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Prayer and Other News

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post features eight religious statistical news stories, leading on an analysis by BRIN of the answers to one of the questions in the latest round of the European Social Survey, whose results have just been released.

Prayer

Data from Round 6 (2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS) have recently been released for most of the 30 participating countries and can be accessed at http://nesstar.ess.nsd.uib.no. UK fieldwork was undertaken by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with 2,286 adults aged 15 and over between 1 September 2012 and 7 February 2013. The standard short battery of ESS religion questions was included in the schedule: self-assessed religiosity, current and former religious affiliation, churchgoing, private prayer, and experience of religious discrimination. Trend statistics (weighted) for the claimed frequency of private prayer (i.e. apart from during religious services) in the UK appear below (figures in percentages):

	2002	2004	2006	2008	2010	2012
Every day	19.1	18.6	18.1	17.9	17.5	17.6
More than once a week	6.9	9.2	7.5	6.4	5.3	6.9
Once a week	5.2	5.0	5.3	5.2	5.0	7.0
At least once a month	6.1	6.0	5.8	6.0	5.7	5.3
Only on special holy days	2.1	2.5	1.4	1.9	2.2	1.9
Less often	16.9	16.7	15.7	14.8	15.9	14.5
Never	43.8	42.1	46.3	47.7	48.4	46.8

As ever with sample surveys, there are some fluctuations in results between surveys. Nevertheless, comparing 2012 with 2002, it will be seen that the proportion of UK citizens claiming to pray once a week or more has stayed the same (31.2% in 2002, 31.5% in 2012), although the number never praying has risen by three percentage points over the decade and is well in excess of the European average in 2012 (37.9%). In 2012 the UK ranked ninth of 24 countries in terms of percentage of the population never praying, as shown in the following table.

Czech Republic	70.5	Germany	36.9
Denmark	58.2	Russian Federation	36.4
Estonia	57.3	Iceland	33.2
Netherlands	55.3	Switzerland	32.9
Sweden	55.3	Finland	32.6
Belgium	53.9	Portugal	23.9
Norway	52.0	Bulgaria	23.9
Slovenia	47.3	Slovakia	22.7
United Kingdom	46.8	Kosovo	15.4
Hungary	41.3	Ireland	14.2
Spain	40.0	Poland	10.8
Israel	38.6	Cyprus	4.8

Faith tourism in Wales

A Wales Faith Tourism Action Plan was launched at St Asaph’s Cathedral by the Welsh Government on 25 October 2013 as part of its long-term strategy to boost tourism. The plan’s 2020 vision is ‘to exploit the full potential of Wales’ places of worship for the visitor economy and to exploit the visitor economy for the purpose of sustaining Wales’ places of worship’. It aims to build upon the existing contribution which places of worship make to Welsh tourism. In 2011 (the last year for which data are available) St David’s Cathedral was the seventh most popular free visitor attraction in Wales. According to Visit Wales, the top five places of worship in that year in terms of visitor numbers were:

St David’s Cathedral	262,000
Norwegian Church, Cardiff	149,000
Brecon Cathedral	120,000
Tintern Abbey	70,000
Llandaff Cathedral	40,000

During 2012 visitors from the UK spent an estimated £12 million while visiting cathedrals, churches, and other religious sites in Wales. More details about the initiative can be found at:

http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/tourism/2013/8125137/?lang=en

Barristers on the veil

The majority of barristers (57%) favours a ban on defendants wearing the full face-veil or niqab during the whole of a criminal trial, and a further 34% support a ban when the defendant is giving evidence. This is according to a single question online poll of members of the Bar Council conducted during October 2013 on behalf of The Times, and summarized by Frances Gibb, the newspaper’s legal editor, in an article in The Times for 2 November 2013 (available online to subscribers). Over 400 barristers responded via Survey Monkey. The poll has been triggered by the public debate about the case of a Muslim defendant who had insisted on wearing the niqab in court but who had been told by the judge she must remove it when giving evidence.

Bonfire Night

The chairman of the Edinburgh Secular Society recently called for a purely secular alternative to Bonfire Night on 5 November, to rid it of its anti-Catholic overtones, arguing that the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes or even the Pope was an offensive way to connect to the failed plot by Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. In response, a spokesperson for the Free Church of Scotland branded the secularists as ‘the puritanical killjoys of the 21st century’.

In practice, the tradition has long since moved on, and the effigies burned on bonfires are no longer just of individuals associated with the Gunpowder Plot but can be of any living public figures or celebrities who are disliked. This year a Kent bonfire society gained widespread publicity for choosing Katie Hopkins, former contestant in The Apprentice, as its annual ‘guy’, to be burned in effigy.

According to a YouGov poll, conducted online on 3-4 November 2013 among a sample of 1,747 Britons, the public is evenly divided (43% each way) on whether it is acceptable or unacceptable to burn well-known people in effigy on bonfires on or around 5 November. Men (55%) are far more likely to find it acceptable than women (31%). Somewhat fewer adults (28%) deemed it acceptable to burn an effigy of Hopkins. As for Bonfire Night itself, 24% anticipated they would be celebrating it this year, while, in a separate YouGov poll on 30-31 October, 45% said they preferred Guy Fawkes Night to Halloween, with only 13% preferring Halloween. The Bonfire Night tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/sz92wiohpx/YG-Archive-131104-Bonfire-Night.pdf

Christmas carols

BRIN has tried to spare you Christmas stories for as long as possible this year, but we cannot hold out indefinitely! Especially since there are only six full weeks to go before the festivities. Our seasonal coverage opens with news from OnePoll, published on 4 November 2013, that its latest online survey of adults aged 18 and over has confirmed Silent Night as the nation’s favourite Christmas carol, taking 59% of the vote. The carols in second to fifth positions were: O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and Away in a Manger. A majority (62%) of the sample said they would open their door to Christmas carollers. OnePoll also found that 23% of people who celebrate Christmas go and see a nativity play, and that 55% admit to having performed themselves in Christmas ‘shows’, three-quarters of which were nativity plays. The press release is at:

http://www.onepoll.com/fairytale-of-new-york-is-top-favourite-christmas-song/

Adoption

To mark the start of National Adoption Week, on 4 November 2013 First4Adoption launched a campaign to increase the number of adopters in England, working in partnership with Home for Good, a Christian agency which aims to make adoption and fostering a significant part of church life. The campaign is targeting faith communities, among others, on the basis of survey data gathered by Kindred and Work Research on behalf of the Department for Education. The research, which was quietly published earlier in the year, is being newly promoted to help underpin the campaign. It comprised both qualitative and quantitative interviews, the latter conducted online among a sample of 4,948 English adults aged 18-65 between 30 November and 5 December 2012. Quotas were set for age, gender, and region to ensure that a national cross-section was achieved. The survey revealed that among the demographic groups most predisposed to adopt or foster children were: a) the 31% of people who claim actively to practice their religion, whatever it is; and b) the 5% who profess to be Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs. In fact, 55% of those who said they were certain or very likely to adopt a child described themselves as actively practising their religion. This was seen by the researchers as part of a wider association between predisposition to adopt and ‘an altruistic streak’. The survey has been partially reported at:

http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/families/adoption/a00223862/adopter-recruitment

Catholics polled on family life

In preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, to be held at the Vatican on 5-19 October 2014, the Roman Catholic Church is consulting the global faithful about family life. It has drawn up a 40-question survey instrument covering the following ten areas:

Diffusion of the teachings on the family in scripture and the Church’s magisterium
Place of marriage according to natural law
Pastoral care of the family in evangelization
Pastoral care in difficult marital situations
Same-sex unions
Education of children in ‘irregular’ marriages
Openness of married couples to life issues (including contraception)
Relationship between the family and the person
Other challenges and proposals
Further comments

It is hard to be charitable about the design of the questionnaire, whose content lacks any kind of social scientific rigour. The questions are all of the open variety, calling for free text responses, and with no pre-set reply codes. They are mostly expressed in complicated language, with an excess of ecclesiastical jargon, and are sometimes ‘leading’. The short demographics section is very deficient and does not even ask for the respondent’s gender. On these various counts, as well as because all respondents will be entirely self-selecting, it is unlikely that any useful (or at least representative) statistics will emerge from the survey.

Presumably, however, it was not the Vatican’s intention to engage in grass-roots-led and evidence-based development of doctrine and policy. As Archbishop Bruno Forte, Secretary of the Extraordinary Synod, has clearly explained: ‘The Synod does not have to decide on the basis of the majority of public opinion’.

All the national bishops’ conferences have been asked to disseminate the survey. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has chosen to do so by making the questionnaire available online, with an option to complete it via Survey Monkey (with no obvious safeguards against misuse). Apparently, there is also to be a printed version in The Universe, a Catholic weekly. The closing date for responses is 30 November 2013.

