)	24.7	38.4	6.8	13.5	17.6	73
Other (%)	23.7	42.9	8.4	11.3	13.7	572
None (%)	26.7	39.6	10.5	12.4	10.8	7,357

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Note: Percentages sum across the rows.

Social issues

As well as shedding some light on the association between religious belonging and party support, the BES 2015 panel study asked questions on equal opportunities for ethnic minorities, women and gays and lesbians. The latter two issues are particularly relevant for religious groups given the various reforms made in relation to same-sex equality under recent governments – most recently, the legalisation of same-sex marriage – and also given debates over the role and status of women within, for example, the Anglicans Church, centring on the issue of women bishops. The questions asked were worded as follows:

Please say whether you think these things have gone too far or have not gone far enough in Britain.

Attempts to give equal opportunities to ethnic minorities.

Attempts to give equal opportunities to women.

Attempts to give equal opportunities to gays and lesbians.

It is worth noting that earlier BES studies asked equivalent questions (equal opportunities for women – asked on the BES surveys from 1974 to 1997, except in 1983; equal opportunities for gays and lesbians and ethnic minorities – asked on the BES surveys from 1987-1997). The pattern of responses for contemporary views based on affiliation is shown in Table 4. What is clear is that all groups are more likely to think that equal opportunities have not gone too far (or not nearly too far) for women compared to the other groups, with around a third or higher adopting this view across all categories of affiliation. In relation to equal opportunities for ethnic minorities, the view that they have not gone far enough is less prevalent across all groups; it is highest for those belonging to other religions, followed by those with no religion. Over two-fifths of Catholics and other Christians, and nearly half of Anglicans, think that equal opportunities have gone too far for ethnic minorities in Britain.

In relation to gays and lesbians, around three-tenths of those with no affiliation think that equal opportunities have not gone far enough (or nearly far enough), with such views less common amongst those with a religious identity. Views that equal opportunities for gays and lesbians have gone too far – perhaps with the recent debate and legalisation of same-sex marriage salient in the minds of some respondents – are higher amongst all religious adherents: for example, such views are twice as likely amongst other Christians as they are amongst those with no religion.

Table 4: Attitudes towards equal opportunities by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Ethnic minorities
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough	10.3	15.1	13.9	26.4	19.5
About right	35.8	36.1	36.9	33.1	37.3
Gone too far or gone much too far	47.4	41.8	43.1	28.4	35.1
Don’t know	6.4	6.9	6.2	12.1	8.2
Women
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough	34.8	36.6	36.0	34.2	37.9
About right	49.2	44.7	43.7	40.1	45.1
Gone too far or gone much too far	12.2	14.4	16.3	15.5	11.2
Don’t know	3.7	4.3	4.0	10.2	5.7
Gays and lesbians
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough	16.0	20.3	14.1	19.6	30.2
About right	42.4	40.5	39.3	32.9	43.0
Gone too far or gone much too far	35.3	32.2	39.9	32.3	19.6
Don’t know	6.2	7.0	6.6	15.2	7.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Summary

The BES 2015 data, as with previous studies in this series, allow for analysis of the political and social opinions of religious groups across different issues. The past (2005 and 2010 elections) and present (current voting intention) patterns of electoral support provide some recent evidence, at first sight, for the traditional associations between religious groups and particular parties. That is, Anglicans still tend to favour the Conservatives over Labour; Catholics show higher levels of support for Labour; and non-Christian religious minorities also are much more likely to favour Labour, with support highest amongst Muslims. Reflecting the clear decline in the party’s public standing since entering into coalition government, levels of support for the Lib Dems have fallen to very low levels across all groups compared their (higher) reported vote share at recent general elections.

In relation to social attitudes, there is greater variation in the views of the religious and non-religious in relation to equal opportunities for ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians, but considerably more agreement in relation to equal opportunities for women, an issue which for the Church of England has been particularly divisive, most recently in relation to the debate over women bishops.

Reference

Fieldhouse, E., J. Green., G. Evans., H. Schmitt, and C. van der Eijk (2014) British Election Study Internet Panel Wave 1.

Posted in Measuring religion, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Research note, Survey news | Tagged 2005 Election, 2010 Election, British Election Studies, British Election Study 2015, equality, gay rights, gender equality, lesbian gay and bisexual people, Political Attitudes, political parties, racial equality, Religious Affiliation, religious belonging, Survey Data, voting, Voting Behaviour, voting intention | 1 Comment

Clergy Voices and Other News

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Clergy voices

A majority (54%) of Anglican clergy thinks the Church of England should retain its current established status, seemingly without modification, according to the first results from a YouGov survey commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University and Westminster Faith Debates for the new series of debates on ‘The Future of the Church of England’, which commenced in Oxford last week.

Respondents comprised 1,509 clergy under the age of 70 from the Anglican Churches in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland who answered 29 questions online between 14 August and 8 September 2014. They had been selected on a random basis (every third name) from Crockford’s Clerical Directory, and questionnaires sent to the 5,000 of the resulting sample of 6,000 for whom email addresses were available. The response rate thus appears to be around 30%. The full findings will not be published until 23 October, the day of the second debate, but data tables for three questions (with breaks by gender, age, church, and ministerial role) are already available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/qouw89178p/Results-for-LancasterUni-WestministerFaith-08092014.pdf

Only 14% of clergy backed the total disestablishment of the Church, with a further 27% favouring some loosening of Church-State ties. Nevertheless, 81% supported the preservation of the principle of an Established Church with some or all of its present privileges. There was also overwhelming acceptance (by 83%) of the importance of maintaining the (creaking) parish system, against 12% saying it was unimportant. Views were more divided about future options for housing the clergy, 49% wanting the Church to continue to provide accommodation, with 18% electing for a higher stipend so that incumbents could arrange their own housing, and 24% wishing both options to be on the table to enable freedom of choice.

An article about the survey appears in the current issue of the Church Times (10 October 2014, p. 4). This contains the toplines for one further question, about the constituency which the Church of England should prioritize. Two-thirds of the clergy replied England as a whole, 18% said Anglicans who do not go to church regularly, 5% regular churchgoers, 7% some other group, with 4% undecided. The article can be read online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/10-october/news/uk/survey-finds-c-of-e-clergy-wedded-to-the-parish-system

Islamic State

Here is a round-up of the latest online polling on the subject of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Topline results only are given; for breaks by demographics, follow the links to data tables.

Britain: 7-8 October 2014

Nine in ten adults rated air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria as a very important (62%) or fairly important (28%) international news story, according to this YouGov poll. The proportion saying the same about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was similar (88%). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ouohbc27zh/InternalResults_141008_news_stories_Ebola_W.pdf

Britain, 8-9 October

The Ebola outbreak (37%) displaced IS (28%) as the most noticed news story of last week, according to Populus interviews with 2,055 persons.

Britain, 9-10 October 2014

The latest YouGov survey for The Sunday Times, for which 2,167 were interviewed, revealed marginally increased majorities in favour of the RAF bombing IS in Iraq (59%) and Syria (54%). However, 60% doubted whether the combination of Western air strikes and Iraqi and Kurdish forces would be sufficient to defeat IS and considered that other ground troops would be needed, even though only 32% approved of the commitment of British and US troops in Iraq (with 47% disapproving). Two-thirds remained opposed to paying ransoms to free British hostages held by IS, with only 9% in favour, but 27% supported the negotiation of other deals with IS (such as prisoner-hostage swaps), with 49% opposed. Three people in ten did not consider that the British media should report the holding and murder of hostages by IS. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/dra8m44o22/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-101014.pdf

London: 24-26 September 2014

A YouGov poll of 1,086 London residents, undertaken for the Evening Standard and published on 8 October, revealed overwhelming opposition (by 74%) to the readmission to the country of British nationals found to have been fighting with extremist groups in Iraq or Syria, such as IS. Just 13% were in favour of letting them back in. Support for Britain and the USA sending in ground troops to Iraq to combat IS was, at 36%, higher than in some national polls, and only 7% behind the disapproval score. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wb3z4vzce8/EveningStandard_141002_ISIS_Website.pdf

Human rights

Four-fifths (79%) of the British public think that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion should be protected as a human right, according to a YouGov poll released on 8 October 2014 for which 2,155 adults were interviewed online on 6-7 October. Most of the other nine potential human rights enquired about also scored around the four-fifths mark, the extremes being the right not to be put into slavery and forced labour (92%) and the right not to be unlawfully arrested or detained without good reason and the right to marry and establish a family (70% each). Freedom of thought, conscience and religion was especially prized by Scots (88%), Labour and Liberal Democrat voters (86%), and the over-60s (84%). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qlmo7myu52/InternalResults_141007_human_rights_W.pdf

