British Social Attitudes Survey, 2010

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘Britain is becoming less religious, with the numbers who affiliate with a religion or attend religious services experiencing a long-term decline. And this trend seems set to continue; not only as older, more religious generations are replaced by younger, less religious ones, but also as the younger generations increasingly opt not to bring up their children in a religion – a factor shown to strongly link with religious affiliation and attendance later in life.’
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Back to Church Sunday, 2011

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Clive D. Field

An extra 77,000 people attended UK places of worship on Back to Church Sunday (25 September) this year, according to a Church of England press release on 25 November 2011, with congregations increasing by nearly a quarter at participating churches as a result of personal invitations to former and potential worshippers. See:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2011/11/tens-of-thousands-respond-to-invitations-to-back-to-church-sunday.aspx
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Seasonal Good Intentions

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Clive D. Field

One-quarter of Britons expect to attend a church service over the Christmas period this year, according to a YouGov poll on Christmas commissioned by The Sun newspaper and published in today’s issue under the heading of ‘We’re Dreaming of a Tight Christmas’.

A representative sample of 1,723 adults aged 18 and over was interviewed online on 27-28 November 2011. The full data tables, with breaks by demographics, have been made available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/90fr0t7zbi/Sun%20Results%20111202%20Christmas.pdf

While 65% do not think they will go to a church service over Christmas, 24% do, broken down into 6% who said they might worship on Christmas Day itself (a Sunday this year), 11% on Christmas Eve, and 7% on another Day around Christmas.

The proportion of putative attenders was identical to a YouGov poll a fortnight before last Christmas. It has varied somewhat since the question was first asked in British public opinion polls in 1964, sometimes reaching two-fifths (albeit not recently).

However, these intentions will often prove aspirational, not translated into reality. Unfortunately, it is hard to know what actually happens since the Church of England is the only major body to collect Christmas attendance data, and then just since 2000.

In an article in the Church of England Newspaper for 11 November 2011, Peter Brierley estimated that the Church of England accounts for 40% of Christmas attendance, rather than its more usual share of 28%. On this basis, he forecast that 11% of the entire population of the UK could be at church this Christmas.

The highest rate of anticipated Christmas churchgoing was found by YouGov among Londoners (35%) and the lowest among manual grades (18%, against 28% for ABC1s), but otherwise there was little variation by sub-group (from 20% to 26%).

Other highlights from this YouGov poll include:

  • 36% anticipated spending less on Christmas presents than last year, 49% about the same, and 10% somewhat more
  • 4% will be spending Christmas Day on their own, 51% with their spouse or partner, 44% with their children, 36% with their parents, and 21% with their siblings
  • 44% will definitely or probably watch the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day
  • 58% will log on to the Internet on Christmas Day (mostly to check email or Facebook)
  • 29% do not find Christmas stressful at all, but 30% get anxious about its cost, 20% about gift-shopping, and 7% about spending time with extended family
  • 25% expected to have a hangover some time over the Christmas period

Meanwhile, a separate TNS survey, carried out online between 29 November and 1 December 2011, has revealed that 21% of a sample of 1,064 adult Britons aged 16-64 plan to go to a carol service this month.

The proportion was higher for women (25%) than men (18%), ABC1s (26%) than C2DEs (14%), parents with children resident in the household (28%) than those without (18%), and for those who were not working (25%) than in employment (19%).

It also increased with age, from 14% among the 16-24s to 27% among the over-55s. Regionally, Scots (16%) and Londoners (13%) were least likely to attend a carol service, with Wales and Western England (29%) and the North-West (25%) scoring highest.

Data tables for the TNS poll are available at:

http://www.tns-ri.co.uk/_assets/files/December_Activity_Tables.pdf

Finally, for now (there will doubtless be other religion-related Christmas polls over the next few weeks), we may note a Christmas survey published by Theos, the think-tank, on 1 December, and based upon online interviews by ComRes with 2.032 adults aged 18 and over on 7-9 October 2011.

Respondents were asked to react to six statements about the meaning of Christmas. One of these was that ‘Christmas is about celebrating that God loves humanity’. 41% agreed with the proposition, 24% disagreed, and 35% were neutral.

Agreement increased with age, from 30% of the 18-24s to 52% of the over-65s. It was greater among women (45%) than men (37%), and public sector workers (42%) than in the private sector (36%). Unsurprisingly, it was much higher among Christians (58%) than those without any religion (12%).

The level of agreement with this statement was much less than the 83% who thought Christmas was about spending time with family and friends, and the 62% who believed it was about being generous to people less fortunate than ourselves.

