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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

Christmas and Other Themes

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Contemporary nativity

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

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

Nativity plays

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

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

Christmas cards

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

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

Christmas carols

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

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

Christmas churchgoing

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

Bible knowledge

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

Fifty-six years on

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom of religion

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

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

Gender segregation

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

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

BRIN source database update

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

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

Early Christmas present

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

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

Scrooging Christmas and Other News

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Christmas has become such a secular festival in contemporary Britain that one might have thought that even non-religious people would have no difficulty in joining in, but our first story today shows a disproportionate dislike for Christmas on their part. The other nine brief items are not particularly seasonal but have all come to hand during the past week or so.

Scrooging Christmas

When it comes to Christmas, people who profess no religion are more likely to be saying ‘Bah! Humbug!’ this year than many people of faith, according to a YouGov poll published on 30 November 2013 for which 1,888 Britons were interviewed online on 26-27 November. Overall, 75% of Britons express a like for Christmas and 21% a dislike, but the figures are 67% and 29% respectively for people of no religion. Adherents of the two main Christian denominations, by contrast, are proportionately more disposed to like Christmas (80% of Anglicans and 82% of Catholics). Similarly, given the chance, 24% of the ‘nones’ would cancel Christmas, against 16% of all Britons, 14% of Anglicans, and 4% of Catholics. Results for other religious groups are based on too small numbers to be meaningful. The greater propensity of the ‘nones’ to dislike Christmas is not merely a function of their younger age profile, since 18-24s generally are less likely to dislike Christmas (13%) than the over-60s (27%). The data tables can be found at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/i2osjr6bxm/YG-Archive-131127-Xmasv2.pdf

Gendering conference

Women may form the backbone of most congregations, but Christian Churches in the UK still have some considerable way to go before they achieve full gender equality in terms of governance and leadership. If further proof of this was required, it was published by Natalie Collins on 13 November 2013 on her God Loves Women blog. Responding to a similar exercise in the United States, she and Helen Austin analysed the gender of speakers and presenters at 26 Christian conferences in the UK, mostly during 2013 but with a few prospective ones for 2014. The majority of these events were evangelical in nature, including substantial festivals such as Spring Harvest and Greenbelt. Of 1,072 presentations (taking account of the fact that individuals often spoke more than once at the same event), only 26% overall were made by women, albeit this was better than in the United States (19%). The UK wooden spoon went to Keswick, which had 21 male but no female speakers, but the proportion of women at the podium was also notably low at the HTB Leadership Conference (13%) and New Horizon (14%). The post can be read at:

http://god-loves-women.webs.com/apps/blog/show/35601231-are-uk-christian-conferences-sexist-

2011 census (1): aggregate data

The UK Data Service announced on 2 December 2013 that aggregate data (about households and individuals within areas) from the 2011 census are now available as Study Number 7427. They cover the full range of geographies employed in the census, from the smallest (output areas with an average of 150 persons) to the nation as a whole. At the moment, aggregate data are only provided for England and Wales, but those for Scotland and Northern Ireland will be added soon. Data (for the 2001 as well as 2011 census) can be accessed through the InFuse service at the University of Manchester, which is easy to manipulate. In the case of religion calculations can be made for 2011 at the broad (9 category) or detailed (49 category) levels. InFuse is available at:

http://infuse.mimas.ac.uk/

2011 census (2): religion and the over-85s

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a new analysis of the ‘oldest old’ in the 2011 census of England and Wales on 6 December 2013. It revealed that there were 1.25 million people aged 85 and over on census day, 24% up on the 2001 level, and 45% in the case of men (although women continued to outnumber men by more than two to one in this age cohort). Doubtless reflecting their upbringing, the over-85s remained disproportionately Christian relative to under-65s in the population, 83% against 55%, the former figure being only 1% lower than in 2001 whereas the latter dropped by 14%. Judaism was the next most followed religion among the over-85s, with 11,000 adherents (much the same as a decade before), unlike in the country at large, where it was Islam. However, the number of over-85s affiliating to a religion other than Christianity or Judaism rose by 118% during the decade, with especially big absolute growth for Hindus and Muslims. Merely 71,000 over-85s stated that they had no religion. Non-response to the voluntary religion question was higher among the over-85s (9%) than the under-65s (7%), which ONS attributes to those living in communal establishments, such as care homes, where carers may have lacked the necessary information or time to complete this question on behalf of residents. The ONS briefing can be read at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_342117.pdf

Faith schools (1)

More heat was injected into the debate on faith schools on 3 December 2013 when the Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC) published an interactive map and commentary in a bid to demonstrate the extent of religious and socio-economic selection in state-funded English secondary schools, and its effect on social and ethnic inclusion. The research features information on every mainstream state-funded English secondary school, including how religiously selective its admissions policies are, and how representative it is of the local area in terms of the number of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSMs) and pupils speaking English as an additional language. Data were derived from various central government statistics and local authority admissions directories.

On social inclusion, the key finding claimed by FAC is that comprehensive secondaries with no religious character admit 11% more pupils eligible for FSMs than would be expected given their areas, while faith secondary schools (which account for 19% of the total) admit fewer than expected (10% fewer in Anglican schools, 24% fewer in Catholic schools, 61% fewer in Jewish schools, and 25% fewer in Muslim schools). A clear correlation is asserted by FAC between religious selection and socio-economic segregation, with schools applying religious admissions criteria tending to perform least well on indicators of eligibility for FSMs and English as an additional language.

Overall, FAC calculates that 16% of secondary schools religiously select pupils to some degree, affecting 72% of all places at faith secondary schools (and 13% of all secondary places in the state sector). The proportion of places affected by religious selection rises to 50% in Anglican and virtually 100% in Catholic secondaries. FAC further estimates that 17% of places at state primary schools are also subject to religious admissions criteria, giving a combined figure of 1,200,000 places at primary and secondary levels in England.

The map can be found at:

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

and key findings and explanation of methodology at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/files/fair-admissions-campaign-map-briefing.pdf

Faith schools (2)

Meanwhile, the Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales has just released the results of its 2013 annual census of Catholic schools and colleges with, for the first time, separate digests for England and Wales, plus a key facts card for England. At an initial glance, the story-line for England might seem hard to square with FAC calculations, above, the CES claiming (on the basis of its census, which achieved a 98% response, and Department for Education data) that Catholic schools recruit pupils disproportionately from the most deprived areas and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It should be noted that the CES deprivation comparisons draw on the official Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI), rather than on eligibility for FSMs (the measure used by FAC, and on which, by CES’s own admission, Catholic schools certainly fall somewhat below the national average). Catholic schools are also said to outperform schools generally by 5% in terms of SATs scores for English and mathematics at age 11 and GCSE passes. In England, excluding 136 Catholic independent schools, there are 2,027 Catholic schools and colleges (equivalent to 10% of the maintained sector), attended by 770,083 students (of whom 70% are Catholic), and employing 46,664 teachers (of whom 55% are Catholic). In Wales there are 87 Catholic schools in the maintained sector, with 28,604 pupils and 1,570 teachers. The two digests can be found at:

http://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/ces-census

London church growth

Further to our coverage of last year’s Greater London church census in our most recent post (30 November 2013), some BRIN readers may like to know of a colloquium planned for 2 May 2014 on the theme of ‘Church Growth and Decline in a Global City: London, 1980 to the Present’. The event is being organized by the Centre for Church Growth Research at Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham University and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. It will be held in Room 349, Senate House, University of London between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Confirmed speakers include: Professor David Martin (LSE), Professor John Wolffe (Open University), Dr Peter Brierley (Brierley Consultancy, which conducted the census), Dr Lois Lee (University College London), Dr Alana Harris (Lincoln College, Oxford), Dr Andrew Rogers (University of Roehampton), and Rev Dr Babatunde Adedibu (Redeemed Christian Church of God). The cost is £50 (£35 for students). For more detailed information, and to book a place, visit: www.durham.ac.uk/churchgrowth.research

Trust in professionals

Ipsos MORI updated its trust in professions (veracity) index on 3 December 2013. It covers 16 professions, including clergy (column headed ‘cle’ in the table). It will be seen that the proportion of the British public trusting clergy to tell the truth has fallen from 85% in 1983 to 66% today, with a corresponding rise in those distrusting the clergy (from 11% to 27%). The trend cannot be attributed to a generic decline in the perceived truthfulness of all professions because most of the other columns are fairly static or even show some improvement in public standing over time (especially for civil servants and trade union officials). The index can be seen at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/15/Trust-in-Professions.aspx?view=wide

Academic confession

Professor David Martin, FBA is the elder statesman of British sociology of religion, particularly known for his writings on secularization and Pentecostalism. Now in his eighties, he has recently published a fascinating retrospect of his intellectual journey: The Education of David Martin: The Making of an Unlikely Sociologist (SPCK, pp. xi + 251, paperback, £25.00, ISBN: 978-0-281-07118-0). In it (p. 131) he reflects thus on his first major book, A Sociology of English Religion, which was published in 1967 at the height of what has since been termed the ‘religious crisis’ of the 1960s: ‘Perhaps its flaws were understandable, but I am embarrassed to have missed the decline in the second half of the sixties. I insouciantly ignored what the statistical experts in the Church of England were telling me, for example, about declines in rates of confirmation. I was dubious about using church statistics, even when, as in the case of Methodism, they were very good. If I had looked at the statistics of Methodist decline as a proportion of total population, as Robert Currie did somewhat later, I would have seen them marching steadily downwatd year by year.’

BRIN not in a spin

Scanning this weekend’s religious press, as we normally do, it was hard to avoid pausing over the headline ‘BRIN’S MISLEADING SPIN’ atop one of the letters in the Jewish Chronicle for 6 December 2013 (p. 37). BRIN caught out spinning? Surely not, when we strive so hard to be impartial! In fact, the letter was written by Rabbi Naftali Schiff in response to David Brin’s attempt ‘to put a positive spin on the figures regarding [Jewish] intermarriage’. Schiff contends that there is a serious problem of Jewish out-marriage, with less than one-third of Jews marrying in, except for the Charedi (Strictly Orthodox) community. So BRIN stands acquitted, even if (David) Brin does not.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged Catholic Education Service for England and Wales, Catholic schools, census of population, Christian conferences, Christmas, church growth, clergy, David Martin, Fair Admissions Campaign, Faith schools, gender equality, God Loves Women, Greater London, InFuse, Ipsos-MORI, Jewish Chronicle, Natalie Collins, Office for National Statistics, professionals, religious admissions criteria, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Sociology of Religion, trust, truth, women, YouGov | Leave a comment

St Andrew’s Day and Other News

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today is St Andrew’s Day, as you might have noticed from the latest and attractive ‘Google doodle’. However, their patron saint’s day is not going to be much celebrated by Scots, according to the first of nine reports in today’s BRIN post. Religious decline is a theme running through several of the other stories.

St Andrew’s Day

St Andrew is the favourite Scottish saint (from a list of nine) of 35% of 1,225 Scots interviewed online by YouGov on 12-14 November 2013, easily beating St Mungo (9%) and St Columba (8%). Notwithstanding, no more than 20% had plans to celebrate St Andrew’s Day in any way this year, even though it falls on a Saturday, while 64% definitely had none. The highest proportions intent on celebration were to be found among the 18-24s (32%) and full-time students (37%), the lowest among 25-34s (13%) and Glaswegians (12%). The low figure for Glasgow seems to be related to the fact that St Mungo is the favourite saint for 17% of the city’s residents, perhaps because he features in Glasgow’s coat of arms. The data tables, published on 28 November, are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/o9p509n5op/YG-Archive-St-Andrew’s-131112.pdf

Is Christianity dying in Britain?

BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas of the University of Essex, published an interesting post on The Conversation blog (run on behalf of a consortium of 13 British universities) on 27 November 2013. Entitled ‘Hard Evidence: Is Christianity Dying in Britain?’ the article was prompted by the recent prognostication of George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, that the Church of England is ‘one generation away from extinction’. Voas contends that ‘the reality is less dramatic, but the story is not altogether wrong’. Using British Social Attitudes Survey data from 1983 to the present, Voas demonstrates that young adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to profess a religion, and that the Church of England has been particularly badly impacted by this trend. The same phenomenon can be seen with regard to churchgoing and ‘orthodox’ religious beliefs. Although more ‘unorthodox’ supernatural beliefs have been sustained, Voas does not think they amount to much: ‘these “beliefs” are casual in the extreme: cultivated by popular culture and its delight in magic and Gothic romanticism, held in the most tentative and experimental way, with no connection to any meaningful spirituality’. In short, ‘Lord Carey is at least half right’. The post can be read at:

https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-is-christianity-dying-in-britain-20734

Is the Church of England dying?

Another blogger to have been inspired by Carey’s remarks is John Hayward, of the University of South Wales, who has been applying mathematical models to church growth for the best part of twenty years now. He runs a fascinating (if not always easy to follow) Church Growth Modelling website, which includes a blog. In his latest post, on 20 November 2013, he writes (positively) about ‘George Carey and Church Decline’. Hayward’s preceding post, on 9 October 2013, concerned ‘The Decline of the Church of England’, informed by an analysis of Anglican attendance data for 2001-11 (which were published earlier in the year). In this article Hayward deployed the ‘general limited enthusiasm model’ (based on the theory that church growth is driven by a sub-group of church members – enthusiasts – who are instrumental in bringing about conversions) to reach the following conclusion: ‘although the church is slowly declining, the most likely scenario is that it will avoid extinction and start growing again around 2035. The enthusiasts in the church, those responsible for the growth, should start increasing around 2020. Although church attendance will stabilise, it will be well below current levels. The church has some work to do in conversion and retention if it is to see the revival-type growth needed to regain its impact on society.’ For more information, go to:

http://www.churchmodel.org.uk/LongDecline3.html#summary

Episcopal psychology

Bishops in the Church of England differ from their male clergy on three of the four aspects of psychological type, being more likely to prefer extraversion over introversion, sensing over intuition, and judging over perceiving. Although there are no differences between bishops as a whole and clergy in respect of the fourth aspect, preference for thinking over feeling, thinking was found to be privileged more among diocesan than suffragan bishops. These conclusions derive from data gathered from 168 Anglican bishops (75 of whom are currently in office, and 93 not), and reported in Leslie Francis, Michael Whinney, and Mandy Robbins, ‘Who is Called to be a Bishop? A Study in Psychological Type Profiling of Bishops in the Church of England’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2013, pp. 135-51.The findings are mostly in line with hypotheses developed from present expectations regarding the office of bishop, but the authors suggest that, in making future episcopal appointments, the Church might be served better by an alternative psychological type profile than manifested in the past and present. Access options to this article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13617672.2013.801647#.UpZUhTZFDX4

Urban and rural religion

Professing Christians are more likely to live in rural than urban areas of England and Wales, according to 2011 Census Analysis: Comparing Rural and Urban Areas of England and Wales, published by the Office for National Statistics on 22 November 2013. Whereas Christians accounted for 59.3% of the total population at the 2011 census, the proportion was 66.9% in rural locations against 57.6% in cities and towns. The rural-urban Christian differential of 9.3%, which was somewhat greater than in 2001 (8.2%), is probably largely age-related, the median age being eight years higher in rural than urban areas, but another contributing factor is that rural dwellers are more likely to have been born in the UK. By contrast, non-Christians are concentrated in urban areas, where they represent 9.9% of residents, compared with just 1.5% in rural districts; this distribution tracks the concentration there of ethnic minorities and persons born outside the UK. The disparity is especially large for Muslims, who constitute only 0.4% of people in the countryside but 5.8% in cities and towns. The number professing no religion is marginally higher in urban than rural areas (25.4% versus 24.1%) but urbanization alone can hardly be said to explain the loss of faith. Overall, 81.5% of English and Welsh reside in urban and 18.5% in rural areas. The report is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_337939.pdf

