Vicar of Dibley and Other News

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Clive D. Field

You can tell that it is the mid-summer ‘silly season’, when hard news is more difficult to come by, if BRIN has to lead a post on the fictional sitcom The Vicar of Dibley! However, we also find space for eight other religious statistical stories, including three touching on Jewish themes.

Television comedies

The Vicar of Dibley, the BBC’s religious sitcom which aired originally from 1994 to 2007, and starred Dawn French as Revd Geraldine Granger, first-generation Anglican woman priest, is the most popular of 28 post-2000 British television comedies, according to YouGov research published on 6 August 2013 (with 1,684 adults interviewed online on 4-5 August). It was rated as best comedy programme by 27% of Britons, beating Mrs Brown’s Boys into second place (25%). The Vicar of Dibley is most popular with the over-60s (42%) but also does well (taking a third of the vote) with the politically right-leaning (Conservative and UKIP supporters) and residents of southern England (outside London) and of the Midlands, the latter perhaps reflecting the fact that the programme is set in a fictional Oxfordshire village. The Vicar of Dibley is least favoured (17-18%) among the under-40s and Londoners. By contrast, Rev, starring Tom Hollander as Revd Adam Smallbone, incumbent of an inner-city Anglican parish in East London, and whose third series will be broadcast by the BBC in 2014, ranks in 21st position, with just 3% of the vote (including 5% of Londoners and over-60s). The full table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gukaq8hi4a/YG-Archive-British-TV-comedies-results-050813.pdf

Alternative Queen’s Speech, II

In our last post, on 17 July 2013, we covered a poll by Lord Ashcroft about the ‘Alternative Queen’s Speech’, a raft of 40 Bills proposed by backbench Conservative MPs. One of the measures was a Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it illegal to wear face coverings in public, including the burka, thereby implicitly targeting Muslims. Public attitudes to this measure have also been sounded out by Opinium Research, who interviewed online on 25-28 June 2013 a sample of 1,650 British adults who said they were likely to vote in an imminent general election. Of these, 62% supported a law prohibiting the wearing of face coverings, peaking at 69% of Conservatives, 83% of UKIP voters, and 73% of over-55s. Opposition averaged 20% but rose to 34% among 18-34s. Full results have been posted at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/Alternative%20Queen%27s%20Speech%20Tables.pdf

Predictions

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the event least expected to occur before 2070, according to a YouGov poll for The Times, conducted online on 22-23 July 2013 among 1,968 adults aged 18 and over. Shown a sub-set of 20 predictions randomly drawn from the full list of 39, only 4% anticipated that Christ would definitely or probably return to earth by 2070, with no major demographic variations. This was similar to the 3% anticipating the Second Coming before 2050 in another YouGov study in August 2010. Respondents in the current survey were also relatively sceptical about the likelihood of making contact with aliens by 2070 (15%) but more hopeful of finding evidence of life elsewhere in the universe (42%). The most predicted occurrence was that most Britons would have to work into their 70s before retiring (83%). The data table was released on 26 July 2013 and is at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/pm4u52h8c8/YG-Archive-The-Times-results-230713-2070-predictions.pdf

U-turns

The Times for 2 August 2013 highlighted the findings from a recent poll of UK adults commissioned by search engine Ask Jeeves to establish the extent to which people make major u-turns in their lives. Nearly half the population admitted to having changed their minds about important issues. On religion, 7% claimed to have switched their religious beliefs, while 11% of men and 8% of women had moved from being believers in God to describing themselves as atheists (slightly offset by the 2% who had moved in the opposite direction). BRIN has not been able to locate a fuller report of the survey on the internet and has contacted the PR department of Ask Jeeves for further details.

Wonga and the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s embarrassment at the revelation that the Church of England has been indirectly investing in Wonga, the online payday lender which he has been publicly criticizing, was the fifth most-followed news story during the week in which it broke, according to research published by Opinium on 5 August 2013. Of the 2,002 UK adults aged 18 and over interviewed online between 30 July and 1 August 2013, 46% claimed to have followed the Archbishop/Wonga story, the top news items being the Spanish rail-crash (68%) and the naming of the royal baby (62%). See Opinium’s blog at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/talking-points-2

Beyond Sundays

Beyond Sundays: How the Church of England is Helping Communities in the Diocese of London, published on 19 July 2013, seeks to quantify Anglican social capital in the Diocese. The value of activities, staff, and volunteer time is estimated at £33 million annually, even without taking into account that churches also supply their own buildings and spaces to host 89% of community projects. The number of such projects is around 1,000, involving 10,000 volunteers, and benefiting 200,000 Londoners each year. In addition, churches raise £17 million annually to carry out these initiatives. Children and family and youth are the main people groups supported. The report, mostly a series of case studies, is at:

http://www.london.anglican.org/assets/downloads/resourcelibrary/beyond-sundays-report.pdf

