Huffington Post and Other Polls

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Huffington Post religion poll

As part of its new ‘Beyond Belief’ series, The Huffington Post UK commissioned Survation to carry out a short online survey about religion among 2,004 Britons on 31 October and 1 November 2014. Results were published on 4 November 2014. Full data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Huffington-Post-Results.pdf

while the Huffington Post’s analysis of the survey, by Jessica Elgot, is at: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/03/religion-beyond-belief_n_6094442.html

The first of the three questions concerned self-assessed religiosity. The majority (61%) of the sample did not consider themselves religious, whereas 31% described themselves as somewhat religious and 8% as very religious. The non-religious were somewhat over-represented among men, those aged 35-64, residents of Northern England and Scotland, and non-manual workers, with two-thirds of each of these groups saying they were not religious. The proportion of very religious was, not unexpectedly, highest for those professing a religion, as well as with the younger age cohorts and Labour voters (probably reflecting a concentration of, respectively, non-Christians and Roman Catholics). 

Asked about the influence of religion on society, 52% thought it caused more harm than good, this view being held especially strongly by the non-religious (62%), the 55-64s (60%), and Liberal Democrats (60%). Just under one-quarter (24%) felt religion did more good than harm, peaking at 66% for the very religious, with 24% undecided. 

In similar vein, 56% deemed atheists and religious people as equally likely to be moral, only 6% considering atheists to be less likely to be moral than the religious against 12% who assessed atheists as the more moral, with 26% unable to comment. Even among the self-designated very religious, no more than one-fifth claimed atheists to be less likely to be moral than religious people. The long-standing conflation of ethics and Judeo-Christian culture appears to be collapsing. 

Religious affiliation

Populus has just released another large-scale survey containing details of religious affiliation. Online interviews took place throughout October 2014 with 18,330 adult Britons, each of whom was asked ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Results are summarized below, indicating that age is now far more important than gender or social class in shaping religious identity (age probably also contributes to the differences by voting intention). Full details can be found in table 12 at: 

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmFT_October_BPC3.pdf

% across

Christian

Non-Christian

No religion
All

54

7

37
Men

52

7

38
Women

55

6

36
18-24

29

13

52
25-34

40

11

45
35-44

49

8

41
45-54

54

5

39
55-64

66

3

29
65+

74

3

23
AB

54

8

36
C1

54

5

37
C2

54

7

37
DE

53

7

38
Conservative

69

5

25
Labour

49

11

37
LibDem

52

6

40
UKIP

64

3

32

Religious hate crimes

One UK resident in 20 claims to have been the victim of a self-defined religious hate crime during the past 12 months, according to a poll by Opinium Research published on 5 November 2014, for which 2,002 online interviews were conducted between 14 and 17 October 2014. The incidence of religious hate crimes was slightly less than those related to disability and race (6% each) and the same as for sexual orientation, gender prejudice or gender identity. Young people aged 18-34 were most likely to say they had been the victim of a religious hate crime (13%), although this age group disproportionately reported being a victim of any hate crime (26%, which was double the national average). Religious hate crimes took many and multiple forms, including harassment (64%), physical assault (52%), internet abuse (52%), domestic abuse (49%), verbal abuse (45%), hate mail (43%), vandalism (36%), and bullying (34%). Data tables are at: 

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4924_opinium_pr_hatecrime_tables__0.pdf

Religious bake off

The gay cake row, which we covered in our post of 29 July 2014, has flared up again. The case involves a Christian family-run bakery in Belfast (Ashers Baking Company) which was threatened with prosecution by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for its refusal to decorate a cake promoting same-sex marriage (which is not legal in the province), on the grounds that it would be contrary to the family’s beliefs. YouGov has just tested public opinion on the subject for a second time (the first being by ComRes in July 2014), interviewing 2,022 Britons online on 6-7 November 2014. It found that 56% deemed the action of the company acceptable and 33% unacceptable, with the strongest support coming from Conservatives (67%), over-60s (69%), and UKIP voters (74%). It also recorded disapproval by 65% of the Equality Commission’s threat of legal proceedings against the bakery unless compensation is paid to the person who requested the cake, approval running at 25% (and no more than 35% in any demographic sub-group). At the same time, majorities ranging from 56% to 80% regarded it as unacceptable for owners of services to decline access to them by a gay couple. Data tables are at: 

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ex7ykytmu1/InternalResults_141107_cultural_beliefs_Website.pdf

Drinking habits

A ComRes poll for Channel 4 News published on 3 November 2014, but conducted online on 24-25 September 2014, discovered that 17% of the 2,144 Britons aged 16 and over who were questioned never drink alcohol, with a further 18% not having consumed any during the week prior to interview. Asked whether there were any factors which prevented them from drinking alcohol, 5% of the whole sample cited their own religious beliefs (rising to 11% of 16-24s and 10% of Londoners, presumably disproportionately non-Christians in both cases), 2% their family’s religious beliefs, and 1% their friends’ religious beliefs. Data tables are at: 

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Channel_4_Drinking_habits_survey_26_September_2014.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (1)

Just over one-third (35%) of a representative sample of 1,629 Britons told YouGov, in an online pre-Halloween survey for The Sun on 26-27 October 2014, that they believed in life after death, a reduction from the earliest polling on the topic by Gallup (48% in 1939 and 49% in 1947). Belief was substantially greater among women (43%) than men (26%), and it was also high in London (42%), where the concentration of immigrants has raised levels of religious belief generally. Almost the same proportion of the whole population (34%) believes in ghosts, with still more (39%) convinced that houses can be haunted, and 28% even claiming to have seen or felt the presence of a supernatural being. However, very few (9%) state that they have communicated with the dead. Data tables are at:   

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/otjwvdct9z/SunResults_141027_Ghosts-Website.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (2)

Meanwhile, another survey by OnePoll for price comparison website confused.com, on 21-23 October 2014, has reported that 31% of 2,000 UK adults have lived in a property they thought was haunted, one-sixth of whom had moved home as a result. The most common haunted occurrences were strange noises (53%), shadows moving around the house (30%), items disappearing without explanation (28%), rooms suddenly becoming chilly (27%), sighting of a ghost (17%), and doors opening and closing of their own accord (16%). Anxieties about the supernatural apparently influence house-buying decisions, with 39% saying they would be put off a property if they knew something bad had happened there, 31% if it was built on an ancient burial ground, 28% if they believed it was haunted, 25% if it was located next to a cemetery, and 11% if it was numbered 13. No data tables are available in the public domain, but there is a press release at:  

http://www.confused.com/press/releases/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-causing-brits-a-fright

Halloween

Opinium Research reported on 30 October 2014 that 40% of UK adults intended to celebrate Halloween the following day, most commonly by watching a scary film on television (20%), going to or hosting a party (17%), dressing up (17%), carving a pumpkin (15%), or going trick-or-treating (12%). It was the youngest generation, aged 18-34, which most enjoyed the various aspects of Halloween, such as dressing up (61%), parties (60%), scary films (58%), Halloween recipes (55%), and trick-or-treating (47%). Overall, 52% of the population expressed a dislike for trick-or-treating and 42% admitted to having pretended not to be at home in order to avoid a visitation from the trick-or-treaters. Data tables and methodological details are not available, but there is a press release at: 

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/brits-hiding-away-trick-or-treaters

Child abuse

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently admitted, in a private letter subsequently publicized on the Exaro website, that the sexual abuse of children has been ‘rampant’ in the Church of England and other British institutions in recent times. A substantial majority (69%) of the British public agrees with his assessment of the situation, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times on 30-31 October 2014, for which 1,808 adults were interviewed online. Among the over-60s the proportion rose to 82% and for UKIP voters it was 86%. Only 16% suggested that Welby was exaggerating the scale of the problem, with 15% uncertain what to think (32% for the 18-24s). Data tables are at:  

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n965i9mzb8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-311014.pdf

Anglican clergy poll

In the Church Times for 31 October 2014 (p. 12), Linda Woodhead provided further analysis of the results of the YouGov poll of Church of England clergy which she commissioned in August-September 2014 (and which we have covered in two recent BRIN posts). Her article can be read online at: 

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/31-october/comment/opinion/clergy-are-more-like-old-labour-than-new

A critique of the article by Jonathan Chaplin appeared in the form of a letter to the editor in Church Times for 7 November 2014 (p. 16).