Methodists and drink

The latest issue of the Methodist Recorder (10 October 2014, p. 3) reports that University of Exeter doctoral student Jon Curtis has just launched a survey to determine the beliefs and practices regarding alcohol of current or former Methodists aged 18 and over living in England, Wales or Scotland. It forms part of the Coup D’Tea project on the history and future of alcohol in the Methodist Church in Britain. Curtis claims (although this could be disputed) that this is the first study of Methodist attitudes to drink for over 40 years. The questionnaire is intended for an entirely self-selecting sample, so, although it will doubtless generate some interesting illustrative material, it is unlikely to yield statistically representative data. It can be completed online at:

http://coupdtea.tumblr.com/

Abstinence is stereotypically associated with Methodism, yet, as Clive Field showed some years ago, its extent has often been exaggerated, especially among the Methodist laity: ‘“The Devil in Solution”: How Temperate were the Methodists?’, Epworth Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2000, pp. 78-93. On the basis of a fairly systematic trawl of the available statistical evidence, he estimated that total abstinence among Methodists peaked around 1910, when it was practised by approximately 95% of ministers and 50% of members. By 1990 the proportion had sunk to one-fifth in both groups, and it has almost certainly declined further since. Just how far is hard to determine since, although sample surveys of the nation’s drinking habits are not uncommon, it is rare for them to control for religion and, even if they do, it is even rarer for them to identify Methodists. As the latest triennial statistics of mission confirm, Methodism has become such a minority denomination that it no longer shows up accurately in national surveys. Methodists tend to be bundled into an undifferentiated Christian category or classified as other Christians (apart from Anglicans and Catholics).

By way of example of the sort of analysis which is possible, we may cite one question from the 2011 British Social Attitudes Survey: ‘How often do you drink 4 or more alcoholic drinks on the same day?’ Results (weighted) are tabulated below:

	Anglican	Roman Catholic	Other Christian	Non-Christian	No religion
Never	49.9%	46.5%	46.8%	68.4%	34.3%
Once a month or less often	32.1%	29.7%	28.6%	20.0%	31.6%
Several times a month	10.2%	20.2%	18.1%	8.2%	23.8%
Several times a week	5.6%	3.0%	5.2%	1.7%	9.4%
Daily	2.2%	0.6%	1.3%	1.6%	0.9%

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged abstinence, alcohol, British Social Attitudes Survey, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, Clive Field, Coup D’Tea, disestablishment, Epworth Review, Evening Standard, freedom of religion, human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Jon Curtis, Linda Woodhead, London, Methodists, parish system, Populus, Sunday Times, Syria, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Religion and Attitudes Towards Faith Schools

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Ben Clements

The expansion of faith schools in recent years, as part of a broader parental choice and diversity of provision agenda in state-sector education, has been a prominent and divisive issue, both within religious traditions and between religious and secular lobbies. Of course, education has historically been an important battleground for religious groups’ identities and interests, whether the established Church of England, Roman Catholicism, the Nonconformist churches or, more recently, non-Christian faiths. Moreover, the historical and contemporary debate over faith-based schooling has varied in myriad ways across the constituent parts of Britain (and, indeed, in Northern Ireland), reflecting their differing religious compositions and deep-rooted tensions between religious traditions.

The renewed prominence of the faith schools debate as a result of recent government policy has been reflected in various opinion polls conducted to elicit whether faith schools have public backing, and to see whether public perceptions match the claims made by those campaigning on either side of the debate regarding, for example, the (supposed) unfair or biased admissions procedures and policies of faith schools, and their better or worse social and educational outcomes relative to non-faith schools.

Of course, many of the opinion polls on this issue have been covered in previous BRIN posts. This BRIN post reviews the available social survey evidence on religious groups’ attitudes towards faith schools in Britain. It analyses data from the British Social Attitudes surveys (BSA). The main focus is on data from more recent BSA surveys but the discussion starts with a question asked in the BSA 1989 survey:

If you were deciding where to send your children to school, would you prefer a school with children of only your own religion, or a mixed-religion school?

Table 1 shows the full distribution of responses to this question based on religious affiliation (Anglican, Catholic, other Christian or no religion). Catholics stand out for being the most likely to have preferred their children to go to a school of their own religious faith but, even so, this amounts to a just third of Catholic respondents (32.7%). Similar – and very small – proportions of Anglicans, other Christians (including those belonging to the traditional Nonconformist churches and those unaffiliated with a particular tradition) and those with no religious affiliation declared they would prefer to send their children to attend a same-faith school. Around two-thirds of Anglicans, other Christians and those with no affiliation preferred their children to attend a mixed religion school, compared to just under half of Catholics (48.9%). Similar proportions in each group had no preference for either a single faith school or a mixed religion school (nearly a fifth).

Table 1: Preferences for a single religion school or a mixed religion school, by affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	No religion (%)
Own religion only	13.7	32.7	15.7	10.2
Mixed religion	67.4	48.9	66.0	69.9
No preference	17.7	17.1	17.4	18.7
Don’t know	1.1	1.3	0.8	1.3

Source: BSA 1989 survey. Weighted data.

Do preferences on this question vary within religious groups based on their religious practice? Table 2 shows the distribution of opinion for Anglicans, Catholics and other Christians according to whether they are (i) frequent attenders or (ii) infrequent or non-attenders at church services.

Frequent attendance is defined as going once a month or more. It should be noted that, when religious groups are divided on the basis of attendance or other indicator of religiosity, some of the percentages cited will necessarily be based on small numbers in the samples, so the data should be treated with a suitable degree of caution.

The most notable feature of the table is the markedly greater variation in the views of Catholics based on regularity of religious practice compared to Anglicans and other Christians. Catholics who attend services on a frequent basis were much more likely to express a preference for schools belonging to their own faith (44.7%) compared to those who attended less often or not at all (21.8%). Well over half of the infrequent attenders preferred mixed religion schools compared to just under two-fifths of regular churchgoers.

Within the other Christian group, frequent church goers are also more supportive of single religion schools than mixed religion schools, being twice as likely to choose this preference as infrequent or non-attenders (respectively, 22.3% and 10.8%). However, around two-thirds of both of these groups expressed a preference for mixed religion schools. Amongst other Christians, those who attend church less often (or not at all) are much more likely to say they have no preference either way. Amongst Anglicans, there is much less variation based on religious practice. Those who attend services on a less frequent basis (or not at all) are somewhat more likely to express no preference either way.

Table 2: Preferences for a single religion school or a mixed religion school, attendance by affiliation

	Own religion only	Mixed religion	No preference	Don’t know
Anglican: Frequent attender	15.9	70.7	12.2	1.2
Anglican: Infrequent or non-attender	13.2	67.0	18.8	1.1
Catholic: Frequent attender	44.7	38.2	15.8	1.3
Catholic: Infrequent or non-attender	21.8	57.7	19.2	1.3
Other Christian: Frequent attender	22.3	65.2	10.7	1.8
Other Christian: Infrequent or non-attender	10.8	66.9	22.3	0

Source: BSA 1989 survey. Weighted data.

Note: Percentages sum across the rows.

Are these differences based on affiliation and when groups are divided by religious practice evident in more recent BSA surveys which have asked questions on faith schools? The BSA 2003 and 2007 surveys asked several identical questions on faith schools, which tap into different aspects of the wider societal debate – for example, whether they should be expanded to meet the demands of parents and families from non-Christian minority faiths, and the perceived better (or worse) social and educational outcomes of faith schools compared to other schools in the state sector.

How much do you agree or disagree that … the government should fund single religion schools if parents want them.

How much do you agree or disagree that … if the government funds separate Christian faith schools, it should also fund separate schools for other faiths.

How much do you agree or disagree that … single religion schools have a better quality of education than other schools.

How much do you agree or disagree that … single religion schools give children a better sense of right and wrong than other schools.

Another question, asked only in the 2007 survey, asked:

How much do you support or oppose having some schools that are linked to a particular religious denomination, such as Roman Catholic?

