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Humanist Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Herewith eight more religious statistical news stories which have come to hand during the past week.

Humanist marriages

Humanist marriages have been legal in Scotland since 2005, and in 2011 (the latest year for which data are available) they were the second most common form of ‘religious’ wedding ceremony in Scotland, after the Church of Scotland. Humanist marriages are not yet legally recognized in England and Wales, but a majority of Britons (53%) and of English and Welsh (51%) think they should be, according to a YouGov poll for the British Humanist Association which was published on 18 June 2013. Online fieldwork was undertaken between 31 May and 3 June 2013 among 2,385 adults aged 18 and over. Support for change is greatest among the never married (60%), those aged 25-34 years (60%), Scots (64%), and full-time students (66%). Outright opposition to the legal recognition of humanist marriages is relatively small (12%), albeit rising to 16% in North-East England, 17% for the married or in a civil partnership, 18% for the over-55s, 19% among the retired, and 26% of widowed. The remainder of the public either expresses no opinion (10%) or takes a neutral stance (25%). Full data tables are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n87gbl5m71/YG-Archive-British-Humanist-Association-030613-humanist-marriages.pdf

Another post-Woolwich poll

Survation have recently posted the full data tables from an online poll on public attitudes to counter-terrorism and the economy which they carried out on 30 May 2013 on behalf of The Sun on Sunday among 1,007 adult Britons. They include results from a couple of questions about hate preachers in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of Islamists. One question asked whether, in general, Muslim communities had been doing all they could to combat the threat of hate preachers and extremism; only 26% of Britons thought they had against 60% who deemed these communities to have been complacent and insufficiently proactive in addressing the problem. The second question asked respondents to anticipate the likely outcome of the long-running case involving Abu Qatada, the radical Muslim cleric; 24% expected him to be forcibly extradited to his native Jordan, 20% to return to Jordan voluntarily, and 38% to remain in the UK indefinitely, with 17% uncertain what would happen. In fact, a treaty which would facilitate Abu Qatada’s extradition and trial in Jordan has now been approved by the Jordanian and UK Parliaments, so the poll has been overtaken by events. The data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Survation-Sun-On-Sunday-Full-Report-020613.pdf

Religious education (RE) in primary schools

‘The lack of time allocated to RE during initial teacher training courses leaves primary school teachers feeling under-prepared to teach the subject when they arrive in the classroom … This, compounded by a lack of curriculum time in many schools and the high turnover of RE subject leaders, is leaving RE teaching in a perilous state in many primary schools.’ So concludes the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) in a report published on 20 June 2013 and based upon online questionnaires completed by a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 679 English primary schools over a six-week period during the Spring Term 2013. In three-quarters of cases the respondent was the subject leader for RE. The report, comprising a brief textual analysis and 13 tables, can be found at:

http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/NATRE_Primary_RE_Survey_2013_1_2_final.pdf

Overall, the resources available for RE were judged to be adequate in 61% of schools and more than adequate in 24%. That left 15% of schools where resources were considered to be less than adequate, rising slightly to 17% for academy and community schools without a religious character (but still 12% even in schools with a religious character). Most schools (82%) devoted less than an hour a week to RE, including 6% who allocated less than half an hour (10% in schools without a religious character). However, this timetabling was not seriously out of line with that for history and geography. One-quarter (24%) of informants claimed to have received no initial teacher training in RE (compared with 16% who said the same about history and 7% about English), and this was even 15% for those who had pursued the three- or four-year bachelor’s degree in education. As a consequence, 17% recalled that they had not been confident at all about teaching RE when they began their careers, albeit 93% assessed themselves as now being very or reasonably confident. The most regularly used resources for teaching RE were the locally agreed syllabus (78%) and the internet (67%).

NATRE is currently fielding an equivalent online survey in English secondary schools. It was launched on 30 May and runs until 26 July 2013. BRIN expects to cover the results in due course.

St Paul’s the tops!

St Paul’s Cathedral and Big Ben tied in first place (with 19% each) in a recent YouGov poll (for Warburtons) in which 2,050 Britons were invited to select their favourite London skyline image from a list of thirteen landmark buildings. Online fieldwork was undertaken between 31 May and 3 June 2013, although results were not released until 19 June. St Paul’s was the undisputed leader over Big Ben among women (21%), the over-55s (27%), retired people (28%), non-manual workers (22%), married persons (22%), separated or divorced (27%), widowed (33%), Londoners (22%), Welsh (18%), and Scots (22%). St Paul’s was the only religious building on the list, with Tower Bridge in third position (12%) and the other ten landmarks all scoring below 10%. One can only speculate as to the reason(s) for St Paul’s popularity: its outstanding architecture, its symbolism of the divine, its epitome of national unity and defiance in that famous wartime photograph from the London blitz, and so forth. Tables can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/vg43flfgno/YG-Archive-Weber-Shandwick-results-030613-Warburtons-London.pdf

Diocese of Leicester mission statistics

A rich statistical profile of the Church of England Diocese of Leicester is contained in its statistics for mission returns for 2012, published (with comparisons for previous years) on 16 June 2013 as a summary report (in PDF format) and raw data (in Excel format) at:

http://www.leicester.anglican.org/news/details/2000-people-joined-leicestershire-churches-last-year

Not only are the figures more up-to-date than the last Church of England national return (for 2011, published on 7 May), but they also relate to some matters which have not hitherto been reported on nationally. Two especially caught BRIN’s attention. First, there is the revelation that 38% of adults in Anglican worshipping communities in the diocese are now aged 70 or above. Second, we get insights into the dynamics of joining and leaving these worshipping communities, unpacking the net figures (‘stocks’) to reveal the underlying and partially offsetting inward and outward ‘flows’. The table below summarizes the position in the diocese for adults, children and young people combined for the four-year period 2009-12:

Joining worshipping community
For first time	4,074
Transfer from another church	1,912
Returning after break from church	822
Total	6,808
Leaving worshipping community
Death or ill-health	1,832
Relocation or joining another church	1,555
No longer part of any church	570
Total	3,957

Scottish Episcopal Church statistics

Decline in the Scottish Episcopal Church appears to have bottomed out somewhat, according to the annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 December 2012 which were presented to the Church’s General Synod meeting in Edinburgh on 6-8 June 2013. The number of members was down just 0.3% on 2011, of communicants by 0.7%, and of attenders on a Sunday before Advent by 0.7%. The Diocese of Edinburgh even registered modest growth on all three indicators. Of course, the longer-term trend remains downwards. Church attendance is said to have reduced by 15% over five years, and the current totals of members (34,804) and communicants (24,480) are well down on the high points of, respectively, 147,518 in 1921 and 62,375 in 1938. However, Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, highlighted to General Synod the existence of many ‘adherents’ of the Scottish Episcopal Church who were neither members nor communicants. The 2012 diocesan statistics can be found on pp. 61-8 of the annual report at:

http://www.scotland.anglican.org/index.php/news/entry/general_synod_2013_-_agenda_and_papers/

Making sense of the census

The British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion (SocRel) Study Group held a study day at Friends House, London on 18 June 2013 on the theme of ‘Making Sense of the Census: The SocRel Response’. Various aspects of the religion question in the 2011 population census of England and Wales were explored. Keynotes were given by Abby Day (organizer of the event, with Lois Lee), Clive Field, and Grace Davie, and there were also two round tables involving nine shorter presentations. A summation of the day will be available on the SocRel website in due course, and it is hoped that selected papers will eventually appear in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Meanwhile, BRIN readers may be interested to see a sub-set of slides from Field’s presentation on the historical and methodological contexts of the census in terms of religious identity. These illustrate how, at least in the British context, different question-wording can apparently lead to marked variations in outcomes. You can view these slides by clicking on the link below:

SocRel sub-set

1851 religious census in the North-East

The Religious Census of 1851: Northumberland and County Durham, edited by Alan Munden, was published by the Boydell Press on 18 April 2013 (Publications of the Surtees Society, Vol. 216, lxxxv + 581p., ISBN 978-0-85444-071-9, £50 hardback). It offers a transcript of the original schedules from the 1851 census of religious accommodation and attendance (in general congregations and at Sunday schools) for the twelve registration districts in these two counties (including places of worship in Yorkshire) as well as for that part of the Alston registration district in Cumberland which was then in the Diocese of Durham. There is an extensive introduction, notes (derived from other primary or secondary sources), appendices, and indexes. Unusually for such editions, and some may feel unhelpfully (notwithstanding the cross-referencing between the two systems on pp. lix-lxxxv), the arrangement of the entries for the 1,175 individual churches and chapels is not in accordance with the numbering of the original documents in the Home Office Papers at The National Archives. Instead, Munden has chosen to rearrange the entries according to his own numbering, first by registration district alphabetically ordered within each county, and then by denomination within each district, thereby losing the topographical unity deriving from organization by sub-districts and parish/places in the census. This volume brings to twenty-two the total of English counties for which editions of the 1851 religious census have now been published, which leaves seventeen to do (of which at least two are being worked on).