 

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Roman Catholics’ Attitudes Towards Homosexuality

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Ben Clements

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

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

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

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

1983 (%)

2013 (%)
Always wrong or mostly wrong

68.0

2.0
Sometimes wrong

6.0

8.0
Rarely wrong or not wrong at all

17.0

65.0
Depends /varies or don’t know

9.0

7.0
Unweighted base

168

102

Source: BSA surveys. Weighted data.

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

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

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

Table 2: Attitudes towards homosexuality

  Agree

(%)

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

Source: Roman Catholic Opinion Survey, February-March 1978

(England and Wales). Weighted data.

 

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

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

The full set response options was as follows:

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

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

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

Homosexual acts are morally wrong.

Don’t know.

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

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

Celebrate

loving

relationships

(%)

Straight

relationships

better

than

gay

relationships (%)

Don’t

like

homosexuality

 (%)

Morally

wrong

(%)
Sex
Men

30.4

17.6

35.2

16.0
Women

48.5

19.7

22.1

7.8
Age group
18-24

45.7

18.1

26.6

9.6
25-34

59.2

17.1

19.1

3.5
35-44

51.6

16.7

24.8

6.3
45-54

43.2

18.2

28.8

7.6
55-64

29.8

25.9

31.0

12.0
65-74

17.1

17.1

37.6

24.4
75+

6.4

14.9

34.0

44.7
Age completed education
15 or under

18.5

26.5

29.1

22.5
16

28.2

20.9

39.9

9.5
17-18

41.7

14.1

32.2

10.4
19

45.3

18.8

25.0

10.9
20

49.5

19.6

20.2

9.2
Still in education

45.7

15.5

26.7

11.2
Social grade
AB

43.3

18.7

24.8

11.8
C1

44.4

15.2

27.7

11.4
C2

31.5

25.3

34.0

7.2
DE

43.0

16.0

25.6

14.2
Attendance
Once a  week or more

27.6

16.6

32.7

21.3
Once a month or more

46.9

21.9

21.9

8.2
Less often

46.7

21.6

24.0

6.3
Never or practically never

46.9

17.1

28.2

6.4

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

Note: Don’t know responses not shown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Right (%)

Wrong (%)

Don’t know (%)
Sex
Men

31.5

52.6

16.9
Women

36.8

42.3

21.0
Age group
18-24

46.0

33.3

20.6
25-34

56.0

23.1

20.8
35-44

42.2

34.7

23.1
45-54

35.3

44.9

19.8
55-64

24.3

58.9

16.8
65-74

11.4

74.3

14.3
75+

8.3

86.1

5.6
Education
No qualifications

21.2

60.6

18.2
GCSE

28.4

48.9

22.7
A-Level

38.1

44.6

17.3
Degree

43.2

34.5

22.4
Other

27.7

58.0

14.3
Social grade
AB

34.3

47.4

18.3
C1

37.1

41.2

21.6
C2

37.8

45.5

16.7
DE

29.1

52.0

18.8
Attendance

 

 

 
Once a week or more

15.2

67.5

17.3
Once a month or more

35.8

45.9

18.3
Less often

42.6

37.7

19.8
Never

46.8

33.6

19.7
Belief in God
Definitely or probably a God or higher power

30.4

52.8

16.8
Probably or definitely not a God or higher power

51.0

29.4

19.6
Don’t know

44.1

24.6

31.4

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

Summary

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

Posted in Historical studies, Religion in public debate, Research note | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anglican Clergy Poll and Other News

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Anglican clergy poll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

% down

Clergy

Britons

Anglicans
Since 1945 British society has become

better

38

27

25
worse

34

51

60
Britain has benefited from immigration in

some ways

96

60

52
no ways

2

32

41
Welfare budget should be

reduced

17

46

52
maintained

31

24

23
increased

44

15

13
Abortion time limit of 24 weeks should be

increased

5

6

5
kept

32

40

39
reduced

43

29

33
Same-sex marriage is

right

39

46

38
wrong

51

37

47
Legal prohibition on assisted suicide should be

kept

70

14

14
changed

22

76

77

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

Heritage at risk

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

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

 

Places of worship at risk

As % of all sites at risk
South-West

163

9.6
South-East

116

20.9
London

73

11.3
East

115

25.8
East Midlands

105

26.1
West Midlands

76

17.4
North-West

115

24.0
Yorkshire

98

12.6
North-East

26

9.1
ENGLAND

887

15.4

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

Number problems

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

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

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

Church growth

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

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

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

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

Islamic State

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Media coverage

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

 

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Catholic Family and Other News

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Catholic family

The Roman Catholic Church’s fortnight-long Extraordinary Synod on the Family ends in Rome today. It has attracted surprisingly little attention in the general (non-Catholic) British media, although its outcomes are now being reported as a victory for conservative forces in the Church, particularly on gay issues. So far as is known, the Synod has not been informed by any scientific test to determine how far British Catholics, professing or practising, are in tune with the Church’s official teaching on family matters. The Church’s own consultation questionnaire, in the autumn of 2013, was something of a public relations disaster, being poorly designed and imperfectly administered; in any case, the findings of this survey in England and Wales and in Scotland have been kept secret. No non-Catholic agency has stepped in to take the pulse of Catholic opinion in the run-up to the Synod, so the latest data which we have of a representative nature are those collected by YouGov for Westminster Faith Debates in June 2013, which revealed a big gap between the hierarchy and people in the pews. The tables from this poll are still available online at:

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

That said, we probably should mention (just about) a global enquiry which has been run by the Catholic weekly The Tablet between 3 and 14 October 2014, via an 18-item open access online questionnaire. This was answered by an entirely self-selecting (and therefore probably quite unrepresentative) sample of more than 4,300 individuals, 57% of them from the United States (where the poll was highlighted on conservative blogs). According to The Tablet, one-quarter of respondents lived in the United Kingdom or Ireland, but their answers are not in the public domain, albeit there is a published tabulation of the views of 84 divorced and remarried British or Irish Catholics, which can be found at:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/texts-speeches-homilies/4/470/what-you-are-hoping-for-from-the-synod-for-the-family-our-survey-results-in-full-

Islamism (1)

Polling interest in the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria appears to be waning. This is the first weekend in more than two months that The Sunday Times has not included a module of questions about IS in its weekly poll conducted on its behalf by YouGov. Although IS remained the second most noted news story of last week, it attracted just 11% of the vote, compared with 50% for the Ebola outbreak, according to a Populus survey on 15 and 16 October 2014 among an online sample of 2,039 adults. The only other recent poll to note was undertaken online by ComRes for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday, also on 15 and 16 October 2014, with 2,000 respondents. Asked whether the US and UK governments were right to refuse to pay ransoms to terrorist groups such as IS, 60% agreed, 13% disagreed, and 27% did not know what to think. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/IoS_SM_Political_Poll_Additional_Questions_19th_October_2014.pdf

Islamism (2)

The Times of 2 October 2014 (p. 13) contained a report on recent research by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), at King’s College London. It was based on a study of 471 male and 54 female jihadists who had travelled to Syria and Iraq, overwhelmingly to join Islamic State (IS) or the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front. Biographical details were gleaned from interviews and social media. Comparative data on 378 German jihadists were obtained from that country’s intelligence service. Key findings from the newspaper coverage of the British research are quoted below, but no further information is currently available on the ICSR website.

‘The UK jihadists tend to be better educated, more affluent and have more social mobility compared to their counterparts in Europe. The typical British fighter was aged 18-24 and had received a sixth-form education, though some had degrees. Before going to the Middle East a majority had an involvement in activist groups focused on global Muslim issues, such as the Palestinian conflict, and many were involved in street-preaching groups. British jihadists tend to have South Asian backgrounds, reflecting the dominant ethnicities within British Islam, while men of North African extraction are the most numerous among mainland European fighters. Some British jihadists had criminal convictions, mostly for drugs or petty crime.’

