Angus Reid Public Opinion Round-Up

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO, formerly Angus Reid Strategies) is the Vancouver-based public affairs practice of Vision Critical and conducts online surveys. It was originally founded in 2006 by Dr Angus Reid, a Canadian sociologist with four decades of experience in market and public opinion research.

Following considerable success in Canada, ARPO established a British adult panel (http://www.springboarduk.com) last autumn and obtained high visibility for its political polling in the run-up to the 2010 general election. But ARPO has also dipped its toes into British religious waters. Relevant questions are summarized below, with further details available at: http://www.visioncritical.com/category/public-opinion/

HALLOWEEN (fieldwork: 28-30 October 2009, n = 2,004)

Only 14% of Britons always celebrate Halloween (compared with 41% of Americans and Canadians), 41% never celebrate it and 45% sometimes do. 55% intended to carry out no Halloween-related activities during the 2009 weekend (against 26% in Canada and 14% in the USA), handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters being the commonest activity.

While 45% of Britons associated Halloween with fun, 35% regarded it as overrated. 30% saw it as harmless, but for 31% it had connotations with paganism and for 40% with witchcraft. Of the various faith alternatives to Halloween, 37% said they had participated in harvest festivals.   

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – MINARETS (fieldwork: 9-12 December 2009, n = 2,002)

Following last November’s Swiss referendum which led to the prohibition on the construction of minarets on Swiss mosques, ARPO sounded out the publics of Britain, Canada and the USA on the issue. 43% of Britons claimed to have followed the story in the media.

Offered a précis of the arguments used in Switzerland, 44% agreed with the proponents of the ban and 28% with the opponents. However, 52% felt that it was unfair for the proponents to have used a poster depicting minarets as missiles.

37% of Britons said they would vote for a similar ban in our country (more than Canadians and Americans, 27% and 21% respectively), with 25% against a ban and 39% abstainers or unsure.

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – RELIGIOUS DRESS (fieldwork: 20-21 January 2010, n = 2,001)

ARPO showed respondents pictures of three items of Muslim women’s dress – the burqa, the niqab and the hijab – and asked whether their use should be forbidden in the UK in public places, at airports and at schools and universities.

Large majorities agreed with banning the burqa in all three situations (ranging from 72% in public places to 87% at airports), and likewise the niqab (from 66% in public places to 85% at airports).

67% considered that garments which conceal a woman’s face are an affront to British values, although, somewhat contradictorily, 58% agreed that the Government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

Far fewer felt it necessary to prohibit wearing of the hijab (from 22% in public places to 34% at airports).

CREATIONISM (fieldwork: 1-9 July 2010, n = 2,011)

Invited to explain the origin and development of human beings on earth, 68% of Britons opted for evolution (almost twice the proportion of Americans), 16% for creationism (one-third the US figure), with 15% unsure.

Creationists were especially plentiful in London (25%, perhaps reflecting the concentration of black-led churches and Muslims there) and thin on the ground in Scotland. Men were more likely to be evolutionists than women, partly because more women registered as unsure.

RESPECT FOR MINISTERS AND PRIESTS (fieldwork: 20-23 July 2010, n = 1,992)

Asked whether they had a great deal or fair amount of respect for each of 25 professional groups, 56% replied affirmatively for ministers and priests, leaving them in sixteenth position in a league table extending from doctors (91%) to car salesmen (12%).

There were no great differences by age and region, but gender was significant: 63% of women against 49% of men had respect for ministers and priests. At the other end of the scale, 39% had little or not much respect for the clergy, rising to 46% among men.

The survey replicated another ARPO poll between 13 and 26 August 2009, which showed respect for ministers and priests running at 57% in Britain, 65% in Canada and 82% in the USA.

Besides polling, the company is also responsible for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, which commenced in 2003. This includes a database summarizing 22,000 polls from around the world and from many different polling agencies. See http://www.angus-reid.com/

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A Levels in Religious Studies

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 19 August the Joint Council for Qualifications (an umbrella body for the seven largest providers of qualifications in the UK) released the summer 2010 results for A Levels and seven other advanced qualifications. They will be found at:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1297/JCQ-A%20LEVEL%20RESULTS.pdf

The statistics cover all UK candidates, but are predominantly for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (there is a separate Scottish Qualifications Authority). In addition to the UK tables, there are disaggregations for each of these three home nations.