Jewish demography

In an apparent reversal of a long-term trend, the Jewish population of England and Wales is now getting younger, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s third report on the 2011 religion census, published on 23 July 2013. The median age of Jews reduced from 43 in 2001 to 41 in 2011, albeit the latter is still above the national figure of 39 years and well above the Muslim statistic of 25 years (Christians had the highest median age – 45 – in 2011). The proportion of Jews aged 21 and above dropped by more than one percentage point between the two censuses, although Jews still record the highest proportion of people aged 85 and over. This rejuvenation process reflects growth in the Strictly Orthodox Jewish community (haredim) since the early 1990s, mainly as a result of its very high birth rate. The average age of haredi Jews is estimated at 27 and of non-haredi at 44, with haredim accounting for 22% of Jews under 5 years in 2001 and 29% in 2011. David Graham, 2011 Census Results (England and Wales): A Tale of Two Jewish Populations can be found at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/2011%20Census%20A%20Tale%20of%20Two%20Jewish%20Populations.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

There were 30% fewer UK anti-Semitic incidents reported to the Community Security Trust during the first six months of 2013 compared with the corresponding period in 2012 (219 and 311 respectively). This is the lowest number of incidents recorded during the first half of a year since 2003. The Trust attributes the decline to the lack of a ‘trigger event’ in 2013 equivalent to the terrorist attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012. There is a detailed analysis of the data in AntiSemitic Incidents Report, January-June 2013, which was published on 25 July 2013 and is available at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/CST%20Incidents%20Report%20Jan%20-%20June%202013.pdf

David Ward and the Jews

David Ward, Lib Dem MP for Bradford East, had the parliamentary party whip withdrawn on 17 July 2013 for a series of comments which were deemed to be anti-Jewish and anti-Israel (a country he described as an ‘apartheid state’), and for which he was unprepared to apologize. The action taken by the party’s leadership prompted the Liberal Democrat Voice website to conduct a poll between 19 and 23 July of the 1,500 paid-up Lib Dem party members registered with its online forum, of whom just over 600 responded. Of these, a majority (53%) opposed the withdrawal of the whip, divided between 37% who supported Ward’s right to speak out and 16% who disagreed with his comments. Just 38% endorsed the removal of the whip, of whom 21% did so as a temporary measure and 17% until Ward apologized. In aggregate, 54% dissented from Ward’s views. The undecided amounted to 8%. Further details are at:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/david-ward-35511.html

 

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Climbing the Papal Mountain and Other News

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Clive D. Field

 

Today’s post covers three news stories, two of which test public reactions to the religious landscape following, respectively, the resignation of the Pope and last month’s four cases of alleged religious discrimination appealed to the European courts.

Climbing the papal mountain

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to leave office at the end of this month, following the announcement of his resignation, his successor will have a veritable mountain to climb, if he is to hold together the Roman Catholic Church and improve its image and influence with non-Catholics.

In a post-resignation poll only about one-fifth (22%) of adults in Britain now consider the Catholic Church to be a force for good in the world, 45% disagreeing (and thus implicitly saying it is a force for ill), and 32% undecided. If we assume that all professing Catholics reckon their Church to be a force for good, then the corollary is that not much more than one-tenth of the rest of the population does so.

Among all Britons, the number in agreement with the proposition never rises above 28% for any major demographic group (and that for the over-65s, Welsh, and Scots), while dissentients represent a majority of the 45-64s, in the South and North-East of England, and among supporters of several smaller political parties.

Comparison with surveys around the time of the papal visit to Scotland and England in September 2010 indicates that the public standing of the Church has taken a real battering during the final two and a half years of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

The current 22% positive rating of the Catholic Church contrasts with 31-33% recorded by Opinion Research Business in identical questions about the Church as a force for good on 14-16 and 22-24 September 2010 and 9-11 September 2011; with 41% by Ipsos MORI on 20-26 August 2010; and 47% by Populus on 10-12 September 2010.

Some commentators have argued that modernization of the Catholic Church demands the appointment of the next Pope from the developing rather than the developed world, reflecting the fact that it is in the former that the Church is growing while in the latter it is in decline, notably losing the battle against secularism in Western Europe. The possibility of an African Pope is often mentioned in this context, with Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana the most cited name and, currently, a bookie’s favourite.

Britons, however, do not seem hugely enthusiastic about the prospect of the Church moving in this direction. Asked whether ‘it would be a positive step for the Catholic Church if they chose an African for their next Pope’, 33% agree, with 19% disagreeing, and 48% having no opinion (and probably no real interest in the matter either). The groups most in favour of an African Pope are the 25-34s (42%), Scots (41%), and Labour voters (43%). Most opposed are men (24%), residents of South-West England (28%), and UKIP supporters (26%).

Source: The two questions about the Roman Catholic Church were included in the online regular political survey by ComRes for The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on 13-14 February 2013, although it appears that, in the end, neither newspaper made use of these particular findings. The sample comprised 2,002 Britons aged 18 and over. Full data appear on pp. 89-96 of the tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/IoS_SM_Political_Poll_Feb_2013.pdf

Wearing religious clothing and symbols at work

Public attitudes to the wearing of religious clothing and symbols in the workplace vary according to the clothing or symbol concerned and to the occupation of the person wearing it.

So finds new research commissioned in the wake of the four British cases of alleged faith discrimination recently adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In one of them, the ECHR found against the UK Government in the action brought by Nadia Eweida, who was sent home by her employer (British Airways) in 2006 for refusing to remove a chain necklace with a small silver Christian cross.