40% contended that Christmas is a good excuse for taking time off but does not really have any meaning today. Just 19% saw the festival as an opportunity to challenge political oppression around the world and 34% poverty and economic injustice.

The data tables for the ComRes study, undertaken in conjunction with the launch of a new Theos report on The Politics of Christmas by Stephen Holmes (ISBN 978-0-9562182-7-8, £5), can be found at:

http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/ChristmasPoll.pdf

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A Place for Pride

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘People who are religious are more likely to be patriotic than are those who self-define as atheists or non-believers.’ So claims a report launched today by the think-tank Demos, and based on interviews with a representative sample of 2,086 adult Britons aged 18 and over in May 2011.

Sponsored by the Pears Foundation, A Place for Pride (ISBN 978-1-906693-88-6) is written by Max Wind-Cowie and Thomas Gregory and is available for free download at:

http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Place_for_pride_-_web.pdf?1321618230

The full data tables from the survey do not appear to have been released as yet. So all BRIN can currently offer are a few religion-related snippets extracted from the published report, as follows:

  • Among the population as a whole 79% said that they were proud to be a British citizen, but the proportion rose to 88% of Anglicans and Jews, 84% of Nonconformists, and 83% of Muslims 
  • Asked whether Britain’s best days were behind her, 44% of the entire sample agreed –  Anglicans (50%) were more pessimistic than average, although Muslims (31%) were more inclined to optimism, with secularists (43%) about the norm 
  • Almost four-fifths of respondents believed that people in Britain were less proud of their religion than 50 years ago – just 35% said they took pride in their own faith 
  • 20% of Muslims but 10% of those without religion claimed strongly to take pride in Britain’s treatment of gay people 
  • 14% claimed to have attended a Church of England service in the past six months and 15% another religious service 

A word of warning. Unless they were deliberately oversampled, which seems unlikely, the cell sizes for some faith groups must be fairly small. 

There is a consequent danger in over-egging the results, as The Sunday Times could be said to have done yesterday with its preview of the report under the headline ‘Muslims are Britain’s greatest flag wavers’.  

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Faith in the Financial Services Sector

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The Archbishop of Canterbury may have intervened in the controversy surrounding the Occupy London protest, as noted in our post at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=1477, but financial services professionals emphatically reject the Church’s role in high finance.

This is the very clear message from an online survey of 515 finance professionals in the City of London conducted by ComRes between 30 August and 12 September 2011, on behalf of the St Paul’s Institute at St Paul’s Cathedral. 88% of respondents were aged 25-54 and 65% were men.

The research is summarized by Rita Duarte of ComRes on pp. 8-19 of Value and Values: Perceptions of Ethics in the City Today, a report and reflections from the St Paul’s Institute published on 7 November. This can be downloaded from:

http://www.stpaulsinstitute.org.uk/Reports

Additionally, ComRes has released the full data tables from the study, with breaks by gender, age, and length of working in the financial services sector. These can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/St_Pauls_results_Sep11.pdf

Asked whether the City of London needed to listen more to the guidance of the Church, only 12% agreed, 76% disagreed, with 12% uncertain. Men (79%) were more likely to disagree than women (70%), with dissent reaching 80% among those who had worked longest in the sector (for fifteen years or more).

Nor can such attitudes be entirely attributed to an absence of faith. Belief in God ran at 41% and at virtually one-half for the over-55s and those who had been in the sector for fewer than five years. 38% disbelieved, but one in two of them said that they believed in a higher power or were a spiritual person. 21% did not know what to think about God.

16% of financial services professionals claimed to attend religious worship at least once a month, 37% less frequently, and 47% never. Total non-attendance peaked at 54% for the 25-34 cohort and 60% for those who had worked in the sector from six to ten years.

More generally, the poll discovered that: ‘professionals in the financial services sector believe that City bond traders, FTSE chief executives and stock brokers are paid too much, teachers are paid too little and that there is too great a gap between rich and poor in the UK.’

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Church of England Resumes Normal Service

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Great news for statisticians! The Church of England has decided to resume publication of Church Statistics in something like its traditional form. This was discontinued in 2006 following the appearance of the edition for 2004/05, and in favour of what hitherto has not been a wholly satisfactory web-based substitute (although enhancements are in hand).

