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Muslim Distinctiveness and Other News

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s round-up of eight religious statistical news stories leads on the first substantive output from an important and academic-led four-year-old sample survey of British Muslims.

Muslim distinctiveness

The distinctiveness of British Muslims is explored in a short but highly significant article by Valerie Lewis and Ridhi Kashyap, ‘Are Muslims a Distinctive Minority? An Empirical Analysis of Religiosity, Social Attitudes, and Islam’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2013, pp. 617-26. Data derive from face-to-face interviews by Ipsos MORI with a sample of 480 British Muslims between January and May 2009; and from face-to-face interviews by NatCen with samples of Britons of other religious persuasions (n = 2,457) and none (n = 1,903) from the contemporaneous British Social Attitudes Survey. Muslims were found to be more religious than other Britons in terms of beliefs, practices (public and private), and salience. They were also more socially conservative on a range of topics: gender roles in the home, divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. In terms of premarital sex and homosexuality, an independent effect of Islam was documented; on other social issues Muslim attitudes tended to resemble those of other religious people. Indeed, more generally, multivariate analysis revealed that much of the difference on socio-moral opinions was due to socio-economic disadvantage and high religiosity, both factors which – Lewis and Kashyap argue – predict social conservatism among all Britons and not just Muslims. The distinctiveness of Muslims, therefore, may not be as great as it superficially seems. It should be noted that no weights were applied to the Muslim data, and that there are several caveats from the authors concerning the representative nature of the Muslim sample (including a high rate of non-response). For access options for this article, go to:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12044/abstract

Civic core

Two-thirds of all charitable activity (charitable donations and volunteering) in this country is attributable to just 9% of its citizens (the ‘civic core’). This is according to a report published by the Charities Aid Foundation on 13 September 2013 and entitled Britain’s Civic Core: Who are the People Powering Britain’s Charities? A further 67% of individuals account for the remaining 34% of charitable activity (the so-called ‘middle ground’), while 24% of the population undertake little or no charitable activity (‘zero givers’). Members of the ‘civic core’ have the greatest interest (37%) in supporting religious organizations (including places of worship), with ‘zero givers’ showing the least (10%); among the ‘middle ground’ the proportion is 20%. This trend reflects the fact that the ‘civic core’ is disproportionately composed of women, the over-65s, and people from professional/managerial backgrounds – precisely those groups most inclined to be involved with organized religion. The data derive from an online survey of 2,027 Britons aged 18 and over conducted by ComRes on 31 July and 1 August 2013, and the report is available at:

https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/CAF_Britains_Civic_Core_Sept13.pdf

Full data tables for the poll were released by ComRes on 16 September. Table 21 provides breaks for interest in religious organizations by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, ethnicity, and the monetary value of volunteering and charitable donations. Table 64 gives details about volunteering for religious organizations during the past year among the sub-group of respondents who have given practical help to a social cause. Table 89 records self-assigned ‘membership’ of religious groups (56% Christian, 8% non-Christian, 34% none). Unfortunately, religious affiliation is not used in this set of tables as a variable to analyse answers to all the other questions about charitable disposition and activity. The data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/CAF_People_Power_9_August_2013_Sig.pdf

Confessions

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales reported on 2 September 2013 that the number of confessions (Sacrament of Reconciliation) is rising at many of its cathedrals. Twenty-two cathedrals were contacted by telephone or email on 21 August, of which 20 replied. Overall, 65% (i.e. 13 cathedrals) noted an increase in confessions, mostly attributing it to a ‘papal effect’ (either the visit to Britain of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, the inauguration of Pope Francis I in 2013, or both), while the remaining 35% (7 cathedrals) said confessions were ‘steady’ or ‘normal’. Actual statistics of those confessing were not cited by the Church, and it is possible that they constitute a relatively small proportion of professing Catholics. The Church’s press release is at:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/News/Back-to-Church

The story was picked up by all the UK’s Catholic newspapers and by the Church Times, including a particularly upbeat report and leader in the Catholic Herald. Responding to the latter, in a letter to the editor published in the Catholic Herald for 13 September 2013 (p. 13), Anthony Hofler of Wolverhampton was in little doubt from his own experience that confession is falling out of fashion among Catholics, except, relatively, at Christmas and Easter. Undaunted, the front page of the same edition of the Catholic Herald highlighted responses by 32 priests to a survey about a three-year-long initiative in the Diocese of Lancaster to boost the uptake of confessions, apparently also with encouraging results. Significantly, again, no hard data were cited in this report, and none currently appear on the websites of the diocese or the diocesan newspaper, Catholic Voice.

With regard to the ‘papal bounce’, as already noted by BRIN in our post of 28 January 2012, average weekly Mass attendance was actually lower after the papal visit in 2010 than before. And, in gearing up for its Home Mission Sunday (which took place on 15 September 2013), the Church itself conceded there are ‘four million baptised Catholics who rarely or never attend Mass’ in England and Wales.

Fracking

Recent public divisions about fracking within the Church of England and other Christian groups are evidenced in new research briefly reported in the latest issue of Christian Research’s monthly ezine, Research Brief, which was emailed to subscribers on 6 September 2013:

CRACKS APPEAR IN FRACKING ARGUMENT

‘Our Resonate August omnibus, completed by 1.520 Resonate panellists, revealed that two-thirds of practising Christians regard it as valid that the church should derive income from mineral rights on property it owns (marginally higher support amongst church leaders). More than 2 in 5 regular churchgoers felt that the church should be able to profit from shale gas reserves located under land it owns, 1 in 3 were uncertain and 1 in 4 objected (to some degree). Interestingly, men (significantly so) and Londoners agreed more strongly than others. The results see-sawed the other way, 1 in 3 opposed and 1 in 5 in favour, if the land was dwelt on.’