In the study, opinion was sought about the entitlement to wear three religious items (a chain necklace with a Christian cross, a Jewish kippah/skullcap, and an Islamic burka) in four professional situations: flight attendant, nurse, teacher, and accountant. The number believing that people in the UK should be allowed to wear the item under each circumstance is as follows: 

 

Cross

Kippah

Burka
Flight attendant

81

68

22
Nurse

70

60

18
Teacher

77

68

22
Accountant

85

77

47
Mean

78

68

27

The table reveals greatest comfort with individuals wearing the Christian cross at work, albeit this is deemed somewhat less acceptable for a nurse than for the other three occupations. This caveat doubtless reflects recall of the case of Shirley Chaplin whose employers, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, had ordered the removal of her crucifix and chain on health and safety grounds. Chaplin had also appealed to the ECHR but, unlike Eweida, unsuccessfully. Opposition to a nurse wearing a cross peaked at 30% among the 18-24s and Liberal Democrat voters.

The Jewish article of clothing, the kippah, is deemed slightly less acceptable than the Christian symbol, with a mean score ten points lower. Some may find a slight hint of anti-Semitism here. However, a majority of adults still support its wearing in all four contexts, even by nurses where disagreement is greatest (30% overall, and rather more among the over-60s and Conservative voters).

But the burka worn by female Muslims finds no real favour at all, even when worn by an accountant, who is presumably less likely to come into regular contact with the public than a flight attendant, nurse, or teacher. Of course, the fact that the burka is so much larger and more ‘intrusive’ than the other two items (respondents were reminded that it covers the body and face) may well have influenced thinking.

Nevertheless, a plurality (47%) do endorse an accountant wearing a burka, whereas for the other three occupations opposition ranges from 67% to 72%. The over-60s are especially hostile, from 81% to a burka worn by a flight attendant to 86% when worn by a nurse, and a majority (51%) even arguing an accountant should not be allowed to wear it.   

Public hostility to the burka has been evidenced in numerous other opinion polls during recent years, as already noted by BRIN. The garment is clearly widely seen as ‘un-British’ and as a manifestation of Muslim reluctance to integrate into mainstream society. Therefore, attitudes to the burka are inextricably bound up with views of Islam, about which there continue to be many reservations relative to Judaism and, still more, to Christianity which is still implicitly regarded as defining Britain’s heritage and culture. 

The research is an interesting example of how principles of religious equality and liberty, to which most Britons would doubtless say they are committed, can be qualified when translated into real-life situations which are the cause of controversy and annoyance.

Source: Three online surveys undertaken among Britons aged 18 and over by YouGov for the YouGov-Cambridge think-tank: on 29-30 January 2013 (n = 1,939, on attitudes to the cross); 3-4 February 2013 (n = 1,712, on attitudes to the kippah); and on 30-31 January 2013 (n = 1,914, on attitudes to the burka). The results are discussed in a YouGov-Cambrdige blog post of 20 February 2013 at:

http://www.yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/?p=4412

The detailed data tables are located at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3xu7auqj0x/YGCam-Archive-results-300113-European-Court-Human-Rights.pdf

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/es1qzi4mv7/YGCam-Archive-results-040213-European-Court-Human-Rights-Kippah.pdf

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ep1emkef5f/YGCam-Archive-results-310113-European-Court-Human-Rights-Burka.pdf

Anglican church-led social action

Four-fifths (82%) of parishes in the Church of England have provided informal support to people in their community who have requested help, and 54% run organized activities to address at least one local social need. The latter figure ranges from 39% of churches whose congregation numbers fewer than 50 people to 94% where it exceeds 250; and from 80% in parishes based on council estates to 47% in the most rural areas. More than one social need is being formally met in 29% of parishes. Activities most commonly offered are: support with school work (69%), care for the elderly (54%), and parent and toddler groups (51%). Food banks are managed by 28% of parishes, although this is now likely to be an underestimate.

Community problems being tackled, formally or informally, by more than two-thirds of parishes comprise lack of self-esteem/hope, homelessness, mental health, and family breakdown/poor parenting. At the other end of the spectrum, more than one-half of parishes admit to doing very little or nothing to alleviate poor housing, benefit dependency, unemployment, unhealthy lifestyles, low education, crime/anti-social behaviour, or low income. While working relationships with schools are active and very close in three-quarters of parishes, the same is true of less than one-fifth in the case of the police, poverty charities, councils, local businesses, and social services.

Source: Online sample survey of Anglican incumbents undertaken by the Church Urban Fund (CUF) on behalf of the Church of England in December 2011. Of the 2,960 clergy invited to participate, 865 or 30% did so. There was an under-representation of rural parishes and small churches in the responses. Key findings are summarized in Bethany Eckley, The Church in Action: A National Survey of Church-Led Social Action, newly published and available at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Research/The_Church_in_Action_Church_Urban_Fund_2013.pdf

It should be noted that this is actually the third report to have been issued by CUF on this survey. The first was Growing Church Through Social Action: A National Survey of Church-Based Action to Tackle Poverty, prepared by Benita Hewitt of Christian Research Consultancy, the agency which undertook the fieldwork; and the second a four-page summary of it, Growing Church Through Social Action. As their titles imply, their focus was especially on the church growth aspects of the research. These earlier reports have already been discussed on BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/church-growth-and-social-action/

 

 

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Abortion and Other News

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Our lead religious statistical news story today concerns the first release of data from the YouGov poll specially commissioned for the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, which commences tomorrow. There will be further releases of data in connection with every debate, each covering a specific area of religion and personal life.