The media debate on the figures has revolved around further evidence of ‘grade inflation’ (reflected in yet another increase in the pass rate and the introduction of the new A* grade) and the excess of demand from successful candidates over the supply of university places.

Our principal interest in the A Level results is naturally in those for Religious Studies (RS). Here are some of the headlines for 2010:

  • There were 21,233 candidates in RS, equivalent to 2.5% of all candidates, a proportion exceeded by 14 subjects (English being the highest, 10.5%) but larger than for 21 others
  • 32.0% of RS candidates were males and 68.0% females, compared with a 46.1/53.9 gender split for all subjects, although RS was less ‘feminized’ than Art and Design (72.8%), Psychology (73.1%) and Sociology (75.3%)
  • The number of RS candidates was just 154 (or 0.7%) more than in 2009, in line with the modest 0.8% rise for all subjects
  • 98.3% of RS candidates gained A*-E passes, 97.6% of males and 98.6% of females, whereas the average pass rate for all subjects was 97.6%
  • The pass rate for RS was slightly lower than for most other Arts subjects, the highest being Communication Studies (99.3%), but generally better than for non-Arts subjects
  • 27.5% of RS candidates obtained A* or A grades, slightly above the average for all subjects (27.0%), albeit only half the number in Further Mathematics and some foreign languages
  • 0.8% more RS candidates obtained the top grade in 2010 than in 2009, greater than the 0.3% improvement across all subjects

Of the non-A Level qualifications reported, numerically the most important are AS Levels. There were 27,742 candidates in RS this summer, representing 2.3% of all candidates. Of these, 92.5% obtained A-E grades, better than the pass rate for all subjects of 88.2%, the figures for RS being 90.7% for males and 93.4% for females.

RS A level results for 1993-2009 are available on the BRIN website at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/Table-10-1-Religious-Studies-A-Level.xls

The chart there shows that the number of RS candidates has more than doubled since the early 1990s, especially among females. It is likely that this trend owes much to the growth of non-Christian faiths in Britain during these years, particularly Islam (whose adherents are so preponderantly youthful).

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Muslims in Britain

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Muslims in Britain: An Introduction is a long-awaited new book by Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University (Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-53688-2, £19.99 paperback – also available in hardback).

The volume deliberately sets out ‘to rebalance current discourse by focusing on issues that are perhaps much closer to the “ordinary” daily lives of British Muslims’, shifting emphasis away from ‘the political, religious and social consequences of “crisis” events over the past three decades’.

Part I of the book thus covers the historical and religious roots of Islam in Britain, and Part II its contemporary dynamics, including socio-demographic profile; religious nurture and education; religious leadership; mosques; gender, religious identity and youth; and engagement and enterprise.

The contents are essentially a judicious and well-presented synthesis of recent academic research into British Islam, particularly published as monographs or journal articles in the 1990s and 2000s.

An appendix (pp. 266-72) provides a useful overview of the main categories of sources, with cross-references to the bibliography (which, as a single alphabetical listing, is otherwise somewhat difficult to navigate).

Although Islam in Britain has generated few statistics itself, partly because it lacks central structures, the quantitative interest of Muslims in Britain is somewhat greater than the inclusion of only four tables in the volume might suggest.

This is especially (but not solely) the case in chapter 5 (pp. 115-29), which summarizes the socio-demographic profile, mainly based on the 2001 census, drawing upon Serena Hussain’s Muslims on the Map (2008). As Gilliat-Ray acknowledges, this census has probably been overtaken in large part by the very rapid growth in Muslim numbers during the intervening nine years.

The one quantitative source which the author does not really deploy is national sample surveys, with the exception of the Labour Force Survey to a small extent. The Citizenship Surveys are mentioned at one point but not used.

Opinion polls among Muslims are also largely ignored, seemingly rejected (p. 269) because they are ‘crisis-driven publications’ which ‘are rarely underpinned by the normal protocols of scholarly peer review, ethical scrutiny or in-depth social scientific methodological awareness’.

This seems a somewhat extreme position to take, denying the reader the opportunity to gain potentially useful insights into Muslim thinking which are not otherwise available at national level. Some polls embrace ‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’ matters of faith, not just attitudes to Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism and so forth. 

