LGBT Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Clive D. Field

The Government’s public consultation on ‘equal civil marriage’, which closes this Thursday (14 June 2012), continues to excite controversy. According to today’s The Times, there have already been more than 100,000 formal responses.

Much of the opposition to these proposals to legalize same-sex marriage has come from religious groups, both Christian and non-Christian, who regard them as an attempt to redefine the nature and meaning of marriage.

This is notwithstanding the fact that Government, in an effort to placate religious viewpoints, intends to restrict the marriage of same-sex couples to a civil ceremony conducted on secular premises. No eligibility is mooted for them to have a religious marriage ceremony on religious premises.    

However, religious leaders (including in the Church of England, which has today published its submission to the consultation) have suggested that this proposal wrongly implies that there are two categories of marriage, civil and religious; ‘this is to mistake the wedding ceremony for the institution of marriage’.

They also doubt whether the distinction would withstand legal challenge, in the form of discrimination claims, and fear that places of worship will eventually have to offer religious ceremonies for same-sex couples.

It has now emerged, from hitherto unreported results of an online poll commissioned by Catholic Voices, that gay people are also dissatisfied with the Government’s compromise in offering same-sex marriages in secular venues only.

The survey was carried out between 27 April and 20 May 2012 among 541 adult Britons aged 18 and over who self-identified as LGBT – gay, lesbian, bisexual or other non-heterosexual – in a screening question asked of 10,139 persons. Full data tables are available at:

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

Among the various questions and statements put to LGBTs were two about same-sex marriage in places of worship, the first being ‘true marriage equality would mean that same-sex couples could marry in places of worship as well as in civil locations’.

Three-fifths (61%) of LGBTs agreed with this proposition, rising to almost three-quarters in South-West England, Wales and Scotland. Women (67%) were more in favour than men (58%). Only 15% of all LGBTs disagreed, with 24% undecided.

The second statement was that ‘faith groups should be forced to allow gay weddings in places of worship’. This split LGBT opinion down the middle, with 35% wanting faith groups compelled to permit same-sex weddings in their places of worship, peaking at 46% among the 35-44s, 51% in Scotland, and 53% of those agreeing with the first statement. 38% dissented and 27% were uncertain.

There are two interesting methodological aspects of this poll. First, the percentage of the initial ComRes screening sample self-identifying as gay was three times that in the Government’s Integrated Household Survey, which is conducted by a combination of face-to-face and telephone interviews. ComRes suggests as a possible explanation for the discrepancy that ‘online polls tend to attract younger, urban populations where numbers of openly gay people are higher’.

Second, ComRes admits to having weighted the data ‘to be representative demographically of the wider GB adult population’. This rather implies that heterosexuals and LGBTs have the identical demographic profile, which is probably not the case.

 

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What Anglicans (and others) think about homosexuality and disestablishment

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Siobhan McAndrew

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier today, the Church of England responded to the Government’s proposals to introduce same-sex marriage. For further information, follow these links to coverage by BBC News, the Guardian, and the Telegraph; furthermore, the Church of England’s full response is available here.

In view of the discussion generated by the response, it is worth examining what Anglicans themselves think about gay relationships. My colleague Ben Clements at the University of Leicester has recently looked at data from the British Social Attitudes surveys and the European Values Surveys to see how attitudes to homosexual relationship have changed over the past three decades or so.

We recently published his full report here as part of our Figures section, which provides an array of statistics on attitudes to gay relationships, towards gay people, to adoption and other issues. To summarise:

  • In 1983, 70 per cent of Anglicans considered sexual relationships between people of the same sex were always or almost always wrong. By 2010, this had nearly halved to 37 per cent.
  • In 1983, 75 per cent of Catholics considered same sex relationships were always or almost always wrong; by 2010, this had fallen to 41 per cent.
  • In 1983, 80 per cent of Other Christians considered such rlationships wrong; by 2010, this had fallen to 47 per cent.
  • In 1983, 58 per cent of those with no religion considered such relationships wrong; by 2010, this had fallen to 21 per cent.

A specific question on the right to marriage was asked on the British Social Attitudes survey in 2007:

‘How much do you agree or disagree that … gay or lesbian couples should have the right to marry one another if they want to?’

Again, Ben broke the responses down by religious affiliation. There is some variation by religious affiliation, although note that age or ‘social generation’ effects may also be a key driver here: those of no religion are generally considerably younger than Anglicans. More complex analysis would be required to assess how far religious affiliation determines attitudes compared with other socio-demographic variables such as sex, education, socioeconomic status, and so forth.