According to James Bone, Vatican correspondent of The Times writing in that newspaper on 6 November 2013 (‘Vatican Survey Gives Catholics Chance to Question Their Faith’), the Vatican has been somewhat put out by the exercise in ‘direct democracy’ on the part of the English and Welsh bishops.

For more information, go to:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/Featured/Synod-of-Bishops-on-the-Family-2014

Christian Research’s new website

Christian Research has recently launched a new website at:

http://www.christian-research.org/

The public domain pages on the site seem mainly concerned to promote Christian Research’s consultancy services, including the potential of its online panel of some 12,000 churchgoers and church leaders (Resonate). At this stage at least, the public pages do not contain much actual research data, and certainly no substantive details of published Resonate polls, although copies of a few past publications by Christian Research are advertised for sale.

The Religious Trends section of the website can only be accessed by those paying an annual membership fee to Christian Research. The section replaces the printed edition of Religious Trends, the seventh and last edition of which was published as far back as 2008. The online version of Religious Trends remains remarkably thin and not particularly current. Indeed, in terms of content, it seems to have moved on very little from the launch version which we covered on BRIN in our post of 6 January 2011. There are sub-sections on: introduction; the world and its religions; UK church overview; Anglicans UK; other UK Churches; the Bible; and other research reports.

As it currently stands, Christian Research’s Religious Trends online compares unfavourably with Dr Peter Brierley’s research outputs, in FutureFirst and UK Church Statistics, the second edition of which will be out next year. As the former director of Christian Research, Brierley was responsible for all the print editions of Religious Trends and much else besides.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged adoption, Bar Council, barristers, Bonfire Night, Christian Research, Christmas carols, Department for Education, effigies, European Social Survey, Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, faith tourism, family, Ipsos-MORI, Kindred, Muslims, nativity plays, niqab, OnePoll, Peter Brierley, prayer, religious dress, religious festivals, religious trends, Roman Catholic Church, The Times, Wales, Work Research, YouGov | Leave a comment

From St George to Prince George

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Prince George and St George both feature in today’s round-up of religious statistical news, which contains five items.

Prince George’s christening

The private christening ceremony for His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge, which took place yesterday (23 October 2013), seems to have attracted more media and public attention than might have been anticipated. One dimension of this was a short poll conducted by YouGov the day before the christening, and released on the day of the christening, in which 1,892 adult Britons were interviewed online. The data table can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rdc3a53eph/YG-Archive-Prince-George-Christening-results-231013.pdf

According to the poll, 43% of Britons still consider ceremonies such as christenings or baptisms to be important, but they are disproportionately found among professing Christians (64%), and the over-60s and Conservative voters (58% each), with only one-third of under-40s thinking such ceremonies to be relevant. By contrast, a majority of adults (52%) do not regard baptisms as important, rising to 57% for men, 57% for the 25-59 age group (the key one for child-rearing), 66% of Scots, and 73% of non-Christians.

The same proportion who agree that baptism remains important, 43%, say that they would prefer their own child (if they had one) to be baptised as a baby, increasing to 58% of over-60s and 68% of Christians. A plurality (47%) contends that children should make up their own mind when older, this being especially the view of Scots (62%) and non-Christians (69%).

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has expressed the hope that Prince George’s christening will encourage others to seek baptism for their children. Almost half (45%) of YouGov’s respondents anticipate that the royal christening will, indeed, boost the number of baptisms in the country, Conservatives being most confident (54%). A similar amount (44%) anticipate that there will be no change in the occurrence of baptisms.

On the face of it, there seems little basis for any optimism, since the long-term trend in baptisms has been relentlessly downwards. In the case of the Church of England, the best source of data, infant baptisms represented 66% of live births in England when first reported in 1902. The figure peaked at 72% in the 1920s but nosedived from the mid-1950s, dipping below 30% in 1987, below 20% in 2000, and standing at 12% in 2011.

For the United Kingdom as a whole, Dr Peter Brierley has assembled a picture from actual and estimated data for all Christian denominations which practise infant baptism. In Table 2.2 of UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends, No. 3 (2001), he shows the ratio of baptisms to live births peaking (at around 90%) in the inter-war and immediate post-war period before falling to 74% in 1960, 64% in 1970, 53% in 1980, and 42% in 1990. A revised calculation, in Table 13.8.3 of UK Church Statistics, 2005-2015 (2011), reveals a decline from 55% in 1991 to 34% in 2010, Anglicans in the four home nations having a baptismal market share of 58% by 2010, Roman Catholics 36%, and other Protestants 6%.

Religion and loneliness

Sample surveys can sometimes be useful in contrasting perception with reality. A case in point is provided by a new poll on loneliness commissioned by the BBC from ComRes for this year’s Radio 2 Faith in the World Week, in which 3,010 adult Britons were interviewed by telephone between 13 and 29 September 2013. Full data tables were published on 18 October and are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Religion_Loneliness_Survey_Britain_October_2013.pdf

Respondents were asked whether they perceived that people with a religious faith are less likely to feel lonely than people without such beliefs. Overall, opinion was divided on the issue, with 44% thinking people of faith are less likely to feel lonely and 47% that they are not. Significantly, the highest level of agreement with the statement (59%) was found among the quarter of the sample who claimed to practise their religion (in private or in public) at least once a month, perhaps implying that religion minimizes loneliness through the associational opportunities it provides and/or the comfort which it brings.

However, when interviewees were asked whether they themselves ever felt lonely, those who practised a religion were actually more likely than average to experience loneliness in some degree (55% against 48%), with even higher figures for practising Christians (57%) and those who live alone and are religious (68%). Individuals who do not practise a religion were slightly less likely than average to experience loneliness (46%), albeit this rose to 62% among the non-religious who live on their own. The highest incidence of acute loneliness (being felt all the time or regularly) in the survey was among religious individuals who lived alone (14%, more than twice the mean).

Similarly, people who practise a religion were more likely than average to report that they felt more lonely than 10 years ago (28% against 22%), while the proportion fell to 20% for those who do not practise a religion. Those who live alone and are religious were the group most likely (43%) to admit to being lonelier than a decade ago.

The apparent conundrum (that religion might increase rather than diminish loneliness) is perhaps largely explained by the fact that the over-65 cohort has the highest concentration of people who claim to practise their religion (32% versus the norm of 24%) and who live on their own (54% compared with 26% for Britain as a whole). Not unnaturally, living on one’s own is closely associated with a sense of loneliness.

All the saints

The English would like to see St George’s Day celebrated more, despite the fact that only 40% are aware of exactly when it falls (23 April). This compares with 71% who know that United States Independence Day is on 4 July and 42% that St Patrick’s Day is on 17 March. Two-thirds consider that St Patrick’s Day is now more widely celebrated here than the English patron saint’s day, with only 7% arguing that St George gets more attention. Three-quarters say that they would like to see this situation change, 41% blaming the absence of a bank holiday for St George’s Day as a reason for the lack of commemoration, and 35% attributing it to politicians’ failing to focus on St George’s Day. A majority (61%) also wants the St George’s flag flown more across the country. The findings come from a poll by ICM Research for British Future in connection with the latter’s recent Festival of Englishness. Online interviews were conducted with 2,360 adults in Britain on 9-11 October 2013, including 1,739 in England. Results have been reported in various online media.

Church of England ministry statistics

The Research and Statistics Division of the Archbishops’ Council published Statistics for Mission, 2012 – Ministry on 18 October 2013. It comprises 15 tables and 21 figures preceded by a summary and explanatory notes. The Church of England had 28,314 licensed ministers in 2012, 65% of whom received no stipend. Licensed stipendiary (mainly parochial) clergy comprised just 29% of this total, their numbers reduced by 13% since 2002. This decline was offset by a rise of 51% in self-supporting clergy over the decade, who are disproportionately female (52% in 2012 against 23% of full-time stipendiary clergy). A 6% fall in stipendiary clergy is forecast for the next five years, entirely among men, with women clergy expected to increase slowly. Women constituted 47% of candidates recommended for ordination training in 2012, but they were significantly older than male candidates; whereas 60% of male ordinands were under 40, 72% of women were over 40. The average age of full-time stipendiary clergy increased between 2002 and 2012, from 50 to 52 years for men and from 48 to 51 for women. Very few stipendiary clergy (3%) come from ethnic minority backgrounds. The report can be found at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1868964/ministry%20statistics%20final.pdf

Veils reprised

The debate about the veiling of Muslim women rumbles on, with fresh polling data released by Survation on 14 October 2013 from its immigration study conducted for Sky News on 27-29 September 2013 among an online sample of 1,508 Britons aged 18 and over. Data tables (of which those for questions 40 to 46 are relevant for our immediate purpose) have been posted at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Full-Sky-News-Immigration-Tables.pdf

