Attitudes to new academy faith schools

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

The Academies Act 2010 is well underway, having received its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 19 July, and with Education Select Committee days due this week.

A number of private and state religious schools have indicated interest in becoming state-funded academies, among about 1500 schools overall so far. For comparative purposes, the January 2009 Schools Census suggested there were 17,064 state primaries and 3,361 state secondaries in England.

The full list of schools indicating interest is available at the Department for Education website, and is updated intermittently. The list does not indicate directly which are schools ‘of a religious character’ – the British Humanist Association estimates that it is ‘over 300’.

The BHA has suggested that schools with a nominal faith tradition (such as Anglican primary schools without a strong faith ethos) will have no provision to change religious character to ‘none’ when becoming academies, even if the Governing Body were in favour.

However, non-faith schools will be able to adopt a religious character when becoming academies – perhaps under the influence of governors or potential sponsors – and this may lead to a proliferation of new faith schools. Its additional concern is that academies with a strong faith character will be freed from National Curriculum strictures, specifically with regard to the teaching of creationism and sex and reproduction.

The BHA commissioned a poll on public attitudes to the religious character of future academies, available here.

67% of respondents thought faith academies should be required to teach about other beliefs including non-religious beliefs. 23% did not, and 11% of respondents didn’t know.

The survey also asked,

‘If an academy were set up by a religious organisation, would you be very, quite, not very or not at all concerned that public money may be used to promote a particular religion or belief?’

35% were very concerned, 36% quite concerned, 16% not very concerned, 5% not at all concerned, and 7% didn’t know.

The survey was conducted 9-11 July 2010, by online interview, with 2000 respondents. The full polling report will be shortly available at http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/media-centre.php

Posted in Religion in public debate | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish Attitudes toward Israel

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

‘Jews in Britain strongly identify with and support Israel. They are ready to see Israel swap territory for peace and to talk with Hamas if it will advance the cause of peace. At the same time, they are concerned about Israel’s security, support the separation barrier/security fence and view the 2008/09 operation in Gaza as “a legitimate act of self-defence.”’

These are the central findings of what is described as the most definitive (albeit not the first) study ever conducted of the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel. Entitled Committed, Concerned and Conciliatory: The Attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel, and written by David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, it was published on 15 July by the community’s leading research body, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).

The report is available to download from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/JPR%20Israel%20survey%20report%2015.pdf

The investigation, which was funded by the Pears Foundation, derives from the responses given by a self-selecting sample of 4,081 self-identifying Jews aged 18 and over living in Great Britain.

They completed an online questionnaire administered by Ipsos MORI between 7 January and 14 February 2010. Data analysis and report-writing was the responsibility of JPR.

Relative to the 2001 census and other (Jewish) sources, the sample is broadly representative of the Jewish community in many respects. However, it is somewhat skewed in terms of educational achievement, synagogue membership and secular/religious outlook, and the data have been weighted in these regards.

‘The survey shows that the vast majority of respondents exhibit strong personal support for, and affinity with, Israel: 95% have visited the country, 90% see it as the “ancestral homeland” of the Jewish people, and 86% feel that Jews have a special responsibility for its survival.’

Additionally, 82% state that Israel plays a central or important role in their Jewish identities, 72% categorize themselves as Zionists, 76% consider Israel to be relevant to their day-to-day lives in Britain, and 87% view British Jews as part of a global Jewish diaspora.

‘On the other hand, these strong levels of personal attachment to Israel do not prevent respondents from expressing criticism about Israel’s civil society: 74% think that Orthodox Judaism has too much influence in Israel; 67% say there is too much corruption in Israel’s political system; and 56% feel that non-Jewish minority groups suffer from discrimination in the country.’  

‘It further paints a portrait of a community that is highly-engaged with Israel, and that expresses predominantly dovish views on the key political issues: 78% favour a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians; 74% oppose the expansion of existing settlements in the West Bank; and 67% favour exchanging land for peace. A majority (52% against 39%) favours negotiating with Hamas to achieve peace.’

Notwithstanding, ‘respondents are clearly sympathetic to Israel’s need to defend itself. Nearly three-quarters agree that “The security fence is vital for Israel’s security” and a similar number agree that Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli military action in Gaza in winter 2008/09) was “a legitimate act of self-defence.” Nearly nine out of ten respondents believe that Iran represents a threat to Israel’s very existence.’