Abortion

A new survey has revealed that most religious people are not against abortion and that their views on the topic are not markedly different from those of the public as a whole. The research (in which 4,437 adult Britons were interviewed online on 25-30 January 2013) was commissioned from YouGov by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, which Woodhead has organized in conjunction with Rt Hon Charles Clarke.

According to the poll, 43% of people who identify with a religion are in favour of keeping or raising the current 24-week upper time limit on abortions (compared with 46% of the general population), 30% would like to see it lowered (28%), and 9% support a complete ban on abortion (7%). The remainder is undecided.

Of particular faith traditions, Catholics, Muslims, and Baptists are the most hostile to abortion, but still only about half of them would like to see the law on abortion changed. Even though the Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion is always wrong, just 14% of Catholics in this country favour a ban, with 33% wanting to see the 24-week limit lowered. Among Muslims 30% support a ban and 16% would like to see the 24-week limit reduced.

Standard (secular) demographics – such as gender, age, and voting preference – do not make much difference to attitudes to abortion. Individuals most likely to be opposed to it are those: who believe in God with most certainty, who rely most heavily on scripture or religious teachings for guidance in their daily life, and whose religion has a strong anti-abortion message. A mere 8% of the population fits this profile, and of this 8% no more than one-third endorse a ban on abortion.  

Among the population as a whole, anti-abortion sentiment is declining and support for current abortion law is growing. Comparisons with earlier YouGov polls reveal that the percentage of adults who would like to see a ban on abortion has fallen from 12% in 2005 to 7% today. Of those who express a view, support for keeping (or even relaxing) the current 24-week limit has risen by about one-third to a clear majority (57%) today.

The full press release about the abortion results of the survey is available at:    

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/westminster_faith_debate_13_02_13_stem_cell_research_abortion_press_release

In an interview with Ben Quinn of The Guardian, Woodhead has commented: ‘The impression one gets from many religious leaders and spokespeople is that most religious people are opposed to the liberalising trend in society. That is just not true and statistics like this give the lie to that view.’ For The Guardian’s coverage, go to:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/12/anti-abortion-feelings-declining

The poll findings have been released in connection with the first of the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, on ‘Stem cell research, abortion and the “soul of the embryo”?’ This takes place tomorrow (13 February 2013). However, BRIN readers should note that the debate is full, although names are still being taken for a reserve list.

Anti-Semitic incidents, 2012

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK rose by 5% in 2012, to reach 640, the third highest total since records began in 1984, according to Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2012, published by the Community Security Trust (CST) on 7 February 2013. However, the figure of 640 included ‘100 anonymised incident reports provided by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) as part of an incident data exchange programme introduced between CST and MPS in London in 2012. Removing these 100 “extra” incidents – which had been reported to MPS but not directly to CST – to give a “like for like” comparison with 2011, suggests an 11 per cent fall in real terms in the UK-wide antisemitic incident total in 2012.’ Abusive behaviour accounted for the majority of incidents in 2012 (73%), followed by assaults (10%), damage and desecration (8%), and threats (6%). Eighty incidents involved the use of internet-based social media, compared to just 12 in 2011. The 32-page report, containing exhaustive quantitative and qualitative analysis, is available at:

https://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202012.pdf

Believing in belonging

BRIN readers may like to know that a paperback version of Abby Day’s acclaimed 2011 book Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World was published by Oxford University Press on 7 February 2013 (ISBN 978-0-19-967355-1, £25.00). It has a certain topicality in helping to unpack the results of the recently-released religion census of England and Wales in 2011 through its research into ‘performative, nominalist Christianity’ in the 2001 census. Indeed, the central ‘puzzle’ which underpins the work is, considering ‘all forms of public Christian religious participation have been declining for at least the last fifty years’, ‘why would so many non-religious people choose to claim a Christian identity on the census?’ The conundrum is explored by means of a critical reappraisal of the secondary literature (empirical and theoretical) and by qualitative interviews undertaken in North Yorkshire between 2002 and 2005. The 2001 census features particularly in chapters 3 and 9. One of Day’s findings is that, when asked how they had recorded their religious identity at the 2001 census, ‘half of my informants who answered “Christian” were either agnostics or atheists, who either overtly disavowed religion or at least never incorporated religion, Christianity, God, or Jesus into our discussions. They were … functionally godless and ontologically anthropocentric.’   Day feels that the language, form, and location of the questions used in the 2001 census (they varied between the home nations) may have contributed to ‘a false picture of an enduring Christian Britain’ by breaking ‘a number of fairly rudimentary rules about questionnaire design’. Likewise, there are useful summaries in the book of the background to the taking of the 2001 religion census and the ways in which its results were subsequently used in public discourse and policy formation.

BRIN in the media

On the morning of 10 February 2013 Clive Field was interviewed on ten BBC local radio stations about the religious dimensions of the same-sex marriage debate in terms of public opinion, and in the wake of the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The discussion centred around four main questions:

  • Has society become more accepting of same-sex marriage?
  • The growing acceptance of same-sex marriage has coincided with a decline of religion – are the two linked?
  • The Church of England and the Coalition for Marriage claim that public opinion does not support same-sex marriage – are they right?
  • What impact will same-sex marriage have on society as a whole?

Field had previously done a series of interviews on Radio 4 and eight BBC local radio stations on 16 December last about the initial results of the 2011 religion census for England and Wales.