Responses to these questions are given in Table 3, based on religious affiliation (and this time also including those from non-Christian faiths). For each question, Table 3 reports the response option favourable towards faith schools: those who strongly agree or agree that the government should fund non-Christian faith schools; those who strongly agree or agree the government should fund single religion schools; those who strongly agree or agree that single religion schools have a better quality of education; those who strongly agree or agree that single religion schools give children a better sense of right and wrong; and those who strongly support or support schools that are linked to a particular religious denomination. Before looking in detail at any differences based on affiliation, it is worth noting that between 2003 and 2007, possibly as the issue became a more controversial and prominent aspect of the debate over education policy, views in support of faith schools tended to decline across the different groups.

Table 3: Attitudes towards faith schools, by affiliation

Question	Response option	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Government should fund non-Christian faith schools	2003: Agree	38.3	56.1	43.1	66.8	41.3
Government should fund non-Christian faith schools	2007: Agree	32.9	49.0	35.2	65.9	35.8
Government should fund single religion schools	2003: Agree	28.2	51.1	32.4	46.1	16.0
Government should fund single religion schools	2007: Agree	24.8	38.7	21.8	36.3	13.8
Single religion schools have a better quality of education	2003: Agree	23.5	40.5	21.2	28.3	12.5
	2007: Agree	21.6	35.7	22.4	30.8	12.6
Single religion schools give children a better sense of right and wrong	2003: Agree	29.8	46.6	32.0	34.1	13.4
	2007: Agree	28.9	39.0	25.9	29.9	11.9
Support schools that are linked to a particular religious denomination	2007: Support	33.3	58.4	31.2	34.5	21.2

Source: BSA 2003 and 2007 surveys. Weighted data.

Looking first at the two questions on government funding of faith schools, it is clear that, in 2003 and 2007, Catholics and those belonging to non-Christian religions are more supportive than Anglicans, other Christians and those with no religion. For example, in 2003, majorities of Catholics and those within non-Christian traditions think that the government should fund faith schools for non-Christian religions; while a majority of the former and a plurality of the latter think the government should, in general, fund faith schools. In terms of the perceived social and educational outcomes of faith schooling, Catholics have the most positive assessments in 2003 and 2007, thinking that faith schools are more likely to provide a better quality of education and to instil a better sense of right and wrong in their pupils. In each case, those belonging to non-Christian religions show the next highest level of positive appraisal. There is a clear divergence in the views of those with and without a religious affiliation, with the latter group much less positive in its views of faith schools. In 2007, 12.6% of those with no affiliation think that such schools provide a better quality of education, while 11.9% think they provide pupils with a better sense of right and wrong. Positive evaluations are much higher across all religious groups, albeit they are usually not a majority.

The question asked only in the 2007 survey (and which, it should be noted, refers to the Roman Catholic faith by way of example), also sorts out the religious and the non-religious to some extent. Again, those with no religion are less supportive of schools linked to particular religious traditions (21.2%). Even so, support amounts to just a third amongst Anglicans, other Christians and non-Christian faiths, but is considerably higher amongst Catholics, at 58.4%, which may partly reflect the specific wording of the question.

As in Table 2, the religious groups in the 2003 and 2007 surveys were subdivided on the basis of their attendance at services, in order to look at attitudinal variation within traditions. Table 4 reports opinions for the same set of questions shown in Table 3. There is a general tendency for those who are frequent attenders – whether Anglican, Catholic or other Christian – to be more supportive of state funding of faith schools and to have more positive appraisals of what they offer to pupils. The highest levels of support – a majority in each case but one – are registered amongst Catholics who attend church on a frequent basis.

Table 4: Attitudes towards faith schools, attendance by affiliation

Question and response option

Anglican: Frequent attender (%)

Anglican: Infrequent or non-attender (%)

Catholic: Frequent attender (%)

Catholic: Infrequent or non-attender (%)

Other Christian: Frequent attender (%)

Other Christian: Infrequent or non-attender (%)

Government should fund non-Christian faith schools: Agree

2003: 50.0

2003: 35.1

2003:

67.9

2003:

44.9

2003:

45.6

2003:

41.5

2007: 37.1

2007: 32.0

2007:

59.8

2007:

41.0

2007:

37.2

2007:

34.0

Government should fund single religion schools: Agree

2003: 42.5

2003: 24.4

2003:

64.5

2003:

38.7

2003:

38.9

2003:

27.8

2007: 41.0

2007: 26.0

2007:

51.0

2007:

29.0

2007:

27.1

2007:

18.4

Single religion schools have a better quality of education: Agree

2003: 36.9

2003: 20.1

2003:

47.7

2003:

33.6

2003:

27.8

2003:

16.7

2007: 40.7

2007: 16.7

2007:

51.0

2007:

23.8

2007:

29.6

2007:

17.6

Single religion schools give children a better sense of right and wrong: Agree

2003: 49.4

2003: 24.6

2003:

56.4

2003:

37.8

2003:

47.0

2003:

21.5

2007: 53.8

2007: 22.6

2007:

53.4

2007:

28.2

2007:

35.4

2007:

19.7

Support schools that are linked to a particular religious denomination: Support

2007: 52.6

2007: 28.8

2007:

76.0

2007:

47.4

2007:

38.9

2007:

25.8

Source: BSA 2003 and 2007 surveys. Weighted data.

As well as attendance, another way of looking at attitudes within religious traditions is on the basis of self-defined religiosity – in this case, how religious individuals are, which was probed in the BSA 2007 survey. For each religious group, respondents have been subdivided into whether they feel (i) very or somewhat religious or (ii) not very or not at all religious. Data are shown in Table 5. Within religious groups, there is marked variation in attitudes towards faith schools on the basis of self-defined religiosity. The general pattern is for those who express a greater degree of religiousness to be more supportive of government funding of faith schools and to have more positive appraisals of what they offer pupils compared to other schools. Amongst Catholics, this is the case for each of the questions. Amongst Anglicans and other Christians, this is also the pattern except for the question on funding faith schools for non-Christian religions, where the differences are much less apparent on the basis of religiosity. The more religious within each group are also much more likely to support schools linked to a particular denomination (with the greatest divergence amongst Catholics and other Christians).

Table 5: Attitudes towards faith schools, religiosity by affiliation

Question and response option	Anglican: Very or somewhat religious (%)	Anglican: Not very or not at all religious (%)	Catholic: Very or somewhat religious (%)	Catholic: Not very or not at all religious (%)	Other Christian: Very or somewhat religious (%)	Other Christian: Not very or not at all religious (%)
Government should fund non-Christian faith schools: Agree	34.5	32.0	55.0	38.4	33.7	37.9
Government should fund single religion schools: Agree	32.1	18.4	42.7	31.2	26.7	14.2
Single religion schools have a better quality of education: Agree	27.3	16.6	46.3	16.5	29.3	11.5
Single religion schools give children a better sense of right and wrong: Agree	36.4	22.2	47.7	23.8	33.3	13.7
Support schools that are linked to a particular religious denomination: Support	38.5	29.2	70.5	37.5	41.5	15.6

Source: BSA 2007 survey. Weighted data.

A question in the 2008 BSA survey also asked about support for faith schools. The question was included in the BSA survey as part of the International Social Survey Programme specialist module on religion. The question was worded as follows:

Some schools are for children of a particular religion. Which of the statements on this card comes closest to your views about these schools.

Table 6 reports the full distribution of responses for this question, based on affiliation. Again, Catholics are most supportive of different religious traditions having faith schools (at 63.3%), with support at similar levels amongst Anglicans, other Christians and non-Christian faiths. Interestingly, over a third of those with no religion also support all religious groups being able to have faith schools. There are generally low levels of support for only some religious groups having their own schools (highest at 16.5% for Anglicans). Catholics are least likely to take the view that there should not be any faith schools (21.6%). This view is more common amongst the other religious groups – Anglicans: 36.3%; other Christians: 37.9%; non-Christian: 44.4% – and is held by nearly half of those with no affiliation (48.3%).

Table 6: Attitudes towards religious groups having their own schools, by affiliation

Response option	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
No religious group should have its own schools	36.3	21.6	37.9	44.4	48.3
Some religious groups but not others should have their own schools	16.5	13.9	14.1	5.7	12.8
Any religious group should be able to have its own schools	44.6	63.3	44.1	48.8	36.8
Don’t know	2.6	1.2	4.0	1.1	2.0

Source: BSA 2008 survey. Weighted data.