‘Perhaps most significantly for a community that has long debated the acceptability of Jewish criticism of Israel in public, a slight majority (53% to 45%) believes that Jews living in Britain have the right to judge Israel, and nearly three-quarters believe that Jews should be free to speak their mind about Israel in the British media in at least some, if not all circumstances.’

In general, the more religious respondents claim to be, the more hawkish their stance on political and security issues. Those with higher levels of educational attainment tend to exhibit more dovish viewpoints compared with Jews with lesser education.

Commenting on the findings, JPR Executive Director, Jonathan Boyd, said: ‘Fundamentally, we found that most Jews feel a strong sense of connection to Israel … Jews in Britain are pro-Israel and pro-peace. Their hawkishness on some issues is typically motivated by a clear concern for Israel’s security, while their dovishness on others reflects a deep-set desire to see the country at peace, both with itself and with its neighbours.’

The report does not discuss in any detail how the attitudes of British Jews towards Israel may have changed over time. Readers interested in possible trends should consult JPR’s previous report from 1997 (based on data gathered in 1995): Barry Kosmin, Antony Lerman and Jacqueline Goldberg, The Attachment of British Jews to Israel.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Non-Source of Religious Statistics

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Government actually collects quite a lot of data pertaining to religion in Britain, but you would not think so if your only evidence was the Annual Abstract of Statistics.

The latest (and last) print edition (No. 146 for 2010) was published by Palgrave Macmillan on 15 July, edited by Ian Macrory.

So far as can be seen, it contains not a shred of religious data (unless you count the appearance of The Passion of Christ in the list of box office top 20 films released in the UK and Ireland in 2004-07).

By all means, check this assertion out for yourself at the following URL (where the book is freely available online):

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/AA2010/aa2010final.pdf

A search under ‘religion’ on http://www.data.gov.uk likewise surfaces relatively little for Britain at the moment, other than the 2001 census (although the commissioned tables, of particular interest for religion, apparently still have to be requested); the Citizenship Survey; and the religious profession of members of the armed forces.

In particular, basic tables by religion from the Annual Population Survey/Labour Force Survey do not seem to be readily accessible. While it is fine (and commendable) that the datasets are available for secondary analysis via the Economic and Social Data Service, surely we need some aggregated statistics in an online published format?

Given that the Government is openly discussing the discontinuation of a decennial population census after 2011 (and, with it, implicitly the loss of the religious question), is it possible for Government statisticians to consider repurposing and making available online a wider selection of such religion data as they have from other sources?

Posted in Official data | Tagged , | Leave a comment

London Bombings – Five Years On

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The fifth anniversary of the London bombings has been marked by a YouGov poll for The Sun newspaper. It was conducted among an online sample of 1,424 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 4-5 July. Headline findings were published in The Sun on 7 July, but the full data can be downloaded from:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-77-050710.pdf

In the five years since 7/7 25% feel that the threat of terrorism in Britain has increased, 53% that it has stayed the same and 17% that it has decreased. 76% rate further terrorist attacks on British soil as very or fairly likely.

Asked to think back to 7/7, and the reaction of British Muslims to the bombings, 33% recalled that it had made them feel more negative toward British Muslims, while for 60% it had made no difference. Conservative voters were twice as likely as Liberal Democrats (42% versus 20%) to have held adverse views, and the over-40s were seven points more negative than the under-40s (36% against 29%).

When questioned about the progress made by British Muslims to integrate into mainstream British society since 2005, four times as many feel that they have become less integrated than more integrated (43% compared with 10%). For 36% there has been no difference, and 12% are ‘don’t knows’. The expression of concern about less integration is most voiced by Conservatives (49%), residents of the Midlands and Wales (48%) and those aged 60 and over (47%).

This complaint about the lack of Muslim integration into British society finds echoes in other recent polls. In another YouGov survey in November 2009 21% considered that most Muslims in Britain led completely separately lives, with three-fifths saying many did so and just 13% believing most Muslims were integrated.

Similarly, interviewed by ICM in January 2008 about whether the Muslim community in Britain needed to do more to integrate, 56% agreed, with 24% deeming there had been sufficient integration and 9% too much.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gender and the Anglican Episcopate

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England has hit the media headlines again during the past week or so over its continuing internal divisions about the issues of women’s ministry and homosexual clergy. The general public’s reactions to all this have been explored by YouGov in an online survey of 2,227 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 11-12 July. Details can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Bishops-120710.pdf

The big debates at the recent General Synod (the Church’s governing body), meeting in York, have been around how to move towards appointing women bishops without alienating traditionalists who do not recognize the authority of a female episcopate. Eventually, Synod did resolve to adopt draft legislation which (subject to further consideration by Synod in 2012 and to Parliamentary approval) would pave the way for women to become bishops on an equal footing with men by 2014.

