News |

ADL Index of Anti-Semitism

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Britain has one of the lowest rates of anti-Semitism in the world, according to The ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism, which was released by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on 13 May 2014.

Interviews were conducted, under the auspices of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, with randomly selected samples of 53,100 adults aged 18 and over in 102 countries (comprising 86% of the world’s population) between July 2013 and February 2014. They included 510 in Britain, by telephone, from 9 August to 17 September 2013 by an unspecified agency.

The principal output from the research is an interactive website, permitting users to interrogate the data for individual countries, but there is also an executive summary which provides an overview of the results and methodology. Both can be accessed at:

http://global100.adl.org/

The index has been compiled from a list of eleven negative stereotypes about Jews, some included in previous (less extensive) ADL research and some new. Respondents who said that at least six of these statements were probably true were deemed to harbour anti-Semitic attitudes.

Across all 102 countries combined 26% of adults were classified as anti-Semitic on this measure, the largest proportion by far being in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA, on 74%), with the biggest score within MENA being the West Bank and Gaza (93%) and for a non-MENA nation Greece (69%). The aggregate score for English-speaking countries was 13%.

Britain scored 8%, placing it in 97th position, with only Vietnam, The Netherlands, Sweden, Philippines, and Laos recording lower figures. The British statistic was higher for men (10%) than women (6%) and, by age, peaked among those aged 35-49 (9%). It was twice as great among people without religion (12%) as Christians (6%), although the sub-sample of the former apparently represented under 140 individuals.

Of the eleven stereotypes, the most commonly accepted in Britain (as it was in the rest of the world) was that ‘Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country/the countries they live in’. This was held by 27% of Britons (34% among 18-34s), the smallest number since ADL surveys began here in 2002 (comparative data for replicated stereotypes appear below). The next most prevalent stereotypes in Britain were that ‘Jews have too much control over the United States government’ (19%, with 24% for men) and ‘Jews have too much control over the global media’ (14%, with 19% among 18-34s).

% saying each stereotype probably true	2002	2004	2005	2007	2009	2012	2013
Jews more loyal to Israel than this country	34	40	39	50	37	48	27
Jews have too much power in business world	21	20	14	22	15	20	11
Jews have too much power in international financial markets	NA	18	16	21	15	22	12
Jews still talk too much about Holocaust	23	31	28	28	20	24	10
Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind	10	18	NA	NA	NA	NA	8

Somewhat fewer than the 8% categorized by the ADL as anti-Semitic self-identified as holding unfavourable opinions of Jews – just 5%, the same as for Christians. Predictably (from other surveys), Muslims were the most negatively rated. However, in the case of all the non-Christian faiths, one-fifth of the British sample was undecided. This presumably reflected lack of direct acquaintance with the groups concerned (for instance, three-quarters said they rarely or never interacted with Jews) but may also have concealed some who were silently antipathetic. The full figures follow:

% rating of	Favourable	Unfavourable	Can’t rate
Christians	82	5	13
Jews	75	5	20
Muslims	69	11	21
Hindus	72	6	22
Buddhists	74	4	23

Rather more (16%) reported that ‘a lot of the people I know have negative feelings about Jews’, while two-fifths admitted to being very or fairly worried about violence directed at Jews or Jewish symbols/institutions in Britain. Such violence occurred somewhat often according to 6% of respondents, not that often for 27%, and never or almost never for 39%. Of the minority who could isolate the cause of the violence, far more Britons attributed it to anti-Israel sentiment as to anti-Jewish feelings, as had been the case in previous years (see trend data, below).

% agreeing violence against Jews	2002	2004	2005	2007	2009	2012	2013
Result of anti-Jewish feelings	15	14	24	27	30	32	14
Result of anti-Israel sentiment	46	51	33	34	26	34	33

In fact, as many as 26% of Britons entertained an unfavourable attitude to Israel, with 38% favourable (against 54% being favourable to Palestine). A similar proportion (27%) agreed that their views of Jews were influenced to an extent, and invariably for the worse, by the actions of the State of Israel. This was much the same as in the four previous surveys (2005. 2007, 2009, and 2012) when the figure ranged from 20% to 28%.

There was overwhelming (99%) familiarity with the Holocaust, and there were no absolute Holocaust-deniers in the sample, albeit 6% believed that the number of Jews who had died in it had been greatly exaggerated. Of the remainder, 83% accepted the historical record of the scale of Jewish deaths, while 10% expressed no views. Far fewer accused Jews of talking too much about the Holocaust than in previous surveys – 10% versus a mean of 26% for 2002-12.

Jews accounted for well under 1% of Britain’s population at the 2011 census, yet only 22% of this sample correctly estimated that proportion. Almost half (47%) reckoned Jews constituted more than 1%, including 26% who believed they might form more than 2% of the population.

So far as Britain and several other countries are concerned, the ADL study will doubtless be compared with Jewish experiences and perceptions of anti-Semitism as reported by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on 8 November 2013. The UK data for the FRA survey derived from an online and entirely self-selecting sample of 1,468 Jews. See BRIN’s post of 15 November 2013 for further analysis.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged Anti-Defamation League, Anti-Semitism, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, holocaust, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, prejudice, violence | 1 Comment

Islamic and Other Themes

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Attitudes to Muslims

One-quarter (26%) of Britons entertain a mostly unfavourable or very unfavourable opinion of Muslims, according to the latest release of data, on 12 May 2014, from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, for which 1,000 adults were interviewed by telephone in Britain between 17 March and 8 April 2014.

This was the lowest proportion holding unfavourable views of Muslims in the seven European countries investigated, significantly less than in Italy (63%), Greece (53%), Poland (50%), and Spain (46%), and broadly comparable with France (27%) and Germany (33%). Negativity toward Muslims was typically associated with older people and those espousing politically right-wing views, and Britain was no exception to this rule, with a gap of 9% between the 18-29s and over-50s and of 15% between leftists and rightists. More information is available at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/05/2014-05-12_Pew-Global-Attitudes-European-Union.pdf

Notwithstanding a lower incidence of Islamophobia than in other countries, unfavourable attitudes to Muslims in Britain in 2014 are running at one of their highest levels since Pew first started measuring them ten years ago (as the following table of trend data shows), only marginally surpassed by the Autumn 2009 figure of 27%. They also far exceed negativity toward Jews in Britain, which has never risen above 9% during the past decade and stands at 7% in the Spring 2014 survey.

%	Favourable	Unfavourable
2004 Spring	67	18
2005 Spring	72	14
2006 Spring	64	20
2008 Spring	63	23
2009 Spring	63	19
2009 Autumn	61	27
2010 Spring	60	20
2011 Spring	64	22
2014 Spring	64	26

Halal meat

The controversy about halal meat entering the food chain for non-Muslims without clear labelling of its provenance rumbles on, and The Sunday Times commissioned YouGov to test public opinion on the subject, 1,905 Britons being interviewed online on 8-9 May 2014. The overwhelming majority (78%) thought that supermarkets should be required to label products containing meat from animals slaughtered using halal methods, with only 13% opposed; the over-60s (84%), Conservatives (84%), and UKIP voters (87%) were most in favour. A plurality (49%) said they would feel uncomfortable about eating halal meat, with discomfort most evident among women (52%), residents of southern England outside London (54%), the over-60s (56%), Conservatives (59%), and UKIP supporters (65%). Overall, 38% were comfortable with consuming halal meat, including 44% of men, 47% of Labour voters, and 51% of Londoners. Data tables can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/45cxqhtvw7/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140509.pdf

Nigerian schoolgirls

The abduction of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by the Islamist group Boko Haram was the most noticed news story of the week, for the second week in succession, according to replies to an open-ended question posed in an online Populus poll of 2,043 Britons on 14-15 May 2014. It was mentioned by 19%, just ahead of the Turkish mine disaster in second place on 16% and of the death of teenager Stephen Sutton on 14%. This information is taken from ‘Something for the Weekend’, the weekly email round-up by Populus, dated 16 May 2014.

When prompted in a YouGov poll on 12-13 May 2014, 55% of 1,977 respondents also indicated that they had been very or fairly closely following the story, with a high of 68% among over-60s. A similar number (54%) expressed support for the UK sending troops to help find the schoolgirls, if requested to do so by the Nigerian government, even though far fewer (32%) endorsed more general western military involvement in combating Islamism in northern Nigeria (with 40% declaring it would be ‘a bad thing’). Awareness of the Twitter campaign to BringBackOurGirls stood at 34%, with 54% among 18-24s (reflecting their greater usage of social media). Full results are located at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/hr12kl3iee/InternalResults_140513_Kidnapped_Nigerian_girls_website.pdf

A question about the kidnapping was also included in a Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday, 1.005 adults being interviewed online on 9 May 2014. The majority of them (56%) wanted the British government to offer to send the SAS (special forces) to Nigeria to help with the rescue of the schoolgirls, with just under one-third opposed to any British military engagement. Support for SAS involvement was especially strong among Scots (64%), ethnic minorities (65%), and the top (AB) social group (68%). Detailed breaks can be found at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MoS-tables-11-May-2014.pdf

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a meditative practice which originates in Buddhism but has been increasingly deployed to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions. According to a YouGov online poll on 8-9 May 2014, 45% of Britons (comprising 51% of women and 38% of men) would support mindfulness-based therapy being available on the NHS to treat depression, with 25% opposed and 30% undecided. This idea has been mooted by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Somewhat fewer (39%) of the public, however, think that mindfulness probably has health benefits, with 29% unconvinced, and 33% uncertain. Complete results do not seem to have been published, the foregoing information being extracted from a YouGov blog post on 10 May 2014 at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/10/mindfulness-therapy-nhs/

Post-war religious statistics

Thanks are due to Dr Ben Clements for alerting BRIN to the existence of a developing resource from the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois. The Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups (CREG) project is assembling data on these two themes for 165 countries since the Second World War. There are three core sources of statistics – Britannica Book of the Year, CIA World Factbook, and World Almanac Book of Facts – with a variety of supplemental sources for individual countries and years. In the case of the UK actual or estimated religious population figures are provided as percentages for each year between 1945 and 2013 for the following groups: Roman Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox, and non-religious (lines 6810-7489 on the ‘long’ worksheet, lines 1727-1795 on the ‘wide’ worksheet). The CREG website will be found at:

http://www.clinecenter.illinois.edu/research/sid-composition.html

These data need to be used with circumspection since specific sources are not cited, the majority of figures appear to be estimates, worksheet columns are poorly labelled (the separate variable descriptions document needs to be consulted for explanations), faith group proportions do not always align with sample survey evidence, and the Protestant category is undifferentiated (and thus impossibly large). The statistics perhaps have some utility for comparative purposes, measured against those of other nations, although there are other compilations for this, perhaps the best-known being the World Religion Database. For the UK alone, Peter Brierley’s estimates are perhaps a better starting-point, albeit not always beyond question either; see, in particular, his UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends, No. 2 (1999) and UK Church Statistics, 2005-2015 (2011).

Spiritual care at point of death

Hospitals in England are often failing to meet the spiritual needs of dying patients and their relatives, as laid down in national guidelines, according to the National Care of the Dying Audit for Hospitals, England: National Report, which was published by the Royal College of Physicians in conjunction with the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool on 14 May 2014. The research was conducted in 2013 on the basis of a mixed methods approach, comprising an organizational audit of 131 hospital trusts, an anonymized case note review for 6,580 patients, and a survey of the views of 858 bereaved families and friends. The report can be found at:

http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ncdah_national_report.pdf

The case note review indicated that 72% of dying patients professed some religion. Despite this, in 63% of cases the hospital failed to achieve the key performance indicator of assessing the spiritual needs of the patient and their nominated relatives or friends. Direct conversations about their spiritual needs were documented with only 21% of dying patients thought capable of participating in such discussions (equivalent to 11% of all patients), and indirect (proxy) conversations (via the nominated relative or friend) were held for 23% of patients. Evidence that patients had been seen by a spiritual adviser was recorded in a mere 9% of cases. Just 25% of the relatives/carers of dying patients were asked about their own spiritual needs. Among the sample of bereaved families and friends, 39% agreed that the patient’s religious or spiritual needs had been met by the healthcare team, with 50% expressing no clear view, and 11% disagreeing.