As with other surveys reported on BRIN, the majority in the Survation poll was opposed to this particular aspect of Islamic women’s dress, the proportion varying somewhat dependent upon the context:

84% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned in courtrooms for people giving evidence (11% disagreeing)
80% want bank managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (13% disagreeing)
72% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned for all front-line staff in hospitals (8% disagreeing, with a further 16% thinking it should be for individual hospitals to determine)
70% want petrol station managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (22% disagreeing)
68% want shop managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (25% disagreeing)
68% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned for all schoolchildren in classrooms (10% disagreeing, with a further 19% thinking it should be for individual schools to determine)
66% want university managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (27% disagreeing)
66% do not want schools to be able to require pupils to wear face covering veils and want the government to prevent them from doing so (26% disagreeing)
60% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned in public streets and open spaces (32% disagreeing)
56% consider that women who wear full face covering veils like the niqab are more responsible for creating divisions and tensions in our society than the politicians and journalists who criticize veil-wearing women (26%)

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged baptism, BBC, British Future, christening, Church of England, clergy, ComRes, Englishness, face coverings, Faith in the World Week, ICM Research, Islamophobia, loneliness, ministry, Muslims, niqab, patron saints, Peter Brierley, Prince George of Cambridge, religious dress, religious faith, rites of passage, Sky News, St George, Survation, veils, women, YouGov | 1 Comment

Things Unseen and Other News

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Things unseen

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

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

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

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

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

Headline findings are:

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

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

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

Storm in a bed and breakfast cup

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

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

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

Contemporary British Jewry

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

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

Clergy stress

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

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

Bishops’ office and working costs

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

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

Scottish Methodist lay preachers

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

Quaker membership statistics

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

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

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

Secularization Restated and Other News

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven statistical news stories about religion in Britain feature in today’s post, including a summative article from Steve Bruce in reaffirmation of the secularization thesis.

Secularization restated

In Britain ‘there is no evidential warrant for describing individual beliefs and behaviour as post-secular or de-secularising’, concludes Professor Steve Bruce in a characteristically robust and entertaining restatement of the secularization paradigm: ‘Post-Secularity and Religion in Britain: An Empirical Assessment’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2013, pp. 369-84 (published on 2 October 2013). ‘Religion has become more contentious; it has not become more popular’ is his principal argument, supported by a high-level overview of statistics of religious membership, attendance, rites of passage, institutions, and beliefs. Nor, Bruce suggests, has the overall picture of (largely Christian) decline been offset by the undoubted growth of non-Christians (unfortunately, the paper was finalized before publication of the results of the 2011 census) and the emergence of alternative forms of spirituality. Nor, in a tantalizingly brief section, does Bruce find evidence of any compensating increased presence of religion in public life; indeed, he claims, there has been ongoing privatization. The article’s arguments and sources are essentially familiar (and perhaps still best read in full in their original incarnations), but relative newcomers to the secularization debate may benefit from it as an introductory discourse and compilation of data. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind a publisher’s pay-wall; for access options, go to:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2013.831642#.UlbieTZwbX4

Westminster Faith Debates

Professor Linda Woodhead released on 8 October 2013 the full data tables from the second YouGov poll she commissioned for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, in which 4,018 adult Britons were interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. The data can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4vs1srt1h1/YG-Archive-University-of-Lancaster-Faith-Matters-Debate-full-results-180613-website.pdf

The tables are a substantial resource for secondary research. They extend to 65 pages and include breaks of all questions by the following variables: current voting intention, 2010 vote, gender, age, social grade, region, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, religious meeting/service attendance, and self-assessed religiosity/spirituality.

The questions cover the following religious topics: self-assessed religiosity/spirituality, religious/spiritual influences, private and public religious practices, belief in God/higher power, and sources of guidance in life. Respondents were then asked about their attitudes to: abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, faith schools, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, protests against perceived insults of faiths, immigration, the European Union, changes in British society, the welfare system, Islamist terrorism, the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church, and Margaret Thatcher versus Tony Blair as best Prime Minister.

The findings for faith schools – a discrete and substantial module in the survey – have previously been released and summarized by BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/faith-schools-and-other-news/

It would be impossible here to record the results for the full range of other subjects covered in the poll, but the final question might be worth a note. Asked which Prime Minister did more good for Britain, 39% said Thatcher, 18% Blair, 6% both equally, 28% neither, with 9% undecided. Thatcher commanded above average support from Anglicans (47%), Presbyterians (49%), and Methodists (47%). Blair was disproportionately popular with Roman Catholics (27%) and churchgoers. Muslims (42%) were most likely to say neither.

BRIN was also struck by the couple of questions surrounding Jerry Springer: the Opera, the British musical staged in London in 2003-05 before touring the UK in 2006, and which attracted strong protests from Christians on the grounds of its irreverence and profanity. Notwithstanding, the production excited little interest from pollsters at the time, so it is good to have the furore covered here, albeit almost a decade late. Reminded of the context, 52% of YouGov’s respondents felt that peaceful protests against the musical were understandable and 42% that they were justified (36% not). Catholics (54%), the historic Free Churches, Muslims (66%), and weekly attenders at services (76%) were most likely to consider the protests justified.

UK Data Service

The UK Data Service (UKDS) has recently announced the release of two historic datasets which will be of interest to BRIN users:

SN 4394: a first release of English Church Attendance Survey, 1998, undertaken by Peter Brierley, and joining the dataset for the 1989 church census, which is already held by UKDS
SN 1988: what appears to be a new edition of Conventional Religion and Common Religion in Leeds, 1982, undertaken by the University of Leeds, and based on interviews with electors and university students

More information about both studies can be found in the UKDS catalogue at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

The UKDS JISCmail list provides regular free (mostly weekly) email alerts about the release of new datasets. To join the list, go to:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=UKdataservice

Religious education

A mainly qualitative assessment of the state of religious education (RE) in English primary and secondary schools is contained in a new report, Religious Education: Realising the Potential, released by Ofsted on 6 October 2013. Data mostly derive from inspections carried out in 185 schools between September 2009 and July 2012, 659 RE lessons being observed. The sample did not include voluntary aided schools or academies with a religious designation, for which alternative inspection arrangements exist. It also excluded schools judged to require special measures or given notice to improve. The overall message in the report is ‘could do better’, with eight areas of concern identified about RE. A tabular summary of the inspection data under seven headings, shown separately for primary and secondary schools, appears on p. 38. In terms of overall RE effectiveness, 42% of primary and 48% of secondary schools were considered outstanding or good, 56% and 41% respectively satisfactory, and 2% and 11% inadequate. Subject training was deemed the worst single facet of provision, with 29% of primaries and 35% of secondaries judged inadequate in this regard. The report is available at:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/religious-education-realising-potential

Evangelicals at work

Published on 7 October 2013, Working Faithfully? is the latest report from the 21st Century Evangelicals project, developed by the Evangelical Alliance and the six other partner organizations in its research club. It derives from an online survey in May 2013 of 1,511 members of the Alliance’s self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) panel of UK evangelicals. Respondents were overwhelmingly (91%) in manual employment and had a strong sense of calling in their job (69%). They mostly (84%) felt valued for the work they did, although 39% experienced work-related stress, 37% endured a working week of more than 40 hours, and 35% of men and 27% of women regularly brought work home with them. Almost half (44%) perceived Christians to suffer discrimination in employment often or sometimes, and 53% thought that Christians getting into trouble at work is a significant problem. However, no more than 12% claimed they had personally been discriminated against in employment for any reason, and just 2% because of a faith-related issue. Somewhat more (14%) said they had encountered hostility, exclusion or mocking from work colleagues on account of their faith, while 9% reported difficulties with their management because they were known as a Christian or had spoken up for Christian values. The report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Working-faithfully-PDF.pdf

Nobel peace laureates

Religious figures feature prominently in a list of past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize considered to have been most deserving, according to a YouGov poll published on 9 October 2013, 1,879 adult Britons having been interviewed online on 7 and 8 October. The data table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zdg9yb4z0f/YG-Archive-Nobel-Peace-Prize-results-081013.pdf

The top six places in the list of most deserving recipients included:

1st (37%) – Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, awarded the Prize in 1979 for her work in overcoming poverty and distress
2nd (33%) – Martin Luther King Jr, Baptist minister and American civil rights leader, awarded the Prize in 1964 for combating racial inequality through non-violence
5th (13%) – Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, awarded the Prize in 1984 for his leadership of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa
6th (12%) – 14th Dalai Lama, awarded the Prize in 1989 for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet

Noteworthy among variations by demographic sub-groups was the disproportionately strong support for Martin Luther King and the Dalai Lama among the 18-24s (43% and 24% respectively).