Finally, Table 7 shows responses to this question based on attendance within each Christian religious group. For each group, those who are less likely to attend services are more favourable to the view that there should not be any faith schools, highest at over two-fifths for other Christians who go to church (or chapel) infrequently or not at all. Amongst Catholics, support for all groups having their own faith schools varies only a little on the basis of attendance (and is around two-thirds of both groups); whereas, amongst Anglicans and other Christians, frequent attenders are much more likely to express this view. Across each group, the most prevalent opinion is that of allowing all groups to have faith schools with the exception of infrequent or non-attending other Christians, where support for no faith schools is the plurality viewpoint.

Table 7: Attitudes towards religious groups having their own schools, attendance by affiliation

Response option	Anglican: Frequent attender (%)	Anglican: Infrequent or non-attender (%)	Catholic: Frequent attender (%)	Catholic: Infrequent or non-attender (%)	Other Christian: Frequent attender (%)	Other Christian: Infrequent or non-attender (%)
No religious group should have its own schools	24.2	38.9	14.9	25.2	22.3	45.3
Some religious groups but not others should have their own schools	14.3	17.0	18.9	11.5	12.4	14.8
Any religious group should be able to have its own schools	59.3	41.4	66.2	61.8	60.3	36.3
Don’t know	2.2	2.8	0.0	1.5	5.0	3.5

Source: BSA 2008 survey. Weighted data.

Summary

This review of religious groups’ attitudes towards faith schools – across various questions and using different measures of religiosity – points up two noteworthy findings. Firstly, when looking at attitudes on the basis of affiliation, Catholics have tended to hold the most supportive views of faith schools, whether that is for public funding in general or for non-Christian traditions, or in terms of what they offer their pupils compared to other schools. Not surprisingly, those who declare they have no religious affiliation tend to be least favourable towards the claims of faith-based schooling. Secondly, when looking at views within religious groups, it is apparent that the more religious – as manifested in regular attendance and a greater sense of religiousness – have more favourable views of faith schools. Accordingly, the most favourable views are held by more religiously-involved or committed Catholics. There is, then, considerable attitudinal variation within religious groups in terms of support or opposition towards faith schools, and therefore – at the level of ordinary adherents – views do not align with simplistic notions of an overarching religious-secular divide over the appropriate role of religion in the public sphere.

Further reading:

Clements, B. (2010), ‘Understanding public attitudes in Britain towards faith schools’, British Educational Research Journal, 36(6): 953–973.

Patrikios, S. and Curtice, J. (2014), ‘Attitudes Towards School Choice and Faith Schools in the UK: A Question of Individual Preference or Collective Interest?’, Journal of Social Policy, 43(3): 517-534.

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Research note, Survey news, Uncategorized | Tagged British Social Attitudes Survey, education, Faith schools, Religion, Religion and Politics, religious attendance, religious belonging, self-assessed religiosity, Survey Data | Leave a comment

Scottish Independence and Other News

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Scottish independence

The referendum on Scottish independence is now behind us (it was held on 18 September 2014), and we know that a majority of residents of Scotland has voted to remain in the United Kingdom. The referendum campaign was accompanied by a spate of opinion polls in Scotland, mostly conducted online, which explored attitudes and voting intentions from a variety of perspectives. However, none of these appear to have asked about the faith of respondents, so we had no clear idea how religion may have influenced views on Scottish independence. The closest we came to that dimension was a series of articles and interviews in the print media by the historian Sir Tom Devine speculating on the shifting attitudes of Scottish Catholics on the prospects of independence for Scotland, and drawing on some less than current data from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey.

It is therefore gratifying to note that Lord Ashcroft has surveyed the actual voting in the referendum of 2,047 Scottish residents. They were contacted by telephone or online on 18 and 19 September, after they had filled in their ballot paper, the voting of this sample almost exact mirroring the national results. The survey tabulations were published on 19 September at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scotland-Post-Referendum-poll-Full-tables-1409191.pdf

As the following table, calculated from Ashcroft’s data, makes clear, there does appear to have been a simplistic correlation between religious affiliation and referendum voting patterns. Essentially, the majority of Catholics, non-Christians, and those professing no religion all favoured independence. It was only the votes of Protestants which saved the United Kingdom. The vast majority of these affiliate to the Church of Scotland and may have been influenced by the fact that the Queen has a strong relationship with it, albeit she is not its Supreme Governor (as she is in respect of the Church of England). The reality is likely to be far more complex than this, as a multivariate analysis of the dataset would doubtless reveal (if it ever becomes available), but these figures suggest that religion cannot be discounted from having some bearing on how people voted.

% across	No vote	Yes vote
Total	54.6	45.4
Christians: Catholic	43.0	57.0
Christians: Non-Catholic	69.1	30.9
Non-Christians	36.4	63.6
No religion	44.3	55.7

Church and State

Talking of establishment, ComRes replicated for ITV News on 12-14 September 2014 a question about the official link between the Church of England and the State which it had first posed some three months earlier. Respondents, of whom there were 2,052 in the second online poll, were asked whether the maintenance of such a link was good or bad for Britain. The plurality was undecided on the issue, but, as the table below indicates, more now believe that establishment is bad than consider it good. It seems especially unpopular in Scotland (45%) and North-East England (40%). The full data can be found on pp. 42-3 of the tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_15th_September_2014.pdf

% down	27-29 June	12-14 Sept	Change
Good	33	28	-5
Bad	29	32	+3
Don’t know	38	40	+2

Islamic State

The referendum on Scottish independence dominated the news last week, being the most noticed story for 61% of Britons, according to an online poll of 2,260 adults by Populus on 17-18 September 2014. The various manifestations of the Islamic State (IS) crisis in Iraq and Syria, including the murder of British hostage David Haines, were thus pushed down the agenda somewhat, but remained the top story for 13%. However, there have been two new IS-related online surveys by YouGov, as follows:

15-16 September 2014

YouGov replicated a sub-set of questions last asked in its poll of 4-5 September 2014. They were put to a sample of 1,977 respondents. Notwithstanding the intervening murder by IS of David Haines, and the threat to kill another British captive, public attitudes to the IS crisis had only slightly hardened, notably in respect of support for RAF air strikes against IS targets, up from 52% to 54% in the case of Iraq and from 48% to 52% in Syria (where Haines was almost certainly killed). There was overwhelming (70%) opposition to the payment of ransoms to secure the release of British hostages, albeit 63% endorsement for a British military rescue operation to free them. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/x2r1cq8rs3/YG-Archive-140917-IS.pdf

18-19 September 2014

The second poll, for The Sunday Times, interviewed 2,126 adults. Relative to the survey of three days before, there had been slight dips in the level of support for RAF air strikes against IS in Iraq (down 1%, to 53%) and Syria (down 1%, to 51%), and the commitment of British and American ground troops against IS in Iraq (down 2%, to 24%, with disapproval on 55%). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wpbxyfjd7p/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140919.pdf

Journal of Contemporary Religion

The latest issue (Vol. 29, No. 3, October 2014) of Journal of Contemporary Religion, published online on 9 September 2014, includes two articles and one book review by members of the BRIN team which may be of interest to readers of this website. The issue can be accessed at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjcr20/29/3#.VBcogTZwbX4

Ben Clements, ‘Assessing the Determinants of the Contemporary Social Attitudes of Roman Catholics in Britain: Abortion and Homosexuality’ (pp. 491-501) is based on secondary analysis of a YouGov survey of 1,636 professing British Catholic adults on the eve of the papal visit to Scotland and England in September 2010. On the two social issues investigated significant numbers of Catholics held liberal views which diverged from the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the most traditionalist (and socially conservative) among the faithful being found to be men, older people, and frequent Mass-goers.

Clive Field, ‘Is the Bible Becoming a Closed Book? British Opinion Poll Evidence’ (pp. 503-28) utilizes 123 national sample surveys of the adult general population and 35 national and local sample surveys of adult religious populations to study changes in the standing of the Bible in Britain since the Second World War. The analysis proceeds both at topline level and by breaks for gender, age, social class, religious denomination, and churchgoing. Twelve broad conclusions are drawn, with declining allegiance to the Bible visible on various fronts, even among regular churchgoers. In an everyday sense, one interpretation of the data could be that Christianity is becoming decoupled from the holy book on which it is founded. This process is attributed to the waning influence of three principal agencies of religious socialization (Church/Sunday school, state school, parents) which formerly underpinned the Bible’s role in faith and society.

