News |

Britain Uncovered and Other News

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Britain uncovered

The recent ‘Britain Uncovered’ poll commissioned by The Observer from Opinium Research, among an online sample of 1,019 adults, included several questions of religious interest. The proportion associating with any religion was 61%, albeit significantly lower among those self-defining as left-wing (49%) as right-wing (71%), with 17% identifying as agnostics and 21% as atheists. However, only 29% of those associating with a religion said that they actively practised it, for example by attending services, equivalent to 18% of the entire population. Of the whole sample, 61% agreed, and just 15% disagreed, that religion is a negative influence in the world rather than a force for good. Two-thirds (65%) acknowledged that Islamophobia is common in Britain, and 48% definitely and 31% probably believed that, in the light of Islamist extremism, British Muslims should make a special effort to state their allegiance to the country. Full data tables from the survey are not yet online; the following details have been abstracted from the summary at:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/19/britain-uncovered-survey-attitudes-beliefs-britons-2015

Religion of parliamentary candidates

A poll by Whitehouse Consulting of 225 parliamentary candidates for marginal seats in the forthcoming general election has revealed that 42% did not identify as members of any religious faith, with 34% claiming to be atheists (including half of Labour Party and Green Party candidates). Just 16% identified themselves as belonging to the Church of England, albeit this rose to 41% of Conservative and 27% of UKIP candidates. Overall, belief in a deity ran at 37%. A press release about the poll was issued on 17 April 2015 at:

http://www.whitehouseconsulting.co.uk/survey-shows-marginal-seat-candidates-will-be-white-male-and-only-somewhat-religious/

Religiosity and voting

In our post of 12 April 2015, we highlighted findings from an analysis of religious affiliation and voting intention undertaken by YouGov for the Church Times on the basis of online interviews with 36,579 electors between 1 and 28 March 2015. The study confirmed that professing Anglicans are disproportionately likely to favour the Conservative Party and Roman Catholics the Labour Party. Further investigation of the same dataset by self-assessed religiosity has now revealed that, excluding the 13% who did not know how they would vote and the 6% who said they would not vote at all, the Conservatives are more likely than average to attract people who describe themselves as religious and the smaller parties those who regard themselves as non-religious. The results are tabulated below:

% down	All	Religious	Non-religious
Conservative	34	42	29
Labour	34	31	34
Liberal Democrat	7	6	8
UKIP	14	14	15
Other parties	11	7	13

Further statistics are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/7wu1rrot0u/Final_Church_Times_Religious_Voting_Intention_Website.pdf

Would you buy a used car from … ?

The public standing, including the perceived trustworthiness, of clergy and priests has taken a bit of a tumble during recent decades. So much so that only one in four of the 300 people questioned by Gorkana Surveys for the vehicle data firm HPI said that they would most trust a vicar to sell them a used car in the private market. The good news, however, is that no other profession fared any better, even motor mechanics getting only a 19% vote of confidence. A blog about the survey was published by HPI on 20 April 2015 at:

https://blog.hpicheck.com/2015/04/20/trusting-sellers/#more-1797

Clergy dyads

Fresh light is shed on the incidence and patterns of ministry of clergy married to clergy in the Church of England in a new article by Susie Collingridge, ‘Patterns of Ministry of Clergy Married to Clergy in the Church of England’, Journal of Anglican Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2015, pp. 68-91. Using the online edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory in early 2013 as her source, she identified the number of such clergy as 26% greater than previous estimates, at 1,160, of whom 994 were active in the ministry, equivalent to 5% of all active Anglican clergy. However, she also found that a higher than normal proportion of clergy married to clergy (20%) were in non-parochial roles such as chaplains, and that it was very rare in clergy marriages for wives to hold more senior positions than their husbands. The article can be accessed via institutional subscription or pay-per-view at:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9652924&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1740355314000205

Gender equality in the Church in Wales

The meeting of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales in Llandrindod Wells on 15-16 April 2015 considered a Report of the Working Group Appointed by the Standing Committee to Review Representation of Women in the Church in Wales, 2015. Having analysed statistics of gender balance among candidates for the ministry, current clergy, holders of senior clerical posts, clergy presiding at cathedral services, members of diocesan boards of finance, and members of provincial committees, the report concluded that:

There is great difference between dioceses in the representation of women
There are few senior appointments held by women and women are not even occupying the posts which would be expected to act as the first stage in achieving a senior post
Equality of representation on committees has not been achieved and early progress has not been maintained
A number of the Cathedrals do not have women either as part of the ministry team or on their Chapters

The report can be found at:

http://cinw.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/10-RepresentationWomen.pdf

Edward Bailey (1935-2015)

Revd Professor Edward Ian Bailey, who initiated the formal study of implicit religion (the concept of ‘secular faith’) in 1968, died on 22 April 2015. An Anglican clergyman (notably as Rector of Winterbourne in the Diocese of Bristol from 1970 to 2006), he was also convenor of the annual Denton Hall Conferences on Implicit Religion from 1978, founding director of the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality, a member of the executive committee of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality, and visiting professor at three British universities. Although his own research and books were not particularly characterized by quantitative methods, he was encouraging of those who deployed statistical approaches, not least by publishing their articles in the journal Implicit Religion, which he established in 1998 and edited until his death.

1851 religious census of Warwickshire

On 30 March 1851 the Government organized, as part of the decennial census of population, a census of the accommodation and attendance at all places of worship in the British Isles. The experiment was never repeated and only summaries of the returns were ever published at the time. However, the original schedules have survived at The National Archives for most parts of England and Wales, and these have been the subject of many scholarly editions during the past four decades. The returns for Warwickshire are the latest to be published: The 1851 Census of Religious Worship: Church, Chapel, and Meeting Place in Mid Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire, edited by Keith Geary (Publications of the Dugdale Society, Vol. XLVII, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Society, 2014, xii + 350pp., ISBN 9780852200971, £30.00 + £3.00 postage and packing, hardback). The main body of the text (pp. 85- 323) comprises an annotated transcript of the 590 returns for the county, arranged by registration districts and sub-districts. This is preceded by a substantial introduction (pp. 1-74) which briefly sketches the historical and topographical background before providing a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of and commentary on the Warwickshire data. There are indexes by persons, places, and subjects (including denominations), plus maps and a bibliography.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Church in Wales, Church of England, clergy, Dugdale Society, Edward Bailey, gender equality, Gorkana Surveys, HPI, implicit religion, Islamophobia, Journal of Anglican Studies, Keith Geary, Muslims, Opinium Research, parliamentary candidates, Religious Affiliation, religious census, self-assessed religiosity, Susie Collingridge, The Observer, trust, used cars, voting, Warwickshire, Whitehouse Consulting | Leave a comment

Atheism and Other News

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Atheism

Two-fifths (42%) of Britons now declare that they have no religion, and the plurality (45%) of these regard themselves as atheists, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by and published in The Times on 12 February 2015, for which 1,552 adults were interviewed online on 8-9 February. The proportion of self-reported atheists in the entire population is thus 19%, rising to 31% of 18-24s, although the number of Britons who definitely do not believe in any sort of God or greater spiritual power is higher still (33% overall, 46% among 18-24s), including 9% of professed Christians. People no longer seem fazed by atheism. Not only do 88% of atheists feel comfortable about talking about their lack of religious identity, while 24% of Christians who believe in God are uncomfortable discussing their convictions, but very few adults react negatively to public figures who have openly acknowledged their atheism. Thus, only 6% of all Britons and 16% of Christians who believe in God feel more negatively about Labour leader Ed Miliband and LibDem leader Nick Clegg simply because they are atheists, and no more than 13% say the same about actor and presenter Stephen Fry following his recent outburst against ‘a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain’. The Times story (with quotes by BRIN’s David Voas) is only available online to subscribers, but YouGov has a blog on the survey, with a link to the full data tables, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/02/12/third-british-adults-dont-believe-higher-power/

Future of religion

The team blog of the Theos think tank is carrying a series of guest posts on the future of religion in Britain, timed to coincide with, and to mark, the forthcoming appearance of the second edition of Grace Davie’s seminal 1994 book on Religion in Britain (on which we will report in due course). Davie is one of the Theos bloggers, with other contributions (thus far) from David Goodhew, Nick Spencer, David Voas, and Adam Dinham.