 

Discussion today has also focused on the position of the Church of England as the established church. The Church of England argues that the proposals mean that the institution of marriage would be redefined in law to mean something the Church would ‘struggle to recognise’ as marriage:

‘the institution of marriage would have been redefined generally for the purposes of English law. At the very least that raises new and as yet unexplored questions about the implications for the current duties which English law imposes on clergy of the Established Church’ [Annex, paragraphs 21, 22].

Relatedly, Ben has also recently looked at attitudes to disestablishment of the Church of England. He analysed data from the British Election Study (BES) AV Referendum Study, undertaken in spring 2011, which included a number of questions regarding reform of British institutions. The full report is also available here in the Figures section.

The question on disestablishment, which was asked on the post-campaign survey wave, was:

 ‘The Church of England should keep its status as the official established church in England.’

The response options were: ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘neither agree nor disagree’, ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’.

While the BES does not ask respondents their religious affiliation, we can break down responses by other demographics. To simplify, the ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ response categories were collapsed. To summarise:

  • Overall, 54 per cent of respondents agreed the Church of England should remain the established church, 22 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed, 16 per cent disagreed (i.e. favoured disestablishment), and 8 per cent didn’t know.
  • Women are more in favour of the status quo than men ( 57 per cent of women agreed with the proposal compared with 50 per cent of men; 12 per cent disagreed compared with 19 per cent of men).
  • 54 per cent of Whites and 55 per cent of Black respondents are in favour of the status quo compared with 40 per cent of Asian respondents. However, the percentage disagreeing was similar for White and Asian respondents (16 and 15 per cent respectively) while that for Black respondents was 8 per cent – notably, 20 per cent of Asian respondents replied that they didn’t know.
  • There is some variation by age category. 63 per cent of those aged 65 and over favour the status quo compared with 41 per cent of those aged 18 to 24; 13 per cent of those aged 65 and over disagreed with the proposition (presumably, therefore, favouring disestablishment) compared with 19 per cent of those aged 18 to 24.
  • English respondents were more likely to support the Church of England continuing as the established church: 56 per cent agreed compared with 51 per cent in Wales, where the Anglican ‘Church in Wales’ was disestablished in 1920, and 31 per cent in Scotland (where the Church of Scotland is recognised as the national church but is not established). 15 per cent of English respondents disagreed, compared with 17 per cent of Welsh respondents, and 24 per cent of Scottish respondents.
  • Conservative Party supporters are more likely to favour continuing establishment: 69 per cent compared with 49 per cent of Labour supporters, 46 per cent of Lib Dems, and 45 per cent favouring no particular party. 8 per cent of Conservative Party supporters disagreed, thereby favouring disestablishment, compared with 19 per cent of Labour supporters, 25 per cent of Lib Dems, and 18 per cent of those favouring no particular party.
  • 74 per cent of Daily Mail readers favour the Church of England remaining established, compared with 65 per cent of Telegraph readers, 61 per cent of Sun readers, 52 per cent of Times readers, 36 per cent of Independent readers, and 28 per cent of Guardian readers.  7 per cent of Daily Mail readers favour disestablishment, compared with 13 percent of Telegraph readers, 7 per cent of Sun readers, 25 per cent of Times readers, 34 per cent of Independent readers, and 45 per cent of Guardian readers.

Again, the full reports and breakdowns are available in the Figures section via the drop-down menu, where the contact details for Ben are also available (although note that he is currently on paternity leave – congratulations Ben!).

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Church Growth in Britain since 1980

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Clive D. Field

‘Alongside the phenomenon of church decline there has been substantial church growth in Britain since 1980. That growth is focussed in London and amongst black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and amongst new churches. But such growth extends across much of Britain and across a range of churches.’

So concludes a new book on Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present, edited by David Goodhew, Director of Ministerial Practice at Cranmer Hall, Durham (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, xiii + 265pp., ISBN 978-1-4094-2576-2, £17.99 paperback, also available in hardback and as an ebook), and targeted at both academic and church leadership audiences.

The volume is ‘a mosaic of micro-studies’, comprising fourteen important examples of growth during the past three decades as experienced in three contexts – mainstream churches, new churches, and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – together with an introduction and conclusion by the editor. The full contents list, introduction and index are freely available at

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10760&edition_id=14240

For a book about church growth BRIN readers may be surprised at the (superficially) relative absence of statistics! Just one figure and two tables appear in the whole work. Lynda Barley’s essay on Anglican cathedrals is one of the most quantitative.