The book review (pp. 555-6) is by David Voas and is of The World’s Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography, by Todd Johnson and Brian Grim (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Charity Brand Index

The Methodist Recorder (12 September 2014, p. 2) reports that Methodist Homes (MHA) has been named the most trusted charity in the UK in 2014 according to the sixth Charity Brand Index published by Third Sector Research on the basis of an online survey of 4,000 adults by Harris Interactive. MHA’s trustworthiness rating stood at 85%, the highest of the 150 charities evaluated in the Index. This is just one facet by which these charities are ranked by the public, other measures including recognition, willingness to donate, effectiveness of media coverage and advertising, attitudes towards the charity’s cause, and understanding of the charity’s work. Unfortunately, the Index is a fully commercial product, the report and dataset costing £1,750, so BRIN is unable to provide further details of results for religion-related charities more generally. However, the top ten charities overall this year are not obviously religious in character; they are listed in the online edition of Third Sector at:

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/cancer-research-uk-named-best-charity-brand-2014/communications/article/1309460

Christmas campaign

The Christmas Starts with Christ 2014 campaign, co-ordinated by ChurchAds.Net on behalf of a consortium of Churches and Christian agencies, was announced on 10 September 2014, with a range of downloadable resources, including posters, radio commercials, and web banners. The campaign officially kicks off on 30 November (Advent Sunday), with churches being invited to hold a Christmas Starts Sunday in December. The organizers hope that 10,000 places of worship will get involved this year.

During the summer (13 June 2014) Christmas Starts with Christ also released statistics of its 2013 campaign, in which an estimated 4,500 churches participated and advertising became genuinely multi-platform. The campaign’s three ‘chat show’ radio advertisements – featuring Mary, Herod, and the innkeeper – were heard by five million listeners. There were 3.55 million opportunities to see a #ChristmasStarts tweet on Twitter. Three ‘thunderclaps’ reached 1.31 million people via social media. The campaign website attracted 139,000 pageviews, 25% more than in 2012 and double the level in 2011. A post-campaign survey by ComRes in January 2014 revealed that 67% of Britons felt the Christmas message had been conveyed effectively by the campaign and 49% acknowledged the advertising had made them think more about the true meaning of Christmas. The ‘2013 – Our Year in Numbers’ summary is at:

http://christmasstartswithchrist.com/docs/2013/CSWC_2013_review.pdf

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Ben Clements, Bible, Charity Brand Index, Christmas Starts with Christ, Church and State, Church of England, Clive Field, ComRes, David Voas, establishment, Harris Interactive, homosexuality, Iraq, Islamic State, ITV News, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Lord Ashcroft Polls, Populus, Roman Catholics, Scotland, Scottish independence referendum, Sunday Times, Syria, Third Sector Research, YouGov | Leave a comment

Islamic State and Other News

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Islamic State

According to opinion polling published in the past week, the British public is becoming uneasy about the advances being made by the armed forces of the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) in northern Iraq, its brutal persecution of ethno-religious minorities there, and the humanitarian crisis left in its wake.

A ComRes survey for ITV News, conducted online on 12 August 2014 among 1,088 adult Britons, found that 84% blamed IS for the current situation in Iraq. The same proportion wanted Britain to send humanitarian aid to the Yazidis then trapped by IS on Mount Sinjar, with 73% wishing to see British helicopters used to airlift them to safety. A plurality (45%) supported British fighter planes making airstrikes on the Islamists (which have yet to happen), but there was much less appetite (18%) for British troops becoming embroiled in ground combat against them. The potential fate of the Iraqi Christian community was a particular cause for concern, no fewer than 50% (including 62% of the over-65s) wanting Britain to give asylum to those currently at risk of death, even though no numbers were specified, just 29% being against. Full tables for these and other ComRes questions on Iraq are located at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Iraq_Crisis_Snap_Poll_12th_August_2014.pdf

YouGov has conducted three polls, all online among samples of adults aged 18 and over: on 10-11 August 2014 (n = 1,676), 11-12 August 2014 (n = 1,942, for The Times), and 14-15 August 2014 (n = 2,019, for The Sunday Times). They revealed strong backing (around three-quarters) for the RAF’s involvement in the airlifting of humanitarian aid to members of religious minorities fleeing the Islamists, with a plurality of around two-fifths approving of RAF airstrikes against IS (albeit a majority backed similar action being taken by the Americans). However, only 28% endorsed the supply of arms by Britain to Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, with 44% opposed, and no more than one-fifth favoured the engagement of British and American ground troops against IS (58% disapproving). A potential British offer of asylum to ‘some of the Yazidi people’ was less popular than in the ComRes poll in respect of Iraqi Christians, approval running at 34% and disapproval at 46%. Two-thirds discerned IS to be a major or moderate threat to Britain itself. YouGov data tables are available as follows:

10-11 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2a3r3j0yj4/InternalResults_140811_Iraq_aid_and_air_strikes_W.pdf

11-12 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3otq667g5p/Times_Results_140812_Iraq_aid_and_air_strikes_W.pdf

14-15 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bm0fuq6bgy/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140815.pdf

A Level results

This summer’s A Level results for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) on 14 August 2014. Entrants for Religious Studies (RS) numbered 24,213, a rise of 3.7% over the previous year, notwithstanding a 2.0% reduction in those for all subjects. RS entries represented 2.9% of all A Levels sat. RS A Level candidates were preponderantly female (69.3%), compared with the all subject average of 54.4%. The RS pass rate (at grades A*-E) in RS was 98.5%, half a point above the figure for all A Levels, with 24.8% gaining A* or A in RS (marginally down on the 25.5% for RS in 2013 and also lower than the 26.0% achieved for all subjects in 2014). Results are further disaggregated by the three home nations. Entries for the AS (Advanced Subsidiary) Level in RS rose even more impressively, by 12.2%, far more than the 5.0% for all AS Level subjects. The full JCQ tables are at:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels

Church of England finance statistics

The Church of England published its national and diocesan finance statistics for 2012 on 14 August 2014, in 25 pages of tables, figures, and commentary, and based on the annual parochial returns (as distinct from the central accounts of the Church Commissioners, which are entirely separate). After three years of deficit, parishes reached break-even point in 2012 through a combination of reductions in expenditure and increased giving. However, donor income, while at a record level, has not kept pace with inflation, being up by just 0.4% on the year (reflecting lower Gift Aid payments from HMRC and slightly fewer regular donors). Full details at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2048371/2012financestatistics.pdf

Church of England clergy survey

The latest issue of the Church Times (15 August 2014, p. 5) reports that YouGov is to carry out an online survey of the background and attitudes of 5,000 Anglican clergy aged 70 and under, randomly selected from Crockford’s Clerical Directory. The poll has been commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with a new series of Westminster Faith Debates on ‘The Future of the Church of England’, to be held in Oxford during the autumn of 2014, in association with Ripon College Cuddesdon and the Church Times. For more information about the programme, go to:

http://faithdebates.org.uk/category/debates/2014-debates/oxford-faith-debates-the-future-of-the-church-of-england/

Attitudes to homosexuality

The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic change in public views of homosexuality in Britain, as recently documented by Ben Clements and Clive Field in ‘Public Opinion Toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights in Great Britain’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 2, Summer 2014, pp. 523-47. Deploying a wide range of attitudinal measures, presented in 31 tables and commentary, they demonstrate some of the key turning-points in this process of liberalization, including the setback brought about by AIDS in the mid-1980s and the rapid improvements in perceptions which have occurred since the Millennium. The abstract and options for accessing the full text of the article are located at:

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/78/2/523.abstract

In line with the journal’s template for contributions to its series of poll trends, the authors reproduce topline data only, for representative probability samples of adult Britons, and with no breaks by standard demographics, including religion (albeit relatively few surveys actually included religious affiliation as a variable). However, two of their tables do have a religion component, based on discontinued series of Gallup data. Table 14 summarizes answers to the question: ‘in your opinion, can a homosexual be a good Christian, Jew, etc. or not?’ In six of seven surveys between 1977 and 1993 around three-quarters answered in the affirmative, and just over one-tenth in the negative. However, much more discomfort was expressed about the appointment of homosexual clergy in six polls from 1977 to 1991 (Table 16), with the plurality (and, in 1986, a majority) opposed. Only in 1991 were more people reconciled to the prospect (49%) than not (41%).