Emigration to Israel

On 30 September 2013 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published Immigration from the United Kingdom to Israel, by Laura Staetsky, Marina Sheps, and Jonathan Boyd, and based upon both Israeli and UK statistical sources. The report showed that 32,600 UK-born Jews or people of Jewish ancestry emigrated to Israel (a process known as making aliyah) between 1948 (when the Jewish state was founded) and the end of 2011, constituting about 1% of all immigrants to Israel during that period. Peak UK immigration to Israel occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, since when the numbers have mostly tailed off, albeit with a spike in the late 2000s. UK-born immigrants to Israel are disproportionately young, with a median age in the late 20s. Their departure for Israel has therefore pushed up the mean age of the Jewish community remaining in the UK and reduced the number of Jewish women of reproductive age in the UK, adversely affecting the community’s potential for growth. Nor is there a compensatory flow in the other direction, the number of UK-born Jews living permanently in Israel in the 2000s being, at 19,000, greater than the 15,000 Israeli Jews permanently living in the UK. For the full data and analysis, go to:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/JPRAliyahReport6thProof.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Aliyah, church attendance, discrimination, emigration, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Israel, Jerry Springer the Opera, Jonathan Boyd, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Laura Staetsky, Leeds, Linda Woodhead, Margaret Thatcher, Marina Sheps, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize, Ofsted, religious education, secularization, Steve Bruce, Tony Blair, UK Data Service, Westminster Faith Debates, work, YouGov | Leave a comment

Discrimination, Identity, and Other News

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Religious discrimination (1)

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

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

The data table for the survey can be found at:

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

Religious discrimination (2)

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

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

Under a veil

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

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

Religious identity (1)

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

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

Religious identity (2)

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

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

Scottish marriages

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

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

The tables can be found at:

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

Time use

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

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

Fossil free churches

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

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

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

Faith Schools and Other News

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven religious statistical stories feature in today’s post, including five newly-released YouGov polls, four touching on aspects of religious prejudice, and leading with a major study of attitudes to faith schools.

Faith schools

In our post of 2 September 2013, we referred to new research into faith schools commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead in connection with the Westminster Faith Debates. It was undertaken on her behalf by YouGov, 4,018 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. That research was published on 19 September, in the form of a press release on the Religion and Society website and the data tables on the YouGov website. Some fascinating results emerged, which, as the press release indicated, will offer ‘little comfort for either those who defend or those who oppose faith schools’. Findings include the following:

Only 32% believe the Government should fund faith schools generally, 18-24s being most supportive (43%), with 45% opposed, peaking at 57% in Scotland (where the existence of Catholic schools has often been a matter of controversy), and 23% undecided
Government funding of any type of faith school fails to find majority support, but opposition is notably lowest for Anglican schools (38%) and greatest for Islamic schools (60%) – hostility to Hindu and Jewish schools (59% and 55% respectively) is also high, but falls to 43% for Christian schools other than Anglican
Only 24% would choose a faith school for their own child, the proportion not exceeding 30% in any demographic sub-group, with 59% being unlikely to do so (peaking at 77% in Scotland)
Academic standards (77%), location (58%), and discipline record (41%) are the major factors in choice of school – just 5% attach importance to grounding of a pupil in a faith tradition and 3% to transmission of belief about God, and no more than 23% cite ethical values
A plurality (49%) finds it acceptable that faith schools should have admission policies which give preference to children and families who profess or practice the religion with which the school is associated (with 38% deeming it unacceptable, ranging from 31% of women to 51% of Scots)
Just 23% (never exceeding 28% in any demographic sub-group) agree that all faith schools should have to admit a proportion of pupils from a different religion or none at all, while 11% think it better for faith schools to admit pupils only of the same faith and 30% that schools should determine their own admissions policies

Analysing the factors which determine favourability to faith schools, Woodhead found strength of belief in God to be the most significant. When it came to attitudes to non-Christian faith schools, an insular (as opposed to a cosmopolitan) outlook was a key influence. In general, while there was some age effect, gender, social grade, and voting intentions appeared to make little difference to opinion.

The press release can be found at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/new_poll_reveals_what_people_really_think_about_faith_schools

and the data tables (with breaks confined to gender, age, social grade, region and voting intention) at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4n6d3tnayp/YG-Archive-University-of-Lancaster-Faith-Matters-Debate-results-180613-faith-schools.pdf

Y-word in football

Yid is slang for a Jew, deriving from Yiddish. On 9 September 2013 the Football Association (FA), which is ‘cracking down’ on undesirable behaviour in football, issued a governance statement about what it described as the ‘y-word’, concluding that ‘the use of the term “Yid” is likely to be considered offensive by the reasonable observer’ and encouraging football fans ‘to avoid using it in any situation’. The statement was clearly directed at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (the ‘Spurs’) which historically had many Jewish supporters. In consequence, its fans often still describe themselves as ‘Yids’ or as belonging to ‘the Yid Army’, and the team’s opponents, in turn, call Spurs supporters ‘Yids’. The FA’s statement has led to controversy and debate, in which even the Prime Minister has become involved.

To test public opinion on the topic, YouGov questioned 1,878 British adults aged 18 and over online on 18 and 19 September 2013. Although three-fifths of those interested in football felt that it was acceptable for Tottenham fans to use the y-word in describing themselves, fewer (46%) of the sample as a whole agreed (with 26% disagreeing and 28% undecided). One-quarter contended that such self-description encouraged anti-Jewish abuse, albeit one-fifth argued the contrary, suggesting that anti-Jewish abuse was actually discouraged by reclaiming the y-word as a positive. A plurality (41%) deemed it unacceptable for Spurs’ opponents to call Tottenham fans ‘Yids’, but people interested in football were more inclined to tolerate use of the word in this context (47%) than Britons overall (34%). Roughly half of both the public and those interested in football seemed to approve of the FA’s intervention in the matter, but 34% thought there were other (implicitly more important) issues for the FA to focus on, UKIP voters (56%) particularly subscribing to this view. Data tables were published on 20 September at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ms6ofjga9s/YG-Archive-‘Yid-Army’-results-190913.pdf

By way of footnote, some BRIN readers may be interested to know that a forthcoming exhibition tells the story of Jews and football in Britain. Entitled Four Four Jew: Football, Fans, and Faith, it runs at the Jewish Museum in London from 10 October 2013 to 23 February 2014.

Banning the burka (1)

Recent high-profile cases, involving courts and a college, have reignited the controversy surrounding Islamic women’s dress, the debate having now spilled over into other arenas such as hospitals. The specific point at issue has been the desirability of permitting the wearing of the full face veil or niqab in public, but The Sun commissioned YouGov to run a poll about the burka (a whole-body garment) more generally, 1,792 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 16 and 17 September 2013. Three-fifths (61%) supported a total ban on the burka in Britain, 5% less than in April 2011, while 32% were opposed to such a prohibition and 8% undecided. The strongest backing for a ban came from UKIP voters (93%), the over-60s (76%), and Conservatives (71%), with the 18-24s (55%), Liberal Democrats (46%), and Scots (42%) most hostile. Opposition to a ban effectively increased when the question was asked in a more roundabout way, 38% agreeing with the proposition that people should be allowed to wear whatever clothing they want in public, including the burka, 54% being in disagreement. At the same time, many respondents wanted officials and employers to have discretion to ban the burka in specific locations: 86% at security checkpoints, 83% in courtrooms (for defendants), 79% in courtrooms (for witnesses), 68% in schools and colleges, and 63% in universities and the workplace. Full data tables were published on 18 September 2013 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7kfoc0tfiq/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-170913-the-Burhka.pdf

Banning the burka (2)

YouGov’s polling for The Sunday Times, conducted online on 19-20 September 2013 and published on 22 September, was more nuanced, differentiating between the burka, the niqab, and the hijab (a headscarf which does not cover the face). Whereas two-thirds of the 1,956 respondents supported a ban in Britain on both the burka and the niqab, with fewer than one-quarter disagreeing, only 25% opposed the wearing of the hijab (with 65% against its prohibition). Rather more (76%) wanted schools to be allowed to ban their students from wearing burkas or niqabs, and 81% wanted hospitals to be permitted to ban their staff from wearing the garments. Referring to the recent court case involving a female defendant with a veil, just 6% thought she should be allowed to wear it throughout the entire trial; 54% favoured removal of the veil in court at all times and a further 35% while the woman was giving evidence. The usual demographic variations can be seen in the answers to all these questions, with UKIP and Conservative voters and the over-60s least sympathetic to Islamic dress, and the under-40s (especially), Londoners, and Scots disproportionately more tolerant. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4ua4utkfr8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-200913.pdf