University students’ religion

On 27 April 2013 BRIN provided preliminary coverage of research into English university students and Christianity, undertaken by a team led by Mathew Guest of Durham University, with funding from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. A major aim of the project, which collected data via online questionnaires completed by 4,341 undergraduates in 2010-11 and via in-depth interviews, was to test empirically the widespread assumption that higher education is a force for secularization. Full details of the findings were published on 12 September 2013 in Mathew Guest, Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner, Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN 9781780937847, paperback, £19.99 – also available in hardback and ebook editions). The volume was reviewed by Gerald Pillay in Times Higher Education on 12 September 2013. Guest has also contributed a substantial article about the research – entitled ‘What Really Happens at University?’ – to Church Times, 13 September 2013, pp. 27-8.

Scottish religious affiliation

The results from the religion question in the 2011 census of population for Scotland are still not available (they are expected to be included in release 2A of the census data on 26 September 2013). Meanwhile, we can note the religious affiliation question from the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS), conducted by ScotCen Social Research among 1,229 residents of Scotland aged 18 and over between July and November 2012. The marginals on the UK Data Service Nesstar site show that a majority of Scots (52%) now regard themselves as belonging to no religion, compared with 40% when SSAS commenced in 1999. A further 22% regard themselves as Church of Scotland (35% in 1999), 11% as Catholics (15%), 12% as other Christians (10%), and 2% as non-Christians (1%). This ‘belonging’ form of question-wording is known to maximize the number of religious ‘nones’, and a similar formulation is used in the Scottish census (‘what religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’). Claimed attendance at religious services (other than rites of passage) in the 2012 SSAS was 19% at least monthly, including 12% weekly or more often. These figures are down on 1999 levels (27% and 17% respectively) but are probably still aspirational to a considerable degree. The latest Scottish church attendance census, conducted by Christian Research on 12 May 2002, revealed a weekly participation rate of 11%, with no deduction for ‘twicing’.

Churchgoing in the Presbytery of Dunfermline

As noted in the previous entry, there has been no Scottish church attendance census since 2002. Nor does the Church of Scotland – as the ‘national church’ – routinely collect attendance data (in the way that the Church of England has since 1968). So there is added interest to annual churchgoing counts organized in the Church of Scotland’s Presbytery of Dunfermline since 2009, the latest on 17 and 24 March 2013. Through the kindness of Allan Vint, summary data for the Presbytery’s 24 congregations have been made available to BRIN. Total attendance in 2013 was 2,493, 4% down on the 2012 total and 14% on 2009. Attendees comprised 34% men and 66% women; 9% children, 3% teenagers, and 88% adults (with an average adult age of 63, up by four years since 2009).

Baby names

Biblical forenames remain fashionable for Jewish boys, according to a list compiled by the Jewish Baby Directory website. Analysing around 1,000 birth announcements in the Jewish Chronicle, Samuel was found to be first equal in the list of boys’ names for the Jewish year September 2012 to September 2013, with Jacob and Joshua joint third, Joseph joint fifth, and Benjamin, Ethan, Nathan and Noah in joint eleventh position. The attraction of female biblical names was less strong, with Leah in fourth place, Rachel in ninth, and Rebecca in eleventh equal. Previously popular biblical names for girls, such as Sarah and Naomi, failed to make it to the top twenty. The rankings are at:

http://www.jewishbabydirectory.com/top-baby-names-of-5773-september-2012-present/

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged baby names, biblical names, British Social Attitudes Survey, Cathedrals, Catholic Herald, charitable giving, Charities Aid Foundation, Christian Research, Christianity, church attendance, Church of Scotland, Church Times, ComRes, confessions, Diocese of Lancaster, distinctiveness, England, fracking, Ipsos-MORI, Jewish Baby Directory, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Kristin Aune, Mathew Guest, Muslims, NatCen, Pope, Presbytery of Dunfermline, Religiosity, Religious Affiliation, religious organizations, Resonate, Ridhi Kashyap, Rob Warner, Roman Catholic Church, Sacrament of Reconciliation, ScotCen, Scotland, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, Social Capital, social conservatism, Sonya Sharma, university students, Valerie Lewis, volunteering | Leave a comment

British Social Attitudes Survey, 2012

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The results of the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey for 2012 were released by NatCen on 10 September 2013 via a dedicated website – http://www.bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk – which includes, among other outputs, a copy of the questionnaire (with marginals) and British Social Attitudes, 30, a free book (downloadable in PDF, ePub or .mobi formats) comprising seven thematic chapters of analysis and commentary. The volume is edited by Alison Park, Caroline Bryson, Elizabeth Clery, John Curtice, and Miranda Phillips.

As usual, this annual survey was undertaken by NatCen on behalf of the Economic and Social Research Council and a consortium of Government departments and charitable funders. Face-to-face interviews were conducted between June and November 2012 with 3,248 adults aged 18 and over in Britain, of whom 2,866 also filled out a supplementary self-completion questionnaire.