In the first post, published on 9 February 2015 and focusing on Christianity, Goodhew suggested that ‘the future … will be a persistent paradox of secularisation from above and resacralisation from below’. His conclusion stemmed from a somewhat caricatured critique of the alleged ‘dodginess’ of many national data on religion (including the Church of England’s) and examples of more localized church growth, from London and elsewhere. As I have said before on the BRIN website, Goodhew’s thesis is undermined by its lack of long-term historical perspective. His blog is at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2015/01/20/secularisation-from-above-resacralisation-from-below

The fourth blog, by Voas, was published on 12 February 2015 but previewed in The Times of 9 February. Voas predicts that the prospects for faith among white Britons are bleak and that ‘the future of religion in Britain is black and brown’, largely revolving around black-majority Churches and Islam. In terms of mainstream Christianity, he thinks that ‘the secularization of religious behaviour has reached the point of no return’; ‘the default position now is that we do not gather together to sing and pray and listen to an indifferent speaker deliver a thought for the week’, most ordained ministers having ‘the leadership ability of bank managers’. Orthodox belief has also declined, especially in God, which ‘has taken a battering’. The post is at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2015/02/02/what-is-the-future-for-religion-in-britain

Christians and politics

Churches Together in Britain and Ireland has recently launched a 2015 general election website to keep Christians briefed about issues and practicalities during the campaign, and to promote debate around its ‘Vision 2020 of the Good Society’. It has also collaborated with Church Action on Poverty (CAP) to commission ComRes to conduct an online survey of 2,135 practising UK Christians between 20 and 26 January 2015. The headline results were published by CAP on 13 February 2015 under the banner ‘Christians Tired of Short-Termism in Politics’. The press release, which includes a link to a summary report prepared by ComRes, can be found at:

http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/news/pressroom/pressreleases/archive/20150213

The poll revealed that 91% of practising Christians claimed they would be more likely to vote for a Parliamentary candidate who communicated a positive long-term vision for society, and yet 88% felt that UK politicians were more interested in short-term political concerns and that the leaders of the main political parties failed to articulate such a long-term vision. Almost without exception (97%), practising Christians agreed that Churches had a key role to play in encouraging debate about what makes a good society, with 80% considering that hitherto they had been ineffective in challenging politicians to communicate their vision for society, and 68% that Churches did not talk enough in public about matters like food poverty, homelessness, and tax avoidance.

Church of England: social action

The social action of the Church of England is examined in Bethany Eckley and Tom Sefton, Church in Action: A National Survey of Church-Based Social Action, which was published on 9 February 2015. The research, which was conducted by the Church Urban Fund (CUF) and the Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Team, was based upon an online survey of Anglican incumbents in September 2014, 1,812 of 5.097 responding (36%), with a slight skew towards larger churches and churches in London, and – possibly – an underrepresentation of those less involved in social action. Some of the questions replicated those in a previous survey by CUF in December 2011. The latest report can be read at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/PDFs/Research/Church-in-Action-2015_0.pdf

Overwhelmingly (95%), Anglican clergy agreed that ‘engaging with the poor and marginalised in the local area is a vital activity for a healthy church’, although fewer (53%) reported that ‘we are tackling poverty as a fundamental part of the mission for our church’. The social issues which presented a major or significant problem in their communities were deemed to be: isolation/loneliness (65%), family breakdown (50%), debt (47%), lack of self-esteem/hope (46%), low income (46%), unhealthy lifestyles (45%), and mental health problems (44%). Just 7% of churches admitted not to be addressing any local issues, with 27% tackling up to four, 31% between five and eight, and 35% (disproportionately in London) nine or more. The most prevalent forms of church-based social action were schools work (76%), food banks (66%, double the 2011 figure), parent and toddler groups (60%), and lunch/drop-in clubs (53%). Activities in support of credit unions were to be found in only a minority of parishes. The main barriers to increased social action by churches were identified as resource constraints, both human (leaders and volunteers) and financial.

Church of England: rural Anglicanism

A profile of the Church of England in the countryside was published by the Archbishops’ Council on 30 January 2015: Released for Mission: Growing the Rural Church (GS Misc 1092). It is based on a mixture of qualitative (47 interviews with clergy and lay people) and quantitative research, the statistics deriving from an analysis of the 2011 parochial returns, a summary of which is tabulated below. It will be seen that, in terms of churches and parishes, two-thirds of the Church of England is to be found in the countryside, but only about two-fifths of its clergy (who are disproportionately female) and attenders (except at Christmas). The pattern of church growth and decline in rural and urban parishes is similar. The report is available at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2148423/gs%20misc%201092%20-%20rural%20multi%20parish%20benefices.pdf

%	Rural	Urban
Organization
Churches	65	35
Parishes	66	34
Benefices	48	52
Deaneries	67	33
Ministry
All clergy	42	58
All incumbents	43	57
Male incumbents	40	60
Female incumbents	50	50
All assistant curates	31	69
Male assistant curates	30	70
Female assistant curates	33	67
All self-supporting clergy	47	53
Male self-supporting clergy	45	55
Female self-supporting clergy	49	51
Membership and attendance
Electoral roll	46	54
Minimum attendance	37	63
Maximum attendance	43	57
Average attendance	40	60
Sum of attendance	39	61
Christmas attendance	49	51
Church growth over 10 years
Growing	18	18
Declining	25	29
Inconclusive	57	53

British Muslims in Numbers

On 11 February 2015 the Muslim Council of Britain launched an 80-page report (including 33 tables and 4 figures) on British Muslims in Numbers: A Demographic, Socio-Economic, and Health Profile of Muslims in Britain Drawing on the 2011 Census. Prepared by the Council’s Research and Documentation Committee, with Sundas Ali as lead analyst, it examines the Muslim-related data from the 2011 census for England and Wales (Scotland, which had only 77,000 Muslims, is not really covered, despite the work’s title) under four broad headings: demographics, civic life, inequalities, labour market and education. The census findings are supplemented by other empirical evidence and accompanied by a series of ‘observations’ directed at a variety of audiences and a list of priorities for future research. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.mcb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MCBCensusReport_2015.pdf

Probably the most striking demographic is the relative youth of the Muslim community, with a median age of 25 compared with 40 in the overall population, and 33% of Muslims under 16. Taken alongside factors such as immigration, this young profile seems likely to ensure the community’s ongoing rapid growth, both absolute and relative (the absolute increase from 2001 to 2011 was 75%). In terms of national identity, as many as 73% of Muslims in 2011 stated their only identity as British (or other UK national), even though 53% were born overseas. On some indicators, the incidence of deprivation among Muslims remained high, with, for example, 46% living in the 10% most deprived local authority districts, up from 33% in 2001. However, there were also signs of greater levels of educational attainment and social mobility among Muslims.

Islamic State

New polling from YouGov for The Sunday Times, in which 1,668 Britons were interviewed online on 5-6 February 2015, has revealed that just 32% support Britain and the USA sending ground troops back to Iraq to help fight the so-called Islamic State (IS), the plurality (45%) being opposed, much the same as in October 2014 (when the question was last asked). This is despite the fact that only 20% are convinced that the current combination of Western air strikes and Iraqi and Kurdish forces will be sufficient to defeat IS, 49% alternatively indicating a need for ground troops ‘from elsewhere’. At 63%, approval of the existing RAF involvement in air strikes against IS has gone up by four points since last October, with 56% supporting an escalation of this involvement in terms of more planes and an increased number of strikes. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/k24ox3l7ay/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-060215.pdf

YouGov has also updated its Iraq, Syria, and IS tracker report to take account of the new findings. This can be viewed at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/51xpyhtlev/YG-Archives-Pol-Iraq-Syria-and-ISIS-060215.pdf

Conspiracy theories

YouGov online polling for YouGov@Cambridge on 3-4 February 2015 explored public attitudes to nine ‘conspiracy theories’, among a sample of 1,749 adults. One of them was a suggestion that some courts in the UK legal system are choosing to adopt Sharia law, which 18% thought was definitely or probably true, including 31% of UKIP voters and 26% of over-60s; a further 31% said it might or might not be true, while 51% were certain that it was false. Another potential conspiracy posited that humans had made contact with aliens but that the news had been deliberately hidden from the people, which 14% agreed was definitely or probably true against 61% who were clear it was not and 25% who were unsure. Nevertheless, belief in both these ‘conspiracies’ paled into relative insignificance compared with the 55% convinced that the Government is hiding the real number of immigrants in the country and the 52% that European Union officials are gradually seeking to take over all the UK’s law-making powers. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bhw7u94epz/GB%20Conspiracy%20Theories%20Pilot.pdf

Anti-Semitism

The All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism published the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism on 9 February 2015 and, alongside it, a sub-report summarizing the results of a Populus poll which it had commissioned, for which 1,001 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed between 22 and 25 January 2015. Asked to rate the seriousness of anti-Semitism in contemporary Britain on a scale of 1-10 (where 1 was low and 10 high), the mean score was 4.66, much as it was ten years ago (4.52), although 37% thought that the problem had worsened over the decade (against 16% who detected an improvement). Moreover, only 55% said that they would be able to explain what anti-Semitism was to somebody else, ranging from 37% of 18-24s to 71% of over-65s, while awareness of recent incidents which were widely regarded as anti-Semitic was relatively limited, the murder of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris excepted, which was known to 91%, albeit one-fifth did not classify the attack as anti-Semitic.

Some anti-Semitic stereotypes continued to find favour, such as the 11% who agreed that Jews have too much power in UK media and politics and the identical proportion that they have too much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy; 15% believed that Jews talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust. The identification of British Jews with Israel was problematical for rather more, 32% thinking that British Jews always defend Israel, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of its actions, and 30% that their loyalties are either divided between Britain and Israel or vested in Israel alone. This is despite the fact that 89% acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. The number of Jews in Britain was vastly over-estimated by respondents, the average guess being 2.7 million, nine times the real figure in the 2011 census, whereas the Muslim population was over-estimated by just one-third. The poll summary can be found at:

http://www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/themes/PCAA/images/Polling-Anti-Semitism-Summary%202015.docx.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged air strikes, Aliens, All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, Anti-Semitism, atheism, Bethany Eckley, census of population, Church Action on Poverty, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Church Urban Fund, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, clergy, ComRes, conspiracy theories, David Goodhew, David Voas, Ed Miliband, ground troops, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jews, Muslim Council of Britain, Muslims, Nick Clegg, politics, Populus, practising Christians, religious census, rural Church, Sharia law, social action, Stephen Fry, Sundas Ali, Sunday Times, The Times, Theos, Tom Sefton, vision for society, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge | Leave a comment

Je suis Charlie and Other News

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Last week’s news was dominated by a series of Islamist outrages in France, in which seventeen innocent people died, three police officers, four shoppers at a kosher supermarket, and ten journalists working for the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which in 2011 and 2012 had controversially published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The attack on Charlie Hebdo prompted an international campaign in defence of freedom of speech under the banner ‘Je suis Charlie’.