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Abu Qatada al-Filistini, Alan Munden, British Humanist Association, census of population, church growth, Church of England, church-joining, church-leaving, Clive Field, County Durham, Diocese of Leicester, hate preachers, humanism, humanist marriages, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jordan, Lee Rigby, London, mission statistics, Muslim communities, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, NATRE, Northumberland, primary schools, Religious Affiliation, religious education, Scottish Episcopal Church, Sociology of Religion Study Group, SocRel, St Paul's Cathedral, Sun on Sunday, Surtees Society, Survation, Warburtons, Woolwich, YouGov | Leave a comment

2011 Census Detailed Characteristics

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

On 16 May 2013 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the first outputs from the third wave of results (Release 3.1) from the 2011 census of population of England and Wales. They comprised detailed characteristics for local authorities in terms of cross tabulations for the questions on ethnicity, national identity, country of birth, main language, proficiency in English, religion, provision of unpaid care, and health. The full tables can be consulted at:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/detailed_characteristics

These tables include the following breaks for religion:

Religion by sex by age
Ethnic group by religion
National identity by religion
Country of birth by religion by sex
Disability by general health by religion by sex by age
Economic activity by religion by sex by age
NS-SeC (National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification) by religion by sex by age

A general statistical bulletin about the release contains (at pp. 15-17) a short analysis of the religion data, focusing on the distribution by age within gender for nine religious groups. It shows that the median age of Christians was six years higher than for all English and Welsh residents (45 compared with 39 years), with Muslims and people of no religion having the youngest profiles (with median ages of 25 and 30 years respectively). The proportion of Muslims under 25 years of age is 48% and of those professing no religion 39%. The statistical bulletin is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_310514.pdf

In addition, ONS has published what it describes as a ‘short story’ on religion, a separate 18-page paper entitled ‘What Does the Census Tell Us about Religion in 2011?’ Prepared by the ONS Measuring National Well-Being Department, it includes eight figures and two tables with associated links to data in Excel format. This paper is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_310454.pdf

There is also an animated video version of the ‘short story’ at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/detailed-characteristics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/video-summary-religion.html

ONS identifies the key points in the ‘short story’ as follows (slightly elaborated here by BRIN):

Christianity has the oldest age profile of the principal religious groups, 22% of Christians being 65 years and over compared with 16% of all English and Welsh residents, closely followed by Jews on 21%
The fall in the number of Christians since 2001 has largely been among the under-60s and, in absolute terms, has been evenly spread between the sexes (with roughly 2,000,000 fewer net Christians of each gender in 2011 than 2001)
The number with no religion has increased across all age groups since 2001, but especially for those aged 20-24 and 40-44, while the growth for women (89%) has been higher than for men (78%)
93% of Christians are white (7% more than the national average) and 89% born in the UK, albeit the number identifying as white British was lower in 2011 (86%) than in 2001 (93%) – in fact, the net reduction of 4,100,000 Christians between 2001 and 2011 would have looked a lot worse had it not been for an increase of 1,200,000 non-UK-born partly offsetting the fall of 5,300,000 among UK-born
68% of Muslims are Asian or Asian British, including 38% who are Pakistani, the latter figure up by 371,000 since 2001, albeit the proportion has reduced from 43% in 2001 – 48% of the growth in the Muslim population since 2001 is accounted for by UK-born and 52% by non-UK-born
The majority of people with no religion are white (93%) and born in the UK (93%), the rise in the number with no religion between 2001 and 2011 being largely (91%) among the UK-born
People with no religion have the highest proportion of economically active (74%), Christians and Muslims the lowest (60% and 55% respectively)
Jews have the highest level of employment (93% excluding students, including 28% self-employed), and Muslims the highest level of unemployment (17%, three times the proportion among Christians and four times for Jews)
Retirement is the main reason for the economic inactivity of Christians (69%) and Jews (57%), and for Muslims because they are students (30%) or looking after the home and family (31%)

BRIN hopes to provide fuller analysis of, and commentary on, these detailed characteristics in due course. Professor David Voas has already got the ball rolling with his blog post of yesterday on ‘Religious Census, 2011: What Happened to the Christians (Part II)’ This includes the hugely important estimate that the overwhelming explanation for the net fall of 4,100,000 Christians between 2001 and 2011 lies in the net ‘defection’ of 3,900,000 persons who were described as Christians in 2001 but not so in 2011, cohort replacement and immigration combined only yielding a net loss of 200,000 Christians during the decade. This process of defection is strongly age-related; the younger the respondents, the more likely they are to have moved away from self-identification as Christians. Read David’s post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/religious-census-2011-what-happened-to-the-christians-part-ii/

The Census detailed characteristics on religion for Northern Ireland were also published on 16 May and can be viewed at:

http://www.nisra.gov.uk/Census/2011_results_detailed_characteristics.html

Posted in Official data, Religious Census | Tagged census of population, Christians, David Voas, Jews, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Religious Affiliation | Leave a comment

How Typical was Thatcher?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Siobhan McAndrew

In the wake of her passing, there has been a good deal of interest in the late Baroness’ religious background and convictions, and the extent to which these drove her political ideology.

The young historian and business adviser Antonio Weiss has written a fascinating University of Cambridge undergraduate thesis on this subject, available here. It has received widespread coverage including at the Huffington Post and on the Radio 4 Sunday programme.

Weiss gives much attention to Thatcher’s upbringing as a Wesleyan Methodist as well as her conversion to the Anglican Church shortly after her marriage to Denis Thatcher in 1951. (Notably, however, she married in Wesley’s Chapel in City Road, London, possibly because Denis Thatcher was divorced and an Anglican church wedding was not possible.) He cites Hugo Young’s diagnosis that the conversion was for social and political reasons rather than a repudiation of her Wesleyan upbringing (Weiss, p. 28); he also cites Thatcher’s own account in The Path to Power (1995) that ‘John Wesley regarded himself as a member of the Church of England to his dying day. I did not feel that any great theological divide had been crossed’ (Weiss, p. 7).

This seems plausible, so I thought worth examining the available survey data regarding the tendency of those raised as Nonconformists to switch to another religion in adulthood. The British Social Attitudes surveys, which have run in most years from 1983, capture respondents’ current religious affiliation and also the religion in which they were raised. A two-way table of current religion by religion of upbringing for the birth cohort born between 1920 and 1929 (since the late Baroness was born in 1925) shows the following:

Table 1

We can see that 48 per cent of those raised as Methodist remained with Methodism, but a full 19 per cent converted to Anglicanism. To simplify the table, we can combine some of the categories but keeping the Methodists separate because we are interested in whether they are different. Note that we still count respondents as switchers if they switch faith communities within the broad ‘Other Christian’ or ‘Non Christian’ groups.

Figure 1

The decision to switch may be primarily driven by the following: to join the faith of a spouse, changing religious convictions, or perhaps the social aspects of different faith communities. There is a lot of work in the US to suggest a status hierarchy in religious communities so that as people become upwardly-mobile they may also switch to ‘higher-status’ religions. Alternatively, people may switch when their basic beliefs about the world change – for example, there is some evidence that as people become more politically liberal in the US, they join more liberal faiths.

The combined BSA datafile doesn’t allow us to test the causal effect of political ideology on switching, but it does allow us to look at the effects of religious background on the tendency to switch or stick with the religion of upbringing, controlling for confounding variables. We can conceive of people as typically being stickers, religious leavers (from having an affiliation to none) or religious switchers. Ideally we would run a multinomial logistic regression to see how religious background predicts membership of these groups, but it’s complicated by the fact that we would also like to take account of those raised as having no religion. (Alternatively, we could run a loglinear model to analyse ‘religious mobility’, but this is more complex and remains for future work).

Those raised and remaining ‘none’ are technically stickers, but are likely to be most similar to the religious leavers. However, if we separate them from the stickers and group them with leavers, being raised as ‘none’ will then perfectly predict membership of that type.