Three specifically religious questions were posed face-to-face, with the following results:

Although just 20% had not had a religious upbringing, as many as 48% overall professed to belong to no religion at the time of interview in 2012, a proportion which increased steadily with each generation cohort (standing at 60% for those born in the 1980s against 25% for those born in the 1920s). Church of England was still the single biggest denominational/faith category in 2012 but, at 20%, it was 16% fewer than the number brought up as Anglicans, and much reduced from the 40% recorded when the question was first put in 1983.
Among those with a current religion and/or brought up in one, weekly attendance at religious services (excluding rites of passage) now runs at 12%, with a further 8% claiming to worship at least monthly and another 14% at least once a year. By contrast, 58% worship never or practically never.
Asked whether they had ever discussed with anyone their wishes in six areas should they not have long to live, 51% said in 2012 they had discussed nothing, while 11% had discussed their spiritual and religious needs (12% in 2009). Women (15%) are more likely than men (9%) to have discussed their spiritual and religious needs, and similarly older than younger age groups, and higher than lower social grades.

Additionally, responses to all questions in the survey can be quickly analysed by religion, through the BSA Information System website at http://www.britsocat.com (prior registration is required). This facility is especially relevant for the 2012 BSA which includes numerous questions concerning morality and social values, replicated from earlier BSA studies. A sampler of what can be discovered via such analysis is included in the chapter in the book on personal relationships (focusing especially on changing attitudes to marriage, homosexuality, and abortion over three decades) by Park and Rebecca Rhead, from which the following statistics for 2012 have been extracted:

All religious groups apart from non-Christians have become more accepting of premarital sex over the past three decades, the number of Anglicans and Catholics describing it as always or mostly wrong now being reduced to one in ten (much the same as in the population as a whole), compared with almost one in three in 1983. Most tolerant of all are people of no religion, only 2% of whom in 2012 considered premarital sex to be wrong (11% in 1983). Frequency of attending religious services also has an impact; whereas 71% of non-attenders said in 2012 that premarital sex is not at all wrong, this was true of only 23% of weekly attenders at worship.
Despite a similar process of liberalization of attitudes over time, people of faith are still appreciably more disapproving of homosexuality than society at large. Indeed, the gap between the religious and non-religious on this issue is now far wider than in the past. Overall, 28% of Britons in 2012 deemed sexual relations between two adults of the same sex to be always or mostly wrong, but the proportion fell to 16% among the irreligious and climbed to 61% of non-Christians (with 35% for Catholics and 40% for Anglicans).
Religion continues to be closely associated with attitudes to abortion. Catholics are the least accepting, with only 39% supporting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy if she wishes to, against 56% of Anglicans. Those professing no religion are most supportive of all (73%, compared with 62% of all Britons). However, acceptance of abortion has increased among all faith communities since 1983; in the case of Anglicans, for example, just 34% endorsed abortion in these circumstances thirty years ago.

Liberalization of opinions on matters of personal relationships since BSA commenced in 1983 is substantially accounted for by generational differences, ‘intolerance’ progressively dying out as more illiberal older age cohorts are replaced by more liberal younger ones. The fact that the same pattern has occurred with religious affiliation might suggest that social liberalism is causally linked with increased secularization. Nevertheless, since even Christians have displayed greater social liberalism over three decades, the relationship is inevitably rather more complex than that.

This complexity is more fully explored in another chapter in the book, on social class by Anthony Heath, Mike Savage and Nicki Senior, which deploys multivariate analysis to study interactions, in 1984 and 2012, between thirteen measures of ‘social cleavage’ (including religion and attendance at a place of worship) on the one hand and five indicators of attitudes to welfare and four of social liberalism on the other. On social liberalism the authors conclude (p. 184):

‘By 2012 … measures of social class have … declined in importance, and there are much closer associations between liberal attitudes and the other social cleavages, notably religion, attendance at a place of worship, age and ethnicity. In 2012, as in 1984, religion and attendance at a place of worship have the strongest associations of all … This is especially the case with attitudes towards premarital sex (and related issues like ease of divorce). The relationship between liberal attitudes and religiosity has, if anything, got stronger over time, especially with respect to the acceptability of same-sex relationships. But educational level also remains a powerful predictor of liberal attitudes.’

The dataset for the 2012 BSA will eventually be available through the UK Data Service (although it is not yet).

Posted in Historical studies, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Alison Park, Anthony Heath, British Social Attitudes Survey, Caroline Bryson, church attendance, dying, Elizabeth Clery, homosexuality, John Curtice, Mike Savage, Miranda Phillips, NatCen, Nicki Senior, personal relationships, premarital sex, Rebecca Rhead, religion of upbringing, Religious Affiliation, spiritual needs | 3 Comments

Attitudes to Immigration and Other News

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post features seven stories which have landed on BRIN’s desk during the past fortnight. Please use the contact tab on our homepage to alert us to any significant news items which we appear to have missed.

Attitudes to immigration and religious affiliation

Lord Ashcroft published the latest of his large-scale opinion polls on 1 September 2013, this time exploring attitudes to immigration. The sample comprised 20,062 Britons aged 18 and over interviewed online, presumably by Populus, between 17 and 29 May 2013. As usual, Ashcroft included a question about religious affiliation: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ As in the census of population for England and Wales, Christian denominations are not differentiated in the response codes. The results of this question appear on pp. 384-92 of the data tables which can be found at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Immigration-Poll-Full-tables.pdf