Unsurprisingly, these Paris shootings were the most noticed news story of last week, according to an online poll of 2,047 Britons aged 18 and over by Populus on 7-8 January 2015. The then still unfolding events in France topped the list with 42%, far ahead of the AirAsia plane crash (9%) and the crisis in NHS hospitals (6%), which were in second and third places respectively. In another online poll, by YouGov on 8-9 January 2015 (explored in the next two items, below), only 4% of the 1,684 respondents were unaware of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, with 72% closely following the story. The implications of this new spike in radical Islamism will doubtless be the subject of further surveys in the days and weeks ahead.

Perceptions of Islam

The toll which Islamist terrorism takes on public perceptions of Islam was exemplified in an internally commissioned module of the YouGov poll taken in the immediate aftermath of the murders at Charlie Hebdo’s offices, on 8 and 9 January 2015. Three-fifths (61%) of the sample said that they entertained a wholly or mainly negative view of Islam, the range by demographic sub-groups being from 48% (Liberal Democrat voters) to 77% (in the case of UKIP supporters). The national figure was double the proportion holding a wholly or mainly negative view of Christianity (31%). Merely 2% regarded Islam completely positively (presumably mostly if not entirely Muslims), with 23% voicing criticisms alongside a generally positive view, and 15% unable to make their minds up. Moreover, the majority (57%) said they would feel comfortable expressing criticisms of Islam to people they knew, against 25% who would feel uncomfortable, worried, or scared about doing so (two and a half times the number saying the same about criticizing Christianity). A plurality (34%) of the whole sample and a majority (51%) of UKIP voters thought the media were more willing to criticize Christianity than Islam, with 15% saying the opposite. Data tables can be accessed via a link on a blog about the survey, posted on 9 January at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/09/britains-cautious-attitude-criticising-islam/

Freedom of speech

A second module in the same YouGov poll, undertaken for the Sunday Times, demonstrated majority support for the media’s right to publish content which could upset some religious believers, with a minority expressing reservations. On the original publication of the cartoons of the Prophet in Charlie Hebdo, 69% deemed it acceptable and 14% unacceptable, while 63% defended other newspapers which had chosen to reprint the cartoons. More generally, 71% agreed that the media have an obligation to show controversial items which are newsworthy even if they might offend the religious views of some people, with 11% prioritizing the avoidance of causing offence and 18% undecided. Three-fifths or more also endorsed publication in newspapers or magazines of certain specific controversial religious content, as summarized below. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/10nth9jzk9/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-090115.pdf

% across	Allow	Disallow
Articles or drawings criticizing and questioning the beliefs and practices of any religion	70	18
Drawings, pictures, or cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed	68	17
Articles or drawings mocking and ridiculing the beliefs and practices of any religion	61	25
Articles or drawings deliberately mocking and ridiculing religious figures like Jesus or the Prophet Mohammed	60	24

Trust in religious professionals (1)

The reputation of clergy/priests for telling the truth has improved slightly during the past couple of years, according to the results of the latest Ipsos MORI veracity index, which was published on 5 January 2015 (and for which 1,116 Britons aged 15 and over were interviewed by telephone between 5 and 19 December 2014). Clergy/priests now rank fifth among eighteen groups of professionals in terms of the public’s trust in them to tell the truth, securing a confidence vote of 71% against 24% who mistrust their veracity (albeit rising to 30% with the under-35s). However, this only restores the standing of clergy/priests to 2009 levels, and they are still 14 points below the trust figure for 1983, the first year of the index. Doctors remain the group most trusted to tell the truth (by 90% of the public) and politicians generally the least (by 16%). Full computer tables for the 2014 survey will be found at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/veracity%202014%20tables.pdf

Trend data back to 1983 are at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/15/Trust-in-Professions.aspx?view=wide

Trust in religious professionals (2)

Clergy may still be trusted to tell the truth, but religious leaders are not trusted across the board, according to the newly-released British results of the WIN/Gallup International End of Year 2014 poll, the fieldwork for which was undertaken by ORB International between 19 and 28 November 2014 among an online sample of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over (the survey was also carried out in 64 other countries). Indeed, 53% of Britons claimed not to trust religious leaders, who ranked just seventh out of ten occupations in terms of the degree of trust which they commanded, 23%, only slightly ahead of the traditional trinity of professional ‘villains’ – bankers, journalists, and politicians. The full scores are as follows:

% across	Trust	Distrust	Don’t know
Healthcare workers	82	10	9
Teachers	75	13	12
Military	67	19	14
Judges	61	20	18
Police	59	28	13
Business people	27	50	24
Religious leaders	23	53	24
Bankers	13	75	13
Journalists	10	80	11
Politicians	7	84	10

The poll also included a couple of other questions measuring the saliency of religion in respondents’ lives. In the first, asked which of five identities was most important to them, only 7% chose religion, against 35% nationality and 25% locality. In answer to the second question, and irrespective of attendance at religious services, 30% described themselves as a religious person, peaking at 45% of over-65s, with 53% declaring they were not religious and an additional 13% they were convinced atheists. These figures demonstrate a marked secularizing shift since the question was first asked by Gallup in Britain, in March 1981, when 58% identified as a religious person, 36% as not religious, and 4% as a convinced atheist. The British WIN/Gallup International 2014 data tables are at:

http://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/UK_Tables_V3_a.pdf

Opinium on religion

Self-assessed religiosity was also one of the questions posed in a survey released by Opinium Research on 5 January 2015, for which 2,003 UK adults were interviewed online between 19 and 23 December 2014. Results were broadly comparable with those obtained by WIN/Gallup International, with 26% agreeing they were religious (10% strongly and 17% somewhat) and 52% disagreeing (17% somewhat and 35% strongly); the remaining 22% said they were neither religious nor irreligious. In light of these findings, it was unsurprising that 70% of the sample believed that it was not important to be a Christian in order for a country to be defined as a democracy, residents of Scotland particularly taking this position (82%). Data tables, which complement those for a sample of first-time voters (already reported by BRIN), are at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4966_first_time_voters_-_omnibus_-_tables_0.pdf

School choice

The low score for religion in defining personal identity, reported by WIN/Gallup International, was matched by an identical vote of 7% for religious ethos as the most important factor in parental choice of a school or college for their children aged 5-18, even though respondents were allowed to select up to five options. This emerged on 9 January 2015 when ComRes released the results of a poll commissioned by NASUWT (the teachers’ union), for which 1,019 UK parents were interviewed online on 19-21 September 2014. The most influential factors determining parental choice were: a school’s location (67%), supportive staff (54%), curriculum (41%), inspection reports (39%), reputation for dealing with bullying or behaviour (38%), and buildings and facilities (36%). The relatively low value attached to religious ethos, which was the least important factor along with a smart school uniform, chimes in with some of Linda Woodhead’s YouGov research in 2013. She found that, while faith schools might be popular with parents, it is predominantly for non-religious reasons. The ComRes data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/NASUWT_Parents_views_of_schools_or_colleges_Tables_pt1.pdf

Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo’s stunning Old Testament frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, completed in 1512, has been judged the greatest work of art ever made in an online poll of 1,642 Britons by YouGov on 21-22 December 2014, netting 25% of the vote (rising to 32% among UKIP supporters). This put him well ahead of Leonardo da Vinci, who occupied second and third places with, respectively, Mona Lisa (7%) and The Last Supper (5%). YouGov conducted its survey in two stages, first asking one set of panellists, with no prompting, ‘in your opinion, what is the greatest work of art ever made?’; and then posing the identical question to a second set, inviting them to choose from the top 15 responses volunteered by the first set. The story, incorporating a link to the full data table, is featured in a blog dated 4 January 2015 on YouGov’s website at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/04/sistine-chapel-ceiling-greatest-work-art-ever-made/

Christian conferences

The majority of speakers at 22 of the largest Christian conferences and festivals in the UK continue to be men, although the proportion of women on the platform increased from 24% in 2013 to 34% in 2014. The most ‘male-heavy’ events were the Keswick Convention and the Big Church Day Out, both of which had only 14% female speakers in 2014 (with Keswick having none in 2013). The analysis was made by Natalie Collins for Project 3:28’s UK National Christian Conferences Male/Female Speaker Statistics Report, 2014, which was published on 6 January 2015 and can be downloaded from:

http://media.wix.com/ugd/7c3a0c_faf74569d68a4609bfd143369233fca1.pdf

Missed opportunity (1)

The current issue of The Tablet (10 January 2015, p. 34) reports that there will be no 2015 print edition of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales. The title has been published on behalf of what is now the Bishops’ Conference ever since 1838 and, inter alia, has been the principal public domain source for Catholic statistics in England and Wales, albeit their quality has left much to be desired, as frequent critiques by Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre clearly demonstrate. Although the Bishops’ Conference will be launching a new online directory on 19 January, it will apparently not include any pastoral statistics, which will be the responsibility of the 22 individual dioceses. Hopefully, this decision will be rethought, and some new published collation of national Catholic data will emerge in due course.

Missed opportunity (2)

Modern overviews of religion in Wales are comparatively rare, so expectations were inevitably raised with the recent appearance of The Religious History of Wales: Religious Life and Practice in Wales from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, edited by Richard Allen and David Ceri Jones with Trystan Hughes (Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2014, vii + 281p., paperback, ISBN 978 1 86057 079 7). With a focus on ‘the religious multiplicity of Wales’, the volume comprises 21 chapters, 19 of them on particular faith traditions (there are also cross-cutting accounts of evangelicalism and ecumenism), written by 18 different authors (a mixture of academics and faith leaders). As with most such collaborative enterprises, the contributions vary somewhat in terms of length, approach, originality of research, and quality. But a clear weakness of pretty well the whole venture is the failure to engage with religious statistics in any meaningful and holistic way, and the lack of currency in those few data which are cited; thus, there are references to the results of the 2001 but not 2011 census of religion. This exemplifies other internal evidence which suggests that the book has been several years in the making and its publication delayed. BRIN readers will certainly regret the absence of a chapter or an appendix which pulls together the key historical and contemporary Welsh religious statistics.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Catholic Directory of England and Wales, Charlie Hebdo, Christian conferences, Christianity, clergy, ComRes, David Ceri Jones, democracy, France, Ipsos-MORI, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, media, Michelangelo, NASUWT, Natalie Collins, Opinium Research, ORB International, parents, Populus, Project 3:28, Prophet Mohammed, religious ethos, religious leaders, Richard Allen, schools, self-assessed religiosity, Sistine Chapel, Sunday Times, trust, Wales, WIN/Gallup International, women speakers, works of art, YouGov | Leave a comment

Twixtmas News

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Hopefully, BRIN readers have had a good rest over Christmas. In case any of you ‘switched off’ from the religious statistical news during the festivities, here is a round-up of seven stories which made headlines between 24 and 29 December 2014. This will definitely be our last news post of 2014, but we will naturally be back in 2015. A Happy New Year to you all!

Belief in the Christmas story

Although 65% of 2,087 adult Britons interviewed online by YouGov on 16-17 December 2014 believed that Jesus Christ really existed, and no more than 18% disbelieved, only minorities accepted four key elements in the nativity story (as summarized in the table, below). Not unexpectedly, the proportions believing in the biblical account of Christ’s birth were considerably higher among those who acknowledged His existence as an historical figure than those who rejected it (four-fifths or more of the latter dismissing each of the four components of the story). Belief was also greatest among women and the over-60s. There was most scepticism about the Virgin Birth, which even 63% of believers in Jesus either disbelieved or were unsure about. This is a feature which has distinguished polling on religious beliefs since the first scientific study by Mass-Observation in Hammersmith in 1944-45. The YouGov data tables were published on 24 December 2014 and can be accessed from a link embedded in a brief blog post on the Christmas story at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/12/24/public-opinion-christmas-story/

% across	Believe	Disbelieve	Don’t know
Newborn Jesus laid in a manger	47	29	24
Wise men guided by a star brought Jesus gifts	37	44	19
Angel appeared to shepherds to announce birth of Jesus	28	51	20
Jesus was born to a virgin	24	55	21

Christmas Day working

An Office for National Statistics press release on 24 December 2014 revealed that 863,000 people, equivalent to 2.9% of the total UK workforce, worked on Christmas Day in 2012 (the last year for which data are currently available), ranging from 2.1% in London to 3.6% in the North-East. Clergy headed the list in terms of the proportion at work on Christmas Day (49%), followed by communication operators (28%), paramedics (25%), prison officers (25%), and farm workers (20%). However, measured in actual numbers at work on Christmas Day, clergy were only sixth in the league table, with 26,000 on duty, compared with 136,000 care workers and 120,000 nurses or nursing auxiliaries. Data derive from the Labour Force Survey. The press release (which incorporates a link to the full data in Excel format) is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp29904_390385.pdf

Christmas carol ‘top of the pops’

As in previous years, Classic FM radio invited its listeners (not representative of the adult population, of course) to vote online for their favourite Christmas carol from 1 December 2014 onwards, ‘tens of thousands’ doing so. The results of the poll were officially announced in ‘The Nation’s Favourite Carols’, broadcast on Christmas Day, with the top five also listed in several newspapers on 22 December. For the first time since 2002, Silent Night was the most popular carol, displacing O Holy Night, which had headed the chart for 11 years in succession. The change may doubtless be attributed in large measure to the centenary of the Christmas truce in 1914, which was reportedly inaugurated by German troops singing Stille Nacht (the original German-language version) from their trenches. The top 10 carols are shown below, while the top 30 appear on Classic FM’s website at:

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/collections/christmas-music/nations-favourite-christmas-carols-2014/

Silent Night
O Holy Night
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
In the Bleak Midwinter (Holst version)
O Come All Ye Faithful
In the Bleak Midwinter (Harold Darke version)
Once in Royal David’s City
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Away in a Manger
Joy to the World

Alcohol and religion

An online poll by ComRes on 12-14 December 2014, commissioned by brewer AB InBev and published on 29 December, has revealed some modest differences in alcohol consumption among the various faith groups (some of which will be accounted for by demographic effects). As the table below shows, among the sample of 2,061 adults aged 18 and over, those professing no religion were more likely than average to drink alcohol and least likely to be giving it up or reducing their intake in January. Christians were just one point behind as alcohol drinkers, with non-Christians well below the norm for alcohol consumption, albeit they registered the largest proportion expecting to give it up or reduce their intake in January. Data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/AB_InBev_Alcohol-free_beer_at_Chirstmas_and_New_Year_Data_tables_18_December_2014.pdf

%	Ever drink alcohol	Expect to reduce/give up alcohol in January
All Britons	80	18
Christians	83	20
Non-Christians	53	24
No religion	84	15

Obesity and religion

Did any BRIN readers notice headlines in the online media over Christmas such as ‘Holy Roast! Religious Brits More Likely to Be Overweight than Atheists’? The source of the story turns out to be an article in the online first edition of Journal of Religion and Health by Deborah Lycett: ‘The Association of Religious Affiliation and Body Mass Index (BMI): An Analysis from the Health Survey for England’. Examining data for 7,414 adults aged 16 and over interviewed (and measured) for the 2012 Health Survey for England, she discovered that religious affiliation was associated with an unadjusted 0.91 kilograms per square metre higher mean BMI, the association being strongest among professing Christians. Although some of the higher BMI was explained demographically, it was not accounted for by smoking status, alcohol consumption, or physical activity level. Even after all adjustments had been made on the linear regression models, affiliates of a religion still had an 0.58 kilograms per square metre higher mean BMI than the irreligious, with Protestants greater than Catholics. A significantly higher waist-to-hip ratio was also seen in Christian and Sikh men. The author observes that: ‘As the study reported here is cross-sectional, it cannot provide any suggestion of whether religion or higher BMI comes first and as such cannot be used to determine cause and effect, but it provides sufficient evidence for further exploration’. Options for accessing the article are outlined at:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-014-9975-3

First-time voters

It is only about four months to go now before the next UK general election (it is scheduled for 7 May 2015), and already the opinion polling machine is cranking up for it. It is expected to be a hard-fought contest, and the electoral choices of first-time voters (those currently aged 17-22, who were not old enough to vote in the 2010 election) are likely to be critical in determining the outcome. Opinium Research, in partnership with The Observer, polled 503 of these first-time voters online on 18-22 December 2014, with extensive data tables of results made available on 27 December at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4966_first_time_voters_-_ftv_-_final.pdf

One thing is pretty clear from the survey: religious influences seem to hold little sway over this first-time voter generation and therefore, by implication, are unlikely to be a significant factor in affecting how they will cast their votes. Just 11% strongly agreed that they are religious, with a further 18% somewhat agreeing, while a majority (56%) disagreed (the remaining 14% being neutral). In a throwback to last year’s debate about whether Britain is or should be a Christian country, merely 10% identified being a Christian as an essential feature of a nation being considered as a democracy, the remaining 90% stating it was an unimportant characteristic. Shown a list of famous people, no more than 10% recalled the Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) discussing politics and current affairs, and under one-quarter of this minority actually agreed with what he said. As if to illustrate the point, first-time voters held socially liberal views on several of the issues on which the Churches have been seen by some as dragging their feet (by upholding ‘traditional’ morality), with, for example, 77% of first-time voters supportive of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and 78% finding nothing wrong in sex outside marriage.

Moral leadership

Speaking of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has not had the best of Christmases. First, he was struck down with pneumonia, having to ‘deliver’ his Christmas Day sermon online, and then he was given a relatively modest rating for moral leadership in a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, for which 2,109 Britons were interviewed online on 18-19 December 2014. Panellists were presented with a list of famous names and asked to choose three or four who provided the best moral leadership. Archbishop Welby was placed fourth, with 15%, after Her Majesty the Queen (34%), the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (30%), and Malala Yousafzai (the Nobel Peace Laureate, 19%). Prime Minister David Cameron came fifth (8%) and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, fifteenth (5%), the same as Labour leader Ed Miliband but behind actress Judi Dench and former footballer David Beckham, among others. Data tables are not yet online (hopefully, they will be in the New Year), but an article about the survey was published on the front page of the main section of the newspaper on 28 December 2014 (only available online to subscribers).

