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Religion and Political Attitudes: The British Election Study 2015, Internet Panel – Wave 4

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Ben Clements

This post provides a summary of findings relating to religion and political attitudes, based on a selection of questions taken from Wave 4 of the BES 2015 internet panel study (fieldwork was conducted online between 6-13 March 2015). The analysis is based on the beta version of the survey dataset (which can be obtained here), using the core sample from Wave 4. The questions looked at encompass party support, ideology and policy debates. Each table presented below looks at attitudes on the basis of religious affiliation using a parsimonious set of categories (Anglican, Catholic, other Christian, other religion, no religion). A previous analysis of religion and attitudes based on data from Wave One of the BES 2015 study is available here.

Party Support

Table 1 provides a breakdown of party identification by affiliation. A question on party identification has featured in the BES surveys since their inception in 1963. Note the greater propensity for Anglicans to report that they identify with the Conservative Party, in keeping with their traditional loyalty to this party at the polls; Catholics are more likely to identify with Labour, again in accordance with traditional patterns of denominational voting. Other Christians are more evenly split between the Conservative and Labour parties, as are those with no affiliation. The other religion group shows a greater propensity to support Labour.

Table 1: Current party identification by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Con	39.3	27.6	26.2	19.5	23.0
Lab	30.8	40.2	29.4	33.9	28.4
Lib Dem	7.8	6.4	11.5	9.7	10.3
UKIP	4.8	3.9	3.5	3.6	3.6
Other party	1.3	5.9	11.5	7.5	7.9
None	12.4	12.0	14.6	18.5	21.8
Don’t know	3.5	4.0	3.4	7.3	4.9

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: Percentages sum down the columns.

Using another way of gauging party support, Table 2 shows the average scores based on a series of scales measuring like or dislike (scores for four parties are shown here). Higher scores equate to more likeability. In keeping with the pattern from Table 1, Anglicans have the highest likeability score for the Conservative Party, while Catholics and other religions show the highest likability scores for Labour. Other Christians register identical scores for the Conservatives and Labour. Those with no affiliation show a clear preference for Labour over the Conservatives. The Lib Dems and UKIP generally receive lower likeability scores, though Anglicans are more favourable to the latter compared to other groups.

Table 2: Like-dislike for political parties, by religious affiliation (mean scores)

	Anglican	Catholic	Other Christian	Other religion	No religion
Con	4.84	4.03	4.15	3.89	3.55
Lab	4.27	4.94	4.15	4.80	4.50
Lib Dem	3.13	3.21	3.37	3.32	3.36
UKIP	3.81	3.24	2.91	2.83	2.69

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: 0 to 10 scale, where 0=strongly dislike and 10=strongly like.

Ideology and Policy

Table 3 reports the mean scores from two scales measuring ideological self-placement, one for left-right position and the other for redistribution. Note that higher scores indicate, respectively, a more right-wing position and a stance that the government should be less concerned with redistribution. Anglicans have the highest scores on the left-right and redistribution scale – they are relatively more right-wing and less in favour of redistribution. Those with no affiliation have the least right-wing score. Catholics, other Christians and those with no religion have very similar scores for the redistribution scale, all slightly higher than that registered for other religions.

Table 3: Ideological self-placement, by religious affiliation (mean scores)

	Anglican	Catholic	Other Christian	Other religion	No religion
Left- right scale	5.75	5.16	5.19	4.97	4.65
Redistribution scale	4.78	4.34	4.32	4.19	4.30

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: Scales range from 0 to 10.

Left-right: 0=left; 10=right.

Redistribution: 0=government should try to make incomes equal; 10=government should be less concerned about equal incomes.

Table 4 shows the proportions agreeing with a series of statements used to measures left-right attitudes. These statements are long-running items in the BES and British Social Attitudes surveys (and the full wordings are shown underneath Table 4). In each case, the ‘left-wing’ response is reported. Most of the statements elicit large majorities in agreement, lowest for the question on redistribution. However, the responses do not tend to show much variation in levels of agreement across groups.

Table 4: Left-right questions: Percent agreeing, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Redistribute income	47.1	51.2	50.7	55.3	52.5
Big business	75.5	77.4	75.0	73.9	75.4
Fair share	71.2	75.8	71.0	68.5	70.9
One law	68.9	74.6	69.2	66.0	70.5
Management and workers	68.8	69.3	67.8	63.7	65.4

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: Combines ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ responses.

Questions:

Government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well off.

Big business benefits owners at the expense of workers.

Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth.

There is one law for the rich and one for the poor.

Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance.

Attitudes differ more on the basis of affiliation in relation to questions concerning libertarian-authoritarian orientations (again a long-running feature of the BES and BSA surveys). Levels of agreement with five statements are reported in Table 5 (the wording is again provided underneath), and are generally high across questions. Anglicans are most in favour of the death penalty (with support lowest amongst other religions and those with no religion). Those with no religion are least likely to support the use of censorship and, along with the other religion group, are somewhat less authoritarian in their views on traditional values, obeying authority and the use of tougher sentences.

Table 5: Libertarian-authoritarian questions: Percent agreeing, by religious affiliation

		Anglican (%)		Catholic (%)		Other Christian (%)		Other religion (%)		No religion (%)
Traditional values	82.1		75.8		72.3		65.1		62.6
Death penalty	65.7		53.7		54.7		49.9		50.8
Obey authority	86.0		84.0		80.4		64.8		69.3
Censorship	65.1		56.7		63.0		47.0		39.8
Stiffer sentences	83.4		80.1		75.9		63.0		67.7

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: Combines ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ responses.

Questions:

Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values.

For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence.

Schools should teach children to obey authority.

Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards.

People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences.

Table 6 shows the full set of responses to two questions on welfare, a policy area which recently – and in earlier decades – has seen faith leaders publicly critical of government policy, stoking debate about the exercise of religious authority in the political process. Table 6 shows that a clear majority in each group agrees that too many people like to rely on government handouts (lowest for the other religion group). Always a minority view, disagreement is lowest amongst Anglicans and highest amongst those with no affiliation.

Table 6: Too many people these days like to rely on government handouts, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Strongly agree or agree	72.1	67.6	66.4	56.0	60.1
Neither	13.8	12.9	15.8	19.1	16.2
Disagree or strongly disagree	12.3	16.7	14.8	16.5	20.9
Don’t know	1.8	2.8	2.9	8.4	2.7

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Finally, turning to equality issues, Table 7 shows the proportions saying that equal opportunities for ethnic minorities, women or gays and lesbians have gone (much) too far. This view is much more likely to be held in relation to ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians. The proportions with this opinion are much lower for equal opportunities for women. Those with no religion are least likely to think that equal opportunities have gone too far for gays and lesbians, while those belonging to other religions are least likely say this in relation to ethnic minorities.

Table 7: Attitudes towards equal opportunities: Percent saying gone too far, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
Ethnic minorities	48.2	42.8	43.8	27.8	35.0
Women	12.9	13.8	14.9	16.5	11.2
Gays and lesbians	36.2	29.8	40.5	32.5	19.9

Source: BES 2015 Internet Panel Study – Wave 4, core sample.

Note: Combines ‘gone too far’ and ‘gone much too far’ responses.

A future BRIN post will look at how religious groups voted in the 2015 general election, when suitable post-election data from the BES 2015 become available.

Reference

Fieldhouse, E., J. Green., G. Evans., H. Schmitt, and C. van der Eijk (2014) Preliminary British Election Study Internet Panel Wave 4.

Further reading

Clements, B. (2015), Religion and Public Opinion in Britain: Continuity and Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Research note | Tagged British Election Study, equal opportunities, left-right scale, libertarian-authoritarian, party identification, redistribution scale, Religious Affiliation, welfare | Leave a comment

Religion and the General Election

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Clive D. Field

With the 2015 general election only four days away, on 7 May, a round-up of recent research on religion and politics in Britain seems appropriate. Here we report on several new stories and remind BRIN readers of other pertinent research which we have covered in posts during the past few weeks.

Density of religious groups

Several attempts have been made to assess the potential impact of the ‘religious vote’ by examining the density of religious groups in individual parliamentary constituencies, as recorded in the 2011 population census, and comparing it with constituency-level voting patterns at the 2010 general election, especially in the light of the size of the majority obtained by the successful candidate five years ago.

General

A multi-group analysis is offered in a new 28-page briefing paper published by the Henry Jackson Society on 30 April 2015: Alan Mendoza, Religious Diversity in British Parliamentary Constituencies. In a series of maps and tables it charts the density of nine major religions groups (Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, other religion, no religion, and religion not stated) in each of Britain’s 632 parliamentary constituencies (Northern Ireland is not covered), set alongside political data from the 2010 general election. The religious and political composition of 193 marginal seats is particularly investigated. It is concluded that the five principal minority religions are likely to have a greater impact on the electoral outcome of marginal seats than in constituencies overall. For example, in 47% of marginals the number of Muslims is greater than the margin of victory in 2010, the equivalent figures for Hindus being 21% of marginals, for Sikhs 13%, for Buddhists 8%, and for Jews 6%. In all, there are 93 marginals where the number of one or more of the five main minority religions outweighs the margin of victory. However, it is argued that the impact will be lessened by the fact that religious minorities will probably not vote in a uniform way, with religion being only one determinant of their political behaviour, a topic to which the Henry Jackson Society promises to return in future. The report can be downloaded from:

http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2015/04/30/religious-diversity-in-british-parliamentary-constituencies/

Jews

On 29 April 2015, the day before the Henry Jackson Society’s briefing, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published Where Jewish Votes May Matter Most: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research Guide to the 2015 General Election in the UK by Jonathan Boyd. Although Jews form less than half a per cent of the population of the whole country, they tend to be spatially clustered. In his report Boyd profiles the 20 English and Welsh constituencies with the largest number of Jews, showing that there are just five where Jews comprise more than 10% of the electorate and six in which Jews are the largest religious minority. He argues that it is only mathematically possible in eight to ten constituencies for Jews to be able to overturn the existing majority (assuming no change in non-Jewish voting), and in four of these cases it would require a level of uniformity in Jewish voting patterns that is, statistically, improbable. He concludes that the two constituencies in which Jews are most likely to play a key role at the general election are Hendon (Conservative in 2010) and Hampstead and Kilburn (Labour in 2010) where a combination of the size of the Jewish population and the tiny majorities of the outgoing MPs creates a situation where how Jews decide to vote could be critical. The particularly large Jewish communities in Finchley and Golders Green, Bury South, and Harrow East could also be influential, Boyd suggests, since, in all three instances, Jews exceed the size of the 2010 electoral majority. The 23-page report can be downloaded from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.Where_Jewish_votes_may_matter_most.Guide_to_2015_General_Election.pdf

Muslims

The Muslim News seems to have somewhat updated its analysis of parliamentary seats where Muslims may be influential, which BRIN originally covered in our post of 5 February 2015. The newspaper claims that the Muslim vote could be important in as many as 40 constituencies in England, 39 of them held by Labour or priority Labour targets. Of the 40, 25 are classed as marginal seats, which are profiled in detail, and 15 as safe seats. In all, there are said to be 80 constituencies where Muslims exceed 10% of the residents. For more information, and a link to the methodology employed, see:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/blog/seats-where-muslims-are-influential/

Voting of religious groups

There has long been a debate about whether a ‘religious vote’ still exists in Britain. Here we present some recent evidence about the correlation of religion and intended voting. However, it should be remembered that correlation does not equate with causation, and that underlying differential demographics of religious groups doubtless contribute to the results described. Eliza Filby (author of the book God & Mrs Thatcher) has a new essay on the religious vote on the Standpoint magazine blog. She concludes that such a vote continues to matter but asks for how much longer? See:

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/features-may-2015-eliza-filby-is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-religious-vote?