Posted in Historical studies, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Anti-Semitism, Boko Haram, Buddhism, Cline Center for Democracy, Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups Project, end-of-life care, halal meat, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Mail on Sunday, Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool, meditation, mindfulness, Muslims, National Health Service, Nigeria, palliative care, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Populus, Royal College of Physicians, schoolgirls, spiritual needs, Sunday Times, Survation, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church of England Health Check and Other News

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Church of England health check

Further to our post of 31 January 2014, we now note the appearance of the second and third instalments of the ‘Church Health Check’ series being run in the Church Times. In the issue for 7 February 2014 (pp. 21-8) there were various essays by academics and insiders focusing on the leadership and structure of the Church of England. Those which had a particularly quantitative dimension were by:

Professor Linda Woodhead who examined (pp. 21-2) the Church’s statistics of ministry for 2012, concluding that ‘there are no longer enough troupers left to keep the show on the road, and the show will have to change’ – see further the BRIN post of 24 October 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/from-st-george-to-prince-george/
Professor Leslie Francis who summarized (pp. 26-7) his research into psychological type profiling of Anglican bishops, to determine whether the Church has the right sort of episcopate – see the BRIN post of 30 November 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/st-andrews-day-and-other-news/
Professor David Voas who reported (pp. 26-7) on the importance of clergy leadership qualities to church growth, noting ‘there are strong associations between growth and personality type, but none between growth and attendance on leadership courses’ – see the BRIN post of 18 January 2014 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/anglican-church-growth-and-other-news/

The same issue of the Church Times also contained (p. 2) two shorter reports quoting further findings from the newspaper’s 2013 readership survey, which attracted 4,620 self-selecting respondents. They revealed that 73% expressed confidence in the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury (7% disagreeing), but just 23% had confidence in the General Synod (37% disagreeing and 41% undecided), and 37% in the Archbishops’ Council. Sub-nationally, 69% (71% among laity) had confidence in their local clergy and 63% in their diocesan bishop. On matters of sexual morality, Anglo-Catholics and Broad Anglicans were shown to be more liberally disposed than Evangelicals, suggesting that the Church of England’s internal strife over homosexuality is far from over. Among Evangelicals, 63% disapproved of ordaining practising homosexuals as priests and 65% as bishops, while 75% were opposed to same-sex marriage in church and 51% to the blessing of such relationships. There was more sign of consensus on another historically contested issue (but now with just one final hurdle to clear in July’s General Synod following this week’s debate), that of women bishops, with support running at 76% for Anglo-Catholics, 77% for Evangelicals, and 93% for Broad Anglicans. These two reports are freely available online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/7-february/news/uk/poll-lack-of-trust-in-synod

The third instalment of the ‘Church Health Check’ can be found in the current issue of the Church Times (14 February 2014, pp. 21-7) and is devoted to the social impact of the Church of England. This has a rather limited quantitative element. However, the lead article by Professor Linda Woodhead (pp. 21-2) draws upon her 2013 Westminster Faith Debates surveys to illustrate how people still connect to the Church in ways apart from regular attendance at public worship, while also noting that take-up of all three church-based rites of passage has diminished. Some of the Opinion Research Business polling for the Church of England over the last decade or so is also relevant in this context, a couple of examples of which can be viewed through the Research and Statistics link webpage (which, incidentally, is in desperate need of an overhaul and update to consolidate the archival material) at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics.aspx

The same issue of the Church Times (p. 3) carries further results from the 2013 readership survey, revealing that 67% of this sub-set of Anglicans are currently involved in some form of unpaid community work (volunteering), with 35% active in two or more fields. Education (19%), local community action (18%), cultural activities (18%), children’s work (12%), and social welfare services (10%) were most frequently mentioned by the self-selecting sample. Volunteering by these clergy and lay churchgoer respondents is said to be at least twice as great as by the population at large, as recorded in Government surveys. See further:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/14-february/news/uk/if-you-need-help,-turn-to-a-churchgoer

Finally, the issue of 14 February 2014 contains a full page (p. 17) printing nine letters from readers in response to the first two instalments of ‘Church Health Check’.

Catholics polled on family life – the sequel

On 8 November 2013 BRIN reported on the Roman Catholic Church’s global consultation of the views of the faithful on family life, including vexed issues such as contraception and same-sex relationships, in preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, to be held in the Vatican on 5-19 October 2014. The consultation, by means of a 40-question survey instrument, attracted significant attention, not to say controversy, inside and outside the Catholic Church. It was criticized in some quarters for its inadequate methodology and theologically opaque content, although the Vatican was at pains to point out that it was not an opinion poll and that the Church’s teaching is not determined by majority popular vote.

Notwithstanding, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales took the lead in putting the questionnaire online and received a healthy response (albeit small in relation to the size of the Catholic population). According to the Catholic Herald (7 February 2014, p. 2) and The Tablet (8 February 2014, p. 28), the Conference received some 16,500 completed questionnaires. The bulk of these (12,266) were filled in online, mainly by laity (80%), with 69% being married and 38% parents. One-fifth of respondents were in ‘positions of responsibility within the Church’, including priests, teachers, and pastoral assistants, while 24% were aged under 45 years and 30% 65 and over. The figures exclude 1,163 responses from 57 other countries, which were forwarded to the relevant Church authorities.

In deference to the Vatican, the Conference has declined to publish its report on the results of the English and Welsh consultation in advance of the Extraordinary Synod (as have the bishops in the United States, Canada, and Australia), despite the fact that both the German and the Swiss Bishops’ Conferences have already published their respective national reports, containing a strong message on the need for ‘reform’. It would be surprising if any different message emerged from England and Wales, given that polling of Catholics in Britain during recent years has demonstrated a wide gulf between opinions in the pews and the Magisterium of the Church. Newly-released polling of 12,000 Catholics worldwide (excluding Britain) by Univision (the television network serving Hispanic America) has revealed similar disaffection, with the partial exception of Africa, as have national surveys by Catholic media and institutions in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. There is a helpful summary of some of this international research in The Tablet for 15 February 2014 (p. 30).

2011 census: Church of Scotland parish profiles

Overseen by Revd Fiona Tweedie, the Statistics for Mission Group of the Church of Scotland has now completed the task of preparing parish profiles of selected data from the 2011 census of population for Scotland. The profiles, which take the form of attractive 12-page PDF documents comprising charts and tables, include details of religious affiliation. They are available to download through the ChurchFinder on the Church of Scotland website (using the ‘Parish statistics’ link from the table of search results) at:

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/church_finder/

Invisible church

Speaking of the Church of Scotland, Steve Aisthorpe (the Kirk’s Mission Development Worker, North) has recently written an interesting 26-page preliminary report on Investigating the Invisible Church: A Survey of Christians who Do Not Attend Church. It is based on a survey of a random sample of 5,523 people in the Highlands and Islands contacted by telephone in the autumn of 2013, 2,698 of whom gave a short interview. Of these 934 identified themselves as Christians who do not attend church and agreed to take part in a more detailed study, and 430 (46%) eventually completed and returned the online and postal questionnaire, comprising almost 80 items. Critical Research oversaw the recruitment of participants, data entry, and statistical analysis, while funding came from the Church of Scotland’s Mission and Discipleship Council and three other partners. The report is at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Investigating%20the%20invisible%20church.pdf

The headline finding from the study was that 44% of the population of the Highlands and Islands, representing some 133,000 individuals, are professing Christians who are not currently engaged with a local congregation, although only 15% had never attended church regularly in the past and 23% had attended for more than 20 years (with a further 27% for more than 10 years). Inevitably, a good proportion of these are ‘cultural Christians’, but a surprisingly large number (50%) scored highly (more than 30 out of 50) on the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, which aims to measure the extent to which faith underpins everyday life. Disillusioned respondents may have been with the Church, and their reasons for church-leaving were explored in detail, but 72% were not disappointed with God, with 50% regarding themselves as part of a worldwide Christian community and 41% as on a spiritual quest beyond religious institutions. There was no simplistic partition into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ here.

The areas explored in the quantitative phase emerged from a previous qualitative phase in 2012-13, in which 30 Christians not attending a local church were interviewed in depth. The report on this qualitative phase (dated July 2013) is also available at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Faith_journeys_beyond_the_congregations.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

The Community Security Trust (CST)’s 32-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2013 was published on 6 February 2014. It revealed that the number of such incidents recorded in the United Kingdom in 2013 was, at 529, 18% lower than in 2012 and only just over half the post-1984 high of 931 incidents in 2009. CST believes the fall in anti-Semitism since 2012 to be genuine and to reflect the lack of anti-Jewish ‘trigger events’ in 2013, such as had caused two temporary spikes in 2012. However, CST still reckons there is ‘significant underreporting’ of anti-Semitic incidents both to itself and the police, and that the true figure is considerably higher. Of the 529 recorded incidents in 2013, over three-quarters took place in Greater London and Greater Manchester, with 69 categorized as violent assaults, although none constituted ‘extreme violence’ (amounting to grievous bodily harm or a threat to life). The most common category, with 368 incidents, was of abusive behaviour, including verbal abuse, albeit these were 23% down on 2012. One-quarter of all incidents were assessed as having far right, anti-Israel, or Islamist motivations. In the minority of cases where a physical description of the perpetrator could be obtained, 62% were white and 25% South Asian. The report, including a profile of incidents by category and month for each year from 2003 to 2013, can be read at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202013.pdf

Values profile of Britain

The January 2014 issue of Modern Believing (Vol. 55, No. 1) is a special theme issue, devoted to ‘What British People Really Think’, and guest-edited by Professor Linda Woodhead. Using data from a variety of sources, but especially from her January and June 2013 YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, it depicts what the British think about abortion (pp. 7-14); women bishops (pp. 15-26); same-sex marriage (pp. 27-38); euthanasia (pp. 39-48); God, religion, and authority (pp. 49-58); and society, politics, and religious institutions (pp. 59-67). There is also an introduction (pp. 1-5) and conclusion (‘A Values Profile of Britain’, pp. 69-74) by Woodhead. Non-subscribers to the journal, and non-members of subscribing institutions, may struggle to access these articles. The new publisher (Liverpool University Press) does not appear to be offering the option to buy a print copy of this special issue only, while downloads cost an eye-watering £25 per (shortish) article via the following link:

http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/n37414k210jp/?p=a25311fb53864bfe817f0c15f25adc56&pi=0

POSTSCRIPT [18 February 2014] BRIN has now ascertained that single copies of this entire issue can be purchased for £15.00, more cost-effective than the article download option. To order a copy, contact Liverpool@turpin-distribution.com

Faith under fire

Do soldiers turn to God when they are on the front line? Some provisional answers to this question are apparently contained in a postgraduate thesis submitted to the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies by Revd Peter King, who was chaplain to the Queen’s Royal Hussars during a bloody tour to Helmand province between October 2011 and April 2012, during which 23 British soldiers were killed and dozens more severely wounded. The research was featured in The Sunday Times, 9 February 2014, Main Section, p. 20 in an article by the newspaper’s defence correspondent, Mark Hookham. King surveyed more than 200 men in his 400-strong battle group, finding that 80% professed some religion and 63% reported that they were more likely to frequent religious services while on operations than when in barracks. An Easter service held by King in a cookhouse in Afghanistan had been attended by about 100 men, of whom one-quarter received Holy Communion. Almost half (46%) of the soldiers interviewed by King said they had prayed in Afghanistan, and the same proportion carried or wore a symbol of faith. An awareness of the presence of God had been felt by 17%, and a few even described a religious experience at the front.

POSTSCRIPT [7 April 2014]: The research has now been published as Peter King, ‘Faith in a Foxhole? Researching Combatant Religiosity amongst British Soldiers on Contemporary Operations’, Defence Academy Yearbook, 2013, pp. 2-10, freely available online at:

http://www.da.mod.uk/publications/library/miscellaneous/58520%20DA%20Yearbook%202013.pdf/view

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Afghanistan, Andrew Village, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, census of population, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Church Times, Community Security Trust, Critical Research, David Voas, euthanasia, family, Fiona Tweedie, health check, Highlands and Islands, Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, homosexuality, Jews, leadership, Leslie Francis, Linda Woodhead, Mark Hookham, ministry, Mission and Discipleship Council, Modern Believing, non-churchgoers, parishes, Peter King, Queen’s Royal Hussars, Religious Affiliation, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage, social impact, soldiers, Statistics for Mission Group, Steve Aisthorpe, Sunday Times, values, Vatican, volunteering, Westminster Faith Debates, women bishops, YouGov | Leave a comment

Young Religion and Other News

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Today’s authoritative post by BRIN associate Dr Ben Clements on survey trends in religious attitudes to euthanasia will be a hard act to follow, but hopefully these eight items of religious statistical news will still be of interest to some of the BRIN readership.