Church Statistics, 2009/10, prepared by the Research and Statistics Department of the Archbishops’ Council, was published on 29 September 2011 as a 67-page booklet (ISBN 978-0-9564659-2-4). This can either be ordered in print from Church House Bookshop (price £6.99) or downloaded for free at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1333106/2009churchstatistics.pdf

It mostly derives from two sources of data: parochial attendance and membership statistics for 2009; and parochial finance statistics for 2009 and numbers of licensed ministers for 2010. The former have already been partly released in provisional form on 3 February and covered by BRIN the next day, so recapitulation of the headlines is unnecessary here. See our previous post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=868

The financial and ministerial statistics are now published for the first time. There was a net decline of 72 in the number of licensed clergy (including part-time and self-supporting ministry), and of 129 in full-time stipendiary clergy alone. There were 8,135 of the latter in 2010 (21% of them women), compared with 15,391 in 1961 and 23,670 in 1901, prompting a headline in today’s The Times of ‘Vicar shortage may leave Church “little more than a sect”’. Moreover, the mean age of all stipendiary diocesan clergy was 52, with 22% aged 60 and over. 97% of them in 2010 were white.

The financial data reveal that the 2008 ‘credit crunch’ had an adverse impact on parochial income in 2009, which dropped by 4%, from £925 million to £889 million. However, the decrease was mainly in restricted income and one-off donations, tax-efficient planned giving actually rising modestly and topping an average of £10 per subscriber a week for the first time (the figure was £0.32 when initially recorded in 1964). Nor were Anglican parishes as hard hit as many other charities. Total parochial expenditure in 2009 was £886 million, of which £699 million was recurring and £187 million for capital.

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YouGov@Cambridge on Religion

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Clive D. Field

On 30 April last, we reported on the virtual launch of YouGov@Cambridge (a collaboration between pollsters YouGov and the University of Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies) and on the interim results from the first annual YouGov@Cambridge census of British life and attitudes. See:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=1223

Between 4 and 7 September, in advance of a two-day physical launch in Cambridge on 8-9 September, YouGov@Cambridge released final tables on the 2011 census, the fieldwork for which extended from 13 April to 20 May 2011 and involved online interviews with a representative sample of 64,303 adult Britons aged 18 and over (although most questions were put to sub-samples).

The new tables included the results for a module on religion, which had not featured in the interim release, and this post summarizes some of the main findings. For the full data, go to:

http://www.yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/sites/yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/files/Religion.pdf

  • 40% of adults professed no religion, 55% were Christian and 5% of other faiths – age made a major difference, with only 38% of the 18-34s being Christian and 53% having no religion, whereas for the over-55s the figures were 70% and 26% respectively 
  • 74% of respondents had been brought up in some religion (including 70% as Christians, implying a net 15% leakage from Christianity over time) and 25% not, the latter figure rising to 39% among the 18-34s 
  • 35% described themselves as very or fairly religious and 63% as not very or not at all religious – there were no big variations by demographics (even by age), but Londoners (41%) did stand out as being disproportionately religious, doubtless reflecting the concentration of ethnic minorities in the capital 
  • 34% believed in a personal God or gods (ranging from 28% among the 18-34s to 42% of over-55s), 10% in some higher spiritual power, 19% in neither, with 29% unsure or agnostic 
  • 11% of respondents claimed to attend a religious service once a month or more, 27% less often, and 59% never – non-attendance was higher among the young (62% for the 18-34s) than the old (54% for the over-55s) and among manual workers (62%) than non-manuals (56%), while London had the best figure for monthly or more attendance (16%) 
  • 16% claimed to pray daily, 12% several times a week, 4% once a week, 7% several times a month, 4% once a month, 24% less often, and 29% never – men (34%) were more likely not to pray at all than women (24%) 
  • 79% agreed and 11% disagreed that religion is a cause of much misery and conflict in the world today 
  • 72% agreed and 15% disagreed that religion is used as an excuse for bigotry and intolerance, with a high of 81% in Scotland where sectarianism has often been rife 
  • 35% agreed and 45% disagreed that religion is a force for good in the world, dissentients being more numerous among men (50%) than women (41%) 
  • 78% (82% of the over-55s) agreed and 12% disagreed that religion should be a private matter and had no place in politics 
  • 16% agreed and 70% disagreed that Christians and the Church should have more influence over politics in the country – only among the over-55s did the proportion in favour of the proposition scrape above one-fifth 
  • 61% agreed and 18% disagreed that organized religion is in terminal decline in the UK – the over-55s (67%) were most prone to agree and Londoners (21%) to disagree 
  • 40% agreed and 40% disagreed that the decline of organized religion had made Britain a worse place – the over-55s (54%) were twice as likely to agree as the 18-34s (27%) 
  • 51% (57% in Scotland) agreed and 32% (37% among men) disagreed that all religions are equally valid 
  • 34% agreed and 49% disagreed that some religions are better than others, men (39%), the over-55s (38%), and Londoners (38%) being disproportionately likely to agree 
  • 49% agreed and 29% disagreed that it is good for children to be brought up within a religion – among the 18-34s opinion divided at 36% each (whereas for the over-55s 64% agreed and 22% disagreed) 
  • 40% agreed (rising to 46% of men and 44% of 18-34s) and 39% disagreed that religion is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge 
  • 29% agreed and 54% disagreed that there are some things in life which only religion can explain, the over-55s (35%) placing more trust in religion than the 18-34s (24%)

