Humanist Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Humanist marriages

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

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

Another post-Woolwich poll

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

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

Religious education (RE) in primary schools

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

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

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

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

St Paul’s the tops!

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

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

Diocese of Leicester mission statistics

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

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

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

Joining worshipping community

For first time

4,074
Transfer from another church

1,912
Returning after break from church

822
Total

6,808
Leaving worshipping community

Death or ill-health

1,832
Relocation or joining another church

1,555
No longer part of any church

570
Total

3,957

Scottish Episcopal Church statistics

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

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

Making sense of the census

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

SocRel sub-set

1851 religious census in the North-East

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

 

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London Churchgoing and Other News

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

London Church Census

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

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

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

Evangelical church life

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

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

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

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

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

Theology of occasional churchgoers

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

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

A selection of findings appears below:

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

British Sikh Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Muslim and Christian News

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

‘Hate preachers’

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

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

Integration of Muslim migrants

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

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

 

Well

integrated

Not well

integrated
Migrants from Eastern Europe

34

54
Children of migrants from Eastern Europe

42

32
Migrants from Muslim countries

21

71
Children of migrants from Muslim countries

38

53
Migrants from Pakistan

28

57
Children of migrants from Pakistan

46

40
Migrants from African countries

31

46
Children of migrants from African countries

43

33

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

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

Britishness of Muslims

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

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

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

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

Islamophobic incidents

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

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

Gilligan’s original article can be found at:

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

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

http://tellmamauk.org/news/

Fair Admissions Campaign

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

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

For more details, see:

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

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

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

Singleness and the Church

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

Methodist diaconate

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

Dean of Studies and Research, Bible Society

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

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

 

 

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Census 2011: Muslims in Britain

Posted on June 8, 2013 by David Voas

The 2011 census allows us to explore the national origins and ethnic composition of different religious groups.  In this initial analysis, we consider the profile of Muslims in England and Wales. Two thirds are Asian, mostly South Asian.  The majority of Muslim Asians, and 38% of all Muslims, are of Pakistani origin.  Bangladeshis come well behind, with 15% of the total.

One of the changes made to the census question on ethnicity in 2011 was to add an ‘Arab’ option.  This group contributes 6.6% of Muslims, exceeding the 4.8% classified as ‘other white’ (e.g. Turkish, Turkish Cypriot, or Bosnian).  Notwithstanding the existence of these categories, an appreciable number of Muslims (2.9%) describe themselves as white British; some are likely to be the descendents of Muslim immigrants and an unknown number are converts.

In total, then, 68% of Muslims in England and Wales are of Asian ethnicity, 14% are white or Arab, and just 10% are black.  The remainder are of mixed or other ethnicity.

The majority (53%) of Britain’s Muslims were born in Europe, although the proportion born in the UK is slightly less than half (47%).  Of Muslims born outside the UK, the majority (54%) come from South Asia.  Other regions that contribute substantially to Muslim immigration include Africa (19%) and the Middle East (12%).

Although a majority of Muslim immigrants are from South Asia, only a minority (47%) of South Asian immigrants are Muslim.  And while a slight majority of Muslims are first generation immigrants, only 19% of people born outside the UK are Muslim.  Like the white British, the foreign-born population is predominantly Christian (48%) or has no religion (14%).

 

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National Well-Being and Other News

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

National well-being

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

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

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

and the regression tables at:

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

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

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

Curbing Muslim radicals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books, Bible, and Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral

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

 

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Doctor-Assisted Suicide and Other News

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

Doctor-assisted suicide

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

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

Proxy religious affiliation

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

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

 

Children

Adults

All
Christian

50.3

61.4

59.3
Buddhist

0.3

0.5

0.4
Hindu

1.4

1.5

1.5
Jewish

0.5

0.5

0.5
Muslim

8.5

4.0

4.8
Sikh

0.8

0.7

0.8
Any other

0.2

0.5

0.4
No religion

30.1

24.0

25.1
Not stated

7.9

7.0

7.2

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

Religious education quizzes

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

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

 

% correct

% incorrect
Atheism

59

41
Buddhism

73

27
Christianity – place of worship

63

37
Christianity – Easter

69

31
Islam

86

14

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

http://www.educationquizzes.com/

Faith and social capital in Wandsworth

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

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

 

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Islamophobia Post-Woolwich

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The data tables are on the YouGov website at:

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

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

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

 

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Local variation in levels of religious affiliation

Posted on May 25, 2013 by David Voas

The 2011 census reveals a remarkable amount of neighbourhood variation in levels of religion or non-religion.  Looking across the 8,570 wards in England – small areas with an average population of about 6,500 – the proportion of people describing themselves as having no religion ranges from virtually nil to more than half.  Even if we ignore the most and least religious deciles and focus on the 80% of areas in the middle, the percentage of no religion is nearly twice as high in some wards as in others (34% versus 18%).

No religion_wards

Unsurprisingly levels of non-religion are lowest where the share of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is highest.  Bastwell (Blackburn) is the most faithful ward in the country, with religious ‘nones’ making up only 1.5% of a population that is 85% Muslim.  It is followed by Southall Broadway and Southall Green, Asian-majority but religiously very mixed areas where Sikhs are the largest group.

If Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists and people of other minority religions are excluded, the lowest levels of ‘no religion’ (around 9.5% of the total classified as Christian, no religion or religion not stated) are recorded in Swanside, Eccleston and West Derby, all in Merseyside.  The legacy of Irish Catholic immigration from the mid-19th century is still felt throughout the region around Liverpool (and eastwards as far as the road to Wigan Pier).

At the opposite end of the scale, Brighton provides the wards with the most non-religion: St. Peter’s and North Laine, Hanover and Elm Grove, Preston Park, Regency, and (following Maerdy in the Rhondda Valley) Brunswick and Adelaide.  Just as strikingly, however, Wales contributes 45 of the 75 least religious wards.  In second position amongst them is Gilfach Goch, the setting (in fictionalised form) for How Green was my Valley.  How Christian was my valley then … and the valley of them that have gone. But it is not only the pit villages that have defected from church and chapel; wards in Aberystwyth, Menai and elsewhere in Wales are on the list.

With area-specific differences, the challenge is to discover whether the contrasts are explained by composition or context.  Is Brighton different from Liverpool, that is to say, because the people living in those places have different characteristics, or because the culture or social ecology leads them to describe themselves differently? Clearly composition has a role: we know that levels of religious affiliation vary considerably by ethnic and religious background, as discussed above.  Likewise gender and generation are important factors.  Such traits account for only a small part of the overall variance in non-religion, however.  (Minority status is important but a relatively small proportion of the population belongs to these groups; age and sex are influential across the board, but they are distributed in very similar ways in most wards.)

So, the question remains: are religious and non-religious people geographically concentrated for reasons not directly related to religion (but rather because of personal characteristics that may not be obvious)?  Or are local norms and religious environments sufficiently distinctive that individuals will think and behave differently depending on where they live?  Of course the nature of ecology is that composition and context shape each other: Brighton has a large gay population, and as a result its culture is different than it would have been otherwise. That culture is influenced by selective migration, and it in turn affects others through ideological diffusion.  Understanding the reasons for geographical variation would help us to understand religious change.

 

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Eight Shorts

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Eight short items of statistical news feature in today’s second post, clearing a small backlog which has built up during a week’s absence from the desk.

Hate crime

The overwhelming majority of the British public (84%) consider that an attack on someone because of their religion should be treated as a hate crime, second only to those who deem an attack on someone because of their race as a hate crime (88%), and ahead of the numbers regarding as hate crimes attacks on the basis of sexuality (83%), transsexuality (81%), disability (78%), gender (75%), sub-culture (68%), age (59%), weight (56%), height (51%), hair colour (51%), and political views (51%). The proportion who do not think that an attack on the grounds of religion should be classed as a hate crime is 10% overall, but 13% for men and Conservative supporters, and 14% among the 18-24s. The survey was conducted by YouGov on 14-15 May 2013 with an online sample of 1,886 adults, and the data tables are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/i4jqy1c3rk/YG-Archive-hate-crime-results-150513.pdf

Sunday stress

Far from being a day of rest, Sunday has become the most stressful day of the week for one-third of Britons, according to a ‘Sunday Stress Audit’ of over 2,000 adults commissioned by the Really television channel. Indeed, 65% now claim to have busier schedules on Sunday than on an ordinary weekday, and 67% report that ‘Sunday blues’ kick in at some point during the day. More than half (51%) consider Sundays to be a day ‘for getting things done’, with an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes being spent on various household tasks, and 35% admitting that they nag or are nagged by their partners to carry out such chores. Such is the level of ‘busyness’ that 34% never get a lie in bed on Sunday, and 53% never get chance to read the Sunday newspapers properly. Sunday lunch (which takes 2 hours to prepare and 26 minutes to eat) and seeing extended family remain key elements of the Sunday tradition, with two-thirds getting together with their wider family at least one Sunday each month, not always without friction. Full results and methodological details of the survey have not been released, and the above summary is largely taken from the Daily Mail for 10 May 2013 at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2322269/Sunday-Its-day-rest-day-stress-Two-thirds-say-Sabbath-busiest-time-week.html

Church organs

‘The traditional church organ is a must for special occasions but, Sunday to Sunday, congregations would rather have a guitar-based worship group.’ This is the conclusion drawn by Christian Resources Exhibitions International from a poll conducted between 26 April and 3 May 2013 among 2,250 UK churchgoers who are members of the Christian Research online panel (Resonate). A guitar-based group was the preference for ordinary Sunday services of 44% of churchgoers compared with 30% for the organ, while almost two-thirds of respondents disagreed with the statement that a church with no organ is like a pub with no beer. More than half the sample had experience of organists slipping ‘unrelated’ secular music into their repertoire. Detailed results of the poll have not been published, but there is a brief press release at:

http://www.creonline.co.uk/news.asp?pageid=13

Church Commissioners

The Church Commissioners, who make a substantial contribution to the finances of the Church of England (especially in respect of its ministry), published their annual report and accounts for 2012 on 14 May 2013. They demonstrate a return on investments of just under 10% for the year, almost matching the Commissioners’ average for the past 20 years. This return exceeds the Commissioners’ target of inflation plus 5%, as well as the performance of a comparator group of funds. The report can be found at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1743919/w1025_cc_annual-report_final.pdf

A century and more of Catholic statistics

The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales has performed a useful service in collating the available national statistics of the Catholic Church in England and Wales until 2010, of ordinations since 1860, priests since 1890, and baptisms, marriages, receptions (formerly adult conversions), and estimates of Catholic population since 1913. Updating the series already available on BRIN (reproduced, with permission, from Churches and Churchgoers, 1977), they were published in spreadsheet format (as a series of tables and graphs), together with a brief and not entirely unbiased commentary, on the Society’s news blog on 17 May 2013 at:

http://www.lms.org.uk/news-and-events/news-blog/may-2013#statistics

With the exception of ordinations (where the lists of men each year have been counted), the data have been taken from the Catholic Directory for England and Wales, a commercial publication but issued with the official sanction of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Although the best source we have, it should not be forgotten that, through no fault of the Catholic Directory, these figures present a variety of challenges in terms of methodology and quality, reflecting weaknesses in the Church’s statistics-gathering at diocesan and national levels. Indeed, the Catholic Directory has recently deemed them so problematical that it has ceased to publish them entirely.

The Latin Mass Society’s principal gloss on the data is to highlight ‘the striking decline of a range of statistical indications of the health of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s’. According to the Society’s chairman, Dr Joseph Shaw, ‘it is not fanciful to connect this catastrophe to the wrenching changes which were taking place in the Church at that time, when the Second Vatican Council was being prepared, discussed, and, often erroneously, applied’. No mention here of wider historical and sociological debates about the secularization of British society and of what some historians view as the ‘religious crisis’ of the 1960s.

Mass-Observation

Mass-Observation was a social research organization founded by Tom Harrisson and Charles Madge in 1937, employing a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, primarily in two fieldwork areas: Bolton/Blackpool and London. Its heyday was relatively short, just twelve years until 1949, after which it was succeeded by Mass-Observation (UK) Limited, with a focus on commercial market research. From the outset it displayed a particular interest in religion, and, although only one major religion-related project (Puzzled People, based on interviews with a sample of 500 Hammersmith residents in 1944-45) was ever published, much raw material survives in the Mass-Observation Archive, on deposit at the University of Sussex since 1975, significant portions of which have been reproduced on microform and online by Adam Matthew Publications. Despite being the subject of a considerable amount of secondary literature, there has not hitherto been a full-length history. It is, therefore, a great pleasure to welcome the new book by James Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949 (Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-967104-5). This is essentially arranged chronologically rather than thematically, but the volume does include some brief discussion of Mass-Observation’s religious research, including an account of Puzzled People on pp. 320-4.

NatCen trustees

NatCen (National Centre for Social Research), the independent and not-for-profit organization which undertakes a wide range of surveys (including the British Social Attitudes Surveys), is looking for four trustees to join its board. The closing date for applications is 17 June 2013. Further particulars are available at:

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/about-us/job-opportunities/trustee-x4   

Public understanding of statistics

Although it contains nothing specific about religion, some BRIN readers may be interested in a poll conducted by Ipsos MORI for King’s College London and the Royal Statistical Society and published on 14 May. The sample comprised 1,034 British adults aged 16-75 interviewed online between 9 and 15 April 2013. In a crushing blow to the BRIN ego, only 6% of respondents agreed that online blogs report statistics accurately. About half the population (49%) have a great deal or fair amount of trust in information provided by statisticians, but the proportion falls to 23% for pollsters, albeit it climbs to 63% for trust in academics. The twenty questions and sub-questions also included some practical tests of the public’s numeracy. The topline results can be viewed at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/rss-kings-ipsos-mori-trust-in-statistics-topline.pdf

 

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2011 Census Detailed Characteristics

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

On 16 May 2013 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the first outputs from the third wave of results (Release 3.1) from the 2011 census of population of England and Wales. They comprised detailed characteristics for local authorities in terms of cross tabulations for the questions on ethnicity, national identity, country of birth, main language, proficiency in English, religion, provision of unpaid care, and health. The full tables can be consulted at:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/detailed_characteristics

These tables include the following breaks for religion:

  • Religion by sex by age
  • Ethnic group by religion
  • National identity by religion
  • Country of birth by religion by sex
  • Disability by general health by religion by sex by age
  • Economic activity by religion by sex by age
  • NS-SeC (National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification) by religion by sex by age

A general statistical bulletin about the release contains (at pp. 15-17) a short analysis of the religion data, focusing on the distribution by age within gender for nine religious groups. It shows that the median age of Christians was six years higher than for all English and Welsh residents (45 compared with 39 years), with Muslims and people of no religion having the youngest profiles (with median ages of 25 and 30 years respectively). The proportion of Muslims under 25 years of age is 48% and of those professing no religion 39%. The statistical bulletin is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_310514.pdf

In addition, ONS has published what it describes as a ‘short story’ on religion, a separate 18-page paper entitled ‘What Does the Census Tell Us about Religion in 2011?’ Prepared by the ONS Measuring National Well-Being Department, it includes eight figures and two tables with associated links to data in Excel format. This paper is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_310454.pdf

There is also an animated video version of the ‘short story’ at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/detailed-characteristics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/video-summary-religion.html

ONS identifies the key points in the ‘short story’ as follows (slightly elaborated here by BRIN):

  • Christianity has the oldest age profile of the principal religious groups, 22% of Christians being 65 years and over compared with 16% of all English and Welsh residents, closely followed by Jews on 21%
  • The fall in the number of Christians since 2001 has largely been among the under-60s and, in absolute terms, has been evenly spread between the sexes (with roughly 2,000,000 fewer net Christians of each gender in 2011 than 2001)
  • The number with no religion has increased across all age groups since 2001, but especially for those aged 20-24 and 40-44, while the growth for women (89%) has been higher than for men (78%)
  • 93% of Christians are white (7% more than the national average) and 89% born in the UK, albeit the number identifying as white British was lower in 2011 (86%) than in 2001 (93%) – in fact, the net reduction of 4,100,000 Christians between 2001 and 2011 would have looked a lot worse had it not been for an increase of 1,200,000 non-UK-born partly offsetting the fall of 5,300,000 among UK-born
  • 68% of Muslims are Asian or Asian British, including 38% who are Pakistani, the latter figure up by 371,000 since 2001, albeit the proportion has reduced from 43% in 2001 – 48% of the growth in the Muslim population since 2001 is accounted for by UK-born and 52% by non-UK-born
  • The majority of people with no religion are white (93%) and born in the UK (93%), the rise in the number with no religion between 2001 and 2011 being largely (91%) among the UK-born
  • People with no religion have the highest proportion of economically active (74%), Christians and Muslims the lowest (60% and 55% respectively)
  • Jews have the highest level of employment (93% excluding students, including 28% self-employed), and Muslims the highest level of unemployment (17%, three times the proportion among Christians and four times for Jews)
  • Retirement is the main reason for the economic inactivity of Christians (69%) and Jews (57%), and for Muslims because they are students (30%) or looking after the home and family (31%)

BRIN hopes to provide fuller analysis of, and commentary on, these detailed characteristics in due course. Professor David Voas has already got the ball rolling with his blog post of yesterday on ‘Religious Census, 2011: What Happened to the Christians (Part II)’ This includes the hugely important estimate that the overwhelming explanation for the net fall of 4,100,000 Christians between 2001 and 2011 lies in the net ‘defection’ of 3,900,000 persons who were described as Christians in 2001 but not so in 2011, cohort replacement and immigration combined only yielding a net loss of 200,000 Christians during the decade. This process of defection is strongly age-related; the younger the respondents, the more likely they are to have moved away from self-identification as Christians. Read David’s post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/religious-census-2011-what-happened-to-the-christians-part-ii/

The Census detailed characteristics on religion for Northern Ireland were also published on 16 May and can be viewed at:

http://www.nisra.gov.uk/Census/2011_results_detailed_characteristics.html

 

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