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Counting Religion in Britain, January 2017

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 16, January 2017 features 22 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 16 January 2017

OPINION POLLS

Faith Research Centre

The major polling news of the month was the official launch by ComRes, in London on 24 January 2017, of its Faith Research Centre, directed by Katie Harrison and claimed to be ‘the UK’s first dedicated commercial capability with specific expertise in researching religion and belief’. The Centre’s vision is ‘to help improve the quality of knowledge . . . by providing robust and impartial evidence of current religious identity, belief, practice, and behaviour’. It aims to do so by offering thought leadership programmes and research and consultancy services on faith issues, domestically and across Europe. Two major projects have already been announced: a series of National Faith Surveys, on a five-year rotational basis, in the UK and four other European countries; and Faith in the Workplace, a set of tools and services to help employers. The Centre’s webpage is at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/faith/

As a trailer for the launch of the Centre, ComRes conducted an online survey into the religious attitudes of 2,048 adult Britons on 4-5 January 2017, the data tables for which can be found at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/polls/general-public-research-religion-of-britain-january-2017/

Respondents were initially asked to assess whether Britain was still a Christian country, a concept which has been to the fore in debates about ‘British values’ during recent years. A slight majority (55%) replied in the affirmative, a big reduction on the 80% found in 1968 and 71% in 1989 but broadly in line with other post-Millennium polling. The proportion judging Britain a Christian country varied widely with age, ranging from 31% of 18-24s to 74% of over-65s. It was also high among professing Christians (72%). Just over one-quarter (28%) considered Britain to be a country without any specific religious identity, and this was especially true of 18-24s (41%), religious nones (37%), and non-Christians (36%). The remaining 17% of the whole sample gave another answer or did not know what to think.

Interviewees were then presented with six pairs of statements and asked to select the one from each pair which best represented their own position. Four of the statements concerned understanding of religion(s), with pluralities saying that a good understanding of religion(s) was important for politicians and policy makers in the UK (47%); for tackling global terrorism (44%); and for understanding the world itself (47%). A further question asked about self-understanding of religion(s) in the UK, rated as good by 43% and not so by 41%. However, similar numbers were scathing in their own assessment of religion(s), which 45% regarded as generally a cause of wars and violence and 44% as doing more harm than good. Somewhat remarkably, nones were no more critical than the rest of society, the assenting figure being 45% for each statement.

Angels

One-third (32%) of Britons claim to believe in angels, and the same number feel they have a guardian angel watching over them, according to a poll commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted online by ICM Unlimited with 2,037 respondents on 17-18 August 2016. This was a similar proportion to 2010 (31% then believing in angels and 29% in guardian angels). In the 2016 survey, women (39%) were more likely to believe in angels than men (26%) and also to have seen or heard an angel (11% and 8%, respectively). Belief in angels otherwise peaked among over-75s and residents of the South-East (both 39%) and the lowest (DE) social group (41%). Data tables are unpublished but a few results were reported in a Bible Society press release of 13 December 2016 at:

https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/latest/news/a-third-of-all-brits-believe-in-guardian-angels/

Islamist terrorism

Islamist terrorism is the major external preoccupation of Britons for 2017, 62% of them telling YouGov in an app-based poll on 2 January that the threat posed by it was most on their mind as an expectation for the year. This was closely followed by the negative effects of the presidency of Donald Trump (59%). Economic disruption as a consequence of Brexit was in third place, at 48%. Just 21% were confident that 2017 would see significant progress in defeating Islamic State. Topline results only can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/01/02/positive-and-negative-expectations-2017-new-year-r/

Banning the burka

International debate about the wearing in public of certain forms of ‘Islamic’ female dress has been raging for a decade or more now and legal bans have already been imposed in certain countries, albeit not (yet) in Britain. Here the appearance of burkinis on holiday beaches was a matter of contention last summer but attention has now reverted back to the wearing of burkas and niqabs. According to an online YouGov poll of 1,609 Britons on 15-16 December 2016, 50% of the adult population would like to see a law passed against the use of full body and face coverings, backing for such a measure being especially strong among over-65s (72%), UKIP supporters (74%), and those who voted for the UK to leave the European Union (EU) in the 2016 referendum (70%). The national figure in favour of a ban is lower than in Germany (69%, seven points more than five months ago) but higher than in the United States (25%), a majority (60%) in the latter country agreeing that people should be allowed to wear what they want, a position taken by just 38% of Britons (but by half of 18-24s, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters and 57% of ‘remainers’ in the EU referendum). The full data table is accessible via the link in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/01/17/brits-and-germans-want-see-burqa-banned-whilst-ame/

‘Muslim’ travel ban

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim majority nations from entering the United States for 90 days has caused a storm of protest, both in his own country and around the world, including in the UK. Sky Data seems to have been the first organization to test British public opinion on the matter, on behalf of Sky News, among a sample of 1,091 Sky customers contacted via SMS on 30 January 2017. This was obviously a niche – and potentially unrepresentative – audience, even though results were weighted to the profile of the population as a whole. Asked whether they would support a similar ‘Muslim’ travel ban in the UK, 34% of respondents said that they would, rising to 40% of over-55s and 44% of residents in the Midlands and Wales. A plurality, 49%, was opposed to a Trump-style policy being adopted in the UK, with hostility greatest among the under-35s (71%) and Londoners (76%), while 18% expressed no clear view. There was also a plurality, again of 49%, in favour of cancelling the proposed state visit to the UK by President Trump later in the year, with 38% wanting it to go ahead and 12% undecided. The data tables can be found at:

http://interactive.news.sky.com/SMSXLIII_TRAVELBAN_300117_FP.pdf

Corruption of religious leaders

UK findings from Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, 2015/16 have recently been released, based upon telephone interviews by Efficience3 with 1,004 adults between 15 December 2015 and 28 January 2016. One of the questions concerned the perceived corruption of national leaders and institutions, including religious leaders. Among UK respondents, 6% assessed all religious leaders corrupt, 8% most of them, 52% some of them, and 27% none of them, with 8% unable to say. The proportion (14%) claiming that most or all religious leaders were corrupt was lower than in many other European and central Asian countries, the regional average being 17% and the range from 2% in Estonia to 39% in Moldova. Within the UK, five groups were seen as being more corrupt than religious leaders, most or all of local government representatives (19%), business executives (21%), government officials (25%), members of the Prime Minister’s office (27%), and MPs (28%). However, religious leaders were seen as more corrupt than judges and magistrates (9%), police (11%), and tax officials (12%). Topline data are available by clicking on the download link at the bottom of the press release at:

https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/governments_are_doing_a_poor_job_at_fighting_corruption_across_europe

Predictions

Britons are a sceptical lot when it comes to believing the predictions of so-called ‘experts’, according to a YouGov poll of 1,943 adults on 7 January 2017. Weather forecasters (29%) and astronomers (27%) are deemed the most credible, some way ahead of economists (19%). Astrologers have one of the poorest ratings, their predictions trusted by no more than 6% of the population overall, albeit they hold special appeal to 18-24-year-olds (12%) and UKIP voters (10%). Pollsters scored just 1%. Results disaggregated by standard demographics are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/6019c410-d4d6-11e6-b6a9-c26f3e0c0822

Psychic powers

Prompted by recent CIA revelations about scientific tests which apparently ‘proved’ that the Israeli psychic Uri Geller really did have special powers, YouGov asked the 4,645 respondents to an app-based poll on 20 January 2017 whether they believed that some people possess psychic powers. Just over one-quarter (27%) did so, women (36%), Scottish Nationalists (36%), and UKIP voters (40%) being especially convinced. A slim majority (51%) disavowed the existence of psychic powers, men (62%) and 18-24s (66%) being most sceptical. The remaining 22% were undecided. Data have been posted at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/105875e0-def7-11e6-9747-82ef68f86b7f/question/c12b5630-def7-11e6-ba0f-2678bf7c8139/social

Triskaidekaphobia

The occurrence of Friday the 13th in the month occasioned at least a couple of polls about triskaidekaphobia and superstition more generally, neither sufficiently reported to enable their credentials to be established, although there was some print and online media coverage (from which this brief account has been compiled). One survey was conducted by the property website Zoopla among 2,839 homeowners, ascertaining that 43% acknowledged being superstitious and 46% having a lucky number (seven being the most popular); 30% also said they would be less likely to buy a property with thirteen in the address and 23% that they would be unwilling to exchange, complete, or even move into a home on Friday the 13th. The other study was undertaken by the hotel chain Travelodge, 74% of its 2,500 respondents reporting they had suffered bad luck on a previous Friday the 13th and 68% they would be making some kind of gesture on the day in order to bring them good luck; 50% expressed belief in the power of lucky numbers and 40% owned up to being superstitious. An associated survey of Travelodge’s 532 UK hotel managers revealed that room 13 was the one customers wished to avoid most, with room 101 and room 666 the second and third least requested; room 7 is the room most in demand.

Holocaust and genocide

More than a quarter (27%) of survivors of the Holocaust and later genocides who live in the UK have experienced discrimination or abuse in this country linked to their religion or ethnicity, according to a survey released by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), marking Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January 2017). This is despite the fact that 72% of survivors said they felt very or fairly welcome when they arrived in the UK. The majority (52%) waited more than twenty years after their arrival before they began to talk about their experiences. Relatives of these survivors are even more likely (38%) to report being victims of faith- or race-based hatred in the UK. The poll was conducted online by YouGov among 208 survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides and 173 of their family members. HMDT’s press release can be found at:

http://hmd.org.uk/news/holocaust-and-genocide-survivors-experience-abuse-uk

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Faith-based charities

New Philanthropy Capital published the final report from its programme of research into faith-based charities on 29 November 2016: Rachel Wharton and Lucy de Las Casas, What a Difference a Faith Makes: Insights on Faith-Based Charities. It draws together the key findings from interim publications and blogs, including an analysis of the statistical importance of faith-based organizations to the charity sector in England and Wales, previously featured by British Religion in Numbers. One-fourth of charities registered with the Charity Commission were found to be faith-based of which two-thirds are Christian. An in-depth survey of 134 faith-based charities was also undertaken. The 33-page report further discusses the main themes which have emerged from the research and makes sundry recommendations. It is available at:

http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/what-a-difference-faith-makes/

Evangelical opinions

The Evangelical Alliance (EA) has recently released headline findings from two surveys conducted among its online research panel of evangelical Christians. It should be noted that these were self-selecting (opportunity) samples and may not be representative of the evangelical constituency, still less of churchgoers as a whole.

The first survey was completed by 811 evangelicals between 28 November and 5 December 2016 and was press-released by the EA on 16 December. It concerned attitudes to Christmas, the key messages being that the overwhelming majority of evangelicals, 89% and 99% respectively, intended (a) to volunteer or give money to charitable causes at Christmas and (b) to sing carols or attend a Christmas service. Further information is available at:

http://www.eauk.org/current-affairs/media/press-releases/jesus-and-giving-at-the-heart-of-christmas.cfm

The second survey was answered by 1,562 evangelicals and published on 23 December 2016 in the January/February 2017 edition of Idea magazine; dates of fieldwork were not given. The subject matter was belief and unbelief with particular reference to: sharing the gospel with people of other faiths; religious freedom in the UK; secularism; and religious illiteracy in the public square. On the last-named topic, 94% of evangelicals criticized the media and 88% politicians for their lack of understanding of religion. The article is available at:

http://www.eauk.org/idea/belief-and-unbelief.cfm

Faith journeys

What Helps Disciples Grow? is the final report by Simon Foster on a 2014-15 research project for the Saint Peter’s Saltley Trust, a Christian educational charity covering the West Midlands. It is based upon responses to a paper questionnaire completed during services by 1,191 churchgoers in the region drawn from 30 places of worship of different denominations. To what extent this constituted a representative sample is unclear. Respondents were asked how they viewed their own calling, growth, and spirituality and what had helped or hindered their Christian journey over the years. Analysis of the data in partnership with Leslie Francis and David Lankshear suggested that there were four distinct paths of discipleship: group activity, individual experience, public engagement, and church worship. The report, tables (with breaks by gender and age), and questionnaire can be downloaded from:

What Helps Christian Disciples Grow?

Christians against Poverty

Debt-counselling charity Christians against Poverty (CAP) has highlighted the lasting impact of its work, based on the experiences of 214 of its clients surveyed at least twelve months after becoming debt free with CAP’s help, in The Freedom Report: The Importance of Debt Advice in Building Financial Capability and Resilience to Stay Free of Problem Debt. The vast majority of clients (93%) remained free of unmanageable debt, 85% felt in control of their finances, 74% no longer used credit, 62% had passed on to others skills learned through CAP, and 46% even had savings. The 34-page report is available at:

https://capuk.org/downloads/policy_and_government/the_freedom_report.pdf

Surveying Sikhs

Jagbir Jhutti-Johal considers methodological issues raised in surveying the Sikh community, with reference to the UK Sikh Survey (2016), in her Religion and the Public Sphere blog at:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionpublicsphere/2017/01/research-on-the-sikh-community-in-the-uk-is-essential-to-better-inform-policy-but-surveys-must-be-improved/

Aliyah statistics

In its latest report, written by Daniel Staetsky, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research asked Are Jews Leaving Europe? It focused on migration to Israel from six countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the UK – which collectively account for 70% of Europe’s Jewish population. Since the Millennium, migration to Israel from the UK, Germany, and Sweden was found to be at a ‘business as usual’ volume whereas in the other three nations, notably in France and Italy, there has been a steep rise in very recent years, to reach historically unprecedented levels. Staetsky deployed statistical modelling in an attempt to identify potential factors which might be driving this pattern, with particular reference to France and the UK, albeit an explicit link to the extent of anti-Semitism could not be proved. Data sources are fully explained in an appendix (pp. 23-6). The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2017.Are_Jews_leaving_Europe.pdf

ACADEMIC STUDIES

British Social Attitudes Surveys

In his latest research note for British Religion in Numbers, Ben Clements presents trend data from British Social Attitudes Surveys to 2015 in respect of current religious affiliation, religion of upbringing, and attendance at religious services. See:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2017/religion-and-the-british-social-attitudes-2015-survey/

Materiality and religion

Material culture has emerged in recent years as a significant theme in the study of religion, and a specialist journal (Material Religion) has been published since 2005. The three phases of materiality – production, classification, and circulation/use – are further illustrated in Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred, edited by Tim Hutchings and Joanne McKenzie (London: Routledge, 2017, x + 245pp,, ISBN 978-1-4724-7783-5, £95.00, hardback). Its thirteen chapters, with introduction and afterword, offer fresh empirical research and theoretical insights, disproportionately drawn from Britain. Reflecting the nature of the subject, these contributions are of a mainly qualitative bent, the exception being Elisabeth Arweck, ‘Religion Materialised in the Everyday: Young People’s Attitudes towards Material Expressions of Religion’ (pp. 185-202). This draws upon data from the 2011-12 ‘Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity’ project, demonstrating a considerable awareness by young people of the cultural factors at work shaping the everyday deployment, circulation, and reception of religious symbols, clothing, and dietary observances. The book’s webpage is at:

https://www.routledge.com/Materiality-and-the-Study-of-Religion-The-Stuff-of-the-Sacred/Hutchings-McKenzie/p/book/9781472477835

Psychology and religion

Vol. 29, No. 2, 2016 of Journal of Empirical Theology is a theme issue on psychology and religion, guest-edited by Emyr Williams and Mandy Robbins. Two of the six articles are of particular British religious statistical interest, although their findings are not entirely conclusive. The more substantial, in terms of its evidence base, is Andrew Village, ‘Biblical Conservatism and Psychological Type’ (pp. 137-59), a correlation explored through responses given by 3,243 self-selecting readers of the Church Times in 2013, 1,269 of them clergy and 1,974 laity. Meanwhile, in ‘The Relationship between Paranormal Belief and the HEXACO Domains of Personality’ (pp. 212-38), Emyr Williams and Ben Roberts illustrate the effects of introducing honesty/humility as an additional (sixth) measure of personality when appraising belief in the paranormal among a preponderantly female sample of 137 undergraduate students in Wales. Access options to these articles are outlined at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15709256/29/2

Church of England liturgies

The words used in Anglican worship have become more accessible over time but there is still scope for making them more so, argues Geoff Bayliss (Rector of Cowley, Oxford), who has appraised the readability of Church of England liturgies by testing them statistically against three standard readability formulae, covering ministry of the word, ministry of the Eucharist, and occasional offices. His summative evaluation is that currently 43% of adults living in England would find 50% of the Church’s liturgical texts difficult to read. Only 34% of these texts fall into the National Literacy Strategy’s Entry Level or Level 1 groupings while 64% are categorized as Level 2, characterized by longer sentences, unfamiliar vocabulary, and a high occurrence of polysyllabic words. Nor is it the case that linguistic complexity is the function of older liturgies such as the Book of Common Prayer; modern versions also exhibit readability problems. Although Bayliss concedes that use of a small core of challenging words may be hard to avoid, he feels many others could be couched in forms which would enhance their readability. The full results of the research are presented in his doctoral thesis, ‘Assessing the Accessibility of the Liturgical Texts of the Church of England: Using Readability Formulae’ (University of Wales DMin, 2016, 314pp.), which can be downloaded from:

http://www.plainenglishliturgy.org.uk/

An introduction to his findings can be found in his article ‘Speaking More in the Language of the People’ in the Church Times, 23/30 December 2016, p. 16, which is available at:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/23-december/comment/opinion/speaking-more-of-the-language-of-the-people

EURISLAM Project

Rather belatedly, we should note the publication of a special theme issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Vol. 42, No. 2, 2016, pp. 177-340) devoted to the EURISLAM Project, funded between 2009 and 2012 by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. EURISLAM was undertaken by a consortium of six European universities, coordinated by the University of Amsterdam, and with the University of Bristol as the British member. The research took place in Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and The Netherlands, utilizing a combination of media content analysis, telephone interviews, and interviews with representatives of Muslim organizations. In each of the six countries, telephone interviews were conducted with onomastically recruited samples of Muslims of Moroccan, Turkish, former Yugoslavian, and Pakistani descent (798 of them in Britain) and also with a cross-section of the national majority population (387 persons in Britain). The questionnaire explored cultural interactions between Muslim immigrants and receiving societies. The theme issue, The Socio-Cultural Integration of Muslims in Western Europe: Comparative Perspectives, contains nine articles, and is available on a subscriber or pay-per view basis at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjms20/42/2?nav=tocList

There is also much more information about EURISLAM, including further bibliographic references, many results, and a link to the dataset, on the project website at:

http://www.eurislam.eu/

Yearbook of International Religious Demography

The latest global attempt to number religious adherents is Yearbook of International Religious Demography, 2016, edited by Brian Grim, Todd Johnson, Vegard Skrbekk, and Gina Zurlo (Leiden: Brill, 2016, xxiv + 231pp., ISBN 978-9-0043-2173-1, €85, paperback). It draws upon a wide range of sources (described in part 3, pp. 167-78), many of them archived in Brill’s World Religion Database, albeit the 2011 census is the principal source of UK data. Country-by-country totals for each major faith group are tabulated in an appendix (pp. 197-225), with extensive statistical analyses in part 1 (pp. 1-93). From this we learn that, in absolute terms, the UK has the third largest population of Sikhs in the world, the fourth of Jains, the fifth of Zoroastrians, the sixth of Jews and agnostics, and the ninth of non-religionists. Part 2 of the volume comprises seven case studies and methodological essays, none specifically relating to the UK. The book’s webpage is at:

http://www.brill.com/products/reference-work/yearbook-international-religious-demography-2016

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

Counting Religion in Britain, October 2016

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 13, October 2016 features 29 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: no-13-october-2016

OPINION POLLS

Desert island Bibles

The well-known figures featured on Desert Island Discs, the long-running BBC Radio programme, are asked to select eight pieces of music to take with them on a desert island but are additionally offered as accompaniments copies of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Asked hypothetically, in the event of being stranded on a desert island, whether they would want to be given a copy of the Bible, only 31% of respondents to a recent poll by ComRes said that they would, falling to 18% in the youngest cohort (aged 18-24) and 10% for those with no religion. Unsurprisingly, the proportion was greatest for professing Christians (49%) but otherwise never reached more than 39% in any demographic sub-group (this for the over-65s and residents of North-West England). The majority (56%) declined to accept the Bible, rising to 83% of religious nones, while 13% were unsure what they would do. The poll was commissioned by the Church and Media Network and conducted online on 7-9 October 2016 among a sample of 2,042 adult Britons. Full data tables are available at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CMN_Desert-Island-Bible-Poll_Data-Tables.pdf

In former days (the programme was first broadcast in 1942), the guests on Desert Island Discs were not automatically offered the Bible and Shakespeare but had to nominate three books to take with them on a desert island. When Gallup invited a sample of Britons to select their titles in 1954, the Bible easily topped the poll, with 36% of the vote, Shakespeare being pushed into third place (5%) after the works of Dickens (7%).

Catholic Church power

Almost half of Britons think the Catholic Church is among the most powerful institutions in the world, according to a YouGov app-based survey on 18 October 2016. Presented with a list of 11 organizations and asked to select the three they judged most powerful, 57% put the United States Central Intelligence Agency in first position, but the Catholic Church came second (on 49%), beating the United Nations into third place (40%). Islamic State (ISIS) was ranked tenth. Topline results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/10/18/most-powerful-people-and-institutions-world-and-br/

Exorcism

Prompted by a recent report that young Catholic priests are not interested in becoming exorcists, an app-based survey by YouGov on 21 October 2016 asked Britons whether they believed people or places can be affected by evil spirits and, if so, whether an exorcist could help. One-third (34%) of all respondents said they believed in evil spirits, with 25% thinking exorcism efficacious and 9% not. The majority (58%) expressed belief in neither, while 7% gave other answers. Topline results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/10/21/posting-childs-reaction-hearing-news-his-mother-ha/

Supernatural

One-half of Britons claim to have experienced paranormal activity in their home, according to a recent pre-Halloween survey commissioned by insurance broker Towergate. One-third say they have been frightened by the supernatural in their own home at night, and one-fifth admit to having called someone (generally a parent or partner) in the middle of the night to seek comfort or support in such circumstances. One person in six reports that they have seen a ghostly figure at home and one in eight that they have moved out of a former home because they were afraid it was haunted. Fear of the supernatural is an even greater deterrent to buying properties in certain locations, with 65% unwilling to purchase near an undertaker’s premises, 62% near a graveyard, and 60% near a sinister-looking church. Many would expect a substantial discount on the asking-price to be offered to tempt them to buy allegedly haunted accommodation, although 45% insist no reduction would be sufficient to overcome their anxieties. As yet, no details of the research (including about methodology) have appeared on Towergate’s website, and the preceding account has been compiled from coverage in the online edition of the Daily Express at:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/724495/Haunted-British-homes-paranormal-activity-research

Gay cake row

A Christian family bakery (Ashers) in Northern Ireland has recently lost its appeal against a conviction that found it guilty of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake supporting same-sex marriage on the grounds that it would have been at odds with the family’s religious beliefs. On the eve of the appeal court’s judgment, on 24 October 2016, YouGov asked 5,490 Britons online whether it had been acceptable for the bakery to have refused the order. A plurality (46%) judged the defendants to have behaved acceptably, including 61% of Conservative and 65% of UKIP voters, and 58% of over-60s. Two-fifths deemed the bakery’s action unacceptable, with 18-24s especially condemnatory (60%). The remaining 14% of the sample were undecided. Full results can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/b97bd1a0-99c7-11e6-9434-005056901c24/question/bd5477f0-99c7-11e6-9434-005056901c24/toplines

Churches and the LGB community

Britons are somewhat divided about whether most Christian churches in the UK are welcoming to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by Jayne Ozanne (a campaigner on LGB issues), for which 1,669 adults were interviewed online on 11-12 October 2016. A plurality (37%) was unsure what to say. One-third considered most churches were not welcoming to LGBs, the proportion reaching two-fifths among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, Roman Catholics, and religious nones. Three in ten electors judged the churches were welcoming to LGBs, the most optimistic sub-groups being Conservative supporters (38%), over-65s (40%), Christians as a whole (45%), and Anglicans (47%). Respondents were also asked a somewhat ambiguous lead-in question about whether the Church of England does or does not exist for everyone who wants to go to church, 47% thinking the former and 17% the latter. Full data tables are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ofq14j098u/JayneOZanneResults_161012_CofE_Website.pdf

Satisfaction with party leaders

BMG Research’s latest political party leader approval ratings were unusually disaggregated by religious affiliation. Summary results from the online interviews with 2,026 UK adults between 19 and 23 September 2016 are tabulated below, for all voters, professing Christians, and religious nones (too few non-Christians were included in the sample to be viable). The strongest finding to emerge is that a majority of Christians are satisfied with Theresa May’s performance as Prime Minister (54%) and dissatisfied with Jeremy Corbyn’s as Leader of the Opposition (57%). Religious nones, by contrast, exhibit a markedly below average approval rating for May and a slightly above average one for Corbyn. An age effect may partly explain these divergences, Christians having a relatively elderly and nones a younger profile. Religious differences were less pronounced in the case of Nigel Farage (whose performance very few could assess, in any case) and Nicola Sturgeon (although there was a nine-point dissatisfaction gap between Christians and nones). Data tables can be found at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CONFIDENTIAL-BMG-POLL-Leadership-Approval-September-results-251016.pdf

% across	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	Don’t know
Theresa May as Prime Minister
All voters	43	24	33
Christians	54	19	27
No religion	32	28	40
Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition
All voters	22	48	30
Christians	18	57	25
No religion	25	38	37
Nigel Farage as interim UKIP leader
All voters	11	17	72
Christians	14	15	72
No religion	7	18	75
Nicola Sturgeon as Scottish National Party leader
All voters	32	32	37
Christians	31	37	32
No religion	31	28	42

London attractions

A slight majority (58%) of Londoners claim to have visited St Paul’s Cathedral, placing it ninth in a list of 20 leading attractions in the capital, while 48% say they have been to Westminster Abbey (in sixteenth position). However, young Londoners (aged 18-24) are significantly less likely than the over-65s to have visited either of these two religious landmarks, 38% less in the case of the cathedral and 37% less for the abbey. The survey was conducted online by YouGov and is reported at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/10/04/natural-history-museum-tops-londoners-list-attract/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Legacies

A press briefing by Christian Legacy (a partnership of various Christian charities) in the run-up to Christian Legacy Week (17-23 October 2016) provided a miscellany of information about the state of the Christian legacy market in the UK. It revealed that Christian women are more likely to have included a charitable gift in their will than Christian men, 65% versus 35%. Christians overall are likely to spread their gifts across almost twice as many charities as non-Christians. Of all charitable legacies made in the past three years, 16% have been given to Christian charities or places of worship, with legacies accounting for 3% of the income of these charities. The briefing has yet to appear on the Christian Legacy website, but some previous ‘latest statistics’ can be found at:

http://www.christianlegacy.org.uk/about-christian-legacy/stats-and-facts

Christian Resources Exhibitions

The Christian Resources Exhibition held at Maidstone on 12-13 October 2016 seems set to be the last. Earlier this year, Bible Society – which acquired Christian Resources Exhibitions (CRE) in 2007 – announced that it was putting the enterprise up for sale. However, it has now admitted that no buyer has been found. CRE was founded by Christian businessman Gospatric Home in 1985 and incorporated as a private limited company in 1990. It has comprised an annual event (latterly known as CRE International) held in the South-East (most recently in London) in the late spring together with one or two smaller exhibitions each year at changing other venues. CRE was officially ranked as the country’s 47th largest consumer exhibition in 2007. Visitor numbers for the 1990s were published in UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends, No. 2, 2000/01, p. 5.8, with around 10,000 attending CRE International, a figure still reached as late as 2011-12. However, there appears to have been some decline since, with 8,000 returned for the four-day event in 2015 and no figure seemingly published for 2016. CRE’s last reported annual turnover was £700,000 in 2005, since when the company has been dormant.

Baptist Assembly

The Baptist Assembly is the yearly gathering of delegates from the English and Welsh regional associations which constitute Baptists Together (Baptist Union of Great Britain). It combines the transaction of the formal business of the Union (including its annual general meeting) with elements of a Christian conference. The future of the Assembly has been under review for some time, in the light of falling numbers and financial pressures, and different styles and formats have been trialled in recent years. To facilitate longer-term planning, an online survey was conducted after the one-day Assembly at Oxford in May 2016, and this was completed by a self-selecting sample of 1,000 Baptists, of whom 74% had attended Assembly at some point in the past and 53% were ministers. A preliminary report on the results of the survey, focusing especially on preferences for the length, timing, and financing of future Assemblies, has been published at:

http://www.baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=180013

Catholic Directory

The Universe Media Group has announced its intention to relaunch the print edition of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales in November 2017, four years after its discontinuation, since when an online only edition has been made available. According to the latest editor’s newsletter (No. 4, 2016), this 2018 edition of the Catholic Directory will be comprehensively overhauled in terms of design and content, with several new sections introduced. However, no explicit mention is made of any plans to bring back the former statistical section, which was the sole national public domain source of current data about the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Convent schools

The significant historical contribution of convent schools to the education of Catholic and other pupils in England and Wales is celebrated in Tales out of School: Recollections of Ex-Convent Girls, edited by Anthony Spencer, Pat Pinsent, and Emma Shackle (Taunton: Russell-Spencer, 2016, [4] + v + 243p., ISBN 978-1-905270-74-3, paperback, £12.00 + £1.74 p&p, available from Russell-Spencer, Stone House, Hele, Taunton, Somerset, TA4 1AJ). The core of the book consists of the reminiscences of 40 women who attended convent schools between the 1930s and 1970s, submitted in response to Spencer’s appeal in The Tablet in 2012. Summative evaluation of the material and convent schools generally is provided by the editors, each of whom has written an essay from a particular perspective. Spencer’s chapter (pp. 197-215) is sociologically-focused and statistically informed by the research of the Newman Demographic Survey (NDS), which he directed. The volume as a whole is an initiative of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust, successor body to the NDS.

OFFICIAL AND QUASI-OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Hate crimes

Home Office Statistical Bulletin 11/16, by Hannah Corcoran and Kevin Smith, reports on Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2015/16, as recorded by the police. There were 62,518 offences in which one or more hate crime strands were deemed to be a motivating factor, of which 4,400 (7%) were categorized as religious hate crimes, 34% more than in 2014/15 (almost double the 19% average rise for all forms of hate crime), although the increase may partly reflect improved notification and documentation of incidents. A good deal of the data and analysis combines, unhelpfully from our perspective, racially and religiously motivated offences, including in Annex A which examines the trends in hate crime before and after the referendum on 23 June 2016 on the UK’s membership of the European Union. The report and associated data tables can be accessed at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2015-to-2016

Religion of prisoners

A snapshot of the prison population of England and Wales as at 30 September 2016 has revealed that 48.6% of prisoners professed to be Christian, 20.5% non-Christian, and 30.8% to have no religion. The number of Christians was 2.0% down on the figure for 30 September 2015 while religious nones increased by 0.8% during the year. There was also a 2.3% rise in Muslim prisoners over the twelve months; they now account for 15.1% of all prisoners. The overwhelming majority (95.3%) of prisoners without religion is male, although there are actually proportionately fewer nones among men (30.7%) than women (32.5%). Full details can be found in table 1.5 of the spreadsheet ‘Prison Population, 30 September 2016’ at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2016

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism in the UK is the tenth report of the 2016-17 session of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. It considers alternative definitions of anti-Semitism (pp. 8-15) and reviews the evidence base for its prevalence in the UK – among the general public (pp. 16-26), on university campuses (pp. 33-7), and in political discourse and parties (pp. 38-49, with special reference to the Labour Party) – as well as the response of Government and the justice system (pp. 27-32). An annex (pp. 58-61) presents details of police-recorded anti-Semitic crimes. The statistical evidence is neatly summarized in a ‘key facts’ section (pp. 3-4), which incorporates links to the original sources. Most of these have already featured on the British Religion in Numbers website, but mention should be made of one which has not, a survey in May 2016 of 2,026 Labour Party members who joined after the 2015 General Election, carried out on behalf of the ESRC Party Members Project. The Committee concludes, inter alia, that, although the UK remains one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe, recent trends in incidents and attitudes show it to be moving ‘in the wrong direction’ (p. 51). Its report is available at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/136/136.pdf

Results concerning anti-Semitism and the Labour Party from the ESRC Party Members Project will be found in its submission to the Labour Party’s own enquiry chaired by the now Baroness Chakrabarti at:

https://esrcpartymembersprojectorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/balewebbpolettisubmission4chakrabarti3rdjune2016-1.pdf

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion

Volume 27 (2016) of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion is sub-divided into a miscellany of five articles and a special section of seven contributions on prayer guest-edited by Kevin Ladd. Each section contains one article of United Kingdom quantitative interest. The miscellany includes Leslie Francis, Patrick Laycock, and Gemma Penny, ‘Distinguishing between Spirituality and Religion: Accessing the Worldview Correlates of 13- to 15-Year-Old Students in England and Wales’ (pp. 43-67), based on 2,728 respondents to the Young People’s Values Survey, and employing discriminant function analysis to isolate the specific combinations of attitudes and values which distinguished young people who described themselves as religious but not spiritual from those who saw themselves as spiritual but not religious. Among the papers in the prayer section is Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny, ‘Prayer, Personality, and Purpose in Life: An Empirical Enquiry among Adolescents in the UK’ (pp. 192-209), drawing upon questionnaires completed by 10,792 participants in the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity project (see, also, next item), and demonstrating that prayer frequency adds additional prediction of enhanced levels of purpose in life after taking all other variables into account. The volume’s webpage can be found at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004322035?showtab=chapters

Religious diversity

The 16 chapters in Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity, edited by Elisabeth Arweck (London: Routledge, 2017, xi + 303 pp., ISBN 978-1-4724-4430-1, £95.00, hardback) substantially report the findings of the AHRC/ESRC-funded project of the same name which was undertaken at the University of Warwick’s Religions and Education Research Unit in 2009-12. The research involved both qualitative and quantitative strands, each represented by six contributions in the book, the qualitative essays written by Arweck or Julia Ipgrave and the quantitative ones by Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny together with another co-author in five instances. For the quantitative strand, questionnaires were completed in 2011-12 by 11,725 13- to 15-year-old students attending state-maintained schools with and without a religious character in five geographical areas (London, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland). The results for each area are analysed in a separate chapter, positioned as a response to a research question suggested by previous scholarly research and debate in that particular area. The final section of the volume is given over to three international case studies, from Canada, the United States, and Germany. The book’s webpage is at:

https://www.routledge.com/Young-Peoples-Attitudes-to-Religious-Diversity/Arweck/p/book/9781472444301

Secularization

Clive Field was recently invited to speak about ‘Measuring Secularization in Britain’ as one of the series of Sunday evening talks on ‘Religion and Conflict’ at Somerville College Chapel, Oxford. His presentation slides have been made available at:

Presentations

Non-religion

If, as is often claimed, no religion is the fastest-growing religion in the western world, then the study of non-religion can equally be observed to be the fastest-growing area in religious scholarship. One of the latest monographs in the field is Phil Zuckerman, Luke Galen, and Frank Pasquale, The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, v + 327 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-992494-1, £16.99, paperback). The volume provides a guide to the English-language social scientific literature about non-religion, as listed in its substantial bibliography (pp. 261-309). Although the focus of the book is international, the arrangement is largely thematic, so there is no systematic discussion of the situation, nor collation of the statistical evidence, for particular countries. There are some scattered references to the United Kingdom, the most substantive of which is on pp. 75-6. The title’s webpage is at:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-nonreligious-9780199924943?q=Zuckerman&lang=en&cc=gb

Ministry and history

The extent, nature, and practical implications of the engagement of Christian ministers with both general and religious history are explored by John Tomlinson in ‘Ministry and History: A Survey of Over 300 Religious Practitioners’, Theology and Ministry, Vol. 4, 2016, pp. 2.1-15. Data derive from a postal questionnaire completed in 2013-15 by 49% of 610 ordained clergy and ministers in five denominations working in parts of the East and West Midlands. The article is available on an open access basis at:

https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/theologyandministry/TheologyandMinistry4_2.pdf

Anglican identities

Abby Day has edited an interesting interdisciplinary collection of 14 chapters on global Anglicanism: Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion: Powers and Pieties (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016, xviii + 270 pp., ISBN 978-1-4724-4413-4, £65.00, hardback). Although there is a fair amount of specifically Britain-related content, the volume’s approach is overwhelmingly qualitative. Indeed, it is highly revealing (and not a little unusual) that its editor has prevailed upon the authors of the only substantial quantitative research article to write up their findings in a narrative rather than numerical form. This essay is by Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny, ‘Belonging without Practising: Exploring the Religious, Social, and Personal Significance of Anglican Identities among Adolescent Males’ (pp. 55-71). The chapter profiles the worldviews (across 10 themes) of two groups of 13- to 15-year-old students from secondary schools in England and Wales, 1,800 religiously unaffiliated and 1,488 professing Anglicans (further sub-divided by frequency of churchgoing into four sub-groups). The book’s webpage is at:

https://www.routledge.com/Contemporary-Issues-in-the-Worldwide-Anglican-Communion-Powers-and-Pieties/Day/p/book/9781472444134

Methodism and social inclusion

Despite its avowed preferential option for the poor, there is no evidence that the Methodist Church in Britain is targeting its resources towards the most deprived communities, according to new research by Michael Hirst. He has analysed cross-sectional and longitudinal data for the distribution of Methodist personnel (ministers, members, and connexional lay appointees), churches, and schools against a widely accepted 38-item index of neighbourhood deprivation for both Lower Layer Super Output Areas and Middle Layer Super Output Areas in England. He found that the immediate surroundings of most Methodist churches typify areas in the middle of the deprivation spectrum while few Methodist schools serve areas of significant deprivation. Moreover, ministers and lay appointees live predominantly in the least deprived neighbourhoods and increasingly so. Hirst’s ‘Poverty, Place, and Presence: Positioning Methodism in England, 2001 to 2011’ is published in the open access journal Theology and Ministry, Vol. 4, 2016, pp. 4.1-25 at:

https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/theologyandministry/TheologyandMinistry4_4.pdf

British and Australian Quakers

A comparison of the beliefs and practices of British and Australian Quakers is offered by Peter Williams and Jennifer Hampton in ‘Results from the First National Survey of Quaker Belief and Practice in Australia and Comparison with the 2013 British Survey’, Quaker Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, June 2016, pp. 95-119. The 2014 Australian study replicated 42 questions from the 2013 British enquiry (whose results were reported by Hampton in Quaker Studies, Vol. 19, 2014-15, pp. 7-136). Answers to half of these questions were remarkably similar in both surveys, but Australian respondents were found to be more likely than their British peers to describe prayer and their activities in meetings for worship as meditation; to describe the Quaker business method as finding a consensus; to believe Quakers can be helped by hearing about the religious experiences of other groups; and to be involved with other social or religious organizations or issues. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/pdf/10.3828/quaker.2016.21.1.7

Catholic churchgoing

Ben Clements illuminates ‘Weekly Churchgoing amongst Roman Catholics in Britain: Long-Term Trends and Contemporary Analysis’ for the online first edition of Journal of Beliefs and Values. In the first half of the paper, four recurrent sources (British Election Studies, British Social Attitudes Surveys, European Values Studies, and European Social Surveys) are used to document a clear over-time decline in self-reported weekly church attendance by Catholic adults. In the second half, an online survey of British Catholics by YouGov in 2010 is analysed to isolate the socio-demographic correlates of regular churchgoing, weekly attenders being shown to be disproportionately older, of higher socio-economic status, and to have children in the household. Somewhat contrary to generic expectation, however, the effects of gender and ethnicity were not found to be significant. The investigation did not extend to an examination of trends in actual Mass-going by Catholics, which has been recorded by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales for more than half a century and also in the ecumenical English Church Censuses between 1979 and 2005. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2016.1237422

Islamophobia

A cross-national study, undertaken in 15 European countries (including the United Kingdom) belonging to the Dublin System (which coordinates asylum policy in Europe), has revealed a marked anti-Muslim bias (and a corresponding pro-Christian bias) in attitudes to hypothetical asylum seekers. Data were collected by Respondi from internet panels in February-March 2016, a total of 18,030 adults being questioned online, among them 1,201 in the United Kingdom. Using a seven-point scale, where 1 denoted sending the applicant back to their country of origin and 7 granting permission to stay, each respondent was asked to rate the profiles of five pairs of asylum seekers according to nine different attributes, one of which was their religion (Christian, Muslim, or agnostic). Results are reported in an 11-page article and 121 pages of supplementary materials (mainly figures and regression tables) published in the First Release edition of Science on 22 September 2016: Kirk Bansak, Jens Hainmueller, and Dominik Hangartner, ‘How Economic, Humanitarian, and Religious Concerns Shape European Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers’. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/09/22/science.aag2147

Yearbook of Muslims in Europe

Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Volume 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2016, xx + 620 pp., ISSN 1877-1432, €179.00, hardback) has been compiled by a team of five editors led by Oliver Scharbrodt. It comprises an introductory essay by Jonathan Laurence (pp. 1-10) and 44 country overviews, including one on the United Kingdom by Asma Mustafa (pp. 607-20). Commencing with this volume, statistical and demographic data have been relegated to an appendix for each chapter, which, in the case of the United Kingdom (pp. 616-17), is mainly drawn from the 2011 population census. The text of each country report otherwise focuses on developments affecting Islam and Muslims during 2014. The British Religion in Numbers source database records 53 relevant surveys for 2014, including those relating to the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair in Birmingham schools and the rise of Islamic State, but none of these is mentioned by Mustafa whose contribution runs to only half the length allotted to Belgium. The volume’s webpage is at:

http://www.brill.com/products/book/yearbook-muslims-europe-volume-7

Muslim labour market penalty

In the latest paper in his series based on UK Labour Force data for 2002-13, Nabil Khattab uses descriptive and multivariate analysis to illuminate ‘The Ethno-Religious Wage Gap within the British Salariat Class: How Severe is the Penalty?’ Although he discovered substantial differences in gross hourly pay between different ethno-religious groups, he contends that they cannot be attributed to pure ethnic or religious discrimination. Nor did he find evidence for an overarching ‘Muslim penalty’, as suggested by some other scholars, notwithstanding two Muslim groups (Muslim-Bangladeshi and Muslim-Pakistani) experienced greater disadvantage than many of the ten other ethno-religious groups included in the study. The article was published in the August 2016 issue of Sociology (Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 813-24), and the full text is freely available at:

http://soc.sagepub.com/content/50/4/813

Halal meat

Animals slaughtered for Muslim consumption must meet specific requirements laid down in the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. In particular, animals must be alive at the point of ritual cut, with many Muslims traditionally believing pre-stunning prior to slaughter to be non-reversible and contrary to Halal principles. To assess current views, Awal Fuseini, Steve Wotton, Phil Hadley, and Toby Knowles surveyed 66 Islamic scholars and a non-random and disproportionately male sample of 314 consumers of Halal meat in the UK between October 2015 and March 2016. The study was funded by the Halal Food Foundation. The majority of both scholars (95%) and consumers (53%) agreed that, if an animal is stunned and then slaughtered by a Muslim and the method of stunning does not result in death, cause physical injury, or obstruct bleed-out, then the meat could be considered Halal-compliant. ‘The Perception and Acceptability of Pre-Slaughter and Post-Slaughter Stunning for Halal Production: The Views of UK Islamic Scholars and Halal Consumers’ is published in Meat Science, Vol. 123, January 2017, pp. 143-50. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174016303151

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

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Counting Religion in Britain, July 2016

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 10, July 2016 features 14 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 10 July 2016

OPINION POLLS

Hope not Hate post-Brexit poll

On behalf of Hope not Hate, Populus conducted an extensive online survey among 4,032 adults in England between 30 June and 4 July 2016, principally to test the social impact of the vote to leave the European Union in the referendum on 23 June. Results were disaggregated by a range of demographics, including religious affiliation, albeit they are only statistically meaningful for Christians, non-Christians, and religious nones. Tables 247-352 present the data for the module on the European Union, showing how particular groups voted, and why; what they thought of the Remain and Leave campaigns; and how they perceived Brexit would impact the nation. The voting figures (summarized below) confirm what we already know from previous studies, that Christians were disproportionately leavers and non-Christians remainers.

% down	All	Christians	Non-Christians	Nones
Remain	38	33	51	42
Leave	45	50	35	41
Did not vote	17	17	14	17

The poll also replicated questions exploring attitudes to religious groups which had been included in Hope not Hate’s pre-Brexit poll, undertaken on 1-8 February 2016. This is interesting, given the frequent claims that the Brexit vote has increased public hostility toward immigrants and other outsiders. In fact, even for Muslims, who have the most negative ratings of all five religions featured in the study, the number of adults suggesting they created major problems in both the UK and the world actually fell in the period between the pre- and post-Brexit fieldwork. There were also modest reductions in those with negative views toward other religions, held by only tiny minorities.

% choosing 4-5 on 5-point scale	Pre-Brexit	Post-Brexit
Groups creating problems in UK
Jews	6	6
Muslims	45	36
Christians	9	9
Hindus	6	5
Sikhs	6	5
Groups creating problems in world
Jews	16	13
Muslims	59	52
Christians	17	15
Hindus	9	7
Sikhs	8	6

All the data tables from this poll can be found, in two separate files, at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/polls/

Perceptions of Muslims (1)

Another pre-Brexit study also revealed that a significant minority of Britons (28%) continued to entertain an unfavourable opinion of Muslims in the country. This was nine points more than in 2015, albeit at a similar level as 2009 and 2014. Unfavourable attitudes to Muslims were especially likely to be held by those on the ideological right (33%) rather than left-leaners (18%) and peaked at 54% among UKIP supporters. People regarding Muslims unfavourably were twice as inclined as those viewing them in a favourable light to perceive refugees as a major threat and as heightening the risk of terrorism. Just under one-fifth of Britons (17%) agreed that most or many Muslims in the country already back Islamic State. Notwithstanding, negativity toward Muslims remained far lower in Britain than in nine other European countries surveyed, the proportion surpassing two-thirds in Greece, Poland, Italy, and Hungary.

With regard to integration, a majority of Britons (54%) still considered most Muslims in the country want to be distinct from the wider society, although this was ten points fewer than in 2006, in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings the previous summer. The proportion rose to 65% on the ideological right and 80% of UKIP voters. Overall, 31% thought Muslims wanted to adopt national customs and way of life, a steady improvement from the 19% recorded in Britain in 2005, but below the 43% currently achieved in France and Sweden. All the findings are contained in the latest release of data from the Spring 2016 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, for which 1,460 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed by TNS BMRB by telephone between 4 April and 1 May 2016. Other questions covered attitudes to Jews and the importance of being Christian to national identity. The report is available at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/07/11/europeans-fear-wave-of-refugees-will-mean-more-terrorism-fewer-jobs/

Perceptions of Muslims (2)

In his column in The Sun on 18 July 2016, Kelvin MacKenzie questioned whether it had been appropriate for Channel 4 News to co-present its report on the recent and deadly Islamist truck attack in Nice with a Muslim journalist (Fatima Manji) wearing a hijab. His article prompted a flood of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The pollster YouGov took up the matter on 21 July when it ran one of its instant app-based surveys. Just 29% of respondents thought MacKenzie had been right to make his remark against 64% who deemed him in the wrong. About half (48%) also argued that The Sun should not have printed the remark. Topline results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/07/21/too-old-highest-office-kevin-mackenzie-and-comment/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Bible stories

The Bible Society has recently published The Nation’s Favourite Bible Stories (ISBN 978-0-5640-4407-8, 144pp., paperback, £7.99), reproducing 70 of them. The 70 emerged from an online survey conducted by ComRes on behalf of the Society among a sample of 2,051 Britons aged 18 and over on 22-23 April 2015. Respondents to this poll were asked to list, unprompted, their top three Bible stories or passages. ComRes subsequently tested the top 20 unprompted mentions with a separate online sample of 2,252 UK adults between 4 and 6 September 2015. The final top 10, in order of popularity, were:

1. The birth of Jesus

2. Noah’s ark

3. The Good Samaritan

4. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus

5. The Exodus

6. David and Goliath

7. The Ten Commandments

8. Jesus feeding the five thousand

9. Jesus turning water into wine

10. The Sermon on the Mount

Jewish marriages

The latest report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) is David Graham’s Jews in Couples: Marriage, Intermarriage, Cohabitation, and Divorce in Britain, derived from the 2001 and 2011 censuses of population (including many tables specially commissioned by JPR from the Office for National Statistics) and the JPR’s 2013 National Jewish Community Survey. Three-fifths of adult Jews live as couples, more than for any other religious or ethnic group, in part due to their older than average age profile. The majority of couples (89%) is married but 11% cohabit. Among married Jews, 78% are in endogamous marriages (i.e., they are married to another Jew) but 22% are in exogamous relationships, generally wed to a Christian or religious none. Marital endogamy for Jews has declined in Britain since at least the late 1960s but the rate of decrease has tailed off recently, being only 2% between the two censuses; moreover, marital endogamy here is still much higher than for Jews in the United States. On the other hand, intermarried Jews have fewer dependent children than their in-married counterparts. Among the rapidly growing contingent of cohabitees, the proportion of exogamous partnerships reaches 68%, negatively impacting Jewish fertility. Exogamous Jews, whether married or not, exhibit far weaker levels of Jewish attachment and engagement than endogamous Jews. Exogamy also increases the chances of a Jewish marriage ending in divorce, although the divorce rate among Jews is lower than in society as a whole. Jews in Couples is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR_2016.Jews_in_couples.Marriage_intermarriage_cohabitation_and_divroce_in_Britain.July_2016.pdf

FutureFirst

The lead article in the August 2016 issue of FutureFirst, the bimonthly subscription magazine of Brierley Consultancy, is contributed by Phil Topham and considers recent statistics of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (based on a report discussed in the May 2016 edition of Counting Religion in Britain). The remaining content is written by Peter Brierley, including two articles inspired by British Social Attitudes Survey religion data, an analysis of rural churches in East Anglia, and a piece on the growing number of active retired clergy in the Church of England (who will soon exceed stipendiary clergy). Brierley Consultancy can be contacted at:

http://peter@brierleyres.com

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Religious hate crimes

The Crown Prosecution Service completed 737 prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences in England and Wales in 2015/16, a 10% increase on the previous year. The total represented 5% of all hate crime prosecutions in 2015/16. Of these religion-related prosecutions, 79% resulted in convictions (five points less than in 2013/14 and 2014/15 and four points less than the average for all hate crimes in 2015/16) and the remainder were unsuccessful, mostly because of acquittal after trial or of victim issues. Just over two-thirds of convictions involved guilty pleas. The Religiously Aggravated and Antisemitic Crime Action Plan was developed and implemented during 2015/16, and the Hate Crime Assurance Scheme was extended to cover racially and religiously aggravated cases, so it is possible that prosecutions may increase in future years. Further details are contained in Hate Crime Report, 2014/15 and 2015/16, which is available at:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/cps_hate_crime_report_2016.pdf

Sex crimes

There have been 725 reported sex crimes in places of worship in the UK during the past three years, according to data obtained from police forces by The Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act. The number has risen by one-fifth during the past twelve months, partly, it is believed, as a result of the ‘Jimmy Savile effect’. Half of the cases (368) involved child abuse. Although most cases related to churches, some occurred at mosques and gurdwaras. One expert, Graham Wilmer, of The Lantern Project (which supports child sex abuse victims), suggested that, given the well-documented tendency to underreport crime, the true number of cases could be up to ten times the reported figure. See the newspaper’s coverage at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3705042/Five-new-sex-offences-week-Reports-abuse-UK-churches-mosques-Sikh-temples-risen-20-cent-past-year-half-involve-children.html

Religion of prisoners

Prison Population Statistics by Grahame Allen and Noel Dempsey (House of Commons Library Briefing Paper No. SN/SG/04334) includes tables summarizing the religious profession of prisoners in England and Wales (Table 7, annually from 2002 to 2016) and Scotland (Table 14, for 2005, 2010, and 2013 only). Of the 85,441 prisoners in England and Wales in March 2016, 49% were Christian (nine points fewer than in 2002), 15% were Muslim (seven points up on 14 years before), and 31% were religious nones (unchanged from 2002). In Scotland in June 2013 (the latest date available), 54% of the 7,883 prisoners were Christian, 3% Muslim, and 42% nones (albeit 57% for female prisoners alone). Muslims are overrepresented in the prison population in both England and Wales and Scotland. Prison Population Statistics can be downloaded from:

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04334/SN04334.pdf

Meanwhile, the British Religion in Numbers website has recently updated its own coverage of the religion of prisoners in England and Wales, its series (now extending from 1975 to 2015) being available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/religion-in-prison-1991-2015/

ACADEMIC STUDIES

State of the Church of England

Two of the country’s leading writers on religious affairs, journalist Andrew Brown and sociologist of religion Linda Woodhead, have teamed up to write That Was the Church, that Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People (London: Bloomsbury, 2016, [8] + 255pp., ISBN 978-1-4729-2164-2, £16.99, hardback, also available in ePDF and ePub editions). It tells the story of how, since the 1980s, the Church of England has not merely declined in a numerical sense (a process which had obviously started long before) but has progressively disappeared from the centre of public life and become alienated from (and unaccountable to) its host society. While, it is suggested, the Church has largely stood still over these three decades (with the notable exception of the ordination of women, achieved under duress), becoming more inward-looking and immersed in ‘managerial voodoo’, the nation has been transformed, generally embracing social liberalism and, in some measure, spirituality as an alternative to religion (which has become a ‘toxic’ brand). The limited trust and allegiance which the English now exhibit toward their Established Church is depicted as in stark contrast to the higher levels of support enjoyed by ‘its closest historical cousins’, the Scandinavian state Churches.

Since the work seems primarily addressed to a general readership, rather than an exclusively academic audience, the argument is not unreasonably built up primarily through description and analysis of key episodes and personalities in the life of the Church, often enlivened by the direct personal experiences of the authors. Some of the judgments on individuals may seem harsh and are likely to ruffle a few feathers, not least among allies of two former (and still living) Archbishops of Canterbury, George Carey and Rowan Williams, who come in for a fair amount of overt or implied criticism. Indeed, That Was the Church, that Was is already proving controversial (the first edition was withdrawn following legal challenge) and has received several unflattering reviews. Some British Religion in Numbers users may also be disappointed by the comparatively limited use made of statistics to substantiate the central claim that the Church of England ‘lost’ the English people during the period in question. Although some reference is made in the text and, more especially, the endnotes to Church and sample survey data, including research commissioned by Woodhead in recent years, their treatment is far from systematic. A possible solution might have been the inclusion of a short appendix where the relevant quantitative evidence could have been assembled for scrutiny. The publisher’s webpage for the volume can be found at:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/that-was-the-church-that-was-9781472921642/

Religious nones

In a recent post on the LSE’s Religion and the Public Sphere blog, Ben Clements collates evidence from sample surveys and opinion polls to illuminate the growth of no religionism in Britain since the Second World War and the extent to which it is driven by avowed atheism or agnosticism. He highlights variability in the findings arising from fluctuations in methodology and question-wording. The post can be found at:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionpublicsphere/2016/07/26/who-are-the-religious-nones-in-britain-atheists-agnostics-or-something-else/

Historical Quaker statistics

A reasonably full history and analysis of national-level statistics relating to the Religious Society of Friends in Britain is offered by James William Croan Chadkirk, ‘Patterns of Membership and Participation among British Quakers, 1823-2012’ (MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015, xx + 261 + xxxivpp., with 72 figures and 55 tables). It covers three broad areas: membership (both before and after the inauguration of the ‘Tabular Statement’ in 1861); attendance at meetings for worship (commencing with the Government’s 1851 religious census and with an especially good overview of the national Quaker censuses in 1904, 1909, and 1914); and various ad hoc studies conducted in recent years, including the longitudinal ‘Present and Prevented’ surveys undertaken by Chadkirk and Ben Pink Dandelion in 2006, 2008, and 2010 (considered at length in chapters 5 and 10). There is no substantive discussion of the British Quaker Survey, 2014 but some preliminary findings are given in footnotes. The conclusion draws brief quantitative comparisons with the experience of other Churches and denominations but emphasizes the distinctiveness of Quakerism and rejects generalized secularization theory as an explanation of Quaker decline. The thesis can be downloaded from:

http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5787/1/Chadkirk15MPhil.pdf

Religion and higher education

James Lewis, Sean Currie, and Michael Oman-Reagan have utilized the population censuses of Australia (2006), New Zealand (2006), Canada (2011), and England and Wales (2011) to establish a positive relationship between higher educational attainment and affiliation to new religious movements (NRMs). They also contend that, apart from New Zealand, irreligion and higher education are similarly correlated. In the case of England and Wales, as the authors note, data on NRMs were only available for those individuals who ticked ‘other’ religion and chose to write in their specific religion on the census schedule. ‘The Religion of the Educated Classes Revisited: New Religions, the Nonreligious, and Educational Levels’ is published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 55, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 91-104, and access options are outlined at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12246/abstract

Collective worship in schools

Imran Mogra surveyed 125 primary school trainee teachers (preponderantly female) at an English university to investigate their knowledge and understanding of, and attitudes toward, collective worship in schools. A large majority of the students thought such worship should be retained and that it makes a significant contribution to the spiritual, moral, social, cultural, emotional, and intellectual development of pupils. ‘Perceptions of the Value of Collective Worship amongst Trainee Teachers in England’ is published in Journal of Beliefs and Values, Vol. 37, no. 2, 2016, pp. 172-85, and access options are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2016.1185227

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Brown, Anti-Semitism, being Christian, Ben Clements, Bible Society, Bible stories, Bloomsbury, Brexit, British Religion in Numbers, Channel 4, child abuse, Church of England, collective worship, ComRes, Crown Prosecution Service, David Graham, endogamy, European Union, exogamy, Fatima Manji, FutureFirst, Grahame Allen, higher education, Hope Not Hate, House of Commons Library, Imran Mogra, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, integration, intermarriage, Islamism, Islamophobia, James Lewis, James William Croan Chadkirk, Jews, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal of Beliefs and Values, Kelvin MacKenzie, Linda Woodhead, Mail on Sunday, Michael Oman-Reagan, Muslims, New Religious Movements, Nice, Noel Dempsey, Peter Brierley, Pew Global Attitudes Project, places of worship, Populus, prisoners, Quakers, Religion and the Public Sphere, Religious Affiliation, religious hate crimes, religious nones, religious prejudice, Religious Society of Friends, Sean Currie, sex crimes, The Sun, TNS-BMRB, trainee teachers, YouGov | Leave a comment

Counting Religion in Britain, March 2016

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 6, March 2016 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 6 March 2016

OPINION POLLS

Hope Not Hate

Hope Not Hate, founded in 2004 to provide a positive antidote to the politics of hate, was responsible for the most detailed opinion poll on religious issues whose results were released in full this month. Online fieldwork was conducted by Populus among a sample of 4,015 adults in England on 1-8 February 2016. An overview of the findings can be found in Robert Ford and Nick Lowles, Fear & Hope, 2016: Race, Faith and Belonging in Today’s England, running to 60 pages and full of bar charts, which can be purchased from the Hope Not Hate website, priced £3 for the ebook and £4 (inclusive of postage) for the printed version. Full data, extending to 436 tables over 541 pages, and incorporating breaks by a range of standard demographics (among them religious affiliation) and segmentation by six identity tribes, are freely available at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/polls/

Overall, compared with the Fear and Hope, 2011 report, England was said to have become a more tolerant and confident multicultural society than five years ago, with attitudes towards race, immigration, and religious hate speech all becoming more positive, due mainly to growing optimism about the economy and changing demographics. However, Muslims continued to be regarded as a uniquely different and problematic religious minority, albeit concerns about them were at a lower level than in 2011. There was majority support for a range of measures to promote greater integration by Muslims.

The richness of the data source precludes comprehensive analysis here, but readers may find it helpful to have a complete checklist of the specifically religious survey questions, as follows:

Q.7	Religious affiliation
Q.16	Religion and other influences as source of identity
Q.18	Compatibility of British values with religious faith
Q.19	Words/phrases (including Christian teachings) marking out British people
Q.20	Respect for local religious leaders/other local institutions
Q.27a	Attitudes to influence of religion on laws/policies
Q.27b	Personal importance of religion
Q.27c	Perceptions of religion as force for good
Q.27d	Attitudes to tolerance of different religious/cultural beliefs
Q.29	Perceived similarity to self of Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.30	Frequency of contact with Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.31	Know well people who Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.32a	Extent to which Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs create problems in UK
Q.32b	Extent to which Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs create problems in world
Q.35a	Attitudes to relative seriousness of religious/racial abuse
Q.35b	Perceptions of relative extent of religious/racial abuse in Britain
Q.35c	Perceptions of increasing religious abuse in Britain
Q.35d	Attitudes to free speech about religion
Q.37	Attitudes to new party wanting, inter alia, to challenge Islamic extremism and restrict building of mosques
Q.38	Attitudes to campaign against religious/racial extremism
Q.39	Attitudes to campaign against new mosque
Q.40	Attitudes to violence by either side in connection with new mosque
Q.41a	Perception that Islam poses serious threat to Western civilization
Q.41b	Perception that discrimination serious problem for Muslims in Britain
Q.41c	Perception that media too negative to Muslims
Q.41d	Perception that Muslim communities need to do more about Islamic extremism
Q.41e	Perception that most Muslims have successfully integrated into British society
Q.41f	Agreement that wrong to blame entire religion for actions of a few extremists
Q.42	Reaction to seeing/hearing Muslims associated with violence/terrorism
Q.43	Sympathy for English national/Muslim extremists when violence between them
Q.44a	Support for more positive media coverage of Islam/Muslim communities
Q.44b	Support for active promotion of British values within Muslim communities
Q.44c	Support for closer monitoring of faith schools, including Muslim faith schools
Q.44d	Support for measures to enable Muslim immigrants to speak English
Q.44e	Support for high-profile campaign against anti-Muslim hatred

Religion and the European Union referendum

A by-product of the Hope Not Hate/Populus survey in England (see preceding item) is that it furnishes the first known evidence in the current European Union (EU) referendum campaign about the attitudes of different religious groups to whether the UK should remain in or leave the EU. The EU-related data will be found in Tables 364-388. A selection is presented below for the three main groups (Christians, Muslims, and nones). Unfortunately, cell sizes for other religions are too small to be statistically reliable. The voting question utilized a scale from 0 (will definitely vote for the UK to remain in the EU) to 100 (will definitely vote to leave), which was subsequently compressed by Populus into three categories (shown here). All the questions suggest that professing Christians are currently more likely than average to take up Eurosceptic positions, with Muslims the most Europhile. However, these views will be the product of a multiplicity of factors, of which religion on its own may not be especially significant.

% down	All adults	Christians	Muslims	No religion
Voting intention
Lean to voting for UK to remain in EU	34	31	40	38
More undecided	27	26	30	27
Lean to voting for UK to leave EU	39	43	31	35
Mean score	52.0	55.2	44.8	48.8
Britain does best within EU
Agree	41	39	54	40
Disagree	21	24	6	20
Britain can be just as prosperous outside EU
Agree	44	49	29	38
Disagree	25	24	36	26
Leaving EU would be security risk
Agree	44	41	64	46
Disagree	27	30	7	24
Britain should be outside EU even if economically worse off
Agree	44	49	30	49
Disagree	23	21	32	24
Leaving EU would allow Britain full control of borders
Agree	57	61	45	53
Disagree	15	14	18	17

Freedom of religion

Asked to select the single most important of 30 possible human rights, just 1% of Britons and of the publics of six other European nations prioritized the right to pursue a religion of choice (or none); in the United States, the figure was 7%. Allowed to pick four or five rights, 26% of Britons opted for religious freedom (peaking at 37% of Liberal Democrat voters), the overall proportion comparable with five of the other European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden), albeit much less than in the United States (53%). British fieldwork for the survey was conducted online by YouGov among 1,700 adults on 22-23 February 2016. International topline results and detailed British data tables are available via the post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/which-rights-matter-most/

Belief at Eastertide

Using YouGov Profiles data, YouGov has reported on the level of belief in 14 spiritual or paranormal phenomena among 12,000 people who affiliate with Christianity and a control set of 39,000 adults. From the list of phenomena, Britons overall were found most likely definitely to believe in fate and alien life, with belief in ghosts and karma more prevalent than in a creator or heaven. Only 41% of Christians definitely believed in a creator (while 18% did not), less than in fate or destiny (46%). Christians also tended to identify with the more comfortable elements of faith, 44% definitely believing in heaven against 27% in hell, and 35% in angels against 24% in the devil. Additional analysis of YouGov Profiles for 234,000 adults showed Christians and religious nones neck and neck at 46% each, with other religions on 8%. For more information, see the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/26/o-we-of-little-faith/

Good Samaritan

As part of its ongoing initiative ‘Pass It On’ (to hand down the stories and messages of the Bible to future generations), the Bible Society has been asking Britons about the contemporary meaning of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). It commissioned YouGov to run two online surveys, one among 2,057 adults aged 18 and over on 4-7 December 2015, the other among 745 children aged 8-15 on 4-9 December 2015. Seven in ten adults said they had read or heard about the story of the Good Samaritan, with 40% (including 46% of women but just 27% of 18-24s) agreeing that educating school pupils about it would help create a kinder society. However, only 13% of adults had actually passed this story on to their own children, rising to 27% of over-55s. Majorities of both adults (64%) and children (58%) claimed to be worried that Britain is becoming a less kind society, while 86% and 89% respectively thought the country would benefit if people were more willing to help each other. In practice, given various scenarios outlined in the poll, there were clear limitations to respondents’ preparedness to help strangers in need in a public place, particularly if it might cost them money and the environment appeared unsafe. Lending somebody a mobile phone to make a call seemed an especially challenging prospect, even when the stranger was a religious leader. No data tables are available online as yet, but a report – Pass It On: The Good Samaritan in Modern Britain – The Power of the Parable in the 21st Century – is available to download at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/files/good_samaritan_report_03083845.pdf

Easter eggs

Four in five (79%) of Britons disagree with the suggestion that manufacturers of chocolate eggs should avoid using the word Easter on their packaging, according to a survey of 2,050 adults conducted online by YouGov on 1-2 March 2016 on behalf of the Meaningful Chocolate Company (which has made The Real Easter Egg since 2010, including a copy of the Easter story in the box). One in nine (11%) of people agrees that Easter should be dropped from the packaging, while one in ten is undecided. The poll was commissioned in response to a tendency by some manufacturers to remove the word Easter from their boxes or to reduce it in size and reposition it on the back of the box. Data tables from the survey are not in the public domain, but there is a news report at:

http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/Stories/National?storyaction=view&storyid=2154

During the fortnight after the story broke, there was growing public and media outrage that chocolate manufacturers were airbrushing Easter from their eggs. Manufacturers were put on the spot to explain themselves, they were mocked on social media sites, and even MPs joined in the fray. Had the poll been undertaken a bit later and nearer Easter, against this backdrop, probably the majority in favour of reinstating the prominence of Easter on chocolate eggs would have been even more overwhelming.

Trust in the Church

The most recently published trust in institutions module of nfpSynergy’s Charity Awareness Monitor, conducted in April 2015 among 1,000 adults aged 16 and over, revealed that 36% of Britons trust the Church quite a lot (26%) or a great deal (10%), a similar proportion to previous years (the survey has been running annually since 2006). The majority (55%) trusts the Church very little (27%) or not much (28%). The most trusted institutions are the armed forces (77%) and National Health Service (70%). Slides containing topline results can be downloaded (after free registration) from:

http://nfpsynergy.net/press-release/trust-charities-now-lowest-eight-years-scotland-and-northern-ireland-have-higher-trust

Papal popularity

In a WIN/Gallup International survey of the publics of 64 nations at the end of 2015 but not released until Easter, 54% overall entertained a very or somewhat favourable opinion of Pope Francis, 12% held an unfavourable view, with 34% undecided. In Britain, where the fieldwork was conducted online by ORB International among a sample of 1,000 adults on 19-28 November 2015, the plurality (46%) was neutral, with 37% favourable and 17% unfavourable. Britain ranked 46 out of 64 in terms of favourability towards the Pope, just behind Sweden and just ahead of Greece, the whole list being headed by Portugal (94%) and Philippines (93%). Not unexpectedly, favourability tended to be highest in predominantly Catholic countries. The proportion of Britons who were very favourable to the Pope was 9%, not much more than one-third of the global average of 24%, although the figures were an identical 5% for those holding a very unfavourable opinion. A report can be found at:

http://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/Opinion_Pope_Francis_Q8_Press_Release_v16-3-2016___.pdf

Topline results for each country are at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s=pope-more-popular-than-world-leaders-easter-2016-poll

The same survey also asked about favourability toward other world leaders. In Britain, Barack Obama (66%), David Cameron (42%), and Angela Merkel (40%) were all given higher ratings than the Pope, François Hollande the same (37%). These comparative data have been online for some time at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/global-q4-only-final.pdf

Islamic State (1)

A poll by YouGov conducted among an online sample of 2,459 Britons on 23 March 2016, the day after the attacks by Islamic State (IS) in Brussels left 32 people dead, found 77% very or fairly worried that IS would attempt a terrorist attack on British soil, just 4% saying they were not worried at all. Concern was highest among over-60s (86%), women (85%), Conservative voters (84%), and Londoners (83%). Only 11% thought the war against IS was being won, while three times that number agreed IS was actually getting stronger, including 48% of UKIP supporters. A blog about the snap survey, incorporating a link to the full results, is available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/23/were-failing-fight-against-isis-public/

Islamic State (2)

There have been calls recently for the killing by Islamic State (IS) of Christians and Yazidis (a Kurdish-speaking religious minority) in Iraq and Syria to be formally recognized as genocide. The calls have thus far been resisted by the British Government but appear to enjoy the support of a majority of the British public, according to an online poll by ComRes among 2,023 adults on 16-17 March 2016, commissioned by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Asked what the Government should be doing about the killing of Christians and Yazidis by IS, 63% thought it should be officially recognizing the killing as genocide, 69% wanted it to raise the issue at the United Nations Security Council with a view to onward referral to the International Criminal Court, 59% endorsed it launching its own enquiry into claims that IS had committed genocide, and 68% agreed that it should be using Britain’s broader international influence to ensure the killing is classified as genocide and the IS leadership brought to account. There was very little opposition to each of these proposed measures being taken by the Government, although about one-quarter of the population was undecided on each statement. Data tables, including breaks by religious affiliation, can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ADF_Genocide-Tables_March-2016.pdf

The Sun and Muslim opinion

In the November 2015 edition of Counting Religion in Britain, we reported on a telephone poll by Survation of 1,003 British Muslims conducted in the wake of the Islamist outrages in Paris, and of the developing row surrounding the presentation of the findings by The Sun (which commissioned the survey) in its issue of 23 November 2015. The newspaper’s reporting of the poll, particularly its suggestion of substantial sympathy among Muslims for individuals who left the country to fight on behalf of Islamic State in Syria, triggered an unusually large number of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). IPSO has now investigated the matter and has upheld the lead complaint by Muslim Engagement and Development. IPSO has ruled that The Sun ‘failed to take appropriate care in its presentation of the poll results, and as a result the coverage was significantly misleading’. Accordingly, the newspaper has been found guilty of breaching Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice and has been required by IPSO to publicize the decision, in print and online, in remedy of the breach. IPSO’s judgment can be read in full at:

https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/rulings/IPSOrulings-detail.html?id=331

Religion and gender

A helpful compilation of contemporary global data about the (generally) greater religiosity of women than men, together with an exploration of the various theories surrounding gender differences in religion (including a possible link to female labour force participation), is contained in the latest report from the Pew Research Center, The Gender Gap in Religion around the World. This was prepared under the direction of Conrad Hackett. The data on religious affiliation relate to 192 countries and derive from national censuses and surveys. Those on religious practices and belief are taken from Pew’s own surveys in 84 countries. In Britain atheists were more likely to be men (56% versus 44%), but women were 5% more likely to attend religious services weekly (15% versus 10%), 9% more likely to pray daily (23% versus 14%), and 7% more likely to say that religion was very important in their lives (25% versus 18%). Regrettably, measures of gender differences in belief in heaven, hell, and angels, which are also available for many countries, were not asked by Pew in Britain, although they have been covered by other survey agencies here. The Pew report can be downloaded at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2016/03/Religion-and-Gender-Full-Report.pdf

Meanwhile, the dataset from the Spring 2014 Pew Global Attitudes Project has been released. Questions of British religious interest concern attitudes to Jews and Muslims; opinions of Pope Francis; and the perceived threat to the world from religious and ethnic hatred. This dataset (and earlier ones) can be downloaded from:

http://www.pewglobal.org/category/datasets/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Visitor attractions

Westminster Abbey was the UK’s top ecclesiastical destination for tourism in 2015 and the fourteenth most frequented UK visitor attraction, among member organizations of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA). It drew 1,664,850 fee-paying customers, 3% fewer than in the previous year. St Paul’s Cathedral was two places behind, with 1,609,325 visitors, 10% down on 2014. Canterbury Cathedral came thirty-fourth, with 957,355 visitors, a fall of 5%. Prominent among the former monastic ruins were Fountains Abbey (371,012 visitors) and Whitby Abbey (146,277), in the care of, respectively, the National Trust and English Heritage. Several places of worship administered by the Churches Conservation Trust appeared in the bottom quartile of the 230 properties on the ALVA list, while the sole designated religious museum (St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow) attracted 143,967 free visitors, up 5%. Visitor figures for ALVA members for 2015 and all years back to 2004 are available at:

http://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423

Jewish charitable giving

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has published a new report, the first on the topic since 1998, on the charitable giving of the country’s Jews: David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, Charitable Giving among Britain’s Jews: Looking to the Future. The underlying data derive from the Institute’s 2013 National Jewish Community Survey, which elicited 3,736 responses from a self-selecting and non-probability convenience sample. A very high proportion of these respondents (93%) claimed to have given something to charity during the year prior to interview, although a much smaller number (28%) had donated more than £500. The report identified the three most important variables which predict the scale of charitable giving of British Jews as age (older Jews being both more generous and habitual donors), strength of Jewish identity and engagement, and level of income. It forecast that secularization of the mainstream Jewish population may lead to a decline in giving, as may the growth in strictly Orthodox Jewry, which will reduce the overall wealth of the Jewish community, also increasing its charitable needs. The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2016.Charitable_giving_among_Britains_Jews.pdf

Jewish health

A 2015 survey of 507 members (207 children, 300 adults, the latter disproportionately female) of Salford’s 7,500-strong strictly orthodox (Charedi) Jewish population has surfaced sundry health issues. It was sponsored by NHS Salford Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and conducted by Jonny Wineberg and Sandi Mann by means of focus groups and questionnaires. Particular concerns were raised by the researchers about immunization take-up, healthy eating, amounts of exercise (especially among men), and attitudes to mental health. Although alcohol consumption by adults was not generally a problem, 12% were classed as binge-drinkers on the Jewish Sabbath. A 54-page report of the survey can be found at:

http://archive.jpr.org.uk/download?id=2721

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Places of worship

A relatively little-known aspect of religious data is that the state collects statistics of places of worship through a process of certification to the Registrar General laid down under an Act of 1855. This is a valuable source of information, notwithstanding certain limitations, in particular that the duty only applies to England and Wales, does not extend to the Church of England and Church in Wales, and is optional (albeit certification confers certain financial advantages and is a prerequisite for subsequent registration of a building for the solemnization of marriages).

A full-page article in The Times on 28 March 2016 used the certifications for 2010 and 2016 to highlight changes in the country’s religious landscape, notably the contraction in mainstream Churches and the growth of newer manifestations of Christianity and non-Christian faiths as a consequence of inward migration. Over this six-year period, places of worship belonging to the United Reformed Church reduced by 8% and to the Methodist Church by 6%. Salvation Army, Quaker, and Roman Catholic ones were down by around 3%. On the other hand, there were more Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, up by 17% and 39% respectively, while places of worship certified to Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims increased by one-quarter. ‘For every Church of England church that has closed over the past six years, more than three Pentecostal churches and almost two mosques have opened’, the newspaper’s journalist, Kaya Burgess, reported in the piece which was variously headlined, according to edition, including as ‘Anglican Faith Sinks in Sea of Diversity’. Subscribers can read the full text at:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article4722614.ece

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Jewish and Muslim MPs

In general, MPs from a Jewish or Muslim minority background in the UK House of Commons are not statistically more likely than MPs from other backgrounds to address issues of concern for Jews or Muslims in the House of Commons. This is according to a content analysis of 3,103 Early Day Motions (EDMs) sponsored by 38 Jewish MPs and 196 by 11 Muslim MPs between 1997 and 2012 compared with a control group of EDMs tabled by non-minority MPs. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that religious background was a vastly inferior predictor of raising minority issues than ‘institutional’ factors such as holding a leadership legislative role, representation of a constituency with a substantial minority population, and length of Parliamentary service. The research is reported in Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, ‘Does Religion Count for Religious Parliamentary Representation? Evidence from Early Day Motions’, Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2016, pp. 129-52. Access options to this article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13572334.2015.1134905

In an article in the advance access edition of Parliamentary Affairs, the same author applies the same methodology to Parliamentary Questions for Written Answers (WPQs) asked by the same group of MPs over the same timescale (39,877 WPQs by the Jewish and 2,398 by the Muslim MPs). An identical conclusion is reached about the limited impact of a religious minority background on engagement with minority issues in the House of Commons. Access options to Kolpinskaya’s ‘Substantive Religious Representation in the UK Parliament: Examining Parliamentary Questions for Written Answers, 1997-2012’ are outlined at:

http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/03/pa.gsw001.abstract

London churchgoing in 1913

Late Victorian and Edwardian London had a reputation for relatively low levels of religious practice, as evidenced in the census of church attendance conducted in the capital by the Daily News in 1902-03. In 1912-13 its successor, the Daily News and Leader, attempted to replicate this census but was forced to abandon it at an early stage in the face of concerted opposition from both Anglicans and Nonconformists. In its place was substituted a survey of the religious and social work of the metropolitan churches, which was published in 1914. The story of ‘the census that never was’ has been pieced together for the first time by Clive Field, who also explains the reasons for its significance, within the context of the broader scholarly debate about whether Edwardian Britain was a ‘faith society’. ‘“A Tempest in the Teapot”: London Churchgoing in 1913 – The Census That Never Was’ appears in London Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 82-99. Access options to this article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03058034.2015.1108624

Religion in Bolton

Although Mass-Observation’s pioneering social survey of industrial Worktown (Bolton), Lancashire in the late 1930s is generally well-known, no serious investigation has hitherto taken place of its sub-project on religion. Clive Field has now published a preliminary survey of the extant and somewhat disordered documentation, enabling a basic history of the sub-project to be constructed for its principal phase in 1937-38, spanning organization, research methodology, and plans for a book which never saw the light of day. The account is underpinned by detailed references to relevant material in the Mass-Observation Archive, thereby facilitating future scholarly exploitation. Briefer descriptions are also provided of subsequent phases of Mass-Observation’s religion research in Bolton, during the early months of the Second World War and in the summer of 1960. A summative assessment finds that the overall output from the sub-project is somewhat disappointing and methodologically impoverished (notably in the limited recourse to quantification), more illuminating of religious institutions in the town than of the role of religion in the everyday lives of ordinary Boltonians, especially non-churchgoers. Access options for ‘Religion in Worktown: Anatomy of a Mass-Observation Sub-Project’, Northern History, Vol. 53, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 116-37 are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0078172X.2016.1127629

Nonconformist prosopography

Mary Riso casts light on the lives as well as the deaths of Victorian Nonconformists in her new book, The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, xvi + 276pp., ISBN 9781472446961, £65.00 hardback, also available as an ebook). It is based upon an analysis of 1,200 obituaries published between 1830 and 1880 in the magazines of four denominations, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Of course, obituaries cannot be regarded as an approximation of a cross-section of the laity of these denominations. In this instance, their limitations also include a tendency to become progressively less formulaic and less spiritual in content over the half-century covered and for their subjects to become increasingly more male and middle class. A methodological chapter (pp. 29-56) explores some of these difficulties. Setting these considerations aside, the sample is large enough to permit some quantification, with statistics appearing throughout the text and, in figure format, in appendix B (pp. 231-47). The analysis is by theme (theology; lifestyle and social mobility; social background; age at death; and religious experience) within denomination. The book’s webpage can be found at:

https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472446961

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7899: National Survey of Young People’s Well-Being, 2010

The National Survey of Young People’s Well-Being, 2010 was a collaboration between the Children’s Society and the University of York, with data collection the responsibility of the National Foundation for Educational Research. A self-completion online questionnaire was filled in, during December 2010 and January 2011, by 5,443 children aged 8-15 in years 4, 6, 8, and 10 of schools in England. It covered a range of measures of well-being and some background information, including religious affiliation (‘what would you say your religion is?’), allowing a ‘not sure’ response alongside ‘none’ and the major world faiths. The religion question does not appear to have been asked in the successor Children’s Worlds Survey, England, 2013-2014. For a full description of the 2010 dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7899&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7919: Health Survey for England, 2014

The Health Survey for England, 2014 is the twenty-fourth in a series of annual studies designed to monitor trends in the nation’s health. It is commissioned by the Information Centre for Health and Social Care and conducted by NatCen Social Research and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. It is undertaken through a combination of face-to-face interview, self-completion interview, and clinical and other measurements. A number of core health-related topics are explored each year with additional topics investigated on a more occasional basis (mental health being a special focus in 2014). A question ‘what is your religion or belief?’ was one of the background variables included in the self-completion booklet given to the 8,077 adults aged 16 and over interviewed in 2014, with reply options of no religion, Roman Catholic, other Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and any other religion. This permits analysis of the religious correlates of particular health conditions and attitudes. For a full description of the dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7919&type=Data%20catalogue

PEOPLE NEWS

Stephen Bullivant

Stephen Bullivant is the inaugural director of the new Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society which has been established at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. It will function as an international hub for research and engagement activities in the interaction between religion and economics, sociology, and political science. The Centre’s current major research projects are on the Scientific Study of Nonreligious Belief; Catholic Social Teaching, Policy, and Society; and Humanae Vitae at 50. A Catholic Research Forum also operates from the Centre, comprising a number of smaller initiatives, including a statistical profile of Catholics in England and Wales compiled from British Social Attitudes Surveys; an investigation among Catholics who no longer regularly attend Mass, in partnership with the Diocese of Portsmouth; and research into the uptake of free school meals in Catholic state schools, in collaboration with the Catholic Education Service. The Centre’s website can be found at:

http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, religious festivals, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Alliance Defending Freedom, anti-Muslim hatred, Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, Bible Society, Bolton, British values, Charity Awareness Monitor, Children's Society, Christians, church attendance, Clive Field, ComRes, Conrad Hackett, Daily News and Leader, David Graham, death, Early Day Motions, Easter eggs, Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, England, European Union, Faith schools, force for good, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, gender differences in religion, genocide, Health Survey for England, Hindus, Hope Not Hate, human rights, importance of religion, Independent Press Standards Organisation, Information Centre for Health and Social Care, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, integration, IPSO, Islam, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jewish charitable giving, Jewish health, Jews, Jonathan Boyd, Jonny Wineberg, Journal of Legislative Studies, London, London Journal, Mary Riso, Mass-Observation, Meaningful Chocolate Company, media, Members of Parliament, mosques, Muslim communities, Muslims, NatCen Social Research, National Foundation for Educational Research, National Survey of Young People’s Well-Being, nfpSynergy, NHS Salford Clinical Commissioning Group, Nick Lowles, Nonconformists, Northern History, ORB International, Parable of the Good Samaritan, Parliamentary Affairs, Parliamentary Questions for Written Answers, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center, places of worship, Pope Francis, Populus, prayer, religion and laws, religious abuse, Religious Affiliation, Religious discrimination, religious festivals, religious tolerance, respect for local religious leaders, Robert Ford, Salford, Sandi Mann, Sikhs, source of identity, spiritual or paranormal phenomena, Stephen Bullivant, strangers, terrorism, terrorist attack, The Sun, The Times, threat to Western civilization, trust in the Church, University of York, violence, visitor attractions, WIN/Gallup International, Yazidis, YouGov | Leave a comment

Advent Pot-Pourri

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Correlates of belief

The socio-structural and religious correlates of over-time belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, and sin are explored in a new article by Ben Clements published in the advance access edition of Journal of Beliefs and Values on 26 November 2014: ‘The Correlates of Traditional Religious Beliefs in Britain’. Data derived from a multivariate analysis of the British samples from the four waves of the European Values Study between 1981 and 2008. No uniform decline in individual beliefs was detected, with the picture one of change (reducing belief in God, heaven, and sin) and continuity (for belief in life after death and hell), although the proportion holding none of the five beliefs did increase from 8% to 25% over the period of the surveys. Women, affiliates of a faith, attenders at religious services, and those attaching importance to religion were found to be more likely to believe. Age effects were not consistent, while higher socio-economic status (reflected in occupation and educational attainment) tended to be associated with lower levels of belief. Access options to the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2014.980070#.VH2Zi-kqXX4

Catholics, assisted suicide, and abortion

The Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life are well-known and apparently continue to exercise some sway over the faithful, despite clear evidence of liberalizing opinion and the desire of many Catholics to make up their own minds about such matters. This is suggested by new research by Ben Clements into Catholic attitudes to assisted suicide and abortion which is reported in ‘An Assessment of Long-Term and Contemporary Attitudes towards “Sanctity of Life” Issues amongst Roman Catholics in Britain’, Journal of Religion in Europe, Vol. 7, Nos. 3-4, 2014, pp. 269-300. The empirical evidence is divided into two main sections. In the first, British Social Attitudes Surveys, European Values Studies, and some other recurrent polls are used to compare attitudes over time to the two issues among Catholics and the general public, mostly since the early 1980s. It is shown that, although the gap between the two has closed, Catholics still tend to hold more socially-conservative views than the rest of the population. In the second section, the YouGov/Westminster Faith Debates poll of Catholics in June 2013 is analysed to determine the socio-demographic and religious correlates of Catholic attitudes to assisted suicide and abortion. The variables found to have the most consistent effects in underpinning a conservative position on sanctity of life were ageing and greater religiosity (in terms of both believing and behaving indicators). Access options to the article are explained at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18748929-00704005;jsessionid=1h6f4t8e08s5w.x-brill-live-02

Catholic schools

The Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales published digests of its 2014 census data for Catholic maintained and independent schools and colleges on 28 November 2014, with separate reports for England and Wales. A response rate of 100% was achieved. In England and Wales combined there were 2,245 Catholic schools attended by 845,762 pupils. Increases were recorded in the number of pupils educated in Catholic maintained schools and in teachers employed in them. The proportion of pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds and living in the most deprived areas also rose, exceeding the national average in each case, but the proportion receiving free school meals remained below the national figure. The number of pupils who were Catholics continued its slow decline, standing at 69.5% in English maintained schools and 56.5% in the Welsh ones. The CES press release, incorporating a link to the digests, is at:

http://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/news/ces-news/item/1002981-catholic-education-service-annual-census-now-more-reliable-than-ever

School nativity plays

A traditional nativity play is held in only a third of schools, according to an online survey of more than 2,000 of its members by Netmums, the parenting website, which was released on 2 December 2014. Instead, more than half of schools now stage an ‘updated nativity’ featuring contemporary characters, while one in eight schools hold Christmas performances devoid of any religious content. Two-thirds of parents whose schools do not put on a traditional nativity play said that they would like it to. The Netmums press release is at:

http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/general-coffeehouse-chat-514/news-current-affairs-topical-discussion-12/1213778-no-room-inn-traditional-nativity-plays-ditched-pop-songs-punk-fairies.html

The subsequent reporting of and comment in the media on the Netmums survey prompted YouGov to run a couple of questions on the subject in its regular weekly poll for The Sunday Times, for which 1,838 Britons were interviewed online on 4-5 December 2014. More than three-fifths (62%) of the sample thought it better for schools to stage traditional nativity plays, and this was especially so among Conservative voters (75%), UKIP supporters (80%), and the over-60s (75%). No question was asked about religious affiliation, but, given the distribution of responses to such questions in other YouGov studies, a significant minority of people professing no faith must also have elected for traditional nativity plays. More modern Christmas plays relevant to contemporary Britain were favoured by 17% (24% for 18-24s), while 12% did not want either sort of play, and 10% did not know what to think. Among parents of children attending primary school, 42% said that their child’s school put on a traditional play with religious content, 40% a modern play with religious content, 5% a modern play with no religious content, and 5% no play at all. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/juhk980ke8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-051214.pdf

Debt support

Four-fifths (79%) of Anglican clergy believe that helping people to manage their money wisely is an important part of the Church of England’s mission, with 48% of parishes actually providing formal or informal help to those in financial difficulties and 22% running debt advice or budgeting courses. The findings derive from an online survey undertaken in October 2014 by the Church Urban Fund and the Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Department, to which 1,685 clergy responded. The Church of England issued a press release about the research on 27 November 2014, which can be read at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2014/11/growing-number-of-parishes-providing-help-to-people-with-debt.aspx

Christians in sport

Practising Christians in the UK are almost 10% less likely to participate in sport once a week than the general public (25.8% and 35.2%, respectively), according to a poll commissioned and published by Christians in Sport (in association with the Bible Society) on 26 November 2014. The press release, which is thin, fails to offer the obvious explanation for such a disparity, that (on the evidence of censuses of church attendance and sample surveys) practising Christians have a more elderly profile than the population as a whole, but it does mention that only 19% of churches actively encourage their congregations to play sport. Although noting that the study was undertaken by Christian Research, the press release gives little further detail. The presumption must be that it was conducted via Resonate, Christian Research’s online panel of UK practising Christians (including church leaders), with some 2,000 of the 15,000-strong panel completing this particular survey. Detailed data tables do not appear to be in the public domain, certainly not on the Christian Research website. We have had occasion in the past to express regret at the lack of visibility about the methodology and results of Resonate polls, which now take place monthly. Christian Research (which is part of the Bible Society family) and its clients potentially do themselves a great disservice by failing to report these Resonate polls more transparently and to open them up to professional scrutiny. The Christians in Sport press release can be found at:

http://www.christiansinsport.org.uk/news.asp?itemid=5805&itemTitle=Press+release%3A+New+poll+says+Christians+prefer+the+armchair+to+arm+weights&section=22&sectionTitle=Stories&from=&to=

New Churches in North-East England

An interdisciplinary conference on New Churches founded in the North-East since 1980, based on a research project funded by the William Leech Foundation, will take place at St Johns College, Durham on 17 April 2015. The conference website, including a link to the draft programme, can be found at:

http://community.dur.ac.uk/churchgrowth.research/conferences/new-churches-in-the-north-east-a-day-conference

Muslims and crime

In his (somewhat laboured) article published in the advance access edition of British Journal of Criminology on 30 November 2014, Julian Hargreaves challenges the dominant scholarly discourse concerning criminological issues faced by British Muslims. Utilizing British Crime Survey/Crime Survey of England and Wales data for 2006-10, he seeks to replace the current misleading generalizations about Muslim experiences of victimization, discrimination, and demonization. Instead, he paints a more nuanced picture in which there were only small or no statistically significant differences between Muslims and non-Muslims in being victims of personal crime, although Muslims were more likely to be victims of household crime (in reflection of living in areas of socio-economic disadvantage). Moreover, Muslim attitudes to the police were, by and large, positive and often more positive than those of non-Muslims. The full text of ‘Half a Story? Missing Perspectives in the Criminological Accounts of British Muslim Communities, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System’ is currently free to download from:

http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/26/bjc.azu091.full.pdf+html

Muslims and employment

Some BRIN readers may have noticed the headline in The Independent for 1 December 2014: ‘British Muslims Face Worst Job Discrimination of any Minority Group, according to Research’. Intrigued to know more, BRIN has tracked the findings down to a forthcoming article in Social Science Journal by Nabil Khattab and Ron Johnston on ‘Ethno-Religious Identities and Persisting Penalties in the UK Labor Market’. Utilizing pooled data from the British Labour Force Survey (covering 553,600 adults aged 19-65 interviewed in the April-June quarters of 2002-10), the authors have estimated the gross and net effects of ethno-religious background on the likelihood of (a) avoiding unemployment and (b) securing employment in professional and managerial (salariat) jobs. The net calculations take the ‘human capital resources’ (such as educational attainment) of the 14 ethno-religious groups into account. This is by no means an easy article to summarize (nor to read). However, the principal conclusion appears to be that ‘most non-white groups face an employment penalty, but Muslim groups – both men and women – experienced the greatest penalties. These penalties are exacerbated when … searching for a managerial or a professional job …’ The most advantaged group in terms of employment prospects was Jewish White British, even more so than Christian White British. Although the article formally only exists as a corrected proof at the moment, it is still possible to access it (by purchase or institutional subscription) at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036233191400130X

Religious book sales

The current issue (5 December 2014, p. 8) of The Church of England Newspaper reports an analysis by The Bookseller of the sales of books on religious and related topics. Until 2007, apparently, the value of sales of mind, body, spirit titles outstripped that of traditional religious books, the relative proportions being 56% and 44%. Thereafter, throughout the years of economic recession, the share of mind, body, spirit titles reduced to 41% (of a slightly diminished overall sales total), falling by 29%, while traditional religious books reached 59%, up 28% in sales. However, from 2014, as the economic recovery has taken effect, mind, body, spirit sales have risen by 10%, with a particularly large increase in sales of works on mindfulness. It is hard to comment without seeing the full data, which do not seem to be on The Bookseller’s public website and are presumably only available to subscribers.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged abortion, assisted suicide, Ben Clements, Bible Society, Bookseller, British Crime Survey, British Social Attitudes Surveys, Catholic Education Service for England and Wales, Christian Research, Christians in Sport, Church of England, Church Urban Fund, crime, debt, employment, European Values Study, Journal of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Religion in Europe, Julian Hargreaves, Labour Force Survey, Muslims, Nabil Khattab, nativity plays, Netmums, New Churches, religious beliefs, religious books, Resonate, Roman Catholics, Ron Johnston, schools, Social Science Journal, sport, Sunday Times, YouGov | Leave a comment

Sacred Texts and Other News

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Sacred texts

The potential contribution of religious and sacred texts to the school curriculum is explored in new research published by the Bible Society on 20 November 2014. Commissioned from YouGov, it involved online interviews with samples of (a) 795 primary and secondary teachers in England and Wales between 24 October and 4 November 2014 and (b) 566 students aged 8-15 in Britain on 24-27 October 2014. The Bible Society’s press release, incorporating links to the full data tables for both samples, will be found at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/news/more-sacred-texts-in-schools-would-help-children-love-thy-neighbour-as-yourself-say-teachers/

Almost three-quarters (73%) of teachers agreed that the education system has more of a role to play in addressing the challenges of inter-religious and ethnic strife at home and abroad through changing attitudes and behaviour of the next generation. Just over two-fifths (42%) thought the teaching of religious and sacred texts in more of the curriculum would improve the cross-cultural understanding of their students with minority groups, with 31% believing it would enhance the general social development of students and 28% community cohesion. However, less than half of teachers (47%) felt confident about including such texts in their teaching plans. Beyond religious education (85%), personal, social, health and economic education classes were deemed appropriate for teaching about religion and faith (48%), followed by those in citizenship (46%), history (27%), and English (11%).

Some two-thirds (64%) of pupils acknowledged the importance of knowing about different religions, but only 15% considered they would have a more positive opinion of religious people as a result (three-fifths saying it would make no difference). A minority clearly viewed religious people with some suspicion, 6% describing them as threatening, 7% as dangerous, 11% as weird, and 13% as old-fashioned. Overall, 46% of pupils said they were not religious themselves. One-fifth (21%) claimed not to have read or been taught about during the past year any of the six religious texts named in the survey, with 64% being exposed to the Bible and 25% the Koran.

Aspirational churchgoing

One-fifth of Britons anticipate they will attend church during the forthcoming Christmas period, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times conducted online on 20-21 November 2014 among 1,970 adults. The proportion rises to 25% for Conservative voters, 24% for the over-60s, and 23% for non-manual workers. The figure is likely to include a fair amount of aspiration since we know that, in the Church of England, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services last year were attended by around 2,400,000, or 4% of the English population. Even if we factor in churchgoing during Advent and Christmas attendances by non-Anglicans, it is hard to see how the 20% prediction will be met in reality. Moreover, this total is made up of 9% who claim to be regular churchgoers and 11% who are not but expect to worship at Christmas. The former statistic is also likely to be inflated as the last (2005) English church census revealed 6% of the population in the pews on a typical Sunday, which is almost certainly less now, notwithstanding recent growth in London. YouGov’s data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/6au4g3f66s/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-211114.pdf

Christians and poverty

Christian attitudes to poverty in Britain are briefly reported in a new book by Martin Charlesworth and Natalie Williams, The Myth of the Undeserving Poor: A Christian Response to Poverty in Britain Today (Grosvenor House Publishing for Jubilee+, ISBN 978-1-78148-875-1) – see especially pp. 42-7. The data, which derive from an online survey completed by an apparently self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 419 Christians (including church leaders) over a three-week period in the summer of 2014, were compared with opinions of a cross-section of adults as recorded by the British Social Attitudes Surveys.

In general, Christians were found to have a slightly narrower definition of who is in poverty than the public, with 51% selecting the narrowest definition and merely 12% the broadest. However, Christians were ‘more sympathetic to those in need, more aware of the poverty that exists in Britain, and less prone to buying into myths about people on benefits’. For example, as many as 54% of Christians suggested that support for the poor from the State is too low, compared with 22% of the population as a whole.

Nevertheless, as in the nation at large, political allegiance made a big difference to Christian opinion, with Christians who identified as Conservatives taking the hardest line. Whereas 67% of Christians who were Labour and 48% who were LibDems agreed that the income gap between rich and poor is morally wrong, just 33% of Conservative Christians said so. Newspaper readership and proximity to poverty were also revealed as having a substantial impact on Christian attitudes. The authors of the book seemed surprised that there was less of a consensus among Christians.

Cathedral friends

An illustration of social capital generated in a religious domain is provided by Judith Muskett, ‘Measuring Religious Social Capital: Scale Properties of the Modified Williams Religious Social Capital Index among Friends of Cathedrals’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2014, pp. 242-9. The main purpose of the article is methodological, to validate a modified version of the religious social capital index originally devised by Emyr Williams in 2008. However, along the way, interesting light is shed on the profile and motivations of 923 members of the friends’ associations of six Anglican cathedrals in England who responded to a postal questionnaire sent out by Muskett in 2011. These respondents were disproportionately over 65 years of age (74%), educated to degree level (44%), and – in their own estimation – religious (96%, including 54% who described themselves as rather or extremely religious). The research originated in the author’s 2013 PhD thesis from York St John University on ‘Cathedrals Making Friends: The Religious Social Capital of Anglican Cathedral Friends’ Associations’. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2014.884843#.VHDfPekqXX4

Clergy burnout

One manifestation of the decline of institutional Christianity in Britain has been the growing trend for clergy to be required to look after more than one church, especially in rural areas. Mandy Robbins and Leslie Francis have examined the relationship between ministerial oversight of multiple churches and levels of clerical burnout, taking into account personal, psychological, theological, and other contextual factors, based upon a sub-sample of 867 female Anglican clergy under the age of 71 serving in stipendiary parish ministry in England in 2006-07. Their findings are reported in ‘Taking Responsibility for Multiple Churches: A Study in Burnout among Anglican Clergywomen in England’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2014, pp. 261-80. They demonstrate a small significant inverse association between number of churches and satisfaction in ministry but no association with emotional exhaustion. Access options are outlined at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15709256-12341310;jsessionid=3mkajba2b384x.x-brill-live-03

Origins of life on earth

News that the European Space Agency’s Philae probe had landed on comet 67P rekindled the debate about the origins of life on earth and, in particular, the extent to which comets might have played a part by bringing organic compounds to earth many millions of years ago. This prompted YouGov to ask representative samples of both Britons and Americans how they currently think life on earth began. In Britain 2,003 adults were interviewed online on 12-13 November 2014, and the results are presented at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/t0vgrsctuq/PeterResults_141113_life_on_earth-Website.pdf

Just 15% of Britons believed that the earth was created by God, the proportion rising to no more than 23% in any demographic sub-group, that being Londoners among whom, through immigration, there are relatively high levels of religiosity. Overall, the divine explanation found less favour than comets, which 19% suggested were instrumental in starting life on earth (possibly because they had heard media speculation along these lines). Another 4% subscribed to the view that an older, alien civilization brought life here from elsewhere in the universe. Two-fifths discounted all these arguments and opted for life beginning because conditions on earth happened to be suitable, while 22% had no idea.

These findings were in stark contrast with those for the United States sample, with no fewer than 53% of Americans agreeing that life on earth was created by God, ranging from 42% in the western states to 70% among blacks and Republicans. However, there is absolutely no difference between Britain and America in the likelihood of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe, an opinion held by, respectively, 66% and 67%. American data tables are at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/l0f4q17xnt/tabs_OPI_space_20141114.pdf

Anti-creationism

Peter Webster’s latest blog post, on 18 November 2014, continues his analysis of the religious dimensions of UK webspace. This time, he has identified and categorized the unique UK hosts linking to any of the four main anti-creationist websites at any point between 1996 and 2010. His conclusion is that, during this period, ‘British creationism was talking largely to itself, and was mostly ignored by academia, the media and most of the churches’. His blog, with links to the source data, can be found at:

http://peterwebster.me/2014/11/18/reading-creationism-in-the-web-archive/

Time to say goodbye

Hymns, as well as classical music, are decreasingly popular as choices for funeral music, according to 84% of funeral directors in the latest annual survey by Co-operative Funeral Care, which was published on 21 November 2014, and based on more than 30,000 funerals conducted by the company. There are now only three traditional hymns left in the top 20 funeral music choices: The Lord is My Shepherd (in second place, the most requested hymn in all but one listing since 2005), Abide with Me (in third position), and All Things Bright and Beautiful (in sixth). In top spot is Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which has displaced the former long-standing leader, Frank Sinatra’s My Way (now in fifth place). Advancing up the league table is the Match of the Day theme tune, occupying fourth place. Schubert’s Ave Maria came sixteenth. Funerals have often been viewed as the ‘last monopoly’ of organized religion, but, if music choice is anything to go by, they too are being secularized. For the overall top 20, and the top 10 or 20 in each music genre (including the top 10 hymns), see the press release at:

http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/press/press-releases/Funeralcare/the-final-countdown-funerals-march-to-a-different-tune-as-brits-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life/

Jewish lives

The Jewish Chronicle for 21 November 2014 (p. 18) highlights an interim report from Jewish Lives, an ongoing project of UJIA (United Jewish Israel Appeal) and funded by the Pears Foundation, involving a longitudinal study of more than 1,000 Jewish families whose children entered Jewish secondary schools in London and Manchester in 2011. The report, which does not appear to be in the public domain, is said to show that, during their first two years at Jewish secondary school, pupils strengthened their British identity without any diminution of their Jewish identity or lessening of support for Israel. The newspaper write-up, which is relevant to current debates about the teaching of ‘British values’ in schools, is at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/125709/jewish-schools-make-you-feel-more-british

BRIN site traffic

The latest site traffic statistics (analysed by Siobhan McAndrew) reveal that there have been 650,457 page views of the BRIN website since its official launch in March 2010 in 300,543 sessions and by 234,744 unique users. In the latest complete month (October 2014) there were 13,587 page views by 6,144 unique users.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion Online, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged anti-creationism, Bible Society, BRIN, British identity, cathedral friends, Christians, Christmas, church attendance, Church of England, clergy burnout, Co-operative Funeral Care, comets, funeral music, God, hymns, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Lives, Jews, Journal of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Empirical Theology, jubilee, Judith Muskett, Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins, Martin Charlesworth, Natalie Williams, origins of life on earth, Peter Webster, poverty, religious festivals, religious social capital, sacred texts, schools, Sunday Times, UJIA, United States, YouGov | Leave a comment

Easter Round-Up

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Children’s Easter knowledge

The Bible Society announced on 17 April 2014 that it had launched a five-day Bible Bedtime Challenge app as an Easter poll showed that children can confuse the Bible with fairy tales and fables. It commissioned YouGov to undertake an online survey of 1,082 British children aged 8 to 15 between 28 and 31 March 2014. Asked which symbol of Easter was most important to them, the majority (55%) of children opted for chocolate eggs, 20% for the Christian cross, and 9% for the Easter bunny. Although 76% associated Easter Sunday with the Resurrection of Christ, 11% thought it had some other connection with Jesus, 13% giving another wrong answer or none at all. Somewhat fewer (65%) knew the significance of Good Friday, 16% linking it with the Resurrection rather than the Crucifixion, and 19% otherwise replying incorrectly or not at all. While 80% were able to name Judas as the person who had betrayed Jesus, only a plurality (45%) knew that he had identified Christ by giving Him a kiss. Probed about specific incidents which might have featured in the biblical account of Easter, the children generally struggled less than might perhaps have been anticipated, albeit 6% were convinced that they included the tale of a couple who killed a sacred goose which laid a golden egg every day, and 13% the story about a hare who raced a tortoise to teach people to be patient (with a further 20% and 15% respectively unable to say). Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, region, social grade, and parental employment and marital status) can be found at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/news/files/Results-for-Easter-poll-108-1.4.14.pdf

Families’ Easter observance

The religious side of Easter did not feature prominently in the plans of 2,500 UK parents of dependent children interviewed online by OnePoll on behalf of the budget hotel chain Travelodge in April 2014. Only one in ten expected to go to church over Easter, and a similar proportion intended to eat fish on Good Friday, the day (in the Catholic tradition) of abstinence from meat. Moreover, 48% of parents reckoned that their children were ignorant of the true meaning of Easter, the most frequent associations being with the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs. For the overwhelming majority of families, Easter was going to be observed as a secular holiday only, with a projected expenditure of £2billion by parents on a combination of short breaks and an average of four day trips during the two-week Easter school holidays. Among the 35% of households intent on a staycation, the seaside was the destination for 37%, a city for 26%, and the countryside for 14%. A visit to family members (36%) topped the list of day trips, followed by museums (24%), working farms (18%), art galleries (10%), and theme parks (9%). The foregoing skeletal details have mostly been gleaned from a couple of stories on the Daily Mirror website, Travelodge’s press releases not yet being in the public domain, still less detailed data tables.