Posted in Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged AB InBev, alcohol, Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of Westminster, attributes of a democracy, Body Mass Index, Christmas carols, Christmas Day working, Christmas story, Classic FM, clergy, ComRes, Deborah Lycett, first-time voters, Health Survey for England, Jesus Christ, Journal of Religion and Health, Justin Welby, Labour Force Survey, moral leadership, Obesity, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, religious festivals, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, The Observer, Vincent Nichols, YouGov | Leave a comment

Huffington Post and Other Polls

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Huffington Post religion poll

As part of its new ‘Beyond Belief’ series, The Huffington Post UK commissioned Survation to carry out a short online survey about religion among 2,004 Britons on 31 October and 1 November 2014. Results were published on 4 November 2014. Full data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Huffington-Post-Results.pdf

while the Huffington Post’s analysis of the survey, by Jessica Elgot, is at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/03/religion-beyond-belief_n_6094442.html

The first of the three questions concerned self-assessed religiosity. The majority (61%) of the sample did not consider themselves religious, whereas 31% described themselves as somewhat religious and 8% as very religious. The non-religious were somewhat over-represented among men, those aged 35-64, residents of Northern England and Scotland, and non-manual workers, with two-thirds of each of these groups saying they were not religious. The proportion of very religious was, not unexpectedly, highest for those professing a religion, as well as with the younger age cohorts and Labour voters (probably reflecting a concentration of, respectively, non-Christians and Roman Catholics).

Asked about the influence of religion on society, 52% thought it caused more harm than good, this view being held especially strongly by the non-religious (62%), the 55-64s (60%), and Liberal Democrats (60%). Just under one-quarter (24%) felt religion did more good than harm, peaking at 66% for the very religious, with 24% undecided.

In similar vein, 56% deemed atheists and religious people as equally likely to be moral, only 6% considering atheists to be less likely to be moral than the religious against 12% who assessed atheists as the more moral, with 26% unable to comment. Even among the self-designated very religious, no more than one-fifth claimed atheists to be less likely to be moral than religious people. The long-standing conflation of ethics and Judeo-Christian culture appears to be collapsing.

Religious affiliation

Populus has just released another large-scale survey containing details of religious affiliation. Online interviews took place throughout October 2014 with 18,330 adult Britons, each of whom was asked ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Results are summarized below, indicating that age is now far more important than gender or social class in shaping religious identity (age probably also contributes to the differences by voting intention). Full details can be found in table 12 at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmFT_October_BPC3.pdf

% across	Christian	Non-Christian	No religion
All	54	7	37
Men	52	7	38
Women	55	6	36
18-24	29	13	52
25-34	40	11	45
35-44	49	8	41
45-54	54	5	39
55-64	66	3	29
65+	74	3	23
AB	54	8	36
C1	54	5	37
C2	54	7	37
DE	53	7	38
Conservative	69	5	25
Labour	49	11	37
LibDem	52	6	40
UKIP	64	3	32

Religious hate crimes

One UK resident in 20 claims to have been the victim of a self-defined religious hate crime during the past 12 months, according to a poll by Opinium Research published on 5 November 2014, for which 2,002 online interviews were conducted between 14 and 17 October 2014. The incidence of religious hate crimes was slightly less than those related to disability and race (6% each) and the same as for sexual orientation, gender prejudice or gender identity. Young people aged 18-34 were most likely to say they had been the victim of a religious hate crime (13%), although this age group disproportionately reported being a victim of any hate crime (26%, which was double the national average). Religious hate crimes took many and multiple forms, including harassment (64%), physical assault (52%), internet abuse (52%), domestic abuse (49%), verbal abuse (45%), hate mail (43%), vandalism (36%), and bullying (34%). Data tables are at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4924_opinium_pr_hatecrime_tables__0.pdf

Religious bake off

The gay cake row, which we covered in our post of 29 July 2014, has flared up again. The case involves a Christian family-run bakery in Belfast (Ashers Baking Company) which was threatened with prosecution by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for its refusal to decorate a cake promoting same-sex marriage (which is not legal in the province), on the grounds that it would be contrary to the family’s beliefs. YouGov has just tested public opinion on the subject for a second time (the first being by ComRes in July 2014), interviewing 2,022 Britons online on 6-7 November 2014. It found that 56% deemed the action of the company acceptable and 33% unacceptable, with the strongest support coming from Conservatives (67%), over-60s (69%), and UKIP voters (74%). It also recorded disapproval by 65% of the Equality Commission’s threat of legal proceedings against the bakery unless compensation is paid to the person who requested the cake, approval running at 25% (and no more than 35% in any demographic sub-group). At the same time, majorities ranging from 56% to 80% regarded it as unacceptable for owners of services to decline access to them by a gay couple. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ex7ykytmu1/InternalResults_141107_cultural_beliefs_Website.pdf

Drinking habits

A ComRes poll for Channel 4 News published on 3 November 2014, but conducted online on 24-25 September 2014, discovered that 17% of the 2,144 Britons aged 16 and over who were questioned never drink alcohol, with a further 18% not having consumed any during the week prior to interview. Asked whether there were any factors which prevented them from drinking alcohol, 5% of the whole sample cited their own religious beliefs (rising to 11% of 16-24s and 10% of Londoners, presumably disproportionately non-Christians in both cases), 2% their family’s religious beliefs, and 1% their friends’ religious beliefs. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Channel_4_Drinking_habits_survey_26_September_2014.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (1)

Just over one-third (35%) of a representative sample of 1,629 Britons told YouGov, in an online pre-Halloween survey for The Sun on 26-27 October 2014, that they believed in life after death, a reduction from the earliest polling on the topic by Gallup (48% in 1939 and 49% in 1947). Belief was substantially greater among women (43%) than men (26%), and it was also high in London (42%), where the concentration of immigrants has raised levels of religious belief generally. Almost the same proportion of the whole population (34%) believes in ghosts, with still more (39%) convinced that houses can be haunted, and 28% even claiming to have seen or felt the presence of a supernatural being. However, very few (9%) state that they have communicated with the dead. Data tables are at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/otjwvdct9z/SunResults_141027_Ghosts-Website.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (2)

Meanwhile, another survey by OnePoll for price comparison website confused.com, on 21-23 October 2014, has reported that 31% of 2,000 UK adults have lived in a property they thought was haunted, one-sixth of whom had moved home as a result. The most common haunted occurrences were strange noises (53%), shadows moving around the house (30%), items disappearing without explanation (28%), rooms suddenly becoming chilly (27%), sighting of a ghost (17%), and doors opening and closing of their own accord (16%). Anxieties about the supernatural apparently influence house-buying decisions, with 39% saying they would be put off a property if they knew something bad had happened there, 31% if it was built on an ancient burial ground, 28% if they believed it was haunted, 25% if it was located next to a cemetery, and 11% if it was numbered 13. No data tables are available in the public domain, but there is a press release at:

http://www.confused.com/press/releases/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-causing-brits-a-fright

Halloween

Opinium Research reported on 30 October 2014 that 40% of UK adults intended to celebrate Halloween the following day, most commonly by watching a scary film on television (20%), going to or hosting a party (17%), dressing up (17%), carving a pumpkin (15%), or going trick-or-treating (12%). It was the youngest generation, aged 18-34, which most enjoyed the various aspects of Halloween, such as dressing up (61%), parties (60%), scary films (58%), Halloween recipes (55%), and trick-or-treating (47%). Overall, 52% of the population expressed a dislike for trick-or-treating and 42% admitted to having pretended not to be at home in order to avoid a visitation from the trick-or-treaters. Data tables and methodological details are not available, but there is a press release at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/brits-hiding-away-trick-or-treaters

Child abuse

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently admitted, in a private letter subsequently publicized on the Exaro website, that the sexual abuse of children has been ‘rampant’ in the Church of England and other British institutions in recent times. A substantial majority (69%) of the British public agrees with his assessment of the situation, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times on 30-31 October 2014, for which 1,808 adults were interviewed online. Among the over-60s the proportion rose to 82% and for UKIP voters it was 86%. Only 16% suggested that Welby was exaggerating the scale of the problem, with 15% uncertain what to think (32% for the 18-24s). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n965i9mzb8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-311014.pdf

Anglican clergy poll

In the Church Times for 31 October 2014 (p. 12), Linda Woodhead provided further analysis of the results of the YouGov poll of Church of England clergy which she commissioned in August-September 2014 (and which we have covered in two recent BRIN posts). Her article can be read online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/31-october/comment/opinion/clergy-are-more-like-old-labour-than-new

A critique of the article by Jonathan Chaplin appeared in the form of a letter to the editor in Church Times for 7 November 2014 (p. 16).