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain have certainly increased since armed conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted again in Gaza in early July 2014. So much so that, among British Jewry, ‘63% say there may be no future for Jews in UK.’ Thus proclaimed the headline on the front page of the current issue (15 August 2014) of The Jewish Chronicle, the percentage appearing in thick, bold characters almost seven centimetres high. In the relatively brief story which followed, the newspaper explained that: ‘in a straw poll conducted by the JC this week, 150 people were asked: “Since the protests against the war in Gaza began, have you or your friends had a discussion about whether there is a future for Jews in the UK?” Just over 63 per cent answered “yes”’.

More information was revealed in an editorial on p. 28: ‘This week’s front-page story is not something we ever thought would be published. The poll is not scientific; we simply approached 150 people randomly in the street. But it accurately reflects the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of recent weeks. Emphatically, that does not mean that 63 per cent of us are preparing to leave. But it is deeply shocking that the stench of antisemitism is now so pungent that many in our community feel the question has to be asked.’ In an obvious slip of the pen, the editor then proceeded misleadingly to describe the poll as ‘a random sample of British Jews’.

Given that the survey has been widely reported in the online media, in Britain and overseas, thereby acquiring some authority, it is important to recognize that this is little more than a ‘voodoo poll’, to use market research industry jargon, and not necessarily representative of Jewish opinion in the country. The small sample size and inadequate sample selection process undermine its wider validity. This is a useful reminder of the difficulties of gauging the views of religious minorities which are so thinly and/or unevenly spread as not to show up in sufficient numbers in nationally representative sample surveys of all adults.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged A Levels, Anti-Semitism, asylum, Ben Clements, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, examinations, finance, Gallup Poll, homosexuality, Iraq, Islamic State, ITV News, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Joint Council for Qualifications, Linda Woodhead, Public Opinion Quarterly, religious studies, Sunday Times, The Times, Westminster Faith Debates, Yazidis, YouGov | Leave a comment

Women in the Church and Other News

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Women in the Church

Prompted by the recent debate (and decisive vote) about women bishops in the Church of England’s General Synod, Opinium Research resolved to test public opinion about several facets of the role of women in the Church. Questions were put to an online sample of 2,003 UK adults on 11-14 July 2014, with the results being published on 15 July. Key data are tabulated below for meaningfully-sized demographic sub-groups (unfortunately, some sub-groups, including regular churchgoers, had too few cases to be statistically reliable).

Q1.0 Women should be allowed to become bishops in the Church of England

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	56	7	37
Men	52	8	41
Women	60	6	34
18-34	52	4	43
35-54	57	7	37
55+	58	9	33
Anglican	62	7	31
Catholic	42	15	42
No religion	58	3	39

Q1.1 Women should be allowed to become clergy in the Roman Catholic Church

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	53	8	40
Men	49	9	42
Women	56	6	37
18-34	51	7	42
35-54	56	7	37
55+	51	9	40
Anglican	56	6	38
Catholic	48	24	28
No religion	54	4	43

Q1.2 The ordination of women is not consistent with Christian teaching

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	21	30	49
Men	25	25	50
Women	18	35	47
18-34	27	19	54
35-54	22	30	48
55+	15	40	45
Anglican	20	36	44
Catholic	36	24	41
No religion	15	30	55

Q1.3 Gender equality in religious organisations should be enforced by law

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	38	20	42
Men	35	22	42
Women	40	18	42
18-34	41	14	45
35-54	41	17	42
55+	32	28	40
Anglican	40	20	40
Catholic	27	35	37
No religion	40	13	46

Q1.4 Whether or not women are allowed to become priests or bishops is an important issue for the 21st century

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	46	14	40
Men	40	17	43
Women	52	10	37
18-34	43	11	46
35-54	45	14	41
55+	50	15	34
Anglican	55	10	34
Catholic	49	23	29
No religion	39	16	45

Q1.5 Whether or not women should be ordained as clergy is entirely a matter for each Christian denomination to decide

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	44	15	40
Men	46	12	41
Women	43	18	40
18-34	35	17	49
35-54	44	16	40
55+	53	13	34
Anglican	53	11	36
Catholic	58	18	25
No religion	32	21	48

At first sight, these results may seem a little surprising. Given the legislative and other strides taken toward gender equality in Britain, otherwise reflected in strong support in public opinion polling, the fact that, at best, only a slim majority appears to favour a greater role for women in the Church strikes one as odd. But the solution to the puzzle lies in the very substantial numbers unable to express a view on the matters surveyed (Q1.2 being a particular case in point), often, one imagines, because they considered themselves insufficiently well-informed to make a judgment or because they were indifferent to the issue. This is a phenomenon characteristic of a lot of polling on religion (see, also, the item on disestablishment, below).

Beyond that, females tended to endorse a stronger role for women in the Church than males, but the effect of age was less consistent save the disproportionate tendency of the 18-34s not to take sides. Anglicans were generally more favourable than Catholics to women assuming more responsibility in Church life, albeit almost half the latter endorsed women priests. People of no religion were only marginally more likely to take a gender diversity stance than the average, and they were disproportionately to be found among those registering as neutral or don’t know.

The full data are available at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4677_opinium_pr_women_bishops_external.pdf

British values

The so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ plot in Birmingham schools recently triggered a political debate about the need to instil ‘British values’ in our children and citizens more generally. In BRIN’s post of 28 June 2014 we noted an initial attempt by ComRes on 11-13 June to define those values, by offering a representative sample of Britons a list of twelve candidate values, from which they were asked to select the most important. They included religious freedom (which was actually ranked tenth in significance).

Subsequently, on 25-27 June 2014, ICM Research (on behalf of British Future) proposed an alternative list of ten items to its online sample of 2,030 adults aged 18 and over. On this occasion, respondents were not specifically asked to rank them but to identify any which they deemed a ‘British value’. Respect for other people’s religion and beliefs was so regarded by 52% (with highs of 67% among the over-65s and 62% for the top AB social group), placing it in seventh position. The most prized British value was respect for the law (69%) and the least respect for MPs and others in elected office (18%). Data tables are at:

http://www.icmresearch.com/data/media/pdf/British%20Future-British-Values-June%202014-V2.pdf

Disestablishment

Only one-third of Britons think the official link between the Church of England and the state is good for Britain, according to a survey by ComRes for ITV News on 27-29 June 2014, for which 2,049 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online. Support was greatest among the over-65s (41%), the top (AB) social group (40%), and retired people with a private pension (42%); it was least in Scotland (19%). The link was considered bad by 29% overall, peaking at 35% for men and in Wales and at 42% in Scotland. The remaining 38% of respondents were unable to express any view on the matter, rising to 46% in the case of the 18-24s and lowest (DE) social group, thereby reinforcing the impression from other polls that indifference and ignorance effectively help to shore up the current establishment of the Church. Full data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_EU__30th_June_2014.pdf

Gay cake row

The Christian Institute has taken up the case of the Christian family-run bakery in Belfast (Ashers Baking Company) which has been threatened with prosecution by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for its refusal to decorate a cake promoting same-sex marriage (which is not legal in the province). This followed a complaint against the business lodged by a gay activist. In pursuit of its campaign, the Institute commissioned ComRes to pose several questions to an online sample of 2,007 Britons on 16-17 July 2014, the results being published on 23 July.

Three-fifths of respondents thought the Commission had acted in a disproportionately heavy-handed way, with just 14% dissenting. A plurality (45%) agreed with the suggestion that ‘Christian-run businesses appear to be being singled out unfairly by gay activists in order to make an example of them’, and this was especially felt by men (54%), Conservatives (55%), the over-65s (62%), and UKIP voters (66%). One-quarter disagreed with the proposition (including one-third of under-35s and of Labourites and Liberal Democrats and 38% of Scots), while 30% voiced no opinion. Full results can be located at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/CI_Bakery_Poll_July_2014.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Ashers Baking Company, Bishops, British Future, British values, Christian businesses, Christian Institute, Church of England, ComRes, disestablishment, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, gender equality, ICM Research, ITV News, Opinium Research, ordination of women, priests, respect for religion and beliefs, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage | 2 Comments

Mid-Summer Miscellany

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Burka

The burka (and thus Islam) has been in the news again during the past week, partly because the European Court of Human Rights has upheld France’s ban on wearing the full face-veil in public (a similar ban also operates in Belgium), and partly because an imam has written to The Times to point out that ‘there is no Koranic mandate for female facial masks’ and to suggest that wearing the burka in public should be made illegal in the UK.

The latest publicity has prompted Opinium Research to test the popular mood in the UK, and the company put several questions to an online sample of 2,004 adults between 4 and 7 July 2014. Topline results are tabulated below, revealing two-thirds of people in favour of banning the burka, similar to other polls in recent years, albeit one-quarter expressed some concern on the grounds of implications for human rights and individual freedoms.