All in all, these data point to a society in which religion is increasingly in retreat and nominal. With the principal exception of the older age groups, many of those who claim some religious allegiance fail to underpin it by a belief in God or to translate it into regular prayer or attendance at a place of worship. People in general are more inclined to see the negative than the positive aspects of religion, and they certainly want to keep it well out of the political arena.

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Anglican Cathedrals in 2010

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Attendance at regular Sunday or midweek services in England’s Anglican cathedrals (excluding Royal Peculiars such as Westminster Abbey) increased by 7% between 2009 and 2010, according to figures released by the Archbishops’ Council’s Research and Statistics Unit on 4 May.

The overall growth in cathedral congregations since the turn of the millennium has been 37%, representing an average of 4% each year, with midweek attendance alone more than doubling and now approaching the same level of Sunday worshippers (16,100 and 18,900 a week respectively).

However, cathedral congregations on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2010 were 7% down on the 2009 figure, while total attendances during Advent were (at 682,400) the lowest since 2000. The adverse pre-Christmas weather was doubtless a major cause.

Easter Eve and Easter Day congregations were also 4% lower than in 2009, with the absolute figure (47,800) the smallest for a decade. Attendance throughout Holy Week was 110,400.

In addition to worship services, cathedrals hosted an ever increasing number of public and civic events, 5,250 in 2010 attended by 1,633,000 individuals, 80% more than in 2000.

General visitors to cathedrals, by contrast, have fallen by one-fifth over the decade, to stand at 9,423,000 in 2010. There was also a 3% dip since 2009 in the number of educational events at cathedrals and a 1% reduction in children present at them.

The Church of England data may be found at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1243690/cathedralattendances2000to2010.pdf

BRIN’s summary of the comparable statistics for 2009 is still available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=144

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The Greying Church

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The greater propensity of older people to religious belief and practice is a well-established sociological phenomenon. In particular, the disproportionate number of elderly worshippers in UK congregations has been documented in church attendance censuses undertaken by Christian Research and other agencies.

Some BRIN readers may have spotted references in yesterday’s media to new research exploring the implications of greater longevity for religiosity. This generated headlines such as ‘Study links faith to life expectancy’ (The Independent) and ‘Church pews are emptying because we are “living longer and don’t fear death”’ (Daily Mail).

The full findings are reported in Elissaios Papyrakis and Geethanjali Selvaretnam, ‘The greying church: the impact of life expectancy on religiosity’, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 38, No. 5, May 2011, pp. 438-52. The authors are, respectively, from the School of International Development, University of East Anglia and the School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.

This is a commercial subscription journal from Emerald Group Publishing, and the paper concerned is not freely available online. The abstract and purchase options can be accessed at:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0306-8293&volume=38&issue=5&articleid=1917339&show=abstract

The article does not report major new empirical data, and the argument can be complex and heavily mathematical, but the following edited extracts from the abstract, introduction and conclusion will give some flavour of the content.

The authors set out to study ‘the mediating role of life expectancy in explaining cross-country differences in religious expression’. They utilize ‘a theoretical decision-making framework … separately examining the decision of young and old individuals with respect to religious participation.’

Religiosity is viewed through a cost-benefit lens, the assumption being that ‘demand for religiosity is determined by the relative benefits and costs of religious adherence when alive and in the afterlife.’ A ‘three-period model of discrete time’ is deployed, corresponding to ‘the young and old intervals of one’s lifetime’ and the hereafter.

‘Decisions at each point in time depend on expected social and spiritual benefits attached to religious adherence (both contemporaneously, as well as in the afterlife), the probability of entering heaven in the afterlife, as well as the costs of formal religion in terms of time allocated to religious activities.’

‘Most religious beliefs link to some degree the cumulative amount of religious effort to benefits in the afterlife. Increases in life expectancy, in effect, discount these after-life benefits against the life-time costs of religious participation, which often come in the form of sacrificing time and income.’

‘Hence, increases in life expectancy encourage postponement of religious involvement, particularly in religion doctrines that do not necessarily link salvation (or afterlife benefits more broadly) to the timing of religiosity.’ Ageing congregations are seen as the inevitable consequence of this process.

