Faith in Oxfordshire

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

A team of researchers from the Applied Research Centre in Sustainable Regeneration (SURGE) at Coventry University has recently completed a £69,000 year-long research study of religion as social capital in Oxfordshire.

Commissioned by the Oxfordshire Stronger Communities Alliance (OSCA) on behalf of a consortium of eight funding partners, Building Better Neighbourhoods: The Contribution of Faith Communities to Oxfordshire Life (ISBN 978-1-84600-034-8) was launched in Oxford on 23 June. It is available to download from:

http://www.oxnet.org.uk/sites/ocva.org.uk/files/BBN%20-%20Report%20[FINAL].pdf

The research utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods. The former phase (running from June to October 2009) is reported in chapter 2 (pp. 5-29) of the document, a paper and electronic self-completion questionnaire being returned by 192 (or 40%) of Oxfordshire’s 450 places of worship. 72% of respondents were Anglican, 21% other Christian denominations and 7% non-Christian (all of the last from the City of Oxford or Cherwell district).

Over 13,000 people regularly attend their main worship services, of whom one-third are under 30 years of age. Most (85%) of the Anglican congregations live less than two miles from their place of worship, but 45% of other Christians and 91% of other faiths travel from a greater distance.

Even without grossing up for non-respondents, these 192 places of worship were found to make a substantial contribution to the wider life of the communities within which they are located. In particular, responding places of worship:

  • Employ 232 full-time, 177 part-time and 48 seasonal members of staff, with an estimated annual salary bill of £8,500,000
  • Give 150,000 community service volunteering hours each year (i.e. excluding the time which is devoted to maintaining the internal life of their places of worship), with an estimated economic value of £850,000
  • Make 221 rooms and halls available for use by the wider community, with 80,000 hours of actual use by external organizations each year
  • Attract 180,000 visitors per annum, thereby contributing £1,700,000 to the tourist economy

These findings mirror those from other recent studies of religion as social capital, at regional, sub-regional, county and city levels. A short bibliography of relevant literature will be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/commentary/drs/appendix3/index.html

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Happy Birthday, Social Trends

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 2 July the Office for National Statistics published the fortieth (2010) edition of Social Trends, the annual compilation of social data from governmental and other sources. Edited by Matthew Hughes, it can be bought as a print publication from Palgrave Macmillan (ISBN 978-0-230-24067-4, £55) but (together with data in Excel format) is also available for free download at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Social-Trends40/ST40_2010_FINAL.pdf

As usual, a few of the tables or figures in this year’s edition touch on religious matters, the principal ones being:

TABLE 2.12: marriages by type of ceremony in England and Wales, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2007 (source: Office for National Statistics). Total ceremonies in England and Wales have fallen from 352,000 to 231,500 between 1981 and 2007, and the number of religious ceremonies has declined from 51% to 33%. The proportion of religious ceremonies is higher in Scotland (48%) and Northern Ireland (71%).

FIGURE 13.17: proportion of people mixing at least once a month with others from different ethnic or religious backgrounds by location in England, April-June 2009 (source: Citizenship Survey, Department for Communities and Local Government). The most likely place to mix socially was at the shops (62%), followed by work, school or college (53%) or a pub, club, café or restaurant (47%). The figure for places of worship was 16%.

FIGURE 13.18: proportion of total amount given to charity by cause, 2008/09 (source: Charities Aid Foundation and National Council for Voluntary Organisations). Of the total £9.9 billion donated to charity, 15% is for religious causes. This is the biggest single category, followed by medical research (14%), hospitals and hospices (12%), overseas (12%), children and young people (11%), animals (5%) and education (4%). 

FIGURE 13.20: belief in God in Great Britain by gender, February 2007 (source: YouGov). 22% of adults aged 18 and over (17% of men and 26% of women) interviewed online claimed to believe in a personal God who created the world and heard their prayers, and a further 26% (22% of men and 29% of women) believed in ‘something’ but were unsure what that was. 16% of the sample, 22% of men and 10% of women, declared themselves atheists.

TABLE 13.21: attendance at church or religious services or meetings (other than rites of passage) by gender in Great Britain, 2008 (source: British Social Attitudes Survey, National Centre for Social Research). 57% of adults aged 18 and over stated that they never or practically never attended religious services, 63% of men and 52% of women. 14% were regular attenders (once a fortnight or more), 12% of men and 15% of women, rising to 19% among those aged 65 and over. 53% of the sample reported that religion was not at all important in their daily lives, 61% of men and 45% of women.