Moreover, several of the chapters adopt a purely qualitative approach. Nevertheless, plenty of numbers can be found interspersed in the text, the most interesting of them being local or congregational.

The case studies are preceded by Goodhew’s overview of church growth in Britain since 1980 and followed by his conclusion boldly entitled ‘The death and resurrection of Christianity in contemporary Britain’. 

While Goodhew is undoubtedly right to critique the excesses of secularization theory and to highlight that ‘the notion that all British churches are in inexorable decline is a myth’, he could be challenged for his equally loose talk of resacralization.

He is also shaky in his understanding of the longer-term historical context and over-simplistic in accepting the 1960s as ‘the key decade of secularization’ and the late 1970s as the beginning of some kind of Christian ‘fight-back’. The book’s commencement point of 1980 is rationalized on this basis.

Goodhew tends to be rather dismissive of the value of national statistics: ‘all national figures concerning churches need to be taken with a pinch of salt’, he writes, illustrating the argument by what he believes to be ‘initial data for the 2011 British Census’ (no results from which have yet been published), but which are actually from a large-scale opinion poll.

However, the point about national statistics is surely that they are net figures (‘stocks’), the balance of both gains and losses (‘flows’). Growth and decline have pretty well always co-existed in the numerical life of the Church.

So, identification of pockets of growth does not necessarily alter the prevailing net direction of travel, which – on most performance indicators – continues to be downward. As Goodhew observes, ‘there is no place for any ecclesiastical triumphalism’.

The essential ‘problem’ with a case study approach (‘church history written “from below”’, as it is described here, as if social historians had not already been doing that for several decades) is that it is possible to assemble an alternative set of case studies pointing to exactly the opposite conclusion.

For instance, Steve Bruce, the eminent sociologist of religion who comes in for some criticism from the authors of this volume, is doing precisely that in what will be a massive forthcoming book looking at local restudies of religion in Britain since 1945.

Although not all the case studies are purely local or regional (thus, Ian Randall and George Lings write about Baptists and Anglicans respectively from a national perspective), the volume’s focus is acknowledged to be on congregational growth.

Accordingly, there are omissions which make for an unbalanced macro-level picture of growth. In particular, the pioneers of British church growth and some of the key aspects of its history are rather rushed over. Examples include the lack of systematic treatment of:

  • the British Church Growth Association, formerly the Church Growth Unit, which published Church Growth Digest between 1979 and 2003
  • the research and writing on church growth of Peter Brierley, during his long career at the Bible Society, MARC Europe, Christian Research and, now, Brierley Consultancy
  • the various interdenominational initiatives in evangelism over the period, from the Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism (1979) and Mission England (1984) at the start to Back to Church Sunday and the Big Welcome in contemporary times

In sum, the book offers an extremely useful series of case studies (often based upon original research, including oral history and participant observation), but it perhaps falls short of a comprehensive appraisal of church growth in Britain since 1980.

It provides a necessary antidote to the ‘eschatology of decline’ and ‘ecclesiology of fatalism’ which has consumed some academics and church leaders, yet it occasionally runs the risk of overstating the opposite, editorial case.

And, in picking the volume up, BRIN readers should be prepared for a relative paucity of what they would consider hard quantitative data.

 

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Diamond Jubilation

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Her Majesty the Queen’s diamond jubilee weekend celebrations are now past. They seem to have resonated with a majority of the British public, but how many, one wonders, stopped to think about the meaning and origins of the word ‘jubilee’?

The same question occurred to the Bible Society, which – not unnaturally – wished to discover the extent to which people knew that jubilee has a Biblical derivation (Leviticus), the jubilee year marking the end of seven cycles of sabbatical years.

The Society commissioned ComRes to ask a representative sample of 2,056 adult Britons aged 18 and over ‘Where does the term jubilee come from?’ Fieldwork was undertaken online on 25-28 May 2012, and the data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Bible_Society_Diamond_Jubilee_May12_data_tables.pdf

Only 12% of all respondents knew that jubilee had its roots in the Bible, and even among professing Christians it was no more than 14% (with 10% each for those of other religions or no religion).

The over-65s (22%) were most knowledgeable, twice the number in all other age cohorts. The top social group (the ABs) were also good at identifying the Biblical link (18%), while men – perhaps surprisingly – scored better than women (16% versus 9%).

The most popular answer to the question was Queen Victoria (30%), reflecting the fact that she was the only monarch before Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate a diamond jubilee. 7% said William Shakespeare, but 49% had no idea where jubilee came from.

This is not the first time that Bible Society has surveyed public knowledge of the biblical origins of common words or phrases. Just over a year ago, in connection with the quatercentenary of the Authorized Version, the Society funded ComRes to ask Britons to name the source of five quotations, all of which came from the Bible.

On that occasion, while 56% knew that ‘my brother’s keeper’ derived from the Bible, just 7% to 19% identified it as the origin of the other four quotations. Biblical literacy was again found to be highest among the over-65s and the ABs. See BRIN’s coverage at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2011/influence-of-the-bible/

 

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Women in Jewish Leadership

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Women are underrepresented in the leadership of the Jewish community in the UK, and there is strong (83%) grass-roots support for action to address the shortfall, including 56% backing for the setting of targets and 35% for the introduction of quotas.

These findings emerge from a survey conducted by the Jewish Leadership Council’s Commission on Women in Jewish Leadership, and published on 17 May 2012. A total of 1,636 Jews aged 15 and over completed an online questionnaire hosted by SurveyMonkey in February and March 2012.

The sample was recruited via 66 Jewish communal organizations and via social media channels. It was essentially self-selecting and not weighted to be statistically representative of all UK Jews. In particular, 75% of respondents were women, even though geographically and denominationally they were said to be broadly in line with the profile of the Jewish population.

Nevertheless, treated with caution, the survey does shed some light on attitudes to gender equality in Judaism, with helpful breakdowns of the views of men and women (men in general and male lay leaders in particular were found to be less positive about change). It also includes data about the extent of volunteering, within and beyond the Jewish community. The full report of the survey is available at:

http://www.thejlc.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CWJL-Survey-Findings.pdf

 

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Anglican Church Growth Research

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England announced on 21 May 2012 the appointment of three research teams to undertake an 18-month programme on Anglican church growth. BRIN featured the invitation to tender in our post on 13 January 2012.

The programme is based on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s strategic goals to the new General Synod in 2010, to take forward spiritual and numerical growth in the Church of England for all communities.

It is supported by funding set aside by the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners for research and development in 2011-13. According to the current issue of the Church Times, £300,000 has been earmarked.

A team from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, led by Professor David Voas (BRIN’s co-director), has been appointed to undertake the data analysis and church profiling strands of the research.

The former will use advanced methods in social and spatial statistical analysis to obtain the maximum information possible from the Church’s parochial and clerical databases, particularly for the last 10 years.

The hope would be to link these Anglican data with secular data (including the population census, indices of deprivation and other neighbourhood statistics). Such an approach should facilitate the testing of hypotheses around factors relating to church growth.

The latter strand will involve in-depth profiling through a postal questionnaire survey of 4,000 churches (from a wide variety of contexts and traditions), probably in autumn 2012. Three equally-sized groups of churches will be surveyed: growing, stable and declining. There will also be a limited number of qualitative interviews.

The questionnaire will be adapted from the Faith Communities Today (FACT) research instrument, co-ordinated by the Hartford Seminary, which has been widely deployed in the United States, including by the Episcopal Church.

Other investigators in the Essex team include Dr Kirk Hadaway, Officer for Congregational Research at the Episcopal Church (United States) and Dr Ruth Powell, Director of National Church Life Survey Research in Australia.

The second research stream involves a study of factors relating to growth at cathedrals, fresh expressions, and the impact of unions of parishes and the use of different patterns of deployment of ministers.

This will be undertaken by a team led by Revd Dr David Goodhew, from Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham. He is the editor of a forthcoming Ashgate book Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present, which will be the subject of a separate BRIN post in due course.

The third stream, to be undertaken by Dr Cathy Ross of the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology (OxCEPT) at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, will investigate church planting through a number of in-depth case studies of a wide range of church plants.

The programme should be completed by the autumn of 2013, with the findings being disseminated widely, although it will be possible to follow the progress of the research through a website which is to be launched soon.

 

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Recent ComRes Polls

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Clive D. Field

This post summarizes findings from three recent ComRes polls of the general public aged 18 and over and which have touched on religious issues.

Defender of the Faith

Pretty strong numerical support for the continuation of the faith links of the monarchy is revealed in a poll conducted in England on behalf of BBC local radio, and involving telephone interviews with a sample of 2,591 adults between 30 March and 15 April 2012. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Defender_of_the_Faith_Poll_April12_data_tables_rerun.pdf

79% agree that the Queen still has an important faith role, and only 25% say that she and future monarchs should not have any faith role or title at all. 73% are in favour of them retaining the titles of Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith, while 50% are prepared to accede to Prince Charles’ request that, on becoming king, he should be Defender of Faith (in general, with 35% opposed). There is some variation in results by demographics, notably above-average endorsement of the faith links of the monarchy among the over-65s.

The overall high figures may partially reflect the public’s perception of the importance which the Queen has been attaching to faith during her Diamond Jubilee celebrations, and/or more positive views of the monarchy as an institution during the past year or so. However, as a meta analysis of all poll data on the various aspects of Church and State has shown (in the September 2011 issue of Implicit Religion), opinions on the subject tend not to be deeply held or well informed.

Talking about Religion

Britons feel more comfortable about discussing religion with family and friends (80%) than they do about money (75%), dying (71%) and sex (57%). Only politics (82%) and immigration (84%) score more highly as conversation topics. These findings emerge from a poll commissioned by the Dying Matters Coalition, and undertaken online on 13-15 April 2012 with 2,028 respondents. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Dying_Matters_Public_April12.pdf

The over-65s (86%) and Scots (85%) feel somewhat more relaxed about discussing religion than other demographic sub-groups. Just 14% of the whole sample find religion an uncomfortable topic of conversation, the proportion only reaching one-fifth among public sector workers.

Origins of the Universe

Just 26% of Britons (and no more than 35% of professing Christians) believe that God caused the Universe to exist and 41% disbelieve this, according to an online survey for Premier Christian Radio between 20 and 22 April 2012, in which 2,054 people were interviewed. 14% think neither scenario to be true, and 19% express no opinion. Data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Premier_Universe_question_April12_data_tables.pdf

Younger persons (aged 18-34) are more likely (31%) to believe that God caused the Universe to exist than the over-55s (24%). Women are also more likely to believe this than men, the top social grade (AB) more than other groups, and public sector workers more than private sector ones. Disbelief in a divine origin of the Universe peaks at 54% in the East Midlands and 64% among those with no religion.

 

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Gay Marriage Revisited

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Some Conservative politicians are blaming the Coalition’s losses in last Thursday’s local elections on the Government’s energetic pursuit of (essentially Liberal Democrat) policies which voters deem unimportant. The reform of the House of Lords and the legalization of gay marriage are often cited in this context.

However, public support for gay marriage appears to be confirmed in a OnePoll survey published in today’s edition of The People newspaper (see, especially, pages 2 and 21). A sample of 2,000 adults aged 18 and over was interviewed online on 3 and 4 May 2012.

59% of respondents said that they supported plans to allow gay couples to marry, compared with 15% who believed that only civil partnerships should be possible (as now). 13% did not want gay relationships to have any form of legal recognition, while 13% were unsure what to think.

Moreover, two-thirds of those in favour of gay marriage (or 40% of the entire sample) wanted gay couples to be allowed to marry in a religious ceremony or in church, if they chose. There was a marked gender split, with women (45%) being more likely to agree than men (34%).  

The OnePoll question-wording is not absolutely comparable with other recent surveys which have probed attitudes to gay marriage and the Church. Nevertheless, the following results are worth noting:

  • In an ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph on 7 and 8 March 2012 55% of Britons argued that the Churches should have the right to refuse to marry gay couples in church, in the event of gay marriage being legalized. 26% disagreed, with 18% uncertain.
  • In a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times on 8 and 9 March 2012 37% thought the Church of England was wrong to defend marriage as an institution for just heterosexual couples. 47% said that it was right and 16% expressed no opinion.
  • In a YouGov poll for The Sun on 3 and 4 April 2012 42% considered same-sex couples should be allowed to marry in church, with 43% opposed, and 15% undecided

Overall, therefore, the surveys for The Sun and The People do seem consistent in suggesting that two-fifths of the general public are well-disposed to gay marriages taking place in church.

Churchgoers, by contrast, seem hostile to the whole concept of legalizing same-sex marriage. 83% were against the idea according to the ComRes Cpanel study of October 2011, and over two-thirds of evangelicals were strongly opposed in November 2011.

 

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Religious Education in Scottish Schools

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Scottish schools are failing to make parents aware of their statutory rights concerning religious and moral education and religious observance, according to new research by YouGov for the Humanist Society Scotland, and published on 30 April 2012.

One thousand Scottish parents of children aged 5-16 were interviewed online between 29 March and 4 April 2012. They were predominantly aged 35-54. A six-page report on the survey, together with a spreadsheet of the full data, is available at:

http://www.humanism-scotland.org.uk/content/education_research/

All Scottish schools are required, by the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, to communicate to parents their right to remove a child from any aspect of religious education and observance, if they wish. Schools are also required to offer a suitable alternative activity.

But in this poll only 20% of Scottish parents claimed they had originally learned of their rights through the school. 41% found out through another route, and the remaining 39% were unaware of their rights at all.

Of the 77% of parents who reported that their child participated in religious education and observance at school, 67% stressed the importance of children learning about a variety of religious beliefs as the reason, while just 15% cited their own religiosity for wanting their child to learn about religion at school. 18% wanted their child to stay with their classmates, 13% did not know that they could withdraw their child, and 11% stated that the alternative options were not spelled out by the school. Multiple answers were possible to this question.

Asked about the best approach to teaching religious education and observance at school, 18% of the full sample argued for the complete removal of the subject from schools. 71% supported a pluralistic approach (with 39% favouring equal time being spent on all main religions, and 32% coverage of all main religions but with a focus on the faith held by the majority of pupils). 4% felt that schools should concentrate on one religion.

Prompted about the specific topics which religious education and observance should cover at school, 16% of all parents thought that no religious or spiritual area should be included. 68% elected for Christianity, 48% Islam, 46% Judaism, 45% Hinduism, 43% Buddhism, 40% Sikhism, 39% philosophy, 38% atheism and secularism, and 21% Jainism.

In sum, therefore, fewer than one-fifth of Scottish parents wish to see the abolition of religious education and observance in schools, albeit this number might conceivably increase if there was more universal awareness of the parental right of withdrawal of their child from religious education and observance. 

As things stand, the overwhelming majority of Scottish parents appear to support the continuation of religious education and observance in schools, but on the implicit understanding that the delivery reflects all major world belief systems.

 

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Recent Historical Articles on Secularization

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Historians continue to debate the nature and the timing of secularization in Britain, and some even question whether the concept is still meaningful as a framework for understanding long-term religious change. Such debates provide an essential context for evaluating and interpreting the available quantitative evidence, and four new contributions are highlighted in this post. All are articles in commercial academic journals and are thus not yet freely available in the public domain, although copies can be obtained through document delivery and pay-per-view services.

Callum Brown, ‘The People of “No Religion”: the Demographics of Secularisation in the English-Speaking World since c. 1900’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Vol. 51, 2011, pp. 37-61

Brown explores the social history of the rise of the people of ‘no religion’ in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the USA, with additional evidence from Australia and New Zealand. He uses population census (in the main) and sample survey data. He particularly covers the period 1950-2010, but also includes a review of data back to 1900. He concludes that the 1960s ‘changed everything in the history of “no religion”’.

Jonathan Clark, ‘Secularization and Modernization: the failure of a “Grand Narrative”’, Historical Journal, Vol. 55, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 161-94

Clark rejects as untenable the traditional model of progressive secularization devised within the sociology of religion, less for its statistical base (which he barely discusses) than for the historical framework within which such data are set and interpreted. His argument rests upon the major historiographical trends he perceives from the 1980s onwards, which have undermined the notion of a fundamental divide between ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ societies.

Jeremy Morris, ‘Secularization and Religious Experience: Arguments in the Historiography of Modern British Religion’, Historical Journal, Vol. 55, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 195-219

Morris surveys the secondary literature on religious decline in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commencing with Edward Wickham’s Church and People in an Industrial City (1957). He argues for ‘dispensing with the straitjacket of secularization’, which he sees as deriving part of its authority from ‘Christianity’s own pathology of decay and renewal’, and for a more broadly-based, ethnographic approach which focuses on the nature of popular religious experience.

Dominic Erdozain, ‘“Cause is not quite what it used to be”: the Return of Secularisation’, English Historical Review, Vol. 127, No. 525, April 2012, pp. 377-400

This is a review article of six books on secularization published between 2007 (Charles Taylor’s massive and philosophical account of A Secular Age) and 2011. Most space is found for a discussion of Steve Bruce’s Secularization: in Defence of an Unfashionable Theory, of which Erdozain is often sharply critical, and Secularisation in the Christian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod, edited by Callum Brown and Michael Snape. Erdozain’s final plea is to avoid confusing the decline of religion with its death.

 

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