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Counting Religion in Britain, April 2016

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 7, April 2016 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 7 April 2016

OPINION POLLS

Muslim voices

Opinion polls conducted among British Muslims have a habit of sparking controversy. No sooner had the storm died down surrounding a telephone survey by Survation for The Sun, specifically regarding the latter’s presentation of the results, than another blew up around a poll by ICM Unlimited for Channel 4, for which 1,081 Muslims aged 18 and over were interviewed face-to-face (in the home) between 25 April and 31 May 2015. Respondents were drawn from Lower Super Output Areas where at least 20% of the population in the 2011 census was Muslim, using random location, quota-based sampling.

Some Muslim commentators (such as Miqdaad Versi in The Guardian and Maha Akeel in The Independent) subsequently criticized this sampling methodology as ‘skewed’ toward Muslims of a lower socio-economic status, but Martin Boon, ICM Director, robustly defended his company’s approach, arguing that this was ‘the most rigorous survey of Muslims that has been produced for many years’. ICM has further published a detailed account of its methodology at:

http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/Survey%20of%20Muslims_Sampling%20approach.pdf

As an additional cross-check, a significant sub-set of the 53 questions posed to Muslims was put to what ICM described as a ‘control group’ of 1,008 adult Britons interviewed by telephone on 5-7 June 2015. The 615 pages of data tables comprised breaks by demographics and attitudinal types both for the Muslim sample and the control group, together with a topline comparison of the two samples in respect of the questions which were common to both. The breaks for the control group included religious affiliation. These data tables will be found at:

http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf

The poll was commissioned by Channel 4 in connection with its documentary What British Muslims Really Think, which was screened on 13 April 2016 and presented by Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. However, results were fed into the media a few days earlier, notably through two lengthy and hard-hitting articles by Phillips in Sunday Times Magazine (10 April) and Daily Mail (11 April). In them, Phillips suggested that Muslims had become ‘a nation within a nation, with its own geography, its own values, and its own very separate future’, requiring ‘a far more muscular approach to integration’, replacing the failed policy of multiculturalism, if they were to be successfully incorporated into the mainstream.

The overwhelming majority of British Muslims judged Britain to be a good place to live (88%) and had a sense of belonging to the country (86%). This is notwithstanding a perceived growing problem of Islamophobia, with 40% assessing there was more religious prejudice against Muslims than five years ago and 17% reporting a personal experience of harassment because of their religion in their local area over the past two years. The overall positivity toward Britain is almost certainly linked to the feeling of 94% of Muslims that they are able to practice their faith here.

At the same time, there is a wish of Muslims to retain a certain distance from the wider society; while 49% would like to integrate fully with non-Muslims in all aspects of life, 46% wanted some degree of separation in favour of an Islamic life. Moreover, as the table below demonstrates, there is a significant amount of rejection by Muslims of values which have become normative among most non-Muslims. Equality and diversity with regard to gender and sexual orientation are heavily compromised by social conservatism, there is a disproportionate adherence to anti-Semitic views, and subscription to freedom of speech is qualified when Islam is felt to be under attack or criticism.

% agreeing	Muslims	Control group
Gender equality
Girls and boys should be taught separately	33	10
Muslim girls should have the right to wear niqab in school	64	37
Acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife	31	9
Wives should always obey their husbands	39	5
Homosexuality
Acceptable for homosexual to be a schoolteacher	28	75
Homosexuality should be legal in Britain	18	73
Gay marriage should be legal in Britain	16	66
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is a problem in Britain	26	46
Jewish people have too much power in Britain	35	9
Jewish people have too much power over the government	31	7
Jewish people have too much power over the media	39	10
Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country	42	24
Jews have too much power in the business world	44	18
Jews have too much power in international financial markets	40	16
Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust	34	18
Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind	34	11
Jews have too much control over global affairs	38	10
Jews think they are better than other people	30	11
Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars	26	6
People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave	27	11
Freedom of speech
Sympathize with groups who organize violence to protect their religion	24	7
Sympathize with people who use violence against those who mock the Prophet	18	NA
Any publication should have the right to publish pictures of the Prophet	4	67
Any publication should have the right to publish pictures making fun of the Prophet	1	47

Islamist threat to London

In the wake of the Islamist attacks on Paris and Brussels, the majority (61%) of 1,017 Londoners interviewed online by YouGov for the Evening Standard between 15 and 19 April 2016 remained anxious that Islamic State/ISIS may attempt a terrorist attack on the capital this year, concern running especially high with Conservative and UKIP voters. Overall anxiety had dropped by five points since the question was last put on 4-6 January, the fall occurring entirely among the ranks of the fairly worried, the very worried being unchanged at 25%. Asked which of the two leading candidates in the upcoming London mayoral election, Zac Goldsmith (Conservative) or Sadiq Khan (Labour and a Muslim), would be most likely to tackle Islamic extremism, 41% of the sample could offer no opinion, while 16% opted for Khan and 13% for Goldsmith, with 30% saying neither or both equally. Data tables can be accessed via a post about the general results of the survey (which revealed Khan well ahead of Goldsmith in terms of voting preferences) at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/sadiq-khan-leads-20-london-mayoral-race/

Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party

It was not just Muslim anti-Semitism which came under the spotlight during April 2016. At the end of the month, a long-simmering row about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party finally erupted, resulting in the Party suspending two of its prominent figures, one an MP and the other Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London who had risen to the MP’s defence. Livingstone has a track record of getting into anti-Semitic hot water, and 27% of 4,406 members of the British public interviewed online by YouGov on 29 April 2016 thought that he was very or fairly anti-Semitic, including 46% of Conservative voters and 39% of over-60s. Still more, 45% of the whole sample, considered the Labour Party had been right to suspend Livingstone, and this included 43% of Labour voters as well as 62% of Conservatives. Just over one-fifth (22%) of all Britons judged anti-Semitism to be a very or fairly big problem in the Labour Party, while 45% said it was only a small problem or none at all, with 33% undecided. Labour voters were less inclined (11%) to view it as a problem. A majority (60%) was clear that criticism of the Israeli government was not in itself anti-Semitic, merely 9% deeming it so. However, hating Israel and questioning its right to exist was regarded as anti-Semitic by 53%, against 21% who disagreed and 26% who could not make up their minds. The data are available in full via the link at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/04/30/drawing-line-anti-semitism/

British Social Attitudes Survey

Londoners are more religious than the rest of Britain, in terms of both belonging and behaving, according to fresh analysis by NatCen Social Research of data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey. In 2014, the latest year available (the dataset and documentation for which is already held by the UK Data Archive as SN 7809), there was a 20 point difference in the proportion of respondents professing no religion between Londoners (32%) and the remainder of the country (52%), whereas in 1983, when BSA commenced, the gap had only been 5%. Of those with a religion, or brought up in a religion, twice as many Londoners (38%) claimed to attend religious services at least monthly in 2014 as people in the rest of Britain (19%). Immigration to the capital, by persons from both Christian and non-Christian backgrounds, largely explains these differences. In 2014, no fewer than 31% of Londoners subscribed to non-Christian faiths (a 9% increase on 2010), against just 4% elsewhere in the nation. In fact, there were almost as many non-Christians as Christians (37%) in London. A press release, with link to data tables, is available at:

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2016/march/londoners-are-more-religious-than-rest-of-britain/

Scottish Social Attitudes Survey

A majority (52%) of residents in Scotland says they belong to no religion, according to initial analysis by ScotCen Social Research of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS) for 2015. This compares with 40% in the first SSAS in 1999. Although the proportion of Roman Catholics and other Christians in Scotland has held relatively steady over the years, there has been a big decline (from 35% in 1999 to 20% in 2015) in professed affiliation to the Church of Scotland. The non-Christian presence in Scotland is limited (2%). Among those with a religion, or brought up in a religion, attendance at religious services monthly or more has also fallen by 10% between 1999 (31%) and 2015 (21%), while 66% in 2015 admitted to never or practically never worshipping (49% in 1999). The latest SSAS interviewed a representative random probability sample of 1,288 adults in Scotland between July 2015 and January 2016. A press release, with link to data tables, is available at:

http://www.scotcen.org.uk/news-media/press-releases/2016/april/two-thirds-of-religious-scots-don’t-attend-services/

Church visits

An online poll by Populus for the Charities Aid Foundation on 19-21 February 2016 quizzed 2,054 UK adults about their engagement with charities, defined in the broadest sense, the principal finding being that almost every household has used at least one charitable service at some point. Churches or religious institutions of charitable status were one of the types of ‘charitable service’ asked about. The proportion of respondents claiming to have ever visited a church themselves (presumably, not necessarily for an act of worship) was 46% (half of them within the past year), which was two points less than those who had never done so. The number of ‘attenders’ was highest among Londoners (55%), public sector workers (56%), the top AB social group (57%), BMEs (57%), and members of households with a combined annual income of more than £55,000 (60%). Those least inclined to have set foot in a church came from the bottom social strata, characterized as being from the DE group (59%), members of households with a combined income of under £14,000 (59%), retired people living only on a state pension (61%), and council tenants (63%). Data tables can be found at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/OmValue-of-Charity-Shortv2.pdf

Referendum on European Union membership

One of the fascinating aspects of the campaign around Brexit, whether the UK should vote to leave the European Union (EU) in the forthcoming referendum on 23 June 2016, is the number of international leaders who have voiced their opinions that the UK should remain in the EU. These have included the Pope who has let it be known, through a senior Vatican diplomat, that he believes the UK would be better ‘in’ than ‘out’ and that it would also make for a stronger Europe. With President Barack Obama the latest world leader to wade into the debate, ITV News commissioned ComRes to conduct an online poll among 2,015 Britons on 20-21 April 2016. Respondents were asked how important to them were the views on the UK’s EU membership of eight leaders or institutions. As the table below indicates, the Pope’s opinion on this matter counted least of all with the electorate. Only 13% overall regarded what he thinks as important and no more than 20% among any demographic sub-group. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ITV-News_Obama-Poll_tabs.pdf

	Important	Unimportant
US President Barack Obama	30	60
HM The Queen	49	42
German Chancellor Angela Merkel	34	55
The Pope	13	77
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon	26	60
International Monetary Fund	48	37
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney	61	29
French President Francois Hollande	28	60

Religion and alcohol

Religion continues to exercise a marginal influence on alcohol consumption in the UK, according to recent research by Ipsos MORI on behalf of Drinkaware, for which 2,303 adults aged 18-75 were interviewed online between 16 November and 4 December 2015. Among the 10% of respondents who claimed that they never drank, 39% gave as a reason for abstinence that drinking alcohol was against their religious or spiritual beliefs, the remaining 61% saying that this was not an important factor for them. Of the 90% of drinkers, 9% reported that a change in their religious circumstances had occasioned a sustained decrease in their consumption of alcohol at some point and 1% an increase. However, for both groups the dominant influences on non-drinking behaviour were secular, such as health, finance, and being in personal control. A report about the research, Drinkaware Monitor, 2015, is available at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/Drinkaware-Monitor-2015-%20Report.pdf

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Faith-based charities

More than one-quarter (27%) of the 187,500 registered charities in Great Britain are faith-based, in the sense of embodying some form of religious belief – or cultural values arising from a religious belief – in their vision or mission, founding history, or project content. This is according to research by New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), which has devised an improved methodology for identifying faith-based charities, employing a combination of existing classifications and automated text analysis of keywords. About two-thirds (65%) of these charities are categorized as Christian or deriving from a Christian tradition, 23% as generally faith-based, and 12% are associated with non-Christian faiths (mostly Islam or Judaism). Almost one-fifth have been formed since 2006. More information about NPC’s ongoing research into the effect of faith on the charitable sector, including a seven-page description of the methodology used to build the underlying dataset of charities, can be found at:

http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/understanding-faith-based-charities/

Faith in public service

A new report from the Oasis Foundation, the research and policy unit of the Oasis group of charities and social enterprises, calls for a rebranding and relaunch of the failed ‘Big Society’ initiative and especially upon the Christian Church in the UK to re-imagine its role and re-orientate itself more radically towards social action and the delivery of public services: Ian Sansbury, Ben Cowdrey, and Lea Kauffmann-de Vries, Faith in Public Service: The Role of the Church in Public Service Delivery. In building their case, the authors draw upon two online surveys conducted on 5-6 April 2016, one by YouGov among 1,710 members of the general public and the other by Oasis of 124 church leaders. The public was clearly ambivalent about the Church assuming a greater role in the delivery of public services. Some people recognized that the Church might be more likely to care than other providers, to add the personal touch, to be better connected to other community groups, and to be more motivated to do a good job. Others, however, worried that the Church might be insufficiently inclusive in its approach, attempting to make converts in the process or to shut out non-Christians or other minority groups. These concerns were held particularly by the 18-24 age group. For church leaders, capacity constraints were a major potential challenge, with only 28% confident that their church could run substantial public services such as education or healthcare. The report can be downloaded from:

http://oasis.foundation/sites/foundation.dd/files/Oasis%20Foundation%20Report%20FINAL%20RS.PDF

Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ncm2584h0d/Oasis_Results160406_W.pdf

Christians and Brexit

One-half of practising Christians (including church leaders) believe that the UK should remain in the European Union (EU), according to an online survey conducted by Christian Research among members of its self-selecting Resonate panel during the first week of March 2016. Free movement of trade was cited as the main reason for their pro-EU stance, while many also considered the debate thus far had been too dominated by anti-immigration rhetoric. Just one-fifth intended to vote for Brexit in the forthcoming referendum on 23 June, mostly because they felt the EU to be too bureaucratic and wasteful or its laws threatened our sovereignty. The remaining 30% were undecided. Promoting peace was seen as the most important part of the EU’s mission by 61% of the sample, but its track-record for advancing religious freedom and tolerance was deemed ineffective by 56%. A press release about the survey (with a tiny amount of additional content available to logged-in Christian Research subscribers) can be found at:

http://www.christian-research.org/news-blog/brexit-and-mothering-sunday-survey/

Evangelical consumers

The March/April 2016 issue of Idea, the magazine of the Evangelical Alliance, contained some headline results from a 2015 survey of evangelical attitudes to ethics and consumerism, completed by 1,461 self-selecting members of the Alliance’s research panel. Four in five respondents (81%) concurred that greed for material possessions is one of the greatest sins of our time and 76% that consumerism is eroding family and community life. The advertising industry was widely blamed for this state of affairs, 67% wanting it more tightly regulated and 44% considering it was generally unethical. Although 92% of evangelicals accepted that the Bible teaches us to be content with what we have, 84% also thought there was nothing wrong in enjoying the material things God has provided for us. On Sunday trading, 59% said that Christians should avoid doing their shopping on Sundays, and just 5% backed longer opening hours for larger stores on Sundays. The magazine is available at:

http://www.eauk.org/idea/upload/idea_magazine_mar_april2016_webversion.pdf

Catholic prisoners

Self-professed Roman Catholics constitute a disproportionate number (18%) of the prison population of England and Wales. Insights into their religious background and engagement with the faith in prison are contained in a new 57-page report commissioned from Lemos & Crane by the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales: Gerard Lemos, Belief & Belonging: The Spiritual and Pastoral Role of Catholic Chaplains for Catholic Prisoners. All Catholic inmates at 17 prisons and young offender institutions in England were invited to complete an anonymous questionnaire, and 332 replied, of whom 86% were male. This was evidently a small minority of those approached, and the sample is not claimed by Lemos as statistically representative. It is possible that prisoners who were least well-disposed to the faith, or suspicious about the involvement of Catholic chaplains in the distribution of the survey, may have been less inclined to take part.

Respondents often had fairly close links with the Catholic Church in their pre-prison life, 82% stating they had attended Mass, 78% they had been baptised, 72% they had made their Communion, and 62% they had been confirmed. Within prison, 88% said they engaged in private prayer and 87% that they had a religious object (typically a rosary or picture) in their cell. Three-quarters wrote that they tried regularly to attend Mass in the prison chapel, albeit 24% had encountered practical or logistical problems in doing so. Favourable opinions were expressed of the Catholic chaplains, whom 94% trusted and 86% considered had helped them learn more about the faith or to practice it, with 58% having come to the chaplain with a specific problem or at a difficult time. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.catholicnews.org.uk/belief-belonging-survey-040416

FutureFirst

The lead article in the April 2016 issue (No. 44) of FutureFirst, the bimonthly bulletin of Brierley Consultancy, was by Mark Griffiths on the subject of parental transmission of faith to children, based on his August 2015 online survey of members of the New Wine database, to which 1,500 parents responded. The remainder of the content was written by Peter Brierley, including articles on church growth, larger churches, churchgoing in London, Church of England mission statistics, and religion and wellbeing. A special four-page insert, also by Brierley, examined trends in UK church membership and attendance since 2000, with forecasts through to 2030. The current year of FutureFirst is only available on subscription, but a complete backfile from 2009 to 2015 is freely available at:

http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/future-first/

Invisible Church

Steve Aisthorpe illuminates the persistence of Christianity beyond the confines of formal church membership and attendance in his The Invisible Church: Learning from the Experiences of Churchless Christians (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 2016, x + 214pp, ISBN 978-0-86153-916-1, £14.99, paperback). The book is based on his original research in Scotland, initially qualitative (in 2013) and then quantitative among two random samples interviewed by telephone, 2,698 members of the general public in the Highlands and Islands in 2014 (of whom 430 non-attending Christians went on to complete a detailed survey) and 815 non-churchgoing Christians in 2015 across five regions. It is written in an accessible style, with cartoons, plenty of Bible references, individual stories, and remarkably few statistics (certainly there are no tables nor figures). The work seems primarily aimed at an ecclesiastical rather than academic readership, both church leaders and church attenders, with questions and activities for further reflection included. Much time is spent by Aisthorpe exposing what he regards as the myths, stereotypes, and prejudices surrounding non-churchgoers. The pervasive message of the volume is that, for many post-congregational and non-congregational Christians, faith continues to play a central role in their lives, even to the extent of a willingness to engage in a different formulation of ‘church’, to display a hunger for informal fellowship, to recognize the importance of ‘mission’, and to become conscious or unwitting pioneers of alternative Christian communities. In this way, ‘what the evidence points to is a reshaping, rebalancing or reconfiguration of the Church.’ Those who subscribe to the thesis that religion is changing rather than declining will derive hope from this book, but it will utterly fail to convince scholars who, arguing from a wider and more balanced portfolio of data, continue to feel that, overall, Britain remains on a secularization trajectory. Further details of the book can be found on the publisher’s website at:

https://standrewpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780861539161/the-invisible-church

Other outputs from Aisthorpe’s research are available at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/resources/mission-research#

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Marriages in England and Wales

There were 9% fewer marriages in England and Wales in 2013 than in 2012, according to a newly-released Statistical Bulletin from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This was the first decrease in marriages since 2009 and is explained by ONS thus: ‘The fall could indicate the continuation of the long-term decline in marriages since 1972 or could be due to couples choosing to postpone their marriage to avoid the number 13 which is perceived as unlucky by many cultures.’ Moreover, the reduction in weddings conducted with religious rites was more than double the level of those performed in civil ceremonies, 14% compared with 6%. The proportion of religious marriages in 2013 was, at 28%, the lowest figure ever recorded and 20 points below 1994, the last full year before the legalization of marriages in approved premises, where over three-fifths of weddings now take place (the final tenth occurring in registry offices). The overwhelming majority (73%) of religious marriages were celebrated by the Church of England or Church in Wales, with Roman Catholics accounting for 11%, other Christian denominations for 12%, and non-Christian faiths for 4%. Unlike Scotland, humanist marriage ceremonies are still not legal in England and Wales. The ONS Statistical Bulletin, with embedded links to a range of detailed data, is at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwales/2013

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Secularization and crises

The proposition that social crises cause religious revivals has been evaluated by Steve Bruce and David Voas with reference to the effect of three twentieth-century crises (the First and Second World Wars and the inter-war Great Depression) on several statistical measures of British and UK church adherence. They conclude there is little or no evidence that these crises produced any religious resurgence. Rather, they found the trajectory of decline in institutional Christianity during the course of the century to be remarkably smooth, thereby supporting (they contend) the notion that secularization has been a long-run process with amorphous and deep causes. ‘Do Social Crises Cause Religious Revivals? What British Church Adherence Rates Show’ is published in Journal of Religion in Europe, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2016, pp. 26-43. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18748929-00901001

Cathedral friends

Judith Muskett has reported further findings from her 2011 survey of 1,131 members of the friends’ associations of six English cathedrals in her ‘Associational Social Capital and Psychological Type: An Empirical Enquiry among Cathedral Friends in England’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2016, pp. 1-15. She demonstrated that higher levels of religious social capital were exhibited by extraverts compared with introverts, posing a potential challenge for the cathedrals among whose friends introverts outnumbered extraverts by almost two to one. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2015.1103550

Theology of religions index

Jeff Astley and Leslie Francis have devised a new multi-choice research instrument to measure ‘theology of religions’, which is concerned with the interpretation and evaluation of the divergent truth-claims and views of salvation asserted or implied by different religious traditions. The methodology is explained in their ‘Introducing the Astley-Francis Theology of Religions Index: Construct Validity among 13- to 15-Year-Old Students’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2016, pp. 29-39. The construct validity of the measure was supported in research among a sample of 10,754 adolescents from London and the four UK home nations surveyed for the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project in 2011-12. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2016.1141527

Intercessory prayer

Using a special analytic framework for intercessory prayer which she devised, Tania ap Siôn has examined 577 prayer requests posted on the Church of England’s Pray One for Me website over a six-month period in 2012 and compared the results with recent studies of posts to physical intercessory prayer boards in three Anglican cathedrals (Bangor, Lichfield, and Southwark). She highlights important differences between the functioning of requests made in the online and offline environments. Access options to the article (‘The Church of England’s Pray One for Me Intercessory Prayer Site: A Virtual Cathedral?’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2016, pp. 78-92) are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2016.1141531

People and places

Danny Dorling and Bethan Thomas have compiled the third in a series of census-based atlases of the UK, deriving from the 2011 census but also incorporating some more recent data: People and Places: A 21st-Century Atlas of the UK (Bristol: Policy Press, 2016, 284pp., ISBN 978-1-44731-137-9, £22.99, paperback). Through maps, tables, and figures with associated commentary, a succession of topics are explored, including a chapter on religion and ethnicity (pp. 47-80). The book’s webpage is at:

http://policypress.co.uk/people-and-places

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7927: Wellcome Trust Monitor, 3, 2015

The Wellcome Trust Monitor is a triennial survey of public attitudes to and knowledge of science and biomedical research (including alternative and complementary medicine) in the UK. It was initiated in 2009. Fieldwork for the third wave was conducted by Ipsos MORI between 2 June and 1 November 2015 among a sample of 1,524 adults aged 18 and over, interviewed face-to-face. Four religious topics were included as background characteristics, which can be used as variables to analyse responses to the more purely scientific and biomedical questions. They covered: religious affiliation (using a ‘belonging’ form of wording); attendance at religious services; frequency of prayer; and beliefs about the origin of life on earth. The catalogue entry for the dataset is at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7927&type=Data%20catalogue

A variety of research outputs from the survey can be accessed on the Wellcome Trust’s website. They include a report (with a section on the origin of life on earth at pp. 74-5, 53% of the sample being unqualified evolutionists, allowing no role for God) and full data tables for all questions, with breaks by demographics. They can be found at:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Reports/Public-engagement/WTX058859.htm

SN 7933: Youth Research Council Survey of Young People’s Religion and Lifestyles, 1957

The Young Christian Workers’ path-breaking survey of the lifestyles and religiosity of adults aged 15-24 living in urban England in 1957 has hitherto been known mainly from preliminary accounts and analyses published in New Life, Vol. 14, 1958, pp. 1-59 and The Tablet, 12 and 19 April 1958. However, the paper questionnaires completed during the course of the face-to-face interviews have mostly been preserved by the Pastoral Research Centre Trust (PRCT), successor to the Newman Demographic Survey, which was one of the partners involved in the original study. Now, with the cooperation of PRCT’s Tony Spencer and funding from the Nuffield Foundation and Marston Family Trust, Siobhan McAndrew has been able to arrange for the scanning of the majority (5,834) of the questionnaires and their transformation into a dataset. This should support significant secondary analysis in the years ahead which, in turn, will inform the growing scholarly debate about changes in the British religious landscape during the long 1950s. The catalogue entry for the dataset, incorporating a link to a very full and brand new user guide compiled by McAndrew, can be found at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7933&type=Data%20catalogue

McAndrew has also blogged about the dataset on the British Religion in Numbers website at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2016/the-1957-youth-research-council-survey-of-young-peoples-religion-and-lifestyles/

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2016/religion-in-the-1957-youth-research-council-survey/

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

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Bible Versus Darwin and Other News

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Bible versus Darwin

Given a list of 30 books, and invited to select three which they considered to be most valuable to humanity (as opposed to having read or enjoyed), 37% of the 2,044 adult Britons recently questioned by YouGov for the Folio Society put the Bible in top spot, narrowly ahead of what is often thought to be its arch rival, Darwin’s Origin of Species (35%). However, in the battle between religion and science, Darwin won out among men (37% against 36% for the Bible), while women put the Bible (38%) ahead of Darwin (33%). In regional terms, the Bible scored most highly in Northern England (41%). Asked why they had opted for the Bible, the most frequent response was because it ‘contains principles/guidelines to be a good person’. The Koran came in eighth position, on 9%. The top ten titles are shown below.

		%
1	Bible	37
2	Origin of Species – Charles Darwin	35
3	Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking	17
4	Relativity – Albert Einstein	15
5	Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell	14
6	Principia Mathematica – Isaac Newton	12
7	To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee	10
8	Koran	9
9	Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith	7
10	Double Helix – James Watson	6

The survey has been widely reported in British and overseas print and online media during the past few days, from which the above summary has been compiled. Irritatingly, the Folio Society’s press release is not yet posted on its website, and the data tables are not yet in YouGov’s online archive either.

Religious liberty

Religious liberty issues are of some concern to a minority of the electorate, according to a ComRes poll conducted for the Christian Institute in the 40 most marginal constituencies of England and Wales. Fieldwork was carried out online among 1,000 adults between 18 and 26 September 2014. Full data tables have yet to be released into the public domain (albeit they have been generously made available to BRIN by ComRes), but a news release from the Christian Institute (on 31 October 2014) is available online at:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/poll-shows-voters-concerned-over-religious-liberty-threats/

Two-fifths (39%) of the sample disagreed with the proposition that religious liberty in Britain had been improved by the current Coalition Government, with just 11% in agreement and 50% recorded as don’t knows. A plurality (44%) thought that UK law should ensure that people are not forced to provide goods or services that violate their beliefs, while 31% dissented from the view that enforcement of equality should always take precedence over conscience in law. Asked whether ‘the tide of legislation has gone too far in elevating equality over religious freedom’, 43% agreed, 21% disagreed, and 35% were undecided. One-third believed that Britain should follow the example of other nations in offering asylum to displaced Christians in Iraq, and 17% said that they would be more likely to vote in the forthcoming general election for a party which promised to grant such asylum.

The Christian Institute’s purpose behind the poll was presumably to ascertain the extent to which neglect of religious liberty might cost politicians votes in May 2015. In practice, however, this seems highly unlikely since we know from a myriad of other polling that it is topics such as the economy, immigration, and the health service which are foremost in the public mind. When it comes to the crunch, religious issues per se generally do not have saliency in British politics.

Jewish vote

Talking of religion and politics, Ed Miliband’s condemnation of Israel’s ground operation in Gaza this summer seems to have upset many Jewish voters, according to a survey published by the Jewish News on 6 November 2014. Three in ten admitted that they would be less likely to vote Labour at the next general election as a result of Miliband’s comments, and 16% that they would be more likely to vote Labour (perhaps suggesting a certain lack of sympathy for Israel’s actions). A plurality (39%) stated that they would not have voted for Labour in any case, with 15% intending to vote Labour anyway.

Overall, 48% of the 1,300 Jewish News readers questioned online on 3-5 November 2014 said that they would vote Conservative if a general election were to be held now (rising to 63% among orthodox Jews), 19% Labour, 8% UKIP, 4% Green, 3% Liberal Democrat, with 16% undecided. The economy was ranked as the top political issue by 85%, followed by the National Health Service (57%), Israel (51%), education (49%), and Europe (40%). The majority (56%) said that a party leader’s or a local candidate’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be a major factor in determining how they voted. For further information, go to:

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/general-election-poll-results-lipman-test/

The usual caveat applies: the poll was evidently completed via a self-selecting sample alerted via various Jewish organizations, so it may not be representative of Britain’s Jewish community as a whole. The pattern of prospective voting by Jews is certainly a little different from the British Election Study (BES) 2015 panel (analysed by Ben Clements for BRIN on 17 October 2014), which was 46% Conservative, 30% Labour, 5% LibDem, and 12% UKIP. However, the BES data were based on only 134 Jews and omitted the undecideds, so the comparison is by no means exact. Moreover, a lot of the fall in the Labour vote between the two surveys may be accounted for by the negative reaction to Miliband’s criticism of Israel. Capturing the opinions of minority religious populations is no easy task.

Blasphemy

Asked about five different types of content in television and film, only 7% of the British public are concerned about blasphemy, compared with 17% who object to racism, 14% to sex, 14% to swearing, and 11% to homophobia, with 37% not being troubled about any of them or undecided. Blasphemy is of most concern to the over-60s (10%) and Conservative voters (9%) and of least concern (4% each) to people aged 25-39 and Labour supporters. The survey was conducted by YouGov for The Sunday Times among 2,022 adults, who were interviewed online on 6 and 7 November 2014. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ggg23xnvxt/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-071114.pdf

Anglican statistics

The Church of England’s Statistics for Mission, 2013 were published on 10 November 2014 in 63 pages of tables, figures, commentary, and methodological notes. They are based upon an 80% completion rate of parochial returns, with estimation being used for the remaining data. The report revealed a by now all too familiar picture of slow net decline, with some more dramatic reductions (for example, electoral roll membership dropped by 9% last year, which saw its first renewal since 2007), but also tempered by some pockets of growth. As columnist Giles Fraser commented in The Guardian for 15 November 2014 (p. 40), ‘it seems that the Church of England continues to slip quietly into non-existence’ while, at the same time, ‘it is holding up pretty well, despite seriously adverse market conditions’.

A variety of measures of all age churchgoing were included; in descending order of magnitude these are: Christmas attendance 2,368,400 (equivalent to 4% of the English population); Easter attendance 1,272,000; worshipping community 1,056,400; average weekly attendance 1,009,100 (2% of the population); average Sunday attendance 849,500; and usual Sunday attendance 784,600. Additionally, an estimated 5,000,000 individuals attended special services during Advent. Overall, it was calculated that 24% of churches were declining, 19% growing, and 58% stable. Enhanced information about joiners and leavers indicated that losses arise from death/illness (38%), moving away (32%), leaving the church (17%), and moving to another local church (14%). Gains derive from joining church for the first time (46%), moving into the area (29%), returning to church (14%), and moving from a local church (12%). Statistics for Mission are at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2112070/2013statisticsformission.pdf

Disestablishment

Only 29% of Britons think the official link between the Church of England and the state is good for Britain, according to a ComRes survey for ITV News between 31 October and 2 November 2014, for which 2,019 adults were interviewed online. The range by demographic sub-groups was from 16% in Scotland to 39% among retired people with a private pension. A similar overall number (30%) believed that establishment is a bad thing, while the plurality (41%) was unable to express a view. The results were comparable with previous polls by ComRes this year (27-29 June and 12-14 September) which posed the identical question. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_6th_November_2014.pdf

English and Welsh Catholic statistics

Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust has recently published, as a blog, the second part of his critique of the collation of Catholic statistics in England and Wales printed in the 2014 edition of the Catholic Directory. This part covers mass attendance, baptisms, marriages, and receptions, together with some overarching reflections on the quality of Catholic data. It also describes the Trust’s own plans for future publications on pastoral and demographic statistics. The blog can be found at:

http://www.prct.org.uk/

Sectarianism in Scotland

Earlier this year, Equality Here, Now released on its website an analysis of the religious composition of the workforce in Scottish local authorities, concluding that there continues to be significant institutional discrimination in the employment of Catholics. A robust response to this has just been published by Steve Bruce in ‘Sectarian Discrimination in Local Councils and Myth-Making’, Scottish Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, November 2014, pp. 445-53. He points out the fundamental methodological flaw of Equality Here, Now in drawing conclusions from very incomplete data (religious affiliation only being available for 14% of council staff). He also presents an alternative way of interpreting these partial statistics, suggesting that, in general, ‘self-declared Catholics and self-declared Protestants are present in ratios that fit local council profiles [in the census of population] reasonably well’. Access to the article can be gained from:

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/scot.2014.0043

The original Equality Here, Now report can still be read at:

https://sites.google.com/site/equalityherenow/home/performance-on-equalities/performance-of-councils—general/catholics-work-and-local-authorities-in-scotland-2014

On retreat

The Autumn 2014 issue of Promoting Retreats: The Newsletter of the Association for Promoting Retreats includes (on pp. 7-9) a summary by Ben Wilson of a survey of the membership of the Association earlier this year, to which 200 members (approaching one-quarter of the total) responded. Two-thirds of them were aged 65 and above, with one-third over the age of 75, and almost two-thirds were women. One-fifth had joined the Association within the past five years, while one-third had been in membership for more than two decades. Members currently attended an average of one retreat and two non-residential quiet days each year. Time constraints (56%), cost (34%), and distance to the nearest retreat house (20%) were cited as the main barriers to going on retreat more often. The newsletter can be read at:

http://www.promotingretreats.org/downloads/2014-2-Autumn.pdf

Islamic State

Things have been a bit quiet on the polling front of late regarding the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but the British public has certainly not forgotten about the group, 78% regarding it as a very or fairly serious threat to Britain in the most recent YouGov poll, for which 2,003 adults were interviewed online on 12-13 November 2014. This was a slightly higher proportion than said the same about al-Qaeda (72%) and significantly more than with Iran (40%) or Russia (38%). The data table is at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/i0qdjx3dhs/InternalResults_141113_threats_Russia_Ukraine.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Association for Promoting Retreats, Ben Wilson, Bible, blasphemy, Catholic Directory, Charles Darwin, Christian Institute, Church and State, church attendance, Church of England, ComRes, disestablishment, Equality Here Now, Folio Society, Iraq, Iraqi Christians, Islamic State, ITV News, Jewish News, Jews, joiners and leavers, Koran, Origin of Species, Pastoral Research Centre Trust, Religious Liberty, retreats, Roman Catholic Church, Scottish Affairs, sectarianism, Steve Bruce, Sunday Times, Syria, television and film, Tony Spencer, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

Baroness Warsi’s Resignation and Other News

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Baroness Warsi’s resignation

Last Tuesday (5 August 2014), Baroness Sayeeda Warsi resigned from Britain’s coalition government in protest at its response to the crisis in Gaza arising from the latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas. She had been the first female Muslim member of a UK Cabinet and, in addition to being Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, held the portfolio of Minister for Faith and Communities at the Department for Communities and Local Government.

In what appears to be the first test of public reaction on the subject, a plurality (44%) of 1,943 adult Britons questioned online by YouGov for The Sunday Times on 7-8 August 2014 felt that she had been right to resign, with a big difference between Conservatives (27%) on the one hand and Labour voters (58%) and Liberal Democrats (50%) on the other. One-quarter considered she had been wrong to resign (including 46% of Conservatives), with 31% undecided.

Somewhat fewer than endorsed Warsi’s resignation, 33%, wanted to see the British government doing more to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza, with Labourites (48%), Liberal Democrats (42%), and Scots (40%) especially of this view. Just 7% wished to see the government doing more to support Israel. In particular, Israel’s bombing of Gaza is widely and increasingly regarded as unjustified, as the following table shows:

Gaza bombing (%)	Justified	Unjustified	Don’t know
20-21 July 2014	15	51	34
24-25 July 2014	18	52	31
28-29 July 2014	17	52	31
31 July-1 August 2014	17	54	29
3-4 August 2014	15	55	30
7-8 August 2014	17	60	24

Public sympathy with the Palestinians has also increased since the current flare-up in Gaza began early last month, now running at twice the level expressed for the Israelis. However, a steady two-fifths of the British public still feels sympathy for neither side. Trend data are as follows:

Sympathize with (%)	Israelis	Palestinians	Neither	Don’t know
13-14 July 2014	14	20	40	26
20-21 July 2014	14	23	40	23
24-25 July 2014	14	27	41	19
28-29 July 2014	14	27	41	18
31 July-1 August 2014	14	28	40	17
3-4 August 2014	12	30	39	20
7-8 August 2014	16	30	41	13

Full tables for the most recent YouGov poll are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/s41ippsqgi/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140808.pdf

Sunday trading

Resistance to the Sunday opening of shops in England and Wales still persists twenty years after the Sunday Trading Act 1994 brought in greater liberalization of shop hours. This is revealed in a poll by ICM Research for Retail Week in which 1,838 English and Welsh adults were interviewed online on 25-27 July 2014. Asked directly, 26% of respondents thought that shops should not be open at all on Sundays, with 53% disagreeing. However, fewer (17%) expressed the view that shops should be closed on Sundays when the question was put in a more indirect way, regarding future priorities for Sunday trading. And fewer still (13%) claimed never to shop on a Sunday, against 41% who were frequent Sunday shoppers (every week or most weeks) and 42% more occasional ones. Among those who ever shopped on a Sunday, supermarkets (71%), garden centres (33%), and home or DIY stores (31%) were the most frequently visited venues. Support for a change in the law to enable large shops to open on Sundays for more than the present six hours was voiced by 48% (rising to 55% among under-45s), 31% being opposed, with 17% rejecting the call for longer opening hours on religious grounds. An account of the survey was published in Retail Week on 1 August 2014, which is available online for subscribers only. Topline results can be accessed without restriction in the form of a slide pack at:

http://www.icmresearch.com/data/media/pdf/Sunday%20Trading%20Poll%20July_August%202014_29.07.14.pdf

Religion and the European Union

Few in Europe or the UK view religion as a major component of the European Union (EU), according to the initial results of Standard Eurobarometer wave 81.4, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social among adults aged 15 and over in all 28 member states, including face-to-face interviews with 1,373 in the UK between 31 May and 14 June 2014. Asked which of twelve issues most created a feeling of community among EU citizens, only 9% in the UK and in the EU overall selected religion, culture scoring most highly (29% and 27% respectively), with sport in second place in the UK (25%). Religion was positioned bottom of the table in the EU and equal second bottom in the UK, somewhat ahead of solidarity with poorer regions (5%). Similarly, when it came to which of twelve values best represented the EU, religion came bottom of the list in the EU and second bottom in the UK, with 3% each (only self-fulfilment being regarded as less significant in the UK). Peace was considered by far the most important value in the EU (37%) but was pipped to the top spot by human rights in the UK (41%). A maximum of three answers was permitted to each question. Topline data only are available at present at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb81/eb81_anx_en.pdf

Scottish Gods

Steve Bruce’s latest book, Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland, 1900-2012 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, xi + 244p., £70, ISBN 978 0 7486 8289 8), is an elegantly-written and stimulating social history of, and sociological commentary on, religion in twentieth- and early twenty-first century Scotland, charting both progressive secularization and religious diversification. It does not aspire to provide a fully comprehensive account of the Scottish religious scene, being essentially a series of case studies along ‘confessional’ or thematic lines. These are successively devoted to: the islands of Lewis, Orkney, and Shetland; the Roman Catholic Church; Protestant sectarianism; the Church of Scotland; the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church; the New Churches; the Buddhists of Samye Ling; the Findhorn Community; Muslims; and sex and Scottish politics.

Although statistics are quoted throughout, this is not a heavily quantitative work (and doubtless all the more readable and less dull for that). The single most cited quantitative source is the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey for 2001, which included a module on religion and belief, which (sadly) has not been replicated since. The volume also draws quite heavily on the results of the religion question in the 2001 census of population; the (relative to England and Wales) belated and still incomplete publication of Scottish religion data from the 2011 census meant that Bruce could not accommodate them in the main text, but he does discuss them in a two-page addendum. There is also a statistical appendix containing eight tables, as well as seven further tables distributed across individual chapters, the original plan for a much longer appendix of statistics being dropped in view of the existence of BRIN (whose achievement is fulsomely acknowledged). The preface holds out the promise of companion volumes on English Gods and Welsh Gods.

Future of Jewish community research

The future of the Community Research Unit of the Board of Deputies of British Jews is under review, according to the latest issue of the Jewish Chronicle (8 August 2014, p. 14). This follows the departure for a new job of its senior researcher, Daniel Vulkan, after almost nine years in the role. The Board has apparently held talks with the Institute of Jewish Policy Research on continuation of the Unit’s work. The Unit has traditionally collected and analysed key data relating to British Jewry, including preparation of an annual survey of Jewish births, marriages, divorces, and burials, as well as publishing regular reports on synagogue membership and Jewish day schools, and conducting research on behalf of other Jewish communal organizations.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, People news, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Board of Deputies of British Jews, Daniel Vulkan, Eurobarometer, European Union, feeling of community, Gaza, ICM Research, Israelis, Jews, Palestinians, Retail Week, Sayeeda Warsi, Scotland, Steve Bruce, Sunday Times, Sunday trading, TNS, values, YouGov | Leave a comment

British Academy Recognition and Other News

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Clive D. Field

BRIN secures British Academy recognition

The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, announced on 23 July 2014 that BRIN is to be one of fine new Academy Research Projects in the social sciences. Following an open and peer-review-based competition, BRIN has been awarded funding for five years in the first instance, with the potential for further support thereafter. BRIN and the four other projects ‘have been recognised for the excellence of their scholarship, and the promise and exciting nature of their programmes’. The British Academy’s announcement can be found at:

http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/1123

Ipsos Global Trends Survey, 2014

Britain has often been placed toward the bottom of international league tables of religiosity, and this continues to be the case according to the newly-published inaugural Ipsos MORI Global Trends Survey, 2014. Fieldwork was undertaken online in 20 developed and developing countries in two waves (3-17 September and 1-15 October 2013) among a sample of adults aged 16/18-64 (thereby excluding the over-65s, who tend to be the most religious cohort, as well as the group least likely to use the internet). Britain was ranked sixteenth in terms of identification of its citizens with any religion or faith (57% against the unweighted global mean of 71%), and sixteenth equal for the personal importance of religion/faith (27%, with 64% of Britons saying it was not important to them). It was also fifth equal for agreement with the statement that ‘organised religion is not for me’ (72%, with just 21% dissenting and 7% uncertain). The most consistently religious of the nations investigated were Argentina, Brazil, India, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. Topline results can be extracted from the survey website at:

http://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com

Prospects for religious revival

In an important new article, ‘Late Secularization and Religion as Alien’, published on 17 July 2014, Steve Bruce of the University of Aberdeen argues that it is ‘sociologically implausible’ that secularization could be reversed in the UK since there are too many obstacles to ‘religious revival’, whether of Christianity or other creeds. In particular, ‘the shared stock of religious knowledge is small, the public reputation of religion is poor, and religion is carried primarily by populations that are unusual in being drawn either from a narrow demographic or from immigrant peoples’. These ‘carriers of religion’ in the UK have been allegedly reduced to elderly women, residents of rural peripheries, Poles, West Africans, and Muslims, leading to the conclusion that ‘religion is now alien’. ‘Being religious is no longer a characteristic that is thinly but fairly evenly distributed throughout the population: it is concentrated in specific minority populations, which reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do.’ The article is published in Open Theology, Vol. 1, 2014, pp. 13-23 and available for free download at:

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2014.1.issue/issue-files/opth.2014.1.issue.xml

No religion hotspots

In a recent post on the Nonreligion & Secularity blog, dated 21 July 2014, Katherine Sissons of the University of Oxford explores the potential of DataShine, a data visualization tool developed at University College London, for the study of the distribution of no religion in the 2011 census: ‘“Godless Cities” and “Religious Enclaves”? The Distribution of Religion and Nonreligion in England and Wales’. She cautions against an over-simplistic interpretation of the data, noting that, although there are some apparent no religion urban ‘hotspots’ (such as Brighton and Norwich), religious and non-religious populations are generally not as spatially segregated as is often assumed, with, for example, above average levels of irreligion occurring in several more rural areas, such as large parts of Wales, East Anglia, and the South-West. The post can be read at:

http://blog.nsrn.net/2014/07/21/godless-cities-and-religious-enclaves-the-distribution-of-religion-and-nonreligion-in-england-and-wales/

Churches and social capital

‘The Church in England reaches approximately 10 million people each year through its community activities, even excluding “familiar” church activities – Sunday services, Christmas, Easter, Harvest, baptisms, weddings, and funerals.’ So concludes Paul Bickley in a new report prepared by Theos think tank for the Church Urban Fund: Good Neighbours: How Churches Help Communities Flourish. The report itself is largely based on an analysis of twelve case studies of the work of Church of England congregations in areas of high deprivation but is informed by an online survey from ComRes among 2,024 English adults aged 18 and over between 19 and 21 February 2014.

Respondents in the national study were first asked to select from a list of community activities and services (i.e. delivered by churches, charities, or voluntary organizations, rather than by private companies or the state) those which they or someone in their immediate family had accessed in the last twelve months. Almost half (48%) reported accessing such activities and services and 43% not. Among those who had taken up the provision, 51% recalled that it had come from a church or a church group (the tables fail to clarify how this figure was calculated). Setting aside weddings or funerals, the majority of this voluntary provision was church-based in only six areas: pastoral support for pub- and club-goers (68%), marriage/relationship advice (64%), food banks (56%), community events such as lunch clubs and cafés (56%), assistance of asylum seekers/migrants (55%), and counselling/befriending services (50%). In the other eleven areas secular agencies predominated.

Good Neighbours can be read at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/PDFs/Research/Good%20Neighbours%20Report-CUF-Theos-2014.pdf

and the ComRes data tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Theos_and_Church_Urban_Fund___Churches_in_the_Community___Final_Data___25th_February_2014.pdf

United Reformed Church statistics

The General Assembly of the United Reformed Church met in Cardiff on 3-6 July 2014, and this provides an opportunity to record its latest Britain-wide statistics, which reveal a pattern of decline characteristic of most of the ‘historic’ Free Churches (the United Reformed Church itself evolved after 1972 as a union of several previous denominations). The following table has been abstracted from:

http://www.urc.org.uk/statistics.html

	2012	2013	% change
Churches	1,512	1,487	-1.7
Active ministers	615	576	-6.3
Retired ministers	900	915	+1.7
Active lay preachers	484	479	-1.0
Serving elders	11,229	10,247	-8.7
Non-serving elders	8,791	8,396	-4.5
Members	61,627	59,077	-4.1
Regular attenders	20,596	19,968	-3.0
Average congregation	61,725	59,828	-3.1
Children associated with Church	44,771	42,076	-6.0
Children worshipping at main service	15,504	15,473	-0.2

Faith and Belief Scotland

Faith and Belief Scotland: A Contemporary Mapping of Attitudes and Provisions in Scotland, by Anthony Allison, is a report on research undertaken in 2013-14 by the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Equality Unit of the Scottish Government. The project was designed to investigate the compliance of Scottish councils with the Public Sector Equality Duty of The Equality Act 2010 in respect of religion and belief as a protected characteristic. Data-gathering comprised qualitative research in eight council areas and an online national survey completed by 1,407 adults aged 16 and over between December 2013 and March 2014.

Although respondents to the online survey were drawn from all 32 Scottish councils, the method of distribution of the questionnaire (‘through various religion and belief mailing lists and popular social media platforms’) means that the sample cannot be considered as statistically representative. In particular, relative to the results of the 2011 Scottish census, adherents of the Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic Church appear to be seriously under-represented and non-Christians and those professing no religion to be over-represented.

Nevertheless, the 37 questions in the online survey do yield some interesting findings, including the significant number of people who rejected the Equality Act’s definitions of religion (43%) and belief (38%), seemingly because they incorporate the lack, as well as the existence, of religion and belief. It is also noteworthy that only 7% of respondents regarded Scotland as a Christian country, with 33% viewing it as a post-Christian or secular nation, and 60% as a society of many religions and beliefs. In part reflection of this fact, there was a significant amount of discomfort with religious organizations providing schools (47%), adoption (39%), and foster care (38%), while 47% were opposed to state funding of religion or belief groups (with 34% in favour).

The report can be found at:

http://faithandbelief.div.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Faith-and-Belief-Scotland-FINAL-VERSION-OF-REPORT.pdf

An interactive map, permitting analysis of all 37 questions by gender, religion or belief group, and council is at:

http://faithandbelief.div.ed.ac.uk/fabs/

Anti-Semitism

A spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the UK has arisen this month as a direct consequence of the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in much the same way as occurred with the similar conflict in January-February 2009. The Community Security Trust is reporting that the number of incidents in this country is currently running at double the level which would be expected under ‘normal’ circumstances (approximately 100 since 1 July 2014 compared with 58 for the whole of July 2013). Recent YouGov polling (as tabulated below) also indicates that, since Israeli military action commenced on 8 July 2014, Britons have been somewhat and increasingly more sympathetic to the Palestinian than the Israeli cause, although the plurality remains neutral and a substantial minority is undecided.

Sympathize with (%)	13-14/7/14	20-21/7/14	24-25/7/14
Israelis	14	14	14
Palestinians	20	23	27
Neither	40	40	41
Don’t know	26	23	19

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religious Census, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged alien, Anthony Allison, Anti-Semitism, British Academy, British Religion in Numbers, Church Urban Fund, community activities, ComRes, DataShine, Faith and Belief Scotland, Gaza, importance of religion, Ipsos Global Trends, Ipsos-MORI, Israel, Katherine Sissons, Nonreligion & Secularity, Open Theology, organized religion, Palestinians, Paul Bickley, Public Sector Equality Duty, Religious Affiliation, religious census, religious revival, Scotland, Scottish Government, secularization, Social Capital, Steve Bruce, Theos, United Reformed Church, visualization, YouGov | Leave a comment

Pope Francis and Other News

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Following on from our previous post, which reported on a major new survey of Catholic opinion, today we summarize recent poll evidence about how Pope Francis is perceived to be getting on by the British public. We also include our usual miscellany of other religious statistical stories.

Pope Francis

Eight months into his pontificate, Pope Francis appears to be making some impression on the British public, according to an online poll by YouGov for The Sunday Times among 1,851 adults on 14-15 November 2013. Just over one-third (36%) think he is doing a good job, peaking at 45% of Liberal Democrats and 46% of Londoners; merely 3% believe he is doing a bad job, with 61% undecided. A similar proportion (31%) expect him to make the Catholic Church more liberal, including 45% of Liberal Democrats, 37% of Conservative voters, and 36% of both 18-24s and non-manual workers; 5% anticipate the Church becoming less liberal, while 23% forecast no change, and 42% are undecided. Pope Francis has made 17% regard the Catholic Church more positively (rising to 29% of Liberal Democrats and 27% of 18-24s), with 2% feeling more negative, and the remaining 80% having no opinion or an unaltered one on the subject.

However, the Pope is beaten into second place (on 12%), after the Archbishop of Canterbury (on 13%), as the religious leader respondents would most like to have at Christmas lunch. The majority (53%) want no religious leader sitting at their Christmas dining table, perhaps reflecting the relatively low importance which Britons attach to the religious component of Christmas. Asked about their favourite part of Christmas, its religious significance came in sixth equal of fourteen places (on 11%), with carols in eleventh position (on 7%). Spending time with family and friends (53%) and giving presents to others (37%) easily topped the list. There were substantial age differences, religious significance being highlighted by 5% of the parenting generation (25-39s) but 18% of the over-60s. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/08oexwxpab/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-151113.pdf

Curiously, The Sunday Times made absolutely no use of these poll data it had commissioned in its (arguably) somewhat over-the-top coverage of Pope Francis in its print edition of 17 November 2013. This comprised no fewer than three articles in its main section, all suggesting that the Catholic Church might be turning a corner under the Pope’s leadership. On pp. 1-2 George Arbuthnott and Luke Garratt had a piece entitled ‘“Francis Effect” Pulls Crowds Back to Church’. On p. 25 Paul Vallely (biographer of Pope Francis) contributed a full-page article headed ‘Pope Idol’, asking whether the ‘Francis effect’ is the ‘miracle’ the Church needs to reverse years of decline. In his analysis, Vallely was supported by a reporting team of eight journalists. Finally, on p. 30 there was a second editorial asserting that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin ‘Welby Can Take Heart from the Francis Effect’, although it was less certain that he could emulate it in the Church of England.

The editorial pointed to ‘a significant rise’ in congregations at Catholic churches in Britain since the election of Francis as Pope. The basis for this claim was a survey conducted by the newspaper during the previous week among the twenty-two Catholic cathedrals in England and Wales, of which thirteen responded. Eleven of these reported a rise in average Sunday attendances in October 2013 compared with a year before. Nine cathedrals provided actual figures, with congregants this October up by an average of 21% (from 11,461 to 13,862), and by 35% in the case of Leeds and 23% in Sheffield. We still await evidence about statistical trends in Catholic parishes up and down the land. Until we have that, perhaps a degree of circumspection is called for with regard to the ‘Francis effect’. After all, similar claims of a ‘Benedict bounce’ were made following the previous Pope’s visit to Britain in 2010, and that phenomenon seems to have been more aspirational than real, at least in quantitative terms.

Media portrayals of religion

Mainstream newspapers and television remain key, albeit partial and often superficial, sources of popular information about religion in Britain, according to a new book published by Ashgate: Kim Knott, Elizabeth Poole, and Teemu Taira, Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred: Representation and Change (xvi + 233pp., £19.99 as paperback or e-book). At the core of the work is a replication (in 2008-09) of a content and discourse analysis first undertaken in 1982 of three newspapers (The Times, The Sun, and The Yorkshire Evening Post), studied over two months, and three terrestrial television channels (BBC1, BBC2, and ITV1), surveyed for one week. The extent and nature of the representation of religion in these media is quantitatively summarized in chapter 2 and then scrutinized with regard to treatments of Christianity (chapter 3), Islam and other minority faiths (chapter 4), atheism and secularism (chapter 5), and popular beliefs and ritual practices (chapter 6). A wider evidence base is drawn upon to support two case studies of media portrayal of religion: the banning of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamic Dutch politician, from entering the country in 2009 (chapter 7) and the 1982 and 2010 papal visits to Britain (chapter 8). The conclusion uses six sets of paired propositions relating to religion and the media as a framework for summative evaluation of the research.

The main text of the work contains many statistics deriving from the content analysis, although relatively few (seven of each) tables and figures. However, appendices 2 and 3 do reproduce some of the most important data, which we partly digest in the table below. The overall number of references to religion and the secular sacred on television was broadly similar in 1982 and 2009, but it rose by 78% in the newspapers from 1982 to 2008, principally as a result of the substantially increased size of newspapers over the period. In both media types there was a marked shift away from coverage of conventional (organized and official) religion in general, and Christianity in particular, to common religion (supernatural beliefs and practices beyond religious organizations). Among non-Christian faiths, there was disproportionate treatment of Islam in 2008-09, much of it negative. The explanation for the greater coverage of common religion on television than in the newspapers at both dates is to be found in a plethora of television advertisements containing references to luck, gambling, magic, and the unexplained. Across all reporting of religion, there was a near doubling in the use of religious metaphors to describe otherwise non-religious subjects (from 14% to 25% in newspapers and from 12% to 20% on television).

Content type (%)	Papers	Papers	TV	TV
	1982	2008	1982	2009
Conventional religion – Christian/general	72.5	47.4	62.7	44.8
Conventional religion – non-Christian	6.6	12.2	5.5	6.0
Common religion	19.2	36.2	30.4	47.2
Secular sacred	1.3	4.4	1.6	2,1

Inevitably, the choice of survey dates and specific media titles will have conditioned some of these research outcomes. In the case of newspapers, it is therefore worth comparing the findings with those of studies by Robin Gill and Paul Baker and colleagues which BRIN has reported at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/newspaper-religion-catholic-schools/

and

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/halloween-and-other-news/

Restudies of religion

The latest in Professor Steve Bruce’s fascinating series of restudies of religion in Britain has just been published: ‘Religion in Ashworthy, 1958-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2013, pp. 92-102. It is a re-examination of the religious scene (preponderantly Anglican and Methodist) in the West Devon village of ‘Ashworthy’ (in reality, Northlew), which was originally surveyed by Bill Williams in 1958 for his classic community study of A West Country Village (1963). Although time constraints have prevented Bruce from ‘achieving the degree or duration of immersion’ that Williams did, five conclusions are reached about changes in the village’s religious life between 1958 and 2011. Inevitably, one of them touches on statistical decline in church adherence, Anglican Easter communicants and Methodist members combined reducing from 29% to 13% of the adult population over the period, the contraction in Methodist numbers being especially severe. For a pay-per-view access option, see:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/45527w70166n1707/

The previous issue of the same journal included another restudy by Bruce: ‘Religion in Gosforth, 1951-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 1, May 2013, pp. 39-49. This is based on a revisitation (in 2009-10) of the first community study by Bill Williams, of Gosforth, Cumbria, which was published as The Sociology of an English Village (1956). Here Bruce found that combined Anglican and Methodist membership as a proportion of the adult population declined from 20% to 12% over the 60 years. Pay-per-view access is available at:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/f18663039713m447/

For a discussion of methodological issues raised by the series of restudies, see Bruce’s article ‘Studying Religious Change through Replication: Some Methodological Issues’, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2012, pp. 166-82. The pay-per-view site is:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/157006812×634863

Anglican faith schools

The Education Division of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England issued a two-page statement outlining ‘The Church of England’s Contribution to Schools’ to coincide with the General Synod debate on these schools on 19 November 2013. It is clearly intended as a defence of the Anglican school sector which has come in for criticism of late, especially over admissions policies. There are currently 4,443 Anglican primary and 221 secondary schools in England, attended by approximately one million pupils. Ofsted inspections are said to show them as more effective than other schools in terms of overall effectiveness, pupil achievement, and quality of teaching, and at both primary and secondary levels. Church of England schools are also judged to be inclusive, with the same proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals as in non-Anglican schools, and almost the same proportion from black or minority ethnic backgrounds. The statement can be accessed through the link in:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2013/11/synod-affirms-cofe’s-crucial-involvement-with-schools.aspx

The Church’s claims about inclusivity have already been challenged by the Fair Admissions Campaign, which accuses the Church of ‘a flawed approach’ to the use of statistics, at:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/fair-admissions-campaign-response-to-john-pritchards-comments-on-the-inclusivity-of-church-schools/

Islamophobia

The practice of publishing articles in the online edition of peer-reviewed journals in advance of scheduling their inclusion in a conventional printed edition is becoming more widespread, especially in the social sciences (less so in the humanities at present). Two recent exemplars both deal with Islamophobia and will be of interest to BRIN readers.

Zan Strabac, Toril Aalberg, and Marko Valenta, ‘Attitudes towards Muslim Immigrants: Evidence from Survey Experiments across Four Countries’ was published in the online edition of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 30 September 2013. It examined whether differences exist between attitudes toward immigrants in general and Muslim immigrants in particular. The data derived from online surveys by YouGov/Polimetrix of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over on 26-31 January 2009 in each of four countries: Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. One half of each national sample was asked four questions about immigrants and the other half the identical questions but about Muslim immigrants. The responses were used to generate two additive 0-100 scales, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. In Norway and Sweden there were basically no differences between the level of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant opinion, whereas in Britain and the United States (and contrary to expectation) anti-Muslim attitudes were actually found to be lower than anti-immigrant ones (with scores of 50.3 and 59.0 respectively in Britain’s case). Possible explanations for this discovery are explored. The article can be accessed at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2013.831542#.Uou1DjZFDX4

Christine Ogan, Lars Willnat, Rosemary Pennington, and Manaf Bashir, ‘The Rise of Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States’ was published in the online edition of International Communication Gazette on 10 October 2013. It is based on secondary analysis of the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Project (for Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States) and the 2010 Pew News Interest Index (for the United States alone). Predictors of attitudes to Muslims are calculated. These appear less strongly defined in Britain’s case than for several other countries, although being highly educated or a woman were associated with a more positive opinion of Muslims. The article can be accessed at:

http://gaz.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/10/1748048513504048.abstract

Gender, theology and higher education

Theology and religious studies departments in UK higher education institutions still have some way to go before achieving full gender equality, according to a report from Durham University published on 15 November 2013 (on behalf of Theology and Religious Studies UK): Mathew Guest, Sonya Sharma, and Robert Song, Gender and Career Progression in Theology and Religious Studies. The authors gathered a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data (for the academic year 2010-11), in the latter case from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and a survey of 41 of 58 departments. Whereas 60% of undergraduates in theology and religious studies were women, the proportion dropped to 42% of taught postgraduates in the subject and 33% of postgraduate research students. The average of female members of academic staff in theology and religious studies was 29% but only 16% of professors. However, for early career academics and lecturers the figure was 37%, suggesting that recruitment is beginning to make a difference to gender balance among staff. Although gender diversity remains an issue elsewhere in universities, the authors explore several factors which accentuate the problem in theology and religious studies. The report, which concludes with 11 recommendations, can be read at:

http://trs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Gender-in-TRS-Project-Report-Final.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged academics, Bill Williams, Cathedrals, Christine Ogan, Christmas, church attendance, Church of England, common religion, conventional religion, Elizabeth Poole, Faith schools, Francis effect, gender, Gosforth, higher education, International Communication Gazette, Islamophobia, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Kim Knott, Lars Willnat, Manaf Bashir, Marko Valenta, Mathew Guest, media, Muslims, newspapers, Northlew, Pope Francis, religious festivals, restudies of religion, Robert Song, Roman Catholic Church, Rosemary Pennington, Rural Theology, Sonya Sharma, Steve Bruce, students, Sunday Times, Teemu Taira, television, Theology and Religious Studies UK, Toril Aalberg, YouGov, Zan Strabac | Leave a comment

Secularization Restated and Other News

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven statistical news stories about religion in Britain feature in today’s post, including a summative article from Steve Bruce in reaffirmation of the secularization thesis.

Secularization restated

In Britain ‘there is no evidential warrant for describing individual beliefs and behaviour as post-secular or de-secularising’, concludes Professor Steve Bruce in a characteristically robust and entertaining restatement of the secularization paradigm: ‘Post-Secularity and Religion in Britain: An Empirical Assessment’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2013, pp. 369-84 (published on 2 October 2013). ‘Religion has become more contentious; it has not become more popular’ is his principal argument, supported by a high-level overview of statistics of religious membership, attendance, rites of passage, institutions, and beliefs. Nor, Bruce suggests, has the overall picture of (largely Christian) decline been offset by the undoubted growth of non-Christians (unfortunately, the paper was finalized before publication of the results of the 2011 census) and the emergence of alternative forms of spirituality. Nor, in a tantalizingly brief section, does Bruce find evidence of any compensating increased presence of religion in public life; indeed, he claims, there has been ongoing privatization. The article’s arguments and sources are essentially familiar (and perhaps still best read in full in their original incarnations), but relative newcomers to the secularization debate may benefit from it as an introductory discourse and compilation of data. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind a publisher’s pay-wall; for access options, go to:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2013.831642#.UlbieTZwbX4

Westminster Faith Debates

Professor Linda Woodhead released on 8 October 2013 the full data tables from the second YouGov poll she commissioned for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, in which 4,018 adult Britons were interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. The data can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4vs1srt1h1/YG-Archive-University-of-Lancaster-Faith-Matters-Debate-full-results-180613-website.pdf

The tables are a substantial resource for secondary research. They extend to 65 pages and include breaks of all questions by the following variables: current voting intention, 2010 vote, gender, age, social grade, region, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, religious meeting/service attendance, and self-assessed religiosity/spirituality.

The questions cover the following religious topics: self-assessed religiosity/spirituality, religious/spiritual influences, private and public religious practices, belief in God/higher power, and sources of guidance in life. Respondents were then asked about their attitudes to: abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, faith schools, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, protests against perceived insults of faiths, immigration, the European Union, changes in British society, the welfare system, Islamist terrorism, the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church, and Margaret Thatcher versus Tony Blair as best Prime Minister.

The findings for faith schools – a discrete and substantial module in the survey – have previously been released and summarized by BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/faith-schools-and-other-news/

It would be impossible here to record the results for the full range of other subjects covered in the poll, but the final question might be worth a note. Asked which Prime Minister did more good for Britain, 39% said Thatcher, 18% Blair, 6% both equally, 28% neither, with 9% undecided. Thatcher commanded above average support from Anglicans (47%), Presbyterians (49%), and Methodists (47%). Blair was disproportionately popular with Roman Catholics (27%) and churchgoers. Muslims (42%) were most likely to say neither.

BRIN was also struck by the couple of questions surrounding Jerry Springer: the Opera, the British musical staged in London in 2003-05 before touring the UK in 2006, and which attracted strong protests from Christians on the grounds of its irreverence and profanity. Notwithstanding, the production excited little interest from pollsters at the time, so it is good to have the furore covered here, albeit almost a decade late. Reminded of the context, 52% of YouGov’s respondents felt that peaceful protests against the musical were understandable and 42% that they were justified (36% not). Catholics (54%), the historic Free Churches, Muslims (66%), and weekly attenders at services (76%) were most likely to consider the protests justified.

UK Data Service

The UK Data Service (UKDS) has recently announced the release of two historic datasets which will be of interest to BRIN users:

SN 4394: a first release of English Church Attendance Survey, 1998, undertaken by Peter Brierley, and joining the dataset for the 1989 church census, which is already held by UKDS
SN 1988: what appears to be a new edition of Conventional Religion and Common Religion in Leeds, 1982, undertaken by the University of Leeds, and based on interviews with electors and university students

More information about both studies can be found in the UKDS catalogue at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

The UKDS JISCmail list provides regular free (mostly weekly) email alerts about the release of new datasets. To join the list, go to:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=UKdataservice

Religious education

A mainly qualitative assessment of the state of religious education (RE) in English primary and secondary schools is contained in a new report, Religious Education: Realising the Potential, released by Ofsted on 6 October 2013. Data mostly derive from inspections carried out in 185 schools between September 2009 and July 2012, 659 RE lessons being observed. The sample did not include voluntary aided schools or academies with a religious designation, for which alternative inspection arrangements exist. It also excluded schools judged to require special measures or given notice to improve. The overall message in the report is ‘could do better’, with eight areas of concern identified about RE. A tabular summary of the inspection data under seven headings, shown separately for primary and secondary schools, appears on p. 38. In terms of overall RE effectiveness, 42% of primary and 48% of secondary schools were considered outstanding or good, 56% and 41% respectively satisfactory, and 2% and 11% inadequate. Subject training was deemed the worst single facet of provision, with 29% of primaries and 35% of secondaries judged inadequate in this regard. The report is available at:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/religious-education-realising-potential

Evangelicals at work

Published on 7 October 2013, Working Faithfully? is the latest report from the 21st Century Evangelicals project, developed by the Evangelical Alliance and the six other partner organizations in its research club. It derives from an online survey in May 2013 of 1,511 members of the Alliance’s self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) panel of UK evangelicals. Respondents were overwhelmingly (91%) in manual employment and had a strong sense of calling in their job (69%). They mostly (84%) felt valued for the work they did, although 39% experienced work-related stress, 37% endured a working week of more than 40 hours, and 35% of men and 27% of women regularly brought work home with them. Almost half (44%) perceived Christians to suffer discrimination in employment often or sometimes, and 53% thought that Christians getting into trouble at work is a significant problem. However, no more than 12% claimed they had personally been discriminated against in employment for any reason, and just 2% because of a faith-related issue. Somewhat more (14%) said they had encountered hostility, exclusion or mocking from work colleagues on account of their faith, while 9% reported difficulties with their management because they were known as a Christian or had spoken up for Christian values. The report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Working-faithfully-PDF.pdf

Nobel peace laureates

Religious figures feature prominently in a list of past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize considered to have been most deserving, according to a YouGov poll published on 9 October 2013, 1,879 adult Britons having been interviewed online on 7 and 8 October. The data table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zdg9yb4z0f/YG-Archive-Nobel-Peace-Prize-results-081013.pdf

The top six places in the list of most deserving recipients included:

1st (37%) – Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, awarded the Prize in 1979 for her work in overcoming poverty and distress
2nd (33%) – Martin Luther King Jr, Baptist minister and American civil rights leader, awarded the Prize in 1964 for combating racial inequality through non-violence
5th (13%) – Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, awarded the Prize in 1984 for his leadership of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa
6th (12%) – 14th Dalai Lama, awarded the Prize in 1989 for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet

Noteworthy among variations by demographic sub-groups was the disproportionately strong support for Martin Luther King and the Dalai Lama among the 18-24s (43% and 24% respectively).

Emigration to Israel

On 30 September 2013 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published Immigration from the United Kingdom to Israel, by Laura Staetsky, Marina Sheps, and Jonathan Boyd, and based upon both Israeli and UK statistical sources. The report showed that 32,600 UK-born Jews or people of Jewish ancestry emigrated to Israel (a process known as making aliyah) between 1948 (when the Jewish state was founded) and the end of 2011, constituting about 1% of all immigrants to Israel during that period. Peak UK immigration to Israel occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, since when the numbers have mostly tailed off, albeit with a spike in the late 2000s. UK-born immigrants to Israel are disproportionately young, with a median age in the late 20s. Their departure for Israel has therefore pushed up the mean age of the Jewish community remaining in the UK and reduced the number of Jewish women of reproductive age in the UK, adversely affecting the community’s potential for growth. Nor is there a compensatory flow in the other direction, the number of UK-born Jews living permanently in Israel in the 2000s being, at 19,000, greater than the 15,000 Israeli Jews permanently living in the UK. For the full data and analysis, go to:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/JPRAliyahReport6thProof.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Aliyah, church attendance, discrimination, emigration, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Israel, Jerry Springer the Opera, Jonathan Boyd, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Laura Staetsky, Leeds, Linda Woodhead, Margaret Thatcher, Marina Sheps, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize, Ofsted, religious education, secularization, Steve Bruce, Tony Blair, UK Data Service, Westminster Faith Debates, work, YouGov | Leave a comment

Discrimination, Identity, and Other News

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The eight stories in today’s post feature a range of topics, but religious discrimination and religious identity especially stand out. It should be noted that the latest statistical bulletin for the Government’s Integrated Household Survey, covering the calendar year 2012 and published on 3 October 2013, did not report on the religious identity question.

Religious discrimination (1)

Perceived discrimination against Muslims has increased during the past three years, but they are still not the group most discriminated against in British society; that unenviable position is thought to be occupied by people with mental health problems, followed by gypsies, transsexuals, and immigrants. This is according to a YouGov poll published on 2 October 2013 and undertaken online on 29-30 September among a sample of 1,717 adult Britons. Interviewees were shown a list of groups and asked how much discrimination they thought each suffered in Britain today, the percentages replying ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ being combined in the table below, with comparisons for January 2011 (where available). Twelve of the 15 groups covered in both surveys were believed to have suffered more discrimination over the three years, only Christians and white persons experiencing a reduction, with no change for atheists (who were the group considered to be least discriminated against). Perceived discrimination against Muslims is now 32% more than against Christians, compared with a gap of 22% in 2011. Discrimination against Jews is believed to be up by one-third.

	01/2011	09/2013
Asians	44	47
Atheists	10	10
Blacks	41	48
Christians	28	25
Disabled	NA	57
Elderly	45	50
Gays/lesbians	43	50
Ginger haired	25	26
Gypsies/travellers	60	62
Immigrants	54	58
Jews	26	34
Mentally ill	NA	67
Muslims	50	57
Transsexuals	53	60
Whites	32	30
Women	29	34
Working class	31	32

The data table for the survey can be found at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/jzh49t1gqk/YG-Archive-discrimination-results-300913.pdf

Religious discrimination (2)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has recently published Identity, Expression, and Self-Respect, Briefing Paper No. 9 in its Measurement Framework series, with some accompanying data in Excel format. The paper considers five indicators in detail, the first of which is freedom to practice one’s religion or belief, which is quantified from the 2010 Citizenship Survey (CS) for England and Wales and from HM Inspectorate of Prisons statistics. In the CS 93% of adults overall felt able to practice their religion freely, but somewhat fewer among the under-45s, several ethnic minorities, and Muslims and Sikhs (for detail, see pp. 17-18 and the table accompanying measure El1.1). Breaks by religion are also sometimes shown in connection with the secondary analysis of data for the other four indicators. The briefing paper and tables are at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/our-measurement-framework/-briefing-papers-and-data/identity-expression-and-self-respect/

Under a veil

The recent public and media debate about whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear the full face-veil or niqab started in connection with specific cases involving courtrooms and colleges. In canvassing popular opinion on the matter, ComRes therefore decided to take the prohibition of the veil in courts, schools, and colleges as ‘a given’, and to ask respondents whether female Muslims should otherwise be free to wear the veil. One-half (including 61% of over-65s and Conservatives, and 79% of UKIP supporters) thought the veil should not be worn even outside courts, schools, and colleges, and just 32% that it should be. The poll was undertaken by telephone for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on 18 and 19 September 2013, among 2,003 Britons aged 18 and over, and the data can be found on pp. 113-16 of the tables posted at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/SM_IoS_Political_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Religious identity (1)

Details of the religious self-identification of the UK’s regular armed forces personnel as at 1 April 2013 were published by the Ministry of Defence on 26 September 2013 in Table 2.01.09 of the 2013 edition of Statistical Series 2 – Personnel Bulletin 2.01. Although the proportion professing no religion has risen steadily, from 9.5% in 2007 to 16.4% today, the overwhelming majority of our service personnel continue to subscribe to some faith, and invariably (81.7% in 2013) to Christianity. Profession of no religion is highest in the Navy (22.3%) and lowest in the Army (13.5%), with 18.7% in the Royal Air Force. Non-Christians are under-represented in relation to society as a whole, which is probably mainly a reflection of the ethnic profile of the armed services. The full table is at:

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/publications/personnel/military/tri-service-personnel-bulletin/2013/2013.pdf

Religious identity (2)

In our coverage of the 2011 Scottish religion census on 28 September 2013, reference was made to potential comparisons with national sample surveys of religious self-identification in Scotland. By way of example, we show below a ten-year percentage comparison from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which employs a larger than average sample. The 2012 data are extracted from p. 13 of the 2012 edition of Scotland’s People (published on 28 August 2013), those for 2001-02 from the dataset accessible via the UK Data Service (applying the random adult sample weights). Although the question asked is identical to that in the census (‘what religion, religious denomination, or body do you belong to?’), these statistics refer to adults only and are thus not directly comparable to the initial census results (which are for all ages). The SHS figures also omit non-responses (because the dataset for 2012 is not yet available). The general direction of travel, of course, is similar to the changes seen in the census between 2001 and 2011, with a big increase in the number of Scots professing no religion and a large decrease in support for the Church of Scotland.

	2001-02	2012
No religion	27.8	43.1
Church of Scotland	47.4	29.7
Roman Catholic	15.1	16.0
Other Christian	7.7	7.9
Non-Christian	2.1	3.4

Scottish marriages

Section 7 of Vital Events Reference Tables, 2012 [for Scotland], published by the General Register Office for Scotland on 27 August 2013, contains three tables dealing with Scottish marriages which will be of interest to BRIN readers:

Table 7.5 lists the number of marriages solemnized by celebrants from 50 different religious and belief traditions for each year between 2002 and 2012. The key stories are the steep fall in marriages conducted by the Church of Scotland (down by 50% over this period) and the Methodist Church (down by 70%) and the rapid growth in ceremonies conducted by the Humanist Society Scotland since they were legalized in 2005; by 2012 they had overtaken Roman Catholic marriages and were closing fast on the Church of Scotland.
Table 7.6 lists the number of civil and religious marriages (the latter disaggregated by Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, and other religions) for each year between 1961 and 2012 and each quinquennium between 1946-50 and 2006-10. Whereas civil marriages represented only 17% of the total in 1946-50, by 2006-10 the figure stood at 52%.
Table 7.7 lists marriages by ‘denomination’ for 2012, when 51% were civil, 18% Church of Scotland, 10% Humanist Society Scotland, and 6% Roman Catholic.

The tables can be found at:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/ref-tables/2012/section-7-marriages-and-civil-partnerships.html

Time use

Since the earliest days of sample surveys, it has been evident that interviewees have a tendency to overstate their recalled religious activities. This is no more so than in the case of churchgoing where claimed attendance can exceed by a factor of two the totals arrived at by actual censuses of public worship. Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning of the University of Aberdeen have sought to illustrate the point by repurposing diary data from English respondents (aged 16 and over) to the UK Time Use Survey, 2000-01, which was conducted by the Office for National Statistics. Participants, who were drawn from a random sample of households, were required to record their main and secondary activities for each 10-minute period on the day in question, which included Sundays (3,317 individuals appear to have completed Sunday diaries). Bruce and Glendinning’s methodology and findings are contained in a four-page report on The Extent of Religious Activity in England, which is being disseminated by Brierley Consultancy, an abridged version of which appears in the October 2013 issue of FutureFirst (contact peter@brierleyres.com to obtain copies of either or both versions). The authors conclude as follows:

‘There is little religion of any form practised, public or private. Less than 11% of adults in England engage in any religious activity whatsoever (including personal prayers and meditation and consuming mass media religious programming) of any duration at any point during a typical week. Only 8.25% of adults engage in any episodes of communal practice in the company of others. Less than 7% attend church on a Sunday. Read the other way round – 7% going to church on Sunday, 8% doing some communal religion and 11% doing any religion at all – these data offer little support for the claim that the decline of conventional churchgoing has been offset by an increase in alternative religious activities.’ Of course, it must be remembered that the survey embodied a snapshot of religious activity on the day the diary was completed, and that those who do not engage in such activity on one Sunday may do so on another.

Fossil free churches

This item is not a politically incorrect reference to the age or traditionalism of churchgoers but to a new campaign by Operation Noah (an ecumenical Christian climate change charity) to encourage churches (particularly the Church of England) to disinvest in companies seeking expansion in fossil fuel reserves. The campaign, and its accompanying report (Bright Now: Towards Fossil Free Churches), was launched on 20 September 2013 and underpinned by data from Christian Research’s Resonate panel, 1,520 churchgoers replying to its August 2013 omnibus. Although more than nine out of ten churchgoers agree that churches should invest their money ethically, the majority does not see climate change as a key issue relative to other priorities (such as women bishops). In the case of Anglicans, 63% want the Church of England to take the lead in addressing man-made climate change, yet only one-quarter supports the Church disinvesting in companies extracting fossil fuels. As with most Resonate polls, full data are not in the public domain, but Operation Noah’s press release can be read at:

http://www.operationnoah.org/node/569

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged armed forces, atheists, Brierley Consultancy, Christian Research, Christians, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Citizenship Survey, climate change, ComRes, discrimination, disinvestment, Equality and Human Rights Commission, face veil, fossil fuels, freedom to practice religion, HM Inspectorate of Prisons, Independent on Sunday, Islamophobia, Jews, marriages, Ministry of Defence, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Operation Noah, religious activity, religious dress, Religious Identity, Resonate, Scotland, Scottish Household Survey, Steve Bruce, Sunday Mirror, Sundays, time use, Tony Glendinning, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church Growth Debated and Other News

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

An academic debate about church growth in Britain provides our lead story today, but we also find space for four new sources of religious statistics.

Church growth in Britain

Last year, in our post of 9 June 2012, BRIN featured Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present, a collection of case studies edited by David Goodhew and published by Ashgate. Our notice of the book, which took (relatively mild) exception to Goodhew’s ‘loose talk of resacralization’, fairly limited understanding of the British religious historical context, and oversights of some key primary sources, prompted a detailed response by Goodhew on the BRIN website on 6 July 2012. This exchange can still be viewed at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/church-growth-in-britain-since-1980/

Now, the arch-proponent of the secularization thesis, Steve Bruce, has provided an extended review of the collection, taking Goodhew and several of his contributors to task in the process. His ‘Secularization and Church Growth in the United Kingdom’ will appear in the next issue (Vol. 5, No. 3, 2013) of Journal of Religion in Europe. In particular, Bruce offers a robust defence of the ‘secularization paradigm’ and critiques the ‘church growth optimists’ for their caricature of social science and the weakness of their empirical evidence and interpretations. Bruce contends that pockets of church growth, as documented by Goodhew and his colleagues, within a picture of overall decline would only refute the secularization thesis if the latter required that declining interest in Churches be universal, even, and rapid, which the thesis does not stipulate.

The same journal issue will contain Goodhew’s ‘Church Growth in Britain: A Response to Steve Bruce’, reprising much of the ground covered in the 2012 book but elaborating certain of the examples. While acknowledging the existence of significant church decline in modern and contemporary Britain (indeed, Goodhew claims – overclaims, to my mind – that the book states ‘the secularisation thesis (explicit and implicit) is true – but it is not the whole truth’), Goodhew argues that there has also been ‘significant church growth – notably in London, amongst black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities, and amongst new churches.’ Goodhew’s claims for London have recently found independent validation in the results of the London Church Census, 2012, undertaken by Peter Brierley, which appeared too late for Goodhew to take into account in his article. Neither has he been able to accommodate the latest findings about York, a case study in the collection, by Robin Gill (in chapter 6 of his Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Volume 2). The final substantive section of the article develops Goodhew’s previous caveats about national ‘net’ figures of religious change, albeit I found this particular discussion somewhat less than clear-cut.

Journal of Religion in Europe gives Bruce the last say in his ‘Further Thoughts on Church Growth and Secularization’. In this Bruce stands by his original conclusion that Goodhew ‘is quite happy for his purpose to be misunderstood in a way that falsely cheers the churches’. Bruce further counsels against the dangers of generalizing from case studies while accepting that there is much value in such studies of growing congregations. He also cites the BRIN post about Goodhew’s book as additional evidence of concerns about it.

The debate between Bruce and Goodhew is conducted in a perfectly civilized manner. However, it does not break significantly new ground, certainly not in the presentation of quantitative data. As is so often the case in academic controversy, the gap between the two parties is not as wide as it seems on the surface, in that both Bruce and Goodhew accept the coexistence of church growth and decline. The difference is essentially about the relative scale of each, how this ‘net’ picture should be interpreted and explained, and what its implications are for the long-term future of institutional religion in Britain. As Bruce has indicated in an email to me, his overriding problem with Goodhew’s book is that ‘the title, the introduction and the publisher’s spin all misrepresent what Goodhew’s contributors show: that in an overall context of decline there is also re-organization with some new outlets being created and some old ones attracting members from declining congregations’. From this perspective, I continue to side more with Bruce than Goodhew.

Community census

The UK’s religious organizations are estimated to employ 61,000 workers, with a yearly wage bill (including indirect costs) of £980 million, and to contribute £1 billion annually to the supply chain for goods and services. This is according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which prepared The Community Census on behalf of Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG) between March and May 2013, the summary report being published by EIG on 17 July 2013. In addition to CEBR’s economic impact assessment of community organizations (comprising charities and voluntary groups, heritage buildings and sites, as well as religious bodies), EIG commissioned Opinium Research to survey public attitudes to them, 2,001 UK adults being interviewed online in April. This poll revealed that a majority (57% overall, 51% of men and 62% of women) believes that their local religious organizations form an important aspect of the community, even though 59% say they personally never attend or support them (with 11% claiming to attend at least once a week and 16% at least once a month). Somewhat implausibly, the youngest age cohort (18-34 years) claims to attend most assiduously on a monthly basis, followed by the over-55s, and – finally – those aged 35-54, while 8% of the 18-34s anticipate increasing their attendance at religious organizations over the next year (against 3% nationally). The Community Census, which EIG intends to be the first in a regular series, can be found at:

http://www.ecclesiastical.com/Images/Ecclesiastical_Community_Census_Report_2013.pdf

Community life

People who actively practice a religion are more likely to volunteer, either formally or informally, and donate to charity than those who profess no religion or who have a religion but do not practice it. For example, among the religious practitioners, 40% undertake formal volunteering on a regular basis (at least once a month), compared with only 25% of the nones and non-practitioners of religion. Those who actively practice their religion are also more likely to volunteer formally (as part of a group) than informally (in an individual capacity). Much of this formal volunteering and charitable giving benefits religious organizations. The findings come from the first Community Life Survey, undertaken by TNS BMRB on behalf of the Cabinet Office as a successor to the discontinued Citizenship Survey. Initial results, based on face-to-face interviews with 6,915 adults aged 16 and over in England between August 2012 and April 2013, were published on 18 July 2013 at:

http://communitylife.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/explore-the-data.html

A Level results, June 2013

At 23,354, the number of students in the UK (excluding Scotland) sitting A Level Religious Studies (RS) in June 2013 was 1.4% more than in the previous year, notwithstanding a decrease of 1.3% in entries for all A Level subjects. It was also virtually twice the figure of 12,671 of ten years before (June 2003). The increase in RS candidates for 2013 over 2012 was somewhat greater among females (1.7%) than males (0.6%), and RS remains a disproportionately feminine choice at A Level, with 68.5% of its students being female this summer, against 54.2% for all subjects. The rise in RS entries was lower in England (1.2%) than in Northern Ireland (4.3%), while Wales actually recorded a decline of 0.7%. The pass rate for A Level RS was 98.8% this year, 0.2% more than in 2012 and 0.7% greater than the average for all subjects. The proportion achieving A* or A grades in RS was unchanged from 2012, at 25.5%, somewhat below the mean for all subjects (26.3%), females (26.6%) being more likely than males (23.2%) to achieve A* or A grades for A Level RS. The much larger number sitting AS Level RS (34,679) also grew between June 2012 and June 2013, by 3.0% in the UK, even though AS entries as a whole were down by 0.4%. For the Joint Council for Qualifications’ full analysis of the June 2013 A, AS, and AEA Level results, published on 15 August 2013, go to:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels/a-as-and-aea-results-summer-2013

Anglican cathedral statistics

Cathedral Statistics, 2012, published on 12 August 2013, documents ongoing growth in several aspects of the work of the Church of England’s 42 Cathedrals and the Royal Peculiar of Westminster Abbey. In particular, all week service attendances (Sunday and mid-week combined) at the cathedrals were 3.2% higher in 2012 than 2011 and 35.1% above the 2002 level (mostly as a result of mid-week improvement). Congregations during Holy Week were 1.9% up in 2012 over 2011 and on Easter Day by 14.2%, with the Easter Day figure 10.5% greater than in 2002. Attendances during Advent, by contrast, were down by 3.9% in 2012 against 2011 and on Christmas Day by 9.2%, largely, it seems, because 25 December fell on a Sunday in 2011 but on a Tuesday in 2012. However, both Advent and Christmas attendance statistics were still higher in 2012 than in 2002, by 4.7% and 10.0% respectively, albeit communicants, both at Christmas and Easter, showed no real expansion over the decade. At 9.7 million, visitors were 1.6% more than in 2011, although much reduced from 11.1 million in 2002; to these totals must be added visitors to Westminster Abbey (1.8 million in 2012). The number of volunteers, supporting these visitors, rose by 7.1% between 2011 and 2012 and by 30.5% from 2002.

As in previous years, the report does not attempt to relate the generally improved performance of cathedrals to the wider quantitative environment of the Church of England. To quote the leader in the current issue (16 August 2013, p. 10) of the Church Times: ‘Growth [in cathedrals] … has to be seen in the context of decline in parishes. How many in the cathedral’s community have arrived there disillusioned with parish life? While a cathedral booms, churchwardens and other volunteers not far away will be stretched.’ The newspaper’s separate news coverage of the data (p. 3) highlights strengthening links between cathedrals and their local communities as an explanation for the former’s successes, and the question posed in the open-to-all poll on the Church Times website is ‘Are cathedrals good models for parish churches?’ Cathedral Statistics, 2012 is at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1820547/2012cathedralstatistics.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged A Levels, Cabinet Office, Cathedrals, Centre for Economics and Business Research, charitable giving, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Community Census, Community Life Survey, David Goodhew, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, Joint Council for Qualifications, Journal of Religion in Europe, Opinium Research, religious organizations, religious studies, secularization, Steve Bruce, TNS-BMRB, volunteering | Leave a comment

2011 Census – Searching for Explanations

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Clive D. Field

The general direction of travel revealed by the 2011 census results for religion in England and Wales, published on 11 December 2012, in relation to those for 2001 (when the question was first asked) came as no surprise.

However, many commentators have been surprised by the speed of change over the past decade, not least in terms of the reduction in the number of professing Christians and the increase in those declaring no religion.

The headline figures for England and Wales are summarized in the table below:

England and Wales	2001	2011	Net change	% change
No religion	7709267	14097229	+ 6387962	+ 82.9
Christian	37338486	33243175	– 4095311	– 11.0
Buddhist	144453	247743	+ 103290	+ 71.5
Hindu	552421	816633	+ 264212	+ 47.8
Jewish	259927	263346	+ 3419	+ 1.3
Muslim	1546626	2706066	+ 1159440	+ 75.0
Sikh	329358	423158	+ 93800	+ 28.5
Any other religion	150720	240530	+ 89810	+ 59.6
Religion not stated	4010658	4038032	+ 27374	+ 0.7
Total	52041916	56075912	+ 4033996	+ 7.8

From this it will be seen that Christians were the only major religious group to have lost ground between the two censuses, in terms of absolute numbers. All other main groups expanded and, apart from the Jews, did so at a much faster rate than the growth in population. The ‘nones’ increased most of all, more than ten times greater than the population as a whole and even faster than the Muslims.

We are not yet in possession of cross-tabulations of the religion data, especially by demographics, and will have to wait well into next year for them to become available. In particular, these will be key to understanding regional and local, as well as national, variations.

Nevertheless, given the scale of Christian ‘losses’ and of ‘gains’ by the ‘nones’, it is not too early to start seeking explanations and to begin to map out an agenda for future research into the 2011 religion census which might begin to suggest explanations.

This post, therefore, is a preliminary attempt to identify some of the factors which would appear to merit further consideration, to assess how they may have impacted upon the responses which were given to the religion question.

Under coverage of the census

As with all censuses, the 2011 census did not initially reach 100% of English and Welsh residents through completion of the household schedule. This will have arisen through gaps in administrative knowledge and some measure of non-compliance. Therefore, the final population figure incorporates a degree of estimation. In the first statistical bulletin to contain headline results from the census, issued on 16 July 2012, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) explained:

‘The 2011 Census achieved its overall target response rate of 94 per cent of the usually resident population of England and Wales, and over 80 per cent in all local and unitary authorities … A good response was achieved to the 2011 Census but inevitably some people were missed. The issue of under coverage in a census is one that affects census takers everywhere and ONS designed methods and processes to address this. A Census Coverage Survey was carried out to measure under coverage in a sample of areas and, based on this and rigorous estimation methods, the census population estimates represent 100 per cent of the usually resident population in all areas. The estimation methods were subject to an independent peer review … All census estimates were quality assured extensively, using other national and local sources of information for comparison and review by a series of quality assurance panels. An extensive range of quality assurance, evaluation and methodology papers are being published alongside this release.’

Non-response to the religion question

Over and above the issue of ‘under coverage’, noted above, the religion question was affected by additional non-response. This arose from the fact that it was the only voluntary question to be asked in the whole census, being clearly marked as such, in reflection of the sensitivities which continue to exist around ‘the state’ investigating a topic which is often regarded as a personal and private matter.

In the event, only 7.2% chose not to answer the religion question, 0.5% fewer than in 2001 (albeit the absolute number was up). The slightly improved relative response may have reflected the efforts of ONS and faith communities to explain the rationale of the religion question among ethnic minorities. At present, we have no accurate means of knowing whether the religious profile of the ‘religion not stated’ category matched that of the 92.8% who did state their religion, or whether it was skewed in some way. A post-census survey which enquired into people’s motivations for declining to state their religion might have explicitly or implicitly shed some light on their hidden religious profession, but it is doubtless too late now to contemplate such a study. Meanwhile, it might be potentially misleading to reallocate this 7.2% as though they did match the 92.8%. It would naturally be very dangerous to assume that ‘religion not stated’ can be equated with ‘no religion’. But the fact that the number of ‘religion not stated’ was broadly similar at the two censuses perhaps enables us to discount it as a driver or explanation of religious change.

Question-wording

Previous research has indicated that variations in question-wording can produce significantly different results, and this is especially true of investigations into religion. There are several formulations which have been used to assess religious identity over the years, and these have often produced a wide gap between maxima and minima, not least for numbers of Christians and those professing no religion.

But it seems unlikely that question-wording can explain much of the change in the religious landscape of England and Wales evident from a comparison of the 2001 and 2011 censuses. The core question was unchanged: ‘What is your religion?’ While the question is viewed by some as imperfect, in implying that a religious identity is expected, this factor would only be relevant if there was a greater degree of such expectation in the minds of respondents in 2001 than there was in 2011. Given other religious changes during the decade, it might be possible to suggest that the ‘prestige’ effect of religion had lessened, and that some individuals felt it less necessary to declare a faith in 2011 than in 2001. However, other questions, such as frequency of attendance at religious services, still seem to engage the ‘prestige’ effect, leading to aspirational if not exaggerated answers.

Not only was the core question on religion the same, but the reply options were identical, with one variation. In 2001 ‘none’ was used and in 2011 ‘no religion’. ONS explained that this change was ‘for clarity’ and consistency with other questions. It would be possible to run a test, for example using a split sample, to see whether ‘no religion’ produces more affirmative replies than ‘none’, and thus whether the adoption of the code ‘no religion’ contributed in any way to the growth in the number selecting that option. Instinctively, however, this does not seem a plausible explanation for the growth in ‘nones’, certainly not in any large measure.

The running order of the reply options was likewise unaltered: no religion, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, any other religion. In the case of any other religion, the instruction in 2001 was ‘please write in’, in 2011 the more peremptory ‘write in’.

Reallocation of write-in replies

The write-in option was designed to be used, both in 2001 and 2011, by those who ticked the ‘any other religion’ box. In practice, some ticked the box but wrote nothing alongside (as yet an unknown number in 2011, but 19,000 in 2001). Others used the write-in option to qualify an answer which ONS judged would better fit another category, particularly Christian or no religion.

In fact, in 2001 only 17.2% of the 878,000 write-ins for any other religion were actually ultimately credited to any other religion. A further 33.3% were a Christian denomination and reassigned by ONS to the Christian category and 49.6% were judged by ONS to sit within the no religion rather than any other religion category, by far the biggest element being 390,000 Jedi Knights.

For 2011 ONS has not yet divulged how many write-ins were reclassified as Christians, but it has revealed that 260,000 were reassigned from any other religion to no religion, of whom the Jedi Knights, at 177,000, were still the single biggest component, albeit a shadow of their 2001 selves. Others moved to no religion included 32,000 agnostics, 29,000 atheists, and 15,000 humanists.

All in all, it seems unlikely that the processing by ONS of write-ins will have materially affected the results of the 2011 census or help to explain the major changes which have taken place since the 2001 census. There may have been some minor alterations in coding and treatment, but these will have had little impact on the big picture; these have been explored further in the recent post by David Voas about write-ins at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/census-2011-any-other-religion/

Head of household factor

Unlike in most sample surveys, the replies to questions in a census may not be given by the individual concerned but by proxy. The census is based on a household schedule, which will generally be completed by the head of the household or an equivalent senior figure. It is therefore possible that, in answering the question on religion, the head of household may impute to other members of the household his/her own religious views or record what he/she believes to be their affiliation but without ever asking them outright.

In their article on the 2001 religion census, published in Journal of Contemporary Religion (Vol. 19, 2004, pp. 23-8), David Voas and Steve Bruce hypothesized that as heads of households ‘are likely to be older than other members and religious affiliation is strongly correlated with age, one might thus expect the census figures to be biased upwards’. This might have accounted, in part, for the 72% of the population professing Christianity in 2001, which was the phenomenon that Voas and Bruce were concerned to explain at that time.

In fact, their brief analysis of the religion data from 2001 for both heads of households and all adults in the household did not suggest any striking differences between the two groups. One of the variations, albeit small, was that heads of households were 0.5% more likely to subscribe to no religion than adults as a whole. This will almost certainly have reflected the fact that heads of households were disproportionately men, and that males tend to declare no religion more than women.

Nevertheless, this head of household factor should not be lightly discounted. It could in principle be tested through a sample survey which asked heads of households to give the religious affiliation of household members while simultaneously asking the question directly of household members themselves. Given that men are disproportionately heads of households and disproportionately of no religion (one-fifth more likely than women in a 64,000 person survey by YouGov in 2011), there is at least a potential (if small) explanation for the big increase in ‘nones’ between the 2001 and 2011 censuses.

Cohort replacement effects

It is unnecessary to say much here about the importance of cohort replacement effects since they have already been explored in some detail by David Voas in his recent post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/religious-census-2011-what-happened-to-the-christians/

Suffice it to say that sample surveys, such as the British Social Attitudes Surveys, have mostly tended to show that religious affiliation is fairly stable across a person’s lifetime but declines over time in the country as a whole as a result of the death of older cohorts with a strong religious (especially Christian) identification and their replacement by young people with much lower levels of religious allegiance.