Churchgoers and evolution

A non-random and disproportionately northern ‘convenience sample’ of 1,100 attenders at 132 Protestant churches, who completed questionnaires in 2009, is used by Andrew Village and Sylvia Baker to examine ‘Rejection of Darwinian Evolution among Churchgoers in England: The Effects of Psychological Type’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2013, pp. 557-72. The principal conclusions are set out in the abstract: ‘The main predictors of rejecting evolution were denominational affiliation and attendance. Individuals from Pentecostal or evangelical denominations were twice as likely to reject evolution compared with those from Anglican or Methodist churches. In all denominations, higher attendance was associated with greater rejection of evolution. Education in general, and theological education in particular, had some effect on reducing rejection, but this was not dependent on having specifically scientific or biological educational qualifications. Psychological type preferences for sensing over intuition and for thinking over feeling also predicted greater rejection, after allowing for the association of type preferences and general religiosity.’ For options to access the article, go to:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12049/abstract

Ecumenism in Scotland

A report on ecumenical activity at congregational level has been prepared by the Church of Scotland’s Committee on Ecumenical Relations and the Ministries Council, based on research carried out in February-March 2013. A questionnaire was sent to all the Kirk’s parishes of which 823 (over half) replied online or by post, a significant minority of which recorded the absence of any other denomination in the parish. Where there was a presence, Roman Catholic, Scottish Episcopal and Baptist churches and independent fellowships were thickest on the ground. However, in practice working relationships were closest (in terms of frequent ecumenical contacts) with the United Reformed Church, followed by the Scottish Episcopal Church, Congregational Federation, and Salvation Army. The commonest inter-denominational activities involving Church of Scotland parishes were the World Day of Prayer, Holy Week services, Christian Aid Week, and Week of Prayer for Christian Unity services. Only a minority of parishes belonged to a local Churches Together Group/Council of Churches (43%) or to an ecumenical ministers’ meeting (48%), but it could have been that none existed locally in some cases. The ‘deepest’ forms of collaboration were inevitably limited, just 6% of congregations sharing their building with another denomination, 3% being in a covenanted partnership with a congregation from another denomination, and 1% having involved an ecumenical partner in the appointment of a minister. More Church of Scotland parishes (70%) detailed hindrances to ecumenical working than identified benefits (60%). Further information about the research can be obtained from Very Rev Dr Sheilagh Kesting at SKESTING@COFSCOTLAND.ORG.UK

Ghosts and UFOs

A majority of Britons (52%) believe that some people have experienced ghosts but fewer (38%) think that some individuals have witnessed UFOs with an extra-terrestrial origin. This is according to a YouGov poll conducted online among a sample of 2,286 adult Britons aged 18 and over between 28 and 30 August 2013, on behalf of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) and published by ASSAP on 17 September 2013 (following a preview in the Sunday Telegraph for 15 September, p. 3). Disregarding inevitable variations in question-wording, belief in ghosts appears to have risen over time (see the tabulation of previous data at http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#ChangingBelief), and it is especially prevalent among women (62% in the ASSAP survey), the separated/divorced (64%), and residents of the East Midlands (66%). Belief in UFOs is highest in the North-East (50%). Disbelievers in ghosts number 34% and in UFOs 45%, peaking among full-time students at 50% and 61% respectively, with 14% and 17% of adults unsure. The data tables are at:

http://assap.ac.uk/newsite/Docs/Ghost%20UFO%20Survey%202013.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, Anti-Semitism, Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, Burka, Church of Scotland, churchgoers, courtrooms, Ecumenism, evolution, face veil, Faith schools, football, Football Association, ghosts, hijab, hospitals, Islamophobia, Jews, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Linda Woodhead, Muslims, niqab, prejudice, psychological type, religious dress, schools, Scotland, Sunday Times, Sylvia Baker, The Sun, Tottenham Hotspur FC, UFOs, Westminster Faith Debates, Yids, YouGov | 1 Comment

Attitudes to Immigration and Other News

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post features seven stories which have landed on BRIN’s desk during the past fortnight. Please use the contact tab on our homepage to alert us to any significant news items which we appear to have missed.

Attitudes to immigration and religious affiliation

Lord Ashcroft published the latest of his large-scale opinion polls on 1 September 2013, this time exploring attitudes to immigration. The sample comprised 20,062 Britons aged 18 and over interviewed online, presumably by Populus, between 17 and 29 May 2013. As usual, Ashcroft included a question about religious affiliation: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ As in the census of population for England and Wales, Christian denominations are not differentiated in the response codes. The results of this question appear on pp. 384-92 of the data tables which can be found at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Immigration-Poll-Full-tables.pdf

In these tables religious affiliation is broken down by the following variables: gender, age, age within gender, social grade, social grade within gender, region, region within gender, educational attainment, educational attainment within gender, working status, employment sector, current voting intention, voting at the 2010 general election, and attitudes to immigration clusters. The clusters are the result of a segmentation analysis by which ‘seven pillars of opinion’, as Ashcroft describes them, have been distilled from the answers given to the various immigration questions. The clusters range from ‘universal hostility’ at one end of the spectrum to ‘militantly multicultural’ at the other, denoting the extremes of antipathy to and acceptance of immigration. These clusters are fully explained on pp. 10-15 of the report on the survey at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/LORD-ASHCROFT-Public-opinion-and-the-politics-of-immigration2.pdf

A table mapping the clusters to religious affiliation is set out below. Although the findings are not fully consistent, it will be seen that professing Christians (a majority of whom will be white British) tend to be disproportionately uncomfortable about immigration and non-Christians, many of whom will be first- or second-generation immigrants, disproportionately favourable to it. As for people of no religion, the major discovery is that they constitute a majority (51%) of the ‘militantly multicultural’ cluster, 15% more than their presence in the population as a whole, whereas Christians are 17% less numerous in this cluster than in the country.

Segment	Christian	Non-Christian	No religion	No answer
All	55	7	36	2
Universal hostility	58	4	37	1
Cultural concerns	65	4	29	2
Competing for jobs	57	6	36	2
Fight for entitlements	62	4	32	2
Comfortable pragmatists	53	8	38	2
Urban harmony	41	24	29	6
Militantly multicultural	38	9	51	3

If the religious affiliation data from this poll are merged with those from other published Populus surveys conducted during the first half of 2013, then we have information about 60,358 Britons. Their religious profile is as follows: 55.2% Christian, 7.2% non-Christian, 35.2% no religion, and 2.3% not stated. It should be noted that these statistics are not directly comparable with those from the 2011 census because: a) they relate to Great Britain, whereas census data are just available for England and Wales at present; b) they are confined to adults while the census covers all ages; and c) the questions differ. In particular, Populus uses a ‘belonging’ form of religious affiliation, which is known to drive up the numbers professing no religion.

Is the Church of England out of touch?

In her column in the latest issue (1 September 2013, freely available online) of The Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter lambasts the Church of England for being out of touch. She was responding to a recent speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he called upon Christians to ‘repent’ for their past homophobic attitudes. ‘The Church is run by a bunch of grey men in fancy costumes’, Street-Porter continued, who ‘fail to represent modern Britain in any meaningful way.’ But does the great British public agree with her view that the Church of England is out of touch with contemporary society (not least in relation to the Church’s struggles with gender and sexual orientation equality issues during the past couple of decades or so)?

The answer appears to be an emphatic yes. The question has been directly addressed in online polling by YouGov on four occasions during 2012-13, with a substantial majority arguing that the Church of England is out of touch with the public mood: 65% on 26-27 January 2012 (in the wake of episcopal opposition in the House of Lords to the Government’s benefits cap); 76% on 22-23 November 2012 (following General Synod’s failure to pass legislation to enable women bishops); 61% on 14-15 March 2013; and 69% on 27-28 March 2013 (the last two surveys being conducted when the same-sex marriage Bill was a live issue). Demographic variations in these results, including by age, are surprisingly small.

Nevertheless, there is some limited comfort in the polls for the Church of England: a) even more Britons (77% on 14-15 March last) think the Roman Catholic Church is out of touch; b) relatively few (14% on 5-13 June 2013, in an as yet unpublished YouGov poll commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead) go so far as to say that the Church of England is a negative force in society (albeit only 18% deem it a positive force); and c) a plurality (42% in YouGov’s study of 16-17 February 2012) still concedes that the Church of England performs a valuable role in Britain. And, despite occasional sabre-rattling in the public square to threaten disestablishment, there exists no strong public clamour to separate Church from State (see my article in Implicit Religion, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2011, pp. 319-41).