%	Agree	Disagree
Burqa, or full veil, should be banned in public places	68	14
Burqa a predominantly cultural rather than religious requirement	66	8
Banning burqa would give women who wear it less freedom	24	39
Banning burqa would be serious breach of rights of women	26	46
What people wear in public legitimate topic of public debate	62	11
What people wear, even in public, entirely private matter	26	48

Breaks by sex, age, and region, which show over-55s to be most illiberal in their views on all the questions, are also available at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4663_opinium_pr_veils_tables.pdf

Jihadists

The British Muslim community has also been in the headlines because of official confirmation that several hundred of its members have been engaged in jihad in Syria and Iraq, with a proportion of them potentially continuing their struggle on their return to Britain. The news has inevitably led to public concern, as recorded in a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, for which 1,936 adults were interviewed online on 26-27 June 2014. Two-thirds of respondents felt that there was a serious danger of such jihadists undertaking terrorist attacks in this country, and this view was particularly held by Conservatives (78%), UKIP supporters (87%), and the over-60s (77%); just 17% believed the risk has been exaggerated. Social media have proved an effective vehicle for jihadist propaganda, and 61% were convinced that these media could be doing much more to prevent this happening, with 12% disagreeing and 27% unsure. Similarly, 63% of Britons considered that there was much more which Muslim community leaders could be doing to help the authorities identify young people who might become jihadists, a position again disproportionately taken up by Conservatives (76%), UKIP voters (85%), and the over-60s (74%); only 12% assessed that such leaders were doing all they reasonably could to assist, the remaining 25% expressing no opinion. In answer to a hypothetical question about having a Muslim child (including a convert), 63% said that they would inform the police if he had gone on jihad in Syria, while 8% would not, and 29% were uncertain what they would do. Full data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/s703u4qd5l/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-270614.pdf

Sunday trading

The overwhelming majority of Britons (77%) appear content with the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994, which limits the opening of large shops in England and Wales to a maximum of six hours on a Sunday. This is according to a ComRes poll for the Association of Convenience Stores, released on 1 July 2014, and for which 1,004 adults were interviewed by telephone between 28 and 30 March 2014. The survey was presumably triggered by recent agitation on the part of some of the retail giants to get these restrictions lifted. Support for the status quo was highest in Scotland (86%), to which the law does not apply, but otherwise did not vary much by demographics (including by religious affiliation). Opposition to the six-hour rule was voiced by 20%, peaking at 30% in South-East England, albeit it sprang from a variety of motives. Among this minority, 56% wished to see no Sunday opening of large shops at all, while 23% wanted their hours to be reduced; on the other hand, 5% opted for a small increase in permitted opening hours and 17% for complete deregulation of Sunday trading, enabling large shops to open for as long as they desired. Data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ACS_Public_Sunday_Trading_Tables_31_March_2014.pdf

Church and clergy

In a seminal article in Social Forces in 1994 Mark Chaves sought to redefine secularization as declining religious authority. His reformulation has hitherto been little examined in a British context, but Clive Field has now used it as a framework for considering changing views of Church and clergy: ‘Another Window on British Secularization: Public Attitudes to Church and Clergy since the 1960s’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 28, No. 2, June 2014, pp. 190-218. This is, in effect, a meta-analysis of opinion poll evidence from the last half-century, derived from 125 non-recurrent surveys and 15 time series (incorporating 114 data points). Much comparative information about other institutions and professions is also provided, notably in the twelve tables. The standing of Church and clergy in Britain is shown to have diminished, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, mirroring the net decline in institutional Christianity revealed in performance indicators of church membership, attendance, rites of passage, and affiliation. This loss of status, it is argued, reflects, not merely the passive effects of a secularizing climate, but active disenchantment with policies and practices pursued by Church and clergy, especially in respect of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church. Access options for the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2014.923765#.U7cR4DZwbX4

Roman Catholic pastoral statistics

The Catholic Directory of England and Wales has been a standard source of statistical information about the Roman Catholic Church for more than a century. The statistical section was dropped by the editor from the 2013 edition, on the grounds of doubts about the quality of the data, bur reinstated in the 2014 edition (in respect of returns for 2012). Unfortunately, the new data are also flawed, according to the first of three blogs by Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre (PRC), subjecting the Catholic Directory figures to forensic examination. This first blog, published on 7 June 2014, reviewed the Catholic Directory’s table of Roman Catholic population, highlighting several problems. In brief, two dioceses failed to send in data (so there is no national total); other diocesan returns were incomplete, sometimes as a consequence of the belated or non-cooperation of parish priests; and most dioceses failed to implement adequate data collection and quality control procedures. As a result, Spencer argues, the Catholic population estimates are ‘meaningless and useless’ and ‘utterly misleading’. The claim is demonstrated by reference to the PRC’s own estimates for several dioceses. The Catholic Directory’s figures thereby exemplify the ‘highly dysfunctional statistics regime’ and ‘chaotic arrangements’ operated by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales since 2000-01. Regrettably, according to Spencer, the Catholic hierarchy has thus far ignored all proposals by the PRC to put a more systematic and credible statistics gathering process in hand. The blog can be read at:

http://www.prct.org.uk/

Religious hatred in Scotland

Criminalized religious hatred is declining in Scotland, according to Janine McKenna and Kathryn Skivington, Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2013-14, which was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 13 June 2014. In 2013-14 there were 635 criminal charges relating to religious prejudice in Scotland laid under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 or Sections 1 and 6 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. This represented a decrease of 17% on the 2012-13 total and of 29% since 2011-12. The majority of those charged were men (90%) and a plurality (47%) aged 16-30, while in 59% of cases the accused was described by the police as being under the influence of alcohol. The faiths targeted were Roman Catholicism (63%), Protestantism (29%), Islam (8%), and Judaism (2%). Almost half (48%) of victims were police officers. Many cases are still ongoing, but, of those which have already been concluded, 85% resulted in a conviction, with a monetary penalty (39%), community penalty (30%), or a custodial sentence (24%) being the principal resolutions. The report is at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00452559.pdf

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Association of Convenience Stores, Burka, Catholic Directory, church, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, Contemporary British History, crime, Islamophobia, Janine McKenna, jihad, Kathryn Skivington, Muslims, Opinium Research, Pastoral Research Centre, religious authority, religious dress, religious hatred, Roman Catholic Church, Scotland, Scottish Government Social Research, sectarianism, secularization, Sunday Times, Sunday trading, Tony Spencer, YouGov | 1 Comment

Recent Journal Articles and Other News

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Clive D. Field

As well as carrying the usual miscellany of news, this post reports on a selection of recent articles in academic journals which may be of interest to BRIN users. We give a URL for each, in line with our standard practice, but it should be noted that the articles themselves are behind paywalls, only available ‘free’ to those with a personal or institutional paid subscription to the journal concerned. If you do not have such access, you can use the online pay-per-view option or ask your local library to obtain a copy.

Religious polarization

Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme (Nuffield College, University of Oxford), ‘Toward Religious Polarization? Time Effects on Religious Commitment in US, UK, and Canadian Regions’, Sociology of Religion, Vol. 75, No. 2, Summer 2014, pp. 284-308.

http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/75/2/284.abstract

The article tests the theory of polarization between religious and secular people by reference to cross-sectional datasets for 13 regions in three countries from 1985 to 2009-10. The four UK regions are England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The UK datasets are the British, Scottish, and Northern Ireland Social Attitudes Surveys and the Northern Ireland Life and Times Surveys, with a combined sample of 118,244 respondents. A religious commitment typology was devised from measures of self-reported religious affiliation and religious attendance to produce three categories of: no religion, affiliate but attend less than monthly (nominally affiliated), and affiliate and attend monthly or more (committed). Increasing polarization is shown to have occurred in England, Wales, and Scotland (also in Alberta and British Columbia) in that, while there has been undoubted growth in nones over time, the proportion of religiously committed has been fairly stable, thereby averting a decline of religion into nothing. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, religious commitment has decreased and nominal affiliation has risen.

