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More Scottish Census Data and Other News

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Clive D. Field

More Scottish census data

Release 3A of the 2011 census results for Scotland was made available on 27 February 2014. It comprised the first of a series of rolling releases of cross-tabulations, providing (in this case) detailed characteristics on ethnicity, identity, language, and religion, from the national to the local levels. The Scottish Census Data Explorer tool is the entry-point for a range of configurable standard outputs and can be found at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ods-web/standard-outputs.html

Three standard outputs are relevant to BRIN from release 3A: Table DC2107SC (religion by sex by five-year age bands; Table DC2201SC (religion by ethnic group); and Table DC2204SC (religion by national identity). The national identity data are obviously rather topical in view of the referendum on Scottish independence later this year, especially so since the extensive referendum polling has largely (if not entirely) ignored any possible religious influences on prospective voting. A simplified version of Table DC2204SC is therefore given below (the other category subsumes: Scottish and any other identity; English identity; any other combination of UK identities; other identity with or without a UK identity):

%	Scottish	British	Scottish and British	Other
Total	62.4	8.4	18.3	10.9
Church of Scotland	65.8	6.8	24.8	2.7
Roman Catholic	65.6	5.3	13.9	15.2
Other Christian	32.5	17.2	14.3	36.0
Buddhist	26.6	16.6	7.4	49.3
Hindu	8.6	16.6	3.8	71.0
Jew	36.8	18.2	19.4	25.6
Muslim	24.3	29.2	9.9	36.6
Sikh	30.5	29.4	9.0	31.2
Other religion	51.2	12.8	11.9	24.2
No religion	65.9	8.4	15.7	10.0
Religion not stated	58.3	10.0	18.0	13.8

This analysis demonstrates that Scottishness is disproportionately concentrated among adherents of the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church and among those professing no faith at all, with two-thirds in each of these three groups describing themselves as Scottish only. The Scottish versus British debate seems much less relevant to other Protestants and non-Christians in Scotland, the majority (other Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus) or plurality of whom (Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and other religion) decline to choose between these two competing identities or select another identity combination.

From Table DC2107SC we can calculate the religious profile of Scotland in 2011 separately for children and adolescents and for adults aged 16 and over, as follows:

%	0-15	16+	All
Church of Scotland	21.3	34.8	32.4
Roman Catholic	15.3	16.0	15.9
Other Christian	4.2	5.8	5.5
Buddhist	0.1	0.3	0.2
Hindu	0.3	0.3	0.3
Jew	0.1	0.1	0.1
Muslim	2.5	1.2	1.4
Sikh	0.2	0.2	0.2
Any other	0.1	0.3	0.3
No religion	47.9	34.3	36.7
Not stated	8.1	6.7	7.0

Of particular interest is that the majority (56%) of Scottish under-16s were returned as without a faith or religion not stated. It is hard to know whether respondents completing the census schedules were admitting that children in their households were being brought up without a religion or implicitly stating that this was a matter for them to make up their own minds about when old enough to do so. This phenomenon particularly impacts the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church having a similar proportion of adherents among children as among adults. Also notable is the much stronger showing of Muslims among children than adults, laying the foundation for future growth of Islam in Scotland (albeit from a small base, relative to England).

The combination of Table DC2107SC and the previously available DC2107EW now enables us to present final figures for the religious profile of the adult population (aged 16 and over) of Great Britain in 2011, as follows:

	England and Wales	Scotland	Great Britain
Whole population	45,496,780	4,379,072	49,875,852
Christian	27,926,262	2,477,436	30,403,698
Buddhist	218,935	11,685	230,620
Hindu	665,429	13,701	679,130
Jew	210,426	5,294	215,720
Muslim	1,810,929	54,193	1,865,122
Sikh	336,352	7,005	343,357
Any other	220,291	14,155	234,446
No religion	10,909,996	1,501,972	12,411,968
Not stated	3,198,160	293,631	3,491,791

Anglican ordinands

A Church of England press release on 25 February 2014 celebrated the fact that in 2013 young people (under 30) comprised almost one-quarter of those accepted for training in the Church’s ministry. The absolute number of young ordinands was, at 113, the same in 2013 as in 2012 and about 30 higher than the average throughout the noughties, albeit the figure had been 112 in 1998. There were slight increases between the two years in ordinands in their thirties and forties with those in their fifties flat. Ordinands who were 60 years and over reduced from 45 in 2012 to 19 in 2013. The percentage below the age of 30 during the past two decades (calculated from various editions of Church Statistics) is as follows:

1994	25.5	2004	12.6
1995	22.6	2005	14.9
1996	19.6	2006	15.2
1997	21.5	2007	14.8
1998	22.9	2008	16.7
1999	18.1	2009	15.1
2000	19.7	2010	21.0
2001	15.0	2011	16.6
2002	14.9	2012	22.2
2003	15.4	2013	22.6

Spotlight on Seventh-Day Adventists

This week’s jailing of two self-styled Seventh-Day Adventists for the manslaughter of their five-month-old son, who died of rickets in 2012, has brought some unwelcome media publicity for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The couple had refused medical treatment for their son on religious grounds, apparently regarding the death as ‘God’s will’. The Church has just issued a press release distancing itself from the couple’s ‘misguided understanding in their belief system’, and pointing out that they had drifted away from the Church since 2009.

The sectarian movement which became the Seventh-Day Adventist Church originated in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century but what is now its British Union Conference has always been relatively small. Its membership was first reported in 1903, at 1,160, rising steadily for the next 60 years, when it reached five figures (10,084 in 1963). It has more than trebled in the past half-century, standing at 34,048 in December 2012 (when last reported), almost certainly on the back of immigration. British membership flows for 2006-12, summarized below, are tabulated in full on the Church’s website at:

http://adventist.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/11574/BUC-Quarterly-Membership-Reports-2006-to-2012.pdf

	January	Gains	Losses	December
2006	25,520	2,432	1,057	26,895
2007	26,895	1,992	777	28,110
2008	28,110	1,541	601	29,050
2009	29,050	2,244	760	30,534
2010	30,534	1,647	519	31,662
2011	31,662	1,813	460	33,015
2012	33,015	1,548	515	34,048

Schools and creationism

Fearful that some faith-based academies and free schools, released from the strictures of the national curriculum, may seek to replace the teaching of evolution with creationism, the Government has clarified that all state-funded schools must teach evolution and not present creationism as a scientifically valid theory.

However, new research from the University of York’s Institute for Effective Education, among more than 200 14- to 16-year-olds in four English secondaries, demonstrated that student views on the origins of human life, and willingness to engage with the inter-relationship of science and religion, vary considerably according to their religious beliefs (Christian, Muslim, or none). Therefore, the researchers warn, the insensitive teaching of evolution in schools, devoid of any religious reference, could risk alienating pupils with a strong faith and turning them off science.

The full research can be found in the pay-per-view/subscription-based article by Pam Hanley, Judith Bennett, and Mary Ratcliffe, ‘The Inter-Relationship of Science and Religion: A Typology of Engagement’, which was recently published in the online edition of International Journal of Science Education. A freely available summary appeared on 12 February 2014 in the higher education e-journal The Conversation, which, in turn, formed the basis of news coverage in the Times Educational Supplement for 21 February 2014 and The Times for 22 February 2014. See:

http://theconversation.com/can-schools-find-way-through-creationism-meets-science-minefield-in-the-classroom-22807

A sixtieth anniversary

Sixty years ago today (on 1 March 1954) Billy Graham commenced his Greater London crusade in the Harringay Arena. By the time the crusade had finished, at Wembley Stadium on 22 May, he had reached an audience of over two million. Graham was already no stranger to Britain, having visited it for evangelistic purposes several times since 1946, as part of a wider (but uncoordinated) movement of revivalism in the years immediately after the Second World War, and in which all the major Protestant Churches, and even the Catholic Church, participated. After his 1954 crusade, Graham came back to run more crusades: in Glasgow and London in 1955; Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast in 1961; London in 1966 and 1967; Oxford and Cambridge in 1980; Blackpool in 1982; Bristol, Sunderland, Norwich, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Ipswich in 1984; Sheffield in 1985; London in 1989; and Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow in 1991.

How was Graham regarded by the British at the time of the 1954 crusade? According to two Gallup polls, he was certainly well known in the country, 83% of Britons having heard of him in March and 88% in May. A minority perceived him as a good and religious man doing very good work, 18% and 34% respectively, a big increase over the two months, reflecting the huge media coverage of the crusade. A further 15% and 13% suggested he was not likely to do much good in Britain, and another 12% and 11% said he was more needed in America. In March 13% and in May 7% thought he was just a curiosity or performer, while 17% and 22% had no interest in him.

The proportion of attenders at the crusades who ‘came forward’ as enquirers was small, around 2% in London in 1954 and Glasgow in 1955. They were disproportionately women and young people, and the majority already had a church association. A detailed assessment of the effects of mass evangelism in the 1950s, made by John Highet in his The Scottish Churches (1960), was fairly downbeat about its value. Certainly, the Graham crusades of 1954-55 coincided with the beginning of a renewed down-turn in Protestant church membership after a momentary reversal of decline (for some denominations, at least) in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Ethnicity, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Billy Graham, census of population, church membership, Church of England, Creationism, crusades, evangelism, evolution, International Journal of Science Education, Judith Bennett, Mary Ratcliffe, ordinands, Pam Hanley, Religious Affiliation, science, Scotland, Seventh-Day Adventist Church | Leave a comment

Welfare Reform and Other News

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Welfare reform (1)

Recent attacks by church leaders from several denominations on the Coalition Government’s welfare and benefits reform programme seem to be giving the British public pause for thought, according to a YouGov poll for today’s edition of The Sunday Times, for which 2,141 adults were interviewed online on 20-21 February 2014. Asked whether they agreed with the church leaders’ criticisms, which branded the reforms as a ‘disgrace’ and leaving some people at risk of ‘destitution’, opinion was evenly divided, 42% agreeing and 42% disagreeing. Most negative about the Government’s policy were Labour voters (71%) and Scots (57%), while those more inclined to reject the views of the church leaders included Conservative supporters (77%) and residents of southern England outside London (50%). For the full results, see p. 9 of the data tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7ievwsmlza/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140221.pdf

This is not the first intervention about the current Government’s welfare reform programme on the part of church leaders. For BRIN’s previous coverage of public reaction to such intervention, see:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/sunday-times-religion-poll-2/ [17 March 2013]

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/lords-spiritual/ [27 January 2012]

Welfare reform (2)

Meanwhile, opinion about the welfare system shows some signs of division along religious lines, according to a ComRes poll conducted online among a sample of 2,027 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 6-8 December 2013. Results were released on 19 February 2014 to coincide with the publication of the latest report from the think-tank Theos, The Future of Welfare, comprising 12 essays introduced and edited by Nick Spencer. The data tables for the survey can be found at:

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

Some of the key findings to emerge from the research include:

Non-Christians are most confident that the welfare state will survive in something like its present nature and scale in 30 years, 45% against 31% for Christians and 28% for people of no faith, the plurality view among the latter groups being that it will survive but in a diminished form.
Christians (75%) take a harder line than non-Christians (63%) or those without religion (60%) in believing that the receipt of welfare benefits should be dependent on prior financial contributions through the tax system, just 19% of Christians disagreeing.
Christians (63%) are also much more likely to disagree with the suggestion that everyone should receive benefits, irrespective of whether they have been paying taxes, this being 10% more than the religiously unaffiliated and 26% more than for non-Christians (51% of whom actually agree with the proposition).
A plurality among people of no faith (49%) do not think that the relatively wealthy should be entitled to some welfare benefits even if they have been paying taxes, whereas both Christians (58%) and non-Christians (53%) deem such entitlement to be perfectly appropriate (albeit 37% of each say not).
Paradoxically, all faith groups (ranging from 64% of those without religion to 70% of Christians) agree that welfare benefits should be a safety net for only the poorest in society.

Of course, such results do not establish any causal effect for religion in shaping views on welfare, and differences are likely to be attributable in the main to underlying demographics, especially of age and social class/wealth. For example, those of no religion will be found disproportionately among younger age cohorts who are, overall, perhaps more economically challenged than their parents’ generation. This may well explain why many of them feel unsympathetic to the relatively wealthy drawing down welfare benefits.