Youth on religion

The first major output from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme’s Youth on Religion (YOR) project was published by Routledge on 9 January 2014: Nicola Madge, Peter Hemming, and Kevin Stenson, Youth on Religion: The Development, Negotiation, and Impact of Faith and Non-Faith Identity (xii + 240p., ISBN 978-0-415-69670-8, £29.99, paperback, also available in hardback and as an e-book).

The book is based upon research undertaken in 2010 in three ethnically and culturally diverse and multi-faith areas of England, with relative social deprivation: the London boroughs of Hillingdon and Newham and Bradford in West Yorkshire. The quantitative phase of investigation comprised online questionnaires completed during lessons in February-April 2010 by 10,376 students in years 8, 10, and 12 (and thus mostly aged 13-18) at 39 secondary schools or colleges in the study areas (4,160 in Hillingdon, 3,361 in Newham, and 2,855 in Bradford). The qualitative phase involved group discussions and paired interviews with 157 students in year 12 (aged 17-18).

It goes without saying that the study areas are not typical of the country as a whole, and, moreover, respondents were not even fully representative of the relevant age group in those areas, thereby creating ‘limitations to the degree of generalisability possible from the study’ (pp. 42, 215). Care should therefore be taken in citing the statistical results because they will not necessarily exemplify the religious views of English young people overall. Commercial online youth panels exist which could have been used as the vehicle for an approximation of a national cross-section, but that is not what is on offer here. In particular, in reflection of the locations (and also differential response), the majority of participants were drawn from ethnic minorities: 40% Asian, 13% black, 10% other ethnicities, and just 37% white. As a consequence, ‘especially high levels of religious belief and practice’ are manifest (p. 215). Muslims formed the largest sub-group in the sample (35%), followed by Christians (31%), no religionists (20%), Sikhs (6%), and Hindus (5%). The numbers interviewed from other religious faiths were too small to be meaningful, even in this specific geographical context.

All that said, the volume contains a fascinating wealth of detail, with chapters on: constructions of religion; religious journeys; religious identity and expression; religion and everyday life; family and its influence; friends and schools; and religion and the community. Especially illuminated is ‘how young people in multi-faith areas get on together and how they live with difference’ (p. 17). Particular interest is likely to attach to the fourfold typology of religiosity introduced on pp. 72-88, sub-dividing the young people into Strict Adherents (24%), Flexible Adherents (32%), Pragmatists (21%), and Bystanders (23%). Unsurprisingly, the majority of Muslims were Strict Adherents, with most of the rest Flexible Adherents who ‘have negotiated ways of accommodating their religiosity within Western lifestyles’ (p. 207). Less than one-tenth of Christians were Strict Adherents, with one-fifth being Bystanders, having no real interest in religion. While four-fifths of the no religionists naturally also fell into the Bystander category, the remaining fifth were Pragmatists, taking a somewhat fluid view of their religious journey. Across the entire sample, there was ‘a tendency toward greater flexibility in religious expression’ (p. 216) as the young people evolved ‘their own personal religious identities within a prevailing ideology of liberal individualism’ (p. 217).

Although the book contains 39 figures and 12 tables, the qualitative evidence features as prominently as the quantitative, and BRIN readers will often find themselves thirsty for more numbers and also questioning some of the researchers’ decisions (for example, to use household ownership of books as some kind of ‘surrogate’ for socio-economic status, p. 35). It is to be hoped that the dataset will eventually be made available for secondary analysis, alongside the questionnaire and more details of methodology (unfortunately, the questionnaire is omitted from its customary place at the end of the book, nor is it available on the project website). Likewise, despite copious references to existing literature, much of the concern is apparently to inform theoretical debates (p. 1), and there are only incidental attempts to compare the project’s own findings with those of previous large-scale surveys, such as, from the 1990s, Leslie Francis’s Teenage Religion and Values project or Alan Smith’s investigation of adolescents in multi-faith Walsall (indeed, the latter’s 2007 book does not even appear in the bibliography of Youth on Religion).

Expectations of God

People now expect more of government than they do of God, according to an Ipsos MORI poll for King’s College London which was published on 14 January 2014, and for which 1,011 adult Britons were interviewed by telephone on 7-9 December 2013. Almost three-fifths (59%) of the public agreed with this statement, against only 29% disagreeing and 12% undecided. By contrast, many fewer (41%) thought that expectations of politicians were greater than those of God, the dissentient voice being 48%, with 11% uncertain. This doubtless reflects, less a vote of confidence in God, than cynicism about politicians, whose reputations have been tarnished by sleaze and other circumstances. Those putting greater expectations on God were especially likely to be found among the over-35s, non-manual workers, and owner-occupiers (54% in each case). For more information, see tables 63-66 at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/LeadershipPoll_tables.PDF

Same-sex marriage

The UK Data Service released on 22 January 2014 two datasets based on online, email, and postal responses to the Government’s public consultation in March-June 2012 on its Equal Civil Marriage (ECM) proposals for England and Wales. As with all such consultations, respondents were entirely self-selecting and almost certainly unrepresentative, demographically and/or attitudinally, of the population as a whole. One dataset comprises the 136,968 replies to the specific questions posed in the consultation, the other contains all 228,066 responses with coding of the more open-ended and free-text content. The coding framework developed by the Government Equalities Office includes the following codes:

SUPPORTIVE

Y4 Religious argument that supports ECM
Y5 Religious bodies ought to be allowed to marry same-sex couples if they wish to

NON-SUPPORTIVE

N4 Religious argument on nature of marriage and against ECM
N5 Religious bodies feel they will be forced to marry same-sex couples, even if they do not want to

OTHER

O5 All religious organizations should/must/will conduct religious marriage for same-sex couples

ISSUES

IS9 Ability of religious organizations to preach and teach their beliefs on the definition of marriage

For further information and documentation about these datasets, consult the UK Data Service catalogue record for Study Number 7394 at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue?sn=7394

Church of England health check

The current issue of the Church Times (31 January 2014, pp. 23-9) includes the first of a four-part series entitled ‘The Church Health Check’, and examining the current state of the Church of England. The first three parts will be devoted to ‘a diagnostic investigation of the patient’, while the fourth will ask ‘what remedial treatment may be required’. The theme of the first part is churches and congregations, and its contributors include Professor Linda Woodhead and Dr Peter Brierley. Woodhead (pp. 23-4) draws on her profile of Anglicans from the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates/YouGov research, arguing that it is ‘Time to Get Serious’ for ‘Anglicans are dying out’, with ‘Anglican identity … not being transmitted from one generation to the next’ and a striking disconnect between the Church’s official teachings and grass-roots social values. Brierley (pp. 24-5) examines Anglican attendances since 2000, forecasting continuing rapid decline to 2030, within three broad age bands, while also noting some pockets of church growth (such as ‘messy church’).

Elsewhere in the same issue of the newspaper (p. 3) are featured some initial findings from the online and postal survey of a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 4,500 clerical and lay readers of the Church Times in July and October 2013. The study was undertaken in conjunction with Professor Leslie Francis and Dr Andrew Village, and the questionnaire extended to eight pages. This first glimpse reveals an excessive degree of confidence on the part of laity (40%) that their own churches would grow over the next 12 months, notwithstanding that just 27% agreed that they often invited other people to come to church, and 19% acknowledged that newcomers would not find it easy in their church.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth’s Sharia moment

When Rowan Williams, as the then Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested in February 2008 that the absorption of aspects of Islamic Sharia law into the British legal framework was inevitable, he was condemned by over two-thirds of the public and churchgoers, with two-fifths of adults calling for him to step down. A further indication of the intense interest generated by his comments, and their broader implications for the Church of England, can be found in the dramatic increase in the number of unique UK web hosts linking to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official website. The figure for 2008 was nearly 50% higher than for 2007 and almost 25% higher than the previous peak of 2004, although it quickly fell back to trend in 2009 and 2010. The discovery has been made by Dr Peter Webster through interrogation of the Internet Archive’s collection of .uk websites for 1996-2010, a copy of which is held by The British Library. For more details, including about methodology, see Webster’s blog post of 28 January 2014 at:

http://peterwebster.me/2014/01/28/distant-reading-the-webarchive/

Methodists and deprivation

Methodism once cultivated the reputation of being a movement for the poor and marginalized, but that no longer appears to be the case if research published by Michael Hirst in the current issue of the Methodist Recorder (31 January 2014, p. 8) is anything to go by. He has mapped the postcodes of Methodist ministers in England in 2001 and 2011 to an index of multiple deprivation for each neighbourhood, revealing that they live disproportionately and increasingly (65% in 2001, 68% in 2011) in the less deprived half of the country. Indeed, the more deprived an area, the less likely Methodist ministers were to live there and the greater the decline over the decade, from a drop of 36% in the fifth most deprived areas to 10% in the fifth least deprived areas. Around 900 active ministers changed addresses between 2001 and 2011, of whom 33% moved to more deprived areas, 41% to less deprived areas, with 26% moving to areas with a similar level of deprivation. Of 700 ministers retiring between 2001 and 2011, 74% went to live in the less deprived half of England compared with the 64% who had worked there in 2001.

Methodists on the internet

The same issue of the Methodist Recorder (31 January 2014, p. 3) also included a somewhat garbled news story about research undertaken in the Cumbria District of the Methodist Church into Methodist use of the internet. BRIN has followed this up and located the original four-page report on the survey by Martyn Evans, which is also no model of clarity. The survey was conducted in October-November 2013 and obtained responses from 100 Methodist congregations in Cumbria (or 93%). Results are mostly disaggregated in the report by circuits, or groups of Methodist churches. Overall, 58% of Methodists reported having access to the internet, which is below average, in reflection, it is suggested, of the disproportionately elderly profile of Methodists and of variable broadband provision in the county. Methodist access to the internet is mostly via a home desktop (38%) or laptop (38%), with 12% using a smartphone and 10% a tablet. Internet Explorer (53%) and Chrome (27%) are the commonest browsers for Methodists. The report is currently available at:

http://www.cumbriamethodistdistrict.org.uk/254360377788.htm

National Jewish Community Survey

On 29 January 2014 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published its latest 45-page report on Jews in the United Kingdom in 2013: Preliminary Findings from the National Jewish Community Survey, written by David Graham, Laura Staetsky, and Jonathan Boyd. Designed to complement statistics available from the 2011 census, and funded by the Pears Foundation and a consortium of Jewish organizations, the data-gathering was managed by Ipsos MORI by means of an online survey completed by a self-selecting and thus non-probability sample of 3,736 unique UK Jewish households (containing 9,895 individuals) between 6 June and 15 July 2013. The sample was principally recruited by ‘snowballing’ techniques through a large number of ‘seed’ agencies in the Jewish community. There was some under-representation of Jewish adults aged 16-39 and 80 and over, and of Jews unaffiliated to a synagogue and of the Strictly Orthodox. Weights were applied to help correct for such sampling bias.

The report presents initial results for six principal areas: generational differences between Jews; denominational switching (within Judaism); intermarriage (with non-Jews); Jewish education; charitable giving; and health, care, and welfare. A major finding is that the observance of Jewish religious rituals (such as dietary laws, Sabbath and festivals, and synagogue attendance) actually decreases with age, being lowest among Jewish over-65s and highest for Jews under 40. The likely explanation advanced for this counter-secularizing tendency is the replenishment of younger cohorts by high birth rates among Haredi and Orthodox Jews. Across the entire sample, ethno-cultural elements (such as remembering the Holocaust and combating anti-Semitism) featured strongly in defining Jewish identity, far more so than religious beliefs and even supporting Israel (although 69% of respondents still considered the latter to be important). One of the key tenets of Judaism is to help less advantaged people, and 77% viewed donating funds to charity as an important component of Jewish identity, with 93% having made a charitable donation during the previous year (three-fifths of whom had given more than £100). All these areas, and more, covered by the preliminary findings will be explored in far more detail in subsequent thematic reports. Meanwhile, you can read the initial document at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.Jews_in_the_UK_in_2013.NJCS_preliminary_findings.January_2014.pdf

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bradford, Christians, Church of England, Church Times, Cumbria, David Graham, deprivation, God, government, Government Equalities Office, Hillingdon, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, internet, Internet Archive, Ipsos-MORI, Jews, Jonathan Boyd, Kevin Stenson, King's College London, Laura Staetsky, Leslie Francis, Linda Woodhead, London, Martyn Evans, Methodist ministers, Methodist Recorder, Michael Hirst, Muslims, Newham, Nicola Madge, Peter Brierley, Peter Hemming, Peter Webster, politcians, politics, public consultation, Rowan Williams, same-sex marriage, secondary schools, Sharia law, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

Roman Catholic and Other Statistics

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Clive D. Field

A belated Happy New Year to all readers of BRIN! It has been a slowish start to 2014 in terms of new religious statistical sources, but here is a selection of seven stories to replenish your stock of data.