Meanwhile, a separate poll commissioned by Sainsbury’s, and published on 15 April 2014, discovered that many of the 1,000 parents interviewed would need to spend much of the Easter weekend break on chores, with 68% mentioning sorting out the garden and 60% getting on top of jobs around the house. While 77% of parents recognized Easter as an important family occasion, 87% admitted to struggling to find things to do that would appeal to the whole family. Notwithstanding, 58% expected to organize activities to keep their children and their friends entertained, and 55% opted for potentially expensive days out at UK attractions. However, when 1,000 children aged 5-12 were asked to describe their perfect Easter, the plurality (33%) prioritized being at home with their parents over going away on holiday (21%), and hanging out with their friends (15%). The best three Easter treats singled out by children were a family picnic outdoors, an Easter egg hunt at home, and seeing baby Easter animals. The Sainsbury’s press release is at:

http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/media/latest-stories/2014/0414-all-kids-want-for-a-cracking-easter-is-a-picnic-with-the-whole-family/

Also on the subject of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, on 9-10 April 2014 ComRes (on behalf of Autogas) asked 1,569 adult Britons with a car in the household how far they expected to drive over the four days. Just over one-quarter (27%) did not drive or did not expect to drive during the weekend, but 63% anticipated being on the road, with 41% planning to drive up to 50 miles, 10% from 51 to 100 miles, and 12% more than 100 miles. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Autogas_Easter_Tables_14_April_2014.pdf

Religion’s role in Britain

A plurality of Britons (35%) thinks religion generally plays a positive role in our society, but 29% see it as a negative force, and 24% do not consider that it plays any part at all in British life (the remaining 12% being undecided). Britain’s positive score is well below the global mean (59%) but similar to that of Western Europe (36%), whose average is brought down by the fact that in six countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden) the negatives outvoted the positives. Among the G7 nations Britain occupies fifth place in terms of positivity toward the role of religion, the two extremes being USA (62%) and France (20%). The most positive country of all in the world is Indonesia and Africa the most positive region.

Findings derive from the WIN/Gallup International End of Year Survey for 2013 for which 66,806 adults were interviewed in 65 countries, including 1,000 in Britain online by ORB International on 6-9 December 2013. A press release about this particular question was issued just before Easter and forms the basis of reports in The Times (‘Britons Hostile to Religion’) and Daily Telegraph (‘Britons Sceptical about Positive Role of Religion’), both for 17 April 2014. This press release is not yet on the WIN/Gallup International website. Undeterred, BRIN has located it substantially reproduced by the Sam Diego Jewish World at:

http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2014/04/16/western-europe-critical-region-religion/

Faith school exemptions

The British public is unsympathetic to appeals from some religious conservatives (including Orthodox Jews) to exempt state-funded faith schools from teaching national curriculum topics which they find contrary to their core beliefs and traditions, notably sex education and evolution. This is according to a new YouGov poll fir the Jewish Chronicle for which 2,144 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online. The poll was commissioned in the wake of the recent ruling by Ofqual, the examinations regulatory body, that schools may no longer block out external examination questions they deem unsuitable for pupils.

Asked whether faith schools should be able to refrain from delivering any form of sex education in lessons, 82% of Britons said no and only 9% yes. A smaller but still substantial majority of 67% also rejected the idea that faith schools should be able to teach creationism as a legitimate scientific theory on a par with evolution, with just 18% agreeing that they should. Opposition on both counts was apparently fairly uniform by demographics. Detailed data tables are not yet available, but an article about the survey was featured on pp. 1 and 4 of the 18 April 2014 edition of the Jewish Chronicle and is also available online at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/117450/faith-schools-must-teach-sex-say-82

Evangelical discipleship

Busyness is making a disciplined spiritual life more difficult for evangelical Christians, with 50% failing to engage with the Bible on a daily basis and 37% failing to pray daily, even though 60% report to praying ‘on the move’ and 33% resort to Bible apps on their mobile device. Moreover, 63% admit to getting easily distracted when they are spending time with God. The biblical character that most (43%) identify with is busy Martha. Younger evangelicals (born after 1980) are particularly challenged in these regards but older ones (born before 1960) still manage more disciplined and structured prayer lives and longer periods spent in private prayer and Bible study. The majority of all evangelicals (54%) also agree that most other Christians today are not very disciplined in their spiritual lives and walk with God. Only 40% feel their church does very well at discipling new Christians, and just 26% regard themselves as successfully equipped for witnessing and sharing their faith with others.

These findings are from Time for Discipleship? – the latest report in the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals series, which was published on 13 April 2014. Data derive from 1,529 self-defined evangelicals in membership of the Evangelical Alliance’s self-selecting research panel who completed an online survey in November 2013. This is an opportunity sample which may not be representative of evangelicals as a whole, not least given that it includes an unstated proportion of church leaders. The report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=49835

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Autogas, Bible, Bible Society, children, church attendance, ComRes, Creationism, discipleship, Easter, Evangelical Alliance. faith schools, holidays, Jewish Chronicle, OnePoll, ORB International, prayer, religious festivals, religious knowledge, role of religion, Sainsbury's, sex education, Travelodge, WIN/Gallup International, YouGov | Leave a comment

Bible Literacy and Other News

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Bible literacy

Bible literacy in Britain is falling through the generations, according to research just released by the Bible Society, which has launched a ‘pass it on’ campaign to encourage parents and other family members to ‘pass on’ a Bible story to their children (including via a Bible Bedtime App), with an overarching warning of ‘use it or lose it’. The research was conducted by YouGov and involved online interviews with 1,091 parents of children and adolescents aged 3-16 on 10-14 January 2014 and 804 children aged 8-15 on 10-13 January 2014. The Bible Society has published a report on the survey, together with tabulations of raw (unpercentaged) data with breaks by demographics for each of the samples. They can be found at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/projects/Bible-Society-Report_030214_final_.pdf

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/Pass_It_On/Results-for-Portland-Communications–(Bible-Society—Parents-Omnibus)-02-14-Parents-Omni—Counts.pdf

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/Pass_It_On/Pass-It-On-data-tables—children’s-survey.pdf

Children were asked to select stories that appear in the Bible from a list of popular children’s books, Greek myths, and fairy tales, and only 14% answered all correctly. Moreover, significant numbers of children indicated that they had not read, seen or heard anything about some of the most celebrated stories in the Bible, 93% saying so about Job, with 89% for the Tower of Babel, 87% for Saul on the road to Damascus, 85% for Solomon, 72% for Daniel in the lion’s den, 63% for the Creation, 61% for the Good Samaritan, 61% for the feeding of the 5,000, 57% for David and Goliath, 56% for the parting of the Red Sea, 54% for Joseph and his coat of many colours, 43% for the Crucifixion, 38% for Adam and Eve, 25% for the Nativity, and 23% for Noah’s Ark.

In like fashion, many parents found it hard to distinguish the plot-lines of Bible stories from Hollywood blockbusters, 54% thinking that the storyline in Hunger Games might have originated in the Bible, with 46% saying the same about the Da Vinci Code, 34% about Harry Potter, and 27% about Superman. On the other hand, 46% did not recognize the plot-line of Noah’s Ark as a Bible story, with 31% ignorant of the derivation of David and Goliath, 30% of Adam and Eve, and 27% of the Good Samaritan. Older parents (the over-55s) were found to be appreciably better than those aged 25-34 at differentiating between Bible stories and Hollywood films, reflecting the fact that they were more likely (79% versus 56%) to have engaged with Bible stories when at school. Parents in Wales were also more knowledgeable than those elsewhere in Britain.

Notwithstanding their own relative ignorance, many parents whose children had been exposed to Bible stories continued to recognize their importance. This was especially so for professing Christians, 59% of whom viewed Bible stories as providing values for a good life, 52% as important to our history and culture, and 41% as classic stories that stand the test of time. Even one-third of non-Christians agreed with each of these propositions, not far below the average of 43%, 40%, and 36% respectively. Among all parents, only 11% deemed it inappropriate for children to learn Bible stories, 62% believing such learning should take place at school, 58% at church or Sunday school, and 45% at home. Three-fifths of parents considered it the role of parents or guardians to read Bible stories to a child, yet only 31% of parents of children aged 3-8 claimed to read Bible stories to their child once a month or more.

These findings are in line with other research. Indeed, a systematic review of some 160 sample surveys of Bible ownership, readership, knowledge, literalism, beliefs, and attitudes since the Second World War demonstrates a progressive decrease in ‘Bible-centricism’ during the past 60 years. It could thus be said to lend support to the theory which sees secularization as declining religious authority, in this case the authority of the Bible as the foundation document of Christianity. This research, by the present author, will be published in Journal of Contemporary Religion later this year.

European Quality of Life Survey

The dataset for the third (2011-12) European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) has recently been released to the UK Data Service’s Nesstar catalogue. The Survey, previously conducted in 2003 and 2007, is commissioned by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. UK fieldwork was undertaken by GfK NOP between 30 September 2011 and 12 February 2012 among 2,252 adults aged 18 and over. Interviews also took place in 33 other European countries, mostly in the European Union (EU).

EQLS has been light on religion-related questions. However, in the 2007 and 2011 rounds a question was included on perceived tensions between different religious groups in each survey country, with the following results for the UK and EU as a whole (EU27), having applied the cross-national weight, and omitting don’t knows and refusals:

%	UK	UK	EU27	EU27
	2007	2011	2007	2011
A lot of tension	32.5	33.7	28.8	28.0
Some tension	53.3	50.0	46.3	48.3
No tension	11.5	16.3	19.0	23.7

A question on claimed frequency of attendance at religious services was included in the 2002, 2007, and 2011 EQLS. The question and reply options differed on each occasion but the weighted results can be collapsed into the threefold categorization shown below:

%	UK	UK	UK	EU25	EU27	EU27
	2003	2007	2011	2003	2007	2011
Once a week or more	12.6	13.5	12.6	17.0	17.4	15.3
Less often	29.3	30.9	27.7	43.5	45.1	39.3
Never	58.0	54.9	59.7	39.5	36.6	45.4

It will be seen that the majority of UK citizens (59.7% in 2011) claim never to attend religious services, 14.3% more than the EU average, with weekly attenders 2.7% less. At the same time, perceptions of tensions between different religious groups are greater in the UK than the EU, and more in the UK reported a lot of tension in 2011 relative to 2007, whereas in the EU somewhat fewer did.

Scottish Health Survey

The results of the 2012 Scottish Health Survey, undertaken by the Scottish Centre for Social Research on behalf of the Scottish Government Health Directorates and NHS Health Scotland, have likewise just been released to the UK Data Service’s Nesstar catalogue. A large sample (4,815 adults aged 16 and over in Scotland) was interviewed face-to-face and by self-completion questionnaire on a wide range of health topics.

A background question on religious affiliation was included on the schedule: ‘What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’ Weighted figures are shown below, in percentages (excluding refusals and don’t knows), together with those for 2003, the first year for which the Scottish Health Survey appears in Nesstar (the first survey was actually conducted in 1995). Unfortunately, the question asked on that occasion was different: ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ There were also methodological variations between the two surveys. Therefore, the two sets of data are not strictly comparable, which may explain why – counterintuitively – there has been no overall decline in religiosity between the two dates (although the ‘other Christian’ group has lost ground). Additionally, it should be remembered that the ‘belonging’ form of question tends to maximize the number of religious ‘nones’. Statistics refer to adults only, not the entire Scottish population (as in the 2011 census).

%	2003	2012
None	39.5	38.7
Church of Scotland	33.2	35.2
Roman Catholic	14.4	15.6
Other Christian	11.3	7.2
Other religion	1.6	3.1

BRIN has disaggregated the 2012 data by age cohort. The results, presented below, show some striking trends: a) no religion is the religious choice of the under-45s; b) Church of Scotland support is concentrated among the over-65s, and there has been an Anglican-style collapse with younger people, undermining the Kirk’s position as a national Church; c) Catholic self-identity reduces with age, being strongest among the under-45s, and offering some hope for the Church; and d) other Protestants appear to be dying out.

%	16-44	45-64	65+
None	52.5	33.5	15.9
Church of Scotland	20.6	40.6	59.5
Roman Catholic	17.9	14.0	13.0
Other Christian	4.8	8.7	10.2
Other religion	4.1	3.0	1.2

Justin Welby as hero

Asked to rate 84 famous Britons as heroes or role models, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was placed 51st by a representative sample of 4,031 adults aged 18 and over interviewed online by Vision Critical in November 2013. Welby was the only past or present religious leader to be included on the list. Top spot in the heroes index went to Falklands War veteran Simon Weston, with physicist Stephen Hawking in second position. Sportspeople did especially well, assisted by their individual prominence in the 2012 Olympics, and politicians scored consistently poorly, ranked between 55th (Boris Johnson) and 84th (Michael Gove). Under the circumstances, given that he has not been in the job that long and has less media exposure than many of the other celebrities asked about, Welby can perhaps be reasonably content with his public standing as ‘hero’. The survey was commissioned by PR agency freuds, and a headline report was published by them on 1 February 2014 at:

http://heroes.freuds.com/assets/files/FREUDS_BREWERY_JOURNAL_2014_PDF.pdf

Religion and voting, 1940s/50s-style

I am currently working on a review of statistical indicators of religious belonging in Great Britain during the ‘long’ 1950s (between 1945 and 1963), and this has led me to re-examine source material in the Mass-Observation (MO) Archive at the University of Sussex, which I first investigated back in the 1980s. Fortunately, huge quantities of the Archive are now available in a commercial digital edition from Adam Matthew Publications, Mass Observation Online, in partnership with the trustees of the Archive (who naturally retain the copyright).

MO is best known for its qualitative and participant observation techniques, but it also diversified into more conventional opinion polling after the Second World War, ultimately leading to the establishment of a market research company of the same name. Two of its largest-scale surveys, each involving interviews with representative quota samples of over 6,000 adult Britons, were undertaken for the Daily Telegraph in April-May 1948 and December 1955-January 1956, to gauge public opinion on the subject of capital punishment.

Both surveys included background questions about religion and political partisanship, and they enable us to move further back in time with the analysis of religious influences on voting which have been so well explored by Ben Clements and Nick Spencer for the era from the 1960s to the present in their recent Theos report on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? This is a book which we covered in our post of 26 January 2014.

Unfortunately, MO’s questions were worded somewhat differently to those in the surveys used by Clements and Spencer, so we should be mindful that we are not entirely comparing like with like. MO’s religion question in both 1948 and 1955 was: ‘What Church, if any, do you usually attend?’ On this definition, 74% in 1948 and 81% in 1955 claimed a religion, so, in effect, respondents really interpreted the question as one about religious affiliation, since church attendance nationally was well below these levels at both dates. MO’s political question was: ‘Which political party, if any, do you support?’

The results for both years are presented below, omitting Jews (too few of whom were interviewed) and refusals, abstracted from the tabulation sheets in MO Archive TC 47-10-E and TC 72-2-E respectively, which are reproduced in Mass Observation Online:

1948 % across	None	Lab	Con	Lib	Other	Undecided	Uninterested
Not attend church	18	38	30	3	3	5	3
Church of England	12	23	52	4	1	5	3
Roman Catholic	17	41	25	3	1	5	3
Nonconformist	11	35	25	18	1	5	4
Church of Scotland	19	28	40	5	1	3	4
Other	23	34	27	8	1	4	3
All	15	30	40	6	1	5	3

1955 % across	None	Lab	Con	Lib	Other	Undecided	Uninterested
Not attend church	18	45	24	3	2	4	3
Church of England	11	30	46	5	1	4	3
Roman Catholic	19	47	24	3	1	3	3
Nonconformist	12	33	32	10	1	5	6
Church of Scotland	9	35	35	4	2	6	6
Other	17	32	29	8	2	3	7
All	13	35	37	5	1	4	4

The tables broadly confirm the findings of Clements and Spencer for subsequent periods, not least in showing that Anglicans were disproportionately Conservative and Roman Catholics disproportionately Labour.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Archbishop of Canterbury, Bible, Bible literacy, Bible Society, Bible stories, children, church attendance, Daily Telegraph, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, European Quality of Life Survey, freuds, GfK NOP, heroes, Justin Welby, Mass-Observation, parents, politics, Religious Affiliation, Scottish Centre for Social Research, Scottish Health Survey, tensions between religious groups, Vision Critical, YouGov | 3 Comments

Christmas and Other Themes

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The Christmas season always seems to inspire some light-hearted as well as serious research, and our post today includes festive examples of both genres, plus a few other statistical news stories which have come to hand in the past week or so. They clear BRIN’s decks this side of Christmas, but we shall be back again shortly afterwards.