 

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Churchgoing in York and Other News

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Herewith three news items which have come to hand during the final week of October:

Churchgoing in York

The churchgoing history of York from 1764 to the present day is recounted, statistically, in part II (chapter 6, pp. 113-56) of Robin Gill’s new book, Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Volume 2 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4094-2597-7, £19.99, paperback – also available as a hardback and an e-book). This is both an update and a re-evaluation of the case study of York which featured in chapter 9 of Gill’s earlier works, The Myth of the Empty Church (1993) and The ‘Empty’ Church Revisited (2003). It is based upon church censuses (local, except for 1851), Anglican visitation returns, and original fieldwork by Gill, in co-operation with individual places of worship. It does not utilize Christian Research’s English church census data for the York unitary authority, available for 1989, 1998, and 2005.

Table 6.1 on p. 151 summarizes adult church attendance in York for six years between 1901 and 2010. This would perhaps have been more meaningful had estimates of the adult population of York been included, together with a footnote about any boundary changes which may have impacted the figures. In absolute terms, churchgoing is continuing to decline in the city, down by (what many would consider) a modest 5.3% between 2001 and 2010. Catholicism has experienced the sharpest contraction (14.2%), with the Church of England falling by just 2.4% during this decade and the Free Churches by 0.4%.

The good fortunes of the Free Churches reflect the vibrancy of newer churches and Christian fellowships, some of which were overlooked by Gill in his previous surveys, and which are heavily dependent upon immigrants and/or students. By contrast, the ‘historic’ Free Churches, notably the Methodists, are still struggling, as they mostly are everywhere. Similarly, the Anglicans benefit disproportionately from the pull of York Minster and the evangelical ministry of St Michael-le-Belfrey, the subject of an ethnographic study by Mathew Guest, Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture (2007).

In conceptual terms, the data are less related to historical and sociological debates about secularization than to contemporary challenges and strategies of mission and church growth. Drawing upon the influential Anglican report on Mission-Shaped Church (2009), the metaphor of needing to defuse the ‘ticking time-bomb’ of church decline (related to failures in the intergenerational transmission of faith from parents to children) is invoked by Gill several times. Notwithstanding the current vibrancy of the newer manifestations of ‘Free Churchism’ – charted further by David Goodhew’s chapter on New Churches in York in Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present (2012) – Gill concludes that the churchgoing situation in York remains ‘fragile’.

The BIG Welcome

The BIG Welcome was launched by British Baptists in 2010 to encourage Christians to invite the unchurched to a service or event at their church. From 2012 the Methodist and Elim Pentecostal Churches have also become involved, making this a sort of Free Church equivalent to Back to Church Sunday (covered in previous BRIN posts), which was started in 2004 within the Church of England and has become progressively more ecumenical, albeit (in quantitative terms) still essentially Anglican (in 2011 58,000 of the 77,000 additional churchgoers were at Anglican places of worship).

By comparison with Back to Church Sunday, the BIG Welcome is a relatively modest affair. In 2011 280 Baptist churches participated, out of 3,215 in England, Wales and Scotland in 2010, just 9%. About 3,000 people came to a church event for the first time in September 2011, 10.7 per participating church. In 2012 the number of churches involved has been 330 out of a combined total of 9,330 Baptist, Methodist and Elim congregations, or 4%. New individuals coming to a BIG Welcome service on Sunday, 23 September this year amounted to 3,660, 11.1 per participating church. Although 87% of participating churches have already indicated they will get involved in the initiative again in 2013 (the other 13% saying they might do so), the future of the BIG Welcome is actually in some doubt on account of impending restructuring at the Baptist Union headquarters in Didcot.

Source: Number of churches (in 2010) from Peter Brierley’s UK Church Statistics, 2005-2015. BIG Welcome data mainly from a report published on Baptist Times Online on 31 October 2012, available at:

http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/597-support-for-big-welcome

Religious Discrimination

In several respects, Britain has become more tolerant and less prejudiced during the past four decades, according to a recent poll of adults. Compared with the 1970s, 81% now feel that there is less discrimination against homosexuals than there used to be, 79% less against black people, 78% less against women, and 64% less against Asians. Of secular groups, only ageism bucks the trend, with 33% saying that discrimination against the elderly has got worse over the years (albeit 6% fewer than those thinking it has decreased).

On the religion front, anti-Semitism is perceived to have abated, with 58% claiming there is less discrimination against Jews than in the 1970s, 7% more, and 25% about the same. However, Muslims, who had a relatively low public profile and were significantly less numerous four decades ago, have not been so fortunate, with 48% of all adults contending that they experience more discrimination, 33% less, and 11% a similar amount as before. Three-tenths also feel that discrimination against Christians has grown, and this is especially so among men (35%) and Conservative voters (41%). Equivalent proportions believe that discrimination against Christians has lessened (32%) or remained static (29%).

Source: Online survey by YouGov among 1,637 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 22-23 October 2012. Full data tables published on 26 October and available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/605x8bbko6/Discrimination%20results%20121023.pdf

 

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Anti-Semitic Incidents, 2011

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Clive D. Field

For the first time ever since reporting began, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in Greater Manchester than in Greater London in 2011, even though the Jewish population of the capital is seven times the size of Manchester’s.