Catholic trends

‘Catholic weekly Mass attendance figures vary a lot around England and, like house prices, show a sharp north/south divide with smaller numbers up north – according to the latest diocesan accounts on the Charity Commission website.’ So writes layman Kenn Winter of Huddersfield in a letter to the editor of the Catholic weekly The Universe, published in its edition of 1 September 2013 (p. 20). Whereas in the Diocese of Westminster he finds that, on average, 700 Catholics per parish attend Mass weekly, in the Archdiocese of Liverpool it is only 250. Winter also notes the big discrepancy between Catholic population and weekly Massgoers, citing the Diocese of Salford as an example, with 330,000 Catholics and 58,000 weekly attenders at Mass. ‘Most Catholics do not go to Mass – especially schoolchildren, yet Catholic schools’ numbers are burgeoning …’ He concludes that, with more children in Catholic schools than attenders at weekly Mass, and often with more Catholic schools than parishes, there appears to be a move away from parish life and the centrality of the parish priest. He ponders: ‘is the Catholic Church in England changing its mission?’

Faith schools

Further to our post of 9 June 2013, the Fair Admissions Campaign released new top-level data for England and Wales on 30 August 2013 to support its claim that ‘faith-based admissions criteria cause schools to be socio-economically unrepresentative of their local areas’. As a proxy for deprivation, the Campaign mapped, for Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs), pupil eligibility for free school meals (FSMs) in the neighbourhood and in state schools. Nationally, 18.1% of primary and 15.2% of secondary school students are considered eligible for FSMs, but the proportion is significantly lower in Roman Catholic schools (virtually all of which are said to have fully religiously selective admissions criteria): 7.1% fewer in Catholic primaries and 4.7% less in secondaries. Admissions criteria vary in Church of England schools. Overall, their FSM numbers are 0.2% below the norm in primaries and 1.9% in secondaries, falling to 3.9% under in the case of Anglican secondaries applying religious admissions criteria. For Jewish schools the FSM undershoot is even worse, 13.4% in primaries and 14.4% in secondaries, while even Muslim secondary schools are 9.4% below average in terms of FSM pupils. At the other end of the spectrum, schools with no religious character are 1.3% above the FSM norm at primary and 0.9% at secondary level. The contention is that religious admissions criteria benefit middle-class parents who have the time to participate in activities required to fulfil the criteria and to plan ahead. The Campaign’s press release can be found at:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/revealed-how-much-faith-based-admissions-socio-economically-segregate-school-intakes/

More generally, the British public clearly entertains reservations about faith schools, according to the latest (as yet unpublished) polling evidence, from YouGov on behalf of Professor Linda Woodhead, 4,018 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. Three-quarters (59%) say they would be unlikely to send their own child to a faith school. Almost two-fifths (38%) find it unacceptable that faith schools are allowed to give preference in their admissions policies to children and families who profess or practice the relevant religion, while 23% contend that all faith schools should have to admit a proportion of students from a different religion or no faith at all.

GCSE results

Provisional GCSE results for the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland) for the summer 2013 round of examinations were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications on 22 August 2013. For Religious Studies (RS) there were 263,988 entrants for the full course, 24,865 or 10.4% up on the previous year, more than twice the increase in candidates for all subjects (4.2%). The ten-year growth for RS is 99.5%, so it could be said to have been a boom decade for the study of religion, even though belief in and practice of it among adolescents and youth have generally reduced on most performance indicators. A majority (54.2%) of RS students in 2013 was female, 3.1% more than for all subjects, but well below the 68.5% for A Level RS. The pass rate for GCSE RS full course was 98.3%, down by 0.2% from 2012, the same decline as for all subjects. ‘Good’ grades of A*, A, B, or C were obtained by 72.4% of RS full course entrants, reduced from 73.7% last year (compared with, respectively, 68.1% and 69.4% for all subjects); the differential might suggest that either RS attracts better students than other subjects and/or that it is a somewhat easier discipline than some.

Besides full course GCSE RS, there is a separate short course (equivalent to half a GCSE), which fared less well, attracting 174,364 candidates this summer, a drop of 61,552 or 26.1% since last year, and mirroring the 26.2% fall in all short course subjects (unsurprisingly, given that 63.6% of all short course entries are for RS). This decline reflects the fact that short courses generally are no longer used as a benchmark of school performance and thus are no longer as attractive to either schools or pupils. Although full and short course RS entrants combined were 36,687 or 7.7% fewer in summer 2013 than in summer 2012, at 438,352 they were still 23.1% more than in summer 2003. Nevertheless, the reversal of the upward trend for RS since 1995 has been seized on by some commentators on the GCSE results as a direct consequence of the Government’s introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), which excludes RS. The full examination results can be studied at:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/gcses

Egypt

The British public is normally fairly suspicious of, if not antipathetic toward, Islamism, but current political events in Egypt are leaving it a little confused. Asked whether they would prefer to see Egypt ruled by an elected Islamist government (such as existed until very recently under President Morsi) or an unelected non-Islamist regime (such as the present military-led government), 53% in an online YouGov poll on 18-19 August 2013 were undecided. The balance of the sample of 1,729 adults was divided between 24% in favour of an elected Islamist administration (ranging from 16% of UKIP voters to 30% of Scots) and 23% for an unelected non-Islamist one (with a low of 15% among Liberal Democrats and a high of 40% for UKIP supporters). These findings exemplify how, in the words of YouGov’s own commentary on the poll, ‘recent developments in Egypt have pitted one of the world’s strongest values, democracy, against one of its biggest fears, Islamist government’. The data table, released on 20 August, is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/98iltt8zen/YG-Archive-Egypt-results-190813.pdf

Muslims in the 2011 census

On 21 August 2013 the Runnymede Trust published The New Muslims, a collection of 13 short papers edited by Claire Alexander, Victoria Redclift, and Ajmal Hussain, the outcome of a workshop and a panel debate held at the University of Manchester in March. One of the contributions (pp. 16-19) is by Stephen Jivraj on ‘Muslims in England and Wales: Evidence from the 2011 Census’. This offers a comparison of the results of the 2001 and 2011 censuses to demonstrate the growth of the Muslim community with particular reference to spatial aspects at local authority level. Three main conclusions are reached: a) Muslims are clustered in selected areas with a history of immigration from Southern Asia; b) their numbers are growing in areas where they are already most clustered, but at an even faster rate in immediately adjacent areas; and c) they were fairly evenly spread across England and Wales in 2001 and had become more so by 2011, with their residential separation decreasing. The New Muslims is free to download at:

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/Runnymede_The_New_Muslims_Perspective.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Ajmal Hussain, census of population, Church of England, Claire Alexander, democracy, Egypt, English Baccalaureate, Fair Admissions Campaign, faith schools. GCSEs, Immigration, Independent on Sunday, Islamism, Janet Street-Porter, Joint Council for Qualifications, Kenn Winter, Linda Woodhead, Lord Ashcroft, Muslims, out of touch, Populus, Religious Affiliation, religious studies, Roman Catholic Church, Runnymede Trust, schools, Stephen Jivraj, The Universe, University of Manchester, Victoria Redclift, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church Growth Debated and Other News

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

An academic debate about church growth in Britain provides our lead story today, but we also find space for four new sources of religious statistics.

Church growth in Britain

Last year, in our post of 9 June 2012, BRIN featured Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present, a collection of case studies edited by David Goodhew and published by Ashgate. Our notice of the book, which took (relatively mild) exception to Goodhew’s ‘loose talk of resacralization’, fairly limited understanding of the British religious historical context, and oversights of some key primary sources, prompted a detailed response by Goodhew on the BRIN website on 6 July 2012. This exchange can still be viewed at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/church-growth-in-britain-since-1980/

Now, the arch-proponent of the secularization thesis, Steve Bruce, has provided an extended review of the collection, taking Goodhew and several of his contributors to task in the process. His ‘Secularization and Church Growth in the United Kingdom’ will appear in the next issue (Vol. 5, No. 3, 2013) of Journal of Religion in Europe. In particular, Bruce offers a robust defence of the ‘secularization paradigm’ and critiques the ‘church growth optimists’ for their caricature of social science and the weakness of their empirical evidence and interpretations. Bruce contends that pockets of church growth, as documented by Goodhew and his colleagues, within a picture of overall decline would only refute the secularization thesis if the latter required that declining interest in Churches be universal, even, and rapid, which the thesis does not stipulate.

The same journal issue will contain Goodhew’s ‘Church Growth in Britain: A Response to Steve Bruce’, reprising much of the ground covered in the 2012 book but elaborating certain of the examples. While acknowledging the existence of significant church decline in modern and contemporary Britain (indeed, Goodhew claims – overclaims, to my mind – that the book states ‘the secularisation thesis (explicit and implicit) is true – but it is not the whole truth’), Goodhew argues that there has also been ‘significant church growth – notably in London, amongst black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities, and amongst new churches.’ Goodhew’s claims for London have recently found independent validation in the results of the London Church Census, 2012, undertaken by Peter Brierley, which appeared too late for Goodhew to take into account in his article. Neither has he been able to accommodate the latest findings about York, a case study in the collection, by Robin Gill (in chapter 6 of his Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Volume 2). The final substantive section of the article develops Goodhew’s previous caveats about national ‘net’ figures of religious change, albeit I found this particular discussion somewhat less than clear-cut.