Religious and ethnic hatred

Asked to select the greatest threat to the world from a list of five current dangers, 39% of Britons put religious and ethnic hatred in first place, with a further 22% placing it second, and still larger numbers of those on the political right. This is according to the results of a question asked in the most recent Pew Global Attitudes survey and released on 16 October 2014. Fieldwork was conducted in 44 countries between March and June 2014, including in Britain where 1,000 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone from 17 March to 9 April. The report and topline results from the question on world dangers can be read at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/10/Pew-Research-Center-Dangers-Report-FINAL-October-16-2014.pdf

The proportion of Britons citing religious and ethnic hatred as the world’s biggest danger in Spring 2014 was actually higher than in all other countries studied apart from Lebanon (58%) and the Palestinian Territories (40%), and it was considerably larger than the European average of 15% and the United States figure of 24%. However, it was somewhat diminished from the levels in Britain in Summer 2002 (43%) and Spring 2007 (45%), which were presumably influenced by the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in, respectively, New York in 2001 (9/11) and London in 2005 (7/7). The growing gap between the rich and the poor was perceived as the greatest global risk for 25% in Britain in 2014, pollution and other environmental problems for 16%, the spread of nuclear weapons for 14%, and AIDS and other infectious diseases for 4%.

Hate crimes: England and Wales

Hate Crimes, England and Wales, 2013/14, by Byron Creese and Deborah Lader, was published as Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/14 on 16 October 2014. The police recorded 44,480 hate crimes in the year, of which 2,273 (5%) were categorized as religiously motivated, somewhat more than disability hate crimes (1,985) and transgender hate crimes (555) but less than sexual orientation hate crimes (4,622) and race hate crimes (37,484). All five strands demonstrated an increase between 2012/13 and 2013/14, which was partly a function of better reporting and partly of a genuine rise, especially, in the case of race and religion hate crimes (the latter up by 45%, from 1,573), growth following the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013. Public order offences and criminal damage or arson were the commonest forms of religion hate crimes. The bulletin is at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364198/hosb0214.pdf

Religion and equality: Scotland

The Scottish Government published on 14 October 2014 an Analysis of Equality Results from the 2011 Census of Scotland. Chapter 3 (pp. 66-98) is devoted to religion and contains 31 charts, 2 figures, and 2 tables, together with brief commentaries thereon. Breaks are given for religion by age, gender, marital status, cohabitation, ethnicity, national identity, country of birth, age of arrival in UK, length of residence in UK, urban/rural classification, English/Scottish language skills, language used at home, dependent children, and health. The report is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0046/00460679.pdf

Atheism

Matt Sheard applies prosopographical techniques to autobiographical and oral history sources to produce a partially quantitative profile of non-elite British atheists between 1890 and 1980. He demonstrates that the process of atheization was principally a phenomenon of childhood and adolescence and often associated with weak religious backgrounds. Sheard’s ‘Ninety-Eight Atheists: Atheism among the Non-Elite in Twentieth Century Britain’ was published on 13 October 2014 in the open access journal Secularism and Nonreligion as Vol. 3, Article 6, and is available online at:

http://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/article/view/snr.ar/

Church decline

Ruth Gledhill has covered on Christian Today the recent analysis by Ben Clements on BRIN of religious affiliation data from the first wave of the British Election Study (BES) 2015 panel. She concentrates particularly on the ‘massive decline’ in affiliation over the fifty-year history of BES. She also interviews BRIN co-director David Voas about the prospects for the Churches. He sees immigration as the principal engine of any church growth which is occurring and the failure to recruit the children of churchgoers as the main reason for church declension. Nevertheless, he does not predict the virtual extinction of the Church of England, thinking that the seemingly relentless decline will bottom out at some point. Gledhill’s article is at:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/exclusive.new.figures.reveal.massive.decline.in.religious.affiliation/41799.htm

London knowledge

YouGov polled 1,966 Britons online on 16-17 October 2014 about their attitudes to the restitution of the Elgin Marbles to Greece, prefacing the survey with a series of true or false statements to test the public’s knowledge of London. Whereas 78% correctly identified Sir Christopher Wren as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, fewer (53%) denied that Westminster Abbey is the main Roman Catholic Church in London, 19% thinking that it is. In fact, the Abbey, although of Catholic origin before the Reformation, is now a Royal Peculiar in the Church of England, and Westminster Cathedral is the principal Catholic place of worship in the capital. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8y47s60k62/InternalResults_141017_London_Elgin_Marbles_Website.pdf

 

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The British Election Study 2015: Religious affiliation and attitudes

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Ben Clements

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

 

Party support

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

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

 

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

Anglican (%)

Catholic (%)

Other Christian (%)

Other religion (%)

No religion (%)
2005
Con

42.8

28.7

31.2

29.0

26.2
Lab

36.4

48.1

38.0

47.0

41.1
Lib Dem

16.7

15.7

16.4

17.1

23.5
Other party

4.2

7.5

14.4

7.0

9.2
2010
Con

47.7

34.4

33.0

29.0

29.9
Lab

26.2

39.1

33.7

38.9

29.8
Lib Dem

21.9

19.3

19.2

24.1

32.0
Other party

4.3

7.2

14.1

8.0

8.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

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

 

Table 2: Current vote intention by religious affiliation

Anglican (%)

Catholic (%)

Other Christian (%)

Other religion (%)

No religion (%)
Con

39.3

29.5

31.1

25.0

26.7
Lab

32.1

45.3

35.6

49.6

39.7
Lib Dem

7.5

5.1

8.1

7.1

10.5
Other party

21.1

20.2

25.2

18.3

23.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

Con

Lab

Lib Dem

UKIP

Other

party

Unweighted base
Anglican (%)

39.3

32.1

7.5

18.3

2.9

4,884
Roman Catholic (%)

29.5

45.3

5.1

12.9

7.3

1,535
Presbyterian/Church of Scotland (%)

24.5

34.9

5.3

7.7

27.7

1,032
Methodist (%)

40.5

34.8

10.5

10.0

4.1

423
Baptist (%)

32.3

36.7

9.7

15.9

5.3

255
United Reformed Church (%)

27.2

35.8

12.3

7.5

16.3

73
Free Presbyterian (%)

21.7

47.8

4.3

17.4

8.7

25
Brethren (%)

15.4

53.8

0.0

30.8

0.0

11
Judaism (%)

46.3

29.9

5.4

11.6

6.2

134
Hinduism (%)

30.9

57.7

3.1

6.2

2.1

65
Islam (%)

14.9

73.0

7.3

0.8

3.6

153
Sikhism (%)

15.4

63.5

5.8

5.9

7.8

34
Buddhism (%)

24.7

38.4

6.8

13.5

17.6

73
Other (%)

23.7

42.9

8.4

11.3

13.7

572
None (%)

26.7

39.6

10.5

12.4

10.8

7,357

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Note: Percentages sum across the rows.

 

Social issues

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

 

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

Attempts to give equal opportunities to ethnic minorities.

Attempts to give equal opportunities to women.

Attempts to give equal opportunities to gays and lesbians.