So as a workaround we divide people up into switchers (including from none to a religion) versus everyone else (stickers and leavers); or stickers (including from none to none) versus everyone else (leavers and switchers). We then predict membership of the ‘switcher’ group and ‘sticker’ group in turn, controlling for age, gender, whether the respondent has a degree-level education, and marital status, and examine the effects of religious background to see if Methodists are more likely to switch or stick. We use the biprobit command in Stata 12.1 to take account of the fact that unobserved characteristics of the respondents will jointly affect whether they are a switcher or a sticker – to put it another way, these religious outcomes are not independent, but relate to each other. This model choice isn’t ideal, but arguably allows us to take account of more information in the data than if we looked at switching and sticking in completely separate models.

The results below look complex, but in brief, the asterisks indicate that the coefficient is significantly different from zero. From the first part of the model, we can say that people born in the 1920s who were still alive over the BSA data period (1983-2010) were more likely to have switched from the religion of upbringing to another religion if they were female; older; married rather than single; widowed rather than single; raised as None compared with Church of England; raised as Other Christian compared with Church of England; or raised as Methodist compared with Church of England.

Table 2

Note: N = 6504. * p < 0.1 ** p < 0.05 *** p < 0.01

When looking at sticking compared with switching/leaving in the second part of the model, we can see the following. Members of the 1920s birth cohort responding to the BSA over 1983-2010 were more likely to have remained with their religion of upbringing if they were female; and raised as None compared with Church of England. Those raised as Other Christian compared with Church of England; raised as Methodist compared with Church of England; or who were separated rather than single were less likely to have ‘stuck’.

Next, we use the model results to predict the overall likelihood of being in either of these groups, and neither, depending on respondent characteristics. Those who are neither switchers nor stickers are logically those who left their religion (a base category where we do not have any respondents raised as ‘none’). As mentioned, the bivariate probit model choice isn’t perfect (the predicted outcomes for the denominations do sum to 100, but are slightly shy for those raised as Nones; the model also predicts that 1% of this group become ‘leavers’ which is not technically possible).

But setting this aside, the results look reasonable. After controlling for the confounders listed in the tables above and averaging effects over the 6504 respondents, we can see that a relatively high proportion of Methodists are predicted to switch, and this appears higher than members of some other faith groups. We should note that we have kept the Methodists separate because we are interested in them; if we looked in particular at the Baptists (rather than in this model grouping them with the ‘Other Christians’) we might find a similar tendency to switch. However, there are limits to the number of groups we can include in the model, and contrasts we can run; it does seem plausible however that those raised as Methodists are like those raised in the other Free Churches in their tendency to switch.

Figure 2

Finally, we can predict the likelihood of somebody like Thatcher being a religious switcher given the fact that they were female, degree-level educated, employed (at least until the early 2000s), married, and raised as a Methodist. We also assume for this purpose that her age is 66 (her ‘average age’ over the 1983-2010 period). While this is a fairly crude simulation, these seem appropriate representative values.

The model predicts that somebody like Thatcher was 37 per cent likely to be a switcher. This is regardless of the political value of switching. Somebody like Thatcher was 49 per cent likely to be a sticker, and 14 per cent likely to be a religious leaver. The confidence ranges for each estimate are however quite broad (see graph below), so it’s possible that the likelihood of women of this demographic being switchers was somewhat higher or lower.

Figure 3

So was Thatcher typical? Switching appears to have been relatively common among older birth cohorts and it seems she was not an outlier; it would have been more unusual for her to have become a religious leaver. It also seems unlikely that the choice was purely driven by expediency. There have been Conservative Prime Ministers who were not Anglican, and indeed the set of twentieth-century Anglican or Episcopalian prime ministers is a little smaller than expected: Salisbury, Balfour, Baldwin, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Heath, Thatcher, Major, and Blair. Nevertheless, historians have much to discuss regarding differences in religiosity and political psychology among British political leaders, where we might well expect starker contrasts.

Posted in People news, Religion and Politics, Research note | Tagged Antonio Weiss, Church of England, Margaret Thatcher, Methodism, Religious Affiliation, Religious Switching | Leave a comment

Sunday Activities and Other News

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post highlights four recent opinion polls, touching on the use of Sundays, the religious state of Scotland, and reactions to the funeral arrangements for the late Baroness Thatcher.

Sunday activities

Sunday has largely become a day dominated by secular routines, according to an online survey conducted by OnePoll in late March 2013 (the week before Easter Sunday) on behalf of the pub chain Chef & Brewer, and kindly made available to BRIN by the Spirit Pub Company. The sample comprised 2,000 UK adults aged 18 and over. Of these, 62% said that they usually spent their Sundays catching up on domestic chores (36% stating they did the bulk of those chores on Sundays, and 41% that they would be ‘lost’ if they did not have Sunday as a catch-up day); 31% shopped (33% considering that Sunday opening of shops had made their lives easier); and 16% went to work.

The average number of ‘little jobs’ done on a Sunday was 16, with only 5% doing none and 39% performing eleven or more. The commonest chores included: washing up (42%), tidying up (41%), clothes washing (39%), hanging out washing (29%), drying up (29%), vacuuming (26%), and ironing (21%). Most time was reckoned to be taken up by tidying the house (30%) and cooking Sunday lunch (25%). Two-fifths (42%) felt annoyed that they never had chance to unwind and really relax on a Sunday, and 54% felt bogged down with the amount of jobs they had to do at the weekend.

Nevertheless, 53% described Sunday as mostly a day of rest for them (more so for men, 57%, than women, 49%), with 77% thinking that the balance of their day still inclined towards relaxation, and just 8% reckoning Sunday to be the busiest day of their week. For 60% Sunday provided an opportunity for spending quality time with friends and family, and for 42% to catch up on sleep. Some also recharged the spiritual batteries. Although, in reply to question 10, 15% claimed that they ‘usually’ went to a place of worship on Sunday, fewer (7%) admitted to worshipping ‘pretty much every Sunday’ in answer to question 4. The second figure is likely to be the more realistic; it represented 6% of men versus 9% of women, and 12% of the over-55s compared with around 5% of younger cohorts.

Scottish faith

Scotland, formerly renowned for its religiosity relative to England, continues to be in the grip of secularizing tendencies, according to the latest opinion poll, conducted by Panelbase for the Sunday Times Scotland and Real Radio Scotland. The sample comprised 1,002 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed online between 18 and 25 March 2013. Some results were published in two articles (by Jason Allardyce and Gillian Bowditch) in the Sunday Times Scotland for 31 March 2013, while the full data tables can be found at:

http://www.panelbase.com/news/Religionforpublication020413.pdf

Asked whether they ‘belonged’ to any religion, 39% of Scots said that they did not, including 54% of men aged 18-34 and even more, 60%, of women in the same cohort. Church of Scotland adherents numbered 32%, Roman Catholics 13%, other Christians 10%, and non-Christians 4%. Christians amounted to 55%, rising, for men, from 34% among the 18-34s to 70% of the over-55s, and for women from 33% to 78%. The proportion of Christians is ten points down on the 2001 population census, and the trend is expected to be confirmed when the 2011 Scottish census results are released later this year.

Less than one-third (30%) were convinced that Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life and was the Son of God, the proportion being highest among Catholics (67%) and lowest for women aged 18-34 (17%). 44% answered the question in the negative (58% of men and 54% of women aged 18-34), and 27% were uncertain what to think.

Rites of passage excepted, two-thirds of the sample never attended public worship or had not done so for more than a year, peaking at 87% of those professing no religion and 74% of women aged 18-34. 8% claimed to have attended within the last week and a further 8% within the past month. The majority (77%) said that the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the former leader of the Scottish Catholics, and his admission of sexually inappropriate behaviour would make no difference to their churchgoing, but 20% stated that they would now be less likely to attend church; there was no difference between Catholics and non-Catholics in this respect.

Unsurprisingly, 62% of all Scots wanted Pope Francis I to move the Roman Catholic Church in new directions (76% of Catholics), against 10% who desired him to maintain the Church’s traditional positions (18%), with 28% having no view (5%). Overall, 63% of Scots wanted the Church to get tougher with abusers (57% of Catholics), 61% to become more accepting of artificial contraception (55%), 55% to become more modern (54%), 54% to allow priests to marry (43%), 54% to become more open (53%), 44% to become more accepting in general (47%), 41% to become more accepting of homosexuality (27%), and 40% to become more accepting of abortion (18%).