Godless Norwich

When the 2011 census results for religion in England were published last December, Norwich stood out as being the local/unitary authority with the largest number of those professing no religion (42% against a national average of 27%), earning the city the sobriquet ‘godless’. As one might expect, the reality is a little more complex than that, and Peter Brierley has now prepared an interesting 4,000 word briefing on the religious scene in Norwich (and Norfolk more generally), which he has circulated to subscribers with the December 2013 (No. 30) issue of FutureFirst, the magazine of Brierley Consultancy. In addition to explaining the high incidence of ‘nones’ in terms of the disproportionate presence of young people (notably students) and Asians (especially Chinese) in the city, he shows that Norwich does not come at the bottom of the league table with respect to self-identifying Christians and church attenders. Indeed, estimated churchgoing in 2012 was higher in Norwich than in Norfolk, and just 0.1% short of the English mean, even if it had reduced by one-half since 1989. To obtain a copy of the paper, contact Dr Brierley at peter@brierleyres.com

London, the exceptional case?

Further to our preliminary notice, in our post of 14 June 2013, we can now report the publication of far more detailed results from, and commentary on, the Greater London church census held on 14 October 2012, undertaken by Brierley Consultancy on behalf of the London City Mission: Peter Brierley, Capital Growth: What the 2012 London Church Census Reveals (174pp., including 95 tables and figures, ADBC Publishers, ISBN 978-0-9566577-6-3, £9.99, from peter@brierleyres.com). Still more data (especially regarding individual boroughs) will become available in April 2014, in the London church census section of UK Church Statistics, 2010-2020.

In essence, London, once a byword for irreligion, is currently bucking the national trend of declining church attendance, thanks largely to immigration, changing patterns of churchmanship (52% of London churchgoers are now evangelicals), and church planting (with 17% more churches in the capital in 2012 than 2005). The headline all-age attendance figures (grossed up from data for 54% of places of worship, derived from a combination of census forms and extrapolations from previous information) are tabulated below, with comparisons from four previous church censuses:

	1979	1989	1998	2005	2012	1979-2012 % change
Anglican	140,500	98,500	101,100	90,300	84,800	-39.6
Roman Catholic	333,700	293.000	237,200	195,400	198,300	-40.6
Methodist/Baptist/URC	101,200	83,400	86,100	76,100	68,200	-32.6
Pentecostal	57,500	82,700	93,700	152,700	229,000	+298.3
Other	63,100	92,000	99,800	108,500	141,200	+123.8
Total	696,000	649,600	617,900	623,000	721,500	+3.7
Total as % population	10.1	9.6	8.6	8.3	8.8

Thus, in absolute terms, total churchgoing was 16% more in 2012 than in 2005, and even 4% more than in 1979. Relative to population, London churchgoing is now restored to the level of the late 1990s. However, the increase was concentrated among newer manifestations of Christianity, particularly Pentecostal and New Churches, with Anglican, Catholic, and traditional Free Churches all struggling.

Brierley comments on the overall growth between 2005 and 2012 (p. 53): ‘That is a considerable increase, almost offsetting the national decline in churchgoing outside London in the same period. So, because of London’s increase, national church attendance in England remained virtually static (instead of declining) between 2010 and 2012! This remarkable impact is because London’s church attendance in 2012 is about a quarter (24%) of that of the whole country.’ However, he cautions that: ‘the increase seen between 2005 and 2012 in London is not expected to continue. The number of people attending church in Greater London is likely to fall slightly in the immediate future, dropping to perhaps 704,000 by 2020.’ The principal reason for this forecast lies in the large number of small churches whose attendance is collectively declining.

Paul Flowers

Reverend Paul Flowers, ex-chairman of the Co-op Bank, who has suffered a fall from grace through perceived failings in both his professional and private life, has the dubious honour of being the first Methodist minister ever to feature in a British opinion poll. Several questions about him were included in YouGov’s weekly omnibus for the Sunday Times on 21-22 November 2013 for which 1,867 adult Britons were interviewed online. Asked to apportion blame for his appointment as chairman, 45% laid the responsibility at the door of the Co-op board, while 19% pointed the finger at the former Financial Services Authority for inadequate regulation and 16% at politicians in the co-operative movement for supporting Flowers. Two-thirds (67%) backed Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to set up an independent enquiry into how Flowers was appointed chairman (17% dissenting), and 72% wanted Flowers prosecuted for his alleged use of hard drugs (and 13% not). The full data appear on p. 6 of the tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/q0ir85hkfv/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-221113.pdf

Religious education

The National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) published its fifth survey on the impact of the English Baccalaureate on religious education (RE) in secondary schools on 29 November 2013. Data were gathered in May-June 2013 by means of an online questionnaire completed by a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 580 schools. The survey revealed that at Key Stage 4 26% of all state schools are failing to meet their legal or contractual obligations to teach RE to all under-16s (rising to one-third of community schools and academies without a religious character), with 12% failing at Key Stage 3. The number of RE subject specialist staff was set to decline in 2013-14 in one-fifth of schools, with one in five RE lessons currently being delivered by non-specialists in 31% of schools. The timetable for RE had been reduced in a minority of schools, especially at Key Stage 4, and in 2013-14 29% of schools will be attempting to deliver the full GCSE course in Religious Studies in less than the recommended number of learning hours. The survey is available at:

http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/NATRE_EBacc_Survey_2013_final.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Bishops, Brierley Consultancy, British Social Attitudes Survey, census of population, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Co-op Bank, David Voas, English Baccalaureate, George Carey, Greater London, John Hayward, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Leslie Francis, London City Mission, Mandy Robbins, mathematical modelling, Michael Whinney, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, NATRE, Norwich, Office for National Statistics, patron saints, Paul Flowers, Peter Brierley, pyschological type profiling, Religious Affiliation, religious education, rural religion, schools, Scotland, St Andrew's Day, Sunday Times, The Conversation, urban religion, YouGov | 1 Comment

Pope Francis and Other News

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Pope Francis

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

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

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

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

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

Media portrayals of religion

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

Restudies of religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anglican faith schools

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

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

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

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

Islamophobia

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

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

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

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

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

Gender, theology and higher education

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

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

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

Portrait of Catholics and Other News

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Clive D. Field

This week’s post contains five religious statistical stories, leading on a major new survey of Roman Catholic religious practice and values.

Portrait of Catholics

Results from one of the most extensive surveys of Roman Catholic opinion for many years were released on 12 November 2013. The poll was commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with the Westminster Faith Debates and conducted online by YouGov between 5 and 11 June 2013 among 1,062 self-identifying British Catholics aged 18 and over. The questions were a direct replication of those put by YouGov to a national sample of 4,018 adults on 5-13 June 2013, again on behalf of Professor Woodhead. Data tables for the Catholic sample, extending to 160 pages and containing innumerable two-way breaks, can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/k0rbt8onjb/YG-Archive-050613-FaithMatters-UniversityofLancaster.pdf

It would naturally be impossible to do full justice to such a rich dataset in a brief post on BRIN, but the following table (using paraphrased questions) gives a flavour of how Catholic opinion on a range of moral, religious, and political issues differs (or not) from that of the general public (all figures in percentages):

	Britons	Catholics
Moral issues
Abortion should be banned	6	19
Same-sex marriage is wrong	37	43
Assisted suicide should be legalized	76	58
Catholic adoption agencies should not be denied charitable status for refusing same-sex adoption	39	57
B&B owners should not be allowed to refuse accommodation on grounds of sexual orientation	57	52
British society has become worse since 1945	51	50
Individuals are more selfish than 20 years ago	70	70
Religious issues
Faith schools generally should not be state-funded	45	28
Catholic schools should not be state-funded	43	20
Muslim protests against cartoons of the Prophet were justified	42	50
Christian protests against Jerry Springer: the Opera were justified	42	53
Concerned about Islamist terrorism	52	54
Church of England is a positive force in society	18	21
Church of England is a negative force in society	14	11
Catholic Church is a positive force in society	13	36
Catholic Church is a negative force in society	28	9
Political issues
Immigration has impacted negatively on my life	28	30
Cultural diversity of British cities is a bad thing	28	30
Better to live in Britain when more people shared a common culture	48	48
Would vote for Britain to leave European Union	47	44
Welfare budget is too high and should be reduced	46	46
Britain’s welfare system has created a culture of dependency	61	59
Crime rate is rising	44	44
Margaret Thatcher did more good for Britain than Tony Blair	39	34
Tony Blair did more good for Britain than Margaret Thatcher	18	24

Professor Woodhead has written two articles for The Tablet based on the survey, also drawing upon the inevitably smaller Catholic sub-samples from YouGov’s two national polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, on 25-30 January and 5-13 June 2013. The first article, published in the issue of 9 November 2013 (pp. 12-13), principally covers Catholic attitudes to sex, contraception, family, women, abortion, and same-sex marriage. The second article (16 November 2013, pp. 6-7) concentrates on the religious beliefs and practices of Catholics and their socio-political values. Both articles highlight how far British Catholics ‘have come adrift’ from Vatican-style Catholicism, only 5% overall and 2% of the under-30s now conforming to the model of ‘faithful Catholics’ according to the Church’s Magisterium.

Jewish births, marriages, and deaths

David Vulkan’s analysis of Britain’s Jewish Community Statistics, 2012 has also been released this week, by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the umbrella body which collects the data from synagogues and other agencies. It can be found at:

http://www.bod.org.uk/content/CommunityStatistics2012.pdf

The report provides a demographic rather than attitudinal snapshot of Britain’s Jewish community, with reference to births, marriages, divorces, and deaths which are recorded under Jewish auspices (life events not marked by ‘a formal Jewish act’ will therefore be omitted, rendering it misleading to express the data as rates per 1,000 Jews). The headline findings are:

Births: There were at least 3,860 Jewish births in 2011. This figure is inferred, from records of male circumcisions and a multiplier for female births, and it includes some estimation for missing data. Births to strictly Orthodox (or Charedi) Jewish parents now account for at least two-fifths of the total. This reflects the younger age profile, earlier marriage, and higher birth rate of the strictly Orthodox.
Marriages: There was an increase in Jewish marriages between 2011 and 2012, from 808 to 857, but the long-term trend remains downwards (there were 1,029 in 1992). The proportion of strictly Orthodox marriages has trebled over the past three decades. On present trends, they are predicted to constitute a majority of Jewish marriages within the next decade.
Divorces: Statistics relate to religiously sanctioned divorces (excluding civil divorces). The trend is downwards, from 277 in 1992 to an estimated 188 in 2012.
Deaths: The long-term decline in the number of Jewish burials or cremations continues, from 4,200 in 1992 to 2,575 in 2012 (albeit the latter was up from 2,452 in 2011). Since 2005 deaths have been lower than the number of births, meaning that there is natural increase in the Jewish community. Whether that translates into an actual increase will depend upon migration flows, on which the Board has no data.

Jewish perceptions and experiences of anti-Semitism

Two-thirds of UK Jews think that anti-Semitism has increased a lot (27%) or a little (39%) in the country over the past five years, and only 5% consider it has decreased, according to data released by the European Union (EU) Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on 8 November 2013. Moreover, 48% of UK Jews regard anti-Semitism generally as a very (11%) or fairly big (37%) problem in the UK, with 52% seeing it as such in the media and 64% on the internet. Association of Jews in the public mind with Israel and even the economic crisis is believed to contribute to anti-Semitism, while negative statements about Jews are most often attributed to people with left-wing political views and to Muslim extremists. Worries about becoming a victim of verbal insult or harassment over the next year are expressed by 28% of UK Jews, with 17% fearful of being physically attacked. One-fifth constantly or frequently avoid wearing or carrying things in public which might identify them as Jews, and 18% claim to have considered emigrating because they do not feel safe living as a Jew in the UK.

Personal experiences of anti-Semitism are lower than perceptions, 16% of UK Jews reporting personal discrimination or harassment during the past 12 months on the basis of their religion or belief, and 19% of verbal insult/harassment and/or physical attack over the same timescale due to being Jewish. Over the previous five years 29% have endured one or more of five forms of anti-Semitic harassment. The workplace is the most common context for such incidents, 76% of which (in the past year) or 71% (in the past five years) go unreported. However, in terms of both perception and experience, anti-Semitism appears to be less widespread and virulent in the UK than in several other European countries surveyed, notably France, Belgium, and Hungary.

The data for this survey were collected by Ipsos MORI, in association with the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, in the eight countries collectively containing more than 90% of the EU’s estimated Jewish population: Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, and the UK. Fieldwork took place in September-October 2012 using an online sample of 5,847 self-identifying Jews aged 16 and over, of whom 1,468 were from the UK. The questionnaire was placed on the open web, and publicized via the FRA and Jewish media and other agencies. Respondents were entirely self-selecting and cannot necessarily be considered to be national Jewish cross-sections. They are likely disproportionately to comprise those with an interest in, or experience of, anti-Semitism and to be members of Jewish community organizations. Nor did it prove feasible to weight the data to correct for any demographic bias. As the report notes: ‘this methodology is unable to deliver a random probability sample fulfilling the statistical criteria for representativeness’. Therefore, great care should be taken in interpreting the results.

An 80-page report on the survey, Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in EU Member States: Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism, can be read at:

http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2013-discrimination-hate-crime-against-jews-eu-member-states_en.pdf

An interactive visualization website, with data export facility, has also been set up, permitting the results for each question for each country to be analysed by age, gender, strength of Jewish identity, and strength of religiosity. This can be found at:

http://fra.europa.eu/DVS/DVT/as2013.php

Wearing the veil in court

The debate about whether a female Muslim defendant should be allowed to wear the niqab or full face veil in court has still not run out of steam. If anything, it has been rekindled by the Lord Chief Justice’s recent announcement that there is to be a public consultation about the wearing of the niqab in courtrooms. In a new YouGov poll for the Sunday Times among 1,878 Britons on 7-8 November 2013, 55% agreed that a defendant should be made to remove the niqab throughout her entire trial and a further 32% when giving evidence (but not otherwise). The combined figure of 87% wanting the niqab prohibited for at least part of the trial peaked at 99% of UKIP supporters, 96% of Conservatives, 96% of over-60s, and 93% of Londoners. More generally, 63% of adults wanted to see a complete ban on wearing the niquab in Britain, rising to 93% of UKIP voters and 82% of over-60s. The full data are available on pp. 7-8 of the survey tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qhng8fwkh7/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-081113.pdf

Self-assessed religiosity

In last week’s post (8 November 2013) we reported results about the claimed frequency of prayer in the UK from Round 6 of the European Social Survey, the dataset for which has recently been released. Now we present the (weighted) answers given to another question: ‘Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are?’ Interviewees were given a showcard inviting them to choose a point on a scale running from 0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious).

Religiosity score	2002	2004	2006	2008	2010	2012
0	14.4	11.4	18.1	18.8	18.0	17.0
1	5.6	7.7	7.7	6.9	8.4	8.2
2	9.7	10.2	9.1	9.8	10.3	9.5
3	10.0	10.6	11.1	10.4	10.4	10.1
4	8.0	10.6	8.9	7.8	8.6	7.5
5	17.7	15.2	14.3	13.8	13.9	12.9
6	10.4	8.8	8.0	8.9	7.4	8.7
7	10.1	8.6	9.6	10.0	9.4	10.1
8	8.2	9.0	6.4	6.1	6.5	9.4
9	2.8	4.3	2.8	3.1	3.4	3.4
10	3.1	3.7	4.1	4.4	3.6	3.3
Low (0-3)	39.7	39.9	46.0	45.9	47.1	44.8
Medium (4-6)	36.1	34.6	31.2	30.5	29.9	29.1
High (7-10)	24.2	25.6	22.9	23.6	22.9	26.2

The scores have been summed into three bands, corresponding to low, medium, and high religiosity. Unsurprisingly, the proportion self-assessing as of low religiosity has increased, from 40% in 2002 to 47% in 2010, before dropping to 45% in 2012. The high religiosity group has fluctuated in size but was actually larger in 2012 than in 2002 (26 versus 24%). It is naturally too soon to say whether the 2012 data mark the reversal of a downward trend or are something of a ‘blip’.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged Anti-Semitism, births, Board of Deputies of British Jews, courtrooms, David Vulkan, deaths, European Social Survey, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, face-veils, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Ipsos-MORI, Islamophobia, Jews, Linda Woodhead, marriages, Muslims, niqab, Roman Catholics, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

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