Were it to be left to the public, 63% would allow the appointment of women bishops and only 10% would not. The remaining 27% express no opinion. Support for female bishops is more prevalent among women than men (67% versus 59%) and among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters (70% and 73% respectively) than Conservatives (58%). Opposition is greatest from Conservatives (15%) and those aged 60 and over (17%).

Another row has been about the leak (said to emanate from within the Crown Nominations Commission) that Jeffrey John, the openly gay but celibate Dean of St Albans, had been considered but subsequently rejected as a candidate for the vacant see of Southwark. This amounts to a second rebuttal for John since, in 2003, he was forced to withdraw his acceptance as Bishop of Reading, following a bitter feud over his appointment and homosexuality.

Asked whether the Church of England should permit gay bishops, public opinion is more divided than on the issue of women bishops, with 39% in favour, 27% opposed and 34% undecided. Among Conservatives and the 60+ age cohort there is actually a net opposition of 5% and 15% respectively. Only among adults aged 25-39 is an absolute majority (52%) supportive.

These reservations about gay bishops may seem surprising, given that British Social Attitudes Survey data point to much greater tolerance of homosexuality in general during the past three decades. In 2008 only 34% thought that homosexual sex was always or almost always wrong, ranging from 19% for the unreligious to 50% for the most religious.

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salvation Army Finance

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Salvation Army’s UK Territory has just published its annual review for 2009. This includes a summary of the Army’s accounts for the financial year ending 31 March 2009, as reflected in its two main trust funds, The Salvation Army Trust and The Salvation Army Social Work Trust.

Total income in 2008/9 was £237m, representing a 2% increase on 2007/8. About one-third of this (£72m, up by 5% on the previous year) derived from social work activities, such as care homes for older people, homeless centres, family and children units, substance misuse centres and defence services centres at military bases in the UK and Germany.

The next biggest source of income was legacies (£45m, up 5%), trading (£36m, up 8%), and donations from the public (£33m, up 3%, despite the credit crunch). But the negative impact of the recession was reflected in a fall in investment income (to £14m, down 5%) and reduced gains from the disposal of properties.

Total expenditure in 2008/9 amounted to £207m, 6% more than in 2007/8. The principal outlays were on social work and defence services (41%), community programmes (20%) and church and evangelism (19%). However, a big ticket item was the cost of generating funds, at £29m or 14% of expenditure.

The surplus of income over expenditure in 2008/9 was, therefore, £30m, a seemingly healthy result. However, there was a decrease of £41m in the value of investments as a result of stock market volatility. So total reserves decreased by £11m (or 2%) to stand at £615m.

Of the total reserves, 3% are endowment funds where only the income (and not the capital) can be used, 70% are restricted funds, and 27% are unrestricted funds. The decrease in unrestricted reserves was a more worrying 16%. Moreover, the subset of unrestricted funds categorized as for general purposes is only £28m, which is below the optimum level of £43m determined by the directors of the trusts.

The Salvation Army’s annual review will be found at:

http://www1.salvationarmy.org.uk/uki/www_uki.nsf/0/B995E78AB485D126802577150050C207/$file/SA%202009%20Annual%20Review%20.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Islamophobia Unveiled

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Clive D. Field

A new opinion poll on British attitudes to Muslim women wearing full face veils was released on 8 July 2010. It is the third to be published this year.

It was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International on behalf of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. 750 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone between 15 April and 2 May 2010.

A report on the poll is available to download at:

http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/pew-global-attitudes-report-on-veil-ban-july-8.pdf

Only one question was posed, whether the respondent would approve or disapprove of a ban on the wearing of full face veils in public places, including schools, hospitals and government offices.

62% of adult Britons approved of such a ban, 32% disapproved and 6% expressed no opinion or refused to answer.

Approval varied considerably by age, with 71% of those aged 55 and over in favour of a ban, compared with 61% of the 35-54s and 52% of the 18-34s.

There were also differences of political ideology. Those categorized as being on the right were most supportive of a ban (69%), with centrists on 63% and leftists on 55%.

By contrast, variations by gender, education and income groups were negligible in Britain.

Approval of a ban was 34% higher in Britain than in the United States. It was also 3% more than in Spain.