However, the scale of the fall in the Christian population between 2001 and 2011 is far more than can be explained by cohort replacement alone. According to the modelling undertaken by Voas in his post, based upon deaths during the decade, he projects that the number of Christians would only have fallen by 1.5 million, or from 72% to 69% of the population, as a direct consequence of cohort replacement.

Disaffiliation

We therefore have to face up to the possibility that a lot of people who gave their religion as Christian in 2001 recorded themselves as of no religion in 2011.

A superficially attractive explanation for this might be sought in the British Humanist Association (BHA)’s Census Campaign, under the somewhat tongue-in-cheek slogan of ‘If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so’. Is it possible that this campaign tipped the balance by persuading many to abandon their ‘cultural Christianity’ and to embrace no faith? At present, thinking in the BRIN team is that this was probably a highly marginal influence, for the following reasons:

The campaign was launched as early as 27 October 2010, and it is very hard to maintain momentum for such an initiative over such a long period as five months (census day was 27 March 2011)
The BHA is a fairly small organization in terms of its paid-up membership and immediate circle of influence, and it therefore had to rely upon advertising, publicity in the commercial media, and social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) in order to reach the general public
The BHA never succeeded in realizing its advertising fund-raising target for the campaign
The BHA was informed that its slogan was likely to cause widespread and serious offence and had to be modified for advertising purposes (a previous BHA campaign in 2009, under the banner of ‘There is probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life’, had already proved controversial)
Companies owning advertising space in railway stations refused to display three different BHA census posters, thereby depriving BHA of a major promotional opportunity
BHA census posters on 200 buses in London and six other cities had to be rephrased to read (less strikingly): ‘Not religious? In this year’s census, say so’
To the best of our knowledge, the BHA has published no independent market research to testify to the visibility and impact of the campaign
The only other major new religion-related census campaign in 2011, to promote Heavy Metal as a religion, was a singular flop, attracting a mere 6,242 write-ins

Therefore, defection or disaffiliation of Christians since 2001 is a probable major cause of the decline of Christian allegiance over the decade. Even though it is not the complete answer (after all, the net decline in Christians constitutes no more than 64.1% of the net growth of ‘nones’), it should undoubtedly be a primary focus of research effort. Notwithstanding the census in England and Wales did not distinguish between different types of Christians (it only did so in Scotland and Northern Ireland), such research needs to be undertaken at a denominational level and should particularly concentrate on affiliation to the Church of England, which has long been known to be the weakest and most nominal of all religious groups. Besides, we know from sample survey evidence that affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church has remained relatively stable and that, while support for the historic Free Churches (such as the Methodists and United Reform) has waned, there has been balancing growth at the Pentecostal and charismatic end of the spectrum, especially of black minority churches, which represent a new form of ‘Free Churchism’.

The Church of England undoubtedly seems to be in a fairly bad way in terms of the decline of popular identification with it. Fifty years ago, in 1963, when Gallup asked the question ‘what is your religious denomination?’ of 20 samples aggregating to more than 21,000 adults in Great Britain, 61% replied Church of England (presumably including its sister Churches in Wales and Scotland). By 2011, when YouGov asked 64,000 adult Britons ‘what is your religion?’ (the identical question to the census), professing Anglicans had reduced to 31%, although 43% had been brought up as an Anglican as a child.

The rites of passage, another bulwark of residual Anglicanism, tell a similar story. Back in 1900 Anglican baptisms represented 65% of live births, but by 2000 this was down to 20% and by 2010 to 12%. In 1900 the Church of England conducted 65% of all marriages, but only 24% in 2000 and 2010. Even funerals, over which the Churches in general and the Church of England in particular held a near monopoly until well after the Second World War, have seen a collapse. In 2000 46% of deaths were still followed by an Anglican funeral, but only 37% in 2010.

It is not enough for Anglican apologists to counter these facts, as they often do, by reference to pockets of growth in the Church of England (Fresh Expressions and cathedrals are most often cited). Growth and decline have coexisted in organized religion for a very long time, so green shoots in some places do not contradict the overall downward trajectory in Anglican fortunes. In statistical terms, the Church of England can no longer count even on the nominal support of the majority of the nation.

So, if large-scale disaffiliation of Christians has occurred between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, it is probably in the Church of England that it needs to be sought. The motivations for it also require to be explored, in particular, the extent to which defections are a manifestation of growing dissatisfaction with the Church and thus a kind of ‘protest vote’. Three opinion polls in 2012 (by YouGov in January and November and ComRes in July) have shown that a clear majority of the nation feels that the Church of England is out-of-touch with modern society, 76% saying so in the most recent survey, following the General Synod’s rejection of women bishops. Indeed, at a time of growing liberalism in public attitudes to diversity issues, the Church’s continuing difficulties over sexuality and gender do present it with something of a public relations mountain to climb.

International migrants

One of the key demographic changes to have occurred between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was the dramatic increase in the number of international migrants, people born outside the UK but who were usually resident in England and Wales at the time of the census. In 2001 there had been 4.6 million answering this description (8.8% of the population); by 2011 there were 7.5 million (13.4%, roughly one-third from the European Union and two-thirds from the rest of the world). Of these 7.5 million, over half (3.8 million) had arrived in the UK between 2001 and 2011. Regionally, the number of residents born outside the UK was highest in London (36.7%). Summary details are provided in the ONS statistical bulletin on International Migrants in England and Wales, 2011, published on 11 December 2012 and available at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_290335.pdf

It is naturally important to understand how immigration may or may not have affected the religious landscape of England and Wales. At present, we have no cross-tabulations from the census for religion by country of birth, although such data should become available in due course and will provide conclusive proof of the relationship between the two variables. All that can be done for the moment is to look at the religious profile of the countries from which these migrants have come and assume that the religion of the migrants broadly matches that national religious profile.

To take a very crude example, the top ten countries for non-UK born residents in England and Wales at the 2011 census are set out below, together with an indication of the religious profile of those countries (the latter information being taken from the very recent report on The Global Religious Landscape by the Pew Research Center).

Country	Nationals resident in England and Wales in 2011	Dominant religious group(s) of country
India	694000	Hindu 79.5%
Poland	579000	Christian 94.3%
Pakistan	482000	Muslim 96.4%
Republic of Ireland	407000	Christian 92.0%
Germany	274000	Christian 68.7%
Bangladesh	212000	Muslim 89.8%
Nigeria	191000	Christian 49.3%, Muslim 48.8%
South Africa	191000	Christian 81.2%
United States	177000	Christian 78.3%
Jamaica	160000	Christian 77.2%

The superficial inferences we can draw from this table are that immigration a) may have contributed to the growth of the non-Christian population of England and Wales between 2001 and 2011 but b) seems unlikely to explain the big increase in the number professing no religion. In these ten countries the proportion with no religious affiliation was highest in Germany (24.7%), followed by Jamaica (17.2%), the United States (16.4%), and South Africa(14.9%); it fell to less than 0.1% in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Moreover, the collapse in the proportion of Christians might almost certainly have been worse but for international migrants, who often came from countries where Christianity was the dominant faith. For example, there was a ninefold growth in the number of Poles (who are preponderantly Catholic) resident in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011, following Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004.

Natural growth

Natural growth is probably irrelevant as an explanation for the increase in the ‘nones’ but almost certainly accounts for much of the rise in the non-Christian population between 2001 and 2011, especially of Muslims. The 2001 census had demonstrated that Muslims had the youngest age profile of all religious groups, as well as the largest households. A similar picture is eventually likely to be revealed by the 2011 census and merits detailed investigation once the data are available to do so. Meanwhile, other evidence also testifies to the fact that Muslims are disproportionately young (and thus more likely than average to be in the child-rearing phase) and inclined to have more children than the norm. The phenomenon is explored on a global basis by Eric Kaufmann in his book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (Profile Books, 2010), which suggests that a fecundity-driven growth of ‘fundamentalist populations’ (Christian, Jewish or Muslim) will reverse the march of secularism before 2050.

Needless to say, all the foregoing are very much preliminary observations and subject to revision in the light of further reflection and the availability of more data. At present, our ability to explore the 2011 census results for religion is very constrained by the limited amount of information released by ONS thus far.

Posted in Official data, Religious Census, Research note, Rites of Passage | Tagged British Humanist Association, census of population, Christians, Church of England, cohort replacement, David Voas, disaffiliation, Eric Kaufmann, head of household, international migrants, natural growth, non-response, nones, Office for National Statistics, Pew Research Center, question-wording, Religious Affiliation, rites of passage, Steve Bruce, under coverage, write-in replies | 1 Comment

Religious Census 2011 – What happened to the Christians?

Posted on December 13, 2012 by David Voas

When it comes to religion, the sharp fall in the ‘Christian’ population has been the big story of the 2011 census. If the 2001 results posed one problem for religious statisticians – why was the Christian figure so high? – the latest findings are just as puzzling: why has it fallen so fast?

The surge of 2001

Ten years ago, the surprise was that far more people identified themselves as Christian on the census (nearly 72%) than in various national surveys (54% in the British Social Attitudes survey). In an article published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, Steve Bruce and I argued that the difference in England and Wales arose because

census forms are often completed by one individual on behalf of the entire household (although we offered evidence that this factor was less influential than had been thought);
the census religion question immediately followed the one on ethnicity and seemed to be simply a supplementary question on the same topic;
the wording of the question (“What is your religion?”) implies that a religious identity is expected;
the form offered a single, undifferentiated ‘Christian’ category, and would frequently have been viewed as part of a system of cultural classification;
and finally, anxiety about immigration and political Islam led many respondents to assert their identification with the country’s Christian heritage.

The fall in 2011

This time the issue is different. Analysis of the full set of British Social Attitudes datasets since the survey began in 1983 shows that religious affiliation is remarkably stable, on average, over the adult life course. Many individuals gain or lose a religious identity (or being little concerned about such matters, vacillate in what they report), but very little aggregate change is found within any given generation. The overall decline in religious identification is not the product of individuals defecting to no religion, but rather of elderly Christians being replaced in the population by young people who are – and remain – less religious.

That being so, it was natural to expect a similar stability in the census returns. Of course the Christian percentage was bound to drop somewhat both because of cohort replacement and as a result of growth in the Muslim and other minority populations, but there was little reason to think that people who called themselves ‘Christian’ in 2001 would not do so again in 2011.

In the event, the outcome has been very different. The total population of England and Wales has gone up by four million, but the number of self-described Christians has gone down by the same amount. The Christian percentage has fallen, according to the census, from 71.7% to 59.3% between 2001 and 2011. A decline of that magnitude can only occur if some people have decided that they don’t have a religion after all.

How many such people are there? We’ll have a much better idea when the cross-tabulations by age, ethnicity and so on are available in the spring. In due course it will even be possible to estimate the figure directly (and very accurately) using the Longitudinal Survey, which links records from successive censuses for a sample of the population. In the meantime, here is a conservative estimate based on the statistics currently available.

The relative decline in Christian affiliation is the product of three factors: replacement, dilution and defection. Old people who in overwhelming majority have a religious identity are replaced in the population by a new generation that does not. Even if there were no absolute losses, the Christian proportion would decline as the number of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others rises. Once we account for these two factors, we can estimate the amount of drift into no religion.

Cohort replacement

We know from vital statistics that some 5,122,500 deaths were recorded in England and Wales between the two census dates. We could use life tables to distribute those deaths by age, but for present purposes we can be content with a more straightforward procedure: we will simply assume that the oldest people are those who died. Excluding about 97,200 non-Christians, 87% of the most elderly group called themselves Christian. Based on the trajectory of generational decline in the figures from 2001, only 56% of their replacements in the population will be Christian, even omitting people of other faiths. In a stationary population, we could thereby project that the absolute number of Christians would fall by one and a half million, and their share would drop from 72% to 69%.

Dilution from growth in other religions

As we know, however, the population is growing, and 42% of that growth has been in the non-Christian population. Once the additional Muslims, Hindus and so on are considered, there are still 2,320,000 more people in the country at the end than at the beginning of the period. The challenge is to decide what assumptions to make about their religious identities. A large proportion will be Africans and Eastern Europeans, large majorities of whom choose the Christian option. For the moment I propose simply to apply the 2001 value (with people of other faiths omitted, 76% were Christian) to the 2011 population boost. The net effect of growth is to dilute the Christian share to 67%. At the same time, however, the projected number of Christians is in excess of 37.5 million, slightly higher than in 2001.

Defection

As shown above, much of the change in the Christian share of the population is the result of natural causes: the death of elderly Christians and their replacement by young people who have no religion, and a continuing growth of non-Christian groups through immigration and natural increase. Using very generous assumptions about the amount of change produced by cohort replacement, and relatively conservative assumptions about growth through immigration, we have managed to explain about 40% of the fall in the Christian percentage of the population. Nevertheless the calculations would not have led us to expect a drop in the Christian headcount between 2001 and 2011.

I estimate that about 4,300,000 people in England and Wales were identified as Christian in 2001 and as having no religion in 2011. (To be more accurate, this value gives the net change: it is very likely that many people called themselves Christian in 2011 having not done so in 2001, and hence the actual number going the other way would be correspondingly larger.) This figure is 13% of the total number of 2001 Christians who were still alive in 2011.

The analysis underlines the remarkable amount of change that has occurred in the relatively short period between the last two censuses. Nearly a quarter of the people who called themselves Christian in 2001 no longer appear in that column, casualties of old age or disaffiliation. Many of them have been replaced via natural increase and immigration, but the situation is intriguingly fluid.

What happened to the Christians?

The 72% figure was never a good indication of the religious state of the nation, and likewise the 12.5 percentage point fall between 2001 and 2011 is unlikely to be evidence of a previously unnoticed shift towards secularity. The census findings are somewhat better aligned than before with national survey data, though for the reasons mentioned at the outset the Christian share is still on the high side. Why the proportion has dropped by so much, though, is a question that is likely to occupy us for some time to come.

David Voas is Professor of Population Studies at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, and co-Director of British Religion in Numbers.

Posted in Official data, Religious Census | Tagged Census 2011, Christianity, David Voas, Religious change, Secularisation, Steve Bruce | 2 Comments

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