General

The British Election Study (BES) 2015, a consortium of the Universities of Manchester, Oxford, and Nottingham, will ultimately be a vital source of information about the interaction of religion and politics. The BES 2015 internet panel, now in its fourth wave, is likely to be especially revealing. BRIN expects to report on this more fully in the future, but readers might recall the preliminary analysis of wave 1 (February-March 2014) data on religion and voting which Ben Clements published on the BRIN website on 17 October 2014 at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/the-british-election-study-2015-religious-affiliation-and-attitudes/

Meanwhile, the most current data on voting intentions by religious groups derive from two online polls conducted by Populus (n = 2,048, 17-19 April 2015) and ORB International (n = 2,051, 22-23 April 2015). Summary figures are tabulated below, for the four main political parties only, also excluding those who said they would not vote, declined to answer, or did not know. It will be seen that Christians are disproportionately Conservative and UKIP supporters, non-Christians disproportionately Labour, with almost two-fifths of no religionists favouring smaller parties or not declaring their hand. Full data tables are available at, respectively:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/FT-Economy-Qs-200415.pdf

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/omopinion-poll.pdf

% down	Populus	ORB
Christians
Conservative	32	31
Labour	23	24
LibDem	7	5
UKIP	14	18
Non-Christians
Conservative	16	29
Labour	51	43
LibDem	8	4
UKIP	4	4
No religion
Conservative	16	17
Labour	28	28
LibDem	7	7
UKIP	10	10
All electors
Conservative	25	25
Labour	26	27
LibDem	7	5
UKIP	12	14

Anglicans

An online poll by YouGov of 5,552 self-identifying Anglicans between 1 and 28 March 2015 recorded their current voting intention (excluding don’t knows and would not votes, and taking into account likelihood to vote) as: Conservative 48% (national average 34%), Labour 27% (national average 34%), Liberal Democrats 6% (national average 7%), UKIP 16% (national average 14%), and other parties 3% (national average 11%). Anglicans thus remain disproportionately Conservative. Data table at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/7wu1rrot0u/Final_Church_Times_Religious_Voting_Intention_Website.pdf

Roman Catholics

According to the same YouGov poll, which also interviewed 1,574 self-identifying Catholics, they remain disproportionately Labour, the pattern of voting intentions being: Conservative 31%, Labour 42%, Liberal Democrats 4%, UKIP 12%, and other parties 10%.

Jews

A Survation telephone poll of 566 self-identifying British Jews on 2-7 April 2015 revealed that a substantial majority (69%) was Conservative, with 22% Labour, and no more than 9% for all other parties. Their pro-Conservative stance doubtless reflected their relatively affluent status, but it also appears to have been determined by perspectives on Israel and the Middle East, a policy area where the Conservative Party in general and David Cameron in particular have a clear edge over Labour. For a fuller report, see the BRIN post of 12 April 2015 at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2015/religion-and-public-affairs/

Muslims

Conventionally-sized polls include too few Muslims to be statistically reliable. However, occasionally large-scale political surveys are conducted or created by aggregation which include a respectable number of Muslims. Two such examples were the online polls from Populus on 4-27 February 2015 and Lord Ashcroft on 20-27 February 2015 which included, respectively, 331 and 170 Muslim electors. In both studies three-fifths of Muslims favoured Labour (partly a function of class-based voting) and fewer than one in ten the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats on 3%. BRIN’s post of 8 March 2015 contains further details and links at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2015/religious-voting-intentions-and-other-news/

Churches as polling places

Of the UK’s 31,855 polling places 5,967 (or 19%) are located in church buildings, according to research released by the National Churches Trust (NCT) on 29 April 2015. The proportion varies by sub-nation and region, ranging from 25% in Greater London down to 12% in Scotland and Northern Ireland (with 20% in Wales and 19% in England as a whole). Constituency-level variations are even greater; for instance, in Sheffield Hallam (seat of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats) two-fifths of polling places are in church buildings. Figures are based on information collected from local authorities during the last UK-wide election, for the European Parliament in May 2014. A number of non-Christian places of worship also serve as polling places but the NCT did not analyse these. The NCT’s press release is at:

http://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/news/church-buildings-play-vital-role-2015-general-election

Posted in Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Alan Mendoza, Anglicans, Ben Clements, British Election Study, Christians, Eliza Filby, general election, Henry Jackson Society, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Jews, Jonathan Boyd, Lord Ashcroft, Muslim News, Muslims, National Churches Trust, ORB International, politics, polling places, Populus, Religious Affiliation, Roman Catholics, Standpoint, Survation, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

Britain Uncovered and Other News

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Britain uncovered

The recent ‘Britain Uncovered’ poll commissioned by The Observer from Opinium Research, among an online sample of 1,019 adults, included several questions of religious interest. The proportion associating with any religion was 61%, albeit significantly lower among those self-defining as left-wing (49%) as right-wing (71%), with 17% identifying as agnostics and 21% as atheists. However, only 29% of those associating with a religion said that they actively practised it, for example by attending services, equivalent to 18% of the entire population. Of the whole sample, 61% agreed, and just 15% disagreed, that religion is a negative influence in the world rather than a force for good. Two-thirds (65%) acknowledged that Islamophobia is common in Britain, and 48% definitely and 31% probably believed that, in the light of Islamist extremism, British Muslims should make a special effort to state their allegiance to the country. Full data tables from the survey are not yet online; the following details have been abstracted from the summary at:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/19/britain-uncovered-survey-attitudes-beliefs-britons-2015

Religion of parliamentary candidates

A poll by Whitehouse Consulting of 225 parliamentary candidates for marginal seats in the forthcoming general election has revealed that 42% did not identify as members of any religious faith, with 34% claiming to be atheists (including half of Labour Party and Green Party candidates). Just 16% identified themselves as belonging to the Church of England, albeit this rose to 41% of Conservative and 27% of UKIP candidates. Overall, belief in a deity ran at 37%. A press release about the poll was issued on 17 April 2015 at:

http://www.whitehouseconsulting.co.uk/survey-shows-marginal-seat-candidates-will-be-white-male-and-only-somewhat-religious/

Religiosity and voting

In our post of 12 April 2015, we highlighted findings from an analysis of religious affiliation and voting intention undertaken by YouGov for the Church Times on the basis of online interviews with 36,579 electors between 1 and 28 March 2015. The study confirmed that professing Anglicans are disproportionately likely to favour the Conservative Party and Roman Catholics the Labour Party. Further investigation of the same dataset by self-assessed religiosity has now revealed that, excluding the 13% who did not know how they would vote and the 6% who said they would not vote at all, the Conservatives are more likely than average to attract people who describe themselves as religious and the smaller parties those who regard themselves as non-religious. The results are tabulated below:

% down	All	Religious	Non-religious
Conservative	34	42	29
Labour	34	31	34
Liberal Democrat	7	6	8
UKIP	14	14	15
Other parties	11	7	13

Further statistics are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/7wu1rrot0u/Final_Church_Times_Religious_Voting_Intention_Website.pdf

Would you buy a used car from … ?

The public standing, including the perceived trustworthiness, of clergy and priests has taken a bit of a tumble during recent decades. So much so that only one in four of the 300 people questioned by Gorkana Surveys for the vehicle data firm HPI said that they would most trust a vicar to sell them a used car in the private market. The good news, however, is that no other profession fared any better, even motor mechanics getting only a 19% vote of confidence. A blog about the survey was published by HPI on 20 April 2015 at:

https://blog.hpicheck.com/2015/04/20/trusting-sellers/#more-1797

Clergy dyads

Fresh light is shed on the incidence and patterns of ministry of clergy married to clergy in the Church of England in a new article by Susie Collingridge, ‘Patterns of Ministry of Clergy Married to Clergy in the Church of England’, Journal of Anglican Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2015, pp. 68-91. Using the online edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory in early 2013 as her source, she identified the number of such clergy as 26% greater than previous estimates, at 1,160, of whom 994 were active in the ministry, equivalent to 5% of all active Anglican clergy. However, she also found that a higher than normal proportion of clergy married to clergy (20%) were in non-parochial roles such as chaplains, and that it was very rare in clergy marriages for wives to hold more senior positions than their husbands. The article can be accessed via institutional subscription or pay-per-view at:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9652924&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1740355314000205

Gender equality in the Church in Wales

The meeting of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales in Llandrindod Wells on 15-16 April 2015 considered a Report of the Working Group Appointed by the Standing Committee to Review Representation of Women in the Church in Wales, 2015. Having analysed statistics of gender balance among candidates for the ministry, current clergy, holders of senior clerical posts, clergy presiding at cathedral services, members of diocesan boards of finance, and members of provincial committees, the report concluded that:

There is great difference between dioceses in the representation of women
There are few senior appointments held by women and women are not even occupying the posts which would be expected to act as the first stage in achieving a senior post
Equality of representation on committees has not been achieved and early progress has not been maintained
A number of the Cathedrals do not have women either as part of the ministry team or on their Chapters

The report can be found at:

http://cinw.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/10-RepresentationWomen.pdf

Edward Bailey (1935-2015)

Revd Professor Edward Ian Bailey, who initiated the formal study of implicit religion (the concept of ‘secular faith’) in 1968, died on 22 April 2015. An Anglican clergyman (notably as Rector of Winterbourne in the Diocese of Bristol from 1970 to 2006), he was also convenor of the annual Denton Hall Conferences on Implicit Religion from 1978, founding director of the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality, a member of the executive committee of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality, and visiting professor at three British universities. Although his own research and books were not particularly characterized by quantitative methods, he was encouraging of those who deployed statistical approaches, not least by publishing their articles in the journal Implicit Religion, which he established in 1998 and edited until his death.

1851 religious census of Warwickshire

On 30 March 1851 the Government organized, as part of the decennial census of population, a census of the accommodation and attendance at all places of worship in the British Isles. The experiment was never repeated and only summaries of the returns were ever published at the time. However, the original schedules have survived at The National Archives for most parts of England and Wales, and these have been the subject of many scholarly editions during the past four decades. The returns for Warwickshire are the latest to be published: The 1851 Census of Religious Worship: Church, Chapel, and Meeting Place in Mid Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire, edited by Keith Geary (Publications of the Dugdale Society, Vol. XLVII, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Society, 2014, xii + 350pp., ISBN 9780852200971, £30.00 + £3.00 postage and packing, hardback). The main body of the text (pp. 85- 323) comprises an annotated transcript of the 590 returns for the county, arranged by registration districts and sub-districts. This is preceded by a substantial introduction (pp. 1-74) which briefly sketches the historical and topographical background before providing a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of and commentary on the Warwickshire data. There are indexes by persons, places, and subjects (including denominations), plus maps and a bibliography.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Church in Wales, Church of England, clergy, Dugdale Society, Edward Bailey, gender equality, Gorkana Surveys, HPI, implicit religion, Islamophobia, Journal of Anglican Studies, Keith Geary, Muslims, Opinium Research, parliamentary candidates, Religious Affiliation, religious census, self-assessed religiosity, Susie Collingridge, The Observer, trust, used cars, voting, Warwickshire, Whitehouse Consulting | Leave a comment

Easter Religion and Other News

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Easter religion

In what, for many, will be a welcome break from the general election coverage, YouGov has undertaken a replication for the Sunday Times of several questions about Easter and religion first asked two years ago. The latest sample comprised 1,906 adult Britons interviewed online on 3-4 April 2015. Detailed results, including breaks by standard demographics and by self-assessed religiosity, can be found on YouGov’s archive pages for 5 April 2015 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/publicopinion/archive/

A topline comparison of the 2013 and 2015 results is tabulated below; breaks for the youngest and oldest cohorts are also shown. Obviously, because of sampling error, too much should not be made of the differences between the two surveys, but it is noticeable that, for all the indicators, the movement is in the direction of the least religious position. Easter is overwhelmingly regarded as a secular occasion, and more than three-fifths of Britons no longer describe themselves as religious, deem religion of importance in their lives, nor regard themselves as a practising member of a faith.

%	2013 all	2015 all	2015 18-24	2015 60+
Religiosity
Religious	NA	36	NA	NA
Not religious	NA	62	NA	NA
Importance of religion to own life
Important	31	29	23	39
Not important	66	68	72	59
Practising member of a religion
Yes	NA	35	31	39
No	NA	62	68	59
Belief in God
Believe in God	38	35	24	44
Believe in spiritual higher power	21	20	19	21
Believe in neither	30	34	47	27
Belief in Jesus Christ
Son of God	39	30	16	38
Real historical figure but not Son of God	30	37	49	37
Probably did not exist	13	14	18	9
Most important part of Easter
Spending time with friends/family	47	42	38	45
Having time off work	19	21	21	5
Religious importance	15	13	8	21
Planned churchgoing over Easter
Yes	15	14	16	18
No	79	83	79	80
Belief in Resurrection
Christ came back to life after crucifixion	31	29	18	36
Christ not come back to life after crucifixion	47	50	63	40

Religious liberty in business

In last week’s news blog we reported on a ComRes survey for the Christian Institute in which a sample of Northern Irish adults was asked for their views about the right of business people to freedom of speech and religious liberty when providing goods or services to customers. The poll results had been released to coincide with civil court action in Belfast against a Christian bakery which had declined to ice a cake with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage. Court proceedings have concluded, but no judgment has been made. A comparable survey has also been undertaken by ComRes in Britain for the Christian Institute, among 2,020 adults interviewed online on 18-19 March 2015, and the data tables (including breaks by demographics and religious affiliation) published on 30 March at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Christian-Institute-_Freedom-of-Speech.pdf

Respondents were asked whether it was appropriate for court action to be taken against business people in a variety of scenarios, several of which had a religious component, as follows:

%	Go to court	Not go to court
Muslim printer refusing to print cartoons of Prophet Mohammed	10	71
Atheist web designer refusing to design a website promoting creationism	8	72
Muslim film company refusing to produce a pornographic film	7	76
Christian bakery refusing to make a cake celebrating Satanism	9	71
Roman Catholic printing company declining to produce adverts for abortion	12	68
Christian bakery refusing to make a cake promoting same-sex marriage	13	68

It will be seen that the findings are reasonably consistent for all six scenarios, with around seven in ten thinking the actions of the business people did not constitute grounds for court proceedings and only one in ten believing that they did. Even among persons professing no religion never more than 18% (in the case of the Christian bakery and the cake promoting same-sex marriage) favoured court action being taken. Of course, it would have been possible to have asked the questions in reverse, with the rights of the spurned customers paramount, in which case – consistent with general public support for diversity legislation – the results for several of the scenarios would probably have been rather different.

Future of world religions

The UK will cease to have a Christian majority by 2050, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center on 2 April 2015: The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050. It forecasts that, by the middle of this century, Christians will account for only 45% of the UK population, compared with 64% in 2010. Over the same four decades, the proportion of religiously unaffiliated is expected to rise from 28% to 39% (which seems rather modest, given the rate of increase among adults between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was running at 1% per annum), of Muslims from 5% to 11%, and of all other religions from 3% to 4%. Baseline numbers are derived from the census, which uses a particular question-wording to determine religious affiliation; other formulations produce higher figures for religious ‘nones’. Pew has used a range of sources to compute trends in fertility, life expectancy, age structure, migration, and religious switching (regarded as the five principal drivers of population growth) in the years to come. For a detailed explanation of the methodology, as well as the complete results by countries (including the Channel Islands), regions, and religious groups, consult the report at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2015/03/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsFullReport.pdf

News from Brierley Consultancy

The April 2015 membership mailing by Brierley Consultancy included a couple of items which some BRIN readers may find of interest. One is No. 38 of the bimonthly magazine FutureFirst, which contained the usual mix of longer and shorter news contributions, among them a lead article by Philip Hughes on ‘Does Faith Give You Better Health?’ The answer to the question, based on British data from the 2011 International Social Survey Programme, was generally that ‘attendance at religious services has little impact on health’, in that it was not one of the top five demographic determinants of health. However, at the level of causation, it was found that smoking and alcohol consumption were the biggest negative influences on self-reported health status, and that those who attended church monthly or more often were much more likely never to have smoked or never to have drunk alcohol than non-attenders at church, the differences being statistically significant. The article is best read in the full version, available on request from Brierley Consultancy. The second item is a 16-page report by Peter Brierley entitled Growing Churches: The Encouragements and Challenges Highlighted by the 2014 Grace Baptist Church Census. The census covered all UK Grace Baptist churches, which have a combined membership of 7,900, and revealed that there was an overall growth in worshippers of 7% between 2010 and 2014, with just 14% of congregations experiencing decline and 48% of Grace Baptists attending two services on Sunday (three times the number of all English churchgoers in 2005). For more information about these items, contact:

peter@brierleyres.com

Nonconformist historical statistics

The latest and, regrettably, final volume in Michael Watts’ history of Protestant Nonconformity in England and Wales was published on 19 March 2015: The Dissenters, Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Nonconformity, by Michael Watts with the assistance of Chris Wrigley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, xviii + 493p., ISBN 978-0-19-822969-8, £85.00, hardback). It covers the years 1860-1906, the previous volumes, published in 1978 and 1995, respectively dealing with the period between the Reformation and French Revolution and 1791-1859, the latter including an important statistical analysis of the results of the 1851 religious census and the pre-1837 non-parochial registers. Since the author died in 2011, his mooted fourth volume on the twentieth century will never appear.

The third volume makes good use of statistical evidence throughout and includes no fewer than 101 tables in the appendix. These are devoted to four main topics:

Members, adherents, and Sunday scholars by denomination (tables 1-6)
Church and chapel attendance by denomination in London, 1851, 1886-87, and 1902-03 (tables 7-27)
Church and chapel attendance by denomination in 50 towns and groups of villages, 1851 and 1881 (tables 28-78)
Occupations of male Dissenters by denomination recorded in baptismal and marriage registers for 22 cities and counties, 1850-59 to 1970-79 (tables 80-101)

There is also accompanying textual analysis of the data on membership and attendance on pp. 85-91 and on occupations on pp. 101-9. This demonstrates that, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, both Nonconformist membership and attendance were beginning to decline relative to population and that the social basis of congregations was narrowing. The provision of occupational data for the twentieth century is an unexpected bonus and considerably extends current knowledge of the subject as hitherto summarized by Clive Field, ‘Zion’s People: Who Were the English Nonconformists?’ – a trilogy of articles published in the Local Historian in May, August, and November 2010.

Anglo-Jewry database, 1851

On 23 March 2015 the UK Data Service released, as Study Number 7668, the Anglo-Jewry Database, a prosopographical resource containing details of the vital events, residences, and occupations of 29,275 Jewish inhabitants of the British Isles in 1851, representing the overwhelming majority (90%) of the Jewish community at that time. The dataset was compiled by a team of 270 contributors worldwide from the population census and a wide variety of other sources, published and unpublished. More information, including links to documentation, is available at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7668

It is also possible to search the database on the JewishGen website at:

http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/1851/introduction.htm

and to order a print-on-demand index at:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/petra-laidlaw/an-index-to-the-jewish-community-of-the-british-isles-in-1851/paperback/product-21815428.html

Finally, it can be mentioned that Petra Laidlaw, principal investigator for the project, has two analytical articles on ‘Jews in the British Isles in 1851’ in Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2011, pp. 29-56 and Vol. 55, No. 1, 2013, pp. 114-57.

European Jewish Research Archive

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has recently soft-launched the European Jewish Research Archive, which it has set up with financial support from the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe. The archive is a free-to-use online repository of research on European Jewish communities that has been published in the form of books, reports, articles, or other media since 1990 and, wherever possible, includes the full text for downloading. It can be searched by author, title, topic, publication year, genre, original language, and geographic coverage. A search under UK currently results in 191 hits. To consult the archive, go to:

http://archive.jpr.org.uk/home

Islam and British values

A majority of Britons (55%) think there is a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, according to a YouGov survey for YouGov@Cambridge released on 26 March 2015 and featured in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph four days later. The sample comprised 1,641 adults interviewed online on 22-23 March. The proportion discerning a fundamental clash was highest among UKIP voters (89%), Conservatives (68%), and over-60s (67%). Only 22% deemed Islam to be compatible with British values, including 39% of both 18-24s and Liberal Democrats, while 10% disagreed with both propositions and 13% did not express an opinion. Data tables are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/30/majority-voters-doubt-islam-compatible-british-val/

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged Anglo-Jewry Database, Brierley Consultancy, British values, business people, Chris Wrigley, Christian Institute, Christians, church attendance, church growth, ComRes, court action, customers, Easter, European Jewish Research Archive, freedom of speech, God, Grace Baptist Churches, Health, importance of religion, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, International Social Survey Programme, Islam, Jesus Christ, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Jews, Michael Watts, Muslims, Nonconformity, occupations, Peter Brierley, Petra Laidlaw, Pew Research Center, Philip Hughes, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Religious Liberty, Resurrection, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge | Leave a comment

Religious Voting Intentions and Other News

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Religious voting intentions

Two large-scale online polls were released last week containing breaks of voting intentions by religious affiliation. There will naturally be heightened interest in these as we are now less than two months away from a general election.

The first survey was a cumulation of political polling conducted by Populus between 4 and 27 February 2015, involving interviews with 14,201 voters. Data tables (table 22 being the most relevant) can be found at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmOnline_Vote_February_2015-BPC.pdf

The second survey was undertaken for Lord Ashcroft and involved interviews with 8,072 electors between 20 and 27 February 2015. Data tables (table 54 being the most relevant) can be found at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/National-poll-tables-March-2015-LAM124A.pdf

Voting intentions from both polls for the four main parties only, i.e. excluding ‘minor’ parties and undecideds, are tabulated below. The most striking finding is that Muslims are more than twice as likely as the population as a whole to support Labour, which will partly be a function of their relatively deprived socio-economic status and thus of class-based voting. Other non-Christians are also disproportionately Labour supporters. However, although Labour was ahead in both polls, the Conservatives attracted the biggest single share of the Christian vote. People of no religion were significantly underrepresented among Conservatives, doubtless reflecting the concentration of ‘nones’ in the youngest age cohorts. In religious terms, UKIP had a fairly broad appeal, apart from to Muslims.

% across	Con	Lab	LD	UKIP
Populus
All	23.1	24.9	6.9	11.4
Christian	29.5	22.4	7.0	13.3
Muslim	9.7	59.8	3.0	1.2
Other non-Christian	21.5	33.2	8.9	6.5
No religion	15.8	25.4	6.9	10.1
Ashcroft
All	24.0	27.2	4.6	13.8
Christian	29.4	26.1	4.6	15.5
Muslim	8.8	60.6	2.9	2,9
Other non-Christian	23.1	33.3	5.3	9.4
No religion	17.9	26.1	4.7	13.0

Meanwhile, an online poll by YouGov for the British Youth Council, for which 1,175 young adults (aged 16-24) were interviewed on 20-26 February 2015, reported on current voting intentions both by religious affiliation and by self-assessed religiosity. Since more than twice as many respondents claimed to be non-religious as religious and to disavow any religion as to profess an affiliation, sub-groups were often too small to draw meaningful conclusions. However, those describing themselves as religious were somewhat more likely to favour either the Conservative or the Labour Party than were ‘nones’, the latter being more attracted to the smaller parties (especially nationalists and the Green Party). Data tables are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/xmdkfy1i2e/BritishYouthCouncilUpdatedResults_150302_website.pdf

Curative astrology?

Conservative MP David Tredinnick, who sits on the House of Commons health and science and technology committees, recently suggested that integrating astrology into medicine could ‘take huge pressure off doctors’, and predicted that reading the stars will ‘have a role to play in healthcare’. Despite otherwise being mostly supportive of alternative medicine (especially acupuncture, chiropractic, and osteopathy), the British public was found to be unsympathetic to Tredinnick’s reasoning in an online poll by YouGov among 1,638 adults on 25-26 February 2015. Four-fifths suggested that astrology was not effective at treating illnesses, no more than 6% in any demographic sub-group thinking it would be effective, and 84% opposed astrology being made available for free through the NHS. Data tables can be accessed via YouGov’s blog on the poll, published on 6 March, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/06/many-believe-alternative-medicine-effective/

Profile of Quakers

The most recent issue (Vol. 19, No. 1, September 2014) of Quaker Studies contains a very substantial article (pp. 7-136, mainly comprising appendices) by Jennifer May Hampton describing the principal findings of an important new survey of Quakers undertaken under the auspices of the Woodbrooke Quaker Studies Centre in 2013. The article, ‘British Quaker Survey: Examining Religious Beliefs and Practices in the Twenty-First Century’, is based on the author’s unpublished 2013 Lancaster University MSc statistics thesis of the same title. Data derived from a self-completion questionnaire answered by ‘a quasi-random’ sample of 649 adult members (70%) and attenders (29%) from 48 local meetings in Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a response rate of 79%. Besides demographics, topics covered included religious beliefs and practices and attitudes to moral issues. The article reproduces the full text of the questionnaire (appendix A) and results in (rather small) diagrammatic form (appendix B).

Some questions replicated those in broadly equivalent national Quaker surveys conducted in 1990 and 2003 (recorded in the BRIN source database), revealing quite substantial changes over time. Some of these were demographic, notably an ageing in the Quaker community (the number over 60 increasing from 37% in 1990 to 70% in 2013, when the mean age was 64 years) and a doubling in those educated to postgraduate degree level (from 17% to 32%). Other changes related to beliefs, such as the big declines in Quakers who believed in God (from 75% in 1990 to 58% in 2013) or self-identifying as Christian (from 52% to 37%). As many as 16% of these members and attenders did not even self-identify as Quakers. Among the 84% who did, latent class analysis enabled them to be categorized into ‘traditional’ Quakers (32%), non-theist Quakers (18%), and ‘liberal’ Quakers (50%). The article does not appear to be available online, but copies of the journal issue can be purchased for £10 from the Quaker Studies Research Association, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, 1046 Bristol Road, Birmingham, B29 6LJ (cheques should be made payable to the Association).

Revision to 2011 census data

On 26 February 2015 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) issued an amended spreadsheet for the results of the religion question in the 2011 census of population in England and Wales. This followed the detection of a data processing error whereby the number of usual residents in the ‘religion not stated’ category had been overestimated by a total of 62,000 for three local authorities in London (Camden, Islington, and Tower Hamlets). This number has now been redistributed to the stated religion categories, with important changes for the three local authorities concerned and some knock-on effects at national level (for example, an additional 24,900 Christians, 14,400 Muslims, and 18,100 people of no religion in England and Wales). To locate the spreadsheet, search the ONS website for ‘Religion correction factors’.

Gallup Poll religion data

Sample surveys are a vital source of religious statistics. They were pioneered in Britain by the Gallup Poll, formerly known as the British Institute of Public Opinion, which was founded by Henry Durant in 1937. Over the years, Gallup developed quite a strong interest in investigating religion, especially during Gordon Heald’s service with the company as director (1969-80) and managing director (1980-94). Topline time series of Gallup’s principal published (and some unpublished) data on religion and the paranormal between 1939 and 1999 have now been collated for the first time by Clive Field in a new 64-page BRIN working paper: Religion in Great Britain, 1939-99: A Compendium of Gallup Poll Data. It includes 111 thematically-arranged tables, together with a subject index. The introduction also provides a brief account of the history and methods of the Gallup Poll and of its publications and archives. The working paper can be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Religion-in-Great-Britain-1939-99-A-Compendium-of-Gallup-Poll-Data.pdf

Religion in the ‘long’ 1950s

Historians and sociologists continue to debate the nature, causation, and chronology of secularization in Britain. Latterly, there has been increased scholarly attention on what happened immediately after the Second World War, not least in view of Callum Brown’s claims that the late 1940s and early 1950s in Britain were a period of religious resurgence prior to the onset of revolutionary secularization in the 1960s. In a new book, these claims are substantially rejected by Clive Field on the basis of the first systematic analysis of a balanced portfolio of quantitative performance measures, published and unpublished, for all faith traditions. They subsume the three dimensions of belonging, behaving, and believing – the typology increasingly applied to the study of religiosity. Field concludes that the long 1950s accord better with a gradualist interpretation of religious decline in modern Britain. An up-to-date historiographical and bibliographical review is also offered. His Britain’s Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Behaving, and Believing in the Long 1950s is published by Palgrave Macmillan (xii + 140pp., ISBN 9781137512529, £45.00 hardback, also available in PDF and EPUB formats) and can be ordered via online sites such as Amazon or from the publisher at:

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/britain’s-last-religious-revival-clive-d-field/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137512529

Religion in the ‘long’ 1980s

Another key decade in Britain’s secularization history, the 1980s, dominated by the premiership of Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1990, is examined in a second recent book: Eliza Filby, God & Mrs Thatcher: The Battle for Britain’s Soul (Biteback Publishing, 2015, xxiii + 407pp., ISBN 9781849547857, £25.00 hardback). Filby focuses on the interrelationship of religion and politics in post-war Britain, with reference both to the politicization of Christianity and the Christianization of politics. The story is exemplified in the life and career of Thatcher, whom she describes as the country’s ‘most religious prime minister since William Gladstone’, and who is perhaps now best remembered religiously for the confrontations between the Conservative Party and the Church of England, the former lurching to the political right in Thatcher’s day and the latter seemingly shifting leftwards.

The origins and nature of Thatcher’s ‘theology’ are expounded. Paradoxically, Filby contends, Thatcher’s attempts to imbue the nation with the religious and moral values learned in her own Methodist childhood ended in failure. ‘It was not the sexual revolution of the 1960s … which ultimately undermined the Christian fabric of Britain, but the changes, struggles and upheavals of the 1980s … Margaret Thatcher’s time in office may have heralded a renaissance of individual freedom, but in doing so also hastened the death of Christian Britain … In her crusade to raise Albion from the ashes, Thatcher ended up destroying all that was familiar. The future was not to be conservative but consumerist, not English, but cosmopolitan, not Christian, but secular.’

This is an interesting argument but, despite the wide range of primary sources which are mined (including manuscripts, interviews, and memoirs), the thesis is not entirely substantiated, partly because criteria for measuring and evaluating ‘secularization’ are never properly articulated and operationalized. While Filby sensibly rejects the level of churchgoing as a complete indicator of the spiritual health of the country, viable alternatives are not really explicitly proposed. Minimal use is made of statistical sources, not even the contemporary sample surveys which could so profitably have illuminated the intersection of religion and politics at grass-roots level. Indeed, for all its readability and erudition, Filby’s portrait of the ‘soul’ of Britain in the 1980s is essentially a top-down one, more a study of politico-religious ideas than of religion and society.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religious beliefs, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged 1950s, 1980s, alternative medicine, astrology, Biteback Publishing, British Youth Council, census of population, Clive Field, David Tredinnick, Eliza Filby, Gallup Poll, Jennifer May Hampton, Lord Ashcroft, Margaret Thatcher, moral issues, Office for National Statistics, Palgrave Macmillan, Populus, Quaker Studies, Quakers, Religious Affiliation, secularization, voting intentions, Woodbrooke Quaker Studies Centre, YouGov | Leave a comment

Muslim Voices and Other News

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Muslim voices

There is no shortage of national opinion polls asking what Britons think about Islam and Muslims, but there have been relatively few surveys conducted among British Muslims in recent years. Only in the aftermath of the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks in 2001 and 2005 respectively were attempts made to capture Muslim voices in a systematic fashion. This omission partly reflects the difficulties in recruiting a nationally representative sample from what is still a religious minority, albeit a large one, and the associated higher costs of interviewing them. Given this background, we must welcome the poll conducted by ComRes on behalf of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, for which 1,000 Muslims in England were interviewed by telephone between 26 January and 20 February 2015. Full details of sample recruitment methods have yet to be published, but data tables of results (with breaks by gender, age, and region) were released on 25 February 2015 and can be found at:

http://comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/BBC-Today-Programme_British-Muslims-Poll_FINAL-Tables_Feb2015.pdf

From the perspective of community cohesion, we may note that 95% of Muslims profess loyalty to Britain, 93% agree that they should always obey British laws, 94% would inform the police about a Muslim planning an act of violence, 85% have no time for those fighting against the West, and 85% dispute that they would rather socialize with Muslims than non-Muslims. However, 20% deny that Western liberal society can be compatible with Islam, 35% think most Britons do not trust Muslims, and 46% report that Britain is becoming less tolerant of Muslims and that prejudice against Islam makes it difficult being a Muslim in Britain. About one in seven (14%) claim not to feel safe in Britain (particularly Muslim women) and to prefer to live in a Muslim country, if they could.