 

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

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

 

Table 4: Attitudes towards equal opportunities by religious affiliation

Anglican (%)

Catholic (%)

Other Christian (%)

Other religion (%)

No religion (%)
Ethnic minorities
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough

10.3

15.1

13.9

26.4

19.5
About right

35.8

36.1

36.9

33.1

37.3
Gone too far or gone much too far

47.4

41.8

43.1

28.4

35.1
Don’t know

6.4

6.9

6.2

12.1

8.2
Women
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough

34.8

36.6

36.0

34.2

37.9
About right

49.2

44.7

43.7

40.1

45.1
Gone too far or gone much too far

12.2

14.4

16.3

15.5

11.2
Don’t know

3.7

4.3

4.0

10.2

5.7
Gays and lesbians
Not gone nearly far enough or not gone far enough

16.0

20.3

14.1

19.6

30.2
About right

42.4

40.5

39.3

32.9

43.0
Gone too far or gone much too far

35.3

32.2

39.9

32.3

19.6
Don’t know

6.2

7.0

6.6

15.2

7.2

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

Summary

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

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

 

Reference

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

Posted in Measuring religion, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Research note, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The British Election Study 2015: Religious affiliation

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Ben Clements

This post analyses the contemporary social make-up of religious belonging in Britain using data released as part of the latest British Election Study (BES), focusing on the 2015 general election. Two waves of panel data (conducted in, respectively, February-March 2014 and April-June 2014) have so far been made available for wider analysis. They can be found here. This post uses wave 1 from the BES 2015 panel study to look at the social bases of religious affiliation in Britain, looking at how religious is distributed across various socio-demographic factors (sex, age, country and region). The analysis is based on the core sample (n=20,881) from wave 1 of the BES 2015 Panel Study, and the data are weighted accordingly. Although the data released so far have not contained measures of other aspects of religion, such as attendance, given the BES’s longevity (it started in the early-1960s) and the extensive range of questions on political and social issues, the current data – and future releases as part of the 2015 study – clearly represent an important resource for scholars of religion in Britain.

It is useful to look at the overall distribution for religious affiliation, which is given in Table 1. The question wording was as follows: ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ The most common response is that of not belonging to any religion, at 44.7%. Next, those who identify as Church of England or Anglican constitute 31.1%, followed by 9.1% who identify as Catholic. Very small proportions say they belong to other Christian traditions or denominations, such as one of the Nonconformist churches or as Church of Scotland/Presbyterian. Similarly, very small proportions report that they identify with a non-Christian faith, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Buddhism, or some other religion.

 

Table 1: Religious affiliation

 

%
Church of England/Anglican/Episcopal

31.1
Roman Catholic

9.1
Presbyterian/Church of Scotland

3.1
Methodist

2.5
Baptist

1.3
United Reformed Church

0.5
Free Presbyterian

0.1
Brethren

0.1
Judaism

0.8
Hinduism

0.6
Islam

1.6
Sikhism

0.3
Buddhism

0.4
Other

3.7
None

44.7

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

Table 2 provides a summary of the data reported already but based on five categories – combining (i) those in the various Christian groups (apart from Anglicans and Catholics) and (ii) those belonging to non-Christian faiths or who responded ‘other’. It also shows the earlier data on religious affiliation from other BES surveys, covering the period from 1963 to 2015. For this period, covering over fifty years, the major features are: the decline in levels of Anglican affiliation, the steady proportions who identify as Roman Catholic, the decline in the proportions belonging to other Christian traditions, the increase in those affiliated to minority non-Christian faiths and the growth in what are often termed the ‘religious nones’. Of course, religious belonging can be affected by the question wording asked and response options available on any particular survey, and the BES questions on affiliation have not been consistently-worded over time.

 

Table 2: Religious affiliation, 1963-2015

1963 (%)

(Feb.) 1974 (%)

1987 (%)

2001 (%)

2015 (%)
Anglican

64.5

41.5

41.4

32.5

31.1
Roman Catholic

8.6

9.0

9.8

10.8

9.1
Other Christian

23.1

12.9

14.7

6.9

7.6
Other religion

0.6

2.7

2.4

7.7

7.5
None

3.2

33.8

31.8

42.1

44.7

Source: BES cross-section surveys; BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

It is a common finding from sociological work on religion that women are more likely to have a religious identity and to be more involved or engaged with their faith. This is apparent, in relation to belonging, for the data presented in Table 3, which shows the religious composition of men and women. While similar proportions of men and women fall within the other Christian and other religion categories (and women are slightly more likely to be Catholic), a clear difference is in the proportions who report they are Anglican – 27.7% for men and 34.3% for women. Accordingly, men are more likely to declare that they do not belong to a religion, a nearly half (48.6%) compared to just over two-fifths of women (40.0%)

 

Table 3: Religious affiliation by sex

Male (%)

Female (%)
Anglican

27.7

34.3
Roman Catholic

8.5

9.7
Other Christian

7.6

7.5
Other religion

7.5

7.5
None

48.6

41.0

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

Next, how does religious belonging vary by age? Table 4 presents the religious composition of seven different age groups (ranging from those aged 18-24 to those aged 75 and older). Several aspects of the data are worthy of note. First, identification as an Anglican increases steadily across age groups, lowest at just 14.2% for those aged 18-24 years and highest at half of those aged 75+ (at 52.1%). There is also a greater tendency to identify with other Christian traditions amongst the older age groups – highest at 11.6% and 10.4%, respectively, for the 65-74 and 75+ groups. Belonging to a non-Christian faith is more likely amongst younger age groups – particularly those between 18-34 years of age. The pattern in the data for having no religious affiliation is the reverse of that seen for Anglicans: that is, there is a steady decrease in the proportion with no religion as we move up the age range. Well over half of those aged 44 and under report having no affiliation, which falls to lower than three-tenths amongst those aged 65 and older.

 

Table 4: Religious affiliation by age group

18-24 (%)

25-34 (%)

35-44 (%)

45-54 (%)

55-64 (%)

65-74 (%)

75+

(%)
Anglican

14.2

19.4

23.6

32.8

39.4

46.4

52.1
Roman Catholic

8.5

8.7

9.4

9.6

9.8

8.6

7.4
Other Christian

4.0

5.6

5.3

6.7

9.4

11.6

10.4
Other religion

11.0

10.9

8.8

6.3

5.1

5.1

5.2
None

61.4

55.3

52.9

44.7

28.3

28.3

4.9

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

Another way at looking at the association between religious affiliation and age is to look at the mean (average) age within each religious group, data on which are presented in Table 5. It is clear that the average age of religious affiliates is highest for Anglicans (53.7 years) and other Christians (52.4 years). It is lowest for those with no religion (43.3 years) and those who belong to non-Christian faiths (42.2 years). The average age of Catholics is 47.6 years, in between the other groups.

 

Table 5: Mean age by religious group

Mean age
Anglican

53.7
Roman Catholic

47.6
Other Christian

52.4
Other religion

42.2
None

43.3

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

The differing religious complexion of the different nations of Britain is still apparent in the data shown in Table 6. Anglicans are much more prevalent in England and Wales than in Scotland, where the other Christian category is much more common (many of whom would identify as Church of Scotland/Presbyterian). Identifying as Roman Catholic is more prevalent in Scotland and England than in Wales. Those in England and Wales are also somewhat more likely to belong to a non-Christian religion. Levels of non-affiliation are clearly higher in Wales and Scotland.

 

Table 6: Religious affiliation by country

England

(%)

Wales

(%)

Scotland

(%)
Anglican

34.0

27.7

4.5
Roman Catholic

9.1

5.9

11.5
Other Christian

5.4

8.1

28.6
Other religion

7.8

6.5

4.7
None

43.7

51.8

50.6

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

 

Finally, Table 7 provides a breakdown of religious affiliation in the different (Government Office) regions of England. Again, historical patterns of migration and settlement by religious communities are apparent. Higher proportions of Catholics are found in the North West, North East and in London. London is also distinct from other regions in having the lowest proportion of Anglicans (24.7%), the highest proportion belonging to other religions (21.4%, followed by the West Midlands at 8.1%) and the lowest proportion with no affiliation (35.3%).

 

Table 7: Religious affiliation by English region

Anglican

Catholic

Other Christian

Other religion

No religion
North East (%)

35.1

11.9

6.1

2.9

44.0
North West (%)

33.6

14.7

5.4

5.4

41.0
Yorkshire and the Humber (%)

37.5

6.5

6.4

5.8

43.8
East Midlands (%)

35.2

5.7

5.4

5.6

48.1
West Midlands (%)

35.2

6.7

5.4

8.1

44.6
East of England (%)

34.4

7.9

5.1

6.0

46.5
London (%)

24.7

13.8

4.8

21.4

35.3
South East (%)

35.3

7.1

5.4

5.0

47.2
South West (%)

39.7

5.4

5.3

4.1

45.5

Source: BES 2015 Panel Study – Wave 1.