Roman Catholic statistics

In our post of 1 February 2013 we reported that the editor of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales had decided to discontinue publication therein of the annual statistical supplement, which had appeared for a century, as a result of her lack of confidence in the quality of the data, especially regarding their consistency. The Tablet for 21/28 December 2013 reported that, ‘thanks to the efforts of a former banker’, the statistics would be reinstated in the 2014 edition of the Catholic Directory. This has yet to appear (it will be published later this month), but, in the meantime, Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust (PRCT) has just released a preliminary table of pastoral and population statistics of the Catholic community in England and Wales for 2011 and 2012, based on a careful (but still not quite complete) editing and reconciliation of data for each of the 22 dioceses. Figures for all years between 2001 and 2012 will be available in due course. The 2011-12 picture is one of continuing decline on several performance measures, of 2.2% in the estimated Catholic population, 1.8% in Mass attendance in October (with only one-fifth of Catholics now at Mass), 3.7% in baptisms, and 18.5% in receptions of converts. There was a modest (0.5%) rise in marriages, but the figure includes mixed marriages and those celebrated in Anglican churches which were authorized by the Catholic parish priest. Deaths were 0.9% less in 2012 than 2011, with the Catholic death rate being 9.7 per 1,000. The PRCT table will be found at:

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

The data were covered by two broadsheet newspapers in their editions of 4 January 2014, The Times suggesting that the pattern of long-term decline (associated with child abuse scandals) might be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’, The Daily Telegraph concentrating on the increase in late baptisms of children (after their first birthday), which it attributed to ‘a scramble for places at the most popular Roman Catholic schools’. The Roman Catholic weekly, The Tablet, also noted the possible ‘Francis effect’ from 2013 when it ran the story a week later (11 January 2014), headlining ‘Mass Attendance Down but London Bucks the Trend’.

BRIN was contacted by the Catholic Herald for an assessment of the statistics, and we are quoted in that newspaper’s report in its edition of 10 January 2014 (p. 3 – there is also an editorial on p. 13). In more detail, the points we made were:

There are long-standing concerns about the quality of many Roman Catholic statistics (especially estimated Catholic population), arising from the absence of a national infrastructure for data collection and quality control, such as exists, for example, in the Church of England.
In many senses the decline in the Roman Catholic Church mirrors what is happening in mainstream Christian denominations in this country. However, the underlying fall would almost certainly have been much greater but for the boost given to the Church by immigration from Eastern Europe in recent years.
In both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England alienation is linked to the growing gulf between official Church teaching and the views of active and nominal members. This has been demonstrated by Professor Linda Woodhead’s recent research. For her study of Catholics, see: http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Catholics-press-release.pdf
Optimists in the Roman Catholic Church suggest that decline may be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’. We are more sceptical about this since a similar argument was put forward for the ‘Benedict bounce’ following the 2010 papal visit. It did not materialize, as the Opinion Research Business polls commissioned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2010 and 2011 demonstrated, and as confirmed by the Church’s statistics for 2009 and 2010 summarized at: http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/catholic-directory-2012/

Religion and politics

Lord Ashcroft’s latest political poll, published on 4 January 2014 and conducted online by Populus on 4-10 November 2013, included the standard background question about membership of religious groups, asked of a very large sample (n = 8,053). The proportion identifying as of no religion was, at 38%, identical to that reported in the two YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, which we covered in our last post of 30 December 2013. These ‘nones’ constituted a majority (51%) of the 18-24s in Ashcroft’s survey and a plurality (44%) of the 25-34s, with Christianity being the leading faith for other demographic sub-groups, averaging 53% and peaking at 71% of over-65s. In political terms, ‘nones’ were most likely to be found among people who had voted Liberal Democrat at the 2010 general election (44%) or the smaller number intending to vote Liberal Democrat now (41%). They were least likely to be encountered among Conservative supporters (27% in both 2010 and 2013), who were disproportionately Christian (66% in 2013). Of those who had voted Conservative in 2010 and intended to do so again, 68% were Christian, falling to 65% for voters who had defected from the Conservatives since 2010, 57% for adults who had switched to the Conservatives since 2010, and 52% for those who had not been Conservative in the past but indicated they might be in the future. UKIP supporters were 10% more likely to identify as Christian than the norm and Labour supporters 4% less. Non-Christians favoured Labour, and this was especially true of Muslims. Superficially (other factors are at work, of course), the historic connection between religion and voting is by no means extinguished. For more data, see table 69 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Blueprint-4-Full-tables.pdf

Also, watch out for the forthcoming Theos report by Ben Clements and Nick Spencer on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? BRIN will cover this as soon after publication as possible.

Religion and age

The lead story on the front page of The Times for 10 January 2014 (subscription access online) was a curiously headlined article by Dominic Kennedy, the newspaper’s investigations editor, on ‘Rise in Muslim Birthrate as Families “Feel British”: Census Figures Reveal “Startling” Shift in Demographic Trend’. Its key underlying fact, taken from the 2011 census, was that ‘almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim … almost twice as high as in the general population’; in stark contrast, ‘fewer than one in 200 over-85s are Muslim’. Expert comments on the findings were sought and quoted from two of the country’s leading demographers, Professors David Coleman of the University of Oxford and David Voas of the University of Essex (and BRIN). Voas apparently said that he saw no prospect of Muslims becoming a majority in Britain, although he did foresee that Muslims who worshipped might outnumber practising Christians one day (which several other pundits have also been predicting for a decade or more). The story in The Times, which has been widely reported in other print and online media in Britain and worldwide, was not actually based on any new analysis of census data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) but on a hitherto little noticed ad hoc ONS table (CT0116, created on 18 October 2013), giving a detailed breakdown of religion in England and Wales by sex by age in 2011. This was pointed out by Ami Sedghi in her post on The Guardian’s Datablog on 10 January 2014, which helpfully includes a link to the table, rather implying that The Times was raking over ‘old news’, and additionally observing that the census actually recorded more children aged 0-4 as having no religion as those who were Muslim. The blog can be read at:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jan/10/rise-british-muslim-birthrate-the-times-census

Gift aid and the Church of England

Gift aid (introduced in 1990) has been an important factor in helping the Church of England to grow its real income consistently over the past two decades, according to a post on the Civil Society blog on 17 December 2013. The Church collects over £80 million of gift aid and tax refunds each year, and it accounts for 8% of all gift aid by value and 15% by volume. Although the number of adults in usual Sunday congregations of the Church of England declined by 27% between 1980 and 2010, tax-effective subscribers (using covenants and gift aid) rose by 38% over the same period, with tax-effective subscribers equivalent to 72% of usual Sunday congregations by 2010 (almost double the 38% of 1980). More information at:

http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/blogs/content/16600/gift_aid_does_make_a_difference_to_giving_ask_the_church_of_england

Violence against the clergy

The Sunday Telegraph of 5 January and The Times of 6 January 2014 both included reports about ‘hundreds of violent attacks on the clergy’, the story subsequently being run by the Church Times on 10 January. The articles drew upon data obtained by right-of-centre think-tank Parliament Street through Freedom of Information requests submitted to police forces in England, of which 25 responded. The replies suggested that there had been more than 200 violent attacks on clergy over the past five years, a number thought to be just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ because of the inadequate and inconsistent recording of such offences. Parliament Street, which has not posted its data online, is calling upon Government to recognize attacks on clergy as constituting a religiously motivated hate crime, which would thereby attract severer penalties. The organization National Churchwatch has also been active since 2000 in documenting anti-Christian hate crime. However, so far as BRIN is aware, the best source of empirical evidence on the subject of the clergy remains the ESRC-funded research into violence against three groups of professionals (including clergy) undertaken by Royal Holloway, University of London in 1998-2001, details of which appear in the final project report at:

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/L133251036/read

State-sanctioned surveillance

In an online Resonate poll conducted by Christian Research since the leaks emanating from former American security contractor Edward Snowden, the majority (77%) of 1,134 UK practising Christians sensed that mass intelligence-gathering by the state in the UK is increasing, but 82% agreed that it is justified in order to prevent acts of terrorism and 69% considered that the level of CCTV in operation in their area was about right. The results were disclosed by the Church Times in its issue of 3 January 2014 (p. 6). Characteristically, no further information is available on Christian Research’s website. However, the website does record that membership of the Resonate Christian omnibus panel has now reached 14,000 and that surveys will be run monthly from January 2014.

Jewish emigration to Israel

Jewish immigration to Israel in 2013 was modestly (1%) up on 2012, according to data collected by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israel Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. However, the number of Jews leaving the UK for Israel (making aliyah) in 2013 was, at 510, 27% down on the previous year, albeit close to the average since the beginning of the Millennium (the range being from 300 in 2002 to 800 in 2009). This decline compared with a rise of 35% in Western Europe (and 63% in France); in the United States there was a reduction of 13%. Emigrants to Israel from the UK constituted 12% of the Western European total and 3% of the world figure. The fall in UK emigrants is attributed by some to the improving economic situation and lessened anti-Semitism in the UK, and by others to a weaker focus on aliyah following a radical restructuring of the Jewish Agency two years ago. This note derives from a press release issued by the Israeli embassy in London on 30 December 2013 and from coverage in the Jewish Chronicle for 3 January 2014. The full data do not yet appear on the Jewish Agency’s website.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Aliyah, Ami Sedghi, Catholic Herald, census of population, Christian Research, Church of England, clergy, David Voas, emigration, finance, gift aid, hate crime, Israel, Jews, Lord Ashcroft, Office for National Statistics, Parliament Street, Pastoral Research Centre Trust, politics, Populus, Religious Affiliation, religious census. Roman Catholic Church, surveillance, The Times, Tony Spencer, violence, voting | 2 Comments

End-of-Year Round-Up

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

This will be the final news post on BRIN for 2013. It features 11 sources which have come to hand over the Christmas period. This year we have been able to bring you 63 general posts containing 310 different news stories. We hope that they have been of interest and value. We will be back in 2014. Meanwhile, we wish you all a Happy New Year.

Christmas religion (1)

Britons appear less likely than Americans to uphold the religious dimension of Christmas, according to a poll by Angus Reid Global published on 23 December 2013, in which 998 Britons were interviewed online between 9 and 11 December. The proportion of Britons saying the religious aspect of Christmas was meaningful to them personally was not much more than half that of Americans (39% against 70%), with a similar transatlantic disparity between those planning to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day (40% versus 72%). One-quarter of Britons claimed they would attend a special Christmas service during December and one-fifth a regular religious service in the month, whereas two-fifths of Americans had the same plans in each case. Some 16% of Britons stated that they normally attended church monthly or more (compared with 18% of Canadians and 37% of Americans). Fewer Britons (48%) than Canadians (64%) or Americans (66%) reported they had been raised in a Christian household that attended church. In all three nations preferences for Christmas carols against Christmas songs were almost evenly balanced, albeit more Britons (39%) than Americans (35%) intended to sing carols. Overwhelmingly, Christmas was said to have become too commercialized (by 84% in Britain), but 14% of Britons also regarded it as too religious. Whatever the good intentions of respondents, it seems improbable that the anticipated levels of religious observance of Christmas were achieved in practice, certainly in Britain. Topline data from the poll can be found at:

http://www.angusreidglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Angus-Reid-Poll-Christmas-Religion.pdf

Christmas religion (2)

Britons may have been taught a lot (30%) or a little (55%) about the Bible when at school, but their knowledge of the biblical accounts of the Christmas story is often shaky, according to a ComRes survey for the Christian Institute published on 21 December 2013, 2,055 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 18-19 December. Some of their false assumptions about the biblical version of the nativity are perhaps understandable, such as the 84% who thought that three kings visited Jesus (the Gospels only referring to wise men from the East), or the 34% who recalled the Bible specifying He was born on 25 December (whereas the Gospels do not cite a specific date). However, other errors were more of the ‘exam howler’ variety, including 7% who were convinced that a Christmas tree is mentioned in the Bible and 4% that Father Christmas appears there. The biblical knowledge of the older age cohorts tended to be sounder than that of the younger, reflecting the fact that they were more likely to have been taught a lot about the Bible during their schooldays. The ComRes data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Christian_Institute_Christmas_Knowledge_Survey_December_2013.pdf

and a Christian Institute press release at:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/brits-believe-santa-present-at-jesus-birth-new-poll-reveals/

Christmas Day shopping

Christmas Day is fast becoming a retail extravaganza. Not only were record numbers of independent shops (16,000) open on Christmas Day this year, but online shopping also hit a new peak. Before the event, Barclaycard estimated that 31% of adults would shop online on Christmas Day, with anticipated purchases of £350 million, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. Afterwards, Experian reported that there had been 114 million visits to online shopping sites in the UK on Christmas Day, 6% more than in 2012, with over 1% of all online searches on Christmas Day including the words ‘sale’ or ‘sales’. Christmas Day shoppers almost certainly outnumbered Christmas churchgoers several times over. However, when the Mail on Sunday contacted 42 senior Church of England bishops for their reactions to this exponential rise in Christmas Day trading, and its compatibility with the spiritual values of Christmastide, only a handful felt able to comment. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London were among those keeping their heads down on the subject. The Mail on Sunday article can be read at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2527696/Church-silent-record-number-stores-set-stay-open-Christmas-Day.html

Westminster Faith Debates: new analyses of data

Professor Linda Woodhead continues to draw upon the January and June 2013 YouGov polls conducted for the Westminster Faith Debates to provide fresh insights into religion in Britain. On 28 November 2013 she took advantage of the publication by the Church of England of the Pilling Report on Human Sexuality to highlight ‘a revolution in Anglican attitudes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage not reflected in official teaching’, based upon the opinions of 2,381 self-identifying Anglicans in the YouGov surveys. Her press release can be found at:

http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Pilling-press-release.pdf

On 22 December 2013 Woodhead issued another press release headed ‘“No Religion” is the New Religion’, with 38% of adult Britons in the two YouGov polls professing no religion. The number varied greatly by age cohort, rising to 48% of the under-30s (among whom only 26% were Christians), but falling to 27% of over-60s (58% of whom were Christians). Indeed, the majority (55%) of those aged 18 or 19 had no religion, and no religion was the biggest single faith category for everybody under 50 years. Although a plurality (43%) of ‘nones’ were atheists, 40% were agnostics, and 16% believers in God. Only 13% of ‘nones’ were found to be hostile to religion in the Richard Dawkins sense, in that they had no religion, admitted to being atheist, and regarded the Church of England and Roman Catholic Churches as negative forces. These hostile ‘nones’ were disproportionately (62%) male. ‘Nones’ were more liberal than the rest of the population in their attitudes to personal morality, and this was enhanced by the age effect (young people also being more liberal). This press release is not yet available on the Westminster Faith Debates website but doubtless will be in the New Year. In the meantime, Woodhead has a blog on the same subject (dated 20 December 2013) at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/blogs/linda-woodhead/why-no-religion-is-the-new-religion/

Westminster Faith Debates: the book

The book of the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates has been published by Darton, Longman and Todd recently: Religion and Personal Life, edited by Linda Woodhead with Norman Winter (ISBN 978-0-232-53018-6, £8.99 paperback, also available as an e-book). The debates are presented in condensed form (based on recordings and transcripts), together with additional research findings (from the special YouGov poll on ethical opinion in Britain commissioned in January 2013), media reactions, and teaching materials. New commentary and reflection is offered in each of the six debate chapters, which deal with: abortion and stem cell research; sexualization of society; religion and gender; the traditional family; same-sex marriage; and assisted dying. A seventh chapter is devoted to ‘why do God?’ with Delia Smith and Alastair Campbell in conversation.

Recent Eurobarometers

The European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys continue to include occasional questions touching on religion, and a couple of recent reports exemplify this. Interviews are conducted face-to-face with representative samples of the adult population aged 15 and over in each member state of the European Union (EU). United Kingdom fieldwork is carried out by TNS UK.

Special Eurobarometer 401, published in November 2013, was on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Science and Technology and included interviews with 1,306 UK citizens (between 27 April and 14 May 2013) as part of Eurobarometer 79.2. Inter alia, the report revealed that adults in the UK were fairly evenly split about whether ‘we depend too much on science and not enough on faith’, 36% agreeing (EU average 39%), 34% disagreeing (32%), and 30% undecided (29%). The pattern of results was broadly similar to Eurobarometer 73.1 in Spring 2010, albeit the dissentients in the UK were 5% fewer in 2013. Hardly anybody (2% in the UK, 1% in the EU) viewed representatives of the various religions as being best qualified to explain the impact of scientific and technological developments on society, by far the lowest score for the 12 groups investigated. Topline findings are presented on pp. T11-T13 and T23 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_401_en.pdf

Standard Eurobarometer 80.1, undertaken in the UK on 2-17 November 2013 among 1,326 adults, enquired into which of 12 factors most created a feeling of community among EU citizens (a maximum of three responses being permitted). Relatively few (10% in the UK, 11% in the EU) singled out religion, which – in the UK’s case – was just one-third the level of the top-scoring unifying factors of sport and culture. Only citizens of Cyprus (27%) and Romania (24%) considered religion to be especially important in creating a sense of EU-wide identity. The question had previously been asked in Eurobarometer 79.3 six months before, when 8% in the UK had mentioned religion. Topline data are on pp. T176-T177 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb80/eb80_anx_en.pdf

Spatially concentrated Jews

The fourth report in the Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s series on the 2011 UK population census was published on 19 December 2013. Written by David Graham, and entitled Thinning and Thickening: Geographical Change in the UK’s Jewish Population, 2001-2011, it demonstrates how that population is becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of core geographical areas. The ten local authorities which experienced the largest absolute increases in Jews between 2001 and 2011 accounted for 36% of UK’s Jews in 2001 but 44% in 2011, whereas the ten places which registered the biggest absolute decreases over the decade saw their aggregate share of the UK Jewish population fall from 23% in 2001 to 18% in 2011. The former list comprised: Barnet, Hackney, Hertsmere, Salford, Haringey, Gateshead, Bury, St Albans, Nottingham, and Epping Forest. UK Jews overwhelmingly (97%) lived in England in 2011, with Scottish numbers contracting by 8% between the two censuses. Areas of ‘thickening’ population are said to be growing as a result of migration from areas of ‘thinning’ population and as a consequence of differing age profiles, resulting in high birth rates in the thickening cores and high death rates in places which are thinning. The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/Thinning_and_Thickening.Final1.pdf

Religious hate crimes

BRIN readers may have noticed media coverage in recent days of a partial survey of religious hate crimes undertaken by the Press Association on the basis of Freedom of Information requests sent to police authorities in England and Wales. However, the media seem to have overlooked an important interdepartmental Government report on the subject, prepared by the Home Office, Office for National Statistics, and Ministry of Justice, which was published on 17 December 2013: An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales. This brings together, for the first time, data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, a continuous survey of adults aged 16 and over), police statistics of recorded crime, and certain other sources. According to the CSEW for 2011/12 and 2012/13, there are on average 70,000 incidents of religiously motivated hate crime each year, evenly divided between personal and household crimes. This represents a sharp increase on the 39,000 incidents for the previous four years, back to 2007/08. Overall, in 2011/12 and 2012/13, 0.1% of English and Welsh citizens were victims of a religiously motivated hate crime during the 12 months prior to interview, but the proportion increased sharply (to 1.5%) for Muslims. The CSEW reporting period spanned March 2010 to February 2013 so excluded the spike in Islamophobic incidents which followed the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in May 2013. Non-whites generally were more susceptible (0.7%) than whites to be victims of religious hate crimes. Religious hate crimes comprised 25% of all hate crimes estimated from the CSEW (55% for race) but only 4% of hate crimes recorded by the police (against 85% for race). In 2012/13 the police registered just 1,573 religious hate crimes (24% entailing violence against the person), suggesting, by comparison with the CSEW, that the vast majority go unreported. For extensive commentary and tables, go to:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-hate-crime-in-england-and-wales

Murder of Lee Rigby

The brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamist terrorists on 22 May 2013 was the equal top news story of 2013, according to a YouGov poll for The Sun on 17-18 December, for which 1,937 adult Britons were interviewed online. It was the choice of 17% of respondents, the same proportion as selected the death of Nelson Mandela and the investigations into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile as being the biggest news story, with the birth of Prince George and the conflict in Syria being in fourth and fifth positions (13% and 10% respectively). The fact that the trial of Rigby’s murderers was in its final stages at the time of fieldwork, culminating in a guilty verdict from the jury on 19 December, may partly explain the overall salience of the story. The case was seen as especially important by UKIP supporters (28%) and the over-60s (22%). The data table is at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/kfslu2z1sg/Sun_Results_131218_SunAwards.pdf

Secularisation and Humanist History blog

Callum Brown, Professor of Late Modern European History at the University of Glasgow and an authority on secularization in British and international contexts, launched his Secularisation and Humanist History website on 16 December 2013. It ‘hosts discussion on the social and cultural history of humanism and allied secular positions’ and features blogs based on the author’s own research and on current news. It can be accessed at:

http://humanisthistory.academicblogs.co.uk/

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England’s annual Faith in Research conference will take place in Birmingham on 4 June 2014. Preliminary information about the event has been published recently, together with a call for abstracts for papers (with abstracts to be submitted by 24 January). If you are interested, go to:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences/faith-in-research-june-2014.aspx

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Angus Reid Global, Bible, Callum Brown, census of population, Christian Institute, Christmas, Christmas carols, Christmas Day, church attendance, Church of England, community feeling, ComRes, Crime Survey for England and Wales, David Graham, Eurobarometer, European Union, Faith in Research conference, hate crimes, Home Office, humanism, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islamophobia, Jews, Lee Rigby, Linda Woodhead, Mail on Sunday, Ministry of Justice, Muslims, no religion, nones, Norman Winter, Office for Natrional Statistics, personal life, police, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, religious knowledge, science, secularization, shopping, The Sun, TNS UK, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | 1 Comment

Portrait of Catholics and Other News

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Clive D. Field

This week’s post contains five religious statistical stories, leading on a major new survey of Roman Catholic religious practice and values.