Seven deadly sins

Asked to nominate the worst of the seven ‘deadly sins’ in a recent YouGov poll, a plurality of Britons (43%) replied greed. This sin easily surpassed wrath (18%), sloth (11%), envy (7%), gluttony (5%), lust (3%), and pride (3%). However, when it came to confessing their own one or two worst vices, gluttony and sloth topped the list, at 25% each, followed by pride (19%), wrath (15%), envy (12%), greed (9%), and lust (8%). So, while greed is considered to be the worst sin, it is the one which people are much less likely to own up to themselves. Detailed figures are supposedly available through the link embedded in the YouGov blog post of 20 February 2014, but the link is broken (BRIN has reported it to YouGov), so only the blog is currently available at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/02/20/greed-deadliest-sin/

Ethnicity and generational change

The first of the 2014 issues of Ethnic and Racial Studies (Vol. 37, No. 1) comprises nine articles on the theme of generational change (between first and second generations) among ethnic minorities in Britain. Several of these essays explore the religious dimension, drawing especially upon the British Election Study Ethnic Minority Survey (EMBES) in which a cross-section of 2,787 ethnic minority respondents was interviewed, face-to-face and by self-completion questionnaire, from 7 May to 31 August 2010. The contributions likely to be of most interest to BRIN readers are:

Lucinda Platt, ‘Is There Assimilation in Minority Groups’ National, Ethnic, and Religious Identity?’ (pp. 46-70). Platt’s principal finding is that there is generational decline on a range of measures of religiosity for all groups with the partial exception of Muslims. This confirms other evidence of a trend of generational assimilation towards majority and away from minority identity and, in a religious sense, could be said to constitute ‘secularization’. Notwithstanding, this is partially qualified by revelations that the second generation of Hindu immigrants prioritized their religious over their ethnic identity, and that perceptions of religious discrimination enhanced common cause among people of the same faith.
Raya Muttarak, ‘Generation, Ethnic, and Religious Diversity in Friendship Choice: Exploring Interethnic Close Ties in Britain’ (pp. 71-98). Muttarak uses pooled data from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 Citizenship Surveys, rather than EMBES. Interethnic friendship patterns are shown to vary significantly by ethnic group, religion, and generation. Ethnic groups sharing similar traits (such as region of origin, race, or religion) were more likely to nominate each other as close friends, although the effect weakened between the first and second generations. In particular, Indian Muslims had a substantially higher chance of having Pakistani close friends than fellow Indians of other religious persuasions. However, black Christians (Caribbean and African) had a higher likelihood of having white British close friends than did other blacks.
Siobhan McAndrew and David Voas, ‘Immigrant Generation, Religiosity, and Civic Engagement in Britain’ (pp. 99-119). Mainly using EMBES (other surveys are drawn upon), but analysing for an intermediate (1.5) as well as first and second generations, intergenerational secularization is found across ethnic minority groups, as measured by private religious practice (especially) and religious salience. At the same time, communal religious practice appeared robust to generational decline, apart from black Caribbeans. While immigrant religiosity failed to foster generalized social trust, it is revealed to promote greater civic integration and volunteering.
Sin Yi Cheung, ‘Ethno-Religious Minorities and Labour Market Integration: Generational Advancement or Decline?’ (pp. 140-60). EMBES is used to examine four labour market outcomes: economic activity, unemployment, access to salaried jobs, and self-employment. The second generation of immigrants showed little advancement in these outcomes relative to the first generation. Substantial ethno-religious ‘penalties’ persisted for all of the outcomes except self-employment, and there was a particularly strong ‘religious penalty’ among Muslim women.
Anthony Heath and Neli Demireva, ‘Has Multiculturalism Failed in Britain?’ (pp. 161-80). Analysis of EMBES, again incorporating a 1.5 generation, demonstrates that all ethno-religious groups have displayed major change across the generations in the direction of a British identity and a reduced social distance, which can co-exist with positive orientations toward their own ethnic culture (as reflected in in-group marriage and friendship). Only a small minority of respondents had taken a separatist position, rejecting a British identity and espousing ‘radical’ socio-political positions. No evidence was found that rates of intergenerational change had been slower among groups that had made successful claims for cultural recognition (such as Sikhs and Muslims). In contrast, lower levels of integration were associated with perceptions of individual or group discrimination.

For abstracts and access options for all these articles, go to:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rers20/37/1#.UwOlUjZFDX4

BMRB turns 80

The British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) is celebrating its eightieth birthday year, laying claim to ‘the longest continuous heritage of any social research company in Britain’. It was established in 1933 as the research arm of advertising agency J. Walter Thompson but quickly shifted emphasis away from commercially oriented research, winning its first contract with the Government in 1939. In 1987 it joined the WPP Group which bought out TNS in 2009, resulting in the creation of TNS BMRB as one of the three constituent companies in the Kantar Group, WPP’s insight, information, and consulting division. TNS Omnibus is a separate company which powers TNS BMRB’s Public Opinion Monitor. Compared to, say, the Gallup Poll (now effectively defunct in Britain), BMRB has not been a major player in religion-related survey research. However, you will find around 30 entries in the BRIN source database where BMRB was responsible for the fieldwork, including the 1963 Political Change in Britain study for David Butler and Donald Stokes, which was the forerunner of the British Election Studies.

Posted in Historical studies, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Anthony Heath, benefits, British Election Study Ethnic Minority Survey, British Market Research Bureau, church leaders, Citizenship Survey, ComRes, David Voas, EMBES, Ethnic and Racial Studies, ethnic minorities, friends, generational change, government, Immigration, integration, labour market, Lucinda Platt, Neli Demireva, Raya Muttarak, secularization, seven deadly sins, Sin Yi Cheung, Siobhan McAndrew, Sunday Times, Theos, TNS-BMRB, welfare reform, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church of England Health Check and Other News

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Church of England health check

Further to our post of 31 January 2014, we now note the appearance of the second and third instalments of the ‘Church Health Check’ series being run in the Church Times. In the issue for 7 February 2014 (pp. 21-8) there were various essays by academics and insiders focusing on the leadership and structure of the Church of England. Those which had a particularly quantitative dimension were by:

Professor Linda Woodhead who examined (pp. 21-2) the Church’s statistics of ministry for 2012, concluding that ‘there are no longer enough troupers left to keep the show on the road, and the show will have to change’ – see further the BRIN post of 24 October 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/from-st-george-to-prince-george/
Professor Leslie Francis who summarized (pp. 26-7) his research into psychological type profiling of Anglican bishops, to determine whether the Church has the right sort of episcopate – see the BRIN post of 30 November 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/st-andrews-day-and-other-news/
Professor David Voas who reported (pp. 26-7) on the importance of clergy leadership qualities to church growth, noting ‘there are strong associations between growth and personality type, but none between growth and attendance on leadership courses’ – see the BRIN post of 18 January 2014 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/anglican-church-growth-and-other-news/

The same issue of the Church Times also contained (p. 2) two shorter reports quoting further findings from the newspaper’s 2013 readership survey, which attracted 4,620 self-selecting respondents. They revealed that 73% expressed confidence in the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury (7% disagreeing), but just 23% had confidence in the General Synod (37% disagreeing and 41% undecided), and 37% in the Archbishops’ Council. Sub-nationally, 69% (71% among laity) had confidence in their local clergy and 63% in their diocesan bishop. On matters of sexual morality, Anglo-Catholics and Broad Anglicans were shown to be more liberally disposed than Evangelicals, suggesting that the Church of England’s internal strife over homosexuality is far from over. Among Evangelicals, 63% disapproved of ordaining practising homosexuals as priests and 65% as bishops, while 75% were opposed to same-sex marriage in church and 51% to the blessing of such relationships. There was more sign of consensus on another historically contested issue (but now with just one final hurdle to clear in July’s General Synod following this week’s debate), that of women bishops, with support running at 76% for Anglo-Catholics, 77% for Evangelicals, and 93% for Broad Anglicans. These two reports are freely available online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/7-february/news/uk/poll-lack-of-trust-in-synod

The third instalment of the ‘Church Health Check’ can be found in the current issue of the Church Times (14 February 2014, pp. 21-7) and is devoted to the social impact of the Church of England. This has a rather limited quantitative element. However, the lead article by Professor Linda Woodhead (pp. 21-2) draws upon her 2013 Westminster Faith Debates surveys to illustrate how people still connect to the Church in ways apart from regular attendance at public worship, while also noting that take-up of all three church-based rites of passage has diminished. Some of the Opinion Research Business polling for the Church of England over the last decade or so is also relevant in this context, a couple of examples of which can be viewed through the Research and Statistics link webpage (which, incidentally, is in desperate need of an overhaul and update to consolidate the archival material) at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics.aspx

The same issue of the Church Times (p. 3) carries further results from the 2013 readership survey, revealing that 67% of this sub-set of Anglicans are currently involved in some form of unpaid community work (volunteering), with 35% active in two or more fields. Education (19%), local community action (18%), cultural activities (18%), children’s work (12%), and social welfare services (10%) were most frequently mentioned by the self-selecting sample. Volunteering by these clergy and lay churchgoer respondents is said to be at least twice as great as by the population at large, as recorded in Government surveys. See further:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/14-february/news/uk/if-you-need-help,-turn-to-a-churchgoer

Finally, the issue of 14 February 2014 contains a full page (p. 17) printing nine letters from readers in response to the first two instalments of ‘Church Health Check’.

Catholics polled on family life – the sequel

On 8 November 2013 BRIN reported on the Roman Catholic Church’s global consultation of the views of the faithful on family life, including vexed issues such as contraception and same-sex relationships, in preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, to be held in the Vatican on 5-19 October 2014. The consultation, by means of a 40-question survey instrument, attracted significant attention, not to say controversy, inside and outside the Catholic Church. It was criticized in some quarters for its inadequate methodology and theologically opaque content, although the Vatican was at pains to point out that it was not an opinion poll and that the Church’s teaching is not determined by majority popular vote.

Notwithstanding, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales took the lead in putting the questionnaire online and received a healthy response (albeit small in relation to the size of the Catholic population). According to the Catholic Herald (7 February 2014, p. 2) and The Tablet (8 February 2014, p. 28), the Conference received some 16,500 completed questionnaires. The bulk of these (12,266) were filled in online, mainly by laity (80%), with 69% being married and 38% parents. One-fifth of respondents were in ‘positions of responsibility within the Church’, including priests, teachers, and pastoral assistants, while 24% were aged under 45 years and 30% 65 and over. The figures exclude 1,163 responses from 57 other countries, which were forwarded to the relevant Church authorities.

In deference to the Vatican, the Conference has declined to publish its report on the results of the English and Welsh consultation in advance of the Extraordinary Synod (as have the bishops in the United States, Canada, and Australia), despite the fact that both the German and the Swiss Bishops’ Conferences have already published their respective national reports, containing a strong message on the need for ‘reform’. It would be surprising if any different message emerged from England and Wales, given that polling of Catholics in Britain during recent years has demonstrated a wide gulf between opinions in the pews and the Magisterium of the Church. Newly-released polling of 12,000 Catholics worldwide (excluding Britain) by Univision (the television network serving Hispanic America) has revealed similar disaffection, with the partial exception of Africa, as have national surveys by Catholic media and institutions in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. There is a helpful summary of some of this international research in The Tablet for 15 February 2014 (p. 30).

2011 census: Church of Scotland parish profiles

Overseen by Revd Fiona Tweedie, the Statistics for Mission Group of the Church of Scotland has now completed the task of preparing parish profiles of selected data from the 2011 census of population for Scotland. The profiles, which take the form of attractive 12-page PDF documents comprising charts and tables, include details of religious affiliation. They are available to download through the ChurchFinder on the Church of Scotland website (using the ‘Parish statistics’ link from the table of search results) at:

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/church_finder/

Invisible church

Speaking of the Church of Scotland, Steve Aisthorpe (the Kirk’s Mission Development Worker, North) has recently written an interesting 26-page preliminary report on Investigating the Invisible Church: A Survey of Christians who Do Not Attend Church. It is based on a survey of a random sample of 5,523 people in the Highlands and Islands contacted by telephone in the autumn of 2013, 2,698 of whom gave a short interview. Of these 934 identified themselves as Christians who do not attend church and agreed to take part in a more detailed study, and 430 (46%) eventually completed and returned the online and postal questionnaire, comprising almost 80 items. Critical Research oversaw the recruitment of participants, data entry, and statistical analysis, while funding came from the Church of Scotland’s Mission and Discipleship Council and three other partners. The report is at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Investigating%20the%20invisible%20church.pdf

The headline finding from the study was that 44% of the population of the Highlands and Islands, representing some 133,000 individuals, are professing Christians who are not currently engaged with a local congregation, although only 15% had never attended church regularly in the past and 23% had attended for more than 20 years (with a further 27% for more than 10 years). Inevitably, a good proportion of these are ‘cultural Christians’, but a surprisingly large number (50%) scored highly (more than 30 out of 50) on the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, which aims to measure the extent to which faith underpins everyday life. Disillusioned respondents may have been with the Church, and their reasons for church-leaving were explored in detail, but 72% were not disappointed with God, with 50% regarding themselves as part of a worldwide Christian community and 41% as on a spiritual quest beyond religious institutions. There was no simplistic partition into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ here.