Hopefully, one of the exceptions to the rule which Gilliat-Ray would concede is the survey of British Muslims undertaken in February-March 2009 by Ipsos MORI on behalf of Robert Putnam (Harvard University), David Voas (University of Manchester) and David Campbell (University of Notre Dame), with funding from the John Templeton Foundation.

Intended to parallel many of the questions in the British Social Attitudes Survey for 2008, this study has yet to be reported in any detail. But, when it does appear, it will be an essential contribution to the academic literature.

Also out-of-scope for Gilliat-Ray is any substantive discussion of how the majority British population has reacted to the emergence of Islam as a major faith in Britain. For instance, the term Islamophobia gets only three entries in the index.

In these ways, while Muslims in Britain offers an excellent introduction to many aspects of the community, it by no means tells the whole story.

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Religious Equality

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Pat Thane has edited a new book exploring seven aspects of inequality in Britain since the Second World War, including religious. Entitled Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain since 1945 (London: Continuum, 2010, ISBN 978-1-84706-298-7), its contributors are all associated with the Centre for Contemporary British History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

The chapter on religion and belief (pp. 53-70, 196-7, 214) is by Liza Filby, currently completing her PhD at the Department of History, University of Warwick on ‘God and Thatcher: Religion and Politics in 1980s’ Britain’. In her essay she provides a broadly chronological account (including timeline) of the development of multi-faith Britain since the nineteenth century, documenting linkages with immigration and ethnicity and recent legislative changes designed to accommodate religious diversity.

As with the other six chapters, there is a brief statistical appendix (pp. 69-70) which, frankly, is quite disappointing. It comprises three tables of a) membership of the five main Christian denominations in 1945, 1955, 1965, 1975 and 1985; b) estimates (by Peter Brierley) of affiliates to non-Christian faiths in 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 (these figures are especially problematical); and c) religious profession for the United Kingdom and separately for Scotland in the 2001 population census.

The opportunity is thus missed to provide truly contemporary data about religious inequality in modern Britain. For instance, the extensive literature on religious disadvantage in the census (such as Serena Hussain, Muslims on the Map, London: Tauris Academic, 2008) is not mined. There is likewise no consideration of survey data, including the Citizenship Survey and opinion polls which touch on Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and perceived discrimination against Christians.

BRIN readers interested in exploring religious equality issues further might well start with the relevant section of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s website at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/about-us/vision-and-mission/our-business-plan/religion-belief-equality/

This includes a link to EHRC Research Services’ newly-established religion or belief network, which issues an occasional e-bulletin, and to Research Report No. 48 (2009) by Linda Woodhead with Rebecca Catto on ‘Religion or Belief’: Identifying Issues and Priorities. The EHRC’s research team is currently preparing a statistical briefing on religion and belief issues. To join the religion or belief network, contact Research@equalityhumanrights.com

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Visualising Religious Switching, Sticking and Leaving

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

David Voas last week sent me a link to this fascinating Internet Monk blog chart, illustrating data collected by Pew on religious background, current affiliation and religious switching in the US. (Please do have a look at the original post and responses – they are full of detail.)

Michael Bell Chart of Pew Data

 

 

 

I have developed a similar chart for BRIN. Respondents to the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey were asked,

‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion; which?’ (the ‘ReligSum’ variable)

and additionally,

‘In what religion, if any, were you brought up: What was your family’s religion?’ (the ‘RlFamSum’ variable).

The responses are also available in more detailed categories (e.g. United Reformed Church, Free Presbyterian, Brethren, Buddhist) which will shortly be uploaded at http://www/brin.ac.uk/figures.

However, for graphical purposes, the numbers for many groups are extremely small, which means they are difficult to depict. It’s also difficult to interpret the significance of the proportion joining or leaving accurately when numbers are so small.

Accordingly, categories were combined by the data publishers to form six broad groups: Church of England/Anglican, Roman Catholic, Other Christian (including the free churches and those people simply identifying themselves as non-denominational Christian), Non-Christian (members of other world religions and New Religious Movements), No Religious Affiliation, and those who refused to answer or did not know. It’s perhaps unhelpful that new and growing Christian groups are included in the ‘other Christian’ group together with nonconformist groups in decline – a further version of this chart could separate them out.

The chart ranks the groups in terms of popularity, with the ‘religion of upbringing’ on the left, and ‘current religion’ on the right. Each circle’s area is proportionate to the size of the group.

Both charts are a type of weighted flow chart: the flow arrows between the past religious status and current religious status have a thicker or thinner width in proportion to the number of people moving between each group at each time point. The intent is to illustrate the proportion of respondents who have switched between religious groups at some point between childhood and at the time of the survey, including from having a religious identity to having none, or vice versa.

Religion-WFlow-2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Britain, there is less switching between religious groups and more from having a religious affiliation to having none (which the BRIN chart highlights) and so the sizes of the original and current religious groups are of more interest.

Michael Bell at Internet Monk used Microsoft Paint to devise the chart, whereas we simply used Excel and added text using Photoshop, avoiding the need to calculate pixel numbers. Curved and straight lines are available in the ‘Shapes’ option and widths can be adjusted to the correct centimetre. The circles were similarly adjusted using πr2  to calculate the width and height options.

The main flaw is that the area of the flow arrows is not proportionate to the size of the groups (which is what may be expected intuitively). The absolute width of the arrows was therefore arbitrary, and so I set the total belonging to each religious category in childhood as having a width equal to the diameter of each relevant circle on the left hand side. The obvious problem with this is that the arrows pointing to ‘Current Religion: None’ add up to having a greater width than the diameter, so one arrow was overlaid over another to ease presentation.

The underlying data are also available in this spreadsheet.

Besides the number of respondents reporting their religious identity during their upbringing, and current religious identity, tables are also available illustrating the data in percentage terms: first, setting the total for each group membership during upbringing to 100% (to illustrate religion of destination for those with a particular religious or irreligious upbringing), and secondly, setting the total for each current group membership to 100% (to illustrate religion of origin for each religious group as currently described). For example, in the first table, 52% of those who had an upbringing affiliated to the Church of England retain an Anglican affiliation; in the second table, 92% of those who currently have an affiliation to the Church of England had an upbringing in the Church of England.

Three issues should be borne in mind. First, the meaning of affiliation is not fixed across religious communities or over time, and additionally depends on the respondent. For Roman Catholics, membership depends on baptism, whereas for other denominations it may be more formal and associational; for some, religious identity also has a cultural component. Some may over-report affiliation as children in order to represent themselves as having switched bravely into having a different identity or ‘None’. Some would also argue that while there are fewer adherents compared with a generation or two ago, the religious practice of those who are affiliated is of increasingly higher quality and commitment.

Secondly, it should be remembered that the chart doesn’t adjust for age or migration history. The Church of England or Roman Catholic stickers are likely to be somewhat older than the leavers, and some of the stickers may also have had their religious identities formed in other countries, for which we make no allowance here. Thirdly, this is a snapshot of religious identity: over the life course some respondents will change their ‘current affiliation’ again – some moving between different religious communities, others choosing at a later stage to move from having a religious identity to having none.

Do I think this is a helpful visualisation method? Well, it’s attractive, and hammers home the point that the ‘Religious Nones’ are the dominant group and the religious affiliation they originally had. It’s not wonderful at depicting switching between religious groups because there is so little – the relevant arrows are hairline. The s-curve option in Excel takes some manoeuvring and it’s time-consuming to develop a graphic in this way. A more adept user of Photoshop may have better luck at devising such charts both efficiently and more attractively. A future option might be to look at using software such as Netdraw, where the width of arrows and position of circles can be determined automatically. Further ideas are very much welcome.

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Religion in Scotland

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Scotland’s Population, 2009, the 155th annual review of the Registrar General for Scotland, was published on 6 August. It can be purchased in print format (ISBN 978-1-874451-80-8, £7) or be downloaded from:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/stats/annual-review-09/rgar2009.pdf

The review is accompanied by Vital Events Reference Tables, 2009, which is available on the internet at:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/publications-and-data/vital-events/ref-tables-2009/index.html

As usual, these annual publications contain an analysis of marriages in Scotland by mode of solemnization. In 2009, of 27,524 ceremonies 48% were religious and 52% civil. The religious figure was almost 1% higher than in 2008, but the general trend remains towards civil weddings, interrupted only in 1997-2002 when there was a small rise in religious services largely associated with an increase of ‘tourism’ marriages, especially carried out at Gretna. Back in 1946-50, civil ceremonies accounted for only 17% of the total in Scotland; they first became a majority in 2005. Full data since the Second World War are given in Table 7.6 of Vital Events Reference Tables, 2009.