Portrait of Catholics

Results from one of the most extensive surveys of Roman Catholic opinion for many years were released on 12 November 2013. The poll was commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with the Westminster Faith Debates and conducted online by YouGov between 5 and 11 June 2013 among 1,062 self-identifying British Catholics aged 18 and over. The questions were a direct replication of those put by YouGov to a national sample of 4,018 adults on 5-13 June 2013, again on behalf of Professor Woodhead. Data tables for the Catholic sample, extending to 160 pages and containing innumerable two-way breaks, can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/k0rbt8onjb/YG-Archive-050613-FaithMatters-UniversityofLancaster.pdf

It would naturally be impossible to do full justice to such a rich dataset in a brief post on BRIN, but the following table (using paraphrased questions) gives a flavour of how Catholic opinion on a range of moral, religious, and political issues differs (or not) from that of the general public (all figures in percentages):

	Britons	Catholics
Moral issues
Abortion should be banned	6	19
Same-sex marriage is wrong	37	43
Assisted suicide should be legalized	76	58
Catholic adoption agencies should not be denied charitable status for refusing same-sex adoption	39	57
B&B owners should not be allowed to refuse accommodation on grounds of sexual orientation	57	52
British society has become worse since 1945	51	50
Individuals are more selfish than 20 years ago	70	70
Religious issues
Faith schools generally should not be state-funded	45	28
Catholic schools should not be state-funded	43	20
Muslim protests against cartoons of the Prophet were justified	42	50
Christian protests against Jerry Springer: the Opera were justified	42	53
Concerned about Islamist terrorism	52	54
Church of England is a positive force in society	18	21
Church of England is a negative force in society	14	11
Catholic Church is a positive force in society	13	36
Catholic Church is a negative force in society	28	9
Political issues
Immigration has impacted negatively on my life	28	30
Cultural diversity of British cities is a bad thing	28	30
Better to live in Britain when more people shared a common culture	48	48
Would vote for Britain to leave European Union	47	44
Welfare budget is too high and should be reduced	46	46
Britain’s welfare system has created a culture of dependency	61	59
Crime rate is rising	44	44
Margaret Thatcher did more good for Britain than Tony Blair	39	34
Tony Blair did more good for Britain than Margaret Thatcher	18	24

Professor Woodhead has written two articles for The Tablet based on the survey, also drawing upon the inevitably smaller Catholic sub-samples from YouGov’s two national polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, on 25-30 January and 5-13 June 2013. The first article, published in the issue of 9 November 2013 (pp. 12-13), principally covers Catholic attitudes to sex, contraception, family, women, abortion, and same-sex marriage. The second article (16 November 2013, pp. 6-7) concentrates on the religious beliefs and practices of Catholics and their socio-political values. Both articles highlight how far British Catholics ‘have come adrift’ from Vatican-style Catholicism, only 5% overall and 2% of the under-30s now conforming to the model of ‘faithful Catholics’ according to the Church’s Magisterium.

Jewish births, marriages, and deaths

David Vulkan’s analysis of Britain’s Jewish Community Statistics, 2012 has also been released this week, by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the umbrella body which collects the data from synagogues and other agencies. It can be found at:

http://www.bod.org.uk/content/CommunityStatistics2012.pdf

The report provides a demographic rather than attitudinal snapshot of Britain’s Jewish community, with reference to births, marriages, divorces, and deaths which are recorded under Jewish auspices (life events not marked by ‘a formal Jewish act’ will therefore be omitted, rendering it misleading to express the data as rates per 1,000 Jews). The headline findings are:

Births: There were at least 3,860 Jewish births in 2011. This figure is inferred, from records of male circumcisions and a multiplier for female births, and it includes some estimation for missing data. Births to strictly Orthodox (or Charedi) Jewish parents now account for at least two-fifths of the total. This reflects the younger age profile, earlier marriage, and higher birth rate of the strictly Orthodox.
Marriages: There was an increase in Jewish marriages between 2011 and 2012, from 808 to 857, but the long-term trend remains downwards (there were 1,029 in 1992). The proportion of strictly Orthodox marriages has trebled over the past three decades. On present trends, they are predicted to constitute a majority of Jewish marriages within the next decade.
Divorces: Statistics relate to religiously sanctioned divorces (excluding civil divorces). The trend is downwards, from 277 in 1992 to an estimated 188 in 2012.
Deaths: The long-term decline in the number of Jewish burials or cremations continues, from 4,200 in 1992 to 2,575 in 2012 (albeit the latter was up from 2,452 in 2011). Since 2005 deaths have been lower than the number of births, meaning that there is natural increase in the Jewish community. Whether that translates into an actual increase will depend upon migration flows, on which the Board has no data.

Jewish perceptions and experiences of anti-Semitism

Two-thirds of UK Jews think that anti-Semitism has increased a lot (27%) or a little (39%) in the country over the past five years, and only 5% consider it has decreased, according to data released by the European Union (EU) Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on 8 November 2013. Moreover, 48% of UK Jews regard anti-Semitism generally as a very (11%) or fairly big (37%) problem in the UK, with 52% seeing it as such in the media and 64% on the internet. Association of Jews in the public mind with Israel and even the economic crisis is believed to contribute to anti-Semitism, while negative statements about Jews are most often attributed to people with left-wing political views and to Muslim extremists. Worries about becoming a victim of verbal insult or harassment over the next year are expressed by 28% of UK Jews, with 17% fearful of being physically attacked. One-fifth constantly or frequently avoid wearing or carrying things in public which might identify them as Jews, and 18% claim to have considered emigrating because they do not feel safe living as a Jew in the UK.

Personal experiences of anti-Semitism are lower than perceptions, 16% of UK Jews reporting personal discrimination or harassment during the past 12 months on the basis of their religion or belief, and 19% of verbal insult/harassment and/or physical attack over the same timescale due to being Jewish. Over the previous five years 29% have endured one or more of five forms of anti-Semitic harassment. The workplace is the most common context for such incidents, 76% of which (in the past year) or 71% (in the past five years) go unreported. However, in terms of both perception and experience, anti-Semitism appears to be less widespread and virulent in the UK than in several other European countries surveyed, notably France, Belgium, and Hungary.

The data for this survey were collected by Ipsos MORI, in association with the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, in the eight countries collectively containing more than 90% of the EU’s estimated Jewish population: Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, and the UK. Fieldwork took place in September-October 2012 using an online sample of 5,847 self-identifying Jews aged 16 and over, of whom 1,468 were from the UK. The questionnaire was placed on the open web, and publicized via the FRA and Jewish media and other agencies. Respondents were entirely self-selecting and cannot necessarily be considered to be national Jewish cross-sections. They are likely disproportionately to comprise those with an interest in, or experience of, anti-Semitism and to be members of Jewish community organizations. Nor did it prove feasible to weight the data to correct for any demographic bias. As the report notes: ‘this methodology is unable to deliver a random probability sample fulfilling the statistical criteria for representativeness’. Therefore, great care should be taken in interpreting the results.

An 80-page report on the survey, Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in EU Member States: Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism, can be read at:

http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2013-discrimination-hate-crime-against-jews-eu-member-states_en.pdf

An interactive visualization website, with data export facility, has also been set up, permitting the results for each question for each country to be analysed by age, gender, strength of Jewish identity, and strength of religiosity. This can be found at:

http://fra.europa.eu/DVS/DVT/as2013.php

Wearing the veil in court

The debate about whether a female Muslim defendant should be allowed to wear the niqab or full face veil in court has still not run out of steam. If anything, it has been rekindled by the Lord Chief Justice’s recent announcement that there is to be a public consultation about the wearing of the niqab in courtrooms. In a new YouGov poll for the Sunday Times among 1,878 Britons on 7-8 November 2013, 55% agreed that a defendant should be made to remove the niqab throughout her entire trial and a further 32% when giving evidence (but not otherwise). The combined figure of 87% wanting the niqab prohibited for at least part of the trial peaked at 99% of UKIP supporters, 96% of Conservatives, 96% of over-60s, and 93% of Londoners. More generally, 63% of adults wanted to see a complete ban on wearing the niquab in Britain, rising to 93% of UKIP voters and 82% of over-60s. The full data are available on pp. 7-8 of the survey tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qhng8fwkh7/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-081113.pdf

Self-assessed religiosity

In last week’s post (8 November 2013) we reported results about the claimed frequency of prayer in the UK from Round 6 of the European Social Survey, the dataset for which has recently been released. Now we present the (weighted) answers given to another question: ‘Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are?’ Interviewees were given a showcard inviting them to choose a point on a scale running from 0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious).

Religiosity score	2002	2004	2006	2008	2010	2012
0	14.4	11.4	18.1	18.8	18.0	17.0
1	5.6	7.7	7.7	6.9	8.4	8.2
2	9.7	10.2	9.1	9.8	10.3	9.5
3	10.0	10.6	11.1	10.4	10.4	10.1
4	8.0	10.6	8.9	7.8	8.6	7.5
5	17.7	15.2	14.3	13.8	13.9	12.9
6	10.4	8.8	8.0	8.9	7.4	8.7
7	10.1	8.6	9.6	10.0	9.4	10.1
8	8.2	9.0	6.4	6.1	6.5	9.4
9	2.8	4.3	2.8	3.1	3.4	3.4
10	3.1	3.7	4.1	4.4	3.6	3.3
Low (0-3)	39.7	39.9	46.0	45.9	47.1	44.8
Medium (4-6)	36.1	34.6	31.2	30.5	29.9	29.1
High (7-10)	24.2	25.6	22.9	23.6	22.9	26.2

The scores have been summed into three bands, corresponding to low, medium, and high religiosity. Unsurprisingly, the proportion self-assessing as of low religiosity has increased, from 40% in 2002 to 47% in 2010, before dropping to 45% in 2012. The high religiosity group has fluctuated in size but was actually larger in 2012 than in 2002 (26 versus 24%). It is naturally too soon to say whether the 2012 data mark the reversal of a downward trend or are something of a ‘blip’.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged Anti-Semitism, births, Board of Deputies of British Jews, courtrooms, David Vulkan, deaths, European Social Survey, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, face-veils, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Ipsos-MORI, Islamophobia, Jews, Linda Woodhead, marriages, Muslims, niqab, Roman Catholics, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Things Unseen and Other News

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The latest report from Theos heads the list of seven religious statistical news stories today, comprising a further attempt by the think-tank to explore the spiritual hinterland which lays beyond institutional religion and to counter the picture of unrelenting secularization of British society.

Things unseen

‘For all that formalised religious belief and institutionalised religious belonging has declined over recent decades, the British have not become a nation of atheists or materialists. On the contrary, a spiritual current runs as, if not more, powerfully through the nation than it once did.’ So begins the latest report from the Theos think-tank, The Spirit of Things Unseen: Belief in Post-Religious Britain, published on 17 September 2013 alongside the data tables from the ComRes poll which underpins it (2,036 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 4 and 5 September 2013). The research, which was sponsored by CTVC as background for a new podcast venture, develops arguments originally advanced by Theos in its 2012 report The Faith of the Faithless (which covered England alone).

The Spirit of Things Unseen (28pp.) can be viewed at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/Spirit%20of%20Things%20-%20Digital%20(update).pdf

and the data tables (34pp., including breaks by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, religious affiliation, and educational attainment) at:

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

Headline findings are:

77% agree that there are things in life that cannot be explained through science or other means
34% believe that people’s thoughts can be influenced by spiritual forces, 27% events in the human world can be so influenced, and 23% events in the natural world
59% believe in one or more of the following spiritual beings: God as a universal life force (30%), spirits (30%), angels (25%), the devil (14%), God as a personal being (13%), a higher spiritual being that cannot be called God (12%), demons (10%), or Jinns (3%) – 30% are sceptics
76% believe in one or more of the following: the soul (39%), life after death (32%), heaven (26%), reincarnation (16%), hell (13%), or the power of deceased ancestors (13%)
39% have undergone one or more of the following: tarot card reading (23%), star signs reading (17%), reflexology session (12%), Reiki session (8%), aura reading (6%), healing with crystals (5%), or Ayurveda session (1%)
11% have visited a spiritual or faith healer or a religious leader who specializes in praying for the sick
38% believe that prayer can heal people (but 50% do not)
17% consider prayer to be effectual in bringing about change, 51% in creating a sense of peace, while 17% feel that prayer does not work in any way
55% pray sometimes (21% at least weekly, 34% occasionally), and the rest not at all
17% perceive miracles as the result of divine intervention in nature and 42% as unusual events that cannot be explained by science, while 30% say they do not exist and are simply examples of coincidence or luck
16% have either personally experienced, or know somebody who has experienced, a miracle

Analysis by religion mostly shows that, while the religious often give the most spiritual responses, smaller but still significant numbers of the avowedly non-religious do so, also. This is particularly so in the case of ‘alternative’ practices, where there is no real difference between the religious and non-religious. On the other hand, there is a wide gap between the two groups when it comes to ‘traditional’ practices, such as prayer. Neither is it the elderly who consistently and disproportionately opt for spiritual answers. Women tend to be more spiritual in their replies than men.

The spiritual beings and beliefs questions do not seem wholly satisfactory, being too compressed. More generally, it could be argued that Theos might have been better served by replicating at least a few questions from earlier surveys, which would have had the advantage of facilitating comparisons over time. As it is, the hint (dropped several times in the report) that what is essentially a single survey snapshot might suggest that Britain is actually becoming more spiritual is evidentially unproven and thus unconvincing. As such, the debate about the current and future religious state of the nation seems set to run and run.