This is one of the findings which has been grabbing the media headlines from the Community Security Trust (CST)’s Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2011, published on 2 February 2012 and available at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202011.pdf

CST, which has been recording anti-Semitic incidents in the UK since 1984, logged 586 of them in 2011, 9% fewer than in 2010 and 37% less than in 2009, when there was a spike in anti-Semitism as a result of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The fall is attributed by CST to the absence of similar ‘trigger events’ in 2011.

The figures exclude potential incidents reported to and investigated by CST but not ultimately classified by it as anti-Semitic (in terms of motivation, targeting or content), although some were anti-Israel. There were 437 of these in 2011, bringing the total of reported incidents to 1,023.

201 of the 586 anti-Semitic incidents (34%) took place in Greater London, a decrease of 9% from 2010, and 244 (42%) in Greater Manchester, 13% more than the year before. There were 141 incidents (24%) in the rest of the UK.

According to CST, the Manchester peak was ‘mainly the result of improved reporting of incidents by Manchester’s Jewish community to CST and to Greater Manchester Police, and a close working relationship between CST and GMP’.

Incidents were categorized by type as follows: extreme violence (one incident), assault (16%), damage and desecration to Jewish property (11%), threats (5%), abusive behaviour (67%), and mass-produced literature (1%).

Victims of incidents were: high-profile public figures (3%), random Jewish individuals in public (37%), people in private homes (12%), schools and schoolchildren (12%), synagogues and congregants (18%), students and academics (6%), Jewish organizations and communal events (11%), and Jewish cemeteries (1%).

Where information was available, 85% of perpetrators were found to be male and 5% mixed gender groups. 61% were white and 39% black, Asian or Arab. 63% were described as adults and 36% as minors (but the latter accounted for two-thirds of anti-Semitic assaults).

 

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National Jewish Student Survey, 2011

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘Jewish students are comfortable being openly Jewish at British universities, despite having concerns about attitudes to Israel on campus. Their commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is robust, but their appreciation of their personal social responsibility lacks muscle.’

These are some of the headlines from the first National Jewish Student Survey (NJSS), overseen by JPR, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and published on 4 October 2011. Written by David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, Home and Away: Jewish Journeys towards Independence – Key Findings from the 2011 National Jewish Student Survey can be downloaded from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/NJSS_report%20final.pdf

The research was commissioned by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) in partnership with the Pears Foundation. It was funded by the Pears Foundation, with additional support from UJIA, Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe and the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation.

Quantitative fieldwork (there was also a qualitative phase, of focus groups) was carried out online by Ipsos MORI between 15 February and 15 March 2011. There were 925 valid responses from Jewish students, covering 95 different institutions, which IPR estimates to equate to from 11% to 14% of the total UK Jewish student population. In addition, there were 761 valid responses to a parallel general student survey, run for benchmarking purposes.

Since Jewish students comprise just 0.5% of all full-time higher education students in the UK, they are not easy to reach through normal random or quota sampling methods. Instead, IPR contacted them via the UJS database, a network of 17 Jewish student nodes, and a modest advertising campaign. Three-fifths of responses eventually derived through UJS as a contact source.

IPR is sensitive to the potential weaknesses of this methodology, which are explored in a section of the report (pp. 65-7) on ‘how representative is the NJSS sample?’ The main conclusions are that, while the sample was reasonably balanced in terms of Jewish denominational backgrounds, it was skewed towards students who were more Jewishly engaged.

With this caveat, we may note some of the key statistics from the study:

  • Half of Jewish students attended just eight out of 113 higher education institutions (Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Kings College London, and University College London), against 9% of the national student body 
  • When choosing a university, 45% did so primarily for the course, 23% for the institution’s reputation, 11% for its league table performance, and 10% for its Jewish population size 
  • The most popular courses followed by Jewish students were medicine, politics, and business and finance, and they were three times less likely to be studying education than students in general 
  • Israel and Jewish Studies formed a component of their courses in relatively few instances (18% and 12% respectively), and this was mostly only a small part of the course 
  • 52% of Jewish students described themselves as religious and 41% as secular, with 53% connected to their home synagogue and 34% to the university Jewish chaplaincy 
  • When students were on campus, their levels of Jewish practice diminished compared to when they were at home, but socializing in Jewish circles substantially increased
  • 59% of Jewish students were always open about being Jewish on campus and 35% sometimes open, the remainder concealing their Jewish identity 
  • 31% reported that all or nearly all their closest friends were Jewish, and 29% that more than half were – this was particularly true of students assessing themselves as religious
  • 21% were concerned about anti-Semitism at their university and 42% reported having experienced or witnessed an anti-Semitic incident since the beginning of the academic year
  • 92% had visited Israel and 89% entertained positive feelings towards Israel (with 11% negative or ambivalent), in contrast to the general student population where 63% had no feelings either way about Israel 
  • 38% were concerned about anti-Israel sentiment on campus, the same number as felt that Israel was treated unfairly in their students’ union 
  • 85% agreed that being Jewish is about ‘strong moral and ethical behaviour’, but fewer (two-thirds) that it is about donating funds to charity, volunteering for a charity, or supporting social justice causes 
  • 72% agreed that it is important for a Jew to marry another Jew, although 50% of those who had been in a relationship had dated a non-Jewish partner 
  • 76% were worried about passing their exams, 68% about finding a job, 41% about living up to the expectations of their parents, and 39% about paying off financial debts 
  • Jewish students were more likely than students in general to have relationship issues, feelings of loneliness, and personal health concerns

For BRIN’s coverage of the launch of the NJSS last February, see:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=900

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Restrictions on Religion

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The UK’s reputation as a land of religious liberty and toleration seems set to take a bit of a knock following the publication on 9 August 2011 of Rising Restrictions on Religion by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. The work was commissioned as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, with Brian Grim as the principal researcher.