However, it was 9% less than in Germany and 20% less than in France (the country which has been making the running over the ban, and where a parliamentary vote on the subject is expected on 13 July).

There are some indications that opinion in Britain may be hardening on the issue, although variations in question-wording can make comparisons difficult.

In January this year only 36% of people interviewed by ComRes wanted it to be unlawful to wear a burka in any public place (although 52% wanted some legal restrictions).

In February 2010 Harris Interactive found that 57% of Britons backed a ban on the burka veil in this country.

Even further ago, in October-November 2006 at the height of the controversy ignited by Jack Straw (then a Labour minister), who criticized the full veil as a psychological and practical barrier to integration, just over one-half the population agreed with his views, although a clear majority opposed a complete ban on wearing the veil in public.

For more information, see the BRIN news posts of 1 February and 3 March 2010 on ‘Should the burka be banned in Britain?’

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Religion and Youth

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Just out from Ashgate is Religion and Youth, edited by Sylvia Collins-Mayo and Pink Dandelion (ISBN 9780754667681, paperback, £17.99, but also available in hardback and as an e-book). It comprises 27 substantive chapters, mostly fairly short, many originally presented as papers at the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion Study Group conference in 2008.

Like much contemporary writing in the sociology of religion, there are strong theoretical, methodological and qualitative components in this volume, but some space is also found for quantitative empiricism, albeit more so in overseas contexts than in Britain. Nevertheless, three chapters will be of especial interest to BRIN users, two of them written by Professor David Voas, Simon Professor of Population Studies at the University of Manchester and BRIN’s co-director.

Chapter 24 (pp. 201-7) by Voas is an encouragement to employ quantitative methods in the study of youth religion, including the secondary analysis of existing datasets. Statistics are seen as a necessary adjunct and corrective to reliance upon case studies. ‘Surveys of representative samples of individuals (or congregations or anything else) are important because they allow us to generalize … In trying to discover what is happening and (broadly) why, there is no substitute for investigating the population as a whole via sample surveys.’ Some of the issues involved in measuring religion and change and in analysing survey data are then elucidated.

Chapter 3 (pp. 25-32), also by Voas, is devoted to ‘Explaining change over time in religious involvement’. This identifies age as the single most important attribute in determining the strength of religious commitment, easily trumping gender, education, employment, place of residence, denomination and so forth. The relative significance of age, period and cohort effects is briefly assessed, with cohort differences shown to have greatest impact. Various explanations (some values-related, some not) are considered for a weakening in the intergenerational transmission of religion. This leads Voas to conclude that ‘Society is changing religiously not because individuals are changing, but rather because old people are gradually replaced by younger people with different characteristics.’

Chapter 6 (pp. 47-54), by Mandy Robbins and Leslie Francis, provides an overview of ‘The Teenage Religion and Values Survey in England and Wales’. This was conducted during the 1990s, by self-completion questionnaire among 33,982 young people aged 13-15 attending 163 secondary schools. A sample of such size has the advantage of permitting meaningful disaggregations by a wide variety of sub-groups, including individual Christian denominations. The survey has already given rise to a substantial number of books, essays and articles reporting results in detail. However, it is useful in this chapter to have an overview of the findings for religious affiliation, belief and practice, together with bibliographical signposts to in-depth published analyses. The authors are now engaged on a new study of the next generation of young people, with the emphasis switched from conventional religiosity to alternative spiritualities.

Posted in Measuring religion, Research note | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Act of Settlement – Reform Postponed

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The UK Coalition Government appears to have quietly abandoned plans, mooted by the then Labour Prime Minister (Gordon Brown) in 2009 but also backed by the Liberal Democrats before the general election last May, to reform the Act of Settlement 1701.

That, at least, is the implication of a written Parliamentary answer on 30 June by Mark Harper, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform at the Cabinet Office and Conservative MP for the Forest of Dean.

Asked by William Bain, Labour MP for Glasgow North-East, whether the Government intended to ‘bring forward proposals to change the law to enable Roman Catholics or those married to Roman Catholics to succeed to the throne’, Harper’s reply was that: ‘There are no current plans to amend the laws on succession.’

The Act of Settlement 1701 was passed at a time when there were uncertainties regarding the succession to the English throne, as well as a widespread fear of, and discrimination against, Roman Catholics. The legislation was subsequently extended to Scotland and the British Empire and Commonwealth, and its provisions remain in force.