With regard to the Islamist outrage against Charlie Hebdo in Paris at the start of the year, 32% understand and 27% sympathize with the motives of the perpetrators, and, more generally, 11% assert that organizations publishing images of the Prophet Mohammed deserve to be attacked, 24% rejecting the suggestion that such acts of violence can never be justified. As many as 78% say that they are personally offended by publication of images of the Prophet. Scaled up for a British Muslim population which must now be approaching three million, several of these percentages have been thought by some commentators on the poll to translate into a worrying level of alienation from British society and ‘British values’. For nearly all questions, there was remarkably little variation in replies between the various demographic sub-groups.

Islamic State

More than three times as many adults, 66% versus 20%, deem Islamic State to be a greater threat to Britain’s security than Russia, notwithstanding the escalating crisis between the West and Russia over developments in Ukraine. This is according to a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times, for which 1,959 Britons were interviewed online on 26-27 February 2015. Islamic State is a particular concern to UKIP voters (75%), the over-60s (73%), and Conservatives (71%). Moreover, in future decisions regarding military expenditure, 52% wish to see resources prioritized to combat Islamist terrorism, with only 18% opting for investment to counter the danger from states like Russia. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/42tha4tjwo/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-270215.pdf

Non-stun slaughter of animals

The practice of slaughtering animals without pre-stunning, which is particularly important in the Jewish and Muslim traditions, was in the news again last week, thanks to a new YouGov poll released by the RSPCA, for which 2,177 adults were interviewed online on 18-19 February 2015. The RSPCA has kindly made the full results available to BRIN (they are not online), but some headline findings were also included in the organization’s press release of 23 February 2015, which is at:

http://media.rspca.org.uk/media/pressreleases/details/-/articleName/PressAlmost80PerCentOfUKWantsAnEndToNonStunSlaughter23Feb15

Current animal welfare legislation generally requires pre-stunning of animals killed for human consumption but allows an exemption for Jews and Muslims on religious grounds, which the RSPCA wishes to see ended. Overwhelmingly (77%), Britons agree with the RSPCA that ‘all non-stun slaughter should be banned, with no exceptions’, with only 8% opposed and 16% undecided. However, the vox populi is seemingly being driven by a mistaken association of non-stunning with halal meat and thus with Muslims alone. Two-thirds of respondents rightly identify the exemption with Muslims, but the same proportion wrongly suggests that the majority of halal meat is not pre-stunned, whereas the reality is that the large majority is pre-stunned, as research by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has confirmed. On the other hand, awareness that the exemption applies to Jews also is much lower (39%), and just 40% realize that, as the FSA revealed, no kosher meat produced for Jews using the shechita method is pre-stunned. About one-third could not hazard a guess about the amount of either halal or kosher meat which is not pre-stunned. Nearly one in seven (15%) incorrectly believes the statutory exemption from pre-stunning applies to Hindus and a few even to Christians.

Jewish health

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research published the latest in its series of census-derived profiles of British Jewry on 23 February 2015: David Graham, Health and Disability in Britain’s Jewish Population: Details from the 2011 Census. Its 27 pages are divided into three parts: general health; disability and limiting health conditions; and other census data on health (relating to unpaid care provision, Jewish residents of medical and care facilities, and medical conditions in Scotland). Subjectively defined, and controlling for the older average age of the Jewish population, Jews were found to be among the healthiest of all religious and ethnic groups and to exhibit a very low prevalence of long-term disability. Unfortunately, in respect of general health, different question-wording was used in 2011 than in 2001, so reliable over-time comparisons cannot be made. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/Health_and_disability_in_Britains_Jewish_Population.pdf

Sectarianism in Scotland

The 2014 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey is only the second since the annual series was launched by ScotCen in 1999 to include a specific module on religion. Whereas on the previous occasion, in 2001, the questions covered general religious beliefs and attitudes and paranormal experiences, in 2014 the focus was on sectarianism, at the behest of the Scottish Government, which funded the module. Fieldwork took place between May and August 2014 among a sample of 1,501 adults aged 18 and over in Scotland. A 98-page report on the sectarianism module was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 20 February 2015: Stephen Hinchliffe, Anna Marcinkiewicz, John Curtice, and Rachel Ormston, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2014: Public Attitudes to Sectarianism in Scotland. It is available to download from:

http://www.scotcen.org.uk/media/830110/ssa2014_full-report-public-attitudes-to-sectarianism-in-scotland.pdf

The report presents a somewhat mixed picture of the extent of Protestant-Catholic sectarianism in Scotland, with some distance evident between perceptions and reality. Although the vast majority (88%) believed that sectarianism is a problem in Scotland, and 66% that it would always exist there, just 19% viewed it as an issue throughout Scotland as a whole, 69% regarding it as a localized phenomenon (notably in Glasgow and the West of the country) and 55% thinking football was its principal cause. No more than 3% felt that Protestant-Catholic relationships in Scotland had worsened over the past decade, 47% detecting an improvement and 40% no change. Only one person in seven (14%), disproportionately Catholic, claimed to have experienced some form of religious discrimination or exclusion during their lives. Overwhelmingly, people’s social networks straddled the denominational divide and the use of sectarian language was condemned. Opinion remained divided about the continuing existence of denominational (Catholic) schools in the state system, 43% opposing and 25% supporting them (rising to 62% among Catholics).

Of the answers to a handful of questions about respondents’ religious background, perhaps the most interesting (and puzzling) was the 10% drop in the number claiming to profess no religion, from 54% in 2013 to 44% in 2014, despite identical question-wording. The authors explain this (p. 7) ‘as most likely to be an artefact of questionnaire content and ordering effects rather than a reflection of any true upsurge in religious adherence in Scotland … It is evidently possible that when, as in 2001 and 2014, a question about religious belonging is preceded by other questions about religion some people are stimulated into reporting a largely latent religious affiliation that they would not otherwise have acknowledged.’ The proportion disclaiming a religious identity was lower still, at 33%, comparable with the 37% who said they belonged to no religion in the 2011 Scottish population census (which covered children as well as adults). The self-reported incidence of regular churchgoing (monthly or more) was 22%, and 51% of those who identified with a religion described themselves as not very or not at all religious.

Adolescents and religion (1)

An interesting case study of the saliency of religious affiliation is reported in Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, ‘The Religious and Social Significance of Self-Assigned Religious Affiliation in England and Wales: Comparing Christian, Muslim, and Religiously-Unaffiliated Adolescent Males’, Research in Education, No. 92, November 2014, pp. 32-48. Respondents comprised 547 male students aged 16-18 attending selected secondary schools in England and Wales at an unspecified date and who self-identified with one of the three religious groups under examination. They completed a questionnaire which explored, through statements measured by a five-point Likert scale, eight themes relating to religious beliefs (Bible, Koran, Jesus, Prophet Mohammed, Jesus and justice, Mohammed and justice, experiencing God, and theology of religions); and six themes relating to religion and public concerns (personal life, public life, the state, social rights, rights of women and children, and sex and morality). Results are presented in the form of 14 tables with commentary. The data highlighted some areas of commonality and others of strong divergence between the three groups. The findings are drawn together in eight main conclusions which cumulatively ‘demonstrate that self-assigned religious affiliation serves as a powerful and important predictor of matters of religious and social concern’. For access options to the article, go to:

http://manchester.metapress.com/content/664n1302104l8787/?p=81083da44fea422ca01929800882a5c1&pi=2

Adolescents and religion (2)

Religion is correlated with character-building according to findings presented in a report published by the University of Birmingham’s Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues on 27 February 2015: James Arthur, Kristján Kristjánsson, David Walker, Wouter Sanderse, and Chantel Jones, Character Education in UK Schools: Research Report. The research, conducted between February 2013 and June 2014, involved 10,200 students and 250 teachers from 68 UK schools, and the techniques comprised surveys, moral dilemma tests, and semi-structured interviews. On the moral dilemma tests, students who professed to be religious scored more highly than those who claimed to be atheist or otherwise to have no religion. Within the religious group, those who practised their religion scored more highly than those who did not. Students attending faith schools also achieved better scores than those going to non-faith schools. Although all these differences were statistically significant, in their conclusion the authors are cautious about interpreting the apparent link between religion and character-building (p. 24). This contrasts with their more emphatic rejection of the widespread conviction that participation in sport builds character. The 38-page report, which is not an easy read, can be found at:

http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/userfiles/jubileecentre/pdf/Research%20Reports/Character_Education_in_UK_Schools.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religious beliefs, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged adolescents, Anna Marcinkiewicz, BBC, census of population, Chantel Jones, character building, Christians, ComRes, David Graham, David Walker, halal, Health, Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Islamic State, Islamism, James Arthur, Jews, John Curtice, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, kosher, Kristján Kristjánsson, Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins, Muslims, pre-stunning, Protestants, Rachel Ormston, Religious Affiliation, religious nones, Research in Education, Roman Catholics, RSPCA, Russia, Scotland, Scottish Government Social Research, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, sectarianism, slaughter of animals, Stephen Hinchliffe, Sunday Times, University of Birmingham, Wouter Sanderse, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church Buildings and Other News

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Church buildings

Churchgoing may be a distinctly minority activity in contemporary Britain, but as many as 45% of the population claim to have visited a church or chapel during the past year for either religious or non-religious purposes, rising to 60% of over-65s and Christians, and even including 27% of those who profess no religion. This is according to a ComRes poll for the National Churches Trust which was published on 29 January 2015, and for which 2,061 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online between 12 and 14 December 2014. Data tables have been posted at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/National_Churches_Trust___Data_Tables.pdf

The heritage and community value of church buildings was also widely appreciated by respondents to the survey. In particular:

79% agreed that churches and chapels are an important part of the UK’s heritage and history (including 51% of religious nones)
75% agreed that it is important for churches and chapels to have good access and modern facilities to make it easier for people to use them (66% of nones)
74% agreed that church buildings play an important role for society as a venue for community activities (64% of nones)
59% disagreed that repairing and restoring historic church buildings only benefits churchgoers (55% of nones)
55% agreed they would be concerned if their local church or chapel building was no longer there (34% of nones)
39% disagreed that their local church or chapel does not play a large role in supporting people in the community (28% of nones)

Fresh Expressions

Church growth advocates, especially in the Church of England and the Methodist Church, are often keen to talk up the potential of Fresh Expressions (FEs) of church as a counterpoise to the more familiar narrative of church decline. However, a somewhat more sobering account of FEs, from theoretical and empirical standpoints, is offered by John Walker, Testing Fresh Expressions: Identity and Transformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, xv + 254p., ISBN 9781472411846, hardback). The book is divided into two substantive halves, the first being a contextual review of the existing British evidence and literature about the fall in churchgoing and secularization. The second half outlines the author’s mixed methods research in the Diocese of Canterbury from 2009, examining five parish churches and five FEs by means of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and attendance data.

Walker concludes by rejecting, on both sociological and theological grounds, any suggestion that FEs alone constitute the future of the Church. In particular, ‘fresh expressions … do not and cannot compete with the depth and breadth of life and experience of parish churches, they are no better at attracting the non-churched than parish churches, and both fresh expressions and parish churches grow through exactly the same process.’ The author presents some interesting ideas and evidence, but his research is ultimately small-scale, and it is debatable whether it benefits from being reported at such excessive length.