In these tables religious affiliation is broken down by the following variables: gender, age, age within gender, social grade, social grade within gender, region, region within gender, educational attainment, educational attainment within gender, working status, employment sector, current voting intention, voting at the 2010 general election, and attitudes to immigration clusters. The clusters are the result of a segmentation analysis by which ‘seven pillars of opinion’, as Ashcroft describes them, have been distilled from the answers given to the various immigration questions. The clusters range from ‘universal hostility’ at one end of the spectrum to ‘militantly multicultural’ at the other, denoting the extremes of antipathy to and acceptance of immigration. These clusters are fully explained on pp. 10-15 of the report on the survey at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/LORD-ASHCROFT-Public-opinion-and-the-politics-of-immigration2.pdf

A table mapping the clusters to religious affiliation is set out below. Although the findings are not fully consistent, it will be seen that professing Christians (a majority of whom will be white British) tend to be disproportionately uncomfortable about immigration and non-Christians, many of whom will be first- or second-generation immigrants, disproportionately favourable to it. As for people of no religion, the major discovery is that they constitute a majority (51%) of the ‘militantly multicultural’ cluster, 15% more than their presence in the population as a whole, whereas Christians are 17% less numerous in this cluster than in the country.

Segment	Christian	Non-Christian	No religion	No answer
All	55	7	36	2
Universal hostility	58	4	37	1
Cultural concerns	65	4	29	2
Competing for jobs	57	6	36	2
Fight for entitlements	62	4	32	2
Comfortable pragmatists	53	8	38	2
Urban harmony	41	24	29	6
Militantly multicultural	38	9	51	3

If the religious affiliation data from this poll are merged with those from other published Populus surveys conducted during the first half of 2013, then we have information about 60,358 Britons. Their religious profile is as follows: 55.2% Christian, 7.2% non-Christian, 35.2% no religion, and 2.3% not stated. It should be noted that these statistics are not directly comparable with those from the 2011 census because: a) they relate to Great Britain, whereas census data are just available for England and Wales at present; b) they are confined to adults while the census covers all ages; and c) the questions differ. In particular, Populus uses a ‘belonging’ form of religious affiliation, which is known to drive up the numbers professing no religion.

Is the Church of England out of touch?

In her column in the latest issue (1 September 2013, freely available online) of The Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter lambasts the Church of England for being out of touch. She was responding to a recent speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he called upon Christians to ‘repent’ for their past homophobic attitudes. ‘The Church is run by a bunch of grey men in fancy costumes’, Street-Porter continued, who ‘fail to represent modern Britain in any meaningful way.’ But does the great British public agree with her view that the Church of England is out of touch with contemporary society (not least in relation to the Church’s struggles with gender and sexual orientation equality issues during the past couple of decades or so)?

The answer appears to be an emphatic yes. The question has been directly addressed in online polling by YouGov on four occasions during 2012-13, with a substantial majority arguing that the Church of England is out of touch with the public mood: 65% on 26-27 January 2012 (in the wake of episcopal opposition in the House of Lords to the Government’s benefits cap); 76% on 22-23 November 2012 (following General Synod’s failure to pass legislation to enable women bishops); 61% on 14-15 March 2013; and 69% on 27-28 March 2013 (the last two surveys being conducted when the same-sex marriage Bill was a live issue). Demographic variations in these results, including by age, are surprisingly small.

Nevertheless, there is some limited comfort in the polls for the Church of England: a) even more Britons (77% on 14-15 March last) think the Roman Catholic Church is out of touch; b) relatively few (14% on 5-13 June 2013, in an as yet unpublished YouGov poll commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead) go so far as to say that the Church of England is a negative force in society (albeit only 18% deem it a positive force); and c) a plurality (42% in YouGov’s study of 16-17 February 2012) still concedes that the Church of England performs a valuable role in Britain. And, despite occasional sabre-rattling in the public square to threaten disestablishment, there exists no strong public clamour to separate Church from State (see my article in Implicit Religion, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2011, pp. 319-41).

Catholic trends

‘Catholic weekly Mass attendance figures vary a lot around England and, like house prices, show a sharp north/south divide with smaller numbers up north – according to the latest diocesan accounts on the Charity Commission website.’ So writes layman Kenn Winter of Huddersfield in a letter to the editor of the Catholic weekly The Universe, published in its edition of 1 September 2013 (p. 20). Whereas in the Diocese of Westminster he finds that, on average, 700 Catholics per parish attend Mass weekly, in the Archdiocese of Liverpool it is only 250. Winter also notes the big discrepancy between Catholic population and weekly Massgoers, citing the Diocese of Salford as an example, with 330,000 Catholics and 58,000 weekly attenders at Mass. ‘Most Catholics do not go to Mass – especially schoolchildren, yet Catholic schools’ numbers are burgeoning …’ He concludes that, with more children in Catholic schools than attenders at weekly Mass, and often with more Catholic schools than parishes, there appears to be a move away from parish life and the centrality of the parish priest. He ponders: ‘is the Catholic Church in England changing its mission?’

Faith schools

Further to our post of 9 June 2013, the Fair Admissions Campaign released new top-level data for England and Wales on 30 August 2013 to support its claim that ‘faith-based admissions criteria cause schools to be socio-economically unrepresentative of their local areas’. As a proxy for deprivation, the Campaign mapped, for Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs), pupil eligibility for free school meals (FSMs) in the neighbourhood and in state schools. Nationally, 18.1% of primary and 15.2% of secondary school students are considered eligible for FSMs, but the proportion is significantly lower in Roman Catholic schools (virtually all of which are said to have fully religiously selective admissions criteria): 7.1% fewer in Catholic primaries and 4.7% less in secondaries. Admissions criteria vary in Church of England schools. Overall, their FSM numbers are 0.2% below the norm in primaries and 1.9% in secondaries, falling to 3.9% under in the case of Anglican secondaries applying religious admissions criteria. For Jewish schools the FSM undershoot is even worse, 13.4% in primaries and 14.4% in secondaries, while even Muslim secondary schools are 9.4% below average in terms of FSM pupils. At the other end of the spectrum, schools with no religious character are 1.3% above the FSM norm at primary and 0.9% at secondary level. The contention is that religious admissions criteria benefit middle-class parents who have the time to participate in activities required to fulfil the criteria and to plan ahead. The Campaign’s press release can be found at:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/revealed-how-much-faith-based-admissions-socio-economically-segregate-school-intakes/