Religious attendance

Marion Burkimsher (University of Lausanne), ‘Is Religious Attendance Bottoming Out? An Examination of Current Trends Across Europe’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 53, No. 2, June 2014, pp. 432-45.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12111/abstract

The article examines self-reported religious attendance monthly or more in 24 European countries (including 10 ex-Communist states) on the basis of European Values Studies and European Social Surveys for the years 1990-2012. Four different methods of assessing trends in religious participation are deployed: inter-cohort differentials, attendance of young people (aged 18-29), attendance by post-war cohorts born in 1950-81, and life-course variations (child versus young adult). Overall, decline is being experienced in some previously high-attending Catholic countries, while attendance in traditionally secular countries (including Britain) is stabilizing at a relatively low level. Only on the child-adult attendance measure was a decline recorded in Britain. A few ex-Communist countries are seeing sustained growth.

UK religious census

A.J. Christopher (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University), ‘The Religious Question in the United Kingdom Census, 1801-2011’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 65, No. 3, July 2014, pp. 601-19.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9281949&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0022046912003636

The author offers an overview of the historical debates and controversies, inside and outside Parliament, surrounding the attempts to include a religion question in the population census of the various nations comprising the United Kingdom. Apart from Ireland (where a question on religious affiliation was included from 1861) and in Northern Ireland (from 1926), these efforts only succeeded in mainland Britain in 2001. The principal exception was the one-off census of religious accommodation and worship in 1851, which is barely discussed by Christopher, notwithstanding the vast primary and secondary literature to which it has given rise. The most detailed consideration in his article is reserved for the debates on the 1861 and 1911 censuses, while the survey of the campaign in the 1990s to add religion to the 2001 census schedule is somewhat brief and fails to cite several of the published first-hand accounts.

Anti-Catholicism

Clive Field (University of Birmingham and University of Manchester), ‘No Popery’s Ghost: Does Popular Anti-Catholicism Survive in Contemporary Britain?’ Journal of Religion in Europe, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014, pp. 116-49.

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18748929-00702004

In accordance with the self-archiving policy of the publisher (Brill), an open access version of this article is also available on the author’s personal website at:

https://clivedfield.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/anti-catholicism-published.pdf

Anti-Catholicism has been a feature of British history from the Reformation, but it has been little studied for the period since the Second World War, and rarely using quantitative methods. A thematically-arranged aggregate analysis of around 180 opinion polls among representative samples of adults since the 1950s offers insights into developing attitudes of the British public to Catholics and the Catholic Church. Anti-Catholicism against individual Catholics is found to have diminished. Negativity toward the Catholic Church and its leadership has increased, especially since the Millennium. Generic and specific explanations are offered for these trends, within the context of other manifestations of religious prejudice and other religious changes.

Jediism

Beth Singler (Pembroke College, University of Cambridge), ‘“See Mom It is Real”: The UK Census, Jediism, and Social Media’, Journal of Religion in Europe, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014, pp. 150-68.

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18748929-00702005;jsessionid=23bvmdgci17ic.x-brill-live-02

The author considers Jediism (of Star Wars fame) as an ‘invented’ New Religious Movement (NRM) and, in particular, its ‘Internet Event’, in the shape of online campaigns to encourage self-identification as Jedi Knight in response to the religion question in the 2001 and 2011 UK censuses of population. These campaigns had significant impact in 2001, with 390,127 individuals (0.7% of UK residents) writing in Jedi as their religion from a wide variety of motivations, including as a joke, but were much less effective in 2011 (when there were 176,632 Jedis). In practice, the Office for National Statistics chose to categorize Jedis as no religion rather than other religion. The use of email (in 2001) and social media, notably Twitter (in 2011) in underpinning these campaigns is explored as a legitimation strategy for NRMs. In this way even ‘invented’ religions such as Jediism can acquire a source of tradition.

Trust in the Church

A majority (55%) of the British public distrusts the Church, according to the latest results from nfpSynergy’s Charity Awareness Monitor (CAM), which were published on 23 June 2014. For the twelfth time since 2003 a representative sample of 1,000 Britons aged 16 and over was asked about the degree of trust which they had in various public bodies and institutions, 24 being included in the most recent survey, conducted online in April 2014. The nfpSynergy press release, with links to some Powerpoint slides, will be found at:

http://nfpsynergy.net/trust-2014

Response options included ‘very little’ and ‘not much’, which have been combined to give a distrust score, and ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ which have been merged to produce a trust figure. The table below, ranked according to level of distrust, summarizes the findings for 2014.

%	Distrust	Trust	Difference
Political parties	83	12	-71
Government	75	20	-55
Insurance companies	71	24	-47
Newspapers	71	24	-47
Multinational companies	70	20	-50
Banks	68	27	-41
Local authorities	63	32	-31
Trade unions	62	30	-32
Civil service	57	34	-23
Legal system	56	39	-17
Church	55	37	-18
Supermarkets	47	49	+2
TV and radio stations	45	50	+5
BBC	42	53	+11
Police	42	55	+13
Royal Mail	40	56	+16
Charities	38	56	+18
Royal family	38	57	+19
Fundraising Standards Board	35	28	-7
Schools	34	61	+27
Small businesses	30	62	+32
NHS	29	68	+39
Scouts and guides	26	64	+38
Armed forces	25	70	+45

The Church was the eleventh most distrusted of all the institutions, with 18% more adults distrusting it than trusting it, and only 10% trusting it a great deal (against 27% quite a lot, 29% not much, and 26% very little). A majority from 52% to 65% has distrusted the Church in every single CAM since September 2006, and a plurality of 45% in the first CAM in November 2003.

The relatively poor showing of the Church in terms of public esteem exemplifies how secularization can be understood (following a famous article by Mark Chaves in Social Forces in 1994) as declining religious authority.

Religious freedom

The recent allegations of a ‘Trojan horse’ plot in some Birmingham state schools have sparked off a debate about the importance of teaching so-called ‘British values’. Several opinion polls have tried to get the public to define precisely what those values might encompass. Little weight is apparently attached to religious freedom, according to one such survey, conducted by ComRes on behalf of the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday between 11 and 13 June 2014, for which 2,034 adult Britons were interviewed online. Out of a list of 12 possible British values, religious freedom was ranked tenth in importance, with just 12% of the vote, albeit twice that (23%) among the over-65s. Freedom of speech came top (48%), followed by respect for the rule of law (34%), and fairness and tolerance (27% each). Full details on pp. 73-6 of the data tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/SM_IoS_Political_Poll_15June_2014.pdf

Scottish Episcopal Church statistics

The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church met in Edinburgh between 12 and 14 June 2014 and, on its final day, debated a motion from the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, calling on the College of Bishops to devise an annual statistical return which would better reflect the full range of the Church’s activities, some of which were said to go unrecorded under the present system. In an attempt to provide a fuller picture, the Diocese had compiled a supplementary ‘Fresh Expressions Statistical Return’ for 2011-12, which is reproduced on pp. 157-8 of the General Synod agenda and papers at:

http://www.scotland.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Synod-Papers.pdf

There is a summary of the debate in the Church Times for 20 June 2014 (p. 10). The main speaker was Professor David Atkinson, from the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, who claimed that ‘there is an imbalance between the numbers we collect and what we are experiencing’.

The Church’s latest figures are included in its annual report to 31 December 2013, disaggregated to individual ‘charge’. Three measures are given: persons of all ages belonging to the congregation (members) – 34,119 in 2013 (down 2.3% on 2012); names on the communicants’ roll – 24,852 in 2013 (up 0.8% on 2012); and attendance on a Sunday before Advent – 13,631 in 2013 (3.5% down on 2012). The annual report can be found at:

http://www.scotland.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014-Annual-Report1.pdf

Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life

The independent Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, an initiative of the Woolf Institute at Cambridge, has recently launched a national consultation, which is, in effect, a call for written evidence in answer to both general and specific questions. The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2014. It does not appear that the Commission intends to conduct a representative national cross-section survey, to set alongside the views of what will inevitably be a self-selecting group of individual and organizational respondents to the consultation and of those invited to attend seven national and local public hearings. Further information can be found at:

http://www.corab.org.uk/national-consultation

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Official data, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged A.J.Christopher, anti-Catholicism, Beth Singler, British Social Attitudes Surveys, British values, Charity Awareness Monitor, church, Clive Field, Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, ComRes, European Social Surveys, European Values Studies, Independent on Sunday, Jediism, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Journal of Religion in Europe, Marion Burkimsher, New Religious Movements, nfpSynergy, Religious Affiliation, religious attendance, religious census, religious freedom, religious polarization, Roman Catholicism, Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, Scottish Episcopal Church, social media, Sociology of Religion, Sunday Mirror, trust, Woolf Institute | Leave a comment

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