Religious authority: Pope vs Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is more admired in Britain than Pope Francis, according to a YouGov poll released on 30 January 2015. In January publics in some 23 countries were asked online two questions about their most admired figures from a global list of 25 men and 25 women, the answers then being combined into a single score. In Britain, the list of male personalities was headed by Stephen Hawking (on a score of 14.8), with the Dalai Lama in sixth position (6.3) and Pope Francis in ninth (5.0). Both the Pope and Dalai Lama scored more highly in Britain than the global mean (4.1 and 4.0, respectively). However, the rating of the Pope was much lower in Britain than in Brazil (17.5) and the United States (9.1), albeit it exceeded that in France and Scandinavia, where the Dalai Lama was much more likely to be admired (his French score being 14.6, with 10.5 in Sweden and 10.3 in Denmark). In the United States, Pope Francis was placed second among the most admired men, followed by Billy Graham in third spot (7.2), and the Dalai Lama in seventh (4.8). A blog about the survey is at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/30/most-admired-2015/

Religious authority: declining status of the Bible

Those who have been unable to access my article on the decline in Bible-centricism in Britain in the October 2014 issue of Journal of Contemporary Religion, because it is hidden behind a paywall, may wish to read a summary of it in the second half of a presentation which I recently gave to Bible Society staff. The first half deals with the context of the statistical measurement of religion. The presentation can be read by clicking on the following link:

Bible – Bible Society presentation

Christians and pornography

The film version of Fifty Shades of Grey hits the cinema screens next week, and in parallel Premier’s Christianity magazine has decided to publish an article in its February 2015 issue exploring the theme of Christians and pornography. To illustrate the piece, its author, Martin Saunders, ran an online survey of UK practising Christians in December 2014, to which he received over 500 anonymous replies. His sample was clearly self-selecting, and Saunders makes no claim to its statistical representativeness. Certainly, some of the results seem a little improbable (or, if true, would be seen by some as rather disturbing). For example, 55% of Christian men reported that they view internet pornography at least once a month with a further 20% accessing it less often (compared with, respectively, 15% and 20% for Christian women), 42% of Christian men acknowledging an addiction to pornography. Even 30% of church leaders admitted to viewing internet pornography at least monthly. The article can be read online at:

http://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2015/February-2015/Grey-Matter-50-Shades-pornography-and-the-shaping-of-our-brains

Muslims and the general election

The Muslim News is currently running an apparently open poll on its website to identify the top issues which may determine how UK Muslims vote in the general election on 7 May 2015, with the intention of using the findings to influence political parties to listen to the views of the Muslim community. This follows the newspaper’s recent research which suggested that the Muslim vote could shape the electoral result in as many as 40 parliamentary constituencies in England, 39 of them held by Labour or priority Labour targets. Of the 40, 25 were classed as marginal seats and 15 as safe seats, but all deemed to be capable of influence by Muslim voters, based upon a correlation of the proportion of the population which was Muslim at the 2011 census with the size of the majority for the successful candidate at the 2010 general election. It is unclear how far the analysis takes account of the disproportionately younger profile of Muslims, which is likely to mean that their share of voters will be rather less than that of the population as a whole. In all, there are said to be 80 constituencies where Muslims exceed 10% of the residents. For more information about the research, including the sensitivity tests which were applied, see:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/newspaper/home-news/muslim-voters-may-determine-next-government/

Mosques

By far the best source of information about mosques in the UK is the database maintained by Mehmood Naqshbandi as part of the (unofficial) Muslims in Britain website. According to the latest report generated from the database, on 19 October 2014 and extending to 64 pages, there are 1,743 active mosques (including prayer rooms) in the UK, of which 1,625 are in England (an estimated 37% being registered as charities). They belong to a variety of Islamic traditions, but with Deobandi (43%) and Bareilvi (24%) being the most dominant. There are 59 mosques which accommodate more than 2,000 people, the largest being a Bareilvi mosque in Bradford, with space for 8,000. The data are also analysed by parliamentary constituencies and local authorities. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.muslimsinbritain.org/resources/masjid_report.pdf

An earlier (April 2013) snapshot of the database was recently summarized on pp. 6-7 of Innes Bowen, Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam (London: Hurst & Company, 2014, x + 230p., ISBN 9781849043014, paperback). At that time, there were 1,664 mosques in the UK with an estimated capacity of 837,000. Bowen’s book is a useful introduction to the diversity of British Islam and its constituent ideologies and cultures.

Slaughter of animals

UK animal welfare legislation permits slaughter without pre-stunning to be carried out in accordance with religious rites. The practice is particularly important in the Jewish and Muslim communities but is increasingly controversial with veterinarians and sections of the public, and seemingly now contrary to UKIP policy. The prevalence of slaughter without pre-stunning was revealed on 29 January 2015 when the Food Standards Agency (FSA) published the results of its September 2013 survey of animal welfare in Great Britain, during the course of which assessments were made at 301 slaughterhouses. It found that 1% of cattle, sheep and goats, and poultry were slaughtered by the Shechita (Jewish) method, none of which were pre-stunned. The incidence of slaughter by the Halal (Muslim) method was 3% for cattle (25% not being pre-stunned), 41% for sheep and goats (37% not pre-stunned), and 21% for poultry (16% not pre-stunned). Overall, 2% of cattle, 3% of poultry, and 15% of sheep and goats were not stunned prior to slaughter, the last figure having risen from 10% in a 2011 survey. For all three classes of animals the proportion slaughtered by the Halal method without pre-stunning increased significantly between 2011 and 2013, supposedly because of stronger campaigning by some Muslims who believe that stunning kills animals. The FSA report is at:

http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2013-animal-welfare-survey.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

The Community Security Trust (CST), which has been monitoring anti-Semitic incidents in the UK since 1984, reported on 5 February 2015 that there was a record number in 2014, 1,168, which was more than double the total in 2013 (535) and 25% above the previous highest figure of 931 in 2009. The single biggest contributing factor to this record number was the conflict in Israel and Gaza between 8 July and 26 August 2014, during which time no fewer than 501 incidents occurred. However, even controlling for the distorting effect of this ‘trigger event’, the CST still calculated that there was an underlying increase of 29% in anti-Semitic incidents in 2014 over 2013. More than three-quarters of all incidents in 2014 took place in Greater London and Greater Manchester, where the two largest Jewish communities in the UK are concentrated, with incidents in Greater London 137% above the 2013 level. Overall, abusive behaviour accounted for 76% of incidents, those involving extreme violence or assault being far less common (7%). For a full analysis and commentary, see the 41-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2014, which can be found at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202014.pdf

New Religious Movements

New religious movements (NRMs) seem to get relatively less exposure in mainstream academic research and literature than they once did, so we should welcome the recent book by James Lewis, Sects & Stats: Overturning the Conventional Wisdom about Cult Members (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2014, ix + 209p., ISBN 9781781791080, paperback). The volume provides a contemporary quantitative overview of NRMs from a global perspective, principally derived from questionnaire surveys (some undertaken by the author) of the membership of selective NRMs and analysis of national census data from Anglophone countries (but excluding the United States, which has no religion census, although some sample surveys are available). The book contains relatively little UK data, the principal exception (pp. 184-6) being toplines of the write-in responses to the 2001 and 2011 censuses.

Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2013

The complete dataset for the June-October 2013 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey was made available for secondary analysis by the UK Data Service as SN 7519 on 20 January 2015. Fieldwork was conducted by ScotCen Social Research by means of face-to-face interview and self-completion questionnaire administered to 1,497 adult Scots. Although no religion module was included, the standard background questions about religious affiliation (current and by upbringing) and attendance at religious services (by those professing a religion) were asked. These can obviously be used as variables for analysing the replies to the other questions, which, on this occasion, disproportionately related to constitutional change, alcohol, mental health, and policing.

Magna Carta

In 2015 we are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, one of the most iconic of all historical documents, the four surviving copies of which have been briefly reunited at The British Library and the House of Lords this week. Yet, beyond knowing that it is significant, many Britons remain unaware of or hazy about its actual content, which was determined by a specific set of circumstances operating in 1215. Although it could be said to have influenced the development of some human rights, in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights sense, Magna Carta cannot be regarded as the progenitor of them all. An example is ‘freedom of religion’, which is only covered in Magna Carta to the more limited extent that chapter 1 established the freedom of the English Church (then Roman Catholic, of course) from state (royal) interference. Nevertheless, 16% of 1,630 Britons interviewed online on 1-2 February 2015 for Index on Censorship thought that Magna Carta had mentioned freedom of religion, including 25% of Liberal Democrats and 22% of over-60s. This was a somewhat lower proportion than the 25% of the public who had given a similar reply to Ipsos MORI in October 2012. The YouGov data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/xysuhertyl/IndexOnCensorshipResults_150202_Magna_Carta_W.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged anti-Semitic incidents, Bible, Christianity magazine, church attendance, church buildings, Church of England, Clive Field, Community Security Trust, ComRes, Dalai Lama, Diocese of Canterbury, Food Standards Agency, freedom of religion, Fresh Expressions, general election, halal, Index on Censorship, Innes Bowen, James Lewis, Jews, John Walker, Magna Carta, Martin Saunders, Mehmood Naqshbandi, mosques, Muslim News, Muslims, National Churches Trust, New Religious Movements, politics, Pope Francis, pornography, Religious Affiliation, ScotCen Social Research, Scotland, Scottish Social Attiutudes Survey, shechita, slaughter of animals, YouGov | Leave a comment

ComRes on Religion and Other News

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Clive D. Field

ComRes on religion

Exactly half the whole population (and 71% of those professing no religion) now denies that religion is a force for good in the world, according to a ComRes poll for ITV News on 16-18 January 2015, for which 2,036 adults were interviewed online. Only 24% overall agreed with the proposition with 26% undecided. Christianity was viewed somewhat more positively, a plurality (39%) agreeing that it is a force for good in the world (peaking at 55% of over-65s and 63% of Christians), against 30% who disagreed (including 53% of religious nones) and 31% who did not know. However, although 44% judged that religious leaders in Britain should not get involved in political debates (compared with 34% who thought they should), in practice there was majority support for some specific recent interventions: 65% approved of the criticisms made by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York of the behaviour of shoppers in the Black Friday sales; 63% of their charge that Britain has become dominated by consumerism and selfishness; and 50% of religious leaders speaking out about economic inequality. Data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_Religion_20th_January_2015.pdf

British Cohort Study

On 27 April 2014 BRIN included in one of its regular weekly round-ups of religious statistical news an item on ‘When we’re 42’. This contained a preliminary (topline) analysis of a short religion module which had formed part of the latest wave of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS), which has been following the lives of babies born in Britain one week in 1970. Information was gathered by TNS BMRB between May 2012 and April 2013 from 9,841 members of the cohort at the age of 42, by a combination of face-to-face interview and self-completion questionnaire, the religion questions appearing on the self-completion form.