The inference drawn is that ‘religious establishments should anticipate to attract older members, particularly in countries which have high life expectancy or expect significant increases in life expectancy (e.g. due to improvements in medical care or decline in critical infection rates). An increased life span allows for postponement of religiosity, without necessarily jeopardising benefits in the afterlife, which are anyway discounted far in the future.’

‘While many religious organisations place particular emphasis on increasing youth membership, they should not lose sight of incentives needed to attract older people.’

On the other hand, ‘current socio-economic benefits can counterbalance the negative impact of life expectancy on religiosity and hence encourage religious involvement. Religions that largely delink salvation/damnation to the timing and amount of religious effort will particularly need to resort to such means to boost membership numbers.’

‘Any contemporaneous benefits linked to religious participation (e.g. in the form of expanding a person’s social circle, communal activities, spiritual fulfilment, support and guidance) are likely to weigh more heavily in the decision-making process compared to what might happen in the less certain and far distant afterlife.’

A Church of England spokesperson, quoted in the Daily Mail, said the study ‘made a number of assumptions about why Christians want to share their faith … Age really isn’t the important thing. It is the duty of every Christian to share the good news of the gospel with those who haven’t heard it, irrespective of age.’

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Census Question Under Fire

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Clive D. Field

There are just six days to go before UK residents have to complete the household and individual questionnaire for the decennial population census.

But humanists are still simultaneously maintaining their attack on the voluntary question on religion while paradoxically encouraging people to answer it, ideally (from the humanist perspective) by registering as of no religion.

In a press release on 20 March the British Humanist Association (BHA) described the census question as ‘highly misleading’ and ‘fatally flawed for its intended purpose of planning public services’. The BHA’s evidence for this claim comes from new opinion polls conducted online by YouGov in England and Wales and in Scotland.

The English and Welsh survey, commissioned by the BHA, was undertaken on 9-11 March 2011 among a representative sample of 1,896 adults aged 18 and over. The Scottish poll was sponsored by the Humanist Society of Scotland and conducted on 10-14 January 2011 among 2,007 adults.

In England and Wales, when asked the census question ‘What is your religion?’, 61% ticked a religious box and 39% declared themselves to be of no religion. However, when asked ‘Are you religious?’, just 29% said ‘yes’ and 65% ‘no’, ‘meaning over half of those whom the census would count as having a religion said they were not religious’.

Responses varied somewhat according to demographics, most notably by age. Whereas 56% of 18-24s had no religion, the proportion fell steadily throughout the age cohorts, to stand at 25% among the over-55s. Similarly, while 70-73% of the three under-45 cohorts stated that they were not religious, this was the case with 68% of those aged 45-54 and 56% of the over-55s.

Marital status also appeared to make a difference, although this pattern doubtless conceals an age-related effect. The number professing no religion was highest among the never married (53%) and those living as married (52%). It was substantially lower among those who were currently married or in a civil partnership (31%) or had formerly been, 27% among the separated or divorced and 25% with the widowed.

The 53% of the English and Welsh sample who professed to be Christian were additionally asked: ‘Do you believe that Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life and was the son of God?’ Fewer than half (48%) said that they did so believe, with 27% disbelieving and 25% unsure, BHA’s unspoken point presumably being that many so-called Christians have rather a shallow or unconventional faith.

It is also a generally inactive faith, in terms of attendance at a place of worship for religious reasons. Only 15% of the entire sample claimed to have been within the past month, with a further 16% going within the past year, 43% more than a year ago and 20% never. The never category was largest among the 18-24s (28%), with 32% for full-time students.

In Scotland, one-half of the sample was asked the Scottish census question: ‘What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’ In reply, 56% of Scots professed some affiliation (with write-in responses available) and 42% none.

The other Scottish half-sample was initially asked: ‘Are you religious?’ 35% said that they were and 56% that they were not, with 8% uncertain. Those who answered that they were religious or who did not know were then asked: ‘Which religion do you belong to?’ At this point, 22% said that they did not belong to any organized religion.

The BHA press release and links to the data tables for both England and Wales and Scotland will be found at:

http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/771

These statistics serve to illustrate what is already generally well-known, that surveys on religious (and – indeed – all other) topics are inevitably informed or perhaps even shaped by question-wording.

The Office for National Statistics, which is overseeing the census, is fully aware of the sensitivities and ambiguities of investigating religion. It has gone to some considerable lengths to research and trial the merits of alternative wordings during its census preparations.

For fuller information about these deliberations and experimentation, see the October 2009 ONS report on Final Recommended Questions for the 2011 Census in England and Wales: Religion, which is available on the ONS website.

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