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Same-Sex Marriage and Other News

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Same-sex marriage heads BRIN’s list of six news stories today, with a fresh poll published about religious attitudes to it, just as the necessary legislation for England and Wales was clearing its final Parliamentary hurdles.

Same-sex marriage

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is firmly on course to enter the English and Welsh statute books, following completion of its final stages in the House of Lords (Third Reading) on Monday (15 July 2013) and House of Commons (‘Ping-Pong’, consideration of House of Lords amendments) yesterday evening (16 July). Royal Assent is expected later this week, with the first same-sex marriages taking place in summer 2014.

On the same day as the House of Lords gave the Bill an unopposed Third Reading, YouGov published its latest online poll on same-sex marriage, undertaken on behalf of Centreground Political Communications on 2-3 July 2013 among 1,923 Britons aged 18 and over. It revealed that 54% of adults support changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry, with 36% opposed, and 10% undecided. This is the eighth occasion on which YouGov has posed the question since December 2012, just prior to the Bill’s introduction into the House of Commons. Each of these polls has produced a majority for change, ranging from 52% to 55%.

Right to the last, however, people of faith continue to resist same-sex marriage, albeit by a narrow margin. In the Centreground survey 44% of those regarding themselves as belonging to a particular religion supported same-sex marriage, 48% were against, with 9% uncertain. By contrast, 69% of the 42% of respondents who had no religion backed same-sex marriage, and just 20% were opposed. It will be interesting to see whether, in the face of defeat of the majority faith line on same-sex marriage in the courts of Parliament and public opinion, religious communities will now rethink their positions. The YouGov table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2wp76zkopq/YG-Archive-Centre-Ground-results-030713-same-sex%20marriage.pdf

BRIN’s post of 4 February 2013, reviewing the religious aspects of same-sex marriage, as reflected in opinion polls, on the eve of the House of Commons Second Reading debate on the Bill, is still online at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/marriage-same-sex-couples-bill/

Interviewed by YouGov, a plurality of the British public has thought the Church of England wrong to oppose same-sex marriage, as shown below:

	22-23/11/12	14-15/3/13	27-28/3/13
	(%)	(%)	(%)
Right	38	39	37
Wrong	48	48	49
Don’t know	13	14	13
N	1,812	1,918	1,918

Alternative Queen’s Speech

Last month (June 2013) a group of backbench Conservative MPs tabled a raft of 40 Bills intended as an Alternative Queen’s Speech, comprising measures to ‘recapture the common ground, where most views are’. Pollster Lord Ashcroft decided to put these proposals to the test and commissioned Populus to gauge public reaction to them. Online interviews were conducted with 2,036 adult Britons on 28-30 June 2013, the sample being split into two, one half (sub-sample A) being asked about each Bill topic introduced as ‘ideas that some people have suggested ought to become law’, the other half (sub-sample B) informed that they were suggestions ‘various Conservative MPs have said they would like to see become law’. Results were published by Ashcroft on 16 July at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Alternative-Queens-Speech-poll-Full-tables.pdf

One of the proposals was for a Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it illegal to wear face coverings in public, including the burka, thereby implicitly targeting Muslims. This was supported by 59% of sub-sample A and 61% of sub-sample B, a similar level to other polls on the subject (especially a clutch of them in 2010), and opposed by 22% and 20% respectively. Support peaked at 73% of over-65s in A (79% in B), 70% of Conservatives (75%), and 90% of UKIP voters (76%). Opposition was especially to be found among the 18-24s (42% in A) and Liberal Democrats (35% in A).

Another measure in the Alternative Queen’s Speech was the Charitable Status for Religious Institutions Bill, which would provide for a presumption that such institutions meet the public benefit test for charitable status (following a recent high-profile case involving the Charity Commission and Exclusive Brethren), although the actual question put by Populus was subtly different, ‘presuming that churches deserve charity status’. A plurality (39%) in both sub-samples was undecided about this matter, with 37% in agreement with the purposes of the Bill in A and 36% in B, and 24% and 25% respectively against. Most in favour in sub-sample A were over-65s (42%), Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (43% each), and Scots and UKIP voters (44% each). Conservative support stood at 45% in sub-sample B and UKIP at 56%. BRIN is not aware of a directly comparable question having been asked before.

Church of England social action survey

The flow of reports seeking to document the contribution of faith communities to social capital shows no sign of drying up. The latest was published on 10 July 2013 by think-tank ResPublica in association with Resurgo Social Ventures, and on behalf of the Church of England: James Noyes and Phillip Blond, Holistic Mission: Social Action and the Church of England. It is available to download from:

http://www.respublica.org.uk/documents/mfp_ResPublica%20-%20Holistic%20Mission%20-%20FULL%20REPORT%20-%2010July2013.pdf

The report is underpinned by quantitative data obtained by Research by Design (RBD), questionnaires being completed by 589 adults who attended Sunday worship at 17 Anglican churches (16 in England, 1 in Scotland) on 24 February 2013. The overwhelming majority of respondents were aged 45 and over (88%) and white (96%), broadly in line with the Church of England’s diversity audit of 2007. There is a separate report by Dave Ruston of RBD on its survey, including the full text of the questionnaire, at:

http://www.researchbydesign.co.uk/cofe/report/test.pdf

Levels of social action were found to be higher among churchgoers than the general public (data for the latter being taken from the Citizenship Survey, 2009-10), albeit the difference may be explained in part by the higher age profile of worshippers. Thus, 79% of church congregations had engaged in formal social action (organized through voluntary groups) during the previous 12 months compared with 40% of the public; informal social action was recorded by 90% and 54% respectively. The commonest manifestations of formal social action were promoting the church (66%) and volunteering for Christian charities (60%). The main examples of informal social action were keeping in touch with someone who has difficulty getting out (75%), giving advice (61%), and looking after a property or a pet for someone who is away (55%). Although most churchgoers said their faith motivated their social activism, most also agreed that they were comfortable helping folk who have different values or religious beliefs to their own. Notwithstanding their social roles, churchgoers were divided about David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, 37% feeling part of it, 30% not, and 33% failing to understand it.

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England is making available online the presentations given at its latest annual Faith in Research conference, held on 20 June 2013. Among those so far available, BRIN readers will especially value the Church of England Strategy and Development Unit’s ‘Church Growth Research Programme: An Update on Progress at the 12-Month Stage’; and Linda Woodhead’s keynote ‘The Church of England: A Changing Church in a Changing Culture’, which explores the conundrum of ‘a national church out of step with its nation’. Woodhead draws upon the findings of two online YouGov polls concerning moral issues which she commissioned, in January and June 2013. BRIN has already documented the first of these polls through its coverage of this year’s Westminster Faith Debates; we will feature the second survey in detail as soon as the data tables become available. See also Ruth Gledhill’s article in The Times for 5 July 2013, which quotes Woodhead at length. The Faith in Research presentations can be downloaded at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-2013.aspx

Sixty years on

In his latest monthly column for the Church of England Newspaper (‘Sixty Years’, 14 July 2013, p. 15), Peter Brierley tries to summarize (from actual data and ‘reasonable estimates’) the religious changes which have occurred in the UK since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He calculates that: a) church membership has fallen from 19% of the population in 1953 to 8% today; b) average Sunday congregations have declined from 14% of the population in 1973 to 6% today; c) the number of churches has fluctuated within the range of 50,000-55,000 during the Queen’s reign; and d) ministers have decreased from 42,000 in 1953 to 37,000 today. Two charts show members, churches, and ministers for each tenth year between 1953 and 2013.

British Institute of Public Opinion

Sample surveys are a vital source of data on religious topics, and it was Henry Durant’s British Institute of Public Opinion (BIPO) – later Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited – which brought them to the fore. Although Durant did not conduct a full-scale survey on religion until 1957, and only asked about religious affiliation intermittently (for the first time in 1943), the BRIN source database reveals how indebted we are to BIPO/Gallup for shining a light on popular religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in Britain. Relatively little has been written about BIPO’s history and methods, so – even though it does not focus on religion (Durant himself is said to have believed that ‘religion was no longer an important factor shaping public opinion’) – BRIN readers will probably still be interested in Mark Roodhouse, ‘“Fish-and-Chip Intelligence”: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936-63’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2013, pp. 224-48. The author’s conclusions are fairly damning: ‘The sample survey was not a precision tool for “taking the pulse of democracy”. It contained irredeemable flaws that homogenized the private opinions of a skewed cross-section of British society, while commercial pressures forced Durant to make trade-offs between cost and quality, and clients’ needs and best survey practice.’ This judgment seems rather harsh and overstated, for many of the BIPO problems which Roodhouse describes (including dependence on quota sampling and part-time interviewers) were characteristic of the early days of opinion polling and market research both in Britain and the United States.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Alternative Queen's Speech, Big Society, British Institute of Public Opinion, Burka, Centreground Political Communications, charitable status, church attendance, church growth, church membership, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Conservative MPs, Dave Ruston, face coverings, Faith in Research, Gallup Poll, Henry Durant, Islamophobia, James Noyes, legislation, Linda Woodhead, Lord Ashcroft, Mark Roodhouse, Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, ministers, Muslims, opinion polls, Peter Brierley, Phillip Blond, Populus, religious institutions, Research by Design, ResPublica, Resurgo Social Ventures, same-sex marriage, social action, Social Capital, Twentieth Century British History, volunteering, YouGov | Leave a comment

Muslim and Anglican Miscellany

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Our latest round-up of religious statistical news publicizes seven stories of Muslim and Anglican interest.

Ramadan and Channel 4

The announcement (on 2 July 2013) by Channel 4 that it will broadcast (on television and its website) the Muslim call to prayer (adhan) during the festival of Ramadan, which runs from 9 July to 7 August, has been poorly received by the British public. According to a YouGov poll released on 4 July, and undertaken online among 1,923 adults on 2 and 3 July, 52% are opposed to the broadcaster’s decision and only 26% supportive, with 23% undecided. Opposition peaks among UKIP voters (84%), the over-60s (68%), and Conservatives (61%). Most in favour, with just over one-third in each case, are Labourites, Liberal Democrats, the under-40s, and Londoners. Unfortunately, no supplementary question was asked to seek reasons for opposition (or support), but anti-Muslim sentiment is likely to have featured strongly, especially with the heightening of tensions following the murder in Woolwich of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of two Islamists. Detailed computer tabulations have been posted at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gwofmzpssr/YG-Archive-Ramadan-results-030713-Channel-4-call-to-prayer.pdf

YouGov’s commentary on the results, including analysis of the impact of Channel 4’s announcement as reflected on Twitter and Facebook, can be found at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/07/04/public-oppose-ch4-muslim-call-prayer/

Anti-Muslim hate crime

The work of Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) in recording anti-Muslim hate incidents in England and Wales, and of the criticisms which it has received for allegedly misleading interpretations of its data, have been mentioned by BRIN twice before (see our posts of 15 March and 9 June 2013). We now highlight the publication, by Teesside University on 1 July, of a systematic analysis of the 584 incidents notified to Tell MAMA between 1 April 2012 and 30 April 2013: Nigel Copsey, Janet Dack, Mark Littler, and Matthew Feldman, Anti-Muslim Hate Crime and the Far Right, at pp. 14-27. The overwhelming majority of these incidents, which the authors accept are of a ‘fundamentally self-selecting nature’, occurred online (74%) and were not reported to the police (63%, thus making it difficult to say how many were technically crimes under the law). Most (56%) were said to be linked with far right groups, rising to 69% for online incidents alone. There is a useful ‘post-Woolwich addendum’ (pp. 27-8), which shows that there were 241 anti-Muslim incidents notified to Tell MAMA in the period between 22 May and 25 June 2013, equivalent to a daily rate four times as high as during the preceding thirteen months, although 46% of these cases occurred during the five days after Rigby’s murder. The report – which marks the official launch of the University’s Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist, and Post-Fascist Studies – is available at:

http://www.tees.ac.uk/docs/DocRepo/Research/Copsey_report3.pdf

True Vision, another hate crime reporting agency, has recently published a faith breakdown of the victims of religious hate crimes as recorded by the police in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 2011. Of the two-thirds of such crimes for which this information is available, 52% were committed against Muslims, 26% against Jews, and 14% against Christians. The data, which come with several caveats and have not been statistically validated, are at:

http://report-it.org.uk/files/religious_hate_crime_data_2011_published_(june_2013).pdf

How many Muslims?

The British public greatly overestimates the number of Muslims living in Britain, and underestimates the country’s Christian population, according to an Ipsos MORI poll for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London whose results were published on 9 July 2013 in connection with the International Year of Statistics. Interviews were conducted online with 1,015 adults aged 16-75 between 14 and 18 June 2013, and topline and detailed tables (pp. 121-8 of the latter being most relevant for our purposes) are available at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3188/Perceptions-are-not-reality-the-top-10-we-get-wrong.aspx

Asked ‘out of every 100 people in Britain, about how many do you think are Muslim?’ 35% could not venture an opinion, but, among those who did reply, 24% was the mean estimated proportion of Muslims, about five times the actual figure for England and Wales as revealed in the 2011 census. The estimated proportion of Muslims peaks among those with no formal educational qualifications (33%) and readers of tabloid newspapers (31%). All told, as many as two-fifths of Britons think that Muslims account for more than 10% of people in the country. By contrast, Christians are believed to comprise no more than 34% of the nation, 25% fewer than in England and Wales at the 2011 census.

Such misperceptions were not confined to religion but affected a whole swathe of topics covered in the survey, thereby highlighting ‘how wrong the British public can be on the make-up of the population and the scale of key social policy issues’. Clearly, the challenge of innumeracy and the deficit of evidence-based thinking remain very great.

Church of England – hardly a ‘national treasure’

In his first presidential address to General Synod this week, Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, warned the Church of England of ‘the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland’, and of an increasing gulf between public attitudes and those of the Church. Some reflection of this disenchantment with the Established Church can be found in a YouGov poll undertaken for Freeview between 7 and 10 June 2013, and published on 10 July 2013. The sample comprised 2,066 UK adults aged 18 and over.

Respondents were given a mixed bag of fifteen British organizations, and asked about the extent to which they valued them, on a scale running from 1 (‘don’t value at all’) to 10 (‘value a lot’). In the case of the Church of England, 21% stated that they did not value it at all, the fourth worst score after the Football Association (32%), BskyB (27%), and Barclays (27%). By contrast, lower figures were recorded by British Gas (18%), the House of Commons (16%), British Telecom (11%), British Airways (11%), BBC (6%), ITV (6%), Freeview (4%), National Trust (3%), Post Office (2%), Royal Mail (2%), and the National Health Service (1%). The Church of England’s worst rating was among Scots (43%) and unemployed people (38%).

At the other end of the spectrum, only 8% valued the Church of England a lot, peaking at 12% of over-55s, the retired, and residents of South-West England; and 18% of those with three or more children in the household. This compared with 54% for the National Health Service, 20% for the BBC, 20% for Royal Mail, 19% for the Post Office, 17% for Freeview, 14% for the National Trust, 8% for the House of Commons, 7% for ITV, 5% for British Telecom, 4% for British Airways, 3% for British Gas, 3% for the Football Association, 2% for BskyB, and 2% for Barclays.

If we assume that scores of 1, 2, 3, and 4 equate to negativity, then 41% of Britons attach limited or no value to the Church of England. One-quarter (24%) are neutral (giving a rating of 5 or 6), 29% are positive (opting for 7, 8, 9, or 10), and 5% are undecided. Full data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/orjnam7d6m/YouGov-survey-Freeview-research-part%201-130610.pdf

Part 2 of the same poll included a similar question about the value of sundry ‘national treasures’, all of which bar British television soaps (27%) achieved a lower 1 score than the Church of England had in part 1: Harry Potter (20%), Wimbledon tennis championship (15%), James Bond (14%), royal family (10%), the Beatles (10%), a cup of tea (8%), William Shakespeare (6%), Stonehenge (6%), Big Ben (6%), British pubs (5%), fish and chips (4%), and red post boxes (4%).

Part 2 also contained a slightly daft question about which one of ten things UK adults would give up in order to ensure continuing free access (through the television licence) to the main television channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5). Going to church was one of the forfeits and was selected by 14% of respondents, just behind using social media (18%) and smoking cigarettes (15%). The tables for Part 2 are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ftez3b2zxd/YouGov-survey-Freeview-research-part2-130610.pdf

Church of England finance statistics

The Church of England’s parochial finance statistics for 2011 were published on 1 July 2013. For the third year running, parishes were in overall deficit, albeit to a smaller extent in 2011 (£14 million) than 2010 (£22 million). Total income in 2011 was £916 million, £19 million more than the year before, while total expenditure was £930 million, up by £12 million. In 2007, the last year before the economic downturn, parishes had an aggregate surplus of £60 million, since when income has steadily fallen in real terms. The report, in the form of nine tables and ten figures, can be found at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1791665/2011financestatistics.pdf

Church Times readership survey

As part of its 150th anniversary celebrations, the Church Times has launched a survey of its readership, broadly comparable to the one undertaken by self-completion postal questionnaire in 2001. A questionnaire was included in the 5 July 2013 edition of the newspaper but can alternatively be completed online. Results will be analysed by Professor Leslie Francis of the University of Warwick and Andrew Village of York St John University; they will be available in the autumn. The online questionnaire can be found at:

https://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/yorksj/ctsurvey

The principal publications arising from the 2001 survey are: Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins, and Jeff Astley, Fragmented Faith? Exploring the Fault-Lines in the Church of England (Bletchley: Paternoster Press, 2005); and Andrew Village and Leslie Francis, The Mind of the Anglican Clergy: Assessing Attitudes and Beliefs in the Church of England (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009).

Godparents for the royal baby

The birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child may be imminent, but a majority of Britons have no views about the baby’s godparents. Given a list of prospective godmothers, 53% say they have no idea or do not care who it will be, with 51% replying along the same lines about prospective godfathers. The figures rise to 70% and 71% respectively among those expressing no interest in the forthcoming royal birth. In so far as Britons have a preference for godparents, it is Prince Harry for godfather (35%) and Pippa Middleton for godmother (16%). YouGov interviewed 1,577 adults aged 18 and over online on 7-8 July 2013, and data tables were published on 11 July at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8xp56xnnvs/YG-Archive-Royal-baby-results-080713-memorabilia-and-godparents.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged adhan, Andrew Village, Anglicans, call to prayer, Channel 4, Christians, Church of England, Church Times, churchgoing, finance, Freeview, godparents, hate crime, Ipsos-MORI, Islamophobia, Janet Dack, King's College London, Lee Rigby, Leslie Francis, Mark Littler, Matthew Feldman, Muslims, Nigel Copsey, numeracy, Ramadan, royal baby, Royal Statistical Society, Teesside University, television, Tell MAMA, True Vision, value, Woolwich, YouGov | Leave a comment

Chaplaincy ‘Wars’ and Other News

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Clive D. Field

It is not an unusual occurrence for religious statistics to be debated and contested, but those relating to hospital chaplaincy seem to be especially prone to feature in public rows. Two competing pictures of what is happening to the number of chaplains lead today’s post, followed by the usual miscellany of seven other news stories.

Hospital chaplaincy

Two pieces of research into chaplaincy provision in NHS hospitals in England have produced seemingly conflicting results. On 27 June 2013 BBC Local Radio announced that the Freedom of Information (FOI) request which it had submitted to 163 acute hospital trusts (and to which 98% responded) had found that 39% had cut back on the chaplains (or full-time equivalents) they employed during the past five years (2009-13), against a backdrop of economies in the NHS. And 47% of trusts had reduced the number of hours chaplains were on duty, the lost hours amounting to 1,380 (or 8% of the total), although another 25% had increased hours. In the 114 trusts where chaplains had left in the past five years, their posts had not been replaced in 36% of cases while 46% of trusts had refilled them but on a lower pay band or shorter hours. BBC press releases on the study (the third including a link to an Excel file containing the data for each trust) are at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23011620 and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/lr-nhs-chaplain.html and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22990153

However, the National Secular Society (NSS), which has long campaigned against publicly-funded NHS chaplains, reported in Newsline (its weekly ezine) on 28 June that its own still incomplete research, again via FOI, among all 230 English health trusts (acute and non-acute) appeared to suggest that ‘since 2009 the number of chaplains has remained largely the same’, notwithstanding serious losses in NHS nursing posts over the same timescale. According to the NSS, 485 full-time equivalent hospital chaplains are employed by the 85% of trusts which have replied to date, compared to 546 in the completed NSS survey undertaken in 2009. The Newsline article, including a link to data from individual trusts which have responded thus far, is at:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/newsline-28-june-2013.pdf

Mappiness is …

Meditating and engaging in religious activities are the thirteenth most likely source (of forty) to make us feel happier, according to a ‘league table’ published in a feature article by Kathryn Cooper in The Sunday Times for 30 June 2013 (main section, p. 12, behind a paywall), and based on the ‘Mappiness’ research project at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mappiness is an app for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices, which 56,900 UK users (presumably, disproportionately young) have downloaded since August 2010 as a tool for measuring their momentary well-being (in contrast to most research into well-being, which relies on recall of recent or past experiences). Each self-selecting participant receives a randomly-timed ‘ding’ once or more each day asking them to complete a short survey of well-being, including a note of their current activity and whereabouts, within one hour of the ‘ding’. Unsurprisingly, intimacy/making love topped the index, increasing happiness levels by 14.2%, while being sick in bed came bottom, depressing happiness by 20.4%. Meditating/religious activities improved perceptions of happiness by an average 4.9%, not far behind drinking alcohol, which was in eleventh position (with a positive score of 5.7%). More information about Mappiness is at:

http://www.mappiness.org.uk/

Short-term trends in religious affiliation

In our post of 22 June 2013 we included a news item about the ‘Making Sense of the Census’ study day and of Clive Field’s presentation there about changing patterns of religious affiliation. Some use was made in this presentation of data obtained by Populus (including in its polls for Lord Ashcroft) in response to the question ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ We can now present (below) the findings (as percentages) from these online Populus surveys of adult Britons aged 18 and over, aggregated into six-monthly periods from January 2011 to June 2013. No strong short-term trends emerge from the table, which is perhaps unsurprising, since there is always a degree of sampling error and other variations arising from such polls (not least with regard to non-Christian faiths). Nevertheless, the broad picture is clear. On this particular question-wording, just over half of adults profess to be Christians and about one-third claim to have no religion.

	1-6/11	7-12/11	1-6/12	7-11/12	1-6/13
Christian	56.6	55.7	56.4	54.9	55.4
Muslim	2.3	1.7	2.2	1.9	2.4
Hindu	1.3	1.0	1.0	0.8	0.9
Jew	1.0	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.7
Sikh	0.2	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.3
Buddhist	0.7	0.6	0.8	0.7	0.7
Other	2.4	2.5	2.5	2.2	2.1
No religion	32.8	35.4	33.6	36.1	35.3
Refused	2.8	2.1	2.4	2.2	2.3
N	23,454	21,097	19,339	49,147	38,260

Making sense of the census

Abby Day and Lois Lee have now prepared a summary report of the study day on ‘Making Sense of the Census’, hosted by the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group (SocRel) on 18 June 2013, which will be found at:

http://socrel.org.uk/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Day-Abby-and-Lois-Lee-2013-Making-Sense-of-the-Census-Report-FINAL-AD-LL.pdf

Black majority churches

The London Borough of Southwark is reputed to have been the home of the country’s first Black Majority Church (BMC), in 1906. It is therefore appropriate that the borough should have been the subject of a two-year study (from June 2011 to June 2013) of the so-called ‘new’ BMCs which have developed in Britain since the 1950s. In Southwark’s case, the phenomenon has been associated with people of African, and particularly West African, origin. Indeed, according to Andrew Rogers of the University of Roehampton, who was principal investigator for the project and wrote the final report on it which was published on 20 June 2013, ‘Southwark is the African capital of the UK’. It is home to at least 240 and possibly as many as 300 new BMCs, disproportionately in the north of the borough, and with no fewer than 25 to be found on the Old Kent Road alone, which is just a mile and a half long. Collectively, these new BMCs attract 24,000 congregants on a Sunday, more than 8% of the population, and perhaps representing ‘the greatest concentration of African Christianity in the world, outside of Africa’. Rogers and his team (a partnership drawn from the University, Southwark for Jesus, and Churches Together in South London) have deployed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to examine these new BMCs, from the perspective of demographics, ecclesiology, ethnicity and culture, community engagement, ecumenical matters, and premises and planning. The report – Being Built Together: A Story of New Black Majority Churches in the London Borough of Southwark – includes 22 tables and 9 figures. It can be found at:

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/uploadedFiles/Page_Content/Courses/Humanities/Being_Built_Together/Being%20Built%20Together(SB)%20web%20(D).pdf

Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland

There was a 24% decrease in 2012-13 (over 2011-12) in charges reported with a religious aggravation under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, according to Amy Goulding and Ben Cavanagh, Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2012-13, which was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 14 June 2013. Even if we factor in the 75 further charges for religious hatred brought under Section 1 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, which came into force on 1 March 2012, there was still a decline of 15% (from 901 to 762). The fall was particularly to be found in charges referring to Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, down respectively by 44% and 24%, but there were increases in charges where conduct was derogatory towards Islam (from 19 in 2011-12 to 80 in 2012-13) and Judaism (from 14 to 27). A single incident in Glasgow accounted for 57 of the anti-Islam charges. Overall, 41% of religiously aggravated charges were in Glasgow. Of all the accused, 91% were men, 91% were aged 16-50, and 49% were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the offence. The main charges brought were threatening or abusive behaviour (56%) and breach of the peace (20%). Full details at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0042/00424865.pdf

Global Methodist statistics

David Jeremy provides an introduction to the historical statistics of world Methodism (including the UK) in his ‘Church Statistics and the Growth of Global Methodism: Some Preliminary Descriptive Statistics’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, edited by William Gibson, Peter Forsaith, and Martin Wellings (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 87-107). His account is drawn from several international (commencing with the Ecumenical Methodist Conference of 1881) and national sources which, not altogether unexpectedly, are sometimes difficult to reconcile with each other. This is even true of membership, which is the most commonly-cited measure of Methodist belonging. The data points which specifically refer to the UK and other individual countries are for 1880, 1910, 1955, and 2006, although global figures are also given for several further years. Membership/population density in the UK declined from 2.5% in 1880 to 2.4% in 1910 to 1.6% in 1955 to 0.5% in 2006. This decrease is symptomatic of a wider shift in global Methodism from developed to developing countries. The essay does not particularly enhance accessibility or understanding of UK Methodist statistics but it does conveniently locate them in a broader geographical context.

Inter-war religion

The timing of secularization in Britain remains a contested topic among historians and sociologists, some regarding it largely as a post-Second World War phenomenon (with the 1960s a critical decade), others viewing it as a more gradual process commencing in the Victorian era. The inter-war years (1918-39) have been little studied in this context, notwithstanding a coincidence of social, economic, and political circumstances which might have been expected to trigger religious change. In ‘Gradualist or Revolutionary Secularization? A Case Study of Religious Belonging in Inter-War Britain, 1918-1939’, Church History and Religious Culture, Vol. 93, No. 1, 2013, pp. 57-93, Clive Field reviews the extent of religious belonging during this period, with reference to quantitative evidence, from two perspectives: churchgoing, and church membership and affiliation. Trends in church attendance are documented, including the demographic variables which shaped it and the effect of innovations such as Sunday cinema and Sunday radio broadcasts of religious services. A conjectural religious profile of the adult population of Britain, c. 1939 reveals that, while, relative to population, there was only marginal growth in professed irreligion and non-Christian faiths since c. 1914, there was accelerated decline in religious worship (notably in terms of regularity) and active affiliation to Protestant denominations. This shift to nominalism particularly impacted the historic Free Churches (the phenomenon had long existed in the Church of England). Examination of these two religious indicators for the inter-war years thus lends further support to the view that secularization in Britain is best seen as a progressive and protracted process. In accordance with the policy of the publisher, Brill, the post-print version of the article has been made available on the author’s personal website at:

http://clivedfield.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/interwar-religion-chrc-2013-published.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Abby Day, Amy Goulding, Andrew Rogers, BBC Local Radio, Ben Cavanagh, black majority churches, BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group, census of population, church attendance, Church History and Religious Culture, church membership, Churches Together in South London, Clive Field, Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, David Jeremy, England, Freedom of Information, happiness, hospital chaplains, inter-war period, Kathryn Cooper, Lois Lee, London, London School of Economics, Mappiness, meditation, Methodism, National Health Service, National Secular Society, Populus, religious activities, Religious Affiliation, religious hatred, religiously aggravated offending, Scotland, SocRel, Southwark, Southwark for Jesus, Sunday Times, University of Roehampton, well-being | Leave a comment

Religious Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven new sources of British religious statistics feature in today’s bulletin, leading with the latest set of official annual figures on the mode of solemnization of marriages in England and Wales.

Marriages (England and Wales), 2011

The number of marriages solemnized in religious ceremonies in England and Wales dropped by 6% between 2010 and 2011, notwithstanding that the overall total of marriages increased by 2% over the same period. The decline affected all denominations and faiths, including the Church of England and Church in Wales, which conducted 7% fewer weddings in 2011 than 2010, despite the former’s push over recent years to stimulate public interest in getting married in church. The fall in religious marriages since 2001 has been 18%, in contrast to all marriages which have contracted by just one-half a percentage point. The proportion of religious marriages to the total has slumped from 99% in 1838 to 84% in 1901 to 67% in 1966 to 30% in 2011, 1976 being the year when civil ceremonies overtook religious ones.

Perhaps reflecting the struggles which many Christian denominations have had to come to terms with divorce, both partners in religious marriages continue to be more likely to be entering their first marriage than do their counterparts at civil ceremonies (82% against 60% in 2011, albeit the former figure has dipped from 95% in the late 1960s as divorce has spread even among people of faith). Couples undergoing a civil marriage are also 10% more likely to be cohabiting before marriage than those marrying in a place of worship; however, the latter figure had climbed to 78% in 2011 (compared with 41% in 1994). So, whatever their traditional teaching against it, the Churches have clearly had to accommodate themselves to a society in which living together (i.e. sex) before marriage is the norm. Were they not to turn a blind eye to it, religious marriages would simply implode.

The foregoing data (still provisional for 2011) are taken from a bulletin issued by the Office for National Statistics today (26 June 2013) and from associated reference tables, all of which may be accessed at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/marriages-in-england-and-wales–provisional-/2011/index.html

Global threats

Given a list of eight possible international concerns, 55% of Britons selected Islamic extremist groups as a major threat to the country, second only to international financial instability (59%), and ahead of global climate change (48%), North Korea’s nuclear programme (45%), Iran’s nuclear programme (42%), political instability in Pakistan (31%), China’s power and influence (29%), and US power and influence (22%). This is according to the latest release of data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with fieldwork undertaken (by Princeton Survey Research Associates International) in 39 countries in Spring 2013 (including Britain, where 1,012 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone between 4 and 27 March 2013). Nevertheless, Islamic extremist groups were even more likely to be categorized as a major threat in several other leading developed nations: Italy (74%), France (71%), Spain (62%), Germany (60%), Japan (57%), and the US (56%). In Britain an additional 33% considered Islamic extremist groups to be a minor threat and only 6% no threat at all. Topline tables were published on 24 June 2013 at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/06/Pew-Research-Center-Global-Attitudes-Project-Global-Threats-Report-FINAL-June-24-20131.pdf

Origins of life

The creationist view of the origin and development of life on earth is held by only a minority of UK citizens, according to Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 2, undertaken by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with 1,396 adults and 460 young people aged 14-18 between 21 May and 22 October 2012, but not published until 17 May 2013. Just 23% of adults and 21% of young people agreed that ‘humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form’, rising to 28% of over-65s, 27% of women, and 27% of those with no educational qualifications. A further 22% of adults and 18% of young people thought that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time, in a process guided by God’. But the biggest number in both groups, 50% of adults and 57% of young people, subscribed to the theory that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time as a result of natural selection, in which God played no part’. The proportion peaked (68%) among those scoring most highly on a quiz about scientific knowledge which was a component of the research. A wide range of documentation about the survey, including data in Excel format (T146 is the relevant table for this question) and the main report (with analysis on pp. 32-3), is available at:

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

These results are broadly consistent with those obtained in Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 1, conducted in 2009. They also accord with evidence from other pollsters, although variations in question-wording and methodology make strict comparisons difficult. This evidence has been summarized thus by Clive Field in an, as yet, unpublished paper: ‘the creation in Genesis is now widely rejected in favour of evolutionist interpretations. This appears to have been a relatively recent phenomenon. Two-thirds to four-fifths now accept human beings have developed from earlier species of animals, while believers in the so-called young earth creation theory (that God made human beings in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years) fell from 29% in 1995 to below one-fifth in the most recent polls (2006-12). Excluding a fairly significant number of “don’t knows”, majority opinion is unevenly split between theories of Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (the latter still admitting some possible role for God or supernatural planner). Many do not see any inherent contradiction between evolution and Christianity in accounting for the origin of life on earth and thus can believe in both, and there is broad support for all explanations of the origin being taught in schools.’

Funeral hymns

Put on the spot, a plurality (44%) of 2,427 adult Britons did not know what song, hymn or piece of music they would like to be played at their funeral, and a further 11% did not want any music to be played. The remaining 45% nominated a particular song, hymn or piece of music, but none took more than 1% of the vote. The most popular religious or allied items were Abide with Me (the choice of 30 respondents), Jerusalem (28), Amazing Grace (22), How Great Thou Art (21), and The Lord is My Shepherd/Psalm 23 (20). The poll was conducted online by ComRes on behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care on 3-6 May 2013, in advance of Dying Matters Awareness Week (13-19 May), although the full data tables were not published until 12 June at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Marie_Curie_Gardens_Final_Data_Tables_9_May_2013.pdf

Youth and religion

A YouGov poll of 940 18- to 24-year-olds for The Sun, conducted online on 14-19 June 2013 and published on 24-25 June, confirms the relatively weak hold which religion has over Generation Y, those born in the 1980s and 1990s. A mere 8% profess membership of a church or religious group (compared with 21% who belong to a gym). One-tenth claim to attend religious services once a month or more, with 56% never going and a further 18% less than annually. Only 12% say they are influenced a lot or a fair amount by religious leaders, even less than celebrities (21%), brands (32%), and politicians (38%), and way behind friends (77%) and parents (82%). Just 14% recognize religion as more often the cause of good in the world against 41% who agree that it is mostly the source of evil, the remainder being neutral or uncertain. No more than 25% believe in God, although another 19% accept that there is some kind of spiritual greater power; 38% believe in neither and 18% are undecided. And only 38% identify with a religion, 56% with none. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, and education) are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jgdvn3vm4b/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-190613-youth-survey.pdf

while commentary on the survey can be found at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/06/24/british-youth-reject-religion/ and

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4981030/yougov-survey-on-britains-young-adults.html

Methodist statistics

The Methodist Church of Great Britain has recently made available its statistics for mission report for the connexional year 2012/13 (representing the position as at October 2012, and based on a 98% response from local churches). Comparing with the year before, the picture which emerges is one of continuing decline on most performance indicators, with significant annual decreases in those with the loosest attachment to the Church, reflected in the figures for the community roll and rites of passage (the fall in membership and attendance was less marked). The following table has been compiled from data available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/ministers-and-office-holders/statistics-for-mission

	2011	2012	% change
Members
All	221,879	219,359	-1.1
New	3,183	2,903	-8.8
Died	6,889	6,938	+0.7
Ceased to meet	4,734	4,052	-14.4
Community roll	513,671	453,990	-11.6
Attendances
All age weekly average: Sunday	202,573	197,592	-2.5
All age weekly average: midweek	33,035	32,814	-0.7
Adult weekly average	199,626	196,365	-1.6
Children/young people weekly average	33,794	33,736	-0.2
Rites of passage
Baptisms/thanksgivings	11,227	10,505	-6.4
Marriages/blessings	3,710	3,570	-3.8
Funerals	22,327	21,505	-3.7

Psychological type and churchmanship of Anglican clergy

The relationship of psychological type preferences to three forms of self-assigned churchmanship (Anglo-Catholic, Broad Church, evangelical) is explored by Andrew Village in ‘Traditions within the Church of England and Psychological Type: A Study among the Clergy’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2013, pp. 22-44. The sample comprised 1,047 Anglican clergy ordained in the United Kingdom (mostly into the Church of England) between 2004 and 2007 who responded to a self-completion postal questionnaire. The majority of clergy were found to prefer introversion over extraversion, but this preference was more marked among Anglo-Catholics than evangelicals. Anglo-Catholics also showed preference for intuition over sensing, while the reverse was true for evangelicals. Clergy of both sexes exhibited an overall preference for feeling over thinking, but this was reversed among evangelicals. These variations could not be wholly explained by differences in the level of conservatism or charismaticism across the traditions, suggesting that they were linked to preferences for different styles of religious expression in worship. In short, Village argues, people gravitate to traditions that match their psychological type, especially in respect of the perceiving function. The analysis is preceded by a fairly extensive literature review of psychological type and religion. The abstract and full-text access options for the article are at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/10.1163/15709256-12341252

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, cause of evil, cause of good, church attendance, church membership, Church of England, churchmanship, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, Creationism, evolution, funerals, global threats, God, hymns, Ipsos-MORI, Islamic extremist groups, Islamophobia, Journal of Empirical Theology, Marie Curie Cancer Care, marriages, Methodist Church, Office for National Statistics, origins of life, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Princeton Survey Research Associates International, psychological type, Religious Affiliation, religious leaders, rites of passage, The Sun, Wellcome Trust Monitor, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

Humanist Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Herewith eight more religious statistical news stories which have come to hand during the past week.

Humanist marriages

Humanist marriages have been legal in Scotland since 2005, and in 2011 (the latest year for which data are available) they were the second most common form of ‘religious’ wedding ceremony in Scotland, after the Church of Scotland. Humanist marriages are not yet legally recognized in England and Wales, but a majority of Britons (53%) and of English and Welsh (51%) think they should be, according to a YouGov poll for the British Humanist Association which was published on 18 June 2013. Online fieldwork was undertaken between 31 May and 3 June 2013 among 2,385 adults aged 18 and over. Support for change is greatest among the never married (60%), those aged 25-34 years (60%), Scots (64%), and full-time students (66%). Outright opposition to the legal recognition of humanist marriages is relatively small (12%), albeit rising to 16% in North-East England, 17% for the married or in a civil partnership, 18% for the over-55s, 19% among the retired, and 26% of widowed. The remainder of the public either expresses no opinion (10%) or takes a neutral stance (25%). Full data tables are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n87gbl5m71/YG-Archive-British-Humanist-Association-030613-humanist-marriages.pdf

Another post-Woolwich poll

Survation have recently posted the full data tables from an online poll on public attitudes to counter-terrorism and the economy which they carried out on 30 May 2013 on behalf of The Sun on Sunday among 1,007 adult Britons. They include results from a couple of questions about hate preachers in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of Islamists. One question asked whether, in general, Muslim communities had been doing all they could to combat the threat of hate preachers and extremism; only 26% of Britons thought they had against 60% who deemed these communities to have been complacent and insufficiently proactive in addressing the problem. The second question asked respondents to anticipate the likely outcome of the long-running case involving Abu Qatada, the radical Muslim cleric; 24% expected him to be forcibly extradited to his native Jordan, 20% to return to Jordan voluntarily, and 38% to remain in the UK indefinitely, with 17% uncertain what would happen. In fact, a treaty which would facilitate Abu Qatada’s extradition and trial in Jordan has now been approved by the Jordanian and UK Parliaments, so the poll has been overtaken by events. The data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Survation-Sun-On-Sunday-Full-Report-020613.pdf

Religious education (RE) in primary schools

‘The lack of time allocated to RE during initial teacher training courses leaves primary school teachers feeling under-prepared to teach the subject when they arrive in the classroom … This, compounded by a lack of curriculum time in many schools and the high turnover of RE subject leaders, is leaving RE teaching in a perilous state in many primary schools.’ So concludes the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) in a report published on 20 June 2013 and based upon online questionnaires completed by a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 679 English primary schools over a six-week period during the Spring Term 2013. In three-quarters of cases the respondent was the subject leader for RE. The report, comprising a brief textual analysis and 13 tables, can be found at:

http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/NATRE_Primary_RE_Survey_2013_1_2_final.pdf

Overall, the resources available for RE were judged to be adequate in 61% of schools and more than adequate in 24%. That left 15% of schools where resources were considered to be less than adequate, rising slightly to 17% for academy and community schools without a religious character (but still 12% even in schools with a religious character). Most schools (82%) devoted less than an hour a week to RE, including 6% who allocated less than half an hour (10% in schools without a religious character). However, this timetabling was not seriously out of line with that for history and geography. One-quarter (24%) of informants claimed to have received no initial teacher training in RE (compared with 16% who said the same about history and 7% about English), and this was even 15% for those who had pursued the three- or four-year bachelor’s degree in education. As a consequence, 17% recalled that they had not been confident at all about teaching RE when they began their careers, albeit 93% assessed themselves as now being very or reasonably confident. The most regularly used resources for teaching RE were the locally agreed syllabus (78%) and the internet (67%).

NATRE is currently fielding an equivalent online survey in English secondary schools. It was launched on 30 May and runs until 26 July 2013. BRIN expects to cover the results in due course.

St Paul’s the tops!

St Paul’s Cathedral and Big Ben tied in first place (with 19% each) in a recent YouGov poll (for Warburtons) in which 2,050 Britons were invited to select their favourite London skyline image from a list of thirteen landmark buildings. Online fieldwork was undertaken between 31 May and 3 June 2013, although results were not released until 19 June. St Paul’s was the undisputed leader over Big Ben among women (21%), the over-55s (27%), retired people (28%), non-manual workers (22%), married persons (22%), separated or divorced (27%), widowed (33%), Londoners (22%), Welsh (18%), and Scots (22%). St Paul’s was the only religious building on the list, with Tower Bridge in third position (12%) and the other ten landmarks all scoring below 10%. One can only speculate as to the reason(s) for St Paul’s popularity: its outstanding architecture, its symbolism of the divine, its epitome of national unity and defiance in that famous wartime photograph from the London blitz, and so forth. Tables can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/vg43flfgno/YG-Archive-Weber-Shandwick-results-030613-Warburtons-London.pdf

Diocese of Leicester mission statistics

A rich statistical profile of the Church of England Diocese of Leicester is contained in its statistics for mission returns for 2012, published (with comparisons for previous years) on 16 June 2013 as a summary report (in PDF format) and raw data (in Excel format) at:

http://www.leicester.anglican.org/news/details/2000-people-joined-leicestershire-churches-last-year

Not only are the figures more up-to-date than the last Church of England national return (for 2011, published on 7 May), but they also relate to some matters which have not hitherto been reported on nationally. Two especially caught BRIN’s attention. First, there is the revelation that 38% of adults in Anglican worshipping communities in the diocese are now aged 70 or above. Second, we get insights into the dynamics of joining and leaving these worshipping communities, unpacking the net figures (‘stocks’) to reveal the underlying and partially offsetting inward and outward ‘flows’. The table below summarizes the position in the diocese for adults, children and young people combined for the four-year period 2009-12:

Joining worshipping community
For first time	4,074
Transfer from another church	1,912
Returning after break from church	822
Total	6,808
Leaving worshipping community
Death or ill-health	1,832
Relocation or joining another church	1,555
No longer part of any church	570
Total	3,957

Scottish Episcopal Church statistics

Decline in the Scottish Episcopal Church appears to have bottomed out somewhat, according to the annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 December 2012 which were presented to the Church’s General Synod meeting in Edinburgh on 6-8 June 2013. The number of members was down just 0.3% on 2011, of communicants by 0.7%, and of attenders on a Sunday before Advent by 0.7%. The Diocese of Edinburgh even registered modest growth on all three indicators. Of course, the longer-term trend remains downwards. Church attendance is said to have reduced by 15% over five years, and the current totals of members (34,804) and communicants (24,480) are well down on the high points of, respectively, 147,518 in 1921 and 62,375 in 1938. However, Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, highlighted to General Synod the existence of many ‘adherents’ of the Scottish Episcopal Church who were neither members nor communicants. The 2012 diocesan statistics can be found on pp. 61-8 of the annual report at:

http://www.scotland.anglican.org/index.php/news/entry/general_synod_2013_-_agenda_and_papers/

Making sense of the census

The British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion (SocRel) Study Group held a study day at Friends House, London on 18 June 2013 on the theme of ‘Making Sense of the Census: The SocRel Response’. Various aspects of the religion question in the 2011 population census of England and Wales were explored. Keynotes were given by Abby Day (organizer of the event, with Lois Lee), Clive Field, and Grace Davie, and there were also two round tables involving nine shorter presentations. A summation of the day will be available on the SocRel website in due course, and it is hoped that selected papers will eventually appear in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Meanwhile, BRIN readers may be interested to see a sub-set of slides from Field’s presentation on the historical and methodological contexts of the census in terms of religious identity. These illustrate how, at least in the British context, different question-wording can apparently lead to marked variations in outcomes. You can view these slides by clicking on the link below:

SocRel sub-set

1851 religious census in the North-East

The Religious Census of 1851: Northumberland and County Durham, edited by Alan Munden, was published by the Boydell Press on 18 April 2013 (Publications of the Surtees Society, Vol. 216, lxxxv + 581p., ISBN 978-0-85444-071-9, £50 hardback). It offers a transcript of the original schedules from the 1851 census of religious accommodation and attendance (in general congregations and at Sunday schools) for the twelve registration districts in these two counties (including places of worship in Yorkshire) as well as for that part of the Alston registration district in Cumberland which was then in the Diocese of Durham. There is an extensive introduction, notes (derived from other primary or secondary sources), appendices, and indexes. Unusually for such editions, and some may feel unhelpfully (notwithstanding the cross-referencing between the two systems on pp. lix-lxxxv), the arrangement of the entries for the 1,175 individual churches and chapels is not in accordance with the numbering of the original documents in the Home Office Papers at The National Archives. Instead, Munden has chosen to rearrange the entries according to his own numbering, first by registration district alphabetically ordered within each county, and then by denomination within each district, thereby losing the topographical unity deriving from organization by sub-districts and parish/places in the census. This volume brings to twenty-two the total of English counties for which editions of the 1851 religious census have now been published, which leaves seventeen to do (of which at least two are being worked on).

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Abu Qatada al-Filistini, Alan Munden, British Humanist Association, census of population, church growth, Church of England, church-joining, church-leaving, Clive Field, County Durham, Diocese of Leicester, hate preachers, humanism, humanist marriages, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jordan, Lee Rigby, London, mission statistics, Muslim communities, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, NATRE, Northumberland, primary schools, Religious Affiliation, religious education, Scottish Episcopal Church, Sociology of Religion Study Group, SocRel, St Paul's Cathedral, Sun on Sunday, Surtees Society, Survation, Warburtons, Woolwich, YouGov | Leave a comment

London Churchgoing and Other News

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Christianity dominates the latest BRIN post, including the revelation that the Church in London is growing overall in terms of attendance at services, news which will give heart to church growth advocates. However, we also find space for a rare national survey of attitudes of the Sikh community.

London Church Census

Church attendance in Greater London grew by 16% between 2005 and 2012, from 620,000 to 720,000, representing 9% of the capital’s population at the latter date, and thereby bucking the downward trend in most national religious indicators. The number of places of worship in London also rose during these seven years, by 17% from 4,100 to 4,800. Growth was especially to be found among black majority and immigrant churches, which together accounted for 27% of all Christian places of worship in London in 2012 and 24% of churchgoers. Black people were far more likely to attend services than whites (19% against 8%), and in Inner London 48% of worshippers were black.

This reliance upon ethnicity and migration also explains other facts revealed by the census, such as that 14% of all churches use a language other than English or that 52% of attenders are in evangelical churches (reflecting the evangelical proclivities of black Christians). By contrast, many traditional, smaller places of worship (with congregations under 200) are still contracting; they represent 50% of churches but just 22% of churchgoers. Overall, Anglicans are declining and Catholics only just growing. Moreover, the net increase of 100,000 worshippers from 2005 to 2012 disproportionately comprised women (82%), although the female majority in congregations as a whole was much lower (56%). The mean age of attenders was 41 years, ranging from 33 in the Pentecostal and New Churches to 56 for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches.

These are among the initial findings from the London Church Census, undertaken by Brierley Consultancy on 14 October 2012 (an ‘average Sunday’) and sponsored by the London City Mission. They are contained in Peter Brierley, London’s Churches Are Growing! What the London Church Census Reveals (Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2013, 16pp.) and in Brierley’s article in FutureFirst, No. 27, June 2013, pp. 1, 4. Copies of both publications are available (for a charge) from the author by emailing peter@brierleyres.com. A full report on the census will be published as a book in October and more detailed tables will appear in the second volume of UK Church Statistics, due in 2014. Meanwhile, comparative churchgoing data for Greater London in 1979, 1989, 1998, and 2005 are available in the various reports by the Bible Society, MARC Europe, and Christian Research on the English church censuses conducted in those years.

Evangelical church life

Life in the Church?, published on 4 June 2013, is the latest quarterly report from the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals research project, conducted online among a self-selecting panel of evangelical churchgoers in the UK. Respondents to this latest survey, undertaken in February 2013, numbered 1,864, of whom 53% were men and 47% women. They comprised 1,207 existing and 657 new panellists. The Evangelical Alliance describes them as an ‘opportunity sample’ and is careful to avoid any claims that it is ‘statistically representative’, noting, in particular, the serious under-representation of older women, the concentration of respondents in London and the southern half of England, and the disproportionate number of church leaders (34%). The summary report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/church-life-report-may-2013.pdf

while full data can be requested from g.smith@eauk.org

In the available space, we can only pick out a few of the more interesting (to BRIN) results:

89% of panellists attended church weekly (including 20% who worshipped twice each Sunday), with 51% also taking part in prayer groups; among other common involvements for non-leaders were: leading worship/reading scripture or prayers in services (37%), leading a home group or Bible study (34%), taking part in church-linked social action (32%), and working with children or young people (31%)
61% of evangelicals said their church had lots of children attending, 59% that it was predominantly middle class, 47% that it included people from most socio-ethnic groups in the community, 47% that it was good at helping disabled persons, 41% that it had a large number of committed young people attending, 37% that it had more women than men, and 26% that it was predominantly elderly
Respondents were generally satisfied with their experience of church life, 68% describing themselves as very happy with it, and 76% feeling that they were growing spiritually as part of their church and sensing the presence of God when it met; on the other hand, 16% believed there were too many cliques in their church, 15% had often thought about leaving for another place of worship, and 9% reported a lot of conflict and discontent in their church
Church leaders overwhelmingly received positive endorsement from their congregations in terms of their leadership style and commitment; however, 13% considered that their leader was too controlling and domineering, while 7% acknowledged a difficult relationship with their leader
80% of panellists agreed that women should be allowed to preach or teach during public worship and 73% to hold senior leadership positions in the church, yet only 16% of current sole church leaders were female and 36% of leaders in a team
71% of evangelicals expected their own church to grow over the next twenty years (13% dramatically and 58% somewhat), albeit just 47% currently were; but only 41% expected the wider UK Church to grow (against 45% anticipating a decrease, 29% dramatically and 16% somewhat)

Theology of occasional churchgoers

Christmastide seems increasingly to be the season for occasional churchgoers to appear in the pews, and the empirical theological dimensions of this in an Anglican context are explored in a new essay by David Walker (currently Bishop of Dudley but recently designated as the next Bishop of Manchester): ‘How Far is it to Bethlehem? Exploring the Ordinary Theology of Occasional Churchgoers’, Exploring Ordinary Theology: Everyday Christian Believing and the Church, edited by Jeff Astley and Leslie Francis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 137-45.

Walker’s evidence derives from a survey of attenders at two evening carol services in Worcester cathedral in 2009 and one afternoon and one evening carol service in Lichfield cathedral in 2010. Questionnaires were completed by 1,151 attenders, of whom 460 were categorized as occasional churchgoers (attending less than six times a year). They included proportionately more men and younger people than are found among regular Anglican churchgoers. Besides demographics, the survey deployed Likert scales to measure attitudes to the carol service, the Christmas story, Christian belief, moral issues, and public religion.

A selection of findings appears below:

Motivations for attending the carol services included: the music (94%), to be reminded of the Christmas story (75%), to feel close to God (55%), to worship God (55%), and to find the true meaning of Christmas (52%)
There were strong preferences for carol services to be candlelit (78%), to contain traditional rather than modern hymns (76%), and to involve the congregation (75%), while 94% expected the service to be uplifting
Occasional churchgoers engaged more with the mystery than the history of the Christmas story, with assent to some key biblical components of Christmas commanding levels of belief of only around one-half, including 58% in the stable, 57% in the shepherds, 55% in the wise men, and 42% in the Virgin Birth
Although 67% considered themselves Christian and 63% wanted Christianity to have a special place in the country, just 13% believed Christianity to be the only true religion, and 53% argued that Christians should not try to convert people, preferring to put pluralism above dogma – the lowest scores for Christian belief were for statements about the literal truth of scripture

British Sikh Report

British Sikh Report, 2013: An Insight into the British Sikh Community was published on 6 June 2013 and is intended to be the first in a series of annual surveys, with the aspiration of becoming ‘the leading light in respect of statistics for the British Sikh community’. It has been put together by ‘an independent team of Sikh professionals from all walks of life in their twenties and thirties’, including academics, following consultation with a range of Sikh and non-Sikh partners.

The research derives from a self-selecting sample (recruited by snowballing techniques) of 662 Sikhs living in Britain who completed an online, English-language questionnaire. The nature of the methodology will mean that respondents may not necessarily be statistically representative of all British Sikhs. In particular, they appear to be disproportionately male (65%, compared with 51% of all Sikhs in England and Wales at the 2011 census) and with a somewhat lower median age than the norm.

The questions in the 2013 survey spanned eleven topic areas: interest in Sikh culture and heritage; representation of Sikhs in the media; identification with and importance of a caste; attendance at Gurdwara; perceptions of gender equality in the Sikh community; political engagement; identity, including nationality, ethnicity, and family; health and well-being; employment; experience of racism; and provision for older people. The report summarizes the findings in each area and concludes with a set of policy recommendations for each. It can be accessed at:

http://www.britishsikhreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/BSR-2013.pdf

Some of the results challenge stereotypes held about Sikhs. For example, notwithstanding the egalitarian spirit of the Sikh faith, 46% of the interviewees felt that there was no true gender equality in the British Sikh community, with 43% of female Sikhs reporting that they had experienced gender discrimination. Likewise, it transpires that only a minority of Sikhs do not eat meat, 21% being vegetarians and 3% vegans. On the other hand, the Gurdwara remains central to Sikh life, with 71% claiming to visit one at least once a month (39% at least weekly, 32% at least monthly).

One of the most depressing findings is that 75% of Sikhs (79% of men, 66% of women) have experienced racism. Of those who have, 28% recalled an incident during the past six months and 53% one in the past eighteen months. Notwithstanding, 95% of Sikhs take pride in being British or living in Britain (45% to a great extent, 38% to a moderate extent, and 12% slightly).

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Survey news | Tagged 21st Century Evangelicals, British Sikh Report, carol services, Christmas, church attendance, church census, church growth, church life, Church of England, David Walker, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Lichfield Cathedral, London, London City Mission, ordinary theology, Peter Brierley, religious festivals, Sikhism, Worcester Cathedral | Leave a comment

Muslim and Christian News

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

‘Hate preachers’

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

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

Integration of Muslim migrants

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

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

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

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

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

Britishness of Muslims

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

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

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

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

Islamophobic incidents

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

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

Gilligan’s original article can be found at:

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

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

http://tellmamauk.org/news/

Fair Admissions Campaign

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

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

For more details, see:

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

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

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

Singleness and the Church

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

Methodist diaconate

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

Dean of Studies and Research, Bible Society

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

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

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

National Well-Being and Other News

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s round-up features another poll on attitudes to Islamism post-Woolwich, in continuation of last Sunday’s blog entry. However, our lead story reports new data which contribute to the ongoing debate about whether religion promotes physical and mental well-being.

National well-being

Religious affiliation helps explain variances in personal well-being in the UK, but its unique contribution is small (in the case of things done in life being perceived as worthwhile and feeling of happiness yesterday) or very small (for satisfaction with life nowadays and feeling of anxiety yesterday), albeit it is still statistically significant. Self-reported health consistently makes the largest difference across all four indicators of well-being, measured on a scale from 0 to 10.

This is according to a report published by the Office for National Statistics on 30 May 2013, and based on regression analysis of the Annual Population Survey from April 2011 to March 2012, for which 165,000 adults aged 16 and over were interviewed. Sebnem Oguz, Salah Merad, and Dawn Snape, Measuring National Well-Being: What Matters Most to Personal Well-Being? can be found at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171766_312125.pdf

and the regression tables at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-307881

To quote the report (p. 16), ‘other things being equal, respondents who said that they have a religious affiliation rate their levels of “happiness yesterday”, “life satisfaction”, and “worthwhile” higher on average than people who said they do not have a religious affiliation. Specifically, those with a religious affiliation rate their “life satisfaction” 0.1 points higher, “worthwhile” 0.2 points higher, and “happiness yesterday” 0.2 points higher on average than those who do not have a religious affiliation. All these differences would be considered small. There is also a very small … difference between the two groups in ratings for “anxiety yesterday”. Those with a religious affiliation give higher ratings for their anxiety levels.’

The individual coefficients for those reporting any religious affiliation were: ‘life satisfaction’ 0.132; ‘worthwhile’ 0.206; ‘happiness yesterday’ 0.169; and ‘anxiety yesterday’ 0.067. The authors concede that religious affiliation is but one test of religiosity and that their analysis ‘can only be considered a first look at the well-being of those who say that they have a religion compared to those who do not’. They also acknowledge that previous studies have been somewhat inconclusive about the relationship between faith and well-being, some revealing a positive and others a negative impact.

Curbing Muslim radicals

A majority of the British public supports curbs on disseminating the views of Muslim radicals in the wake of the brutal murder on the streets of Woolwich on 22 May of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of two alleged Islamist terrorists. This is according to a YouGov poll published today and commissioned by The Sunday Times. The sample comprised 1,879 adults aged 18 and over interviewed online on 30 and 31 May 2013, and the data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rj6l6hgo07/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-310513.pdf

Most Britons (53%) were critical of the BBC for interviewing, and thus giving a platform to, Anjem Choudary on ‘Newsnight’ following the Woolwich murder. Choudary holds radical views and is the former spokesperson of al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK, both of which organizations are now banned. Especially critical of the BBC were Conservative and UKIP voters (69% and 72% respectively) and the over-60s (66%). About one-third (32%) defended the BBC on the grounds that all views should be aired and the broadcast had afforded an opportunity to hold Choudary to account; Liberal Democrats (53%) particularly took this line.

Still more (59%, including 76% of Conservatives, 81% of UKIP supporters, and 72% of over-60s) supported a legal ban on named Muslim radicals, such as Choudary, appearing on television or radio, with 24% opposed (most notably Liberal Democrats on 48%). However, a plurality (49%) thought such a ban would be ineffective in preventing their message reaching people who might be radicalized by them, with 38% arguing that it would be effective (Conservatives being most optimistic, on 52%).

Opinion was even more strongly in favour of important internet sites such as Google and Youtube refusing to host or link to videos and websites encouraging extremist views. Three-quarters (76%, rising to 89% of over-60s) agreed with this suggestion, with only 11% against. Moreover, a majority (57%) believed that such refusal by the likes of Google and Youtube would be effective at stopping the message of the Muslim radicals, including just over two-thirds of Conservatives, UKIP voters, and the over-60s, with 30% disagreeing.

On the other hand, 56% (and 65% of Liberal Democrats) considered that banning extremist Muslim preachers from broadcast and online media would not in practice help the fight against terrorism, even if it did make us feel better. Against this were 36% who contended that a ban would reduce exposure to radical messages, UKIP voters (46%) and Conservatives and the over-60s (44% each) being most confident.

The number thinking that ‘a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism’ was two points more than a week ago (16% versus 14%, with 32% for UKIP supporters). However, the prevailing opinion (60%) in both surveys was that the great majority of Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding with a dangerous minority being alienated.

Books, Bible, and Twitter

New research commissioned and partly released by the Bible Society on 31 May 2013 compares and contrasts the attitudes and practices of Christians (regular lay churchgoers and church leaders) and the general population with regard to books, the Bible, and social media. Two online surveys were conducted: one by Christian Research of 2,294 UK Christians (disproportionately Protestants and church leaders) between 26 April and 3 May 2013; the other by ComRes of 1,935 English and Welsh adults aged 18 and over between 26 and 28 March 2013. The Bible Society’s press release and the Christian Research and ComRes tables will be found respectively at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/news/new-research-reveals-digital-reading-habits/

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/news/files/Resonate-social-media-research-results.pdf

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Bible_Society_Social_Media_Final__May_2013.pdf

Only 1% of Christians confessed that they never read a book in their own time against 7% of adults as a whole (and 10% of those professing no religion, perhaps reflecting their younger age profile). Christians were simultaneously more likely than adults to prefer reading a physical book (79% versus 69%) and to favour using an e-reader (16% versus 14%). As for all adults, the preference of Christians for the physical book steadily increased with age, reaching 91% for the over-75s. Christians preferred the artefact still more (83%) when it came to reading the Bible on their own, compared with 17% who opted for an e-version of the scriptures.

The same proportion (28%) of both churchgoing Christians and the whole population confessed to ignorance about Twitter, albeit there was a gap of 6% between those professing some religion (31%) and none (25%). Churchgoers (47%) were more likely than all adults (32%) to view Twitter as a mixed blessing, at once holding the power to do tremendous good and inflict immense damage, but they were less likely to condemn it as egocentric and destructive of human relationships (9% against 12%) or to dismiss it as a passing trend (7% against 14%). The remaining 8% of practising Christians rated Twitter a great innovation and builder of dialogue and community (all adults 14%).

Bible questions were only reported for the English and Welsh national sample, buried in the cross-breaks. The majority (54%) of respondents admitted to never reading the Bible privately outside a church context, with 9% claiming to read it at least monthly and 7% at least weekly. Three-tenths appeared to entertain negative or neutral opinions of the Bible, 26% describing it as a credal document, 19% as a cultural asset, and 17% as inspiration-led.

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral

Baroness Thatcher’s funeral service at St Paul’s Cathedral on 17 April 2013 was the third most-requested live television programme on the BBC iPlayer since the latter launched on 25 December 2007. It attracted 832,280 live-stream requests, compared with 1,013,036 such requests for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games and 958,681 for day 11 coverage of the Games. A further 163,000 people requested the funeral service as a catch-up rather than live. According to the BBC, one reason the funeral was so popular as a real-time experience was because it took place during mid-week when many viewers were likely to have watched it on their work computers.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Anjem Choudary, Annual Population Survey, BBC, Bible, Bible Society, books, Christian Research, churchgoers, ComRes, Dawn Snape, funeral service, Google, internet, iPlayer, Islamism, Islamophobia, Margaret Thatcher, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, radical preachers, radicalism, Resonate, Salah Merad, Sebnem Oguz, social media, St Paul's Cathedral, Sunday Times, television, terrorism, Twitter, well-being, YouGov, Youtube | Leave a comment

Doctor-Assisted Suicide and Other News

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Our second post of the day features four miscellaneous items of religious news.

Doctor-assisted suicide

Legalization of doctor-assisted suicide for terminally-ill people of sound mind, with appropriate safeguards, is endorsed by 62% of Britons aged 18 and over who profess to belong to a religion (n = 1,247), according to an online poll conducted by YouGov for Dignity in Dying between 22 and 24 April 2013, and published on 20 May. The proportion among self-identifying Christians was 63% but dropped to 49% for Catholics (29% of whom were opposed). Support for a change in the law also tended to fall away with greater regularity of attendance at religious services, being highest for less than monthly worshippers, whereas among those who worship more than once a week 49% rejected doctor-assisted suicide and just 38% favoured it. Full data tables can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qfxfmkooe6/YG-Archive-Dignity-in-Dying-results-240413-assisted-dying-full-religion.pdf

Proxy religious affiliation

One of the drawbacks of the census of population as a source of data about religious affiliation is that, unlike a sample survey, it incorporates a large measure of proxy responses, as opposed to being based entirely on self-designation. This is because the household form will generally be completed by one person, often the ‘head of the household’, who may or may not consult other members of the household about the answers to be given. Since heads of household are disproportionately male and older than other individuals, two demographic characteristics known to relate to religious identity, there is at least the potential for proxy responses to skew the results.

Among adults we know from an Ipsos MORI poll conducted immediately after the 2011 census that at least 18% claimed they had the religion question in the census answered on their behalf by somebody else, not all of whom were asked how they wished to be described. However, children were probably even less likely to be consulted about the recording of their religious identity, and thus it is instructive to analyse the 2011 census of religion for England and Wales separately for children (aged 0-15 years) and adults (aged 16 years and above). Percentages in each religious group, calculated from the newly-released Table DC2107EW, are shown below:

	Children	Adults	All
Christian	50.3	61.4	59.3
Buddhist	0.3	0.5	0.4
Hindu	1.4	1.5	1.5
Jewish	0.5	0.5	0.5
Muslim	8.5	4.0	4.8
Sikh	0.8	0.7	0.8
Any other	0.2	0.5	0.4
No religion	30.1	24.0	25.1
Not stated	7.9	7.0	7.2

The table demonstrates that children are six points more likely than adults to be recorded as without any religion and one point more likely to be entered as religion not stated. This may suggest that some heads of household/parents are actually erring on the side of caution by not assigning a religion to their children until they are old enough to make up their own minds. On the other hand, the much higher proportion of children with no religion and the much smaller number described as Christians (11% fewer than among adults) may reveal a genuine movement of the religious tide, which will add to the depressing interpretation of the census so far as the future of Christianity in this country is concerned. The fact that more than twice the proportion of children as adults are registered as Muslims doubtless reflects the youthful profile of the Muslim community but may also imply that any child of a Muslim parent will automatically have been deemed to be a Muslim by the person completing the schedule.

Religious education quizzes

Education Quizzes is a learning and revision website for Key Stages 2-4 (including GCSE), which has been running for just over a year. In return for a fairly modest parental subscription of £5 a month, pupils can test their knowledge in a vast range of curriculum subjects. Some of the multiple-choice quiz results in religious education (RE) were featured in The Times and Daily Express on 24 May 2013, which led BRIN to investigate. In response, Education Quizzes has generously supplied BRIN with all the RE quiz results for Key Stages 2 (aged 7-10) and 3 (aged 11-13) to 15 March 2013.

While the nature of the enterprise, and its early days, probably means that those who complete the quizzes cannot be assumed to be statistically representative of the child population, the results still have illustrative value. The table below summarizes the mean number of correct and incorrect answers per quiz for the various Key Stage 3 quizzes which have been answered most numerously to date:

	% correct	% incorrect
Atheism	59	41
Buddhism	73	27
Christianity – place of worship	63	37
Christianity – Easter	69	31
Islam	86	14

In the two Christianity quizzes the questions with most incorrect answers were about the appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus (72% incorrect) and the part of a church in which the congregation sits (55% incorrect). Most ignorance on the Islam quiz was displayed in relation to the question about the name of the book prescribing how Muslims should live; 31% did not know this was the Sunnah. Education Quizzes can be found at:

http://www.educationquizzes.com/

Faith and social capital in Wandsworth

Faith-based organizations were responsible for two-fifths of all voluntary sector welfare projects in the London Borough of Wandsworth in 2010, according to a report belatedly published by the London Churches Group for Social Action on 9 May 2013. Additionally, a minority of secular welfare projects had some faith connection; for example, 7% had been founded by a faith body and 8% operated out of faith-owned premises. However, on average faith-based projects were significantly smaller than those run by secular agencies, in terms of expenditure, number of users, and employees. This partly reflected the fact that they were also much less likely to be in receipt of public-sector funding. Elizabeth Simon, Better Off Without Them? Report of a Pilot Study into the Proportion of Voluntary Sector Welfare Projects Organised by Churches and Other Faiths is available at:

http://www.londonchurchesgroup.org.uk/Better%20off%20without%20them%20report%20May%202013.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged census of population, children, Dignity in Dying, doctor-assisted suicide, Education Quizzes, Elizabeth Simon, London Churches Group for Social Action, proxy religious affiliation, religious knowledge, Social Capital, Wandsworth, welfare, YouGov | Leave a comment

Islamophobia Post-Woolwich

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Muslims in Britain are in the public opinion spotlight again following Wednesday’s brutal murder on the streets of Woolwich of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of two alleged Islamist terrorists. Post-event attitudes are explored in a YouGov poll published in two sections today, and conducted online among a representative sample of 1,839 Britons aged 18 and over on 23 and 24 May 2013. The poll included questions asked on behalf of The Sunday Times and Matthew Goodwin of the University of Nottingham.

The Sunday Times survey replicated one of the questions posed in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings of 7 July 2005. Then YouGov found that 10% believed that ‘a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism’. The proportion now stands at 14%, peaking at 36% of UKIP supporters, with 19% among manual workers and residents of northern England; and 16% among men, the over-40s, and Londoners. Most Britons (60%) consider that the great majority of British Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding but that there is a dangerous and disloyal minority predisposed to terrorism, while 20% argue that practically all British Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding who deplore Rigby’s murder as much as everyone else. However, fully one-half of respondents feel that a significant number of the leaders of Britain’s Muslim communities are turning a blind eye to terrorism, rising to 81% of UKIP voters and 61% of the over-60s, and only 28% concede that they are doing their best to fight it (Liberal Democrats being most optimistic on 46%). The data tables are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/pdc1opqf1w/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-240513.pdf

Goodwin replicated questions which he had asked in an earlier poll, in this case in November 2012, and focusing on violent conflict and the English Defence League (EDL), as well as on attitudes to Muslims. The number of Britons anticipating a ‘clash of civilizations’ between British Muslims and native white Britons increased by 9% over the six months, from 50% to 59%, now being highest among UKIP supporters (86%) and the over-60s (70%); those in disagreement fell from 26% to 21%. 5% more (48% versus 43%) concur that differences in culture and values make future conflict between British-born Muslims and white Britons inevitable (UKIP 77%, over-60s 57%), the optimists being 3% fewer (25% against 28% previously). The proportion contending that British Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy rose from 30% to 34% (and to 72% of UKIP voters and 47% of the over-60s), with dissentients reduced from 41% to 37%. Those believing that British Muslims are part of an international plot to abolish Parliament grew from 12% to 17%, albeit 53% refute the suggestion.

At the same time, opinion was more stable as to whether Muslims overall are good British citizens (62% agreeing in November and 63% today, with just 12% taking the contrary line); whether they make an important contribution to British society (41% then, 40% now, with 23% disagreeing); whether they share the culture and values of the majority society (36% then, 38% now, with 31% disagreeing and 24% neutral on each occasion); and whether their influence in the media constitutes a threat to free speech (44% then, 45% now, with 32% and 30% disagreeing). Paradoxically, there was a decrease of 8% in Britons considering Muslims to be incompatible with the British way of life, from 48% to 40%, albeit a majority of UKIP voters (73%) and over-60s (52%) subscribe to this position; there was a corresponding increase, from 24% to 33%, in those arguing that Muslims are compatible with the British way of life. Only one-fifth say they would endorse planned demonstrations against ‘Muslim terror’ in the aftermath of Woolwich, with 51% negative towards such protests in general and 60% towards demonstrations organized by the EDL and British National Party.

Goodwin’s own interpretation of the data, reflected in quotations in Daniel Boffey’s coverage of the poll on yesterday’s The Guardian website and in Goodwin’s commentary in today’s edition of The Observer, is reasonably hopeful about public attitudes to Muslims: ‘in the aftermath of events that could well have triggered a more serious backlash, the direction of travel remains positive and suggests that there has not been a sharp increase in prejudice’. Goodwin further highlights that negativity is concentrated among the over-60s, with 18-24s most tolerant; and that Britons overwhelmingly reject the EDL’s ‘toxic brand of politics’. His commentary can be read at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/26/public-attitude-muslims-complex-positive

The data tables are on the YouGov website at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/fbvrufy6ra/Dr-Matthew-Goodwin-University-of-Nottingham-YouGov-Survey-Results-Extremism-In-Britain-130526.pdf

A further post-Woolwich poll was undertaken by Survation for the Mail on Sunday on 24 May 2013, in which 1,121 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed online. It included a couple of questions touching on Islam. One asked whether people who express extreme Islamic views, such as Anjem Choudary (former leader of the now banned al-Muhajiroun group), should be allowed to appear on television news programmes or not. In reply, 59% affirmed that such individuals should not be given this kind of news platform, including 70% of over-55s and Conservative voters, and 73% of UKIP backers; 30% favoured their appearance on television news, with 10% undecided. The second question enquired whether organizations holding extreme anti-Islamic views, such as the EDL, should be given airspace on television news; 49% were against such media coverage (66% of Conservatives), 38% in favour (53% of UKIP supporters), and 13% uncertain. Data tables can be found at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Woolwich-Full-Report.pdf

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Anjem Choudary, English Defence League, Islamism, Islamophobia, Lee Rigby, Mail on Sunday, Matthew Goodwin, Muslims, prejudice, Sunday Times, Survation, television news, terrorism, The Observer, Woolwich, YouGov | 1 Comment

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