The Act’s exclusion of Roman Catholics or persons married to a Roman Catholic from the line of succession to the throne has long been regarded as anomalous, in a society which has become religiously pluralistic and committed to equality of opportunities.

The Government’s decision to put reform of the Act on the back-burner certainly appears to fly in the face of majority opinion, according to the most recent polls.

Thus, a YouGov survey for the Sunday Times on 13-14 November 2008 (conducted online among a sample of 2,080 adults aged 18 and over) found that 62% supported a change in the law to allow a future monarch to marry a Roman Catholic and still assume the throne. 19% were opposed and 20% were don’t knows.

Support for reform varied somewhat according to demographics, particularly voting intention. Liberal Democrats were most in favour (71%), followed by Labour voters (67%) and Conservatives (61%). Support was also markedly higher among non-manual than manual workers, 66% versus 57%, and in London (66%) and Scotland (69%).

An ICM poll for the BBC on 20-22 March 2009 (carried out by telephone among 1,005 adults aged 18 and over) reported an even larger majority, 81%, backing the heir to the throne being allowed to marry a Catholic and still become monarch.

Posted in Religion in public debate | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“Islamist Terrorism”

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of 7/7, the summer’s day in 2005 when four young Muslim male bombers unleashed co-ordinated attacks on London’s public transport system, killing 52 civilians as well as themselves. These were the first suicide-bombings on British soil, although Britain’s first suicide-bomber can be traced back to Afghanistan in 1996.

In the run-up to the anniversary of 7/7, the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), which was founded in 2007 (and describes itself as a non-partisan think-tank promoting human rights, tolerance and community cohesion), has today released the preview edition of a major report, which will run to over 500 pages, on Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections (ISBN 978-0-9560013-6-8, £40).

Written by Robin Simcox, Hannah Stuart and Houriya Ahmed, the book is divided into two parts, dealing with ‘Islamist terrorism’ in, respectively, the UK and worldwide, based on individual profiles of the terrorists. However, the preview edition comprises only the executive summary and other preliminary material. This is available for download at:

http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/uploads/1278089320islamist_terrorism_preview.pdf

‘In order to be included in this report,’ it is explained, ‘individuals must have: been convicted for terrorism-related offences; committed suicide attacks in the UK; been convicted, fought or committed suicide attacks abroad and possessed significant links to the UK (having been educated there, lived there for an extended period of time or been radicalised there); or been involved in extradition cases from the UK. In addition, they must have been motivated primarily by a belief in Islamism.’

‘Islamism’ is defined as a ‘political ideology, whose key tenets include: belief that Islam is not a religion, but a holistic socio-political system; advocacy of Sharia (Islamic) law as divine state law; belief that a transnational Muslim community, known as the Ummah, should unite as a political bloc; advocacy of an “Islamic” state, or Caliphate, within which sovereignty belongs to God.’

In the absence of comprehensive official data, for which government was criticized by the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2009, CSC researchers spent two years compiling, from court records and press reports, a database of individuals involved in 127 ‘Islamism-related offences’ (IROs) in the UK between 1999 and 2009.

With only five exceptions, these IROs were carried out by men. The average age of perpetrators was 27, with the youngest 16 and the oldest 48; 68% were under 30 years. 42% were persons in employment or in full-time further or higher education, while 35% were unemployed.

69% of IROs were carried out by British citizens, supporting the theory that the UK faces its greatest threat from ‘home-grown’ terrorism. However, 46% of perpetrators had ancestry in south-central Asia. 48% were residents of London, the next two most common regions being the West Midlands (13%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (9%).

In 44% of IROs, the individual pleaded guilty. 60% of convictions were secured under anti-terrorism legislation. Sentences of ten years or longer were given in 20% of cases and a life or indefinite sentence in 19%. 21% of the convicted successfully appealed their sentences.

68% of those who committed IROs had no links with any proscribed organizations, but the other 32% did (mostly with al-Muhajiroun or al-Qaeda). Seven of the UK’s eight major bomb plot cells contained members with direct links to al-Qaeda. 31% of perpetrators (mostly British) had attended a terrorist training camp, typically in Pakistan.

Data on British-linked Islamism-inspired terrorism threats worldwide between 1993 and 2009 have yet to be released.

Other CSC publications touching on Islam and Islamism include: Hate on the State: How British Libraries Encourage Islamic Extremism; Virtual Caliphate: Islamic Extremists and their Websites; Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinions (based on online fieldwork by YouGov); Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy; and Radical Islam on UK Campuses.

Posted in Other | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment