Charitable Choices

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

What we do with our money tells us something about what sort of people we are, including our values in life. From this perspective, the findings of a recent YouGov poll would seem to indicate that religion does not feature high on our rank order of priorities.

YouGov interviewed online a representative sample of 1,903 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 6 and 7 October. They were asked a couple of questions about how they would donate £10 for charitable purposes.

Given thirteen options for donating this money, and being invited to select up to three, charities for the advancement of religion came bottom of the list, chosen by a mere 2%. This proportion did not vary across demographic sub-groups.

The only other option to mention religion (albeit peripherally) was ‘the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity’. This scored 5% overall but was significantly more popular with Labour and Liberal Democrat voters than Conservatives.

Top of the list came charities for the advancement of health or the saving of lives (44%), for the assistance of those in need (32%), for the prevention or relief of poverty (19%), for animal welfare (19%), and for the promotion of the armed forces or emergency services (13%). Some of these charities will naturally have religious links or roots.

Full data tables from this poll are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-CharityTypes-081010.pdf

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Children at Church Weddings

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

‘To invite or not to invite young children?’ to weddings is a key question for couples planning their big day, but a new survey conducted by the Church of England – as part of the Archbishops’ Council’s ongoing Weddings Project – suggests a majority of people agree with the Church that children should be welcome at the ceremony.

Fieldwork dates for the poll were not cited in the Church’s recent press release, a lamentable oversight, but it appears to have been conducted in the run-up to the National Wedding Shows held at Earl’s Court, London and the NEC, Birmingham earlier this month. 2,008 adults were interviewed online by ICM.

85% agreed that children should be allowed at wedding ceremonies, with 9% disagreeing and 6% having no clear view. Asked whether ‘The church should welcome young children to wedding ceremonies, and make arrangements to help keep them happy and occupied’, 68% agreed, 23% disagreed, with 9% saying ‘don’t know’.

These results have prompted the development of a new advice sheet by the Church on Welcoming Children at Weddings. It advocates that they should be given a ‘wedding bag’ when they arrive at church and also suggests ways for children to take part in the service, particularly the couple’s own children.

The above post is derived from the Church of England’s press release at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr8410.html

This is BRIN’s 200th news post since the start of 2010!

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How Fair is Britain?

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Section 12 of the Equality Act 2006 endowed the newly-formed Equality and Human Rights Commission with a responsibility to monitor the progress that society is making towards becoming more equal, and to report on it every three years.

The first such triennial review was published yesterday as How Fair is Britain? Equality, Human Rights and Good Relations in 2010. This alone runs to 750 pages but is supplemented by a raft of specially-commissioned research reports and by submissions in response to a call for evidence. All this documentation can be freely accessed at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/triennial-review/

Religion (as measured by religious affiliation) is one of the key equality variables to be monitored, although religious data are not necessarily available for all equality indicators which are covered by the review.

Most of the information used derives from secondary analysis of existing datasets, including, in the case of religion, the Population Census, Annual Population Survey, Labour Force Survey, Citizenship Survey, Health Survey for England, and Wealth and Assets Survey.

There is only occasional new primary data, such as the National Foundation for Educational Research’s online survey of 1,758 English schoolteachers’ attitudes towards religious and other forms of equality in January-February 2010. There is a separate report for this at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/triennial_review/triennial_review_nfer_teachervoice_omnibus.doc

Overall, the review found a Britain far less prejudiced on race and homosexuality than twenty years ago. However, numerous inequalities remain. Specifically, Muslims are shown to experience much disadvantage, in terms of lower educational qualifications, higher unemployment, lower pay, poorer health, and above-average imprisonment.

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Religion and Wellbeing

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

To coincide with the publication on 13 October of their new report on human wellbeing, entitled Wholly Living, aid agencies CAFOD and Tearfund and think-tank Theos commissioned ComRes to undertake an online poll on 24-26 September among a representative sample of 2,008 adult Britons aged 18 and over.

The survey has limited explicitly religious content, but a couple of findings are worth reporting here.

Asked which of six things had brought them greatest personal happiness so far, only 5% of respondents said it was their religious or spiritual life (rising to 7% for the over-55s and Scots and to 8% among the DE social group). The overwhelming majority (60%) cited relationships, with 9% each opting for holidays and helping others and 4% each for spending money and their job.

Hardly anybody (just seven individuals) felt that religious issues were big on their personal and family agenda at the moment. But 24 people (1%) said religious issues were currently important for the UK and 93 (5% overall and 7% for the over-65s) for the rest of the world.

The full data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/CAFODhappinessoct10.aspx

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Roman Catholic School Statistics

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Roman Catholic schools have long formed a key part of the state school system in Great Britain, accounting for about one in ten of all maintained school places in England and Wales. These schools receive 100% of their running costs and 90% of their capital funding from the state.

Over and above any reporting which these schools have to make to Government, there has been a much more detailed annual census of Roman Catholic schools, teachers and pupils carried out from within the Church since 1959, successively by the Newman Demographic Survey (NDS), Catholic Education Council and Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales.

The results of these censuses were substantively published until the CES assumed responsibility for their administration. Although the CES has latterly issued digests for 2007 and 2008, it has allegedly declined researcher access to all its school statistics for 1992-2006 and to the unpublished data for 2007 and subsequent years.

One researcher who has regularly sought access to these hidden data has been Tony Spencer, founder of the NDS and currently Honorary Secretary of the Pastoral Research Centre (PRC), of which the present writer is also a non-Catholic trustee. Tony’s overall contribution to the development of Catholic statistics is summarized at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/commentary/drs/appendix7/index.html

Tony has now written up the full story of his (as yet unsuccessful) attempts to persuade the CES to grant access to these school census data in a paper published by Russell-Spencer Ltd on 8 October and entitled Secrecy in the Catholic Church: The Case of Catholic School Statistics in England and Wales (ISBN 978 1 905270 52 1).

Copies of this paper, and of an accompanying press release, are available from Tony Spencer, Stone House, Hele, Taunton, Somerset, TA4 1AJ; telephone 01823 46169; email sociorelresearch@ukonline.co.uk

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Faith of Generation Y

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Faith of Generation Y is a new book by Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Bob Mayo and Sally Nash, with Christopher Cocksworth (Church House Publishing, 2010, xii + 153pp., ISBN 978 0 7151 4206 6, £14.99). Generation Y was born from about 1982 onwards, in succession to Baby Boomers (born 1946-63) and Generation X (born 1964-81).

Collins-Mayo is a professional sociologist of religion, at Kingston University. But, as the name of its publisher might suggest, the volume is aimed mainly at a practitioner rather than academic audience – church leaders, youth workers, missioners and teachers. It seeks to capture the mindset of today’s young people and to spell out the implications (and opportunities) for contemporary Christian witness.

The book is divided into two not quite equal sections, sociological perspective (pp. 1-89) and theological reflection (pp. 91-136). The former derives from research conducted over the last five years with young people aged 8-23 (but mostly 11-18) in England who participated in 34 Christian (Protestant or non-denominational) youth and community outreach projects. Respondents comprised 297 who completed questionnaires and 107 who were interviewed. They included a balance of frequent and infrequent churchgoers, although the authors were particularly interested in the latter. 

The main empirical findings are set out, through a mixture of quantitative and, more especially, qualitative data, in chapters 3-5. These consider, in turn, young people’s faith and its relationship to Christianity (pp. 32-51); the processes of transmission of faith and the Christian memory (pp. 52-70); and the relevance of Christian faith to day-to-day life (pp. 71-82). Chapter 6 (pp. 83-9) summarizes the key points from the sociological research. There are six tables.

As the authors are the first to concede, their sample cannot necessarily be considered to be statistically representative of Christian youth work or young people as a whole. Therefore, from a BRIN perspective, the figures must be regarded as more indicative than conclusive. However, findings from other studies with a stronger quantitative methodological grounding are quoted throughout, including the work of Leslie Francis.

The headlines of the book will come as no great surprise. Young people have generally disengaged from Christianity and the Church (to which they are ‘benignly indifferent’), and their faith is mostly not of a religious nature, but ‘immanent’. Family, friends and self tend to provide the central axes of meaning, hope and purpose which enable the young to get on with the business of daily living. On the other hand, among the unchurched some evidence of lingering affiliation and belief was found and also for what Grace Davie has called ‘vicarious religion’.

The book is a sort of sequel to Making Sense of Generation Y: The World View of 15- to 25-Year-Olds by Sara Savage, Sylvia Collins-Mayo and Bob Mayo, with Graham Cray (Church House Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978 0 7151 4051 2), which was based on group interviews with 124 young people around England in youth clubs, colleges and universities.

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After the Papal Visit

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

One-quarter of British adults claim to have followed the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England, according to a newly-released poll from Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO), far fewer than are preoccupied with the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

Fieldwork for the survey was conducted on 22-24 September, among 2,005 members (including 173 Roman Catholics) of ARPO’s Springboard UK online panel, although the results were not released until the afternoon of 6 October. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, region, social grade and Catholic/non-Catholic) and commentary are available at:

http://www.visioncritical.com/blog/britons-and-catholics-want-church-to-do-more-to-assist-sexual-abuse-victims/

4% of the entire sample of adults aged 18 and over and 19% of Catholics said that they had followed the visit very closely and 21% and 31% moderately closely. 31% of both groups stated that they had not followed it too closely, while 44% of Britons and 19% of Catholics had not followed it closely at all. So, one-half of British Catholics had no great interest in the papal visit. Catholics apart, Scots (43%) followed the visit most closely.

Asked about the arrest during the visit of six men in an alleged terror plot against the Pope, only 22% of Britons and 28% of Catholics were convinced the threat was real. 34% of adults said the threat was not real and 44% were unsure.

The remaining questions focused on sexual abuse by Catholic priests. 31% of all Britons and even 19% of professing Catholics thought that more than one-quarter of all priests had been involved in sexual abuse over the past five decades. 26% and 41% respectively put the proportion at less than one in ten, and 25% and 26% between one in ten and one in four. 17% of all respondents and 14% of Catholics were unsure.

At the same time, 37% of Britons and 56% of Catholics said that the sexual abuse scandal was limited to a few priests in a few locations. 27% and 19% considered that the scandal was considerable and permeated about half of the Catholic Church. 21% and 15% believed that it was widespread and affected practically the whole of the Church. 16% of all adults and 10% of Catholics were uncertain.

80% of Britons (rising to 90% of over-55s) and 68% of Catholics were convinced that the Church had done too little to assist the victims of sexual abuse, most of the remainder having no clear view.

87% of all adults wanted the Church’s hierarchy to acknowledge that it had failed to act, 85% called on the Church to pass to the relevant authorities the names of all accused priests, and 82% expected the Church to provide material support to victims. Almost identical numbers of Catholics agreed with these three propositions. The strongest proponents were the over-55s and Scots.

58% of all respondents (peaking at 66% of over-55s and 67% of Scots) considered Pope Benedict had handled the scandal badly against 20% who thought he had done well. Catholics were somewhat more impressed with his performance, 39% saying well and 42% badly.

Similarly, 43% of Britons but 69% of Catholics deemed the Pope to have been sincere in his expression of sorrow during his visit about sexual abuse by priests. 29% and 15% respectively regarded him as insincere.

All in all, therefore, not much sign of the fabled ‘Benedict bounce’ here.

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‘Aggressive Atheism’

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Many have judged the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England to have been a relative success, but it was almost derailed at the eleventh hour by comments made by one of his closest aides, Cardinal Walter Kasper, in an interview with the German news magazine Focus, published on 13 September.

Kasper was widely quoted as making various seemingly disparaging remarks about the islands he was shortly to visit with the Pope, including references to a ‘third-world country’ in the grip of ‘aggressive neo-atheism’. Kasper was pulled from the papal entourage at the last minute, ostensibly on the grounds of his illness (gout).

In a YouGov poll conducted for The Sunday Times on 16-17 September among a representative online sample of 1,984 Britons aged 18 and over, respondents were asked what they thought about Kasper’s views. These questions do not seem to have been used in the printed edition of the newspaper, but the results are now available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-ST-results-170910.pdf

Putting on one side Kasper’s perceived experiences of landing at Heathrow Airport, with which many travellers might concur, 23% of interviewees agreed with him that aggressive neo-atheism is widespread in Britain, 37% disagreed, 25% were neutral and 16% expressed no opinion.

Those most likely to think that neo-atheism was taking root comprised men (27%), the over-60s (30%), Scots (29%) and Conservative voters (29%). The proportion fell to 16% among the 18-24s, but this was mainly because 54% of them were neutral or did not know. Disagreement was notably higher among the ABC1s than the C2DEs (non-manuals and manuals, respectively).

One of Britain’s most outspoken atheists, and probably to the fore of Kasper’s mind in making his comments, is Richard Dawkins. His was one of the names included in a separate YouGov survey of 3,161 adults on 24-26 August in which they were asked to decide who was a ‘national treasure’.

7% of the sample thought that Dawkins was definitely a national treasure, and a further 16% that he was admirable but not quite a national treasure. His admirers were especially to be found among Londoners (32%) and Liberal Democrats (30%). Another 30% were convinced that Dawkins was not a national treasure, while 38% did not know who he was and 9% had no opinion. Detailed results are at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-NationalTreasures-260810.pdf

Quantitative evidence about the extent of atheism in contemporary Britain is somewhat affected by definitional issues. Equating it with those who positively and consistently disbelieve in God, the number of atheists has risen from 10% in 1991 to 12% in 2000 to 18% in 2008, according to the British Social Attitudes Surveys. In 2008 atheists were disproportionately (23%) men or aged 18-34.

International survey findings are reviewed in Phil Zuckerman, ‘Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns’, in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 47-65.

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Church in Wales Statistics

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The biannual meeting of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales took place at Lampeter on 22-23 September. One of the items on the agenda was the report on membership and finances for 2008 and 2009, based on the annual parochial returns. This can be found at:

http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/publications/downloads/sharedassets/membershipfinance/0809-en.pdf

This document has been compared with the equivalent report for 2004 and 2005 so as to get some idea of the principal changes in membership indicators during the past quinquennium (while obviously ignoring year-by-year fluctuations). The results are tabulated below:

 

2004

 2009 % change
Over 18 average attendance – Sundays

41,771

36,836

– 11.8
Over 18 average attendance – weekdays

6,030

5,416

– 10.2
Under 18 average attendance

7,746

5,467

– 29.4
Easter communicants

74,779

65,251

– 12.7
Pentecost communicants

41,582

35,605

– 14.4
Christmas communicants

72,521

59,656

– 17.7
Trinity III communicants

37,913

34,589

– 8.8
Electoral roll

72,303

58,106

– 19.6
Baptisms

8,595

8,076

– 6.0
Confirmations

2,099

1,697

– 19.2
Weddings

4,052

3,479

– 14.1
Funerals

11,129

7,705

– 30.8

It will be seen that all indicators are declining, and some at a fairly steep rate. This seems set to continue (for instance, Easter communicants in 2010 were down again, at 63,515).

Only a couple of mitigating factors can be cited in 2009: Christmas communicants were affected by adverse weather conditions, necessitating the cancellation of some services; and there was a five-yearly revision of the electoral roll, which typically clears out ‘dead wood’.

In presenting the report to the Governing Body, Richard Jones and Tracey White worried that ‘The Church seems to be dropping out of the few significant occasions in people’s lives. Are we being pushed to the margins of society?’ At the same time, they wondered whether alternative counting measures needed to be deployed, especially of youth groups, ‘Messy Church’ and school involvement.

It was not just bad news on the membership front. The Church in Wales finances were also under pressure, according to the report for 2008 and 2009. For the first time since the annual return was introduced in 1990, the level of total direct giving actually fell in cash terms. Partly as a result, parish expenditure exceeded income by £1.4 million, the first parochial-level deficit since 1993.

Overall, including the funds managed by Diocesan Boards and the Representative Body, the Church moved from a surplus of £3.8 million in 2008 to a deficit of £0.7 million in 2009 (with an income of £54.4 million and expenditure of £55.1 million). This was hardly unexpected, given the recession. More information about the Church’s finances can be found in the annual report and accounts for 2009, available at:

http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/structure/repbody/ciwannualreport2009english.pdf

A useful academic study of the Church in Wales during the 1990s, based on extensive original research, is Chris Harris and Richard Startup, The Church in Wales: The Sociology of a Traditional Institution (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999).

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Druids

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 21 September the Charity Commission for England and Wales made a landmark ruling in relation to the long-standing application by the Druid Network to become a registered charity and thus to benefit from the advantages of charity law.

After a delay of five years (according to the Network’s website) the Commission’s 21-page judgment finally accepted that ‘The Druid Network is established for exclusively charitable purposes for the advancement of religion for the public benefit’.

The Commission took into account academic evidence about the nature of Druidry as a religion. Its decision has led to a flood of media headlines such as ‘After thousands of years, Druids are recognised as religious group’.

The Druids are thus the first Pagan body to win recognition under the Charities Act 2006. But how many of them are there? As ever with British religious statistics, there is no hard and fast answer.

In the 2001 census 1,657 individuals wrote in their religion as Druidry, fairly well scattered across England and Wales. However, this will have been an underestimate since some may have recorded themselves under the umbrella term of Pagans (of whom there were 30,500), while others may have been among the 42,000 who simply ticked the other religion box without specifying which religion they followed. 

A BBC Inside Out investigation on 23 June 2003 ventured a figure of ‘around 10,000 practising Druids in Britain’. This number is still widely quoted in Druid circles. A report in the Daily Mail for 22 June 2007 suggested there were ‘more than 9,000 British Druids’. But neither source cited the basis for their statistics.

The Druid Network itself currently only has about 350 paid-up members, although it calculates that it has had 1,300 members past and present in its short history (it was established in late 2002). Religious Trends, 7 (p. 10.6) claimed it had 450 members and 28 groups in 2007. The Network emphasized to the Charity Commission that it is not really a member-focused organization, rather delivering information to a wider public.

The most recent academic monographs on the history of British Druidry are by Ronald Hutton: The Druids (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007) and Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). More background may also be found in the Charity Commission’s adjudication, which is at:

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/library/about_us/druiddec.pdf

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