Storm in a bed and breakfast cup

The long-running legal case of husband and wife Peter and Hazelmary Bull versus Martin Hall and Steve Preddy moved to the Supreme Court on 9 and 10 October 2013, more than five years after the incident which gave rise to it. The Bulls are devout Christians and owners of a B&B in Cornwall, who had refused a double room to Hall and Preddy (a homosexual couple in a civil partnership), on grounds of religious conscience. A County Court in 2011 had originally found the Bulls in breach of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 and awarded damages to Hall and Preddy. A subsequent appeal by the Bulls to the Court of Appeal was dismissed last year. No date has yet been fixed for a hand-down of judgment by the Supreme Court.

To coincide with the Supreme Court phase of the case, Lancaster University issued a press release on 9 October 2013 reporting the findings of two questions about the case which had been added to the second of the YouGov surveys commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, 4,018 Britons having been interviewed online on 5-13 June 2013. The ‘bad news’ in this poll for the Bulls is that a majority of adults (57%) do not believe that B&B owners should be allowed to discriminate against guests on the basis of the latters’ sexual orientation, and this includes a majority or plurality of all major religious groups (for example, 52% of Anglicans and 51% of Catholics). Even the most certain believers in God are anti-discrimination (49%), although 53% of weekly churchgoers are pro-discrimination. The better news for the Bulls is that a plurality (49% against 40%) think it wrong that they were ordered to pay damages. Lancaster’s press release, which has been covered by the Church Times (11 October 2013, p. 6) and The Tablet (12 October 2013, p. 28) is at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/uploads/docs/2013_10/1381315862_Christian_B&B_poll_Press_Release.pdf

Contemporary British Jewry

‘British Jews place a premium on communal belonging, albeit without an excess of piety or religiosity. They hold conservative political loyalties balanced by some liberal social views.’ So conclude sociologists Professor Linda Woodhead and Professor Steven Cohen in their analysis of the 318 self-identifying British Jews interviewed for the two YouGov polls which Woodhead commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, with online fieldwork on 25-30 January and 5-13 June 2013. Their article, ‘Who do we think we are? Here are the facts’, contains comparisons with other religious groups in Britain and with American Jews. It was published in the print edition (p. 2) of the Jewish Chronicle for 11 October 2013 and in the online edition at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/112220/new-surveys-shed-light-who-we-are

Clergy stress

Stress among the clergy has been the subject of serious sociological and psychological study for over a quarter of a century, one of the earliest empirical surveys being Ben Fletcher’s Clergy under Stress (1990). In preparation for its Building Resilience symposium (in London on 15 October and York on 17 October 2013), St Luke’s Healthcare for the Clergy commissioned Christian Research to poll 492 ordained UK clergy in August 2013, some results being published in a press release on 23 September 2013. It is assumed (but not explicitly stated) that respondents were members of Christian’s Research’s online panel, Resonate. Asked how they felt in themselves, 37% of clergy replied ‘positive and energized’, 50% said they had more good days than bad, but 12% admitted to struggling or barely coping. Although 58% had rarely or never considered giving up their role in the Church, 33% had done so occasionally, and 8% often or very frequently. Over half (53%) had never received training to understand or manage stress, with all but 23% willing to take up one or more resources to help in this regard. For further details, follow the ‘Building Resilience symposium press release’ link at:

http://www.stlukeshealthcare.org.uk/publications

Bishops’ office and working costs

On 7 October 2013 the Church Commissioners published a 13-page report on the office and working costs of the Church of England’s 113 diocesan and suffragan bishops for the year ending 31 December 2012. They amounted to £18.1 million, representing an increase of 6% over the 2011 figure. Staff were the biggest single expenditure (50%), albeit their costs grew by less than average (4%). Costs are itemized for each individual bishop, as they have been for the past 12 years, 28 of them (among them the two archbishops) actually returning a lower figure in 2012 than for 2011. On the other hand, expenditure by the Bishops of Leicester and Southwark was up in cash terms by over £50,000. Additional to these office and working costs, stipends and employer’s national insurance and pension contributions for bishops came to £5.5 million, with a further £4.7 million spent on maintaining the houses, office premises, and gardens of the archbishops and diocesan bishops (including Lambeth Palace). The grand total of central expenditure on Church of England bishops in 2012 was, therefore, £28.3 million, but this still excludes the housing costs of suffragan bishops, which are met by dioceses. The report is available at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1862748/bishops%20office%20and%20working%20costs%202012.pdf

Scottish Methodist lay preachers

Right from its origins in the eighteenth century, Methodism has been dependent upon the voluntary efforts of local (lay) preachers to conduct many of its worship services, and this remains the case today. Indeed, in Scotland the proportion of services at which they officiated rose from 31% in 1996 to 39% in 2010, partly in reflection of a 31% reduction in ordained ministers in Scotland over the same period. These Scottish local preachers (both ‘fully accredited’ and ‘on trial’) are increasingly women, 39% in 1996 and 47% in 2010. They are also a progressively elderly group, with mean ages of 55 in 1996 and 64 in 2011, and with a corresponding fall in the number in full-time paid employment. In line with society, formal education levels of local preachers continue to improve, those with first or higher degrees growing from 47% in 1996 to 58% in 2011. In addition to taking preaching appointments, local preachers hold other offices in Methodism (especially church council member), while their principal leisure pursuits are reading, sport, walking, music, and gardening. These details are taken from John Sawkins, ‘Methodist Local Preachers in Scotland: Characteristics and Deployment, 1996 and 2011’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 59, No. 3, October 2013, pp. 89-101.

Quaker membership statistics

Finally, an ‘overdue’ item. The 2013 Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain took place on 24-27 May, and one of the sequence of ‘documents in advance’ was a 12-page ‘tabular statement’ of membership for the year ending 31 December 2012. In total there were 478 local meetings with 13,906 members, of whom 37.4% were men, 62.3% women, and 0.3% children under 16. Member incomings during the year numbered 535, of which 66.5% were by application and 33.5% by certificate (i.e. transfer from Britain or another Yearly Meeting). Outgoings amounted to 726 (191 more than incomings), of which 33.1% were through termination of membership, 44.6% by death, and 22.3% by certificate. The Quaker death rate for the year was 23 per 1,000, well above the national average, and thus suggesting an ageing membership. Besides members, there were 8,681 attenders and 2,004 children recognized as connected with Quaker meetings but not in membership. On p. 11 will be found a record of Britain Yearly Meeting membership, disaggregated by sex, quinquennially from 1935 to 1970 and annually thereafter. Membership has not fallen so severely as for other historic Free Churches, only by 28.0% over these 77 years. The tabular statement is at:

http://www.quaker.org.uk/files/Tabular-statement-2013-web.pdf

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Bishops, Britain Yearly Meeting, Christian Research, Church Commissioners, Church of England, clergy, ComRes, CTVC, discrimination, finance, God, Hazelmary Bull, healing, homosexuality, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, John Sawkins, Linda Woodhead, local preachers, Martin Hall, membership, Methodist Church, miracles, office costs, Peter Bull, prayer, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Quakers, Religious Society of Friends, Scotland, spiritual forces, spirituality, St Luke’s Healthcare for the Clergy, Steve Preddy, Steven Cohen, stress, Supreme Court, Theos, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Discrimination, Identity, and Other News

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The eight stories in today’s post feature a range of topics, but religious discrimination and religious identity especially stand out. It should be noted that the latest statistical bulletin for the Government’s Integrated Household Survey, covering the calendar year 2012 and published on 3 October 2013, did not report on the religious identity question.

Religious discrimination (1)

Perceived discrimination against Muslims has increased during the past three years, but they are still not the group most discriminated against in British society; that unenviable position is thought to be occupied by people with mental health problems, followed by gypsies, transsexuals, and immigrants. This is according to a YouGov poll published on 2 October 2013 and undertaken online on 29-30 September among a sample of 1,717 adult Britons. Interviewees were shown a list of groups and asked how much discrimination they thought each suffered in Britain today, the percentages replying ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ being combined in the table below, with comparisons for January 2011 (where available). Twelve of the 15 groups covered in both surveys were believed to have suffered more discrimination over the three years, only Christians and white persons experiencing a reduction, with no change for atheists (who were the group considered to be least discriminated against). Perceived discrimination against Muslims is now 32% more than against Christians, compared with a gap of 22% in 2011. Discrimination against Jews is believed to be up by one-third.

	01/2011	09/2013
Asians	44	47
Atheists	10	10
Blacks	41	48
Christians	28	25
Disabled	NA	57
Elderly	45	50
Gays/lesbians	43	50
Ginger haired	25	26
Gypsies/travellers	60	62
Immigrants	54	58
Jews	26	34
Mentally ill	NA	67
Muslims	50	57
Transsexuals	53	60
Whites	32	30
Women	29	34
Working class	31	32

The data table for the survey can be found at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/jzh49t1gqk/YG-Archive-discrimination-results-300913.pdf

Religious discrimination (2)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has recently published Identity, Expression, and Self-Respect, Briefing Paper No. 9 in its Measurement Framework series, with some accompanying data in Excel format. The paper considers five indicators in detail, the first of which is freedom to practice one’s religion or belief, which is quantified from the 2010 Citizenship Survey (CS) for England and Wales and from HM Inspectorate of Prisons statistics. In the CS 93% of adults overall felt able to practice their religion freely, but somewhat fewer among the under-45s, several ethnic minorities, and Muslims and Sikhs (for detail, see pp. 17-18 and the table accompanying measure El1.1). Breaks by religion are also sometimes shown in connection with the secondary analysis of data for the other four indicators. The briefing paper and tables are at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/our-measurement-framework/-briefing-papers-and-data/identity-expression-and-self-respect/

Under a veil

The recent public and media debate about whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear the full face-veil or niqab started in connection with specific cases involving courtrooms and colleges. In canvassing popular opinion on the matter, ComRes therefore decided to take the prohibition of the veil in courts, schools, and colleges as ‘a given’, and to ask respondents whether female Muslims should otherwise be free to wear the veil. One-half (including 61% of over-65s and Conservatives, and 79% of UKIP supporters) thought the veil should not be worn even outside courts, schools, and colleges, and just 32% that it should be. The poll was undertaken by telephone for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on 18 and 19 September 2013, among 2,003 Britons aged 18 and over, and the data can be found on pp. 113-16 of the tables posted at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/SM_IoS_Political_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Religious identity (1)

Details of the religious self-identification of the UK’s regular armed forces personnel as at 1 April 2013 were published by the Ministry of Defence on 26 September 2013 in Table 2.01.09 of the 2013 edition of Statistical Series 2 – Personnel Bulletin 2.01. Although the proportion professing no religion has risen steadily, from 9.5% in 2007 to 16.4% today, the overwhelming majority of our service personnel continue to subscribe to some faith, and invariably (81.7% in 2013) to Christianity. Profession of no religion is highest in the Navy (22.3%) and lowest in the Army (13.5%), with 18.7% in the Royal Air Force. Non-Christians are under-represented in relation to society as a whole, which is probably mainly a reflection of the ethnic profile of the armed services. The full table is at:

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/publications/personnel/military/tri-service-personnel-bulletin/2013/2013.pdf

Religious identity (2)

In our coverage of the 2011 Scottish religion census on 28 September 2013, reference was made to potential comparisons with national sample surveys of religious self-identification in Scotland. By way of example, we show below a ten-year percentage comparison from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which employs a larger than average sample. The 2012 data are extracted from p. 13 of the 2012 edition of Scotland’s People (published on 28 August 2013), those for 2001-02 from the dataset accessible via the UK Data Service (applying the random adult sample weights). Although the question asked is identical to that in the census (‘what religion, religious denomination, or body do you belong to?’), these statistics refer to adults only and are thus not directly comparable to the initial census results (which are for all ages). The SHS figures also omit non-responses (because the dataset for 2012 is not yet available). The general direction of travel, of course, is similar to the changes seen in the census between 2001 and 2011, with a big increase in the number of Scots professing no religion and a large decrease in support for the Church of Scotland.

	2001-02	2012
No religion	27.8	43.1
Church of Scotland	47.4	29.7
Roman Catholic	15.1	16.0
Other Christian	7.7	7.9
Non-Christian	2.1	3.4

Scottish marriages

Section 7 of Vital Events Reference Tables, 2012 [for Scotland], published by the General Register Office for Scotland on 27 August 2013, contains three tables dealing with Scottish marriages which will be of interest to BRIN readers:

Table 7.5 lists the number of marriages solemnized by celebrants from 50 different religious and belief traditions for each year between 2002 and 2012. The key stories are the steep fall in marriages conducted by the Church of Scotland (down by 50% over this period) and the Methodist Church (down by 70%) and the rapid growth in ceremonies conducted by the Humanist Society Scotland since they were legalized in 2005; by 2012 they had overtaken Roman Catholic marriages and were closing fast on the Church of Scotland.
Table 7.6 lists the number of civil and religious marriages (the latter disaggregated by Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, and other religions) for each year between 1961 and 2012 and each quinquennium between 1946-50 and 2006-10. Whereas civil marriages represented only 17% of the total in 1946-50, by 2006-10 the figure stood at 52%.
Table 7.7 lists marriages by ‘denomination’ for 2012, when 51% were civil, 18% Church of Scotland, 10% Humanist Society Scotland, and 6% Roman Catholic.

The tables can be found at:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/ref-tables/2012/section-7-marriages-and-civil-partnerships.html

Time use

Since the earliest days of sample surveys, it has been evident that interviewees have a tendency to overstate their recalled religious activities. This is no more so than in the case of churchgoing where claimed attendance can exceed by a factor of two the totals arrived at by actual censuses of public worship. Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning of the University of Aberdeen have sought to illustrate the point by repurposing diary data from English respondents (aged 16 and over) to the UK Time Use Survey, 2000-01, which was conducted by the Office for National Statistics. Participants, who were drawn from a random sample of households, were required to record their main and secondary activities for each 10-minute period on the day in question, which included Sundays (3,317 individuals appear to have completed Sunday diaries). Bruce and Glendinning’s methodology and findings are contained in a four-page report on The Extent of Religious Activity in England, which is being disseminated by Brierley Consultancy, an abridged version of which appears in the October 2013 issue of FutureFirst (contact peter@brierleyres.com to obtain copies of either or both versions). The authors conclude as follows:

‘There is little religion of any form practised, public or private. Less than 11% of adults in England engage in any religious activity whatsoever (including personal prayers and meditation and consuming mass media religious programming) of any duration at any point during a typical week. Only 8.25% of adults engage in any episodes of communal practice in the company of others. Less than 7% attend church on a Sunday. Read the other way round – 7% going to church on Sunday, 8% doing some communal religion and 11% doing any religion at all – these data offer little support for the claim that the decline of conventional churchgoing has been offset by an increase in alternative religious activities.’ Of course, it must be remembered that the survey embodied a snapshot of religious activity on the day the diary was completed, and that those who do not engage in such activity on one Sunday may do so on another.

Fossil free churches

This item is not a politically incorrect reference to the age or traditionalism of churchgoers but to a new campaign by Operation Noah (an ecumenical Christian climate change charity) to encourage churches (particularly the Church of England) to disinvest in companies seeking expansion in fossil fuel reserves. The campaign, and its accompanying report (Bright Now: Towards Fossil Free Churches), was launched on 20 September 2013 and underpinned by data from Christian Research’s Resonate panel, 1,520 churchgoers replying to its August 2013 omnibus. Although more than nine out of ten churchgoers agree that churches should invest their money ethically, the majority does not see climate change as a key issue relative to other priorities (such as women bishops). In the case of Anglicans, 63% want the Church of England to take the lead in addressing man-made climate change, yet only one-quarter supports the Church disinvesting in companies extracting fossil fuels. As with most Resonate polls, full data are not in the public domain, but Operation Noah’s press release can be read at:

http://www.operationnoah.org/node/569

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged armed forces, atheists, Brierley Consultancy, Christian Research, Christians, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Citizenship Survey, climate change, ComRes, discrimination, disinvestment, Equality and Human Rights Commission, face veil, fossil fuels, freedom to practice religion, HM Inspectorate of Prisons, Independent on Sunday, Islamophobia, Jews, marriages, Ministry of Defence, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Operation Noah, religious activity, religious dress, Religious Identity, Resonate, Scotland, Scottish Household Survey, Steve Bruce, Sunday Mirror, Sundays, time use, Tony Glendinning, YouGov | Leave a comment

Devil in the Detail

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Eight religious statistical news stories feature in our latest miscellany, starting with a survey on belief in the Devil and ending with a public consultation on the future of the decennial population census in Britain, to which some BRIN readers may wish to respond. Our next post will concentrate on the results of the religion question in the last (2011) census of Scotland.

Devil

Belief in the existence of the Devil is three times as great in the United States (57%) as it is in Britain (18%), according to YouGov data published on 27 September 2013, 1,919 Britons having been interviewed online on 24-25 September and 1,000 Americans on 12-13 September. The current British figure is 16 points lower than when Gallup first posed a similar question in February 1957. Disbelievers now number 65% (compared with 42% a half-century earlier), with 17% undecided. Belief in the Devil does not vary hugely by most demographic variables, but it does by religion, being 7% for the non-religious, 25% for Christians, and 41% for non-Christians.

The national results are identical for belief that some people can be possessed by the Devil or another evil spirit: 18% yes (against 51% in the United States), 65% no, and 17% don’t know. This belief again peaks among non-Christians (37%) and is lowest for the non-religious (10%). Of these British believers in possession, 6% think that it occurs frequently, 12% occasionally, 33% rarely, and 6% never (the rest being uncertain). Among these believers in possession, 35% believe in the power of exorcism, with no major demographic fluctuations (even by religion), 18% do not, and 47% cannot make up their minds. YouGov’s blog post about the study, with links to full data tables, is at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/09/27/18-brits-believe-possession-devil-and-half-america/

Religious discrimination and the young

Interviewed online by ComRes for BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat programme, 72% of 1,001 adults aged 18-24 considered that young people today are more tolerant than their parents of different ethnic groups, religions, and sexual orientations. They also identified religious discrimination as the second most widespread form of discrimination in Britain (39%), after racism (58%) and just ahead of homophobia (36%). No more than 5% denied that Islamophobia exists in the UK, and 60% accepted that Muslims have a negative image among the British public (compared with 11% to 17% for the five other world faith communities).

At the same time, significant numbers of these young adults themselves exhibited negativity towards either Islam or Muslims. The Islamic faith was described as traditional by 88%, set in its ways by 81%, disrespectful of women by 67%, unequal by 63%, separate by 61%, intolerant by 52%, and violent by 37%. The Muslim community was often not thought to share the same values as other people (44%), nor to be doing enough to combat extremism (39%). More than one-third (37%) had no regular interactions with Muslims in any context, 27% distrusted them (against 12% to 16% for members of the other faiths), and 28% thought the country would be better off with fewer Muslims (13% to 17% for the other faiths).

Fieldwork took place between 7 and 17 June 2013, but the extensive data tables (481 pages) were only released on 25 September. They may be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Radio_1_Newsbeat_Discrimination_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Christians and wills

The Church Times for 20 September 2013 (p. 6) carried a brief report about a new study by Christian Research among its online panel (Resonate). Respondents numbered 1,917 churchgoers aged 45 and above and church leaders. Of those who had made a will, 45% said that they had left money to a charity, a much higher proportion than the norm. According to Remember a Charity, only 7% of all wills in the UK contain a charitable bequest. BRIN has so far failed to discover any more details about this survey. It is certainly not publicized on the current Christian Research website, which is sparse and, it is claimed, ‘soon’ to be replaced.

Anglican mindsets

To the same issue of the Church Times (20 September 2013, p. 16), Professor Linda Woodhead contributed an important article ‘A Gap is Growing within the Church’. This continues the analysis of two YouGov polls she commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, on ethics and personal life (25-30 January, n = 4,437) and ethics and public life (5-13 June, n = 4,018). Her main thesis, underpinned by the survey data, is that, in both contexts, majority Anglican opinion is a ‘mirror image’ of the official teaching and policy of the Church of England. On personal morality most Anglicans espouse liberalism (in the sense that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how to lead their lives) and fairness, whereas the Church inclines to authoritarian-paternalism, and the maintenance of difference, altogether occupying the ‘conservative’ ground. In matters of public life, however, the roles are reversed, majority Anglican views veering towards the free market and ‘Little England’ ends of the spectrum, while the Church is more social welfarist-paternalist and cosmopolitan in outlook. ‘In short’, Woodhead writes, ‘Anglicans have a good deal in common with the Government. They are in line with The Guardian on personal issues, but the Telegraph or even the Mail on wider social and economic matters.’ She also notes a values gap between Church and society, which widens as the age range is descended, perceived discrimination against women and gay people being significant factors in the disaffection of the young from the Church of England.

Religion and depression

The claim is often made, especially on the basis of research undertaken in the United States, that religion promotes psychological well-being, but the contrary appears to be the case in a multinational study reported in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 43, No. 10, October 2013, pp. 2109-20: ‘Spiritual and Religious Beliefs as Risk Factors for the Onset of Major Depression: An International Cohort Study’. Written by a team of ten academics (with Michael King of University College London as corresponding author), the data derive from 8,318 adults aged 18-75 attending general practices in seven countries (including 1,331 in the UK, 66% of whom were women) and followed up at six- and twelve-month intervals in 2003-04. The overall conclusion is that ‘holding a religious or spiritual life view, in contrast to a secular outlook, predisposed people to the onset of major depression and that such beliefs and practice did not act as a buffer to adverse life events’. This was particularly so in the UK, where the 27% of the sample claiming a spiritual understanding of life (without practising a religion) were almost three times as likely to experience an episode of depression than the secular group (32% of respondents). The odds ratios (adjusted and unadjusted) for the onset of major depression were also higher than the seculars for the 41% in the religious group, albeit the difference was not as marked as for the spiritual group. The explanation advanced is that ‘people predisposed to depression increase their search for existential meaning in religion and spirituality’. For access options to the article, go to:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8988733&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0033291712003066

Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s blockbuster thriller novel (2003) and film (2006), which has been frequently denounced as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, was the most-read of nineteen works of modern fiction in a survey conducted by Opinium Research in which 2,001 UK adults were interviewed online between 19 and 22 July 2013. More than one-third (36%) of all adults claimed to have read it, including 42% of the over-55s. Data tables were released on 25 September 2013 and are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op3710_opinium_pr_adult_literacy_tables.pdf

Scotland’s Jews

The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has published the final report on Being Jewish in Scotland, written by Fiona Frank, Ephraim Borowski, and Leah Granat. It derives from a mixed methods research project, which commenced in November 2011 with funding from the Community Safety Unit of the Scottish Government. It ultimately involved more than 300 Scottish Jews (about 5% of the total, albeit possibly not representative) who either attended 30 focus groups or (n = 155) participated in one-to-one interviews or completed a survey form. The report is essentially a qualitative document but drawing upon pre-existing statistical evidence. Although the experience of living in Scotland was largely found to be positive, some anti-Semitism was revealed, leading to a sense of insecurity. Four-fifths of respondents were also concerned about ‘increasingly acrimonious attacks on Israel’. Being Jewish in Scotland can be read at:

http://www.scojec.org/news/2013/13viii_bjis_report/report.pdf

Beyond 2011

The Office for National Statistics issued a public consultation document on 23 September 2013 on The Census and Future Provision of Population Statistics in England and Wales. Two principal options for taking the census forward have been identified: a) a census once a decade, as in 2011, but primarily completed online; and b) a census repurposing existing government data with new compulsory annual surveys completed by a sample of households (cumulatively covering about half the population over a decade). Further details about these options, a SWOT analysis of them, the consultation questions, and how to respond (by 13 December 2013), together with links to two supplementary reports (one of which, Summary of the Uses of Census Information, contains sundry references to religion), can be found at:

http://ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/get-involved/consultations/consultations/beyond-2011-consultation/index.html

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Anglicans, BBC, Beyond 2011, census of population, Christian Research, Church of England, Church Times, ComRes, Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, depression, Devil, Ephraim Borowski, exorcism, Fiona Frank, Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Leah Granat, Linda Woodhead, Michael King, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, Psychological Medicine, Religious discrimination, Roman Catholic Church, Scotland, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, wills, YouGov | Leave a comment

ADL Index of Anti-Semitism

Islamic and Other Themes

Roman Catholic and Other Statistics

End-of-Year Round-Up

Things Unseen and Other News

Discrimination, Identity, and Other News

Recent News

Recent Sources

Archives

Recent Comments

British Religion in Numbers is funded as a British Academy Research Project