Funeral of Mrs Thatcher

The country is as divided about the late Baroness Thatcher in the aftermath of her death as it was during her lifetime. One-half of the 1,893 British adults interviewed by YouGov online for The Sun on 8 and 9 April 2013 thought that it is right that she be given a full ceremonial funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral this coming Wednesday (17 April). Predictably, the proportion rose to 85% among Conservatives and 60% of UKIP supporters but dropped to 25% among Labour voters and 38% of Scots. Those thinking it wrong that she be given such a funeral numbered 32%, including 58% of Labourites and 45% in Scotland, with 18% expressing no view (possibly reflecting the fact that fieldwork took place in the immediate aftermath of Mrs Thatcher’s death, before people had the chance to think matters through). Full data table available on page 4 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jx8g4k4srj/YouGov-Sun-results-Thatcher-legacy-130409.pdf

A second YouGov poll, this time for the Sunday Times on 11 and 12 April 2013 among 1,981 Britons, asked a similar question but offered clarification of what was meant by a ‘ceremonial funeral’ at St Paul’s Cathedral (in contrast to a ‘state funeral’, as would be accorded to a monarch) and included different reply options. On this occasion, 42% of respondents preferred that Baroness Thatcher receive a ceremonial but not a state funeral, including 70% of Conservatives and 52% of Liberal Democrat and UKIP voters, and 73% of those who ranked Thatcher as ‘a great Prime Minister’. A further 8% (13% of Conservatives and 21% of those admiring her as ‘a great Prime Minister’) wanted her to have a state funeral, with 43% arguing that she should have neither a state nor a ceremonial funeral (70% for Labourites alone), and 8% undecided. Full data table on pages 21-2 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e4m8mi50q2/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-120413.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged ceremonial funeral, Chef & Brewer, church attendance, Gillian Bowditch, Jesus Christ, Keith O'Brien, Margaret Thatcher, OnePoll, Panelbase, Pope Francis I, Real Radio Scotland, Religious Affiliation, Roman Catholic Church, Scotland, St Paul's Cathedral, Sunday activities, Sunday Times, Sunday Times Scotland, The Sun, YouGov | Leave a comment

Religion and Voting and Other News

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Four stories are covered in today’s BRIN post, including new data on religion and prospective voting behaviour.

Religion and voting

Two new large-scale polls (from YouGov and Populus) shed light on the relationship between religion and voting intentions since UKIP’s emergence as the fourth force in British politics (so clearly demonstrated in the recent Eastleigh by-election). The studies show that prospective voters for the two parties towards the right of the political spectrum (Conservative and UKIP) are more likely to espouse a religion than those towards the left (Labour and Liberal Democrat). Summary results are set out in the table below, percentages reading downwards.

	All	Con	Lab	LibDem	UKIP
YouGov
No religion	46	40	46	NA	39
Any religion	50	56	50	NA	59
No answer	4	4	4	NA	2
Populus
No religion	36	28	36	36	31
Any religion	62	71	62	62	68
No answer	2	2	2	2	1

It should be noted that the polls used different measures of religious affiliation, which explains why people of faith were less numerous in one than the other. The YouGov question wording is fairly neutral, making no assumptions about religious affiliation, whereas the Populus one might be considered to be somewhat leading, implying some expectation that respondents will belong to one of the religious groups.

The religious category was sub-divided in the Populus survey, enabling an assessment of the current voting intentions of adherents of the major faiths. The single most striking finding is that the majority (58%) of Muslims now incline to follow Labour, contrasting with the 2010 general election in which around one-third (36%) of Muslims recalled that they had actually voted for Labour, at a time when the party (then in government) was unpopular with Muslims because (especially) of its perceived anti-Islamic foreign policy. Also notable is that 54% of Jews support either the Conservatives or UKIP. Details are below (percentages reading across in this instance):

	Con	Lab	LibDem	UKIP	Other/none
Populus
No religion	18	29	7	7	39
Christian	27	28	6	10	29
Non-Christian	16	36	9	6	33
Muslim	8	58	8	1	25
Hindu	20	39	11	1	29
Jew	42	16	4	12	26
Buddhist	9	27	16	6	42

Source: Online surveys of adult Britons aged 18 and over conducted by a) YouGov throughout February 2013 (n = 28,944), the religious affiliation question being ‘do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’; and b) Populus for Lord Ashcroft on 22-31 January 2013 (n = 20,022), the religious affiliation question being ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’

The YouGov data were published on 5 March 2013 and are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/mse55iouje/UKIP-profile-Feb-2103.pdf

The Populus/Ashcroft data were published on 8 March 2013 and can be found in table 100 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LibDem_Poll.pdf

Attitudes to Muslims

British Muslims continue to have a major public image problem, according to two recent polls commissioned by Matthew Goodwin of the University of Nottingham in connection with his Chatham House briefing paper on the English Defence League (EDL). This was published on 6 March 2013 as: The Roots of Extremism: The English Defence League and the Counter-Jihad Challenge.

In the second of Goodwin’s surveys, the proportion of all adult Britons responding to various statements about Muslims was as follows:

50% anticipated there will be a ‘clash of civilizations’ between British Muslims and native white Britons (26% disagreeing)
44% agreed that free speech in Britain is threatened by the influence of Muslims in the media (32% disagreeing)
43% agreed that differences in culture and values make future conflict between British-born Muslims and white Britons inevitable (28% disagreeing)
31% disagreed that British-born Muslims generally share the culture and values of the majority society (36% agreeing)
30% agreed that British Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy (41% disagreeing)
23% disagreed that Muslims make an important contribution to British society (41% agreeing)
12% disagreed that the vast majority of Muslims are good British citizens (62% agreeing)
12% agreed that British Muslims are part of an international plot to abolish Parliament (54% disagreeing)

Source: Online survey by YouGov of 1,691 Britons aged 18 and over on 20-21 November 2012. Detailed table (with breaks by gender, age, social grade, region, and vote) available at:

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Europe/0313bp_goodwin_dataconflict.pdf

The first poll, likewise by YouGov and conducted online on 21-22 October 2012 among a sample of 1,666 Britons, focused on knowledge of and attitudes to the EDL. But it also posed several additional questions about Islam and Muslims, four of which are worth highlighting:

63% wanted the number of Muslims coming to Britain to be reduced
57% considered Islam to present a serious danger to Western civilization
52% believed higher Muslim birth rates threaten British national identity
48% argued that Muslims are incompatible with the British way of life

The detailed tables from this poll are available as follows:

a) breaks by general demographics:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/nvm151779n/YG-Archive-221012-EDL-National-sample.pdf

b) breaks by general demographics and degree of support for the EDL:

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Europe/0313bp_goodwin_dataissues.pdf

Goodwin’s Chatham House paper is at:

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Europe/0313bp_goodwin.pdf

Islamist terrorism

Britons are somewhat less apprehensive about the threat of terrorism than they were in 2010, on the fifth anniversary of the London bombings. Even so, 44% currently think that a terrorist attack within the UK is very or moderately likely to happen in the next year, while 70% anticipate an incident as deadly as the 2005 London bombings occurring during their lifetimes. The source of the threat is most widely perceived to be al-Qaeda and ‘other Islamic-based terrorist groups’, with 68% currently concerned about them compared with 3% for residual terrorist groups in Northern Ireland. Anxiety about Islamist terrorism builds steadily with age, from 50% of the 18-34s to 81% of the over-55s, but otherwise varies little by key demographics.

Source: Online survey by Angus Reid Public Opinion among 2,013 Britons aged 18 and over on 26-28 February 2013. Report and full data tables published on 4 March 2013 and available at:

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/48686/fears-of-an-imminent-terrorist-attack-subside-in-britain/

Flesh and blood

Regular churchgoers in the UK are more likely to have given blood than the general public, according to new research. Whereas 9% of the former say they have given blood during the last year, no more than 4% of all adults have given blood in the past two years. Moreover, 33% of regular churchgoers claim to have registered as a blood donor (apparently with no statistically significant differences by denomination, gender, or age); while 48% report they have joined the NHS organ donor register, which is 17% more than in the population as a whole. Blood and organ donation is already considered as part of their personal Christian giving by 28% (rising to 35% of clergy and church leaders), with a further 42% being open to the idea. However, as experienced by these worshippers, three-quarters of churches do not mention or encourage either blood or organ donation.