Journal of Religion in Europe gives Bruce the last say in his ‘Further Thoughts on Church Growth and Secularization’. In this Bruce stands by his original conclusion that Goodhew ‘is quite happy for his purpose to be misunderstood in a way that falsely cheers the churches’. Bruce further counsels against the dangers of generalizing from case studies while accepting that there is much value in such studies of growing congregations. He also cites the BRIN post about Goodhew’s book as additional evidence of concerns about it.

The debate between Bruce and Goodhew is conducted in a perfectly civilized manner. However, it does not break significantly new ground, certainly not in the presentation of quantitative data. As is so often the case in academic controversy, the gap between the two parties is not as wide as it seems on the surface, in that both Bruce and Goodhew accept the coexistence of church growth and decline. The difference is essentially about the relative scale of each, how this ‘net’ picture should be interpreted and explained, and what its implications are for the long-term future of institutional religion in Britain. As Bruce has indicated in an email to me, his overriding problem with Goodhew’s book is that ‘the title, the introduction and the publisher’s spin all misrepresent what Goodhew’s contributors show: that in an overall context of decline there is also re-organization with some new outlets being created and some old ones attracting members from declining congregations’. From this perspective, I continue to side more with Bruce than Goodhew.

Community census

The UK’s religious organizations are estimated to employ 61,000 workers, with a yearly wage bill (including indirect costs) of £980 million, and to contribute £1 billion annually to the supply chain for goods and services. This is according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which prepared The Community Census on behalf of Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG) between March and May 2013, the summary report being published by EIG on 17 July 2013. In addition to CEBR’s economic impact assessment of community organizations (comprising charities and voluntary groups, heritage buildings and sites, as well as religious bodies), EIG commissioned Opinium Research to survey public attitudes to them, 2,001 UK adults being interviewed online in April. This poll revealed that a majority (57% overall, 51% of men and 62% of women) believes that their local religious organizations form an important aspect of the community, even though 59% say they personally never attend or support them (with 11% claiming to attend at least once a week and 16% at least once a month). Somewhat implausibly, the youngest age cohort (18-34 years) claims to attend most assiduously on a monthly basis, followed by the over-55s, and – finally – those aged 35-54, while 8% of the 18-34s anticipate increasing their attendance at religious organizations over the next year (against 3% nationally). The Community Census, which EIG intends to be the first in a regular series, can be found at:

http://www.ecclesiastical.com/Images/Ecclesiastical_Community_Census_Report_2013.pdf

Community life

People who actively practice a religion are more likely to volunteer, either formally or informally, and donate to charity than those who profess no religion or who have a religion but do not practice it. For example, among the religious practitioners, 40% undertake formal volunteering on a regular basis (at least once a month), compared with only 25% of the nones and non-practitioners of religion. Those who actively practice their religion are also more likely to volunteer formally (as part of a group) than informally (in an individual capacity). Much of this formal volunteering and charitable giving benefits religious organizations. The findings come from the first Community Life Survey, undertaken by TNS BMRB on behalf of the Cabinet Office as a successor to the discontinued Citizenship Survey. Initial results, based on face-to-face interviews with 6,915 adults aged 16 and over in England between August 2012 and April 2013, were published on 18 July 2013 at:

http://communitylife.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/explore-the-data.html

A Level results, June 2013

At 23,354, the number of students in the UK (excluding Scotland) sitting A Level Religious Studies (RS) in June 2013 was 1.4% more than in the previous year, notwithstanding a decrease of 1.3% in entries for all A Level subjects. It was also virtually twice the figure of 12,671 of ten years before (June 2003). The increase in RS candidates for 2013 over 2012 was somewhat greater among females (1.7%) than males (0.6%), and RS remains a disproportionately feminine choice at A Level, with 68.5% of its students being female this summer, against 54.2% for all subjects. The rise in RS entries was lower in England (1.2%) than in Northern Ireland (4.3%), while Wales actually recorded a decline of 0.7%. The pass rate for A Level RS was 98.8% this year, 0.2% more than in 2012 and 0.7% greater than the average for all subjects. The proportion achieving A* or A grades in RS was unchanged from 2012, at 25.5%, somewhat below the mean for all subjects (26.3%), females (26.6%) being more likely than males (23.2%) to achieve A* or A grades for A Level RS. The much larger number sitting AS Level RS (34,679) also grew between June 2012 and June 2013, by 3.0% in the UK, even though AS entries as a whole were down by 0.4%. For the Joint Council for Qualifications’ full analysis of the June 2013 A, AS, and AEA Level results, published on 15 August 2013, go to:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels/a-as-and-aea-results-summer-2013

Anglican cathedral statistics

Cathedral Statistics, 2012, published on 12 August 2013, documents ongoing growth in several aspects of the work of the Church of England’s 42 Cathedrals and the Royal Peculiar of Westminster Abbey. In particular, all week service attendances (Sunday and mid-week combined) at the cathedrals were 3.2% higher in 2012 than 2011 and 35.1% above the 2002 level (mostly as a result of mid-week improvement). Congregations during Holy Week were 1.9% up in 2012 over 2011 and on Easter Day by 14.2%, with the Easter Day figure 10.5% greater than in 2002. Attendances during Advent, by contrast, were down by 3.9% in 2012 against 2011 and on Christmas Day by 9.2%, largely, it seems, because 25 December fell on a Sunday in 2011 but on a Tuesday in 2012. However, both Advent and Christmas attendance statistics were still higher in 2012 than in 2002, by 4.7% and 10.0% respectively, albeit communicants, both at Christmas and Easter, showed no real expansion over the decade. At 9.7 million, visitors were 1.6% more than in 2011, although much reduced from 11.1 million in 2002; to these totals must be added visitors to Westminster Abbey (1.8 million in 2012). The number of volunteers, supporting these visitors, rose by 7.1% between 2011 and 2012 and by 30.5% from 2002.

As in previous years, the report does not attempt to relate the generally improved performance of cathedrals to the wider quantitative environment of the Church of England. To quote the leader in the current issue (16 August 2013, p. 10) of the Church Times: ‘Growth [in cathedrals] … has to be seen in the context of decline in parishes. How many in the cathedral’s community have arrived there disillusioned with parish life? While a cathedral booms, churchwardens and other volunteers not far away will be stretched.’ The newspaper’s separate news coverage of the data (p. 3) highlights strengthening links between cathedrals and their local communities as an explanation for the former’s successes, and the question posed in the open-to-all poll on the Church Times website is ‘Are cathedrals good models for parish churches?’ Cathedral Statistics, 2012 is at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1820547/2012cathedralstatistics.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged A Levels, Cabinet Office, Cathedrals, Centre for Economics and Business Research, charitable giving, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Community Census, Community Life Survey, David Goodhew, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, Joint Council for Qualifications, Journal of Religion in Europe, Opinium Research, religious organizations, religious studies, secularization, Steve Bruce, TNS-BMRB, volunteering | Leave a comment

Vicar of Dibley and Other News

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Television comedies

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

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

Alternative Queen’s Speech, II

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

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

Predictions

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

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

U-turns

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

Wonga and the Archbishop of Canterbury

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

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

Beyond Sundays

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

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

Jewish demography

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

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

Anti-Semitic incidents

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

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

David Ward and the Jews

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

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

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Aliens, Alternative Queen's Speech, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ask Jeeves, atheism, Burka, census of population, Church of England, community projects, Community Security Trust, Conservative MPs, David Graham, David Ward, Diocese of London, face coverings, God, haredim, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islamophobia, Israel, Jesus Christ, Justin Welby, Liberal Democrat Voice, Liberal Democrats, Opinium Research, payday loans, predictions, Religious Affiliation, religious dress, Rev, Second Coming, Social Capital, television comedies, The Times, u-turns, Vicar of Dibley, Wonga, YouGov | Leave a comment

Same-Sex Marriage and Other News

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Same-sex marriage heads BRIN’s list of six news stories today, with a fresh poll published about religious attitudes to it, just as the necessary legislation for England and Wales was clearing its final Parliamentary hurdles.

Same-sex marriage

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is firmly on course to enter the English and Welsh statute books, following completion of its final stages in the House of Lords (Third Reading) on Monday (15 July 2013) and House of Commons (‘Ping-Pong’, consideration of House of Lords amendments) yesterday evening (16 July). Royal Assent is expected later this week, with the first same-sex marriages taking place in summer 2014.