The report, the second in a series, is the outcome of desk-based research from 18 published primary sources. It seeks to measure, on a points-based system, the incidence of restrictions on religious beliefs and practices in 198 countries between mid-2006 and mid-2009. Data are recorded for a Government Restrictions Index (GRI) and a Social Hostilities Index (SHI). Inevitably, the scoring cannot eliminate a degree of subjectivity.

On the GRI the UK’s overall score rose from 2.2 for the two-year period ending mid-2008 to 2.8 in mid-2009. This was assessed as a moderate score on the fourfold categorization used by Pew (very high embracing the top 5% of country scores, high the next 15%, moderate the next 20%, and low the bottom 60%). Of the specific measures comprising the GRI, 7 had increased in the UK between the two reference dates, 14 were unchanged, and 7 had decreased.

On the SHI the UK’s overall score moved from 2.5 for the period ending mid-2008 to 3.6 in mid-2009. This was assessed as a high score. Seven UK measures rose between the two dates, 11 were unchanged, and 1 had fallen. The UK was one of five European nations (the others being Bulgaria, Denmark, Russia, and Sweden) which experienced a substantial rise in the SHI. In the UK’s case, this is largely attributed by Pew to mounting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism (the latter in response to Israel’s military intervention in Gaza early in 2009).

Overall, combining the GRI and SHI, Pew discovered that restrictions on religion had grown in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%), decreased in 12 (6%), and remained essentially unchanged in 163 (82%). Among the 25 most populous nations – which account for three-quarters of the global population – restrictions on religion substantially increased in eight, including the UK. In China, Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK the increases were primarily due to movements in the SHI, whereas in Egypt and France they were the consequence of the GRI.

The main report and the detailed country report on this research are available to download at:

http://pewforum.org/Government/Rising-Restrictions-on-Religion.aspx

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Muslim-Western Tensions – British Experiences

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘Muslim and Western publics continue to see relations between them as generally bad, with both sides holding negative stereotypes of the other.’ However, there has been ‘somewhat of a thaw in the U.S. and Europe compared with five years ago’.

This is according to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, released on 21 July. It was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between 21 March and 15 May 2011 among 23 publics, including Great Britain (where 1,000 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone).

The Muslim-related questions have been analysed by Pew for six Western publics (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and the USA), seven Muslim publics (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, and Turkey) and for Israel.  

The present post mainly focuses on the British data, but the international results may be readily viewed in the report Muslim-Western Tensions Persist, which is available for download at:

http://pewglobal.org/files/2011/07/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Western-Relations-FINAL-FOR-PRINT-July-21-2011.pdf

64% of Britons held a favourable opinion of Muslims. This represented a fall of seven points since 2005 (just before 7/7) but a 4% recovery from 2010. It was also, jointly with France, the best figure among the six Western nations, higher than Russia (62%), USA (57%), Germany (45%), and Spain (37%).

Nevertheless, 22% of Britons regarded Muslims unfavourably, which was far more than took the same view of Christians (6%) or Jews (7%). 83% were well-disposed to Christians and 76% to Jews, much the same as in 2004.

Moreover, only 39% of Britons assigned no negative traits to Muslims. Specifically, 43% described them as fanatical, 38% as arrogant, 32% as violent, 29% as selfish, 18% as immoral, and 16% as greedy. Similarly, 61% did not associate Muslims with respect for women, 45% with tolerance, 34% with generosity, and 22% with honesty.

52% in Britain saw most Muslims as wanting to remain distinct from mainstream society, rising to 59% for those without degree-level education. Apart from the USA (51%), other Western countries recorded even higher figures, as much as 72% in Germany. Just 28% of Britons thought Muslims wanted to adopt British customs, albeit an improvement on 19% in 2005 and 22% in 2006.

52% of British adults assessed relations between Muslims around the world and Westerners as being generally bad (nine points less than in 2006) and 40% as generally good. 48% of Americans also said bad, 58% of Spaniards, 61% of Germans, and 62% of French.

Of Britons who said relations were bad, 34% believed Muslims were mostly to blame for this state of affairs (compared with 25% in 2006), 26% Western people, and 24% both groups.

So-called ‘Islamic extremism’ seems to have soured relations. 70% in Britain were concerned about this and a mere 28% unconcerned. Notwithstanding, 70% represented a fall of 7% since the 2006 (post-7/7) survey and a return to 2005 (pre-7/7) levels. Russians (76%) and Germans (73%) were more concerned than Britons, Americans (69%), French (68%), and Spaniards (61%) somewhat less.

In similar vein, 52% in Britain claimed that some religions were more prone to violence than others, and three-quarters of these cited Islam as the single most violent religion (against 63% immediately before 7/7).

59% of Britons thought Muslim nations should be more economically prosperous than they were. This lack of prosperity was largely attributed to internal deficiencies in those nations: government corruption (51%), lack of democracy (46%), lack of education (36%), and Islamic fundamentalism (31%). No more than 15% were willing to allocate blame to US and Western policies.