The areas explored in the quantitative phase emerged from a previous qualitative phase in 2012-13, in which 30 Christians not attending a local church were interviewed in depth. The report on this qualitative phase (dated July 2013) is also available at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Faith_journeys_beyond_the_congregations.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

The Community Security Trust (CST)’s 32-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2013 was published on 6 February 2014. It revealed that the number of such incidents recorded in the United Kingdom in 2013 was, at 529, 18% lower than in 2012 and only just over half the post-1984 high of 931 incidents in 2009. CST believes the fall in anti-Semitism since 2012 to be genuine and to reflect the lack of anti-Jewish ‘trigger events’ in 2013, such as had caused two temporary spikes in 2012. However, CST still reckons there is ‘significant underreporting’ of anti-Semitic incidents both to itself and the police, and that the true figure is considerably higher. Of the 529 recorded incidents in 2013, over three-quarters took place in Greater London and Greater Manchester, with 69 categorized as violent assaults, although none constituted ‘extreme violence’ (amounting to grievous bodily harm or a threat to life). The most common category, with 368 incidents, was of abusive behaviour, including verbal abuse, albeit these were 23% down on 2012. One-quarter of all incidents were assessed as having far right, anti-Israel, or Islamist motivations. In the minority of cases where a physical description of the perpetrator could be obtained, 62% were white and 25% South Asian. The report, including a profile of incidents by category and month for each year from 2003 to 2013, can be read at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202013.pdf

Values profile of Britain

The January 2014 issue of Modern Believing (Vol. 55, No. 1) is a special theme issue, devoted to ‘What British People Really Think’, and guest-edited by Professor Linda Woodhead. Using data from a variety of sources, but especially from her January and June 2013 YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, it depicts what the British think about abortion (pp. 7-14); women bishops (pp. 15-26); same-sex marriage (pp. 27-38); euthanasia (pp. 39-48); God, religion, and authority (pp. 49-58); and society, politics, and religious institutions (pp. 59-67). There is also an introduction (pp. 1-5) and conclusion (‘A Values Profile of Britain’, pp. 69-74) by Woodhead. Non-subscribers to the journal, and non-members of subscribing institutions, may struggle to access these articles. The new publisher (Liverpool University Press) does not appear to be offering the option to buy a print copy of this special issue only, while downloads cost an eye-watering £25 per (shortish) article via the following link:

http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/n37414k210jp/?p=a25311fb53864bfe817f0c15f25adc56&pi=0

POSTSCRIPT [18 February 2014] BRIN has now ascertained that single copies of this entire issue can be purchased for £15.00, more cost-effective than the article download option. To order a copy, contact Liverpool@turpin-distribution.com

Faith under fire

Do soldiers turn to God when they are on the front line? Some provisional answers to this question are apparently contained in a postgraduate thesis submitted to the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies by Revd Peter King, who was chaplain to the Queen’s Royal Hussars during a bloody tour to Helmand province between October 2011 and April 2012, during which 23 British soldiers were killed and dozens more severely wounded. The research was featured in The Sunday Times, 9 February 2014, Main Section, p. 20 in an article by the newspaper’s defence correspondent, Mark Hookham. King surveyed more than 200 men in his 400-strong battle group, finding that 80% professed some religion and 63% reported that they were more likely to frequent religious services while on operations than when in barracks. An Easter service held by King in a cookhouse in Afghanistan had been attended by about 100 men, of whom one-quarter received Holy Communion. Almost half (46%) of the soldiers interviewed by King said they had prayed in Afghanistan, and the same proportion carried or wore a symbol of faith. An awareness of the presence of God had been felt by 17%, and a few even described a religious experience at the front.

POSTSCRIPT [7 April 2014]: The research has now been published as Peter King, ‘Faith in a Foxhole? Researching Combatant Religiosity amongst British Soldiers on Contemporary Operations’, Defence Academy Yearbook, 2013, pp. 2-10, freely available online at:

http://www.da.mod.uk/publications/library/miscellaneous/58520%20DA%20Yearbook%202013.pdf/view

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Afghanistan, Andrew Village, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, census of population, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Church Times, Community Security Trust, Critical Research, David Voas, euthanasia, family, Fiona Tweedie, health check, Highlands and Islands, Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, homosexuality, Jews, leadership, Leslie Francis, Linda Woodhead, Mark Hookham, ministry, Mission and Discipleship Council, Modern Believing, non-churchgoers, parishes, Peter King, Queen’s Royal Hussars, Religious Affiliation, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage, social impact, soldiers, Statistics for Mission Group, Steve Aisthorpe, Sunday Times, values, Vatican, volunteering, Westminster Faith Debates, women bishops, YouGov | Leave a comment

Bible Literacy and Other News

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Bible literacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

European Quality of Life Survey

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scottish Health Survey

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Welby as hero

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

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

Religion and voting, 1940s/50s-style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Religion and Other News

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Today’s authoritative post by BRIN associate Dr Ben Clements on survey trends in religious attitudes to euthanasia will be a hard act to follow, but hopefully these eight items of religious statistical news will still be of interest to some of the BRIN readership.

Youth on religion

The first major output from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme’s Youth on Religion (YOR) project was published by Routledge on 9 January 2014: Nicola Madge, Peter Hemming, and Kevin Stenson, Youth on Religion: The Development, Negotiation, and Impact of Faith and Non-Faith Identity (xii + 240p., ISBN 978-0-415-69670-8, £29.99, paperback, also available in hardback and as an e-book).

The book is based upon research undertaken in 2010 in three ethnically and culturally diverse and multi-faith areas of England, with relative social deprivation: the London boroughs of Hillingdon and Newham and Bradford in West Yorkshire. The quantitative phase of investigation comprised online questionnaires completed during lessons in February-April 2010 by 10,376 students in years 8, 10, and 12 (and thus mostly aged 13-18) at 39 secondary schools or colleges in the study areas (4,160 in Hillingdon, 3,361 in Newham, and 2,855 in Bradford). The qualitative phase involved group discussions and paired interviews with 157 students in year 12 (aged 17-18).

It goes without saying that the study areas are not typical of the country as a whole, and, moreover, respondents were not even fully representative of the relevant age group in those areas, thereby creating ‘limitations to the degree of generalisability possible from the study’ (pp. 42, 215). Care should therefore be taken in citing the statistical results because they will not necessarily exemplify the religious views of English young people overall. Commercial online youth panels exist which could have been used as the vehicle for an approximation of a national cross-section, but that is not what is on offer here. In particular, in reflection of the locations (and also differential response), the majority of participants were drawn from ethnic minorities: 40% Asian, 13% black, 10% other ethnicities, and just 37% white. As a consequence, ‘especially high levels of religious belief and practice’ are manifest (p. 215). Muslims formed the largest sub-group in the sample (35%), followed by Christians (31%), no religionists (20%), Sikhs (6%), and Hindus (5%). The numbers interviewed from other religious faiths were too small to be meaningful, even in this specific geographical context.

All that said, the volume contains a fascinating wealth of detail, with chapters on: constructions of religion; religious journeys; religious identity and expression; religion and everyday life; family and its influence; friends and schools; and religion and the community. Especially illuminated is ‘how young people in multi-faith areas get on together and how they live with difference’ (p. 17). Particular interest is likely to attach to the fourfold typology of religiosity introduced on pp. 72-88, sub-dividing the young people into Strict Adherents (24%), Flexible Adherents (32%), Pragmatists (21%), and Bystanders (23%). Unsurprisingly, the majority of Muslims were Strict Adherents, with most of the rest Flexible Adherents who ‘have negotiated ways of accommodating their religiosity within Western lifestyles’ (p. 207). Less than one-tenth of Christians were Strict Adherents, with one-fifth being Bystanders, having no real interest in religion. While four-fifths of the no religionists naturally also fell into the Bystander category, the remaining fifth were Pragmatists, taking a somewhat fluid view of their religious journey. Across the entire sample, there was ‘a tendency toward greater flexibility in religious expression’ (p. 216) as the young people evolved ‘their own personal religious identities within a prevailing ideology of liberal individualism’ (p. 217).

Although the book contains 39 figures and 12 tables, the qualitative evidence features as prominently as the quantitative, and BRIN readers will often find themselves thirsty for more numbers and also questioning some of the researchers’ decisions (for example, to use household ownership of books as some kind of ‘surrogate’ for socio-economic status, p. 35). It is to be hoped that the dataset will eventually be made available for secondary analysis, alongside the questionnaire and more details of methodology (unfortunately, the questionnaire is omitted from its customary place at the end of the book, nor is it available on the project website). Likewise, despite copious references to existing literature, much of the concern is apparently to inform theoretical debates (p. 1), and there are only incidental attempts to compare the project’s own findings with those of previous large-scale surveys, such as, from the 1990s, Leslie Francis’s Teenage Religion and Values project or Alan Smith’s investigation of adolescents in multi-faith Walsall (indeed, the latter’s 2007 book does not even appear in the bibliography of Youth on Religion).

Expectations of God

People now expect more of government than they do of God, according to an Ipsos MORI poll for King’s College London which was published on 14 January 2014, and for which 1,011 adult Britons were interviewed by telephone on 7-9 December 2013. Almost three-fifths (59%) of the public agreed with this statement, against only 29% disagreeing and 12% undecided. By contrast, many fewer (41%) thought that expectations of politicians were greater than those of God, the dissentient voice being 48%, with 11% uncertain. This doubtless reflects, less a vote of confidence in God, than cynicism about politicians, whose reputations have been tarnished by sleaze and other circumstances. Those putting greater expectations on God were especially likely to be found among the over-35s, non-manual workers, and owner-occupiers (54% in each case). For more information, see tables 63-66 at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/LeadershipPoll_tables.PDF

Same-sex marriage

The UK Data Service released on 22 January 2014 two datasets based on online, email, and postal responses to the Government’s public consultation in March-June 2012 on its Equal Civil Marriage (ECM) proposals for England and Wales. As with all such consultations, respondents were entirely self-selecting and almost certainly unrepresentative, demographically and/or attitudinally, of the population as a whole. One dataset comprises the 136,968 replies to the specific questions posed in the consultation, the other contains all 228,066 responses with coding of the more open-ended and free-text content. The coding framework developed by the Government Equalities Office includes the following codes:

SUPPORTIVE

Y4 Religious argument that supports ECM
Y5 Religious bodies ought to be allowed to marry same-sex couples if they wish to

NON-SUPPORTIVE

N4 Religious argument on nature of marriage and against ECM
N5 Religious bodies feel they will be forced to marry same-sex couples, even if they do not want to

OTHER

O5 All religious organizations should/must/will conduct religious marriage for same-sex couples

ISSUES

IS9 Ability of religious organizations to preach and teach their beliefs on the definition of marriage

For further information and documentation about these datasets, consult the UK Data Service catalogue record for Study Number 7394 at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue?sn=7394

Church of England health check

The current issue of the Church Times (31 January 2014, pp. 23-9) includes the first of a four-part series entitled ‘The Church Health Check’, and examining the current state of the Church of England. The first three parts will be devoted to ‘a diagnostic investigation of the patient’, while the fourth will ask ‘what remedial treatment may be required’. The theme of the first part is churches and congregations, and its contributors include Professor Linda Woodhead and Dr Peter Brierley. Woodhead (pp. 23-4) draws on her profile of Anglicans from the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates/YouGov research, arguing that it is ‘Time to Get Serious’ for ‘Anglicans are dying out’, with ‘Anglican identity … not being transmitted from one generation to the next’ and a striking disconnect between the Church’s official teachings and grass-roots social values. Brierley (pp. 24-5) examines Anglican attendances since 2000, forecasting continuing rapid decline to 2030, within three broad age bands, while also noting some pockets of church growth (such as ‘messy church’).

Elsewhere in the same issue of the newspaper (p. 3) are featured some initial findings from the online and postal survey of a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 4,500 clerical and lay readers of the Church Times in July and October 2013. The study was undertaken in conjunction with Professor Leslie Francis and Dr Andrew Village, and the questionnaire extended to eight pages. This first glimpse reveals an excessive degree of confidence on the part of laity (40%) that their own churches would grow over the next 12 months, notwithstanding that just 27% agreed that they often invited other people to come to church, and 19% acknowledged that newcomers would not find it easy in their church.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth’s Sharia moment

When Rowan Williams, as the then Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested in February 2008 that the absorption of aspects of Islamic Sharia law into the British legal framework was inevitable, he was condemned by over two-thirds of the public and churchgoers, with two-fifths of adults calling for him to step down. A further indication of the intense interest generated by his comments, and their broader implications for the Church of England, can be found in the dramatic increase in the number of unique UK web hosts linking to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official website. The figure for 2008 was nearly 50% higher than for 2007 and almost 25% higher than the previous peak of 2004, although it quickly fell back to trend in 2009 and 2010. The discovery has been made by Dr Peter Webster through interrogation of the Internet Archive’s collection of .uk websites for 1996-2010, a copy of which is held by The British Library. For more details, including about methodology, see Webster’s blog post of 28 January 2014 at:

http://peterwebster.me/2014/01/28/distant-reading-the-webarchive/

Methodists and deprivation

Methodism once cultivated the reputation of being a movement for the poor and marginalized, but that no longer appears to be the case if research published by Michael Hirst in the current issue of the Methodist Recorder (31 January 2014, p. 8) is anything to go by. He has mapped the postcodes of Methodist ministers in England in 2001 and 2011 to an index of multiple deprivation for each neighbourhood, revealing that they live disproportionately and increasingly (65% in 2001, 68% in 2011) in the less deprived half of the country. Indeed, the more deprived an area, the less likely Methodist ministers were to live there and the greater the decline over the decade, from a drop of 36% in the fifth most deprived areas to 10% in the fifth least deprived areas. Around 900 active ministers changed addresses between 2001 and 2011, of whom 33% moved to more deprived areas, 41% to less deprived areas, with 26% moving to areas with a similar level of deprivation. Of 700 ministers retiring between 2001 and 2011, 74% went to live in the less deprived half of England compared with the 64% who had worked there in 2001.

