Religious Census of Berkshire in 1851

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 30 March 1851, for the first and last time, a government survey of religious accommodation and attendance was undertaken throughout Great Britain as part of the decennial census of population. Information was gathered from the minister or lay official in charge of each place of worship, who was asked to complete a manuscript schedule.

Although the outcome of the religious census was published at the time, in separate reports for England and Wales and Scotland in 1853-54, results were only disaggregated to registration district, county and large town levels. Moreover, some questions in the schedules were not tabulated at all, while replies about the numbers in the general congregation and Sunday schools were unhelpfully conflated. Many returns also included valuable remarks.

These manuscript schedules therefore contain much information not available in the printed reports. Embargoed for 100 years, they are now increasingly appearing in modern scholarly editions. With the recent publication of Berkshire Religious Census, 1851, ed. Kate Tiller (Berkshire Record Society, Vol. 14, 2010), the returns for 20 English counties are now available in this way, in addition to the whole of Wales.

The appearance of the Berkshire volume also means that the schedules for all three counties forming the Church of England Diocese of Oxford have been printed, Tiller being responsible for the Oxfordshire edition (Oxfordshire Record Society, Vol. 55, 1987) and Edward Legg for Buckinghamshire (Buckinghamshire Record Society, Vol. 27, 1991).

Oxford is an especially interesting diocese since its energetic and reforming bishop from 1845 to 1869, Samuel Wilberforce, was the most vociferous critic of the taking of the religious census, inside and outside Parliament. His opposition extended right up to the eleventh hour before census day and was reactivated by the publication of the report for England and Wales in 1854.

Tiller’s edition of the Berkshire returns follows the pattern of her Oxfordshire volume and, indeed, the model of several other county editions. A transcript, arranged alphabetically by place name, of the 448 returns for Berkshire churches and chapels fills 104 pages. It is preceded by 60 pages of introductory material covering the background to the religious census and its results in the county, although there is limited quantitative analysis. An index, running to 25 pages, completes the book.

Excluding some duplicate returns, there were 435 places of worship in Berkshire in 1851, of which 202 were Anglican, 86 Old Dissent and 122 Methodist. Based on the experience of other counties, it seems certain that some Methodist services will have been missed by the census machinery, and it is a pity that Tiller has not been able to check for omissions against contemporary circuit plans and other documents. A distinguishing feature of Berkshire is that Primitive Methodism was the largest Nonconformist denomination in terms of attendances, a dominance which it had achieved in just 20 years.

The volume can be purchased from the Berkshire Record Society, Berkshire Record Office, 9 Coley Avenue, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 6AP for £25.00 plus £2.50 postage and packing.

Tiller’s research for this edition has led to two spin-off publications: ‘The place of Methodism: a study of three counties in 1851’, Methodism and History: Essays in Honour of John Vickers, eds Peter Forsaith and Martin Wellings (Applied Theology Press, 2010); and ‘Chapel people in 1851: the example of Berkshire’, Chapels and Chapel People, ed. Chris Skidmore (Chapels Society, 2010).

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Attitudes towards the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts: Data from the British Election Study

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Ben Clements

Ben Clements, University of Leicester.

I recently wrote about the British Election Study 2009/10 as a resource, providing some tables on how vote choice and attitudes to party leaders differed across religious communities.

As well as asking the British electorate in detail about their voting behaviour, perceptions of parties and their leaders, and the dynamics of general election campaigns, a series of questions taps into views on both long-standing policy debates and more recent political issues.

For instance, by using evidence from the BES 2005 and the BES 2009/10 we can compare attitudes on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts by religious affiliation.  Tables 1 and 2 show approval or disapproval of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in response to an identical question administered in each of the two BES surveys.

 

TableIraq

TableAfghan

What is evident from Tables 1 and 2 is that, while opinion tends to be against British involvement in both conflicts across the different categories, levels of disapproval are highest amongst Muslims (though slightly more so in the case of Iraq). Also, across all categories, higher proportions respond ‘don’t know’ in relation to the situation in Afghanistan, despite Britain’s military involvement there since 2001 (with a fifth of Muslims unsure).

Ben Clements is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester, with interests in the study of elections, public attitudes to the EU, and the work experiences of the visually-impaired. He is currently working on a book on religious affiliation and political attitudes in Britain, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. He can be contacted at bc101@leicester.ac.uk

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Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Yet another opinion poll has been published in the run-up to the state and pastoral visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England between 16 and 19 September. But this one is different, since it is about the liturgical predilections of British Catholics and not about papal popularity!

It is one in a series of surveys commissioned by Paix Liturgique, a movement of Roman Catholic laity based in France and dedicated to the extraordinary form of the Latin Rite. Other national surveys have been conducted in France in 2001, 2006 and 2008, Italy in 2009, and Germany and Portugal in 2010.