Source: Survey of a representative sample of 3,171 UK Christians of all denominations attending church at least two to three times a month and agreeing that their faith is either the most important thing in their life or more important than most other things. They were drawn from the Christian Research Resonate panel of both church leaders and laity and interviewed online between 10 December 2012 and 9 January 2013. The study was undertaken on behalf of Kore in connection with the launch of the fleshandblood campaign, a partnership with NHS Blood and Transplant to mobilize the Church to increase the number of blood and organ donors in the UK. A summary report, Fleshandblood 2013 Research Results, was published on 5 March 2013 and is available at:

http://fleshandblood.org/resource/2013-research-results/

Posted in church attendance, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged al-Qaeda, Angus Reid Public Opinion, blood donation, Chatham House, Christian Research, churchgoers, English Defence League, fleshandblood, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, Kore, Lord Ashcroft, Matthew Goodwin, Muslims, NHS Blood and Transplant, organ donation, politics, Populus, Religious Affiliation, terrorism, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

Scottish Social Attitudes and Other News

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Start your week with BRIN’s latest selection of British religious statistical news, comprising three sources of data on the contemporary scene plus a reassessment of religious belonging in the Edwardian era a century ago.

Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2011

The dataset for the 2011 (June-September) Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) Survey was released by the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) on 20 February 2013 and can be interrogated by registered users via the ESDS Nesstar catalogue. The sample comprised 1,197 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed face-to-face by ScotCen Social Research.

The religion-related content was confined in 2011 to standard questions on religious affiliation and attendance at religious services. However, since the results for religion from the Scottish census of population in 2011 have yet to appear, it may be useful to note here the weighted SSA results for 2001 and 2011.

The SSA religious affiliation question (‘do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’) reveals that the majority (53%) of Scottish adults in 2011 professed no faith, up by 16% from 2001. The Christian share fell from 61% to 44% during the decade, mostly among the Church of Scotland (down from 36% to 22%). The details are given below:

	2001	2011
No religion	37	53
Church of Scotland	36	22
Roman Catholic	14	12
Other Christian	11	10
Non-Christian	1	3

Interestingly, claimed attendance at religious services showed less change between 2001 and 2011, albeit this is an indicator notoriously liable to inflated self-reporting. Nevertheless, regular (monthly or more) churchgoing reduced from 24% to 19%.

	2001	2011
Once a week or more	15	13
Once a month or more	9	6
At least once a year	14	10
Less often	3	4
Never/practically never	48	47
No religion/family religion	11	20

Evangelicals and education

Evangelical Christians ‘are a highly-educated group who appreciate and value the education they have received. Many are committed to lifelong learning and have undertaken study to better understand their faith and serve the Church. Significant numbers are involved in education as teachers, other staff or school governors.’

These are among some of the major findings in the latest report from the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals research programme, in which a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) panel of evangelicals are periodically invited to complete an online questionnaire on selected topics. This particular survey was carried out in November 2012 and elicited 1,377 responses, 77% from persons with a university education. The report Do We Value Education? was published on 26 February 2013 and is at:

http://eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Education-report-February-2013.pdf

The content of the survey is too extensive to summarize here. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that there was not complete unanimity among evangelicals about the role of religion in state schools. Although 69% agreed that all schools should have regular assemblies including a Christian act of collective worship, no more than 31% felt that religious education (with a predominantly Christian emphasis) should be a compulsory component of the curriculum for all children throughout their entire school life. This was far behind the figures for English language (82%), mathematics (76%), science (50%), physical education (39%), and computing and technology (48%).

When it came to faith schools, one-third failed to disagree with the proposition that they tend to divide communities in harmful ways, and no more than 52% agreed that church schools generally offer a higher standard of education than non-church schools. Somewhat controversially, 51% argued that church schools should always give priority in admissions to children from churchgoing families, despite the fact that 42% acknowledged that church schools do not seem to be doing a very good job at producing committed Christians among their students.

Halloween

Children’s engagement with and perceptions of the autumnal and now largely secular and commercialized festival of Halloween (abbreviated from All Hallows Eve, All Hallows being an alternative rendering of All Saints Day in the Christian calendar) are illuminated in a new article by Mark Plater: ‘Children, Schools, and Hallowe’en’, British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2013, pp. 201-17. This is available to subscribers or on a pay-per-view basis at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2012.750594

Short questionnaires were completed in class in 2007 by 493 primary school pupils aged 7 (n = 127) and 11 (n = 366) in the London borough of Redbridge and Lincolnshire. The overwhelming majority of children were found to have participated in Halloween activities in some way in recent years, with 66% having significant and 23% some involvement. The combined figure of 89% ranged from 74% of those whose family background was religious to 93% in the case of non-religious. Participation was higher among pupils aged 11 (92%) than aged 7 (78%).

The commonest Halloween activities reported by the children were: trick or treating (72%), dressing up for Halloween (70%), attending Halloween parties (57%), playing Halloween games (45%), watching scary movies (40%), walking around the streets in the dark (39%), and making Halloween-related artwork (39%). In 84% of families various forms of merchandise had been bought to support these activities at some point in recent years.

Most children (79%) said that they enjoyed Halloween but 9% did not (three-fifths of the latter being from religious families). Enjoyment was much higher in Lincolnshire (86%) than inner-city Redbridge (56%) Asked to choose from a list of adjectives to describe Halloween, 74% selected positive (typically fun-scary and/or exciting) and 13% negative terms. Plater contrasts the relative enthusiasm of the pupils for Halloween with the reluctance of teachers to tackle it in the curriculum, which was revealed in his earlier research.

Edwardian religion

In his book Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (2006, pp. 40-87), Callum Brown characterizes Edwardian Britain as ‘the faith society’, in which there was a ‘buoyancy of Christian culture’, ‘religiosity marked the social values of almost the entire society …’, and ‘nearly every person would claim some attachment to a religion, most would be able to show an attachment to a church …’ These assertions are (partly) put to the quantitative test in a new article by Clive Field, ‘“The Faith Society”? Quantifying Religious Belonging in Edwardian Britain, 1901-1914’, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 37, No. 1, March 2013, pp. 39-63. The article can be accessed (on a pay-per-view basis) at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12003/abstract

In this paper Field collates the extant statistical evidence for church attendance and church membership/affiliation in the years before the First World War. A mixed picture is reported, with elements of sacralization and secularization co-existing. Although churchgoing was already in relative and absolute decline, one-quarter of adults (disproportionately women) still worshipped on any given Sunday, and two-fifths at least monthly. Moreover, hardly anybody failed to be reached by a rite of passage conducted in religious premises. Only 1% professed no faith and just over one-half had some reasonably regular and meaningful relationship with organized religion in terms of church membership or adherence. For children, perhaps nine-tenths attended Sunday school, however briefly.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Survey news | Tagged 21st Century Evangelicals, British Journal of Religious Education, Callum Brown, children, church attendance, church membership, Clive Field, education, Edwardian era, Evangelical Alliance, Faith schools, Halloween, Journal of Religious History, Lincolnshire, Mark Plater, Redbridge, Religious Affiliation, religious belonging, religious education, religious festivals, ScotCen Social Research, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey | 1 Comment

Pope Benedict Departs and Other News

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Benedict XVI leaves the papal office today following his resignation earlier in the month, and it is fitting that he should be the lead story in our latest BRIN post. This mostly derives from YouGov’s February 2013 Eurotrack survey, but space has been found for a couple of miscellaneous items, too.

Pope Benedict departs

YouGov has taken the opportunity of Benedict XVI’s departure to ask the publics of six Western European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden) how they rate his pontificate. Questions were included in the regular online Eurotrack undertaken between 21 and 27 February 2013, with 1,704 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed (among them 117 professed Roman Catholics). Results have been disaggregated by religious affiliation within country (but not by other demographics) at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/auqvjc212x/Eurotrack-February-2013.pdf

A press release about the survey has also been issued and can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/onzs1ox195/Pope_press_release.pdf

Asked whether Benedict had been right or wrong to resign as pope, 68% of Britons said right, similar to Denmark (67%), but lower than in Finland (71%), Sweden (72%), France (75%), and Germany (82%). In Britain 77% of the religious contended that he had made the right decision, including 79% of Catholics, compared with 64% of the religiously unaffiliated (29% of whom did not know what to think). Only 8% of Britons said that Benedict had been wrong to resign.

When it came to assessing how well or badly Benedict had done during his eight years as pope, a plurality of Britons (41%) expressed no view, with 36% thinking he had done well, and 23% badly. The positive figure was better than Sweden (18%), Denmark (24%), and France (33%), but nowhere near as good as in Germany (52%, the country from which he hails). Benedict’s performance was rated as good by 72% of British Catholics, 50% of all those professing a religion, 28% of non-Christians, and 26% of people without faith.

On specific aspects of his pontificate, Benedict was often judged to have been too conservative and to have changed things too little. In Britain 43% said that this had been true of theological issues such as women priests; 47% of moral issues such as birth control, abortion, and homosexuality; and 33% of social issues such as wealth and poverty. Catholics were as inclined to reach this verdict as the rest of the population. Otherwise, a principal difference by religious affiliation was the large number of ‘don’t knows’ to be found among non-Christians and those without religion.