Methodists on the internet

The same issue of the Methodist Recorder (31 January 2014, p. 3) also included a somewhat garbled news story about research undertaken in the Cumbria District of the Methodist Church into Methodist use of the internet. BRIN has followed this up and located the original four-page report on the survey by Martyn Evans, which is also no model of clarity. The survey was conducted in October-November 2013 and obtained responses from 100 Methodist congregations in Cumbria (or 93%). Results are mostly disaggregated in the report by circuits, or groups of Methodist churches. Overall, 58% of Methodists reported having access to the internet, which is below average, in reflection, it is suggested, of the disproportionately elderly profile of Methodists and of variable broadband provision in the county. Methodist access to the internet is mostly via a home desktop (38%) or laptop (38%), with 12% using a smartphone and 10% a tablet. Internet Explorer (53%) and Chrome (27%) are the commonest browsers for Methodists. The report is currently available at:

http://www.cumbriamethodistdistrict.org.uk/254360377788.htm

National Jewish Community Survey

On 29 January 2014 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published its latest 45-page report on Jews in the United Kingdom in 2013: Preliminary Findings from the National Jewish Community Survey, written by David Graham, Laura Staetsky, and Jonathan Boyd. Designed to complement statistics available from the 2011 census, and funded by the Pears Foundation and a consortium of Jewish organizations, the data-gathering was managed by Ipsos MORI by means of an online survey completed by a self-selecting and thus non-probability sample of 3,736 unique UK Jewish households (containing 9,895 individuals) between 6 June and 15 July 2013. The sample was principally recruited by ‘snowballing’ techniques through a large number of ‘seed’ agencies in the Jewish community. There was some under-representation of Jewish adults aged 16-39 and 80 and over, and of Jews unaffiliated to a synagogue and of the Strictly Orthodox. Weights were applied to help correct for such sampling bias.

The report presents initial results for six principal areas: generational differences between Jews; denominational switching (within Judaism); intermarriage (with non-Jews); Jewish education; charitable giving; and health, care, and welfare. A major finding is that the observance of Jewish religious rituals (such as dietary laws, Sabbath and festivals, and synagogue attendance) actually decreases with age, being lowest among Jewish over-65s and highest for Jews under 40. The likely explanation advanced for this counter-secularizing tendency is the replenishment of younger cohorts by high birth rates among Haredi and Orthodox Jews. Across the entire sample, ethno-cultural elements (such as remembering the Holocaust and combating anti-Semitism) featured strongly in defining Jewish identity, far more so than religious beliefs and even supporting Israel (although 69% of respondents still considered the latter to be important). One of the key tenets of Judaism is to help less advantaged people, and 77% viewed donating funds to charity as an important component of Jewish identity, with 93% having made a charitable donation during the previous year (three-fifths of whom had given more than £100). All these areas, and more, covered by the preliminary findings will be explored in far more detail in subsequent thematic reports. Meanwhile, you can read the initial document at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.Jews_in_the_UK_in_2013.NJCS_preliminary_findings.January_2014.pdf

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bradford, Christians, Church of England, Church Times, Cumbria, David Graham, deprivation, God, government, Government Equalities Office, Hillingdon, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, internet, Internet Archive, Ipsos-MORI, Jews, Jonathan Boyd, Kevin Stenson, King's College London, Laura Staetsky, Leslie Francis, Linda Woodhead, London, Martyn Evans, Methodist ministers, Methodist Recorder, Michael Hirst, Muslims, Newham, Nicola Madge, Peter Brierley, Peter Hemming, Peter Webster, politcians, politics, public consultation, Rowan Williams, same-sex marriage, secondary schools, Sharia law, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

Religion and attitudes towards euthanasia in Britain: Evidence from opinion polls and social surveys

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Ben Clements

The issue of euthanasia or assisted dying formed the basis of one of the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates on religion and personal morality. An accompanying survey of adults in Britain – conducted by YouGov in January 2013 – found that public support for euthanasia was very strong: 70% being in favour, 16% opposed and 14% undecided (a more detailed discussion of these findings – including the reasons underlying the opposing positions taken – is available here). What about public attitudes over time on this issue? In particular, what have been the views of religious groups – both in terms of belonging but also based on other aspects, such as religious practices and beliefs? This post reviews the historical data on religious groups’ views towards euthanasia, using evidence from both national opinion polls and social surveys. Three main sources are used, which between them allow analysis of different question wordings and response options on this issue:

NOP polls conducted between the 1970s and 1990s.
European Values Study (EVS) surveys for the period 1981-2008.
British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys undertaken between 1983 and 2012.

The data presented here will hopefully be of use to those interested in religious groups’ attitudes towards euthanasia in particular or towards social-morality issues in general. Before commenting on the data, it is worth making a couple of general observations. First, euthanasia is generally understood to mean the voluntary ending of an individual’s life, usually to relieve incurable and painful suffering. Second, the ending of life in these circumstances could be achieved by: (a) the individual, if physically capable of doing so; (b) with the assistance of a doctor or other medical professional; or (c) with the assistance of a friend or relative. The questions on which the NOP and BSA time series data are based clearly refer to scenario (b), but the EVS question is less well-defined.

NOP OPINION POLLS

Firstly, a series of polls conducted by NOP for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (which became Dignity in Dying in 2006) from the 1970s into the 1990s provide valuable data on religious groups’ attitudes towards euthanasia. Respondents were asked whether they (strongly / moderately) agreed or (strongly / moderately) disagreed with the following statements (note the slight variation in wording for some surveys):

1976: People say the law should allow adults to receive medical help to an immediate peaceful death if suffering from incurable physical illness that is intolerable to them, provided they have previously requested such help in writing.
1978: If a patient is suffering from a distressing and incurable physical illness, a doctor should be allowed to supply that patient with the means to end his own life if the patient wishes to.
1985: Some people say that the law should allow adults to receive medical help to an immediate peaceful death, if they suffer from an incurable physical illness that is intolerable to them, provided they have previously requested such help in writing.
1989: Some people say that the law should allow adults to receive medical help to an immediate peaceful death if they suffer from an incurable physical illness that is intolerable to them, provided they have previously requested such help in writing?
1993: Some people say that the law should allow adults to receive medical help to a peaceful death if they suffer from an incurable physical illness that is intolerable to them, provided they have previously requested such help in writing.

Data are presented in Table 1, which reports the proportions disagreeing in each of the five polls undertaken between 1976 and 1993. The final column shows the percentage point change over time. Table 1 shows the results for a variety of Christian denominations, as well as those who reported that they were ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ (or did not know). Affiliation categories for which there were generally few or very few individuals in the surveys are not shown. A few interesting findings present themselves. First, levels of disagreement are generally higher for Catholics in the earlier surveys compared to other Christians denominations (particularly Anglicans and Methodists). Second, opposition is usually lowest amongst Atheists and Agnostics, as well as Anglicans and those who responded ‘don’t know’, again more evident in the earlier surveys. Agnostics show very little opposition in the earlier surveys, lower than that registered by Atheists. Third, on no occasion is disagreement a majority view amongst any of the groups – peaking at 43% for Catholics in 1978. Fourth, all religious groups show declining levels of disagreement over time, although the percentage point changes vary in magnitude (see final column). For example, disagreement amongst Catholics declined by 17.0 points compared to 5.0 and 6.0 points, respectively, for Anglicans and Methodists.

Table 1 Per cent disagreeing with euthanasia by affiliation (NOP polls)

	1976 (%)	1978 (%)	1985 (%)	1989 (%)	1993 (%)	Change
Anglican	13.0	19.0	17.0	14.0	8.0	-5.0
Methodist	18.0	18.0^a	16.0	16.0	12.0	-6.0
Church of Scotland	15.0	20.0	23.0	18.0	7.0	-8.0
Other Protestant	25.0	–	31.0	35.0	19.0	-6.0
Roman Catholic	33.0	43.0	39.0	25.0	16.0	-17.0
Other non-Protestant	39.0	–	37.0	23.0	25.0	-14.0
Atheist	16.0	14.0	10.0	5.0	1.0	-15.0
Agnostic	6.0	17.0	12.0	6.0	4.0	-2.0
Don’t know	18.0	8.0	12.0	10.0	5.0	-13.0

Source: NOP opinion polls (data kindly supplied by Dr Clive Field).

^aThis category is not functionally equivalent with the other years, as in 1978 it included other non-conformist traditions (including Baptists, Congregationalists and United Reformed) as well as Methodists.

The NOP data therefore show that opposition to euthanasia – as expressed in response to the question used here – was very much a minority view across various religious traditions, as well amongst as those who said they were an ‘atheist’ or an ‘agnostic’. Moreover, the levels of opposition clearly fell over time. Several opinion polls have been undertaken by YouGov for Dignity in Dying in recent years, including one in April 2013.

EVS SURVEYS

What about other attitudinal data on this issue, this time taken from recurrent social surveys? And what do such data tell us about views on euthanasia based on measurement of religious practice and beliefs? The EVS surveys, with four waves spanning the period 1981-2008, have gauged views on euthanasia by asking a question about whether euthanasia is justified. It is worded as follows:

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between … Euthanasia (terminating the life of the incurably sick).

Respondents are asked to place themselves on a scale ranging from 1 to 10. On this scale 1 represents a position where euthanasia is never justified and 10 represents a position where it is always justified. Given this type of measuring instrument, we can present the mean scores on this scale for various aspects of personal religion: affiliation, attendance at services, membership, broad-based identity and belief in God. Table 2 reports the mean scores for each of the four surveys (1981, 1990, 1999 and 2008) as well as showing the change over time in these scores in the final column. To reiterate, higher scores represent greater acceptance of euthanasia.

Looking at affiliation, those who do not report a religious belonging are most likely to have seen euthanasia as justifiable, followed by Anglicans. Catholics have generally been less likely to see it as justifiable, as have other Christians (the data for non-Christian faiths are not reported here as they have constituted small numbers of respondents in the EVS surveys). We also see variation in average scores on the basis of other measures of religion: those less likely to accept the justifiability of euthanasia include frequent-attenders (defined here and subsequently as once a month or more), members of churches or religious organisations, those who self-identify as a religious person, and those who profess a belief in God. Again, the general picture is that the climate of opinion becomes more accepting of euthanasia, and this occurs across the various measures of personal religion. Even so, the change over time is much less pronounced for frequent-attenders and those who profess membership of a church or religious organisation. The increases are larger for the three categories of religious belonging compared to those with no affiliation, given the latter’s greater acceptance from the outset.

Table 2 Mean scale scores for whether euthanasia is justifiable or not by various indicators of religion (EVS surveys)

	1981	1990	1999	2008	Change
*Affiliation*
Anglican^a	4.61	4.55	5.27	5.79	+1.18
Catholic	3.36	3.74	4.98	4.90	+1.54
Other Christian	3.76	4.18	4.45	5.35	+1.59
No religion	5.51	5.18	5.11	6.14	+0.63
*Attendance*
Frequent	3.56	3.90	3.54	3.91	+0.35
Infrequent	4.27	4.68	5.25	5.80	+1.53
Never	4.94	5.18	5.40	6.16	+1.22
*Membership of a church or religious group*
Member	3.49	3.82	4.30	3.69	+0.20
Not a member	4.69	4.90	5.02	5.92	+1.23
*Identity*
Is a religious person	4.00	4.22	4.64	4.94	+0.94
Is not a religious person / is a convinced atheist	5.00	5.32	5.19	6.18	+1.18
*Belief in God*
Believes	4.08	4.45	4.72	4.95	+0.87
Does not or other response	5.51	5.41	5.40	6.59	+1.08

Source: EVS surveys. Weighted data.

^aNote that this category for the 1981 survey covers Protestant traditions apart from Non-conformists. For all subsequent surveys, Non-conformists and other Christian traditions fall within the ‘other Christian’ category.

BSA SURVEYS

In addition to the over-time data from the EVS, the BSA surveys have asked a consistently-worded question on euthanasia on several occasions since 1983. It reads as follows:

About a person with a painful incurable disease. Do you think that doctors should be allowed, by law to end the patient’s life, if the patient requests it?

Respondents were able to give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response (or reply ‘don’t know’). Data are presented for both affiliation and frequency of attendance (with the percentage point changes again reported in the final column). Table 3 reports the proportions who responded ‘no’ in each survey from 1983 to 2012. Looking at the results for affiliation, we can see that, as is evident above, Catholics have been more likely to oppose euthanasia compared to Anglicans and those with no religion. They have also registered higher levels of opposition than other Christians, until the more recent surveys. As with the NOP and EVS data, moreover, all groups show declining opposition over time – most marked for Catholics (a fall of 12.8 percentage points). Based on frequency of attendance at religious services (for which data are currently available until 2005), there are clear and sustained differences over time. Specifically, frequent-attenders show higher levels of opposition (around two-fifths in most surveys saying ‘no’), with infrequent attenders showing lower levels of opposition and being closer in their views to non-attenders, of whom only small minorities respond ‘no’.

Table 3 Per cent saying ‘no’ to euthanasia by affiliation and attendance (BSA surveys, 1983-2012)

	1983	1984	1989	1994	2005	2012^a	Change
*Affiliation*
Anglican	19.3	23.7	16.3	16.2	15.2	13.9	-5.4
Catholic	41.8	41.6	48.2	35.9	27.9	29.0	-12.8
Other Christian	30.4	34.3	29.9	21.0	26.8	23.2	-7.2
No religion	14.0	13.8	10.6	8.5	10.5	9.1	-4.9
*Attendance*
Frequent	39.7	43.1	45.2	33.9	41.2	–	+1.5
Infrequent	20.5	22.2	17.3	13.4	18.0	–	-2.5
Never	14.1	17.8	11.6	10.6	12.5	–	-1.6

Source: BSA surveys. Weighted data.

^a Data on attitudes by attendance for the 2012 survey are not yet available.

The BSA series also asked an additional question on euthanasia, only fielded on surveys in the 1980s. It was worded as follows:

About a person who is not incurably sick but simply tired of living. Do you think that doctors be allowed by law to end that person’s life if he or she requests it?

Note the important different in question wording, referring to a person being ‘not incurably sick but simply tired of living’. Does this change affect levels of opposition? Data for religious affiliation are shown in Table 4. Levels of opposition are much higher in response to this question wording; in fact, there is overwhelming opposition to euthanasia in such circumstances. Those with no religious affiliation are a little less likely to be against, but around four-fifths are opposed in each survey. For Anglicans, Catholics and other Christians, proportions approaching nine-tenths of each groups –and sometimes higher – register opposition to euthanasia on such grounds. Albeit covering a much shorter duration, the data show little change in views over time (from 1983 to 1989). When classified by attendance, those who never attend services show slightly lower levels of opposition compared to infrequent or frequent attenders, although negative sentiment is broadly similar in the 1989 survey.

Table 4 Per cent saying ‘no’ to euthanasia by affiliation and attendance (BSA surveys, 1983-1989)

	1983	1984	1989	Change
*Affiliation*
Anglican	86.7	90.3	86.9	+0.2
Catholic	90.6	96.0	87.4	-3.2
Other Christian	92.4	91.2	90.2	-2.2
No religion	82.0	81.6	82.0	–
*Attendance*
Frequent	92.7	94.1	87.3	-5.4
Infrequent	87.0	92.5	86.0	-1.0
Never	81.4	83.9	85.1	+3.7

Source: BSA surveys. Weighted data.

Finally the 2008 BSA survey offers a snapshot of religious groups’ views. It featured two specialist modules on religion (for the International Social Survey Programme and Faith Matters), administering this question on the ISSP module.

Suppose a person has a painful incurable disease. Do you think that doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life, if the patient requests it?

While the question wording is somewhat similar to the first BSA question discussed above, a different set of response options were used: ‘definitely should be allowed’, ‘probably should be allowed’, ‘probably should not be allowed’ and ‘definitely should not be allowed’ (as well as ‘don’t know). Table 5 reports the distribution of opinion for a various indicators of religion, (affiliation, frequency of attendance, frequency of prayer – defined as every week or more, whether considers themselves a religious person, takes part in church activities aside from regular worship, and belief in God). The options have been collapsed into broader ‘should be allowed’ and ‘should not be allowed’ categories. There is majority support for allowing euthanasia across all categories, although there is still considerable variation in the proportions who think it should be allowed. Opposition is highest amongst members of non-Christian religions, frequent-attenders, those who pray regularly, those who seem themselves as religious, those who frequently take part in church activities (defined as once a month or more), and those who express a belief in God. The proportions responding ‘don’t know’ are generally on the low side (highest at 6.1% for other Christians and 5.6% for frequent attenders).

Table 5 Whether euthanasia should or should not be allowed by various indicators of religion (BSA 2008 survey)

	Definitely or probably should be allowed (%)	Probably or definitely should not be allowed (%)	Don’t know (%)
*Affiliation*
Anglican	85.3	12.8	1.9
Catholic	74.6	23.9	1.5
Other Christian	70.4	23.5	6.1
Other religion	63.0	31.2	5.8
No religion	89.8	8.6	1.6
*Attendance*
Frequent	59.4	34.9	5.6
Infrequent	86.1	12.6	1.3
Never	86.9	10.7	2.4
*Prayer*
Frequently	68.0	28.6	3.4
Infrequently	84.9	12.6	2.5
Never	90.7	8.4	0.9
*Religious person*
Religious	73.8	23.2	3.1
Neither	88.3	9.2	2.5
Not religious	90.6	8.4	1.0
*Takes part in church activities (aside from regular worship)*
Frequently	56.7	39.7	3.6
Infrequently	82.2	14.9	2.9
Never	88.6	9.9	1.5
*Belief*
Believe in God	74.1	22.3	3.6
Do not	91.4	7.9	0.7
Can’t choose	89.2	8.9	1.9

Source: BSA 2008 survey (ISSP module). Weighted data.

Summary

Overall, we can see that opposition towards euthanasia has decreased in recent decades, and this has occurred based on different questions sourced from opinion polls and recurrent social surveys. Even amongst those who show greater personal engagement with religion – whether through personal or communal practice or belief – opposition to euthanasia is a minority viewpoint. In terms of belonging, Catholics have tended to show higher levels of opposition, particularly in earlier surveys, with Anglicans less opposed and those with no religion least opposed. Because support for euthanasia for individuals with incurable conditions or diseases has traditionally been a majority viewpoint for religious groups since the 1970s, with opposition being expressed by a minority, we do not see such strong liberalising trends as have been evident in religious opinion towards other social-moral issues – such as homosexuality and gay rights – in recent decades.

Further reading

The BSA data analysed here by no means exhaust the questions asked on the topic of euthanasia in this series. More detailed sets of questions were administered in the 1995 and 2005 BSA surveys, and were analysed in the following publications:

Clery, E., McLean, S. and Phillips, M. (2007), ‘Quickening death: The euthanasia debate’, in A. Park et al (eds), British Social Attitudes: 23^rd Report. Perspectives on a Changing Society, London: Sage, pp. 35-54.

Donnison, D. and Bryson, C. (1996), ‘Matters of Life and Death: Attitudes to Euthanasia’, in Jowell, R., Curtice, J., Park A., Brook, L. and Thomson, K. (eds.), British Social Attitudes: the 13th Report. Aldershot: Dartmouth, pp.

For analysis of U.S. public opinion on this topic, see:

Green, J. A. and Jarvis, M. G. (2008), ‘The right to die’, in N. Persily, J. Citrin and P. Egan (eds), Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy. New York: OUP, pp. 267-285.

A recent cross-national study of public attitudes is:

Cohen, J., Marcoux, I., Bilsen, J., Deboosere, P., van der Wal, G. and Deliens, L. (2006), ‘European public acceptance of euthanasia: Socio-demographic and cultural factors associated with the acceptance of euthanasia in 33 European countries’, Social Science & Medicine, 63(3): 743-756.

Posted in Religion in public debate, Research note, Survey news | Tagged British Social Attitudes Survey, end of life, European Values Study, euthanasia, opinion polls, public, Social Surveys, Survey Data | 1 Comment

Religious Vote and Other News

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Is there a religious vote?

A religious vote continues to exist in Britain, particularly as regards disproportionate Anglican and Jewish preferences for the Conservative Party and Catholic and Muslim preferences for the Labour Party. However, the association between religion and politics is by no means straightforward nor consistently strong (and probably weaker than yesteryear). It is also shaped by other socio-economic factors (notably class), and it is not necessarily driven by the saliency of religious or moral issues. Theo-political alignments certainly seem to be less powerful in Britain than the well-researched religious vote in the United States, albeit the latter can sometimes be exaggerated. These are some of the impressions left from a reading of the latest Theos report, published on 24 January 2014, by Ben Clements (University of Leicester) and Nick Spencer (Theos) on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? It can be downloaded from:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/publications/2014/01/24/voting-and-values-in-britain-does-religion-count

This 123-page book, which packs in no fewer than 66 figures and 22 tables, is underpinned by secondary analysis of the British Election Studies from 1964 (including the special surveys of ethnic minorities in 1997 and 2010) and the British Social Attitudes Surveys since 2000. Its first two chapters map religious affiliation and attendance to voting yesterday (at 14 general elections between 1959 and 2010) and today (2010 and beyond, albeit omitting the recent large-scale polls by Lord Ashcroft, doubtless because he does not differentiate between Christian denominations). The third to fifth chapters map the same factors to three scales of political values (left versus right; libertarian versus authoritarian; and welfarist versus individualist), while an appendix presents the results of multivariate analysis of vote choice at the 2010 general election (drawing on the special internet panel of voters).

The findings and arguments of this work are (commendably) too nuanced and granular to restate here. Nobody could accuse the authors of over-simplification or of unevidenced assertions, such is the care with which the analysis and interpretation have been undertaken. They even resist a speculation about the likely effects on political behaviour and values of the progressive collapse of Anglican nominalism and rise of people of no religion. Consideration of the latter would have been especially interesting as they document a shift from libertarianism to authoritarianism among the ‘nones’ during the past decade. The book contains no overarching conclusion, although chapters 1 and 2 have separate summaries and conclusions, and the executive summary extends to 11 pages, reflecting the wide range of statistics.

Given all this complexity, by way of an appetizer, we confine ourselves to reproducing below a reformulated table 1.1 (p. 35) which shows average party vote share (in percentages) by religious group for all general elections between 1959 and 2010, calculated from the British Election Studies:

	Conservative	Labour	Liberal/ Liberal Democrat
Anglicans	47.8	35.5	15.4
Catholics	31.1	54.3	12.8
Nonconformists	41.5	36.9	19.3
Church of Scotland/Presbyterian	37.9	37.3	13.3
No religion	32.6	43.2	19.9

A Theos press release about the report, also issued on 24 January, offers a more bite-size overview under the heading ‘Anglicans are still “Tory Party at Prayer” but Muslims are Labour’s to Lose’. In it Spencer is quoted as saying that the report demonstrates that ‘religious block votes do not exist in Britain as many claim they do in America.’ On the other hand, he adds, ‘there are clear and significant alignments between various religious and political camps, of which politicians should be aware. At a time when mass party membership, political ideology and party tribalism are at a low ebb, we should pay attention to the big political values that shape our voting behaviour.’ The press release is at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2014/01/24/anglicans-are-still-aotory-party-at-prayerao-but-muslims-are-labouraos-to-lose

Disestablishment of the Church of England

Clements and Spencer have also taken a fresh look at ‘Public Opinion in Britain towards the Disestablishment of the Church of England’ in the FirstView edition of their article for the Journal of Anglican Studies, published online on 17 January 2014, and available for non-subscribers to rent or purchase. The paper derives from responses to the question about the Church of England’s continuing establishment asked in the Alternative Vote Referendum Study in Spring 2011, the importance of which Clements has already flagged up in his BRIN post of 21 May 2012. The sample is a very large one (n = 22,124 for Britain and 18,556 for England), thereby permitting a very detailed analysis.

Overall, 56% in England agreed that the Church of England should keep its status as the official established Church, with 15% disagreeing, and 29% neutral or undecided. The figures for Britain were 54%, 16%, and 31% respectively. Respondents most supportive of disestablishment were found to be men, residents of Scotland, those with degree-level education, Liberal Democrat identifiers and others with left-wing and liberal policy preferences, and readers of The Guardian. No significant differences by age group were discovered, despite generational variations in religious belonging, beliefs, and practice evident in other surveys. A limitation of the data source is that no information was gathered about religious affiliation, so religion is the one variable which cannot be controlled for. The article can be accessed at:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9151959&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1740355313000399

Attitudes to the burka

Last summer and autumn we reported on a series of new polls of public attitudes to the wearing of the burka and full face-veil (niqab) by Muslim women in Britain. The issue is also live in several other Western countries, and the ethical, political, and legal dimensions of the matter are explored in a collection of French-language essays published on 16 January 2014: Quand la burqa passe à l’ouest: enjeux éthiques, politiques et juridiques, edited by David Koussens and Olivier Roy (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, ISBN 978-2-7535-2844-4, 280pp., €20). The chapters are a mixture of generic discussion and individual case studies, of France (particularly), Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, and Quebec. The former include a digest of multinational polling about the burka and attitudes to Muslims in general by Ben Clements: ‘La burqa dans l’opinion publique des sociétés occidentales’ (pp. 39-52). It comprises 11 tables, with commentary, drawn from: Pew Global Attitudes Surveys in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011; European Values Surveys in 1990, 1999, and 2008; and Harris Interactive polls in 2006 and 2010. The discussion mostly centres on Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. A brief conclusion highlights some distinctive characteristics of French and American public opinion.

Counting blessings

The Church of England appears to be in research overdrive at the moment. Following the release on 16 January 2014 of key findings from its 18-month Church Growth Research Programme, two more studies were published last week. First, on 20 January, to coincide with ‘Blue Monday’ (often considered as the most depressing day of the entire year), the Church issued a press release encouraging people to ‘count your blessings’, informed by new YouGov online polling which the Church had commissioned among 2,084 Britons on 10-13 January. The survey revealed that only one in ten adults never ‘count their blessings’, in the sense of feeling grateful or lucky when reviewing their life situation, while a majority (51%) count them at least once a week, including 59% of women and the over-55s and 60% of the retired. Family and/or partner (53%) is deemed to be the single most important factor when counting blessings, followed by health (15%). No option was given to mention faith or religion as a blessing in its own right, nor to acknowledge that ‘blessings’ might have a supernatural origin, along the lines of Johnson Oatman’s famous hymn of 1897, which invited its hearers and singers to acknowledge ‘what the Lord hath done’. The Church’s press release, including a link to YouGov’s full data table, is at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2014/01/count-your-blessings-on-blue-monday,-says-cofe.aspx

Credit unions

Then, on 22 January 2014 the Church Urban Fund (CUF) published a preliminary research report on credit unions: Money Speaks Louder than Words: Credit Unions and the Role of the Church in Tackling Financial Exclusion. The Church has been advocating a greater role for credit unions to combat the social evils which are seen to stem from the rapid growth of the payday lending sector and is encouraging churchgoers to invest some of their savings in such unions. To test churchgoers’ experience of and attitudes to credit unions, the Church commissioned two pieces of research: a quantitative study of 385 churchgoers of all denominations aged 16-75 who worshipped at least once a year (among them 200 attending at least once a month), interviewed online by Ipsos MORI in December 2013; and six focus groups involving 54 regular Anglican churchgoers.

Among the Ipsos MORI panel past or present membership of credit unions by all churchgoers was found to be very low (5%), with only 22% feeling they knew a great deal or fair amount about such unions, and less than one-quarter willing to consider joining a credit union in future, even after they had been given a brief explanation of how the unions function. At the same time, 83% of churchgoers agreed that payday loans exploit those who cannot access other forms of credit, and around one-half that the Churches should engage with credit unions in some way. Overall conclusions drawn by CUF from the quantitative and qualitative research were that churchgoers: think there is a need to develop a more ethical financial system; are positive about credit unions in principle but have some concerns; and believe the Churches should help the credit union sector to grow. The report can be read at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/money-speaks

Religious gypsies

On 21 January 2014 the Office for National Statistics published a report on What does the 2011 Census Tell Us about the Characteristics of Gypsy or Irish Travellers in England and Wales? The 2011 census represented the first time that the ethnic group question had included a dedicated tick box for the white ethnic sub-group of gypsy or Irish traveller (which is recognized under the Equality Act 2010), and, in the event, 58,000 people identified themselves as such in the census (albeit this figure is lower than previous estimates). The report itself makes only a couple of brief references to the religious affiliation of the gypsy or Irish traveller community, but fortunately the detail can be calculated from Table DC2201EW, showing ethnic group by religion, which has been available for some time.

Summary data (in percentages) are presented in the table below, from which it will be seen that the proportion of Christians among gypsies and Irish travellers was much the same as in the white population overall, but that 4.6% less professed no religion and 2.4% more declined to answer the question. The lower figure for ‘nones’ is especially interesting in that the median age of gypsies and Irish travellers in 2011 was 13 years less than in England and Wales (26 versus 39), and that ‘nones’ generally tend to be concentrated among younger cohorts. The predominance of Christians is unsurprising. Historically, there were quite close links between gypsies and Christian evangelism in Britain, explored in a 2003 book by David Lazell, with Gypsy Smith one of the most famous revivalists of the early twentieth century.

	Gypsy or Irish Traveller	All white people	All persons
Christian	64.1	63.9	59.3
Buddhist	0.7	0.2	0.4
Hindu	0.2	0.0	1.5
Jewish	0.4	0.5	0.5
Muslim	0.7	0.4	4.8
Sikh	0.2	0.0	0.8
Other religion	1.4	0.4	0.4
No religion	22.7	27.3	25.1
Not stated	9.6	7.2	7.2

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Alternative Vote Referendum Study, Ben Clements, British Election Studies, British Social Attitudes Surveys, Burka, census of population, Church of England, Church Urban Fund, counting blessings, credit unions, disestablishment. European Values Surveys, gypsies, Ipsos-MORI, Irish travellers, Islamophobia, Journal of Anglican Studies, Muslims, Nick Spencer, Olivier Roy, Pew Global Attitudes Surveys, political values, politics, Religious Affiliation, religious dress, Theos, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

Anglican Church Growth and Other News

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Anglican church growth

The Church of England’s ambitious 18-month research programme into numerical church growth, sponsored by the Spending Plans Task Group accountable to the Archbishops’ Council and Church Commissioners, is nearing its end, and findings are beginning to be released. The programme comprises three strands involving research teams at the University of Essex (headed up by Professor David Voas, also of BRIN); St John’s College, Durham; and Ripon College, Cuddesdon. The strands relate to: the analysis of existing data collected annually by the Church; church profiling (a special survey of a representative sample of churches, to which 1,700 or 46% responded); and structures (with sub-strands on cathedrals, fresh expressions of church and church plants, and amalgamations and team ministries). The research has employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods and has also taken account of existing literature on church growth.

The first primary published output from the programme, issued on 16 January 2014, is the report From Anecdote to Evidence: Findings from the Church Growth Research Programme, 2011-2013. It identifies factors associated with church growth (pp. 7-11); describes where growth is to be found (pp. 12-22), including four case studies; and pinpoints factors associated with church decline (pp. 23-9). Rather than attempt to rehash the report here, it is probably easiest to let BRIN readers explore it for themselves (if you are pressed for time, there is an executive summary on pp. 5-6). It can be read at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/report

There is also an infographic of key findings at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/infographic

and a Church of England press release at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2014/01/signs-of-growth.aspx

Coinciding with the report, a Church Growth Faith in Research Conference took place in London on 16 January 2014, attended by some 200 delegates, mostly from within the Church of England, but including some academics, journalists, and members of other denominations. Overviews were provided of all the strands of the research programme, typically via parallel breakout sessions. There was also the bonus of a presentation by Dr Mike Clinton of King’s College London about his complementary Experience of Ministry Project, which is surveying cross-sections of clergy in 2011, 2013, and 2015 and has a longitudinal component.

The morning plenary session by David Voas on national, local, and individual factors affecting numerical change in church attendance was undoubtedly the most general and the most interesting slot on the conference programme (at least for me). Voas has been responsible for the data analysis and church profiling strands. His key message was that, in order to grow again, the Church of England needs to improve retention of its children and young people, and to invest in provision for teenagers and young adults (churches with youth workers, for instance, are more likely to grow than those without). Evangelism of adults has limited potential, Voas continued, since, according to British Social Attitudes Surveys, people do not tend to change their religious identity much during adulthood.

Theoretically, such retention should be possible, since the ratio between children and adults in the Church of England is not much different from in the whole population. However, European Values Surveys indicate that Anglicans do not attach great parenting priority to the transmission of faith to their children, just 11% among nominal Anglicans and no more than 36% of the religiously active ones, the latter statistic being highlighted by Andreas Whittam-Smith, First Church Estates Commissioner and chair of the conference. A further recommendation from Voas, noting the Church’s attendance high during Advent and at Christmas, was to look again at the other festivals to ‘make Christmas come more than once a year’. He also thought that the parochial model of the Church should be examined afresh, since the research suggested it was breaking down.

Notwithstanding such key messages, both Voas and Dr Bev Botting, the Church of England’s Head of Research and Statistics, stressed that there was no single and simple recipe for growth in the Church of England. They also emphasized that, while the research programme had been able to isolate some of the factors affecting church growth and decline, it had not necessarily been able to establish causation. Voas pointed out that certain factors, such as churchmanship, which seemed significant at bivariate analysis stage faded away in importance when it came to multivariate analysis.

Voas and, particularly, Botting highlighted continuing issues surrounding the completeness and quality of the Church’s annual statistics-gathering from parishes. In his breakout session on methodology, Voas drew attention to the weak correlation (0.29) between the incidence of church growth self-reported in the survey of churches in summer 2013 and objective measures of growth in those churches derived from the Church’s own central data. Various explanations for the discrepancy can be advanced, but one reading is obviously that survey respondents were too optimistic in recalling the degree of growth experienced by their churches. Moreover, the model proposed by Voas could only explain one-quarter of self-reported church growth (even less of objective growth).

Presentations and recordings from the conference will be made available on the church growth programme’s website in due course, as will the final reports from each research strand or sub-strand. The website also contains much other useful contextual information. It can be found at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/

Rating the Pope

The current Pope may be enjoying a higher and more positive public profile than his predecessor, but there is little evidence yet of a decisive ‘Francis effect’ in terms of British opinion. This is suggested by a multinational YouGov poll on ‘the most admired people in the world’ conducted for The Times and published on 11 January 2014. Fieldwork was conducted, through a mixture of online and mobile phone interviews, with 13,895 adults in 13 countries (representing in aggregate over half of the global population). It took place after the death of Nelson Mandela and after Time magazine had chosen Pope Francis as its ‘person of the year’. Participants were asked two open-ended questions, seeking write-in answers about a) the most famous person in the world and b) the living person most admired by them.

Across all 13 countries combined Pope Francis was ranked fourth, with a score of 3.43%. However, in six nations (China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Russia) he did not make the top ten. In the remaining seven his score and ranking are shown in the table below, the Pope’s vote in Britain being only one-sixth of the level recorded in the United States and equivalent to just one-third of professing British Catholics:

	% score	national ranking
United States	21.07	1
Brazil	16.82	1
Germany	16.13	1
France	12.79	2
Australia	5.47	3
Great Britain	3.66	3
Nigeria	1.48	9

The British list was headed by Her Majesty the Queen (18.74%) followed by Barack Obama (8.57%). The Dalai Lama came in fifth place, with 3.09%, just behind Sir Richard Branson (3.43%) and immediately ahead of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2.63%). Unless one counts Richard Dawkins (the arch-atheist) as such in 25th place (with 0.69%), no other religious figure made the British top thirty, which is bad news for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Evangelist Billy Graham scored well in the United States (6.10%) but to a much lesser extent globally (0.49%).