Note: Percentages sum across the rows.

 

 

Summary

These new data on religious affiliation from the BES 2015 shed some light on the social basis of religious affiliation in contemporary British society. There are clear differences in levels of religious affiliation (and non-affiliation) based on sex, age, and region. Demographically, women and those in older age groups are more likely to be Anglican, while men and younger people are more likely to report having no religion. Younger people are also more likely to identify with a non-Christian religion. Religious belonging also varies by nation and region, reflecting historical patterns of migration, settlement and denominational fault-lines. Non-religion is somewhat higher in Scotland and Wales while, within England, London is particularly distinctive in terms of its religious complexion.

 

NB: A second note, to accompany this one, will look at the social and political attitudes of religious groups using the same data from the BES 2015.

 

Reference

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

Posted in Measuring religion, Research note, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Current Voting Intentions and Other News

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Current voting intentions

We are almost through the party political conference season for another year, and the 2015 general election campaign seems already to have started, so it is perhaps an appropriate time to review the state of the ‘religious vote’ in the country. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of another of Lord Ashcroft’s large-scale polls, this time conducted online among 8,053 voters between 12 and 17 September 2014. Voting intentions for the four main parties by religious affiliation are summarized in the table below, from which it will be seen that by far the most significant trend to emerge is the predisposition to support the Labour Party of non-Christians in general and Muslims in particular. This will almost certainly have been shaped by the younger age profile of non-Christians (49.3% of whom were aged 18-34 compared with 28.0% of the whole sample) but may also reflect past gratitude to the former Labour government for its legislative support of religious diversity and equality (although that administration’s foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan had a countervailing influence in the Muslim community).

%   across

Con

Lab

LibDem

UKIP
All

22.4

27.3

5.5

14.5
Christian

28.2

25.3

5.0

16.6
Non-Christian

16.6

40.8

5.7

8.0
Muslim

5.4

62.9

5.4

3.0
No religion

16.2

27.7

6.2

13.1
Prefer not to say

7.6

31.4

6.5

6.5

In terms of religious affiliation, 37.9% of adults in this survey professed no religion, five points more than in equivalent polls conducted between January and June 2011 (32.8%). The number of Christians reduced by more than three points during the same three-year interval (from 56.6% to 53.2%). So, on this particular measure of religiosity at least, Britain seems to be secularizing at quite a rapid pace. For more information, see pp. 136-7 of the data tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Project-Blueprint-5-Full-data-tables-Sept-14.pdf

Islamic State

A round-up of recent polling on the Islamic State (IS) crisis in Iraq and Syria follows, arranged by date of fieldwork (which preceded the announcement of the murder by IS of a second British hostage, Alan Henning). Unless otherwise stated, surveys were conducted among online samples of Britons aged 18 and over. Topline results only are cited, but breaks by demographics are available by following the links.

26-28 September 2014

In a ComRes telephone poll for The Independent among a sample of 1,007, a majority (56%) of the public disagreed with the suggestion that ‘the situation in Iraq and Syria is none of our business and we should stay out of it’, against 38% who agreed. However, somewhat fewer (48%) thought that taking part in military action against IS would make Britain safer in the longer term, with 42% dissenting. David Cameron as current prime minister was more trusted than prospective prime minister Ed Miliband to make the right decisions on how to combat IS (45% versus 28%), albeit the plurality (49%) still distrusted Cameron. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Independent_Political_Poll_1st_October_2014_1237.pdf

26-28 September 2014

In another ComRes poll, this time conducted for ITV News among 2,024 individuals, 56% approved of British air strikes against IS in Iraq (twice the number disapproving) and 48% in Syria, but far fewer (29%) endorsed the engagement of British ground troops, with 51% opposed. The reasons given by those supporting air strikes were: the threat posed by IS to Britain (77%), the need to take action in the face of atrocities in the world (67%), and the beheading of British and American hostages (66%). Drivers for opposing air strikes included: the prospects of the conflict becoming longer and messier (77%), the lack of clear objectives (47%), the fact that it was none of Britain’s business (43%), the expense of involvement (41%), and Britain’s poor previous record of military action in Iraq (39%). Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_29th_September_2014.pdf

1-2 October 2014

IS was the most noticed news story of last week for 26% of the public, according to a Populus poll of 2,014. The death of Alice Gross came second, with 17%, and the Conservative Party conference third, with 11%.

2-3 October 2014

The regular YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, which interviewed 2,130, revealed approval for RAF participation in air strikes against IS to be unchanged from the previous week, at 58% in the case of operations in Iraq and 52% in Syria, although opposition was up by 3% in both cases. People were evenly split, at 42% each, in thinking that air strikes in Iraq would be effective or ineffective in combating IS, but the majority (51%) remained hostile to the commitment of ground troops in Iraq, with only 28% in favour. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8xpy43vlqr/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-031014.pdf

Faith schools

The House of Commons Library has recently issued a short briefing note on faith schools in England (reference SN/SP/6972). It includes, at pp. 9-12, a useful digest of relevant statistics, including the number of such schools disaggregated by faith community and educational status, the number of pupils, and performance in GCSE examinations. The note is available at:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN06972/faith-schools-faqs

Religion of armed services personnel

The United Kingdom’s armed service personnel remain overwhelmingly Christian in their religious allegiance, but the proportion is slowly declining, according to the Ministry of Defence’s Statistical Series 2 – Personnel Bulletin 2.01, which was published on 25 September 2014. Back in 2009, 87% of personnel professed to be Christian but the figure fell to 80% in 2014. There was a corresponding rise in the number claiming to have no religion, from 12% to 18%, rising to 25% in the case of the Royal Navy (with the Royal Air Force on 21% and the Army on 15%). The proportion of non-Christians continues to be very low (2% across all three services combined), and much less than in the population at large. There is more detail in Table 2.01.09 at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/357724/tri_service_personnel_bulletin_2_01_2014.pdf

Church in Wales statistics

The Church in Wales Membership and Finances, 2013 was one of the papers presented to the meeting of the Church’s Governing Body on 17-18 September 2014. In terms of membership, the report suggests, ‘there are no positive indicators: every field shows decline compared with the previous year, and in some cases that decline is significant’. Most serious was the 18% fall in confirmations between 2012 and 2013, with marriages down 13%, Easter communicants by 10% (on top of an 8% fall from 2011 to 2012), and average attendance by the under-18s by 9%. Average adult attendances reduced by 4% on Sundays and 5% on weekdays. Parochial income and expenditure likewise decreased, by 7% and 4% respectively, albeit a modest operating surplus of £491,000 was achieved. Weekly direct giving per attender grew by 4% in the year, above the rate of inflation, to stand at £9.11; indeed, the overall growth in such giving since 1990 has exceeded the retail prices index by 18% (113% versus 95%). The report is at:

http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/11-MembershipAndFinance.pdf

Jewish identity

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research published on 18 September 2014 a supplementary report on the results of its 2011 National Jewish Student Survey: David Graham, Strengthening Jewish Identity: What Works? An Analysis of Jewish Students in the UK. The underlying dataset includes 36 different measures of Jewish identity for almost 1,000 Jewish students. Through factor analysis they were collapsed into six broad indicators of identity: cognitive religiosity; socio-religious behaviour; cultural religiosity; ethnocentricity; student community engagement; and Jewish values. Although Jewish educational programmes were found to have some positive and independent impact on Jewish identity, overall the effect was six times weaker than that of a Jewish upbringing. The impact of Jewish education was strongest in terms of socio-religious behaviour, including practices such as synagogue attendance and Sabbath observance. The most important educational initiatives, from the perspective of impact on Jewish identity, were revealed to be those involving a seminary experience or gap year in Israel. The report, which also contains reflections on the findings by Jonathan Boyd, is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.Strengthening_Jewish_Identity.What_works.Sept_2014.pdf