On the same day as the House of Lords gave the Bill an unopposed Third Reading, YouGov published its latest online poll on same-sex marriage, undertaken on behalf of Centreground Political Communications on 2-3 July 2013 among 1,923 Britons aged 18 and over. It revealed that 54% of adults support changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry, with 36% opposed, and 10% undecided. This is the eighth occasion on which YouGov has posed the question since December 2012, just prior to the Bill’s introduction into the House of Commons. Each of these polls has produced a majority for change, ranging from 52% to 55%.

Right to the last, however, people of faith continue to resist same-sex marriage, albeit by a narrow margin. In the Centreground survey 44% of those regarding themselves as belonging to a particular religion supported same-sex marriage, 48% were against, with 9% uncertain. By contrast, 69% of the 42% of respondents who had no religion backed same-sex marriage, and just 20% were opposed. It will be interesting to see whether, in the face of defeat of the majority faith line on same-sex marriage in the courts of Parliament and public opinion, religious communities will now rethink their positions. The YouGov table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2wp76zkopq/YG-Archive-Centre-Ground-results-030713-same-sex%20marriage.pdf

BRIN’s post of 4 February 2013, reviewing the religious aspects of same-sex marriage, as reflected in opinion polls, on the eve of the House of Commons Second Reading debate on the Bill, is still online at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/marriage-same-sex-couples-bill/

Interviewed by YouGov, a plurality of the British public has thought the Church of England wrong to oppose same-sex marriage, as shown below:

	22-23/11/12	14-15/3/13	27-28/3/13
	(%)	(%)	(%)
Right	38	39	37
Wrong	48	48	49
Don’t know	13	14	13
N	1,812	1,918	1,918

Alternative Queen’s Speech

Last month (June 2013) a group of backbench Conservative MPs tabled a raft of 40 Bills intended as an Alternative Queen’s Speech, comprising measures to ‘recapture the common ground, where most views are’. Pollster Lord Ashcroft decided to put these proposals to the test and commissioned Populus to gauge public reaction to them. Online interviews were conducted with 2,036 adult Britons on 28-30 June 2013, the sample being split into two, one half (sub-sample A) being asked about each Bill topic introduced as ‘ideas that some people have suggested ought to become law’, the other half (sub-sample B) informed that they were suggestions ‘various Conservative MPs have said they would like to see become law’. Results were published by Ashcroft on 16 July at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Alternative-Queens-Speech-poll-Full-tables.pdf

One of the proposals was for a Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it illegal to wear face coverings in public, including the burka, thereby implicitly targeting Muslims. This was supported by 59% of sub-sample A and 61% of sub-sample B, a similar level to other polls on the subject (especially a clutch of them in 2010), and opposed by 22% and 20% respectively. Support peaked at 73% of over-65s in A (79% in B), 70% of Conservatives (75%), and 90% of UKIP voters (76%). Opposition was especially to be found among the 18-24s (42% in A) and Liberal Democrats (35% in A).

Another measure in the Alternative Queen’s Speech was the Charitable Status for Religious Institutions Bill, which would provide for a presumption that such institutions meet the public benefit test for charitable status (following a recent high-profile case involving the Charity Commission and Exclusive Brethren), although the actual question put by Populus was subtly different, ‘presuming that churches deserve charity status’. A plurality (39%) in both sub-samples was undecided about this matter, with 37% in agreement with the purposes of the Bill in A and 36% in B, and 24% and 25% respectively against. Most in favour in sub-sample A were over-65s (42%), Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (43% each), and Scots and UKIP voters (44% each). Conservative support stood at 45% in sub-sample B and UKIP at 56%. BRIN is not aware of a directly comparable question having been asked before.

Church of England social action survey

The flow of reports seeking to document the contribution of faith communities to social capital shows no sign of drying up. The latest was published on 10 July 2013 by think-tank ResPublica in association with Resurgo Social Ventures, and on behalf of the Church of England: James Noyes and Phillip Blond, Holistic Mission: Social Action and the Church of England. It is available to download from:

http://www.respublica.org.uk/documents/mfp_ResPublica%20-%20Holistic%20Mission%20-%20FULL%20REPORT%20-%2010July2013.pdf

The report is underpinned by quantitative data obtained by Research by Design (RBD), questionnaires being completed by 589 adults who attended Sunday worship at 17 Anglican churches (16 in England, 1 in Scotland) on 24 February 2013. The overwhelming majority of respondents were aged 45 and over (88%) and white (96%), broadly in line with the Church of England’s diversity audit of 2007. There is a separate report by Dave Ruston of RBD on its survey, including the full text of the questionnaire, at:

http://www.researchbydesign.co.uk/cofe/report/test.pdf

Levels of social action were found to be higher among churchgoers than the general public (data for the latter being taken from the Citizenship Survey, 2009-10), albeit the difference may be explained in part by the higher age profile of worshippers. Thus, 79% of church congregations had engaged in formal social action (organized through voluntary groups) during the previous 12 months compared with 40% of the public; informal social action was recorded by 90% and 54% respectively. The commonest manifestations of formal social action were promoting the church (66%) and volunteering for Christian charities (60%). The main examples of informal social action were keeping in touch with someone who has difficulty getting out (75%), giving advice (61%), and looking after a property or a pet for someone who is away (55%). Although most churchgoers said their faith motivated their social activism, most also agreed that they were comfortable helping folk who have different values or religious beliefs to their own. Notwithstanding their social roles, churchgoers were divided about David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, 37% feeling part of it, 30% not, and 33% failing to understand it.

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England is making available online the presentations given at its latest annual Faith in Research conference, held on 20 June 2013. Among those so far available, BRIN readers will especially value the Church of England Strategy and Development Unit’s ‘Church Growth Research Programme: An Update on Progress at the 12-Month Stage’; and Linda Woodhead’s keynote ‘The Church of England: A Changing Church in a Changing Culture’, which explores the conundrum of ‘a national church out of step with its nation’. Woodhead draws upon the findings of two online YouGov polls concerning moral issues which she commissioned, in January and June 2013. BRIN has already documented the first of these polls through its coverage of this year’s Westminster Faith Debates; we will feature the second survey in detail as soon as the data tables become available. See also Ruth Gledhill’s article in The Times for 5 July 2013, which quotes Woodhead at length. The Faith in Research presentations can be downloaded at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-2013.aspx

Sixty years on

In his latest monthly column for the Church of England Newspaper (‘Sixty Years’, 14 July 2013, p. 15), Peter Brierley tries to summarize (from actual data and ‘reasonable estimates’) the religious changes which have occurred in the UK since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He calculates that: a) church membership has fallen from 19% of the population in 1953 to 8% today; b) average Sunday congregations have declined from 14% of the population in 1973 to 6% today; c) the number of churches has fluctuated within the range of 50,000-55,000 during the Queen’s reign; and d) ministers have decreased from 42,000 in 1953 to 37,000 today. Two charts show members, churches, and ministers for each tenth year between 1953 and 2013.

British Institute of Public Opinion

Sample surveys are a vital source of data on religious topics, and it was Henry Durant’s British Institute of Public Opinion (BIPO) – later Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited – which brought them to the fore. Although Durant did not conduct a full-scale survey on religion until 1957, and only asked about religious affiliation intermittently (for the first time in 1943), the BRIN source database reveals how indebted we are to BIPO/Gallup for shining a light on popular religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in Britain. Relatively little has been written about BIPO’s history and methods, so – even though it does not focus on religion (Durant himself is said to have believed that ‘religion was no longer an important factor shaping public opinion’) – BRIN readers will probably still be interested in Mark Roodhouse, ‘“Fish-and-Chip Intelligence”: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936-63’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2013, pp. 224-48. The author’s conclusions are fairly damning: ‘The sample survey was not a precision tool for “taking the pulse of democracy”. It contained irredeemable flaws that homogenized the private opinions of a skewed cross-section of British society, while commercial pressures forced Durant to make trade-offs between cost and quality, and clients’ needs and best survey practice.’ This judgment seems rather harsh and overstated, for many of the BIPO problems which Roodhouse describes (including dependence on quota sampling and part-time interviewers) were characteristic of the early days of opinion polling and market research both in Britain and the United States.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Alternative Queen's Speech, Big Society, British Institute of Public Opinion, Burka, Centreground Political Communications, charitable status, church attendance, church growth, church membership, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Conservative MPs, Dave Ruston, face coverings, Faith in Research, Gallup Poll, Henry Durant, Islamophobia, James Noyes, legislation, Linda Woodhead, Lord Ashcroft, Mark Roodhouse, Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, ministers, Muslims, opinion polls, Peter Brierley, Phillip Blond, Populus, religious institutions, Research by Design, ResPublica, Resurgo Social Ventures, same-sex marriage, social action, Social Capital, Twentieth Century British History, volunteering, YouGov | Leave a comment

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