Stephan Shakespeare (YouGov’s CEO) had a full-page article about the results of the survey in The Times for 11 January (main section, p. 26). There is also a detailed blog by William Jordan on the YouGov website at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/01/11/infographic-bill-gates-most-admired-world/

Decline in the Archdiocese of Glasgow

The Archdiocese of Glasgow, which is widely regarded as the heartland of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, has embarked upon a strategic review of pastoral provision in response to a sustained and long-term decline, which is far in excess of the contraction in the city’s population (down just over 10% between the 1991 and 2011 censuses, although it has started to rise again recently). Some key statistics are contained in the December 2013 issue of Flourish, the Archdiocese’s journal, from which the following table has been compiled:

	1991	2012	% change
Parishes	109	94	-14
Diocesan priests	196	85	-57
Catholic population	252,676	189,576	-25
Mass attendance	75,790	43,579	-43
Baptisms	4,050	2,245	-45
First communions	3,692	1,970	-47
Marriages	1,229	775	-37
Funerals	2,962	2,282	-23

Integrated Household Survey

Data for the Government’s January-December 2012 Integrated Household Survey, the largest pool of official social data apart from the census of population, have just been released for online analysis in the Nesstar catalogue (UK Data Service, SN 7419). The questions put to the sample of 338,174 UK citizens included one on ‘what is your religion?’ and the percentage distribution of replies for Great Britain and its constituent home nations are shown below (all data are weighted):

	England	Wales	Scotland	Britain
No religion	29.0	36.1	37.8	30.1
Christian	61.3	60.3	58.6	61.1
Buddhist	0.5	0.2	0.3	0.4
Hindu	1.6	0.3	0.4	1.4
Jew	0.5	0.1	0.1	0.5
Muslim	5.2	1.7	1.5	4.7
Sikh	0.7	0.1	0.2	0.6
Any other	1.2	1.3	1.2	1.2

Worship and criminality

‘People who regularly visit a place of worship are less likely to be involved in low level crime and delinquency’, according to a (statistics-free) press release by the University of Manchester on 15 January 2014. The research, funded by the Bill Hill Charitable Trust and to be published in full later in the year, was undertaken by PhD student Mark Littler on the basis of a survey of 1,214 UK young people aged 18-34 in July 2013 and in-depth qualitative interviews. Information was gathered on eight measures of delinquency: littering, skipping school/work, using illegal drugs, fare dodging, shoplifting, music piracy, property damage, and violence against the person. The most significant correlations were found for shoplifting, illegal drugs, and music piracy. The press release, including comments by Littler, is available at:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=11380

Religious hostilities

Social hostilities involving religion in the UK declined somewhat between December 2011 and December 2012 but remained at a high level relative to 197 other countries, according to research published by the Pew Research Center on 16 January 2014. The Center’s social hostilities involving religion score, an index calculated from 13 different measures of religion-related tensions and crime available from public domain information sources, dropped for the UK from 6.3 in 2011 to 6.0 in 2012, although it was substantially greater than when first calculated in 2007 (when it stood at 1.6). By contrast, the government restrictions on religion index, based on 20 measures, was unchanged for the UK between 2011 and 2012, registering 3.0 in both years, a score which was judged moderate in relation to other nations. For full details about the methodology and results of this research, consult the full report at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/01/RestrictionsV-full-report.pdf

Army chaplaincy in the First World War

With the centenary of the First World War fast approaching, BRIN will naturally be keeping a look-out for new publications which explore the religious aspects of the conflict, especially including the statistical perspective. A recent book by Peter Howson fits the bill in not neglecting the quantitative dimension of the subject of army chaplaincy: Muddling Through: The Organisation of British Army Chaplaincy in World War One (Solihull: Helion, 237pp., ISBN 978-1-909384-20-0). A total of 185 army chaplains died during the war, 52% as a direct consequence of enemy action. Three-fifths of the deceased were Anglicans, who accounted for 57% of all chaplains serving in the Army on 11 November 1918, when hostilities stopped. Below we reproduce a simplified (and arithmetically corrected) version of table 2 in the volume, showing the denominational breakdown by theatre of war of all Army chaplains at the time of the Armistice:

	UK	Western Front	Other theatres	Total
Anglican	709	878	398	1,985
Presbyterian	75	161	66	302
Wesleyan	60	127	69	256
United Board	60	126	64	250
Welsh Calvinist	4	5	1	10
Salvation Army	0	4	1	5
Catholic	78	389	184	651
Jew	4	8	4	16
Total	990	1,698	787	3,475

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Archdiocese of Glasgow, army chaplains, church growth, Church of England, crime, David Voas, First World War, Integrated Household Survey, Mark Littler, Peter Howson, Pew Research Center, Pope Francis I, Religious Affiliation, religious hostilities, Roman Catholic Church, The Times, YouGov | 1 Comment

Roman Catholic and Other Statistics

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Clive D. Field

A belated Happy New Year to all readers of BRIN! It has been a slowish start to 2014 in terms of new religious statistical sources, but here is a selection of seven stories to replenish your stock of data.

Roman Catholic statistics

In our post of 1 February 2013 we reported that the editor of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales had decided to discontinue publication therein of the annual statistical supplement, which had appeared for a century, as a result of her lack of confidence in the quality of the data, especially regarding their consistency. The Tablet for 21/28 December 2013 reported that, ‘thanks to the efforts of a former banker’, the statistics would be reinstated in the 2014 edition of the Catholic Directory. This has yet to appear (it will be published later this month), but, in the meantime, Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust (PRCT) has just released a preliminary table of pastoral and population statistics of the Catholic community in England and Wales for 2011 and 2012, based on a careful (but still not quite complete) editing and reconciliation of data for each of the 22 dioceses. Figures for all years between 2001 and 2012 will be available in due course. The 2011-12 picture is one of continuing decline on several performance measures, of 2.2% in the estimated Catholic population, 1.8% in Mass attendance in October (with only one-fifth of Catholics now at Mass), 3.7% in baptisms, and 18.5% in receptions of converts. There was a modest (0.5%) rise in marriages, but the figure includes mixed marriages and those celebrated in Anglican churches which were authorized by the Catholic parish priest. Deaths were 0.9% less in 2012 than 2011, with the Catholic death rate being 9.7 per 1,000. The PRCT table will be found at:

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

The data were covered by two broadsheet newspapers in their editions of 4 January 2014, The Times suggesting that the pattern of long-term decline (associated with child abuse scandals) might be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’, The Daily Telegraph concentrating on the increase in late baptisms of children (after their first birthday), which it attributed to ‘a scramble for places at the most popular Roman Catholic schools’. The Roman Catholic weekly, The Tablet, also noted the possible ‘Francis effect’ from 2013 when it ran the story a week later (11 January 2014), headlining ‘Mass Attendance Down but London Bucks the Trend’.

BRIN was contacted by the Catholic Herald for an assessment of the statistics, and we are quoted in that newspaper’s report in its edition of 10 January 2014 (p. 3 – there is also an editorial on p. 13). In more detail, the points we made were:

There are long-standing concerns about the quality of many Roman Catholic statistics (especially estimated Catholic population), arising from the absence of a national infrastructure for data collection and quality control, such as exists, for example, in the Church of England.
In many senses the decline in the Roman Catholic Church mirrors what is happening in mainstream Christian denominations in this country. However, the underlying fall would almost certainly have been much greater but for the boost given to the Church by immigration from Eastern Europe in recent years.
In both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England alienation is linked to the growing gulf between official Church teaching and the views of active and nominal members. This has been demonstrated by Professor Linda Woodhead’s recent research. For her study of Catholics, see: http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Catholics-press-release.pdf
Optimists in the Roman Catholic Church suggest that decline may be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’. We are more sceptical about this since a similar argument was put forward for the ‘Benedict bounce’ following the 2010 papal visit. It did not materialize, as the Opinion Research Business polls commissioned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2010 and 2011 demonstrated, and as confirmed by the Church’s statistics for 2009 and 2010 summarized at: http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/catholic-directory-2012/

Religion and politics

Lord Ashcroft’s latest political poll, published on 4 January 2014 and conducted online by Populus on 4-10 November 2013, included the standard background question about membership of religious groups, asked of a very large sample (n = 8,053). The proportion identifying as of no religion was, at 38%, identical to that reported in the two YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, which we covered in our last post of 30 December 2013. These ‘nones’ constituted a majority (51%) of the 18-24s in Ashcroft’s survey and a plurality (44%) of the 25-34s, with Christianity being the leading faith for other demographic sub-groups, averaging 53% and peaking at 71% of over-65s. In political terms, ‘nones’ were most likely to be found among people who had voted Liberal Democrat at the 2010 general election (44%) or the smaller number intending to vote Liberal Democrat now (41%). They were least likely to be encountered among Conservative supporters (27% in both 2010 and 2013), who were disproportionately Christian (66% in 2013). Of those who had voted Conservative in 2010 and intended to do so again, 68% were Christian, falling to 65% for voters who had defected from the Conservatives since 2010, 57% for adults who had switched to the Conservatives since 2010, and 52% for those who had not been Conservative in the past but indicated they might be in the future. UKIP supporters were 10% more likely to identify as Christian than the norm and Labour supporters 4% less. Non-Christians favoured Labour, and this was especially true of Muslims. Superficially (other factors are at work, of course), the historic connection between religion and voting is by no means extinguished. For more data, see table 69 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Blueprint-4-Full-tables.pdf

Also, watch out for the forthcoming Theos report by Ben Clements and Nick Spencer on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? BRIN will cover this as soon after publication as possible.

Religion and age

The lead story on the front page of The Times for 10 January 2014 (subscription access online) was a curiously headlined article by Dominic Kennedy, the newspaper’s investigations editor, on ‘Rise in Muslim Birthrate as Families “Feel British”: Census Figures Reveal “Startling” Shift in Demographic Trend’. Its key underlying fact, taken from the 2011 census, was that ‘almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim … almost twice as high as in the general population’; in stark contrast, ‘fewer than one in 200 over-85s are Muslim’. Expert comments on the findings were sought and quoted from two of the country’s leading demographers, Professors David Coleman of the University of Oxford and David Voas of the University of Essex (and BRIN). Voas apparently said that he saw no prospect of Muslims becoming a majority in Britain, although he did foresee that Muslims who worshipped might outnumber practising Christians one day (which several other pundits have also been predicting for a decade or more). The story in The Times, which has been widely reported in other print and online media in Britain and worldwide, was not actually based on any new analysis of census data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) but on a hitherto little noticed ad hoc ONS table (CT0116, created on 18 October 2013), giving a detailed breakdown of religion in England and Wales by sex by age in 2011. This was pointed out by Ami Sedghi in her post on The Guardian’s Datablog on 10 January 2014, which helpfully includes a link to the table, rather implying that The Times was raking over ‘old news’, and additionally observing that the census actually recorded more children aged 0-4 as having no religion as those who were Muslim. The blog can be read at:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jan/10/rise-british-muslim-birthrate-the-times-census

Gift aid and the Church of England

Gift aid (introduced in 1990) has been an important factor in helping the Church of England to grow its real income consistently over the past two decades, according to a post on the Civil Society blog on 17 December 2013. The Church collects over £80 million of gift aid and tax refunds each year, and it accounts for 8% of all gift aid by value and 15% by volume. Although the number of adults in usual Sunday congregations of the Church of England declined by 27% between 1980 and 2010, tax-effective subscribers (using covenants and gift aid) rose by 38% over the same period, with tax-effective subscribers equivalent to 72% of usual Sunday congregations by 2010 (almost double the 38% of 1980). More information at:

http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/blogs/content/16600/gift_aid_does_make_a_difference_to_giving_ask_the_church_of_england

Violence against the clergy

The Sunday Telegraph of 5 January and The Times of 6 January 2014 both included reports about ‘hundreds of violent attacks on the clergy’, the story subsequently being run by the Church Times on 10 January. The articles drew upon data obtained by right-of-centre think-tank Parliament Street through Freedom of Information requests submitted to police forces in England, of which 25 responded. The replies suggested that there had been more than 200 violent attacks on clergy over the past five years, a number thought to be just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ because of the inadequate and inconsistent recording of such offences. Parliament Street, which has not posted its data online, is calling upon Government to recognize attacks on clergy as constituting a religiously motivated hate crime, which would thereby attract severer penalties. The organization National Churchwatch has also been active since 2000 in documenting anti-Christian hate crime. However, so far as BRIN is aware, the best source of empirical evidence on the subject of the clergy remains the ESRC-funded research into violence against three groups of professionals (including clergy) undertaken by Royal Holloway, University of London in 1998-2001, details of which appear in the final project report at:

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/L133251036/read

State-sanctioned surveillance

In an online Resonate poll conducted by Christian Research since the leaks emanating from former American security contractor Edward Snowden, the majority (77%) of 1,134 UK practising Christians sensed that mass intelligence-gathering by the state in the UK is increasing, but 82% agreed that it is justified in order to prevent acts of terrorism and 69% considered that the level of CCTV in operation in their area was about right. The results were disclosed by the Church Times in its issue of 3 January 2014 (p. 6). Characteristically, no further information is available on Christian Research’s website. However, the website does record that membership of the Resonate Christian omnibus panel has now reached 14,000 and that surveys will be run monthly from January 2014.

Jewish emigration to Israel

Jewish immigration to Israel in 2013 was modestly (1%) up on 2012, according to data collected by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israel Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. However, the number of Jews leaving the UK for Israel (making aliyah) in 2013 was, at 510, 27% down on the previous year, albeit close to the average since the beginning of the Millennium (the range being from 300 in 2002 to 800 in 2009). This decline compared with a rise of 35% in Western Europe (and 63% in France); in the United States there was a reduction of 13%. Emigrants to Israel from the UK constituted 12% of the Western European total and 3% of the world figure. The fall in UK emigrants is attributed by some to the improving economic situation and lessened anti-Semitism in the UK, and by others to a weaker focus on aliyah following a radical restructuring of the Jewish Agency two years ago. This note derives from a press release issued by the Israeli embassy in London on 30 December 2013 and from coverage in the Jewish Chronicle for 3 January 2014. The full data do not yet appear on the Jewish Agency’s website.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Aliyah, Ami Sedghi, Catholic Herald, census of population, Christian Research, Church of England, clergy, David Voas, emigration, finance, gift aid, hate crime, Israel, Jews, Lord Ashcroft, Office for National Statistics, Parliament Street, Pastoral Research Centre Trust, politics, Populus, Religious Affiliation, religious census. Roman Catholic Church, surveillance, The Times, Tony Spencer, violence, voting | 2 Comments

End-of-Year Round-Up

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

This will be the final news post on BRIN for 2013. It features 11 sources which have come to hand over the Christmas period. This year we have been able to bring you 63 general posts containing 310 different news stories. We hope that they have been of interest and value. We will be back in 2014. Meanwhile, we wish you all a Happy New Year.