Historic Methodist spirituality

British Methodism holds the record for publishing the longest annual national series of membership returns, starting in 1766. Underpinning them, especially in the earliest days, were the detailed registers of members for the rounds or circuits into which the country was divided. Some of these have survived and provide the basis for an analysis of Methodist membership by gender, marital status, and occupational background. These were systematically examined many years ago by Clive Field, and the results published in ‘The Social Composition of English Methodism to 1830: A Membership Analysis’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol. 76, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 153-78. This article is freely available at:

https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m2333&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF

A few of these registers went even further and, by means of symbols (dots, question marks, letters, and strokes), categorized Methodist members according to their spiritual state, as perceived by the ministers, along a continuum from awakening through justification to sanctification. This aspect of the listings, which had generally been discontinued by the time of John Wesley’s death in 1791, has been less often studied – until now: Robert Schofield, ‘Methodist Spiritual Condition in Georgian Northern England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 65, No. 4, October 2014, pp. 780-802. Using data especially from the Keighley Round for 1763-65, but also four other circuits (three of them in the North), Schofield demonstrates through ten tables and four figures that both short-term recruitment to and leakage from Methodism were considerable and that the majority of members did not experience spiritual growth over a twelve-month period. For access options, go to:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9348156&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0022046913000547

Another new publication to make good use of Methodist statistics is Jonathan Rodell, The Rise of Methodism: A Study of Bedfordshire, 1736-1851 (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, Vol. 92, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-85155-079-4, £25.00). Its 16 tables examine the number and demographics of Wesleyan and Moravian members; the occupations of fathers of children baptised by Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists; and attendances at chapel and Sunday school in the 1851 religious census.

 

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Second Edition of UK Church Statistics

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

The indefatigable Dr Peter Brierley has recently produced what will perhaps be the highlight of the religious statistical publishing year: UK Church Statistics, Number 2, 2010 to 2020 (Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2014, ISBN 978-0-9566577-7-0, £27 inclusive of postage and packing). Copies can be obtained directly from the author at The Old Post Office, 1 Thorpe Avenue, Tonbridge, Kent, TN10 4PW. Cheques should be made payable to Brierley Consultancy or you can arrange to pay via BACS by contacting peter@brierleyres.com

The first edition of UK Church Statistics was published in 2011. However, the title is, in effect, a continuation of UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends (seven editions of which appeared between 1997 and 2008), which was edited by Brierley when he was director of Christian Research. Although Religious Trends nominally survives as an online publication on the Christian Research website, accessible to the organization’s subscribers, it is but a shadow of its former self and is not especially current. Even further back, the origins of UK Church Statistics can be traced to the statistical sections pioneered by Brierley in the main UK Christian Handbook, starting with UK Protestant Missions Handbook, Volume 2 in 1977.

UK Church Statistics, Number 2 extends to 184 densely-packed A4 pages, so the book cannot be easily summarized and critiqued in a single BRIN post. Here we simply strive to give an overview of the principal contents, as follows:

Denominational statistics (sections 0-11)

These sections comprise about one-third of the volume and, for this reader, constitute its most important part. The number of members, churches/congregations, and ministers are given for each of 292 UK denominations, based on a survey by Brierley during the second half of 2013. Comparative data are shown for 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012 (2009 being omitted on the rather flimsy grounds that it was covered in the first volume of UK Church Statistics), with forecasts for 2015 and 2020 (which denominations were also asked to supply). Gaps arising from non-response or other reasons are filled by estimates, which generally seem plausible. Data have been summed for ten broad denominational groupings (the same as have been used by Brierley for reporting over the past 35 years), with Fresh Expressions of church separately recorded, while each denomination’s figures are disaggregated by the four home nations comprising the UK.

One conclusion is that, although church membership in the UK is continuing to decline overall, the rate of decrease seems to have lessened significantly, with the result that the membership level previously anticipated for 2020 will probably not now be evident until 2025. Moreover, the trend is bucked in Independent, New, Orthodox, and Pentecostal Churches, as well as in the category of smaller bodies, all of which reported absolute growth between 2008 and 2013, much of which can be attributed to the effects of immigration. Partly for the same reason, church membership has flattened out in England, with the traditionally more religious Wales, Northern Ireland, and – most notably – Scotland proportionately losing most members between 2008 and 2013. It should be noted, of course, that the Churches do not have a common criterion of ‘membership’, and thus Brierley has needed to use multiple indicators (including attendance in the case of the Roman Catholic Church and the New Churches). Perhaps a more substantive explanation of this point would have been beneficial. The number of denominations rose by 6% during the last quinquennium, of places of worship by 2%, and of ministers by 6%.

Additional to the data for membership, congregations, and ministers which he has gathered from his 2013 survey, Brierley reproduces other statistics collected by individual denominations. This is especially so for the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church, Methodist Church, and Free Church of Scotland.

London church census, 2012 (section 12)

A report on the census of church attendance in London in 2012, conducted by Brierley for the London City Mission, has already appeared in Brierley’s Capital Growth (Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2013). In UK Church Statistics, Number 2, some of the finer, borough-level detail from this research is provided for the first time, with comparative data for 1989, 1998, and 2005 and contextual information from the 2001 and 2011 censuses of population. There is also a useful executive summary of the census, whose importance and interest stem from the fact that attendance in London actually grew by 16% between 2005 and 2012, largely on the back of immigration.

Distribution of English and Scottish churches (section 13)

The numbers of churches by denomination are given for counties and local authorities. These are derived from the 2002 Scottish and 2005 English church censuses, undertaken by Brierley, with revisions to the 2005 data in respect of the Roman Catholic Church.

Religion in the population census, 2001 and 2011 (section 14)

There are 31 pages of tables (and some maps), but no substantive commentary, exploring the results of the religion question posed in the 2001 and 2011 UK census of population, with breaks by age, gender, ethnicity, and local/unitary authorities or counties. There are also comparative data on the spatial distribution of English churchgoers, including in 2012 (estimated by Brierley since, apart from London, there has been no census of church attendance in England since 2005).

International religious statistics (section 15)

The section comprises 15 rather disparate sub-sections abstracted from collations of data by Patrick Johnstone and Todd Johnson or taken directly from primary sources such as the Australian and Irish censuses. Other international data appear in sub-section 5.6.

Other UK religious statistics (section 16)

This miscellany of 11 sub-sections is a slight misnomer, since much of the content relates to secular rather than religious data. However, there are useful tables of baptisms of children and of marriages by denomination back to, respectively, 1991 and 2000 (data on funerals are to be found in sub-section 2.8); estimates of usual Sunday attendance in England by age and denomination at five-yearly intervals back to 1980; and of passes in public examinations in Religious Studies, back to 2010.

Essays on UK religious life (section 17)

There are five essays by Brierley: ‘Church Families and Young People’ (2012); ‘Nominal Christians’ (2011); ‘Democracy and Protestantism’ (2013); ‘The Optimum Length of Ministry’ (2013); and ‘Norwich: “the Most Godless City”’ (2013). Also included is the article by Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning on ‘The Extent of Religious Activity in England’ (2013). All essays have previously been circulated with FutureFirst, the bi-monthly bulletin of Brierley Consultancy.

Index (section 18)

With a claimed 4,000 entries, this is a helpful tool, not least since some data appear in sections where one might not necessarily expect to find them.

Summation

In general, this is a valuable resource, a great credit to the seemingly boundless energy and creativity of one man, and well worth the money. However, the exact extent of its value may depend upon your starting point. Experienced users of British religious statistics, with ready access to earlier volumes by Brierley and otherwise already familiar with some of the sources such as the population census, will derive the greatest benefit from sections 0-12, which incorporate the results of important original research by Brierley. In contrast to religious practitioners, they may also be less interested in, and occasionally more sceptical of, some of the forecasts of future trends. Those seeking a more one-stop-shop guide to British religion in numbers will find their needs very substantially, but by no means completely, met by this book, the single major omission being sample survey data touching on religion (albeit these often do not relate to institutional Christianity, which is Brierley’s principal preoccupation).