Contemporary nativity

If Jesus was born in the UK today, it would most probably be in the Yorkshire Dales (27%) or London (24%), according to the 1,000 UK adults aged 18 and over who completed an online survey by OnePoll on 25 November 2013. Moreover, his likeliest birthplace today would be a garden shed (32%), Premier Inn or Travelodge (18%), or a squat (15%). A chocolate orange (14%) or socks (11%) topped the list of presents for this contemporary Jesus. Asked which nativity character they would prefer to be, an angel (25%, rising to 40% of females, even though every angelic name in the Bible is masculine) or a wise man (22% overall, 30% among males) were the most popular choices, with Mary and Joseph trailing well behind on 8% and 4% respectively. The University of Manchester scientist Professor Brian Cox exemplified a modern wise man for 31% of respondents, followed by newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald (16%), and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson (12%); only 9% saw the current Archbishop of Canterbury as fitting the part of a wise man. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, and region) were released by the Bible Society, which commissioned the poll, on 17 December 2013 and are available at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/news/files/December%202013/2013-Nativity—full-data-tables.pdf

Nativity plays

The overwhelming majority (83%) of 480 working fathers surveyed by officebroker.com said they found it difficult to get time off work to see their child perform in a nativity play, and only 16% were able to do so every year. Although 89% professed they would like to attend the nativity, regardless of the role played by their child, a choosier 11% of dads would only go if their child was playing the part of Mary or Joseph. The principal source of data about the survey is the online edition of the Daily Mail for 12 December 2013 at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522280/The-dads-wont-attend-nativity-plays.html

Christmas cards

One-third of UK businesses claim to be shying away from sending Christmas cards to customers this year for fear of offending their personal beliefs and being seen as insensitive. This is according to research conducted by Your Say Pays on behalf of Pitney Bowes in December 2013 among an online sample of 1,000 business respondents. See the Pitney Bowes press release dated 11 December 2013 at:

http://pressroom.pitneybowes.co.uk/festive-cheer-feels-the-pinch-as-consumers-cut-back-on-christmas-cards/

Christmas carols

O Holy Night, first performed in 1847, has topped Premier Christian Radio’s poll of Christmas carols, it was announced on 15 December 2013. The poll had been running on the Premier website for several weeks and was completed by a self-selecting sample. O Holy Night (Cantique de Noël, with words by Placide Clappeau and melody by Charles Adam) took 15% of the vote. It narrowly beat Hark the Herald Angels Sing (14%), with In the Bleak Midwinter in third place on 11%. Silent Night, which tends to head most other lists of favourite carols, came fourth on this particular list, with 9% support. Joy to the World was fifth (7%). The full top ten can be seen at:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/o.holy.night.is.nations.favourite.carol/35064.htm

Christmas churchgoing

Of 3,330 readers of The Sun, 9% anticipate they will go to church this Christmas, according to a yuletide survey published in today’s edition (19 December 2013, pp. 20-1) of the newspaper. No details of methodology are given. The figure is almost certainly likely to be aspirational in large part, reflecting good intentions that will not be translated into reality. Nevertheless, the proportion is somewhat lower than in more representative polls of the adult British population conducted in recent years. The lower incidence of Christmas churchgoing among readers of The Sun probably reflects the fact that they are more likely to be men and manual workers (as revealed in the National Readership Survey), groups which are relatively poor attenders at public worship.

Bible knowledge

Although four-fifths of Britons claim to have read the Bible, they are often ignorant about its content, according to a new online poll of 2,000 adults commissioned to mark the release on 26 December 2013 of DVD and Blu-Ray editions of The Bible mini-series, recently shown on UK television (Channel 5). Even the true significance of Christmas Day was a mystery to 16%, while one-fifth had no idea that Christ died on Good Friday, and one-quarter was unfamiliar with the story of God creating the world in six days. Sadly, this is one of those media-sponsored surveys for which it is virtually impossible to lay one’s hands on the full results. The best report BRIN has seen to date, and that was very brief, appeared in The Times for 14 December 2013. We will keep searching, but we suggest that you do not build your hopes up!

Fifty-six years on

In February 1957 Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited carried out a major opinion poll into religion on behalf of the News Chronicle, 2,261 Britons aged 16 and over being interviewed face-to-face. Many of these questions have just been replicated by YouGov for Prospect, among an online sample of 1,681 Britons aged 18 and over on 24-25 November 2013. The following 1957-2013 comparison has been constructed from Peter Kellner’s article, ‘Ye of Little Faith’, in Prospect, Issue 214, January 2014, pp. 40-1 (supplemented by Gallup’s 1957 documentation).

%	1957	2013
God
Personal God	41	17
Spirit/life force	37	52
Neither	6	28
Don’t know	16	23
Jesus Christ
Son of God	71	27
Just a man	9	29
Just a story	6	22
Don’t know	14	21
Devil
Is	34	22
Is not	42	49
Don’t know	24	29
Life after death
Is	54	33
Is not	17	33
Don’t know	29	34
Religion
Can answer today’s problems	46	19
Largely old-fashioned	27	58
Don’t know	27	23
World’s need
Greater economic security	48	81
More religion	36	8
Don’t know	16	11
Church and politics
Keep out	53	41
Express views	36	45
Don’t know	11	14
Church-State connection
Should continue	37	27
Should end	37	51
Don’t know	26	23

YouGov also polled its respondents about a couple of other topics not probed by Gallup in 1957, although they have been covered in subsequent surveys by other companies. Asked about the origin of life on earth, only 8% in 2013 subscribed to the biblical account, 14% opted for intelligent design, 60% believed in the theory of evolution, and 19% were uncertain. On the Resurrection of Christ, 26% believed that He had returned to life on the third day after crucifixion, 48% did not, and 26% were undecided.

Kellner’s take on these statistics is, unsurprisingly, that there has been ‘a collapse of faith in the central tenets of Christianity’ during the past half-century. Certainly, there have been substantial falls in key traditional beliefs, of 24% in a personal God, 44% in Jesus as the Son of God, and 21% in life after death. At the same time, there have been steep rises of 31% in those thinking religion an irrelevance to solving modern problems, and of 33% in the conviction that greater economic security – not religion – is what the world needs. A majority (51%) now favours the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Full data tables from this poll are now (21 December 2013) available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/3s35pyaa5c/YG-Archive-131125-Prospects.pdf

Freedom of religion

Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (which is protected under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998) is regarded as vital or important by 89% of Britons, and as useful by 6%, with only 4% viewing this right as unnecessary. This is according to the results of a telephone poll conducted by ComRes for Liberty among 1,002 adults aged 18 and over on 22-24 November 2013, and published on 10 December to mark United Nations Human Rights Day. This was a higher level of support for freedom of religion than in previous annual ComRes surveys, the first of which appears to have been undertaken in May 2009. Nevertheless, freedom of religion was somewhat less prized than some other freedoms, respect for privacy, family life, and the home being deemed vital or important by 97%, with 96% saying the same about the right to a fair trial and the protection of property. The data table, with breaks by demographics, can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Liberty_Human_Rights_Tracker_Data_Tables_November_2013.pdf

Gender segregation

Gender segregation for religious reasons at meetings of university societies and groups is strongly opposed by the British public, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times published on 15 December 2013, in which 1,846 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online on 12-13 December. Only 12% thought separate seating areas for men and women should be allowed on campus, although the proportion rose to one-fifth among 18-39s. Opponents of gender segregation stood at 69%, peaking at 85% of over-60s and Liberal Democrats, with 19% uncertain what to think. The survey was triggered by Universities UK guidelines (withdrawn on 13 December following intervention by the Prime Minister and others) which suggested that segregation was permissible if no disadvantage was caused. The debate has mainly centred on segregation of audiences at university Islamic societies. Full results of the YouGov poll are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jljqincr91/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-131213.pdf

BRIN source database update

The annual update of the BRIN source database has just taken place. New entries have been created for 129 British religious statistical sources, of which 83 date from 2013 and 46 from previous years. This brings the total of sources described in the database to 2,243. The 2013 sources include many important sample surveys, such as the three commissioned for the Westminster Faith Debates, and polls on topical issues, such as religion and same-sex marriage, the state of the Catholic Church under the two popes of 2013, Islamist terrorism (especially after the murder of Lee Rigby), and Muslim women’s dress. Moreover, 37 existing entries have been updated, mostly by additional subject keywords and/or publication references. The source database, which is searchable in multiple ways, can be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/

Early Christmas present

Many BRIN readers will be aware of the hard work put in by Dr Siobhan McAndrew at the University of Manchester in helping to establish BRIN when she was our full-time project officer in 2008-10, and of her various contributions to the website since that time. We now extend to her and her husband our warmest congratulations on the birth of their daughter, Ramona, on 7 December 2013 at St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester. As we are supposed to be good at statistics, we had better quote the birth weight, which was 4lb. 14oz. Siobhan and daughter are now back home, and both are fine, Siobhan tells us in a recent email.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged afterlife, Bible knowledge, Bible Society, businesses, Christmas, Christmas cards, Christmas carols, Church and State, church attendance, Church of England, ComRes, Devil, disestablishment, evolution, fathers, freedom of religion, gender segregation, God, human rights, Jesus Christ, Liberty, nativity, nativity plays, officebroker.com, OnePoll, origin of life on earth, Peter Kellner, Pitney Bowes, politics, Premier Christian Radio, Prospect, religious festivals, Resurrection, Siobhan McAndrew, Sunday Times, The Bible mini-series, The Sun, universities, wise men, YouGov, Your Say Pays | Leave a comment

Muslim and Christian News

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Clive D. Field

For a third week running, Muslims dominate the religious statistical news post-Woolwich, but we also find space for four short items on Christians.

‘Hate preachers’

The brutal murder by two Islamists of Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich continues to inform public opinion towards Islam and Muslims. In a newly-released poll, by ComRes for the Sunday Mirror (conducted online on 29 and 30 May 2013), 84% of the 2,015 adult Britons interviewed agreed that the Government should take action to silence so-called ‘hate preachers’ who radicalize young Muslims, the proportion reaching 94% among over-65s and 95% with UKIP voters. Just 6% disagreed with the proposition, with 10% undecided. Detailed tables, published on 2 June, can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Sunday_Mirror_Political_Poll_2_June_2013.pdf

Integration of Muslim migrants

Negative opinions about Muslims predate Rigby’s murder, of course. By way of illustration, migrants from Muslim countries were perceived by Britons as the least well integrated into British society of four migrant groups covered in two YouGov polls for YouGov@Cambridge, which were published on 3 June 2013, with online interviews of representative samples of adults aged 18 and over conducted on 7-8 and 16-17 May 2013. A summary table appears below, with full breaks by demographics available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4opseuuz4d/YG-Archive-Cam-migrants-integration-results-080513.pdf

	Well integrated	Not well integrated
Migrants from Eastern Europe	34	54
Children of migrants from Eastern Europe	42	32
Migrants from Muslim countries	21	71
Children of migrants from Muslim countries	38	53
Migrants from Pakistan	28	57
Children of migrants from Pakistan	46	40
Migrants from African countries	31	46
Children of migrants from African countries	43	33

The proportion feeling that migrants from Muslim countries were poorly integrated into British society was 71% overall, 14% more than in the case of migrants from Pakistan (which is a preponderantly Muslim nation), 17% more than for migrants from Eastern Europe, and 25% more than migrants from African countries. Migrants from Muslim countries were especially seen as poorly integrated by Conservative and UKIP voters, the over-40s, and Midlanders and Welsh.

Children of migrants from Muslim countries were assessed as better integrated into British society than their parents, by a margin of 17%. Even so, a majority of Britons (53%) said that this second generation, too, was poorly assimilated, rising to 89% for UKIP supporters, 62% of Midlanders/Welsh, and 58% of over-40s. By contrast, pluralities felt that children from the other three migrant groups were well integrated.

Britishness of Muslims

But what Britons as a whole feel about Muslims may be at variance with how Muslims regard themselves. This is suggested by a briefing paper by Stephen Jivraj, Who Feels British? The Relationship between Ethnicity, Religion, and National Identity in England, which was published on 6 June 2013 by the University of Manchester’s Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity. The paper is at:

http://www.ethnicity.ac.uk/census/CoDE-National-Identity-Census-Briefing.pdf

Using evidence from the 2011 census of population, which included a question on national identity for the first time, Jivraj found that:

Muslims are more likely than Christians to report British national identity only (57% compared to 15%), with Sikhs on 62% and Hindus on 54%
Muslims are less likely to report other (foreign) national identity only than Buddhists or Hindus (24% compared to 42% and 32% respectively)
Christians (65%) and Jews (54%) are more likely to report English only national identity than any other faith group, Hindus (9%) and Muslims (13%) registering the lowest figures

Islamophobic incidents

Lee Rigby’s murder has prompted a degree of backlash against Britain’s Muslim community, with a number of demonstrations organized by far-right groups, several attacks on mosques and Islamic centres, and various other Islamophobic incidents. The question is how extensive has that backlash been? Here a row has blown up between the right-leaning media and the Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) project, whose first annual statistics were covered by BRIN on 15 March 2013, and which performs a similar role for Islamophobia as the Community Security Trust does for anti-Semitism, with start-up funding for Tell MAMA provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

According to Tell MAMA, there have been 212 Islamophobic incidents reported to it between Rigby’s death on 22 May and last weekend. For two successive weeks running Andrew Gilligan in his column in the Sunday Telegraph has criticized the ‘spin’ being placed on the figures by Tell MAMA, especially its claims of a growing ‘cycle of violence’. In today’s article (‘Muslim Hate Monitor to Lose Backing’, p. 14), Gilligan reiterates that 57% of the incidents occurred online, mainly in the form of offensive posts to Twitter and Facebook; 16% of reports have yet to be verified; and that physical targeting of Muslims featured in just 8% of cases and attacks on property in 6%.

Gilligan’s original article can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10093568/The-truth-about-the-wave-of-attacks-on-Muslims-after-Woolwich-murder.html

Tell MAMA’s side of the story is set out in its blog at:

http://tellmamauk.org/news/

Fair Admissions Campaign

The Fair Admissions Campaign launched in London on 6 June 2013, with the objective of opening up all state-funded schools in England and Wales to all children, regardless of their parents’ religion. As part of the evidence base for its claim that the current system is discriminatory, the Campaign has published the results of a preliminary mapping of state schools against one socio-economic indicator, the eligibility of pupils for free school meals.

This found that ‘secondary schools without a religious character have on average 26 per cent more pupils eligible for free school meals than the first half of their post code and 30 per cent more pupils eligible than their local authority. In contrast, Roman Catholic secondary schools have 20 per cent fewer pupils in receipt of free school meals than the average for their postcode and 23 per cent fewer for the average for their local authority. Voluntary Aided Church of England secondary schools have eight per cent and 18 per cent fewer than the average for their post code and local authority respectively. Most Church schools were set up to serve children from poor families, so serving the better off in their community is a distortion to their original mission.’

For more details, see:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/schools-map/

In a parallel development, on 3 June the Sutton Trust, which is dedicated to ‘improving social mobility through education’, published Selective Comprehensives: The Social Composition of Top Comprehensive Schools, focusing on the top 500 English comprehensive state secondary schools, based on their academic performance in 2012. These schools included a disproportionate number of faith schools (33% against 19% of all state-funded secondary schools) which scored relatively poorly on a measure of eligibility for and uptake of free school meals (8% compared with 12% for all faith schools and 17% for non-faith schools nationally). The report is at:

http://www.suttontrust.com/public/documents/1topcomprehensives.pdf

Singleness and the Church

Peter Brierley’s writes a monthly column on church statistics for the Church of England Newspaper. In his latest article (9 June 2013, p. 15) he focuses on ‘Being Single in Church’, picking up on the experiences of singles as recently reported in a survey of members of Christian Connection, a dating agency for Christian singles. Brierley compares the marital status of English churchgoers and population in 2012, the former data taken from a study of only seven evangelical congregations for the Langham International Partnership. He shows that adult ‘legally singles’ are far more numerous in society than in church, but this is because of the disproportionate concentration of cohabitees and single parents in the population; excluding these two categories, there were actually more ‘singles’ in church. Almost half of churchgoers aged 18-39 are single, and the great majority of these are women, who are therefore challenged to find a suitable marriage partner within the church. This is underlined by preliminary findings from Brierley’s London Church Census, 2012, five-sixths of those who joined the Church in the capital during the past decade being female. For those in their twenties 10,000 women joined between 2005 and 2012 against only 5,000 men.

Methodist diaconate

A quantitative demographic and attitudinal profile of the Methodist Order of Deacons (a neighbourhood form of ministry complementing, and having equal status with, the much larger Order of Presbyters) is offered by Lewis Burton, ‘The Methodist Diaconate: Profiling a Distinctive Order of Ministry’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol. 89, 2012-13, No. 2, pp. 15-32. The article is largely based upon a questionnaire survey of Deacons undertaken in 2006 to parallel the same author’s 2004 study of Methodist Presbyters.

Dean of Studies and Research, Bible Society

The Bible Society is advertising for a Dean of Studies and Research in order to spearhead its engagement with the higher education sector and to contribute to the programme of Christian Research, which is part of the Society. The closing date for applications is 23 June 2013. Further particulars of the post are available at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/about-bible-society/jobs/dean-of-studies-and-research/

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Gilligan, Bible Society, Britishness, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Census, Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, children, Church of England Newspaper, comprehensive schools, ComRes, diaconate, Fair Admissions Campaign, Faith schools, government, hate preachers, integration, Islamophobia, Lewis Burton, Methodist Church, migrants, Muslims, Peter Brierley, radicalization, singles, Stephen Jivraj, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Telegraph, Sutton Trust, Tell MAMA, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge | Leave a comment

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