Posted in Survey news | Tagged alcohol, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ashers Baking Company, atheists, Channel 4 News, child abuse, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, ComRes, confused.com, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, ghosts, Halloween, haunted houses, Huffington Post, Jessica Elgot, Jonathan Chaplin, life after death, Linda Woodhead, morality, OnePoll, Opinium Research. Populus, religion as cause of harm, Religious Affiliation, religious hate crimes, same-sex marriage, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, supernatural, Survation, The Sun, YouGov | Leave a comment

Anglican Clergy Poll and Other News

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Anglican clergy poll

As anticipated in our post of 12 October 2014, the complete results of the YouGov survey of Anglican clergy were published on 23 October. The poll was designed by Professor Linda Woodhead and commissioned on behalf of Lancaster University, Westminster Faith Debates, and other partners in connection with the current series of debates on the Future of the Church of England. Respondents comprised 1,509 clergy aged 70 and under from the Anglican Churches in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland who answered 30 questions online between 14 August and 8 September 2014. They had been selected on a random basis (every third name) from Crockford’s Clerical Directory, and questionnaires sent to the 5,000 of the resulting sample of 6,000 for whom email addresses were available. The response rate thus appears to be around 30%. Full tables (with breaks by gender, age, year of ordination, country, and ministerial role) are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/5f5s31fk47/Results-for-Anglican-Clergy-Survey-08092014.pdf

Additionally, a press release has been issued in which Woodhead makes the following points:

Anglican clergy are united by a strong faith in a personal God and commitment to the parish system, 83% in each case
They are marked out from lay Anglicans and the rest of the population by their left-wing, ‘old Labour’, views, including attachment to a generous welfare system
They tend towards morally conservative positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and – especially – assisted dying
Attitudes are often sharply split between the third of clergy who are evangelical and the rest, the former tending to dissent from the official Church line that Anglicans should learn to ‘disagree well’

An abbreviated version of the press release can be found at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2014/cofe-clergy-concerned-with-protecting-the-welfare-budget/

Some of the questions were specific to the clergy, but others replicated those put to a sample of adult Britons by YouGov on behalf of Westminster Faith Debates in June 2013. This permits comparisons between the clergy, the general population, and the Anglican section thereof, as follows:

% down	Clergy	Britons	Anglicans
Since 1945 British society has become
better	38	27	25
worse	34	51	60
Britain has benefited from immigration in
some ways	96	60	52
no ways	2	32	41
Welfare budget should be
reduced	17	46	52
maintained	31	24	23
increased	44	15	13
Abortion time limit of 24 weeks should be
increased	5	6	5
kept	32	40	39
reduced	43	29	33
Same-sex marriage is
right	39	46	38
wrong	51	37	47
Legal prohibition on assisted suicide should be
kept	70	14	14
changed	22	76	77

Other surveys of Anglican clergy have been carried out in the past, but have mostly had a different focus, on religious beliefs, aspects of ministry, or psychological type. Comparisons with the current YouGov study are therefore difficult. However, we may note that clerical support for disestablishment appears to have diminished somewhat over the years. Whereas Gallup found it running at 30% of full-time clergy in December 1984 and 35% in August 1996, it had fallen to 14% 30 years later, 81% wishing to retain all or some of the trappings of establishment.

Heritage at risk

The latest debate in the Future of the Church of England series was devoted to heritage, and it was fitting that, on the very same day the debate took place (23 October 2014), English Heritage published the 2014 Heritage at Risk Register. This is the first since the register began in 1998 to include a fairly comprehensive inventory of places of worship judged to be at risk. In the past year the organization has visited all those considered to be in poor or very bad condition on the basis of local reports. As a result, it is now known that, of the 14,775 listed places of worship in England, 887 or 6.0% are at risk, accounting for 15.4% of all 5,753 sites on the at risk register. The greatest number (805) are Anglican. The regional breakdown of at risk places of worship is shown below. To search the register, and for more information about it, go to:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/heritage-at-risk-2014/

	Places of worship at risk	As % of all sites at risk
South-West	163	9.6
South-East	116	20.9
London	73	11.3
East	115	25.8
East Midlands	105	26.1
West Midlands	76	17.4
North-West	115	24.0
Yorkshire	98	12.6
North-East	26	9.1
ENGLAND	887	15.4

In a complementary move, ChurchCare, the Church of England’s national agency for supporting its places of worship, has been working, with the financial assistance of English Heritage, to develop the Church Heritage Record, a publicly accessible database of church buildings integrated with a Geographic Information System. This will have an educational and engagement mission alongside its primary role in church planning. When launched in Spring 2015, it will contain over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England, covering a wide variety of topics from architectural history and archaeology to worship and the surrounding natural environment.

Number problems

The current issue (Vol. 16, No. 2, 2014) of DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions is a theme issue devoted to ‘The Problem with Numbers in the Study of Religions’. Guest edited and introduced by Bettina Schmidt, it contains seven substantive research articles offering case studies of Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, and the British Isles (the latter including a further essay by Martin Stringer on superdiversity with reference to religion in Handsworth, Bitmingham in the 2011 census, as well as a qualitative study by Simeon Wallis of English adolescents who identify with no religion). There is an insightful afterword by BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas (pp. 116-24), which both offers a commentary on the individual papers and, drawing on his own research, illuminates the ‘serious problems of validity and reliability in measuring religion’ while simultaneously advancing a compelling case for quantification. The issue is freely available online at:

http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/DISKUS/index.php/DISKUS/issue/view/8

From the British perspective, perhaps the single most important contribution is by Kevin Brice on ‘Counting the Converts: Investigating Change of Religion in Scotland and Estimating Change in Religion in England and Wales Using Data from Scotland’s Census, 2001’ (pp. 45-69). Factoring in ethnicity, this cross-references the questions on religion of upbringing and current religion asked in Scotland in 2001 (but not in 2011, when only current religion was investigated) in order to quantify life-cycle change in religion, albeit not differentiating between Christian denominations. The overall extent of religious change was 13.5% in Scotland in 2001 (ranging from 2.2% for Pakistanis to 21.1% for Black Caribbeans), with 85.7% of all changes involving a move to no religion, and with leaving Christianity for no religion a very dominant trend for almost all ethnic groups. Notwithstanding, there were also subsidiary trends, including a not insignificant movement from none to Christian. This is a valuable piece of historical analysis, with the detail embedded in 11 tables, but its subsequent application to produce estimates for religious change in England and Wales in 2011 inevitably raises some doubts, with Brice himself conceding that some of the estimates are ‘far from robust’. As Voas suggests in his afterword, perhaps greater recourse to the potential of sample surveys for measuring religious change would have been revealing.

Church growth

Further to the release of its substantive findings at the beginning of 2014, the Church Growth Research Programme of the Church of England has been conducting some follow-on work. Particular mention should be made of a new report from Fiona Tweedie entitled Stronger as One? Amalgamations and Church Attendance. She finds that in urban areas benefice structure does not have any statistically significant effect on the likelihood of growth or decline in attendance, and that in other areas the relationship between the two variables is complex, but with no evidence to suggest that the more churches are amalgamated, the greater the chances of numerical decrease. Moreover, attendance patterns in parishes with a team ministry do not differ substantially from those without. In letters to the Church of England Newspaper (17 October 2014) and Church Times (24 October 2014), her conclusions have been challenged by David Goodhew and Bob Jackson, who point to ‘problematic data’, ‘technical statistical issues’, and failure to distinguish between different sizes of church as the source of their misgivings. The 45-page Stronger as One? report can be read at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Reports/Stronger_as_One1.pdf

A further conference in connection with the Church Growth Research Programme has now been scheduled for 4 December 2014, at the Cutlers Hall, Sheffield, with BRIN’s David Voas as one of the keynote speakers. Entitled ‘From Evidence to Action’, conference details can be found at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/news/23

Islamic State

The so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria was the fifth most noticed news story of last week, mentioned by just 7% of 2,038 Britons interviewed online by Populus on 22 and 23 October 2014. It had been in second position the previous week and in the top spot (currently occupied by the Ebola outbreak) for several weeks before that. In third place last week was the (Islamist-related) shooting in Ottawa, noted by 9%.

In another newly-released Populus poll for We Believe in Israel and the Jewish Leadership Council, and principally concerned with British attitudes toward Israel, 77% entertained a very cold and unfavourable view of IS (the bottom of a 10-point scale), with a further 11% regarding them unfavourably (points 1-4). Nevertheless, 5% held IS in a favourable light (points 6-10), rising to 14% among the 18-24s. The word most often used to describe Israel was Jewish (40%), 63% endorsing Israel’s right to exist as a majority Jewish state, albeit more than two-thirds of these qualified their support with the proviso that Israel should agree to the existence of a separate Palestinian state. Fieldwork was conducted online between 10 and 12 October 2014, among a sample of 2,067. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/OmIsrael_BPC.pdf

The latest Ipsos MORI Political Monitor asked a half-sample of 501 adults, interviewed by telephone on 11-14 October 2014, what role the British military should play against IS. In reply, 59% backed their deployment abroad to fight IS, 17% giving as their reason the direct threat to British interests and 42% the threat to other people’s rights and freedom. Opposition to the intervention of Britain’s armed forces against IS stood at 34%. The question was somewhat ambiguous because intervention could have been interpreted to mean RAF bombing of IS, the engagement of British troops in Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, or the commitment of British ground troops in direct combat with IS, the first two of which are already happening. Data tables are at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Oct2014_PolMon_Tables_Web_foreignpolicy.pdf

In its most recent poll for The Sunday Times, undertaken on 23-24 October 2014 on the basis of 2,069 online interviews, YouGov found that 76% of the population supported the removal of British citizenship from those who possess dual nationality or are naturalized Britons and who have been fighting with IS, with only 10% opposed. Two-thirds (with 19% against) also wanted to see Parliament change the law so that British citizenship could be removed from people born in Britain and who have no other nationality but have been fighting with IS. Responding to the Islamist gun attack on the Canadian Parliament, 77% thought there was a risk of a similar attack occurring in this country. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tg001pwhwn/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-241014.pdf

Media coverage

Thanks and congratulations are due to regular BRIN contributor Ben Clements for his two recent posts on religion data in the British Election Study 2015 panel. These seem to have excited some media interest, with coverage thus far in The Catholic Herald, 24 October 2014, p. 6 (also quoting BRIN co-director David Voas); The Tablet, 25 October 2014, p. 29; and The Times, 25 October 2014, main section, p. 92.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Ben Clements, Bettina Schmidt, British Association for the Study of Religions, British Election Study, census of population, church attendance, church growth, Church Heritage Record, Church of England, ChurchCare, clergy, David Voas, DISKUS, English Heritage, Fiona Tweedie, Heritage at Risk Register, Ipsos-MORI, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jewish Leadership Council, Kevin Brice, Linda Woodhead, places of worship, Populus, Religious Affiliation, Religious change, Scotland, Sunday Times, Syria, We Believe in Israel, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Clergy Voices and Other News

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Clergy voices

A majority (54%) of Anglican clergy thinks the Church of England should retain its current established status, seemingly without modification, according to the first results from a YouGov survey commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University and Westminster Faith Debates for the new series of debates on ‘The Future of the Church of England’, which commenced in Oxford last week.