 

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Organisational data, Religious Census, Rites of Passage | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Trust and Other News

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Trust (1)

Public trust in the Church of England is lower than in other non-political national institutions, according to the results of an Ipsos MORI survey for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which were published on 13 September 2014. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,008 adults aged 15 and over in Britain on 18-24 July 2014. Respondents were asked to assess their trust in 14 institutions on a scale from 0 to 10, the mean score for the Established Church being 5.36, only rising above 6 in the case of readers of mid-market daily newspapers and those broadly satisfied with the present system of government. The scores for all institutions follow:

 

Mean score
Armed forces

7.74
Charitable/voluntary sector

6.51
Police

6.49
Monarchy

6.38
Legal system

5.86
Bank of England

5.85
BBC

5.75
Church of England

5.36
Local government

4.90
Welsh Assembly

4.77
Scottish Parliament

4.67
Westminster Parliament

4.20
Westminster government

4.13
Political parties in general

3.76

The study also covered support for the protection by law of 10 rights and freedoms. Freedom of religion was ranked eighth in order of importance, although it was only seven points behind the most highly prized freedom (the right to a fair trial). Variation by demographic sub-groups ranged from 83% to 94%. Support for each of the rights and freedoms is tabulated below:

Strongly/tend to support

%
Right to a fair trial

96
Right to freedom from slavery

95
Right to a private/family life

95
Freedom of speech

95
Right to liberty

94
Right not to be tortured/degraded

92
Right to protest

91
Freedom of religion

89
Right to life

79
Right not to be charged for a non-crime

71

The data tables (pp. 1-3 and 114-16 being particularly relevant) will be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/jrrt-state-of-the-nation-tables-2014.pdf

Trust (2)

Clergy/priests are the profession most trusted to tell the truth by MPs, in a survey released by Ipsos MORI on 9 September 2014, for which 143 MPs were interviewed face-to-face between 9 June and 6 August 2014. Indeed, the proportion of MPs trusting clergy/priests completely or a fair amount was, at 86%, 20 points greater than among the general public in November 2013. Judges (83%), scientists (82%), and doctors (76%) also performed well on the MPs’ veracity index, as they did with the public, with bankers (18%), estate agents (12%), and journalists (11%) being deemed the least trustworthy by MPs.  For more information, see the slideshow at:

http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IpsosMORI/the-view-from-westminster-ipsos-mori-m-ps-survey-1978-2014/4

Religion of dependent children

Release Sup. 3 of the 2011 census results for England and Wales, dated 9 September 2014, included Table LC2123EW: religion of dependent child by sex. Fully interactive, and searchable to the lowest level of census geography, it revealed that, across the country as a whole, 51% of dependent children were recorded as Christian, 8% as Muslim, 3% as of another religion, 30% as of no religion, and 8% as not stated. However, there were many areas where Christians were in a minority, including Birmingham (the centre of this summer’s alleged Trojan Horse plot in schools), where there were more Muslim dependent children (97,100) than Christian (93,800). The table can be accessed at:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/lc2123ew

Islamic State

The polling scene has recently been dominated by the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence, but there have continued to be some surveys on the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria since our last post on 4 September 2014. Polls are arranged in chronological order of fieldwork, and were conducted online among samples of adults aged 18 and over.

21-29 August 2014

This Eurotrack survey by YouGov appears to be the first to study British attitudes to the IS crisis in a comparative context, in this case measured against those in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. There were 2,021 respondents in Britain. Six questions were posed about Iraq, with some notable differences in national opinion, including when it came to the willingness of countries to take part in air strikes against IS targets. Britain and Denmark were most likely to contemplate such action (at 42% in each case), while Finland and Germany were least enthusiastic (26%). But perhaps the most significant variations emerged when participants were questioned about giving asylum in their country to Iraqi Christians and non-Christians. As can be seen from the table below, Britons were, after the French, the least well-disposed to this scenario, with non-Christians being less welcome than Christians in all countries. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rkvalht3o6/August_Eurotrack.pdf

Approval (%) of

granting asylum to

Iraqi Christians

Iraqi non-Christians
Denmark

50

37
Finland

58

48
France

35

22
Germany

47

41
Great Britain

38

27
Norway

46

37
Sweden

61

54

3-5 September 2014

Support for some form of British military intervention against IS reached 60% in this Opinium Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph, for which 2,002 UK individuals were interviewed; only 20% were opposed to British action from the air or on the ground. Approximately four-fifths endorsed tough new powers against British jihadists fighting with IS, in the shape of seizure of their passports, stripping them of their citizenship, and banning them from re-entering the UK. Data tables are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4829_telegraph_iraq_tables.pdf

4-5 September 2014

Support for RAF air strikes against IS built to 52% in this YouGov poll among 1,961 Britons for the Sunday Times, even reaching 48% for air strikes against IS in Syria (11 points up on the week before). Opposition was voiced by 68% to the payment of ransoms for the release of British citizens held hostage by IS, with 62% in favour of a military rescue operation. Half the sample felt that British Muslim leaders should be doing a lot more to dissuade British Muslims from going to Iraq to join IS, just 22% thinking the Muslim leadership was doing all it reasonably could. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e6yfutr1ad/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140905.pdf

Household income

In an online poll by Populus on 29-31 August 2014, the 2,010 respondents were asked to provide information about their religion and total household income prior to tax. Correlating the answers to the two questions, it can be shown that non-Christians were disproportionately likely to come from the poorest households (with an income of under £14,000), while those professing no religion were to be found in above-average numbers in the richest households (with an income over £28,000). Christians were more clustered in households with a middling income. Results are summarized below, and the source data are on p. 35 of the tables at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OmFood_Fraud-income-break.pdf

%

Up to £14k

£14k-£28k

Over £28k
All

23

43

33
Christians

21

50

29
Non-Christians

30

35

35
No religion

24

36

39

Premier Christian Radio audience

Premier Christian Radio, the evangelical (and sometimes controversial) station broadcasting primarily in London and South-East England (but also receivable on Freeview and the national DAB multiplex) has announced that it reached its biggest ever audience in its twenty-year history during the second quarter of 2014. According to official RAJAR figures, its average weekly listening by adults aged 15 and over in London and the South-East was 240,700 in this period, equivalent to 2% of the population served. The rise follows a rebranding exercise and the launch of a new website (incorporating listen again features) earlier in the year. However, historic data back to 2010, tabulated below, indicate that there has been some volatility in Premier’s audience, so it is too soon to say whether this increase will be sustained. These statistics can be examined in more detail, including for the pre-2010 era, at:

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

Period

Weekly

audience

persons

Weekly

audience

hours

Hours

per

listener
2010 Q1

141,000

1,456,000

10.4
2010 Q2

143,000

1,708,000

12.0
2010 Q3

213,000

2,405,000

11.3
2010 Q4

164,000

1,833,000

11.2
2011 Q1

135,000

808,000

6.1
2011 Q2

235,000

2,339,000

9.9
2011 Q3

181,000

1,461,000

8.1
2011 Q4

89,000

1,076,000

12.0
2012 Q1

153,000

1,147,000

7.5
2012 Q2

172,000

1,881,000

10.9
2012 Q3

164,000

1,568,000

9.6
2012 Q4

175,000

2,069,000

11.8
2013 Q1

138,000

979,000

7.1
2013 Q2

156,000

1,522,000

9.8
2013 Q3

147,000

1,373,000

9.3
2013 Q4

160,000

1,141,000

7.1
2014 Q1

97,000

865,000

8.9
2014 Q2

241,000

2,435,000

10.1

Education of Anglican bishops

The Church Times has surveyed the secondary and tertiary educational backgrounds of the Church of England’s 112 serving bishops. One half were found to have been educated at an independent school, with 36% attending a grammar school and 13% a comprehensive school. Two-fifths (42%) had taken their first degree at Oxford or Cambridge, with Durham University accounting for a further 17%. The newspaper collected the data following the recent publication of a report on Elitist Britain? by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which documented a bias towards independent and Oxbridge backgrounds among other national leaders. Details are available for each individual bishop at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/5-september/news/uk/half-the-bishops-in-the-c-of-e-were-educated-privately

 

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Round-Up of Islamic State and Other Surveys

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Islamic State

There has been a further round of polling in recent days related to the advances of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, as summarized below, by chronological order of fieldwork. Unless otherwise stated, surveys were conducted online and among representative samples of Britons aged 18 and over.