In terms of Benedict’s political clout, only 9% of Britons considered that leading politicians in Britain had paid a great deal or a fair amount of notice to the views of Benedict and the British Catholic hierarchy, less than in Germany (33%) or France (18%), but fractionally more than in the Scandinavian countries. The overwhelming majority of Britons (71%), and even 78% of British Catholics, accepted that politicians had paid little or no notice to the pope and his bishops. Moreover, three-fifths of all Britons and 72% of the irreligious thought that politicians had been right not to have taken such notice, albeit 57% of Catholics disagreed.

More generally, respondents were asked whether four groups of religious leaders play a positive or negative role in the life of each country. In Britain (as can be seen from the table, below) a majority in three cases and a plurality in the other selected neither of these options, replying instead that they did not know or that the leaders made a limited impact on national life or that their role was equally positive and negative.

	Positive	Negative	Other
Protestant bishops and archbishops	21	22	57
Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops	16	33	51
Leading Jewish rabbis	19	17	64
Leading Muslim clerics	10	44	46

Among those expressing a clear opinion, Roman Catholic and Muslim leaders were especially seen in a critical light. Not unexpectedly, people who espoused a religion tended to be disproportionately more positive about religious leaders and the irreligious disproportionately more negative; however, when it came to Muslim leaders, both religious and irreligious were similarly negative. Catholics were most positive about their own bishops and archbishops.

On the characteristics of the next pope, many Britons could not get hugely exercised. They became most animated (in the sense of 44% saying they would be delighted) at the prospect of a pope who wanted to permit Catholic couples to use contraception. The proportion expressing delight at other scenarios was: a pope who advocated much stronger action to redistribute money within countries from rich to poor (24%); a pope who advocated that rich countries should spend far more on overseas aid (17%); a pope from Africa (11%); and a pope from South America (9%).

Religion and the current politico-economic situation

The YouGov Eurotrack study also included questions about current political and economic issues in Europe, the answers to which will be of interest to BRIN readers because they have been broken down by religious affiliation. Here we report on some of those for Britain alone, albeit the same level of detail is also available for the other five countries included in the survey.

Although most Britons (60%) disapprove of the Coalition Government’s record to date, the proportion is notably higher among those without a religion (65%) than those who profess some faith (56%), apart from Roman Catholics (68%, whose politics tend to be left-of-centre – see the next item, on the religious right). There is a corresponding gap in approval ratings of the Government: 32% by the religious (rising to 35% of non-Catholic Christians) and 20% of the faithless, with a national mean of 24%.

These judgments on the Government do not appear to correlate with perceived changes to the financial situation of respondents’ households during the previous twelve months. Whereas the religious are relatively more positive about the Government than the irreligious, it is the former whose households have suffered most: 60% reported that their finances had worsened a lot or a little against 51% of the religiously unaffiliated, with the number observing an improvement standing at 9% and 12% respectively.

On Britain’s membership of the European Union, people without religion (41%) were more likely than those with (33%) to say that they would vote in favour of continuing membership, in the event of a referendum being held, the national average being 36%. Nationally, 42% stated that they would vote to leave the European Union, comprising 49% of the religious and 38% of the irreligious. Among the religious, Catholics were most in favour of leaving (55%) and non-Christians the least (34%, with 43% wishing to stay in membership).

Naturally, it cannot be assumed that this spread of opinions is solely the function of the religion/irreligion factor, which is the only variable to be included in the YouGov tables. We know from other surveys that both religion and politics are independently impacted by secular demographics, and they will doubtless explain some of the variance noted above.

Religious right

In a new report from the Theos think-tank, Andy Walton (with Andrea Hatcher and Nick Spencer) asks Is There a ‘Religious Right’ Emerging in Britain? The question is answered in the negative, in the sense of there not being an American-style religious right at present, and the judgment being that there is little chance of one developing in the immediate future. Part of the evidence base for this conclusion is a ‘brief foray’ (pp. 34-45) into relevant social surveys, particularly the British Social Attitudes Surveys and the British Election Studies, although some use is also made of BRIN.

The findings which the authors particularly highlight are: a) the number of committed Christians in Britain is a relatively small proportion of the electorate, particularly in terms of evangelicals and Catholics, who form the backbone of the US religious right; b) only 9% of Britons with a religious affiliation say religion is very important in making political decisions, with less fixation with some of the specific issues which dominate the US political scene; and c) practising believers, albeit socially conservative, disproportionately espouse economic views which are left-of-centre, especially among Catholics. Is There a ‘Religious Right’ Emerging in Britain? can be found at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/IS%20THERE%20A%20RELIGIOUS%20RIGHT%20(NEW).pdf

Religion and education

The December 2012 issue (Vol. 33, No. 3) of Journal of Beliefs & Values is a special number, guest-edited by Elisabeth Arweck and Robert Jackson, devoted to religion and education. Specifically, it comprises a dozen articles reporting research projects which have been funded by the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. Although the majority of contributions are of a qualitative nature, several authors deploy quantitative methods to varying degrees. From this standpoint, BRIN readers will probably be most interested in the two articles on young people’s attitudes to religious diversity by Leslie Francis and members of his research group (pp. 279-92, 293-307), which apply techniques from the psychology of religion and empirical theology. The papers include details of the theoretical underpinning, design and scope, and preliminary results of a study of approximately 10,000 years 9 and 10 pupils (aged 13-15) in state-maintained secondary schools in London, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. They report, respectively, on interim datasets of 3,020 and 5,993 cases.

An interesting revelation from the first paper is that ‘a negative view of Muslims is more prevalent among secular young people than among young people who are practising members of Christian churches. In this sense, Christianity is seen to promote acceptance, not rejection, of adherents of Islam.’ The second article illustrates how empathic capacity (in terms of attitudes to other religious groups) is more strongly related to God images than to religious affiliation or religious attendance. Secular factors (such as gender, neuroticism, and psychoticism) also make a difference in predicting the empathy of individuals. For titles, abstracts, and access options for all the articles in this special issue, go to:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjbv20/33/3

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Andrea Hatcher, Andy Walton, Coalition Government, conservatism, Denmark, education, Elisabeth Arweck, European Union, Eurotrack, Finland, France, Germany, household finances, Islam, Jewish leaders, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Leslie Francis, Muslim clerics, Nick Spencer, politicians, politics, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion and Society Programme, Religious Affiliation, Religious diversity, religious leaders, religious right, Robert Jackson, Roman Catholic Church, secondary schools, Sweden, Theos, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

Trust in Clergy and Other News

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Clive D. Field

While waiting for the first tests of public opinion to the sudden resignation of Benedict XVI as Pope, here is a batch of six recently-published sources of British religious statistics on a miscellany of subjects.

Trust in clergy

Clergy/priests are the sixth most trusted group in a list of seventeen read out by Ipsos MORI in a telephone survey of 1,018 Britons aged 18 and over conducted on 9-11 February 2013 and published on 15 February. Clergy/priests were trusted to tell the truth by 66% of the sample, a figure exceeded only for doctors (89%), teachers (86%), scientists (83%), judges (82%), and television news readers (69%).

As might have been anticipated, the list was propped up by estate agents, MPs in general, bankers, journalists, and politicians in general; in each of these cases seven-tenths or more of adults stated that they did not trust these groups to tell the truth. However, 27% also said the same about clergy/priests, with 7% expressing no opinion.

The truthfulness of clergy/priests was not subject to major demographic variations, but it is interesting to note that some of the highest scores came from the 18-24s (72%), owner occupiers (70%), Scots (74%), intending voters for the Conservatives (76%) and UKIP (72%), and from those satisfied with the Coalition Government (75%).

For both topline and detailed data, go to:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3133/Politicians-trusted-less-than-estate-agents-bankers-and-journalists.aspx

Although clergy/priests might well take comfort from their relatively positive performance in this poll, they should not get too complacent. An Ipsos MORI time series clearly shows that trust in them to tell the truth has fallen fairly steadily from 85% in 1983, with the level of distrust rising from 11% in the same year. See:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Veracity2011.pdf

Beginning of life

People of faith are more likely than those without religion to say that human life begins at conception. Overall, a plurality (44%) of Britons takes this view, but the proportion rises to 50% among Anglicans and Muslims and 60% among Catholics and Baptists, whereas for the ‘nones’ it falls to 34%. For the ‘very religious’, it is higher still: two-thirds of those who say they get some guidance in life from God, religion, religious leaders, or religious teachings. This same set of groups is also three times more likely than the norm to want to see abortion banned altogether: one-fifth or more as opposed to 7% for all respondents.