Respondents comprised 1,509 clergy under the age of 70 from the Anglican Churches in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland who answered 29 questions online between 14 August and 8 September 2014. They had been selected on a random basis (every third name) from Crockford’s Clerical Directory, and questionnaires sent to the 5,000 of the resulting sample of 6,000 for whom email addresses were available. The response rate thus appears to be around 30%. The full findings will not be published until 23 October, the day of the second debate, but data tables for three questions (with breaks by gender, age, church, and ministerial role) are already available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/qouw89178p/Results-for-LancasterUni-WestministerFaith-08092014.pdf

Only 14% of clergy backed the total disestablishment of the Church, with a further 27% favouring some loosening of Church-State ties. Nevertheless, 81% supported the preservation of the principle of an Established Church with some or all of its present privileges. There was also overwhelming acceptance (by 83%) of the importance of maintaining the (creaking) parish system, against 12% saying it was unimportant. Views were more divided about future options for housing the clergy, 49% wanting the Church to continue to provide accommodation, with 18% electing for a higher stipend so that incumbents could arrange their own housing, and 24% wishing both options to be on the table to enable freedom of choice.

An article about the survey appears in the current issue of the Church Times (10 October 2014, p. 4). This contains the toplines for one further question, about the constituency which the Church of England should prioritize. Two-thirds of the clergy replied England as a whole, 18% said Anglicans who do not go to church regularly, 5% regular churchgoers, 7% some other group, with 4% undecided. The article can be read online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/10-october/news/uk/survey-finds-c-of-e-clergy-wedded-to-the-parish-system

Islamic State

Here is a round-up of the latest online polling on the subject of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Topline results only are given; for breaks by demographics, follow the links to data tables.

Britain: 7-8 October 2014

Nine in ten adults rated air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria as a very important (62%) or fairly important (28%) international news story, according to this YouGov poll. The proportion saying the same about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was similar (88%). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ouohbc27zh/InternalResults_141008_news_stories_Ebola_W.pdf

Britain, 8-9 October

The Ebola outbreak (37%) displaced IS (28%) as the most noticed news story of last week, according to Populus interviews with 2,055 persons.

Britain, 9-10 October 2014

The latest YouGov survey for The Sunday Times, for which 2,167 were interviewed, revealed marginally increased majorities in favour of the RAF bombing IS in Iraq (59%) and Syria (54%). However, 60% doubted whether the combination of Western air strikes and Iraqi and Kurdish forces would be sufficient to defeat IS and considered that other ground troops would be needed, even though only 32% approved of the commitment of British and US troops in Iraq (with 47% disapproving). Two-thirds remained opposed to paying ransoms to free British hostages held by IS, with only 9% in favour, but 27% supported the negotiation of other deals with IS (such as prisoner-hostage swaps), with 49% opposed. Three people in ten did not consider that the British media should report the holding and murder of hostages by IS. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/dra8m44o22/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-101014.pdf

London: 24-26 September 2014

A YouGov poll of 1,086 London residents, undertaken for the Evening Standard and published on 8 October, revealed overwhelming opposition (by 74%) to the readmission to the country of British nationals found to have been fighting with extremist groups in Iraq or Syria, such as IS. Just 13% were in favour of letting them back in. Support for Britain and the USA sending in ground troops to Iraq to combat IS was, at 36%, higher than in some national polls, and only 7% behind the disapproval score. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wb3z4vzce8/EveningStandard_141002_ISIS_Website.pdf

Human rights

Four-fifths (79%) of the British public think that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion should be protected as a human right, according to a YouGov poll released on 8 October 2014 for which 2,155 adults were interviewed online on 6-7 October. Most of the other nine potential human rights enquired about also scored around the four-fifths mark, the extremes being the right not to be put into slavery and forced labour (92%) and the right not to be unlawfully arrested or detained without good reason and the right to marry and establish a family (70% each). Freedom of thought, conscience and religion was especially prized by Scots (88%), Labour and Liberal Democrat voters (86%), and the over-60s (84%). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/qlmo7myu52/InternalResults_141007_human_rights_W.pdf

Methodists and drink

The latest issue of the Methodist Recorder (10 October 2014, p. 3) reports that University of Exeter doctoral student Jon Curtis has just launched a survey to determine the beliefs and practices regarding alcohol of current or former Methodists aged 18 and over living in England, Wales or Scotland. It forms part of the Coup D’Tea project on the history and future of alcohol in the Methodist Church in Britain. Curtis claims (although this could be disputed) that this is the first study of Methodist attitudes to drink for over 40 years. The questionnaire is intended for an entirely self-selecting sample, so, although it will doubtless generate some interesting illustrative material, it is unlikely to yield statistically representative data. It can be completed online at:

http://coupdtea.tumblr.com/

Abstinence is stereotypically associated with Methodism, yet, as Clive Field showed some years ago, its extent has often been exaggerated, especially among the Methodist laity: ‘“The Devil in Solution”: How Temperate were the Methodists?’, Epworth Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2000, pp. 78-93. On the basis of a fairly systematic trawl of the available statistical evidence, he estimated that total abstinence among Methodists peaked around 1910, when it was practised by approximately 95% of ministers and 50% of members. By 1990 the proportion had sunk to one-fifth in both groups, and it has almost certainly declined further since. Just how far is hard to determine since, although sample surveys of the nation’s drinking habits are not uncommon, it is rare for them to control for religion and, even if they do, it is even rarer for them to identify Methodists. As the latest triennial statistics of mission confirm, Methodism has become such a minority denomination that it no longer shows up accurately in national surveys. Methodists tend to be bundled into an undifferentiated Christian category or classified as other Christians (apart from Anglicans and Catholics).

By way of example of the sort of analysis which is possible, we may cite one question from the 2011 British Social Attitudes Survey: ‘How often do you drink 4 or more alcoholic drinks on the same day?’ Results (weighted) are tabulated below:

	Anglican	Roman Catholic	Other Christian	Non-Christian	No religion
Never	49.9%	46.5%	46.8%	68.4%	34.3%
Once a month or less often	32.1%	29.7%	28.6%	20.0%	31.6%
Several times a month	10.2%	20.2%	18.1%	8.2%	23.8%
Several times a week	5.6%	3.0%	5.2%	1.7%	9.4%
Daily	2.2%	0.6%	1.3%	1.6%	0.9%

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged abstinence, alcohol, British Social Attitudes Survey, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, Clive Field, Coup D’Tea, disestablishment, Epworth Review, Evening Standard, freedom of religion, human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Jon Curtis, Linda Woodhead, London, Methodists, parish system, Populus, Sunday Times, Syria, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | Leave a comment

Trust and Other News

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Trust (1)

Public trust in the Church of England is lower than in other non-political national institutions, according to the results of an Ipsos MORI survey for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which were published on 13 September 2014. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,008 adults aged 15 and over in Britain on 18-24 July 2014. Respondents were asked to assess their trust in 14 institutions on a scale from 0 to 10, the mean score for the Established Church being 5.36, only rising above 6 in the case of readers of mid-market daily newspapers and those broadly satisfied with the present system of government. The scores for all institutions follow:

	Mean score
Armed forces	7.74
Charitable/voluntary sector	6.51
Police	6.49
Monarchy	6.38
Legal system	5.86
Bank of England	5.85
BBC	5.75
Church of England	5.36
Local government	4.90
Welsh Assembly	4.77
Scottish Parliament	4.67
Westminster Parliament	4.20
Westminster government	4.13
Political parties in general	3.76

The study also covered support for the protection by law of 10 rights and freedoms. Freedom of religion was ranked eighth in order of importance, although it was only seven points behind the most highly prized freedom (the right to a fair trial). Variation by demographic sub-groups ranged from 83% to 94%. Support for each of the rights and freedoms is tabulated below:

Strongly/tend to support	%
Right to a fair trial	96
Right to freedom from slavery	95
Right to a private/family life	95
Freedom of speech	95
Right to liberty	94
Right not to be tortured/degraded	92
Right to protest	91
Freedom of religion	89
Right to life	79
Right not to be charged for a non-crime	71

The data tables (pp. 1-3 and 114-16 being particularly relevant) will be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/jrrt-state-of-the-nation-tables-2014.pdf

Trust (2)