A much fuller (27-page) analysis of the module, incorporating various cross-tabulations, was published on 21 January 2015 as Centre for Longitudinal Studies Working Paper 2015/1: David Voas, The Mysteries of Religion and the Lifecourse. It will also appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Longitudinal and Life Course Studies but meanwhile can be accessed via the link at:

http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/page.aspx?&sitesectionid=939&sitesectiontitle=Recent+working+papers

The press release for the report led on the substantial gender differences which were found in the two religious beliefs which were enquired into, an emphasis which was then reflected in the media coverage, although the phenomenon is hardly novel and, as Voas comments, still lacks a clear resolution. Perhaps of greater interest are his methodological conclusions and observations arising from the research, with a plea to avoid over-reliance on single-item measures of religiosity. This is exemplified in the sevenfold religious typology proposed by the author in table 8, based on pooling BCS data about religious identity, religious attendance, and belief in God and life after death, and which demonstrates that religiosity is far from being a black and white matter. The table is reproduced below:

Label	Description	%
Non-religious	Does not have a religion and believes in neither God nor life after death	28
Nominally religious	Identifies with a religion but believes in neither God nor life after death	7
Unorthodox non-religious	Does not have a religion or does not attend services, believes in God or life after death but not both	21
Unorthodox religious	Has a religion and attends services at least occasionally, believes in God but not life after death (or vice versa)	5
Non-identifying believers	Does not have a religion but believes in God and life after death	10
Non-practising religious	Has a religion and believes in God and life after death but does not attend services	14
Actively religious	Has a religion and believes in God and life after death and attends services	15

Religious affiliation

Lord Ashcroft’s latest themed political opinion poll was published on 14 January 2015, this time on public attitudes to the National Health Service. Fieldwork was conducted online between 14 and 24 November 2014 among adults aged 18 and over, and, as usual, there was a background question asked about religious affiliation: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Summary weighted findings appear below, with comparisons from previous years, from which it will be seen that Christian disaffiliation and profession of no faith are proceeding relatively rapidly. The full results (with breaks by gender, age, social grade, region, employment sector, working status, educational attainment, and voting intention) can be found in table 149 of the data tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/NHS-poll-Full-data-tables.pdf

% down	11/2011 All	11/2012 All	11/2013 All	11/2014 All	11/2014 18-24	11/2014 65+
Christian	56.4	55.0	52.6	53.7	32.4	72.1
Non-Christian	6.6	6.5	7.4	7.0	13.3	3.2
No religion	35.2	36.3	37.7	37.0	49.4	23.4
Refused	1.8	2.2	2.3	2.4	4.9	1.3
N =	5,000	20,066	8,053	20,011	2,402	4,201

Rating Pope Francis

Pope Francis was quick to condemn the Islamist outrages in Paris, but he subsequently raised more than a few eyebrows when he told journalists that there were limits to freedom of expression and that the faith of others should not be insulted, even cracking a joke in the process about punching anybody who foul-mouthed his own mother. The majority of Britons (51%) disagreed with the Pope’s (unguarded) statement (Londoners and UKIP voters most strongly, on 59%), against 36% who supported it, according to an online poll by YouGov among 1,747 Britons on 18-19 January 2015. Reviewing his pontificate more generally, 51% thought that the Pope is doing a good job, up by 15 points over two YouGov surveys undertaken during his first year in office in 2013, and very few (7%) suggested he is doing a bad job, as many as 42% being undecided. Almost one-quarter (23%) claimed they had a more positive view of the Catholic Church as a result of Pope Francis, albeit the plurality who hold a negative view of the Church is still as large as ever (36%, the same as in November 2013), the over-60s being most negative (48%). Nearly two-fifths (39%, 8 points up on November 2013) anticipated that the Pope would make the Church more liberal, notwithstanding there is as yet little tangible evidence that its teachings are about to be ‘modernized’ in any substantive way. A blog about the survey was published on 20 January 2015, with a link to the data tables, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/20/pope-francis-approval-rise/

Immigration

A plurality (47%) of the British public believes that immigration has weakened Christian values in Britain, according to an online poll by Survation for the think-tank Bright Blue, for which 1,052 adults were interviewed between 12 and 16 September 2014 (although the results were only released on 19 January 2015). The proportion holding this view soared to 81% among UKIP voters and also constituted a majority for several other demographic sub-groups, including retired people (66%), the over-55s (62%), Conservative voters (56%), the lowest (DE) social grade (55%), men (54%), and married persons (53%). Just 19% of the whole sample disagreed with the proposition that immigration had weakened Christian values in Britain, while 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 8% registered as don’t knows. On a related matter, and referring to a recent situation in real life, 66% of Britons favoured granting asylum in the UK to a woman from a strongly Muslim country who had been threatened with execution because of her Christian beliefs. Data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GB-Population-tables.pdf

The same questions were also posed to a separate sample of 1,307 current Conservative voters between 12 and 30 September 2014, and these data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Conservative-Voters-tables.pdf

Anti-Semitism – Jewish perspectives

Anti-Semitism was again in the media spotlight during the past week, in the wake of the recent Islamist outrages in France, in one of which four Jews were murdered in an attack on a kosher supermarket. The heightened coverage of anti-Semitism is being underpinned by original empirical research.

The Jewish Chronicle has published the second in its new series of Jewish topical issues polls, undertaken by Survation among a representative sample of 939 UK Jews (including secular and non-practising) aged 18 and over, who were interviewed by telephone on 19-20 January 2015. Notwithstanding greater efforts being made by the authorities to protect Jews, 58% claimed not to have noticed any increased police presence in their own areas during the past fortnight (against 40% who had), with Jewish over-55s most likely to have detected no improvement (70%). Asked whether the Government was doing all it could to combat anti-Semitism, only 33% answered in the affirmative, while 55% thought it should be doing more (rising to 61% of female Jews and 64% of under-35s). However, there was majority welcome (60%) from UK Jews for the letter which the Communities Minister had written to Muslim leaders calling for renewed efforts on their part to explain how Islam can be part of British identity. Data tables, with breaks by age, gender, and region, are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jewish-Issues-Poll-2.pdf

As well as summarizing the results of its own poll, the current issue of The Jewish Chronicle (23 January 2015, pp. 6-7, 35) also allocated space to continued discussion about the validity of the poll of Jews conducted online by the Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA) between 23 December 2014 and 11 January 2015, whose findings were rather alarmist (as featured in our last post on 18 January 2015). In The Jewish Chronicle, CAA chair Gideon Falter had an article strongly affirming the ‘bulletproof’ nature of his organization’s research, while distinguished academic (and Holocaust survivor) Michael Pinto-Duschinsky urged the newspaper’s readers ‘don’t trust these misleading figures’, backing up previous criticisms of them by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Alderman, a regular columnist on The Jewish Chronicle, called for an end to ‘point-scoring’ about the CAA survey of Jews, although he was skating on somewhat thin ice himself since he had apparently made some use of the CAA data in an article he had written for The Spectator.

Anti-Semitism – public opinion

A survey of public attitudes to Jews and the Holocaust was published by the European Jewish Congress on 21 January 2015. It was designed by 202 Strategies and undertaken by Survation among a sample of 504 UK adults aged 18-35 (48% of whom described themselves as not religious), who were interviewed online between 8 and 10 January 2015. A significant minority of respondents was found to have ambiguous, prejudiced, or ill-informed views on both topics, albeit some might consider a few of the questions to be a little leading. Although a majority (53%) acknowledged the existence of anti-Semitism in the UK, 23% denied it and 24% were undecided. Three-fifths had been taught about the Holocaust at school but fewer, 40%, regarded it as the most important event in European history over the last century, just 34% knew who Adolf Eichmann was, 31% underestimated the number of Jews who had perished in the Holocaust (with a further 21% unable to answer at all), and only 29% were aware of Holocaust Memorial Day. One in seven inclined to Holocaust denial in that they agreed ‘the evidence surrounding the Holocaust is not complete and I would need to see more proof to believe without a doubt that it occurred’. A similar proportion (15%) backed the introduction of a legal requirement for businesses owned by Jews to have a special form of identification (22% saying the same about Muslim businesses) and 15% wanted individual Jews to carry religious identification (13% wishing to see a similar obligation on Christians). One-quarter thought it very or somewhat likely that laws discriminating against Jews could be passed in Europe today, and 24% anticipated that another Holocaust might happen in Europe during their lifetime. Full data tables have not yet been released (and may not be, since 202 Strategies rather than Survation did the analysis), but a 16-page report is available at:

http://www.eurojewcong.org/docs/UKpoll.pdf

The Conversation of 22 January 2015 contained a preliminary analysis by Tim Bale of a poll which he had commissioned from YouGov to gauge voter reactions to the prospect of a Jewish politician leading a political party and becoming Prime Minister. This is more than a distant scenario, given that Ed Miliband leads the Labour Party and might, after the May general election, become the first British Jewish Prime Minister since 1880, albeit – conceivably – at the head of a minority or coalition government. In fact, only one-third of all UK voters are aware of Miliband’s religious background, and even fewer of those intending to vote Labour than for the other parties. Even if they were aware, for the vast majority (83%) it would apparently make no difference to their electoral choice. However, 13% of UKIP voters would be less likely to vote for a party with a Jewish leader, twice the proportion of Conservative and LibDem voters who said this, and three times the number of Labour voters. UKIP voters were also least likely (48%) to see a Jewish prime minister as equally acceptable as one from another faith, compared with 62% of all voters and 72% of Labour voters. More generally, just 10% agreed that Jews have too much influence in the country, a reduction from 18% in 2004 (albeit UKIP supporters are still at 18%). Bale’s post, which is a spin-off from his forthcoming Oxford University Press book on the Labour Party under Miliband, can be read at:

http://theconversation.com/british-voters-open-to-a-jewish-prime-minister-but-some-are-more-welcoming-than-others-36611

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion

Among the 11 essays in the latest edition (Vol. 25, 2014) of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, an annual published by Brill, are a couple which might interest BRIN readers, details of which are given below:

pp. 2-16, Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, ‘Religious Identity, Mystical Experience, and Psychopathology: A Study among Secular, Christian, and Muslim Youth in England and Wales’ – a survey of the incidence of mystical experience and its association with psychoticism and neuroticism among 203 Muslim, 477 Christian, and 378 religiously unaffiliated young people aged 14-18 attending 12 schools in England and Wales

pp. 78-108, Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip and Sarah-Jane Page, ‘Religious Faith and Heterosexuality: A Multi-Faith Exploration of Young Adults’ – a survey of the sexual values, attitudes, and behaviour of 515 self-defined heterosexual religious young adults aged 18-25 living in the UK

Posted in Measuring religion, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged 1970 British Cohort Study, 202 Strategies, Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, Anti-Semitism, Bright Blue, Campaign against Antisemitism, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Christian values, ComRes, David Voas, Ed Miliband, Eric Pickles, European Jewish Congress, force for good, God, heterosexuality, holocaust, Immigration, ITV News, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Leslie Francis, life after death, Lord Ashcroft, Mandy Robbins, Muslims, mystical experience, politics, Pope Francis I, psychopathology, Religious Affiliation, religious leaders, Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Sarah-Jane Page, Survation, The Conversation, Tim Bale, TNS-BMRB, YouGov | Leave a comment

Quantiphobia and Other News

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Quantiphobia

Quantiphobia – the fear or suspicion of statistics – surfaces among religious leaders from time to time, and, of course, has some biblical foundation in David’s alleged sin in numbering the Israelites (2 Sam. 24:1-25, 1 Chron. 21:1-30). It is particularly likely to manifest itself during periods when religious performance indicators are perceived as unhealthy, such as during the Edwardian era in Britain, when, according to one noted historian (Keith Robbins), there was ‘a crisis of Christendom’. Thus, Charles Booth, the pioneering religious sociologist, concluded his multi-volume assessment of religious forces in London in 1902 with the verdict: ‘Spiritual influences do not lend themselves readily to statistical treatment … The subject is one in which figures may easily be pressed too far, and if trusted too much are likely to be more than usually dangerous.’ And the Protestant leadership in the capital was so paranoid about declining church attendance in 1913 that it frustrated an attempt by the Daily News and Leader to replicate a census of churchgoing first taken in 1902-03, reminding the newspaper that: ‘The influence of the Church is often in inverse proportion to its numerical strength, as in the early days, under the Roman Emperors.’ (I have written up the story of this long forgotten episode as an article for forthcoming publication).