August 2014

OnePoll reported on 29 August 2014, on the basis of 1,000 interviews, that the most popular option for resolving the IS crisis was ‘encourage peaceful negotiation’ (29%), with ‘military action – we should launch air strikes’ a close second on 27%. The proportion in facour of air strikes was higher among professing Christians (32%) than atheists (24%), although the number in both sub-groups recommending military action in the form of deploying ground troops against IS was similar (13% and 12% respectively). The survey covered knowledge of, and attitudes to, a range of current international conflicts, revealing a significant lack of understanding (including the 13% of respondents who identified the Egyptian holiday resort of Sharm el-Sheikh as a terrorist organization). As so often with OnePoll studies, there is only a blog post available online, published at:

http://www.onepoll.com/13-of-brits-think-sharm-el-sheikh-the-popular-egyptian-holiday-destination-is-a-terrorist-group/

20-22 August 2014

ComRes, commissioned by the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday, reported 55% of 2,058 Britons in agreement with the suggestion that, if IS continued unchecked in Iraq, it would pose a direct threat to security on British streets; just 14% disagreed with 31% undecided. However, there was no consensus that the emergence of IS demonstrated that Britain had withdrawn from Iraq prematurely: 26% agreed, 39% disagreed, and 36% could not say. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/SM_IoS_Political_Poll_24th_August_2014_12371.pdf

22-25 August 2014

ComRes, for ITV News, asked 2,062 Britons how the British government should respond to IS, taking into account the level of military action necessary to achieve a particular outcome. One-third (35%) thought that we should seek to defeat IS in its entirety, a big jump on the 20% recorded in the pollster’s previous survey of 15-17 August, with 23% wishing to see us concentrate on preventing IS from making further gains (29% in the earlier study). Just over one-fifth (22%) argued that Britain should not become involved, 8% down on the week before. These answers were not wholly consistent with those to another question, which asked whether the government should concentrate its efforts on preventing radicalization of Muslims in the UK, rather than engaging in Iraq and Syria, a strategy with which 58% agreed. Overwhelmingly (71%), respondents considered that people using social media to promote IS should have their accounts suspended, with only 10% dissenting, with 75% concurring that social media websites should hand over to the government the personal details of anybody using their account to organize IS activity. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_26th_August_2014.pdf

28-29 August 2014

YouGov’s latest weekly poll for the Sunday Times largely replicated questions about IS and Iraq asked on 21-22 August 2014, and sometimes in earlier surveys. Opinion was found to have remained constant over the week, with 77% approving of the RAF dropping humanitarian supplies to people fleeing IS, 43% of air strikes by the RAF against IS (more specifically, 37% against IS targets in Syria), 37% of supplying arms to Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, and 29% of sending British troops to help train such forces. Strong support remained for stripping Britons fighting alongside IS of their citizenship, in cases where they held dual nationality or had been naturalized (78%), and of changing the law to allow citizenship to be withdrawn from birth Britons (67%). Overwhelmingly (86%), Britons who had fought for Islamist groups abroad were deemed to pose a threat to the country on their return, while 79% held that their Islamist involvements had increased the risk of major terrorist attacks taking place in Britain. Four-fifths wished to see the prosecution of British citizens travelling to Iraq or Syria, the presumption for many respondents being that they must have gone to fight for IS, unless they could prove otherwise. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/frletj5cgx/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140829.pdf

29-31 August 2014

Telephone interviews with 1,001 adults by ComRes for The Independent revealed continuing minority support for direct British military involvement in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria, 35% endorsing RAF air strikes (with 50% disagreement) and 20% the commitment of British ground forces (with 69% opposed). A majority (61% versus 29%) thought that Britons suspected of joining IS should have their passports taken away and be stripped of their citizenship, albeit fewer (39%) considered that Britons travelling to Iraq and Syria should be presumed to be terrorists until they could be proved innocent. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/The_Independent_Political_Poll_2nd_September_2014.pdf

3 September 2014

The deteriorating situation in Iraq and Syria, including an apparent beheading by IS of a second American citizen and a threat of a similar fate to a British hostage, is slowly increasing public support for RAF air strikes against IS. Based on a fairly small sample of 703 adults, by YouGov for The Sun, the figure now stands at 47%, ten points up on 10-11 August (when the question was first asked by YouGov), with 31% disapproval and 22% undecided. Support for Britain supplying arms to Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS has also increased, from 28% on 11-12 August to 39% on 3 September, with 37% opposed and 24% uncertain. However, there was no greater enthusiasm than in previous polls for Britain and the USA deploying ground troops in Iraq to combat IS (with 20% in favour and 58% against, the same split as on 14-15 August). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ozg4t2h6kv/SunResults_140903_Islamic_State_ISIS_W.pdf

A tracker of YouGov’s recent polling on Iraq and IS is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ogulv37v9d/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers-Iraq-IS-Conflict-030914.pdf

Scottish religion

Further evidence that religion is on the wane in Scotland is provided by two new data sources from the Scottish Government.

The proportion of adult Scots who profess no religion stood at 46% in 2013, up by six points since 2009, according to the report and tables from the 2013 Scottish Household Survey, published on 13 August 2014, for which 9,920 individuals were interviewed. There was a corresponding fall over the same period in allegiance to the Church of Scotland, from 34% to 28%, while the number of Roman Catholics remained unchanged, at 15%. Respondents were also asked about their experience of discrimination and harassment. Discrimination was reported by 7% of all Scots but by 10% of Catholics and Christians other than Church of Scotland, and by 21% of non-Christians. For harassment the national average was 6% but 14% among non-Christians. Further information is contained in tables 2.2, 4.18, and 4.19 and in figure 2.1 at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/08/7973/downloads

The majority of marriages in Scotland in 2013 were solemnized in civil ceremonies, as they have been in every year since 2005. The proportion now stands at three times the level it did in 1946-50. The principal reason why ‘religious’ weddings remain reasonably common, at 49% in 2013, is that the total is inflated by those conducted by humanist and other ‘non-religious’ celebrants, a practice which is legal in Scotland, but not yet in England and Wales. Indeed, representatives of the Humanist Society of Scotland alone officiated at 3,185 marriages in Scotland in 2013, not far short of the 4,616 celebrated by Church of Scotland ministers. If humanist and other belief weddings are excluded, then the proportion which might be considered ‘religious’, on a more conventional definition of organized religion, is reduced to 37%, the equivalent figure in 1946-50 being 83%. The fall in religious marriages has been absolute as well as relative. Whereas in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War there were an average of 35,700 per annum, there were just 10,300 in 2013, on a like-for-like basis. Weddings conducted in the Kirk have more than halved in the decade 2003-13. Details are provided in Vital Events Reference Tables 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7, published by the General Register Office for Scotland on 14 August 2014 at:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/ref-tables/2013/section-7-marriages-and-civil-partnerships.html

Trust in religious institutions

Surveys have consistently demonstrated that the under-25s are the least religious of all age groups, regardless of the measure of religiosity which is used. New research from Survation for Sky News, based on 1,004 online interviews with Britons aged 16-24 on 21-26 August 2014, has now revealed that they also tend to mistrust religious institutions, relative to other national institutions. The question asked was: ‘which of the following institutions do you trust to address your concerns/needs?’ Topline results are summarized in the table below. Distrust in religious institutions was especially high among prospective UKIP voters and residents of Wales, Scotland, and Southern England outside London (the capital itself recording 43% trust). For more detail, see tables 42-49 at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Sky-Youth-Poll-Tables.pdf

%

Trust

Not trust
National Health Service

78

22
Police

66

34
Social services

53

47
Local authorities

52

48
Judiciary

42

58
Government/Parliament

31

69
Religious institutions

31

69
Mainstream media

18

82

 

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