For adults as a whole, life is thought to start at some point during pregnancy by 30% but not until the baby is born by 17%, both options being selected by an above-average number of persons professing no religion (36% and 21% respectively). Don’t knows amounted to 8%, including one-third of those who preferred not to declare what their religious affiliation was.

The data come from the YouGov survey of 25-30 January 2013 for the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, the abortion aspects of which we have already covered in our post of 12 February. The full data tables for all these questions were released on 14 February and are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/a0c0uf8c2g/YouGov-Survey-University-of-Lancaster-Results-130130.pdf

Lenten intentions II

Further to the coverage in our post of 9 February, YouGov has conducted a second online poll about the intended observance of Lent this year. Fieldwork took place on 10-11 February 2013 (before the start of Lent on 13 February) among 1,691 adult Britons aged 18 and over. Of these 27% said that they had plans to give something up for Lent, not dissimilar to the 24% recorded in the earlier poll. Full data tables (which also cover the anticipated consumption of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday) are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9szci1h69s/YG-Archive-110213-Pancake-Day.pdf

Religious affiliation

The latest survey to collect information about religious affiliation was conducted by ComRes for Marie Curie Cancer Care on 6-8 February 2013. A total of 2,601 Britons aged 18 and over was interviewed online. In reply to the question ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ 53% said Christian, 8% non-Christian, and 37% none, with 2% preferring not to say.

The number professing no religion peaked among the under-45s (49% for the 18-24s, 46% for the 25-34s, 43% for the 35-44s), falling to 22% with the over-65s. There was also an above-average proportion of ‘nones’ in the lowest (DE) social group (42%), among private sector workers (42%), in the North East (42%), and in the South East (44%).

People who reported that somebody close to them (a relative or friend) had died in the last three years were somewhat less likely to declare themselves to have no religion (35%) than those who had not been bereaved on this timescale (39%); they were also more prone to say that they were Christian (55% against 52%). Perhaps the proximity of death still exercises a marginal pull towards the religiosity end of the religious-secular spectrum? For more detail, see Table 43 in the dataset at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Marie_Curie_Perceptions_of_Death_Data_February_2013.pdf

Inflated churchgoing

The tendency for respondents in sample surveys to exaggerate the frequency with which they attend public religious services is a well-known fact. It is described, somewhat euphemistically, as ‘measurement error’.

The outcome of the ‘prestige effect’, whereby people are still reluctant to admit that they are not so ‘religious’ as they or society feel they should be, the gap between reality and aspiration can be clearly seen by comparing the number who attended church on a typical Sunday in the last (2005) English Church Census with those claiming to worship weekly in polls around the same time.

However, the phenomenon is by no means peculiarly British but can be found internationally, too, including in North America. Philip Brenner, a sociologist from the University of Massachusetts Boston, is one of the scholars who has studied it, with his most recent research reported in the Winter 2012 issue (Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 361-83) of Sociology of Religion: ‘Investigating the Effect of Bias in Survey Measures of Church Attendance’. It is far from being a light read and will win no prizes for linguistic accessibility! Although this is normally a subscription journal, Brenner’s article is, at the time of writing, free to view (apart from the three appendices) at:

http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/4/361.full.pdf+html

Brenner’s approach is to compare the reports of churchgoing in time use diaries with claims made in national sample surveys between the 1970s and early 2000s. Fourteen countries are investigated (United States, Canada, and twelve in Europe). In the case of Great Britain, the evidence derives from a comparison of time diaries for 1974-75, 1983-84, 1987, 2000-01, and 2005 with fifteen multinational surveys of adults from 1975 to 2006 in which fieldwork was undertaken in Britain.

The author’s particular concern is to establish whether the over-reporting of church attendance in surveys is related to the individual demographic ‘predictors’ commonly associated with religious practice. He has therefore compared the replies of sub-groups with regard to Sunday churchgoing in both the diaries and the surveys by means of logistic regression models. The demographic variables employed were: gender, age, marital status, presence of children in the household, educational attainment, and household income. Religious affiliation was excluded through insufficiency of data.

The core of this analysis is to be found in Table 1, which is entitled ‘testing the equality of residual variation assumptions and equality of underlying coefficients’. His principal conclusion (to paraphrase) is that there is very little evidence to suggest that demographic sub-groups respond differentially when reporting churchgoing in sample surveys against time diaries.

The over-reporting of church attendance which Brenner presupposes to exist in North American surveys (but generally not in European ones) is said at one point of the text not to be rooted in demography but to reflect the tendency of North Americans to ‘view religiosity as a more central part of their identities’.

However, in the conclusion, it is admitted (perhaps somewhat contradictorily) that the gap between time diaries and survey results probably reflects differences in data collection method, between directive (in the surveys) and non-directive (in the diaries) techniques.

Anglican episcopate

‘Bishops are a touchy subject within the Anglican Church. They wield a lot of power and matter more than most people realise, but because of this their origins have rarely been studied in a dispassionate way nor their present functions honestly weighed up in the light of the needs of the Church within a modern society’.

In his new book, deriving from his D.Min. thesis at the University of Wales Bangor in 2009, Michael Keulemans (an associate priest of the Church in Wales) attempts to rectify these deficiencies. Bishops: The Changing Nature of the Anglican Episcopate in Mainland Britain (2012) is available in hardcover, softcover, and ebook editions from http://www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk

Apart from a good deal of historical context, two major surveys are included in the work. The first examines the background and careers of diocesan bishops in England, Wales, and Scotland at twenty-year intervals between 1905 and 2005 (chapters 6, 7, and 8). The second, employing a self-completion postal questionnaire, looks at attitudes towards the bishop’s role of 255 serving clergy and 358 leading laity (churchwardens or equivalent) in four Anglican dioceses (two in England, one each in Wales and Scotland), and compares them with those of 25 bishops who retired between 2000 and 2008 (chapters 10 and 11).

Although now around five years old, the second survey inevitably touches on a couple of issues which remain (controversially) current in the Anglican Communion: practising gay and women bishops. On the latter, 72% of clergy, 67% of laity, and 84% of retired bishops endorsed female bishops. Respondents from the Scottish diocese (Edinburgh) were notably supportive (83% of clergy and 82% of laity). There was much less enthusiasm for practising gay bishops: 30% of clergy, 17% of laity, and 25% of retired bishops.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged abstinence, beginning of human life, bereavement, Bishops, Church of England, churchgoing, clergy, ComRes, conception, episcopate, gay bishops, Ipsos-MORI, Lent, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Michael Keulemans, Philip Brenner, priests, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Sociology of Religion, trust, truth, Westminster Faith Debates, women bishops, Xlibris, YouGov | Leave a comment

Abortion and Other News

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Our lead religious statistical news story today concerns the first release of data from the YouGov poll specially commissioned for the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, which commences tomorrow. There will be further releases of data in connection with every debate, each covering a specific area of religion and personal life.

Abortion

A new survey has revealed that most religious people are not against abortion and that their views on the topic are not markedly different from those of the public as a whole. The research (in which 4,437 adult Britons were interviewed online on 25-30 January 2013) was commissioned from YouGov by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, which Woodhead has organized in conjunction with Rt Hon Charles Clarke.

According to the poll, 43% of people who identify with a religion are in favour of keeping or raising the current 24-week upper time limit on abortions (compared with 46% of the general population), 30% would like to see it lowered (28%), and 9% support a complete ban on abortion (7%). The remainder is undecided.

Of particular faith traditions, Catholics, Muslims, and Baptists are the most hostile to abortion, but still only about half of them would like to see the law on abortion changed. Even though the Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion is always wrong, just 14% of Catholics in this country favour a ban, with 33% wanting to see the 24-week limit lowered. Among Muslims 30% support a ban and 16% would like to see the 24-week limit reduced.

Standard (secular) demographics – such as gender, age, and voting preference – do not make much difference to attitudes to abortion. Individuals most likely to be opposed to it are those: who believe in God with most certainty, who rely most heavily on scripture or religious teachings for guidance in their daily life, and whose religion has a strong anti-abortion message. A mere 8% of the population fits this profile, and of this 8% no more than one-third endorse a ban on abortion.

Among the population as a whole, anti-abortion sentiment is declining and support for current abortion law is growing. Comparisons with earlier YouGov polls reveal that the percentage of adults who would like to see a ban on abortion has fallen from 12% in 2005 to 7% today. Of those who express a view, support for keeping (or even relaxing) the current 24-week limit has risen by about one-third to a clear majority (57%) today.