Notwithstanding some pockets of church growth, few informed observers would deny that most branches of organized Christianity in Britain today are facing another crisis, with downturns in key metrics of religious belonging, behaving, and believing, and with the social significance of religion declining in the non-institutional arena, too, in a quantitatively measurable way. Statistics of the Churches, therefore, rarely present a good news story from their perspective these days, causing occasional voices to be raised against their use. The latest example is to be found in an article by Edward Dowler (Vicar of Clay Hill in the Diocese of London) on ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and the Gathering of Data’ which is published in the Church Times of 19/26 December 2014, p. 12 (only available online to subscribers). In it the author advises us to ‘be wary of an overemphasis on statistics at the expense of faithfulness to the gospel’. He is especially critical of the ‘data-driven approach’ which has characterized the Church of England in recent years, exemplified (he writes, in somewhat garbled fashion) by ‘the British Religion in Numbers project associated with Professor Linda Woodhead, and her surveys on the part played by religion in public life …’ In reality, the piece is a bit of a rant by Dowler against ‘the prevailing managerialist delusion of contemporary Western society’ and ‘a clear connection between collecting data and wielding economic power’.

Of course, statistics should never be used in complete isolation, and they must be understood and interpreted within the context of relevant and rigorous qualitative evidence, where it exists, as well as against the historical background. And we should be on our guard against ‘bad statistics’, gathered in methodologically inadequate ways and presented without due regard to their limitations. But a plea for recourse solely to qualitative data (or none at all) can often degenerate into a reliance on the anecdotal and a tendency to generalize from the atypical, with the consequent potential to mislead. What is worse, it may result in self-delusion on the part of religious leaders, and being in denial of reality. Caution and moderation in the use of statistics would be wise counsel, yet Dowler goes beyond that, which is why, in the last resort, we are unpersuaded by his arguments. Doubtless his retort to BRIN would be, in the misquoted words of one of the principal characters in the Profumo scandal (who died last week), ‘well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

Religion in the 2011 English and Welsh census

For some unexplained reason, the Office for National Statistics rereleased on 16 December 2014 Table QS210EW from the 2011 census of England and Wales, giving national totals for the six principal faith communities, as well as an analysis of the write-in answers for those who ticked the ‘other religion’ and ‘no religion’ boxes. The table will be found at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-statistics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/sty-what-is-your-religion.html

Religion in colonial and Commonwealth censuses

Anthony Christopher explores ‘The “Religion” Question in British Colonial and Commonwealth Censuses, 1820s-2010s’ in Journal of Religious History, Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2014, pp. 579-96. The focus is on how investigation of religious affiliation in such censuses has developed, since being pioneered by the Australasian and North American colonies in the late 1820s, rather than on the presentation of results from them (which would have been difficult, given the diversity of approaches which are described). Nevertheless, drawing as it does on a range of primary and secondary sources, it is very useful to have all this information brought together in one place, seemingly for the first time, although its value would have been enhanced by inclusion of an appendix listing for each country or territory the dates for which religion data were collected. The article, which complements the author’s summary of the coverage of religion in the UK censuses (in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 65, No. 3, July 2014, pp. 601-19), can be accessed at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12107/abstract

News stories of 2014

For its end-of-year review, Opinium Research asked 2,001 members of its UK online panel on 9-12 December 2014 which of 30 events of 2014 they considered to be most memorable. Unsurprisingly, the Ebola outbreak (49%), the First World War poppy display at the Tower of London (44%), and the Scottish independence referendum (44%) occupied the top three spots. But Islamism had also made a big impression, with the rise of Islamic State in fourth place (41%) and the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram in eleventh (26%). The canonization of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, by contrast, was relegated to twenty-seventh position, being deemed memorable by just 5% of all adults (equivalent to about half the Catholic population), albeit the proportion rose to 14% in London (with its concentration of immigrants). Data tables are at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op5096_lansons_end_of_year_-_predictions_memorable.pdf

Values

Asked to select their three most important personal values from a list of twelve, just 8% of 1,317 UK residents chose religion in the latest Eurobarometer (wave 82.3), undertaken by face-to-face interview by TNS UK between 8 and 17 November 2014. As the table below indicates, this was tenth in the UK’s value rankings, although not as bad as in the European Union (EU) as a whole (where religion came bottom of the list). Apart from Malta and the Republic of Cyprus (both on 17%), religion was not deemed an important personal value in most EU countries, falling to 2% in three instances. Even fewer (3% in both the UK and the EU) viewed religion as one of the three values best representing the EU, although 12% in the UK and 9% in the EU were willing to concede that religion helped create a feeling of community among EU citizens. These questions have been posed in previous Eurobarometers, with very similar results. Topline data for the latest wave are at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb82/eb82_anx_en.pdf

Important personal values (%)	UK	EU
Respect for human life	37	34
Peace	34	44
Human rights	34	40
Equality	28	20
Individual freedom	21	25
Rule of law	19	15
Tolerance	18	17
Respect for other cultures	18	9
Democracy	17	25
Religion	8	6
Solidarity for others	6	18
Self-fulfilment	6	9

Christmas traditions

The Salvation Army’s UK Territory issued a series of five (one national and four regional) press releases between 4 and 8 December 2014, lamenting the disappearance of British Christmas traditions, both secular and religious, based on the evidence of a survey of the public which it had commissioned. Among the vanishing traditions was attendance at midnight Mass or the Christmas Eve church service, which just 7% reported plans to attend in 2014. Nativity plays and carolling were also investigated, apparently. The press releases did not present an especially coherent overview of the research and have attracted minimal media attention. BRIN’s efforts to obtain from the Salvation Army further details of the survey’s methodology and findings have gone unanswered thus far, but we will keep trying. The national press release is at:

http://news.salvationarmy.org.uk/dont-let-shopping-get-way-christmas-says-salvation-army

Church Commissioners

The Church Commissioners are the eighth largest charitable donor in the world, and the second in the UK (after the Wellcome Trust, in second place globally), according to City AM’s World Charity Index 2014, published on 18 December 2014. In their last reported year the Commissioners made £208 million of charitable donations to support the Church of England. More information about the Index can be found at:

http://www.cityam.com/205869/city-ams-world-charity-index-2014-whos-made-list-top-givers

Posted in Measuring religion, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Anthony Christopher, Boko Haram, British Empire, canonizations, census of population, charitable donations, Christmas, Church Commissioners, Church Times, City AM, Edward Dowler, Eurobarometer, European Union, Islamic State, Islamism, Journal of Religious History, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, Pope John Paul II, Pope John XXIII, quantiphobia, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Roman Catholic Church, Salvation Army, TNS UK, traditions, values | Leave a comment

Understanding Society, Wave 4

Posted on December 20, 2014 by David Voas

Wave 4 of ‘Understanding Society’, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, is now available to registered users of the UK Data Service.

Every year the study collects data on the social and economic characteristics of people living in 40,000 households across the country. In addition, the British Household Panel Survey, which began in 1991, has been integrated into the study. There is also a large booster sample of ethnic minorities. The data allow researchers to study social change over past decades and prospectively for decades to come.

The study is largely funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It is designed and managed by a group in the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex. (To declare an interest, I am acting director of ISER as well as co-director of BRIN.)

The Wave 4 dataset is the product of interviews with nearly 70,000 adults and 9,000 children (age 10-15). It covers some new topics (for example on wellbeing, post-Olympic participation in sport, net income) and a number of areas of enquiry that have appeared previously. Respondents provided information about their religion in the first wave, and Wave 4 goes further.

The basic question on religious affiliation is posed using the filter plus follow-up wording: “Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?” [If yes] “Which religion do you regard yourself as belonging to?” The breakdown for adults in Great Britain is:

%
No religion                                                                              50.4
Church of England/Anglican                                              24.1
Roman Catholic                                                                       8.5
Church of Scotland                                                                  2.1
Free Church or Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland    0.2
Episcopalian                                                                             0.1
Methodist                                                                                   1.8
Baptist                                                                                        0.7
Congregational/United Reform/URC                                 0.3
Other Christian                                                                         1.9
Christian (no denomination specified)                                3.8
Muslim/Islam                                                                            2.7
Hindu                                                                                          1.1
Jewish                                                                                         0.3
Sikh                                                                                             0.5
Buddhist                                                                                     0.4
Other                                                                                            1.1

On frequency of attendance at religious services or meetings, the distribution is:

%
Once a week or more often                     10.8
Less often but at least once a month      6.0
Less often but at least once a year         14.2
Never or practically never                       22.2
Only at weddings, funerals etc.              46.8

Respondents were also asked “How much difference would you say religious beliefs make to your life? Would you say they make …”

a great difference                15.2
some difference                   17.5
a little difference                 18.9
no difference                       48.5

Wave 4 contained a religious practice module, but it was used for the ethnic minority boost rather than the entire sample. Respondents were asked to say whether “My religious beliefs affect … what I eat / drink (such as alcohol) / wear / my decisions related to marriage and dating / what school I would send my children to / my decisions for charitable giving and helping others / my decisions related to investment and savings / the friends I choose / the sort of job I would do.”

As expected, Muslims are considerably more religious than the majority of the population. Nearly three quarters (72%) claim to pray every day, and more than three quarters (77%) say that religious beliefs make a great difference in their lives. For most, religion has a substantial effect on what they eat, drink, and so on. Only for a minority, though, does faith affect schooling or friendship decisions. And not all self-identified Muslims are devout: one in eight (12%) pray less than weekly.

This descriptive summary provides only a hint of the work to come. The longitudinal and household nature of the survey mean that scholars will be able to analyse change in the religious involvement of individual respondents, the way that religiosity is linked to family, and so on.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged church attendance, importance of religion, Muslim practice, Religious Affiliation, religious belonging | Leave a comment

Religion and Political Attitudes: The British Election Study 2015, Internet Panel – Wave 4

Religion and the General Election

Britain Uncovered and Other News

Religious Voting Intentions and Other News

Quantiphobia and Other News

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