More generally, the British public clearly entertains reservations about faith schools, according to the latest (as yet unpublished) polling evidence, from YouGov on behalf of Professor Linda Woodhead, 4,018 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. Three-quarters (59%) say they would be unlikely to send their own child to a faith school. Almost two-fifths (38%) find it unacceptable that faith schools are allowed to give preference in their admissions policies to children and families who profess or practice the relevant religion, while 23% contend that all faith schools should have to admit a proportion of students from a different religion or no faith at all.

GCSE results

Provisional GCSE results for the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland) for the summer 2013 round of examinations were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications on 22 August 2013. For Religious Studies (RS) there were 263,988 entrants for the full course, 24,865 or 10.4% up on the previous year, more than twice the increase in candidates for all subjects (4.2%). The ten-year growth for RS is 99.5%, so it could be said to have been a boom decade for the study of religion, even though belief in and practice of it among adolescents and youth have generally reduced on most performance indicators. A majority (54.2%) of RS students in 2013 was female, 3.1% more than for all subjects, but well below the 68.5% for A Level RS. The pass rate for GCSE RS full course was 98.3%, down by 0.2% from 2012, the same decline as for all subjects. ‘Good’ grades of A*, A, B, or C were obtained by 72.4% of RS full course entrants, reduced from 73.7% last year (compared with, respectively, 68.1% and 69.4% for all subjects); the differential might suggest that either RS attracts better students than other subjects and/or that it is a somewhat easier discipline than some.

Besides full course GCSE RS, there is a separate short course (equivalent to half a GCSE), which fared less well, attracting 174,364 candidates this summer, a drop of 61,552 or 26.1% since last year, and mirroring the 26.2% fall in all short course subjects (unsurprisingly, given that 63.6% of all short course entries are for RS). This decline reflects the fact that short courses generally are no longer used as a benchmark of school performance and thus are no longer as attractive to either schools or pupils. Although full and short course RS entrants combined were 36,687 or 7.7% fewer in summer 2013 than in summer 2012, at 438,352 they were still 23.1% more than in summer 2003. Nevertheless, the reversal of the upward trend for RS since 1995 has been seized on by some commentators on the GCSE results as a direct consequence of the Government’s introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), which excludes RS. The full examination results can be studied at:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/gcses

Egypt

The British public is normally fairly suspicious of, if not antipathetic toward, Islamism, but current political events in Egypt are leaving it a little confused. Asked whether they would prefer to see Egypt ruled by an elected Islamist government (such as existed until very recently under President Morsi) or an unelected non-Islamist regime (such as the present military-led government), 53% in an online YouGov poll on 18-19 August 2013 were undecided. The balance of the sample of 1,729 adults was divided between 24% in favour of an elected Islamist administration (ranging from 16% of UKIP voters to 30% of Scots) and 23% for an unelected non-Islamist one (with a low of 15% among Liberal Democrats and a high of 40% for UKIP supporters). These findings exemplify how, in the words of YouGov’s own commentary on the poll, ‘recent developments in Egypt have pitted one of the world’s strongest values, democracy, against one of its biggest fears, Islamist government’. The data table, released on 20 August, is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/98iltt8zen/YG-Archive-Egypt-results-190813.pdf

Muslims in the 2011 census

On 21 August 2013 the Runnymede Trust published The New Muslims, a collection of 13 short papers edited by Claire Alexander, Victoria Redclift, and Ajmal Hussain, the outcome of a workshop and a panel debate held at the University of Manchester in March. One of the contributions (pp. 16-19) is by Stephen Jivraj on ‘Muslims in England and Wales: Evidence from the 2011 Census’. This offers a comparison of the results of the 2001 and 2011 censuses to demonstrate the growth of the Muslim community with particular reference to spatial aspects at local authority level. Three main conclusions are reached: a) Muslims are clustered in selected areas with a history of immigration from Southern Asia; b) their numbers are growing in areas where they are already most clustered, but at an even faster rate in immediately adjacent areas; and c) they were fairly evenly spread across England and Wales in 2001 and had become more so by 2011, with their residential separation decreasing. The New Muslims is free to download at:

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/Runnymede_The_New_Muslims_Perspective.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Ajmal Hussain, census of population, Church of England, Claire Alexander, democracy, Egypt, English Baccalaureate, Fair Admissions Campaign, faith schools. GCSEs, Immigration, Independent on Sunday, Islamism, Janet Street-Porter, Joint Council for Qualifications, Kenn Winter, Linda Woodhead, Lord Ashcroft, Muslims, out of touch, Populus, Religious Affiliation, religious studies, Roman Catholic Church, Runnymede Trust, schools, Stephen Jivraj, The Universe, University of Manchester, Victoria Redclift, YouGov | Leave a comment

Church Growth Debated and Other News

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Church growth in Britain

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

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

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

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

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

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

Community census

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

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

Community life

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

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

A Level results, June 2013

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

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

Anglican cathedral statistics

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

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

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

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

Census, Corruption, Confidence, Curriculum, and Charity

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today we feature five Cs of religious statistics – census, corruption, confidence, curriculum, and charity – in our latest round-up of newly-released quantitative data.

Census – local characteristics on religion

More data from the 2011 census of population were released by the Office for National Statistics on 31 July 2013 in the form of local characteristics on ethnicity, identity, language, and religion for output areas in England and Wales. The release provides the first cross-tabulations of two or more topics for output areas. More information and links to the data can be found at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/local-characteristics-on-ethnicity–identity–language-and-religion-for-output-areas-in-england-and-wales/index.html

The religion-specific tables are:

LC2107EW Religion by sex by age
LC2201EW Ethnic group by religion
LC2204EW National identity by religion
LC2207EW Country of birth by religion by sex
LC6205EW Economic activity by religion by sex by age
LC6207EW NS-SeC by religion

although there is only space to highlight a couple here.

The breakdown of religion by ethnicity is shown below. Contrary to what many people might think, Muslims are not the most ethnically homogenous faith community – they are ‘only’ 68% Asian and include significant numbers of whites (8%) and blacks (10%). Most ethnically homogenous are Hindus (96% Asian) and Christians, Jews, and persons of no religion – all around 93% white.

% across	White	Mixed	Asian	Black	Other
All religious groups	86.0	2.2	7.5	3.3	1.0
Christian	92.7	1.7	1.4	3.9	0.3
Buddhist	33.8	4.0	59.7	1.1	1.5
Hindu	1.5	1.2	95.7	0.7	0.9
Jewish	92.4	1.6	1.1	0.6	4.3
Muslim	7.8	3.8	67.6	10.1	10.7
Sikh	1.8	1.2	87.1	0.3	9.6
Other religion	76.0	3.1	16.5	3.0	1.5
No religion	93.4	2.8	2.5	1.0	0.4
Not stated	86.4	3.1	5.8	3.7	1.1

NS-SeC (National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification) is collapsed into eight main categories (excluding those not classified), of which three, at the extremes of the spectrum, appear below: (1) = higher managerial, administrative, professional; (7) = routine; and (8) = never worked or long-term unemployed. Most ‘affluent’ on this indicator are the Jews, who are almost twice as likely to be in higher managerial, administrative or professional occupations as the norm, and only one-quarter as likely to be in routine jobs. Most disadvantaged are Muslims, 24% of whom have never worked or are long-term unemployed, four times the national average, although cultural factors will account for some of the differential.

% across	(1)	(7)	(8)
All religious groups	9.9	11.6	5.9
Christian	9.2	12.6	4.5
Buddhist	11.1	8.5	8.5
Hindu	17.1	7.4	9.1
Jewish	19.2	2.9	5.2
Muslim	6.3	8.7	23.8
Sikh	9.6	12.5	9.8
Other religion	10.6	8.4	6.2
No religion	11.6	10.2	5.7
Not stated	10.0	11.4	7.0

Corruption – Global Corruption Barometer

One-third of the population considers that religious bodies in this country are corrupt or extremely corrupt, according to the results of the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), 2013, which were published on 9 July 2013 by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International: The Global Coalition against Corruption. The publics of 107 nations were surveyed on a variety of corruption-related topics between September 2012 and March 2013, with 1,000 adults being interviewed online in the UK by ORB International. A report on the study and various other outputs can be found at:

http://www.transparency.org/research/gcb

Asked to assess the extent to which twelve national organizations were affected by corruption, 34% of the UK sample said that religious bodies are corrupt or extremely corrupt (against 29% globally). Although this was a smaller proportion than made the same claim against the media (69%), political parties (66%), Parliament (55%), business (49%), and civil servants (45%), it was higher than for the police (32%), the judiciary (24%), medical and health services (19%), education (18%), NGOs (18%), and the military (17%). The UK figure for religious bodies was also almost double the 18% recorded in the 2005 GCB.

The mean corruption scores (on a scale of 1 to 5) for the UK and all 107 countries investigated in the 2013 GCB are set out in the following table, with comparisons for 2005, (when 69 countries were surveyed):

	2013	2013	2005	2005
	UK	Global	UK	Global
Political parties	3.9	3.8	3.5	4.0
Media	3.9	3.1	3.2	3.2
Parliament	3.6	3.6	3.2	3.7
Business	3.5	3.3	3.0	3.4
Civil servants	3.3	3.6	NA	NA
Religious bodies	3.0	2.6	2.4	2.6
Police	3.0	3.7	2.8	3.6
Judiciary	2.7	3.6	2.9	3.5
NGOs	2.6	2.7	2.5	2.8
Education system	2.6	3.1	2.1	3.0
Medical/health services	2.6	3.2	2.2	3.2
Military	2.5	2.8	2.5	2.9

The corruption score for religious bodies in the UK has increased over time from 2.4 in 2005 to 2.8 in 2006 and 2007 to 3.0 in 2010 and 2013, despite the global score remaining flat. This seems to exemplify growing perceptions of corruption affecting most UK national institutions (with the exception of the judiciary and the military), rather than specific evidence of corruption by UK religious bodies. While one can identify many reasons why the overall public standing of religious bodies may have declined of recent years, notably for the Anglican and Catholic Churches and Islam, it is not so easy to explain why they should be thought of as becoming more corrupt.

Confidence – trust in the Church

The Church is the fourteenth most trusted of twenty-four national institutions, according to a survey conducted by nfpSynergy in May 2013 among an online sample of 1,000 Britons aged 16 and over, and published on 16 July 2013. Just 30% of respondents said that they had a great deal or quite a lot of trust in the Church, a lower proportion than in the ten previous surveys carried out during the past decade through the nfpSynergy Charity Awareness Monitor. Trust in the Church stood at 42% in November 2003 and has tended to fall since, but somewhat erratically (with a rise from 32% in January and July 2011 to 38% in May 2012). By contrast, a majority of the population (61%, eight points more than in May 2012) now claims they have very little or not much trust in the Church, albeit this is still not quite as bad a rating as for banks (77%), newspapers (79%), Government (80%), and political parties (88%). The institutions which command the greatest confidence are the armed forces (78% stating that they trust them a great deal or quite a lot), the scouts and guides (67%), the National Health Service (67%), charities (66%), and schools (65%). The press release and slides relating to the May 2013 study are at:

http://nfpsynergy.net/trust-charities-third-year-running

Curriculum – benefits of religious education

Religious education (RE) is the secondary school subject regarded as having least educational benefit according to a poll published on 9 August 2013 and conducted among 1,844 UK adults aged 18 and over who had attended secondary school in the UK. They were interviewed online by Opinium Research between 12 and 16 July 2013. Shown a list of 17 school subjects, 21% identified RE as being least beneficial to their education, rising to 24% among men, 26% for those aged 35-54, and 27% for residents of Yorkshire and Humberside and Wales. The next most non-beneficial subject was art (cited by 16%), followed by physical education (10%). At the other end of the spectrum, biology, ICT, and sex education scored just 1% each, suggesting they were deemed most useful beyond school. Full results are on pp. 12-15 of the data tables at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/OP3507%20-%20Opinium%20PR%20-%20Education%20-%20SET%20FOUR%20-%20Tables.pdf

Charity – charitable giving by Muslims

British Muslims are increasingly donating to charity online, with the month of Ramadan causing a spike in digital giving. This is according to a press release from JustGiving, which describes itself as the world’s leading online giving platform, on 20 July 2013. The claim about Muslim charitable donations is based on two sources. First, the value of donations by British Muslims to Muslim and non-Muslim causes via JustGiving increased from £116,000 in 2010 to £200,000 in 2012. Second, JustGiving commissioned ICM Research to undertake an online survey of 4,000 adults between 22 and 27 June 2013, which suggested that Muslims gave more than twice as much per capita to charity last year as the average Briton (£371 versus £165). Jews were the next most generous faith group (£270), while Protestants gave £202 and atheists only £116. The full results of the ICM study are apparently not being published at this stage, the foregoing being based on a report in The Times for 20 July 2013 and on JustGiving’s press release at:

http://www.justgiving.com/en/SharedMedia/press-releases/Ramadan%20donations%20cause%20spike%20in%20digital%20giving.pdf

Posted in Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Social Capital, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged census of population, charitable giving, Charity Awareness Monitor, church, corruption, educational benefit, ethnicity, Global Corruption Barometer, ICM Research, Jews, JustGiving, mfpSynergy, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, ORB International, Religious Affiliation, religious bodies, religious education, secondary schools, socio-economic classification, Transparency International, trust | Leave a comment

Vicar of Dibley and Other News

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Clive D. Field

You can tell that it is the mid-summer ‘silly season’, when hard news is more difficult to come by, if BRIN has to lead a post on the fictional sitcom The Vicar of Dibley! However, we also find space for eight other religious statistical stories, including three touching on Jewish themes.

Television comedies

The Vicar of Dibley, the BBC’s religious sitcom which aired originally from 1994 to 2007, and starred Dawn French as Revd Geraldine Granger, first-generation Anglican woman priest, is the most popular of 28 post-2000 British television comedies, according to YouGov research published on 6 August 2013 (with 1,684 adults interviewed online on 4-5 August). It was rated as best comedy programme by 27% of Britons, beating Mrs Brown’s Boys into second place (25%). The Vicar of Dibley is most popular with the over-60s (42%) but also does well (taking a third of the vote) with the politically right-leaning (Conservative and UKIP supporters) and residents of southern England (outside London) and of the Midlands, the latter perhaps reflecting the fact that the programme is set in a fictional Oxfordshire village. The Vicar of Dibley is least favoured (17-18%) among the under-40s and Londoners. By contrast, Rev, starring Tom Hollander as Revd Adam Smallbone, incumbent of an inner-city Anglican parish in East London, and whose third series will be broadcast by the BBC in 2014, ranks in 21st position, with just 3% of the vote (including 5% of Londoners and over-60s). The full table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gukaq8hi4a/YG-Archive-British-TV-comedies-results-050813.pdf

Alternative Queen’s Speech, II

In our last post, on 17 July 2013, we covered a poll by Lord Ashcroft about the ‘Alternative Queen’s Speech’, a raft of 40 Bills proposed by backbench Conservative MPs. One of the measures was a Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it illegal to wear face coverings in public, including the burka, thereby implicitly targeting Muslims. Public attitudes to this measure have also been sounded out by Opinium Research, who interviewed online on 25-28 June 2013 a sample of 1,650 British adults who said they were likely to vote in an imminent general election. Of these, 62% supported a law prohibiting the wearing of face coverings, peaking at 69% of Conservatives, 83% of UKIP voters, and 73% of over-55s. Opposition averaged 20% but rose to 34% among 18-34s. Full results have been posted at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/Alternative%20Queen%27s%20Speech%20Tables.pdf

Predictions

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the event least expected to occur before 2070, according to a YouGov poll for The Times, conducted online on 22-23 July 2013 among 1,968 adults aged 18 and over. Shown a sub-set of 20 predictions randomly drawn from the full list of 39, only 4% anticipated that Christ would definitely or probably return to earth by 2070, with no major demographic variations. This was similar to the 3% anticipating the Second Coming before 2050 in another YouGov study in August 2010. Respondents in the current survey were also relatively sceptical about the likelihood of making contact with aliens by 2070 (15%) but more hopeful of finding evidence of life elsewhere in the universe (42%). The most predicted occurrence was that most Britons would have to work into their 70s before retiring (83%). The data table was released on 26 July 2013 and is at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/pm4u52h8c8/YG-Archive-The-Times-results-230713-2070-predictions.pdf

U-turns

The Times for 2 August 2013 highlighted the findings from a recent poll of UK adults commissioned by search engine Ask Jeeves to establish the extent to which people make major u-turns in their lives. Nearly half the population admitted to having changed their minds about important issues. On religion, 7% claimed to have switched their religious beliefs, while 11% of men and 8% of women had moved from being believers in God to describing themselves as atheists (slightly offset by the 2% who had moved in the opposite direction). BRIN has not been able to locate a fuller report of the survey on the internet and has contacted the PR department of Ask Jeeves for further details.

Wonga and the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s embarrassment at the revelation that the Church of England has been indirectly investing in Wonga, the online payday lender which he has been publicly criticizing, was the fifth most-followed news story during the week in which it broke, according to research published by Opinium on 5 August 2013. Of the 2,002 UK adults aged 18 and over interviewed online between 30 July and 1 August 2013, 46% claimed to have followed the Archbishop/Wonga story, the top news items being the Spanish rail-crash (68%) and the naming of the royal baby (62%). See Opinium’s blog at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/talking-points-2

Beyond Sundays

Beyond Sundays: How the Church of England is Helping Communities in the Diocese of London, published on 19 July 2013, seeks to quantify Anglican social capital in the Diocese. The value of activities, staff, and volunteer time is estimated at £33 million annually, even without taking into account that churches also supply their own buildings and spaces to host 89% of community projects. The number of such projects is around 1,000, involving 10,000 volunteers, and benefiting 200,000 Londoners each year. In addition, churches raise £17 million annually to carry out these initiatives. Children and family and youth are the main people groups supported. The report, mostly a series of case studies, is at:

http://www.london.anglican.org/assets/downloads/resourcelibrary/beyond-sundays-report.pdf

Jewish demography

In an apparent reversal of a long-term trend, the Jewish population of England and Wales is now getting younger, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s third report on the 2011 religion census, published on 23 July 2013. The median age of Jews reduced from 43 in 2001 to 41 in 2011, albeit the latter is still above the national figure of 39 years and well above the Muslim statistic of 25 years (Christians had the highest median age – 45 – in 2011). The proportion of Jews aged 21 and above dropped by more than one percentage point between the two censuses, although Jews still record the highest proportion of people aged 85 and over. This rejuvenation process reflects growth in the Strictly Orthodox Jewish community (haredim) since the early 1990s, mainly as a result of its very high birth rate. The average age of haredi Jews is estimated at 27 and of non-haredi at 44, with haredim accounting for 22% of Jews under 5 years in 2001 and 29% in 2011. David Graham, 2011 Census Results (England and Wales): A Tale of Two Jewish Populations can be found at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/2011%20Census%20A%20Tale%20of%20Two%20Jewish%20Populations.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

There were 30% fewer UK anti-Semitic incidents reported to the Community Security Trust during the first six months of 2013 compared with the corresponding period in 2012 (219 and 311 respectively). This is the lowest number of incidents recorded during the first half of a year since 2003. The Trust attributes the decline to the lack of a ‘trigger event’ in 2013 equivalent to the terrorist attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012. There is a detailed analysis of the data in AntiSemitic Incidents Report, January-June 2013, which was published on 25 July 2013 and is available at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/CST%20Incidents%20Report%20Jan%20-%20June%202013.pdf

David Ward and the Jews

David Ward, Lib Dem MP for Bradford East, had the parliamentary party whip withdrawn on 17 July 2013 for a series of comments which were deemed to be anti-Jewish and anti-Israel (a country he described as an ‘apartheid state’), and for which he was unprepared to apologize. The action taken by the party’s leadership prompted the Liberal Democrat Voice website to conduct a poll between 19 and 23 July of the 1,500 paid-up Lib Dem party members registered with its online forum, of whom just over 600 responded. Of these, a majority (53%) opposed the withdrawal of the whip, divided between 37% who supported Ward’s right to speak out and 16% who disagreed with his comments. Just 38% endorsed the removal of the whip, of whom 21% did so as a temporary measure and 17% until Ward apologized. In aggregate, 54% dissented from Ward’s views. The undecided amounted to 8%. Further details are at:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/david-ward-35511.html

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Aliens, Alternative Queen's Speech, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ask Jeeves, atheism, Burka, census of population, Church of England, community projects, Community Security Trust, Conservative MPs, David Graham, David Ward, Diocese of London, face coverings, God, haredim, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islamophobia, Israel, Jesus Christ, Justin Welby, Liberal Democrat Voice, Liberal Democrats, Opinium Research, payday loans, predictions, Religious Affiliation, religious dress, Rev, Second Coming, Social Capital, television comedies, The Times, u-turns, Vicar of Dibley, Wonga, YouGov | Leave a comment

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

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