The full press release about the abortion results of the survey is available at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/westminster_faith_debate_13_02_13_stem_cell_research_abortion_press_release

In an interview with Ben Quinn of The Guardian, Woodhead has commented: ‘The impression one gets from many religious leaders and spokespeople is that most religious people are opposed to the liberalising trend in society. That is just not true and statistics like this give the lie to that view.’ For The Guardian’s coverage, go to:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/12/anti-abortion-feelings-declining

The poll findings have been released in connection with the first of the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, on ‘Stem cell research, abortion and the “soul of the embryo”?’ This takes place tomorrow (13 February 2013). However, BRIN readers should note that the debate is full, although names are still being taken for a reserve list.

Anti-Semitic incidents, 2012

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK rose by 5% in 2012, to reach 640, the third highest total since records began in 1984, according to Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2012, published by the Community Security Trust (CST) on 7 February 2013. However, the figure of 640 included ‘100 anonymised incident reports provided by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) as part of an incident data exchange programme introduced between CST and MPS in London in 2012. Removing these 100 “extra” incidents – which had been reported to MPS but not directly to CST – to give a “like for like” comparison with 2011, suggests an 11 per cent fall in real terms in the UK-wide antisemitic incident total in 2012.’ Abusive behaviour accounted for the majority of incidents in 2012 (73%), followed by assaults (10%), damage and desecration (8%), and threats (6%). Eighty incidents involved the use of internet-based social media, compared to just 12 in 2011. The 32-page report, containing exhaustive quantitative and qualitative analysis, is available at:

https://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202012.pdf

Believing in belonging

BRIN readers may like to know that a paperback version of Abby Day’s acclaimed 2011 book Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World was published by Oxford University Press on 7 February 2013 (ISBN 978-0-19-967355-1, £25.00). It has a certain topicality in helping to unpack the results of the recently-released religion census of England and Wales in 2011 through its research into ‘performative, nominalist Christianity’ in the 2001 census. Indeed, the central ‘puzzle’ which underpins the work is, considering ‘all forms of public Christian religious participation have been declining for at least the last fifty years’, ‘why would so many non-religious people choose to claim a Christian identity on the census?’ The conundrum is explored by means of a critical reappraisal of the secondary literature (empirical and theoretical) and by qualitative interviews undertaken in North Yorkshire between 2002 and 2005. The 2001 census features particularly in chapters 3 and 9. One of Day’s findings is that, when asked how they had recorded their religious identity at the 2001 census, ‘half of my informants who answered “Christian” were either agnostics or atheists, who either overtly disavowed religion or at least never incorporated religion, Christianity, God, or Jesus into our discussions. They were … functionally godless and ontologically anthropocentric.’ Day feels that the language, form, and location of the questions used in the 2001 census (they varied between the home nations) may have contributed to ‘a false picture of an enduring Christian Britain’ by breaking ‘a number of fairly rudimentary rules about questionnaire design’. Likewise, there are useful summaries in the book of the background to the taking of the 2001 religion census and the ways in which its results were subsequently used in public discourse and policy formation.

BRIN in the media

On the morning of 10 February 2013 Clive Field was interviewed on ten BBC local radio stations about the religious dimensions of the same-sex marriage debate in terms of public opinion, and in the wake of the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The discussion centred around four main questions:

Has society become more accepting of same-sex marriage?
The growing acceptance of same-sex marriage has coincided with a decline of religion – are the two linked?
The Church of England and the Coalition for Marriage claim that public opinion does not support same-sex marriage – are they right?
What impact will same-sex marriage have on society as a whole?

Field had previously done a series of interviews on Radio 4 and eight BBC local radio stations on 16 December last about the initial results of the 2011 religion census for England and Wales.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Abby Day, abortion, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, BBC, Ben Quinn, census of population, Charles Clarke, Clive Field, Community Security Trust, Linda Woodhead, nominalist Christianity, Religious Affiliation, religious census, same-sex marriage, The Guardian, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Anglican Comments on the Census and Other News

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The results of the 2011 religion census for England and Wales continue to reverberate around faith communities. The lead item in today’s BRIN post concerns coverage of the census in the country’s conservative evangelical newspaper for the Church of England.

Church of England Newspaper and the census

In the current issue (13 January 2013) of the Church of England Newspaper (CEN) no fewer than three of its columnists devote space to the religion results of the 2011 census of England and Wales, which were published on 11 December 2012.

The most extensive treatment (‘Making Sense of the Census’, p. 15) is by Peter Brierley, the veteran church statistician. He is unsurprised by the 11% fall in the number of professing Christians between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, which he sees as foreshadowed in the estimated 6% drop in church membership between 2000 and 2010 and the 14% decline in church attendance during the same period. He advances three possible explanations for decreasing Christian ‘adherence’: a) the surge in immigration (with Brierley reckoning the majority of the new immigrants to be non-Christians, although this claim is unevidenced); b) the death of elderly Christians since 2001 (said by Brierley to account for 8% of the 11% decline, which seems a rather high proportion in comparison with the calculation by David Voas on BRIN on 13 December last); and c) the relative lack of new people becoming Christians, the transmission of the faith being said to be at ‘an all-time low’.

The other two columnists take to task Arun Arora, the Church of England’s Director of Communications, who, from his press statement issued on 11 December onwards, has tried to cast the census results in the best possible light for the Church of England. In a CEN short entitled ‘Militant Communicator’ (p. E2), the compiler of ‘The Whispering Gallery’ explicitly criticizes Arora for his selective use of statistics (especially of baptisms) in his recent letter to The Times (31 December 2012), written in response to the call (28 December 2012) by that newspaper’s Phil Collins for the disestablishment of the Church. Arora should realize, the CEN continues, ‘inertia is the best defence of the establishment, not statistics that unravel when they are examined carefully’.

In his CEN column on ‘The Future for Evangelicalism’ (p. 16), Paul Richardson also fixes his sights on Arora, without actually naming him: ‘it will not do to dismiss the census as just showing the disappearance of “cultural Christians” … People who in the past wrote “C of E” on forms now write “no religion”. Long term this is going to make it difficult to sustain the Church of England’s position as an established church’. Richardson further contends that the Roman Catholic Church is in similar denial in its statement about the census, Richardson pointing out that ‘the census shows … large numbers of people entering Britain over the past 10 years from Poland and other Catholic areas but that this influx is not reflected in figures for mass attendance. These figures have risen only slightly, suggesting there has been a large exodus from the pews of indigenous Anglo-Irish Catholics’.

Twittering Christmas

The Church of England released figures on 8 January 2013 for its Christmas campaign on Twitter, #ChristmasStartsWithChrist (or #CSWC), aimed at the UK’s estimated 10 million ‘Twitterati’. In all, 8,878 Christmas-related tweets were sent by Anglicans (from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York downwards) using these two hashtags, with peak traffic occurring on Christmas Day around 11 am and a smaller peak on Christmas Eve around 11 pm. Over a 24-hour period from 11 pm on 24 December to 11 pm on 25 December there were an average of 370 tweets an hour. See the Church’s press release at:

http://churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2013/01/church-rejoicing-over-christmas-twitter-campaign.aspx

Same-sex marriage

As the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government continues to press ahead with its legislative plans for same-sex marriage, there are continuing indications that many Conservative Parliamentarians have serious misgivings about them. The latest evidence (published on 9 January 2013) comes from a ComRes poll (on behalf of the Coalition for Marriage) of 106 members of the House of Lords during the autumn of 2012, with 69% of Conservative peers wishing to see the proposals postponed until after the next general election and 100% opposing any use of the Parliament Act to steamroller opposition in the Lords.

Moreover, although Government believes it can ensure that churches and other places of worship will not have to perform same-sex marriages against their will, 51% of Conservative peers and 40% of all peers believe that there is no effective way of guaranteeing such an outcome. The proportion thinking this is four times as great for peers born before 1940 as after 1950, and more than 10% higher for peers who have sat in the Upper Chamber since before 1997 as those who became members after that date. Full results available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Same-Sex_Marriage_Peers_Final_Data_Tables_21_Dec_2012.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Arun Arora, census of population, Christmas, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Coalition for Marriage, ComRes, House of Lords, Paul Richardson, Peter Brierley, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage, The Times, Twitter | Leave a comment

Humanist Marriages and Other News

2011 Census Detailed Characteristics

How Typical was Thatcher?

Sunday Activities and Other News

Religion and Voting and Other News

Pope Benedict Departs and Other News

Trust in Clergy and Other News

Abortion and Other News

Anglican Comments on the Census and Other News

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