Finally, a footnote on religion more generally. Professing Christians in the Western countries were asked whether they first considered themselves as citizens of their nation or as Christians. In Britain 63% of Christians placed their nationality first, exactly three times the proportion which put their Christian identity first. This reflected a shift since 2006, when the figures had been 59% and 24%. Americans were most likely to put Christianity (46%) above nationality, French the least (8%).

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Antisemitism Worldwide, 2010

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Clive D. Field

23% of all serious acts of violence and vandalism perpetrated against Jews and Jewish property globally in 2010 took place in the UK, according to Antisemitism Worldwide, 2010: General Analysis.

This is a newly published report from Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism and the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. Edited by Roni Stauber, it is available to download at:

http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2010/general-analysis-10.pdf

Of the worldwide total of 614 serious incidents in 2010, 144 were recorded in the UK, the highest number for any single country. France came next, with 134, and then Canada, on 99, followed a long way behind by Germany (38), the United States (28) and Australia (27).

The UK total was 61% down on that for 2009 (374 incidents), when anti-Semitism peaked in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. This was larger than the 46% global decrease. UK anti-Semitism in 2010 was at a similar level to 2006 and 2007, according to the Tel Aviv data, but well above the double figures of previous years. 

Stauber attributes the UK’s preeminence in this global league table of anti-Semitism to the ‘very unique’ fact that Britain exhibits a strong presence of both far-right political groups and Muslim pro-Palestinian communities, each of which is viewed as being anti-Jewish.

It should be noted that the Tel Aviv researchers employ a far tighter definition of anti-Semitic incidents than does the Community Security Trust (CST), which has been monitoring anti-Semitism in the UK since 1984.

The CST recorded 639 incidents in the UK in 2010 in its most recent report, which BRIN has covered at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=855

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Group-Focused Enmity in Europe

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Fresh light on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Britain is shed in a report published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Berlin on 11 March 2011. Entitled Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report, it is written by Andreas Zick, Beate Kupper and Andreas Hovermann. It is available to download from:

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/do/07908-20110311.pdf

The publication is based upon the Group-Focused Enmity in Europe project which is located at the Bielefeld Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, and which has been supported by funding from a consortium of six foundations.

Fieldwork for the underlying survey was conducted in eight European countries during autumn 2008: France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. A sample of 1,000 adults aged 16 and over was interviewed by telephone by TNS in each nation.

Attitudes to various groups were measured, but this particular report concentrates on a sub-set of six types of prejudice: anti-immigrant views, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia (or anti-Muslim attitudes, as they are termed here), racism and sexism.

There continues to be evidence of anti-Semitism in Britain, with 14% of adults agreeing that Jews had too much influence, 22% that they tried to take advantage of being victims during the Nazi era, and 23% that they did not care about anything or anybody except their own kind.

However, these figures were actually the lowest for all the eight countries, with the exception of The Netherlands. Britain and The Netherlands came joint first on a fourth measure, agreeing that Jews enriched the national culture (72%). Hungary and Poland were generally most negative about the Jews.

Levels of hostility rose somewhat when the question of Israel-Palestine was put to a half-sample. 36% of Britons said that, given Israeli policy, they could understand why people did not like Jews. Still more, 42%, concurred that Israel was conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians, which was a bigger proportion than in Hungary, Italy and The Netherlands.

Negativity towards Muslims was greater still. 45% of Britons considered that there were too many Muslims in the country, 50% claimed that they were too demanding, and 47% regarded Islam as a religion of intolerance.

These three items were combined into a scale of anti-Muslim attitudes. While Hungary and Poland were about as Islamophobic as they were anti-Semitic, the mean scores for the remaining nations were much higher than for anti-Semitism, Britain included. Portugal was least Islamophobic.

Other questions did not form part of this scale but, administered to a half-sample, reinforced the evidence of enmity. Only 39% in Britain felt that the Muslim culture fitted well into the country and Europe, and 82% viewed Muslim attitudes towards women as contradicting British values. 38% believed that many Muslims perceived terrorists as heroes, and 26% that the majority of Muslims found terrorism justifiable.

Anti-Muslim sentiments were shown to have an especially strong relationship with anti-immigrant views, and this was particularly true of Britain. The correlation between anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic opinions was less marked but still observable. Anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attitudes had a relationship of medium strength.

Correlations with self-assessed religiosity were explored in a separate report on the same survey: Beate Kupper and Andreas Zick, Religion and Prejudice in Europe: New Empirical Findings (Alliance Publishing Trust, 2010), which can be found at:

http://www.alliancemagazine.org/books/religionandprejudice.pdf

Whereas, for Europe as a whole, the researchers discovered that ‘the more religious individuals are, the more prejudiced they are’, the pattern in Britain was more complex.

For Britons greater religiosity was most associated with sexism and homophobia, and – to a lesser extent – with racism and anti-immigrant views. In the cases of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the very religious were the least prejudiced of the four religiosity groups but the quite religious were the most prejudiced.

Overall, 5% of Britons described themselves as very religious, 29% as quite religious, 27% as not very religious, and 38% as not at all religious. A YouGov poll of 5,000 plus respondents for The Sun last month revealed that 27% saw themselves as religious and 71% not.

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