This will be the last edition of Social Trends to appear as a print publication. Henceforth, it will be disseminated solely via the web, with material being added throughout the year.

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Caring for Places of Worship

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Churchgoing may be declining, but, according to an omnibus survey conducted for the Church of England, 85% of the adult population visited places of worship for some reason in 2009, whether for an event, personal interest or to attend a service. Many visitors will naturally have been drawn to them for their historical importance.

You certainly do not need to be religious to appreciate the significance of places of worship to the country’s architectural heritage. England alone has 14,500 listed places of worship (4,000 Grade I, 4,500 Grade II* and 6,000 Grade II). In fact, 45% of all Grade I listed buildings are places of worship.

Although the overwhelming majority of these listed church buildings are Anglican parish churches, many of them pre-dating the Reformation, a significant minority are Free Church. There is also a relatively small number of listed non-Christian places of worship, approximately one-half of which are synagogues and one-quarter mosques.

But what state are these religious premises in? In an attempt to improve its evidence base, English Heritage (the official champion of England’s historic buildings) has undertaken the first ever physical condition survey of a 15% representative sample of England’s listed places of worship.

Headline findings from the survey appear in Caring for Places of Worship, 2010, which was published by English Heritage on 30 June. The document is available to download from:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/caring-for-places-of-worship-report/caring-places-of-worship-2010-report.pdf/

In the aggregate, 11% of listed places of worship were found to be in a poor or very bad physical state and thus potentially at risk. The figure stood at 14% for Grade I buildings and 13% for Grade II*, compared with 8% for Grade II. Thus, the most important places of worship are relatively in greatest danger.

Rural places of worship are also at more risk than urban ones (13% against 9%), although inner-city buildings are an exception to the rule in London and Birmingham. An above-average incidence of listed places of worship in poor or very bad condition was reported in the West Midlands, South-East and East, and a lower than average number in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North-East.

Of the 89% of listed places of worship not deemed to be at risk, approximately two-fifths were judged to be in good condition and the remainder in fair condition. Dr Simon Thurley, English Heritage’s CEO, described this finding as ‘a huge testament to the hard work and altruism of their congregations. They take on responsibility for their building in addition to their commitment to worship and community service, finding almost all the necessary funding from their own pockets.’

English Heritage simultaneously released results from evaluations of the impact of two major schemes to provide financial support for listed places of worship. These are the Repair Grant for Places of Worship Scheme (RGPoWS), jointly funded by English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and which has benefited 11% of listed places of worship since 2002; and the Government-financed Listed Places of Worship Scheme (LPoWS).

The evaluations were carried out by BDRC Continental through interviews in April-May 2010 with 100 recipients of RGPoWS grants and 300 recipients of LPoWS grants made since 2005. Summaries of the evaluations are published at:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/k-o/key-findings-rgpow.pdf

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/k-o/lpows-key-findings.pdf

For over three-fifths of grant recipients the repair and maintenance of their place of worship is a constant major concern. Grants helped them plan a more certain future for their building, avoiding more costly repairs later on, and also to increase the number of visitors and broaden community use. Grants further benefited the local economy since 90% of grant recipients exclusively used local businesses to undertake repairs.

In the case of recipients of RGPoWS grants, which are invariably for more than half the cost of the scheme, 76% claimed that they could not have completed the restoration work without help from the RGPoWS, and 30% that they would have had to close their building but for the RGPoWS.

Even for recipients of LPoWS grants, which are limited to 17.5% of the cost, 20% would not have been able to complete the repair and maintenance work at all without the LPoWS and 18% would only have been able to complete some of the work.

A parallel investigation by the National Churches Trust, which covers the whole of the UK and includes non-listed as well as listed buildings, is expected to report later in the year.

NOTE: In conjunction with the main survey, Jewish Heritage UK was funded by English Heritage to survey the state of 37 listed synagogues in England between March and June 2009. A separate report on this study, Synagogues at Risk, is available at:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/synagogues-at-risk/synagogues-at-risk.pdf/

This contains detail additional to an assessment of the physical condition of the building, including information about frequency of services, average attendance at services, and membership size and trends.

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