Of the 13,285 religious ceremonies in 2009, 46% were conducted by the Church of Scotland, 13% by the Roman Catholic Church and 40% by other religions. Heading the list of these ‘other religions’ is the Humanist Society of Scotland, with 12% of all religious ceremonies (humanist celebrants have been authorized to conduct marriages in Scotland since 2005). The Pagan Network and the Spiritualists’ National Union also make an appearance, with 26 and 14 marriages respectively. So, a proportion of religious ceremonies are not really religious in the understood sense of the word. Neither are religious marriages necessarily conducted in places of worship. In fact, in 2009 only 54% were, hotels being the venue for about 2,000 religious weddings and castles and other historic buildings for 1,100.

These statistics, coupled with the forthcoming (16 September) visit to Edinburgh of Pope Benedict XVI, have prompted Adam Morris to write a summative assessment of the state of religion in Scotland. This appeared under the tile ‘Losing our Religion’ in the Edinburgh Evening News for 9 August. The article can be found (with sundry comments) at:

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Adam-Morris-Losing-our-religion.6464064.jp

In it Morris claims that ‘Scots are turning their back on religion’, with just 53% identifying themselves as Christian. Besides the marriage statistics, he also cites falling congregations (with only 18% of Scots regular churchgoers and two-thirds not attending during the past year), the disappearance of Sunday schools and other church-based youth organizations, and the growing fashion for non-religious naming ceremonies in lieu of Christian baptism.

Morris quotes Peter Kearney, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Scotland, who says that society today is designed against faith, with churchgoers ‘increasingly seen as odd’. Kearney acknowledges that church numbers are down but highlights reduced participation in organizations in general, a point with which Morris agrees. ‘While all may not be alive and well across Christian churches in Scotland, the 600,000 who attend every Sunday is still more than the 100,000 who go to a professional football game and the 300,000 who attend the cinema.’

Clearly, the Edinburgh Evening News would not claim this to be an especially deep analysis of religion in Scotland. Those interested in learning more could try: Clive Field, ‘“The Haemorrhage of Faith”? Opinion Polls as Sources for Religious Practices, Beliefs and Attitudes in Scotland since the 1970s’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 16, 2001, pp. 157-75; Peter Brierley, Turning the Tide: The Challenge Ahead – Report of the 2002 Scottish Church Census, London: Christian Research, 2003; David Voas, ‘Religious Decline in Scotland: New Evidence on Timing and Spatial Patterns’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 45, 2006, pp. 107-18; and the various publications by Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning arising from the religion module of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/1348). However, caveat emptor – the statistics in all of these writings are now several years out of date.

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More Perceptions of Islam

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Islamophobia certainly appears to be a hot topic in 2010. Ten opinion polls have already been undertaken between January and July to gauge the attitudes of adult Britons towards Islam and Muslims.

Now The Guardian of 3 August has noted another, carried out on behalf of the London-based Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA). iERA was established in 2009 as a global organization committed to presenting Islam to the wider society (a process known in Islamic theology as dawah).

The iERA investigation was conducted among a random sample of 500 English-speaking non-Muslims aged 16 and over interviewed face-to-face on the street in Britain by DJS Research in November 2009. Fieldwork seems to have occurred disproportionately in major British cities. 

The full report on the survey is entitled Perceptions on Islam & Muslims: A Study of the UK Population, with Hamza Andreas Tzortzis as the senior researcher. It can be downloaded (albeit not in a very printer-friendly form) from:   

http://www.iera.org.uk/downloads/iERA_NonMuslimPerceptionsOnIslam_and_Muslims_ResearchReport.pdf

The enquiry covers similar ground, but in rather more detail, as the YouGov poll for the Exploring Islam Foundation which we have already featured on the British Religion in Numbers website (on 8 June).

However, as iERA notes on page 5, the results of the two investigations differ in various ways. iERA attributes this to the methodological inferiority of YouGov’s approach, not least the fact that it uses a panel (deemed by iERA to constitute a self-selecting sample), obtained a low response rate and employed only closed questions.

80% of the iERA sample had no or very little knowledge of Islam, with 17% having basic knowledge and 3% a lot. 40% did not know who Allah is, 36% did not know who the Prophet Mohammed was, and just 20% had come into contact with the Koran (compared with 95% for the Bible).