Christmas religion (1)

Britons appear less likely than Americans to uphold the religious dimension of Christmas, according to a poll by Angus Reid Global published on 23 December 2013, in which 998 Britons were interviewed online between 9 and 11 December. The proportion of Britons saying the religious aspect of Christmas was meaningful to them personally was not much more than half that of Americans (39% against 70%), with a similar transatlantic disparity between those planning to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day (40% versus 72%). One-quarter of Britons claimed they would attend a special Christmas service during December and one-fifth a regular religious service in the month, whereas two-fifths of Americans had the same plans in each case. Some 16% of Britons stated that they normally attended church monthly or more (compared with 18% of Canadians and 37% of Americans). Fewer Britons (48%) than Canadians (64%) or Americans (66%) reported they had been raised in a Christian household that attended church. In all three nations preferences for Christmas carols against Christmas songs were almost evenly balanced, albeit more Britons (39%) than Americans (35%) intended to sing carols. Overwhelmingly, Christmas was said to have become too commercialized (by 84% in Britain), but 14% of Britons also regarded it as too religious. Whatever the good intentions of respondents, it seems improbable that the anticipated levels of religious observance of Christmas were achieved in practice, certainly in Britain. Topline data from the poll can be found at:

http://www.angusreidglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Angus-Reid-Poll-Christmas-Religion.pdf

Christmas religion (2)

Britons may have been taught a lot (30%) or a little (55%) about the Bible when at school, but their knowledge of the biblical accounts of the Christmas story is often shaky, according to a ComRes survey for the Christian Institute published on 21 December 2013, 2,055 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 18-19 December. Some of their false assumptions about the biblical version of the nativity are perhaps understandable, such as the 84% who thought that three kings visited Jesus (the Gospels only referring to wise men from the East), or the 34% who recalled the Bible specifying He was born on 25 December (whereas the Gospels do not cite a specific date). However, other errors were more of the ‘exam howler’ variety, including 7% who were convinced that a Christmas tree is mentioned in the Bible and 4% that Father Christmas appears there. The biblical knowledge of the older age cohorts tended to be sounder than that of the younger, reflecting the fact that they were more likely to have been taught a lot about the Bible during their schooldays. The ComRes data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Christian_Institute_Christmas_Knowledge_Survey_December_2013.pdf

and a Christian Institute press release at:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/brits-believe-santa-present-at-jesus-birth-new-poll-reveals/

Christmas Day shopping

Christmas Day is fast becoming a retail extravaganza. Not only were record numbers of independent shops (16,000) open on Christmas Day this year, but online shopping also hit a new peak. Before the event, Barclaycard estimated that 31% of adults would shop online on Christmas Day, with anticipated purchases of £350 million, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. Afterwards, Experian reported that there had been 114 million visits to online shopping sites in the UK on Christmas Day, 6% more than in 2012, with over 1% of all online searches on Christmas Day including the words ‘sale’ or ‘sales’. Christmas Day shoppers almost certainly outnumbered Christmas churchgoers several times over. However, when the Mail on Sunday contacted 42 senior Church of England bishops for their reactions to this exponential rise in Christmas Day trading, and its compatibility with the spiritual values of Christmastide, only a handful felt able to comment. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London were among those keeping their heads down on the subject. The Mail on Sunday article can be read at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2527696/Church-silent-record-number-stores-set-stay-open-Christmas-Day.html

Westminster Faith Debates: new analyses of data

Professor Linda Woodhead continues to draw upon the January and June 2013 YouGov polls conducted for the Westminster Faith Debates to provide fresh insights into religion in Britain. On 28 November 2013 she took advantage of the publication by the Church of England of the Pilling Report on Human Sexuality to highlight ‘a revolution in Anglican attitudes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage not reflected in official teaching’, based upon the opinions of 2,381 self-identifying Anglicans in the YouGov surveys. Her press release can be found at:

http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Pilling-press-release.pdf

On 22 December 2013 Woodhead issued another press release headed ‘“No Religion” is the New Religion’, with 38% of adult Britons in the two YouGov polls professing no religion. The number varied greatly by age cohort, rising to 48% of the under-30s (among whom only 26% were Christians), but falling to 27% of over-60s (58% of whom were Christians). Indeed, the majority (55%) of those aged 18 or 19 had no religion, and no religion was the biggest single faith category for everybody under 50 years. Although a plurality (43%) of ‘nones’ were atheists, 40% were agnostics, and 16% believers in God. Only 13% of ‘nones’ were found to be hostile to religion in the Richard Dawkins sense, in that they had no religion, admitted to being atheist, and regarded the Church of England and Roman Catholic Churches as negative forces. These hostile ‘nones’ were disproportionately (62%) male. ‘Nones’ were more liberal than the rest of the population in their attitudes to personal morality, and this was enhanced by the age effect (young people also being more liberal). This press release is not yet available on the Westminster Faith Debates website but doubtless will be in the New Year. In the meantime, Woodhead has a blog on the same subject (dated 20 December 2013) at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/blogs/linda-woodhead/why-no-religion-is-the-new-religion/

Westminster Faith Debates: the book

The book of the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates has been published by Darton, Longman and Todd recently: Religion and Personal Life, edited by Linda Woodhead with Norman Winter (ISBN 978-0-232-53018-6, £8.99 paperback, also available as an e-book). The debates are presented in condensed form (based on recordings and transcripts), together with additional research findings (from the special YouGov poll on ethical opinion in Britain commissioned in January 2013), media reactions, and teaching materials. New commentary and reflection is offered in each of the six debate chapters, which deal with: abortion and stem cell research; sexualization of society; religion and gender; the traditional family; same-sex marriage; and assisted dying. A seventh chapter is devoted to ‘why do God?’ with Delia Smith and Alastair Campbell in conversation.

Recent Eurobarometers

The European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys continue to include occasional questions touching on religion, and a couple of recent reports exemplify this. Interviews are conducted face-to-face with representative samples of the adult population aged 15 and over in each member state of the European Union (EU). United Kingdom fieldwork is carried out by TNS UK.

Special Eurobarometer 401, published in November 2013, was on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Science and Technology and included interviews with 1,306 UK citizens (between 27 April and 14 May 2013) as part of Eurobarometer 79.2. Inter alia, the report revealed that adults in the UK were fairly evenly split about whether ‘we depend too much on science and not enough on faith’, 36% agreeing (EU average 39%), 34% disagreeing (32%), and 30% undecided (29%). The pattern of results was broadly similar to Eurobarometer 73.1 in Spring 2010, albeit the dissentients in the UK were 5% fewer in 2013. Hardly anybody (2% in the UK, 1% in the EU) viewed representatives of the various religions as being best qualified to explain the impact of scientific and technological developments on society, by far the lowest score for the 12 groups investigated. Topline findings are presented on pp. T11-T13 and T23 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_401_en.pdf

Standard Eurobarometer 80.1, undertaken in the UK on 2-17 November 2013 among 1,326 adults, enquired into which of 12 factors most created a feeling of community among EU citizens (a maximum of three responses being permitted). Relatively few (10% in the UK, 11% in the EU) singled out religion, which – in the UK’s case – was just one-third the level of the top-scoring unifying factors of sport and culture. Only citizens of Cyprus (27%) and Romania (24%) considered religion to be especially important in creating a sense of EU-wide identity. The question had previously been asked in Eurobarometer 79.3 six months before, when 8% in the UK had mentioned religion. Topline data are on pp. T176-T177 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb80/eb80_anx_en.pdf

Spatially concentrated Jews

The fourth report in the Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s series on the 2011 UK population census was published on 19 December 2013. Written by David Graham, and entitled Thinning and Thickening: Geographical Change in the UK’s Jewish Population, 2001-2011, it demonstrates how that population is becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of core geographical areas. The ten local authorities which experienced the largest absolute increases in Jews between 2001 and 2011 accounted for 36% of UK’s Jews in 2001 but 44% in 2011, whereas the ten places which registered the biggest absolute decreases over the decade saw their aggregate share of the UK Jewish population fall from 23% in 2001 to 18% in 2011. The former list comprised: Barnet, Hackney, Hertsmere, Salford, Haringey, Gateshead, Bury, St Albans, Nottingham, and Epping Forest. UK Jews overwhelmingly (97%) lived in England in 2011, with Scottish numbers contracting by 8% between the two censuses. Areas of ‘thickening’ population are said to be growing as a result of migration from areas of ‘thinning’ population and as a consequence of differing age profiles, resulting in high birth rates in the thickening cores and high death rates in places which are thinning. The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/Thinning_and_Thickening.Final1.pdf

Religious hate crimes

BRIN readers may have noticed media coverage in recent days of a partial survey of religious hate crimes undertaken by the Press Association on the basis of Freedom of Information requests sent to police authorities in England and Wales. However, the media seem to have overlooked an important interdepartmental Government report on the subject, prepared by the Home Office, Office for National Statistics, and Ministry of Justice, which was published on 17 December 2013: An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales. This brings together, for the first time, data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, a continuous survey of adults aged 16 and over), police statistics of recorded crime, and certain other sources. According to the CSEW for 2011/12 and 2012/13, there are on average 70,000 incidents of religiously motivated hate crime each year, evenly divided between personal and household crimes. This represents a sharp increase on the 39,000 incidents for the previous four years, back to 2007/08. Overall, in 2011/12 and 2012/13, 0.1% of English and Welsh citizens were victims of a religiously motivated hate crime during the 12 months prior to interview, but the proportion increased sharply (to 1.5%) for Muslims. The CSEW reporting period spanned March 2010 to February 2013 so excluded the spike in Islamophobic incidents which followed the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in May 2013. Non-whites generally were more susceptible (0.7%) than whites to be victims of religious hate crimes. Religious hate crimes comprised 25% of all hate crimes estimated from the CSEW (55% for race) but only 4% of hate crimes recorded by the police (against 85% for race). In 2012/13 the police registered just 1,573 religious hate crimes (24% entailing violence against the person), suggesting, by comparison with the CSEW, that the vast majority go unreported. For extensive commentary and tables, go to:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-hate-crime-in-england-and-wales

Murder of Lee Rigby

The brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamist terrorists on 22 May 2013 was the equal top news story of 2013, according to a YouGov poll for The Sun on 17-18 December, for which 1,937 adult Britons were interviewed online. It was the choice of 17% of respondents, the same proportion as selected the death of Nelson Mandela and the investigations into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile as being the biggest news story, with the birth of Prince George and the conflict in Syria being in fourth and fifth positions (13% and 10% respectively). The fact that the trial of Rigby’s murderers was in its final stages at the time of fieldwork, culminating in a guilty verdict from the jury on 19 December, may partly explain the overall salience of the story. The case was seen as especially important by UKIP supporters (28%) and the over-60s (22%). The data table is at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/kfslu2z1sg/Sun_Results_131218_SunAwards.pdf

Secularisation and Humanist History blog

Callum Brown, Professor of Late Modern European History at the University of Glasgow and an authority on secularization in British and international contexts, launched his Secularisation and Humanist History website on 16 December 2013. It ‘hosts discussion on the social and cultural history of humanism and allied secular positions’ and features blogs based on the author’s own research and on current news. It can be accessed at:

http://humanisthistory.academicblogs.co.uk/

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England’s annual Faith in Research conference will take place in Birmingham on 4 June 2014. Preliminary information about the event has been published recently, together with a call for abstracts for papers (with abstracts to be submitted by 24 January). If you are interested, go to:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences/faith-in-research-june-2014.aspx

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Angus Reid Global, Bible, Callum Brown, census of population, Christian Institute, Christmas, Christmas carols, Christmas Day, church attendance, Church of England, community feeling, ComRes, Crime Survey for England and Wales, David Graham, Eurobarometer, European Union, Faith in Research conference, hate crimes, Home Office, humanism, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islamophobia, Jews, Lee Rigby, Linda Woodhead, Mail on Sunday, Ministry of Justice, Muslims, no religion, nones, Norman Winter, Office for Natrional Statistics, personal life, police, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, religious knowledge, science, secularization, shopping, The Sun, TNS UK, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | 1 Comment

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