The current Pope stated in a motu proprio of 2007 that the Mass can be celebrated both in its modern or ordinary form (i.e. in the vernacular, with the priest facing the congregation and Holy Communion received standing) and in its traditional or extraordinary form (i.e. in Latin and Gregorian chant, with the priest facing the altar and Holy Communion received kneeling).

The purpose of Paix Liturgique’s polling is to ascertain how far the Catholic laity is aware that the two forms of the Mass are permitted, and how much demand potentially there is for the extraordinary form, or Latin Mass.

Fieldwork in Britain was undertaken online by Harris Interactive France between 21 and 28 June 2010, among a sample of 6,153 adults aged 18 and over. From these were filtered 800 professing Roman Catholics.

Details of the poll are contained in a 10-page report from Harris, which can be downloaded from:

http://www.paixliturgique.fr/securefilesystem/FICHIERLISTE/FICHIERLISTE_20100903151657_harris_-_paix_liturgique_-_gb_juin2010.pdf

Paix Liturgique’s commentary on the survey can be found in its Lettre, 246 of 3 September, which has been translated into English and posted on the Protect the Pope website at:

http://protectthepope.com/?p=940

A short article about the poll also appears on the front page of the Catholic Herald of 3 September, which can be read at:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/09/03/poll-almost-half-of-mass-goers-would-attend-older-form/

The following summary is derived from a combination of all the above, together with a two-page five-nation comparison of Paix Liturgique’s polling kindly supplied to BRIN by the organization’s press officer.

24% of Britain’s self-identifying Catholics claim to attend Mass weekly and 8% monthly, the combined figure of 32% being in excess of France and Portugal (19%) and Germany (10%), albeit lower than Italy (51%). The remaining British Catholics attend on holy days (10%) or occasionally (46%), with 12% never going to Mass.

39% of all Britain’s Catholics are aware that Mass can be celebrated in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms, which is less than in France, Germany and Italy. The other 61% do not realize this. However, among weekly and monthly Mass-goers awareness stands at 63%.

45% would consider it normal for both forms to be celebrated regularly in their own parishes (rising to 55% for weekly and monthly Mass-goers), with 21% regarding it as abnormal and 34% having no opinion.

Given the chance to attend Mass in the extraordinary form in Latin, but without it replacing the ordinary form in English, 16% of all Catholics say they would attend the traditional Mass weekly and 11% monthly.

When the same question was put to the regular (weekly or monthly) Mass-goers alone, 43% say they would attend the extraordinary form every week and 23% once a month. The combined figure of 66% is higher even than Italy, as well as far more than in France, Germany and Portugal.

Unsurprisingly, Paix Liturgique concludes that the poll is a ringing endorsement of its cause and emphatic proof of the ‘astounding deficiency’ of the British Roman Catholic hierarchies in promulgating knowledge of the motu proprio.

Paix Liturgique’s letter ends on an interesting methodological note. Because of the relatively small proportion of Catholics in Britain (13%), Harris had to poll a much larger number of adults than in Catholic countries. Consequently, at €10,000, this has been Paix Liturgique’s most expensive survey to date.

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Alternative Medicine

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Alternative medicine has been in the news again recently, on account of the ongoing debate about whether homeopathic remedies should be available on the National Health Service.

This has prompted YouGov to conduct an online survey on 30-31 August about belief in alternative medicine among a representative sample of 1,548 adult Britons aged 18 and over. The results were posted on the YouGov website on 2 September at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-AlternativeMedicine-310810_0.pdf

Respondents were asked how effective a treatment nine forms of alternative medicine were, with definitely, possibly, probably not and definitely not as the four principal options.

In terms of definitely being an effective treatment, chiropracty and osteopathy topped the list at 23%, with acupuncture not far behind at 18%. The other six remedies scored between 1% and 8%.

Extending the net, to embrace those who said the treatments were possibly as well as definitely effective, saw six remedies rising to more than 50%: acupuncture (66%), chiropracty (66%), osteopathy (65%), herbal medicine (51%) and reflexology (50%).

For all nine forms of alternative medicine, women were greater believers than men. This is the most obvious demographic variation, although the high proportion of don’t knows, ranging from 18% to 46% per treatment, makes it harder to detect trends.

Unfortunately, faith-healing was not included as an ‘alternative medicine’ in this poll. The nearest we come to it are Reiki (a Japanese Buddhist spiritual practice), which half of the sample appeared not to have heard of and only 4% rated as effective; and the crystal therapy beloved of New Agers but viewed as definitely effective by just 1%.

MORI polls in 2003 and 2006 found that 24% and 26% respectively of adults believed in faith-healers, 20% of men and 32% of women at the latter date. These and earlier figures from 1968 to 1998 can be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/faithhealingbelief_000.xls

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