Only 14% had been taught or actively sought information about Islam, in contrast to the 84% who had not. 76% had never spoken to a Muslim about Islam and 71% had never seen or heard any dawah material. Even when exposed to such material, attitudes were more likely to remain unchanged or to worsen than to improve. 77% had no desire to learn more about Islam.

27% of respondents entertained negative perceptions of Muslims, with 55% neutral and 18% positive. Around three-quarters thought that the contribution of Islam and Muslims to Britain was either non-existent or negative; and disagreed or were neutral when asked whether Muslims positively engaged with society.

For one-third Muslims were seen as the major cause of community tension, 32% being convinced they preached hatred. 24% viewed them as terrorists, with one-fifth denying they were law-abiding and peaceful. 30% were antipathetic to Sharia law and 59% agreed that Islam oppresses women.

The commentary (pages 30-39) records the more significant breaks by demographic sub-groups, although too much significance should not be attached to these disaggregations on account of the relatively small size of the overall sample. In particular, the report inclines to make more than is advisable of replies from those aged 21-24 (of whom there cannot have been more than about 45 interviewed).

The conclusion (page 10) is: ‘The general population has displayed a negative perception concerning religion, Islam and Muslims. The dawah has had limited reach and it has not improved perceptions about Islam. There has also been a consistent trend of apparent neutrality; we believe this indicates apathy and indifference coupled with genuine ignorance about religion and specifically Islam.’ Nineteen recommendations are advanced (pages 39-45) to improve this situation.

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Trust in the Clergy

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

How trustworthy are the clergy, both absolutely and in relation to other professionals? Several opinion poll companies have tried to answer this question over the years, including Ipsos MORI, which has data on the extent to which Britons trust the clergy to tell the truth or not going back to 1983, some of which is abstracted at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/Table-9-1-Trust-Professions-Ipsos-MORI-1983-2009.xls

GfK Custom Research has undertaken a similar exercise annually since 2003, asking respondents whether they trust the clergy and other groups or not. But GfK has polled internationally and not just in Britain.

Most recently GfK surveyed 15 European countries (including by telephone in the UK) and the United States, Brazil, Colombia and India in February and March 2010 on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, with an average of just under 1,000 interviews in each nation.

GfK has issued a press release about the 2010 survey, which will be found at:

http://www.gfknop.com/imperia/md/content/gfk_nop/newsandpressinformation/100609_pm_trust_index_2010_fin.pdf

Unfortunately, it does not feature any of the UK results. However, some of these have been made available exclusively to British Religion in Numbers by Mark Hofmans of GfK Custom Research and are quoted here with his kind permission.

Across all countries, trust in the clergy stands at 58%, the range being from 33% in France to 86% in Romania. In the UK the figure is 63%, the highest in Western Europe (and 15% above the sub-continental average), closely followed by Sweden on 62%.

But UK citizens’ trust in the clergy is far less than in doctors (85%), the army (85%), schoolteachers (84%) and policemen (73%), although it exceeds confidence in lawyers (48%), managers of large enterprises (34%), journalists (21%) and politicians (14%).  

GfK report that, internationally, trust in the clergy declined by 8% between 2009 and 2010, from 66% to 58%, and by as much as 17% in Germany, which GfK largely attributes to the adverse publicity surrounding the abuse of children and young people by Roman Catholic priests and the Church’s perceived inadequate response to these events.

In the UK the fall from 2009 to 2010 was only 3%, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Roman Catholic Church in Britain has been somewhat less caught up in the scandals than its counterparts in Ireland and continental Europe. The 66% having trust in the clergy in the UK in 2009 was also 6 points higher than in 2008.

Although somewhat less that the number of Britons telling Ipsos MORI that they trust the clergy to tell the truth (71% in 2009), and notwithstanding a continuing trickle of ‘naughty vicar’ stories in the media (the latest about sham marriages), the GfK figure of 63% in the UK having confidence in the clergy is still surprisingly high (and not far behind the United States on 69%).

How do we interpret this? Is the lingering respect for clergy a recognition of the influence which they exercise in the leadership of the local communities which they serve, or do we still derive comfort from the knowledge that the clergy of all denominations and faiths set a lead in religious commitment and moral standards which the rest of us will but imperfectly follow?

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