Clergy/priests are the profession most trusted to tell the truth by MPs, in a survey released by Ipsos MORI on 9 September 2014, for which 143 MPs were interviewed face-to-face between 9 June and 6 August 2014. Indeed, the proportion of MPs trusting clergy/priests completely or a fair amount was, at 86%, 20 points greater than among the general public in November 2013. Judges (83%), scientists (82%), and doctors (76%) also performed well on the MPs’ veracity index, as they did with the public, with bankers (18%), estate agents (12%), and journalists (11%) being deemed the least trustworthy by MPs. For more information, see the slideshow at:

http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IpsosMORI/the-view-from-westminster-ipsos-mori-m-ps-survey-1978-2014/4

Religion of dependent children

Release Sup. 3 of the 2011 census results for England and Wales, dated 9 September 2014, included Table LC2123EW: religion of dependent child by sex. Fully interactive, and searchable to the lowest level of census geography, it revealed that, across the country as a whole, 51% of dependent children were recorded as Christian, 8% as Muslim, 3% as of another religion, 30% as of no religion, and 8% as not stated. However, there were many areas where Christians were in a minority, including Birmingham (the centre of this summer’s alleged Trojan Horse plot in schools), where there were more Muslim dependent children (97,100) than Christian (93,800). The table can be accessed at:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/lc2123ew

Islamic State

The polling scene has recently been dominated by the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence, but there have continued to be some surveys on the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria since our last post on 4 September 2014. Polls are arranged in chronological order of fieldwork, and were conducted online among samples of adults aged 18 and over.

21-29 August 2014

This Eurotrack survey by YouGov appears to be the first to study British attitudes to the IS crisis in a comparative context, in this case measured against those in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. There were 2,021 respondents in Britain. Six questions were posed about Iraq, with some notable differences in national opinion, including when it came to the willingness of countries to take part in air strikes against IS targets. Britain and Denmark were most likely to contemplate such action (at 42% in each case), while Finland and Germany were least enthusiastic (26%). But perhaps the most significant variations emerged when participants were questioned about giving asylum in their country to Iraqi Christians and non-Christians. As can be seen from the table below, Britons were, after the French, the least well-disposed to this scenario, with non-Christians being less welcome than Christians in all countries. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rkvalht3o6/August_Eurotrack.pdf

Approval (%) of granting asylum to	Iraqi Christians	Iraqi non-Christians
Denmark	50	37
Finland	58	48
France	35	22
Germany	47	41
Great Britain	38	27
Norway	46	37
Sweden	61	54

3-5 September 2014

Support for some form of British military intervention against IS reached 60% in this Opinium Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph, for which 2,002 UK individuals were interviewed; only 20% were opposed to British action from the air or on the ground. Approximately four-fifths endorsed tough new powers against British jihadists fighting with IS, in the shape of seizure of their passports, stripping them of their citizenship, and banning them from re-entering the UK. Data tables are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4829_telegraph_iraq_tables.pdf

4-5 September 2014

Support for RAF air strikes against IS built to 52% in this YouGov poll among 1,961 Britons for the Sunday Times, even reaching 48% for air strikes against IS in Syria (11 points up on the week before). Opposition was voiced by 68% to the payment of ransoms for the release of British citizens held hostage by IS, with 62% in favour of a military rescue operation. Half the sample felt that British Muslim leaders should be doing a lot more to dissuade British Muslims from going to Iraq to join IS, just 22% thinking the Muslim leadership was doing all it reasonably could. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e6yfutr1ad/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140905.pdf

Household income

In an online poll by Populus on 29-31 August 2014, the 2,010 respondents were asked to provide information about their religion and total household income prior to tax. Correlating the answers to the two questions, it can be shown that non-Christians were disproportionately likely to come from the poorest households (with an income of under £14,000), while those professing no religion were to be found in above-average numbers in the richest households (with an income over £28,000). Christians were more clustered in households with a middling income. Results are summarized below, and the source data are on p. 35 of the tables at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OmFood_Fraud-income-break.pdf

%	Up to £14k	£14k-£28k	Over £28k
All	23	43	33
Christians	21	50	29
Non-Christians	30	35	35
No religion	24	36	39

Premier Christian Radio audience

Premier Christian Radio, the evangelical (and sometimes controversial) station broadcasting primarily in London and South-East England (but also receivable on Freeview and the national DAB multiplex) has announced that it reached its biggest ever audience in its twenty-year history during the second quarter of 2014. According to official RAJAR figures, its average weekly listening by adults aged 15 and over in London and the South-East was 240,700 in this period, equivalent to 2% of the population served. The rise follows a rebranding exercise and the launch of a new website (incorporating listen again features) earlier in the year. However, historic data back to 2010, tabulated below, indicate that there has been some volatility in Premier’s audience, so it is too soon to say whether this increase will be sustained. These statistics can be examined in more detail, including for the pre-2010 era, at:

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

Period	Weekly audience persons	Weekly audience hours	Hours per listener
2010 Q1	141,000	1,456,000	10.4
2010 Q2	143,000	1,708,000	12.0
2010 Q3	213,000	2,405,000	11.3
2010 Q4	164,000	1,833,000	11.2
2011 Q1	135,000	808,000	6.1
2011 Q2	235,000	2,339,000	9.9
2011 Q3	181,000	1,461,000	8.1
2011 Q4	89,000	1,076,000	12.0
2012 Q1	153,000	1,147,000	7.5
2012 Q2	172,000	1,881,000	10.9
2012 Q3	164,000	1,568,000	9.6
2012 Q4	175,000	2,069,000	11.8
2013 Q1	138,000	979,000	7.1
2013 Q2	156,000	1,522,000	9.8
2013 Q3	147,000	1,373,000	9.3
2013 Q4	160,000	1,141,000	7.1
2014 Q1	97,000	865,000	8.9
2014 Q2	241,000	2,435,000	10.1

Education of Anglican bishops

The Church Times has surveyed the secondary and tertiary educational backgrounds of the Church of England’s 112 serving bishops. One half were found to have been educated at an independent school, with 36% attending a grammar school and 13% a comprehensive school. Two-fifths (42%) had taken their first degree at Oxford or Cambridge, with Durham University accounting for a further 17%. The newspaper collected the data following the recent publication of a report on Elitist Britain? by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which documented a bias towards independent and Oxbridge backgrounds among other national leaders. Details are available for each individual bishop at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/5-september/news/uk/half-the-bishops-in-the-c-of-e-were-educated-privately

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged air strikes, asylum, Bishops, British jihadists, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, dependent children, education, Eurotrack, freedom of religion, household income, Ipsos-MORI, Iraq, Islamic State, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, MPs, Muslim leaders, Opinium Research, Populus, Premier Christian Radio, RAJAR, ransoms, Religious Affiliation, religious census, rights and freedoms, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, trust, YouGov | Leave a comment

Islamic State and Other News

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Islamic State

According to opinion polling published in the past week, the British public is becoming uneasy about the advances being made by the armed forces of the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) in northern Iraq, its brutal persecution of ethno-religious minorities there, and the humanitarian crisis left in its wake.

A ComRes survey for ITV News, conducted online on 12 August 2014 among 1,088 adult Britons, found that 84% blamed IS for the current situation in Iraq. The same proportion wanted Britain to send humanitarian aid to the Yazidis then trapped by IS on Mount Sinjar, with 73% wishing to see British helicopters used to airlift them to safety. A plurality (45%) supported British fighter planes making airstrikes on the Islamists (which have yet to happen), but there was much less appetite (18%) for British troops becoming embroiled in ground combat against them. The potential fate of the Iraqi Christian community was a particular cause for concern, no fewer than 50% (including 62% of the over-65s) wanting Britain to give asylum to those currently at risk of death, even though no numbers were specified, just 29% being against. Full tables for these and other ComRes questions on Iraq are located at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Iraq_Crisis_Snap_Poll_12th_August_2014.pdf

YouGov has conducted three polls, all online among samples of adults aged 18 and over: on 10-11 August 2014 (n = 1,676), 11-12 August 2014 (n = 1,942, for The Times), and 14-15 August 2014 (n = 2,019, for The Sunday Times). They revealed strong backing (around three-quarters) for the RAF’s involvement in the airlifting of humanitarian aid to members of religious minorities fleeing the Islamists, with a plurality of around two-fifths approving of RAF airstrikes against IS (albeit a majority backed similar action being taken by the Americans). However, only 28% endorsed the supply of arms by Britain to Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, with 44% opposed, and no more than one-fifth favoured the engagement of British and American ground troops against IS (58% disapproving). A potential British offer of asylum to ‘some of the Yazidi people’ was less popular than in the ComRes poll in respect of Iraqi Christians, approval running at 34% and disapproval at 46%. Two-thirds discerned IS to be a major or moderate threat to Britain itself. YouGov data tables are available as follows:

10-11 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2a3r3j0yj4/InternalResults_140811_Iraq_aid_and_air_strikes_W.pdf

11-12 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3otq667g5p/Times_Results_140812_Iraq_aid_and_air_strikes_W.pdf

14-15 August 2014:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bm0fuq6bgy/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140815.pdf

A Level results

This summer’s A Level results for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) on 14 August 2014. Entrants for Religious Studies (RS) numbered 24,213, a rise of 3.7% over the previous year, notwithstanding a 2.0% reduction in those for all subjects. RS entries represented 2.9% of all A Levels sat. RS A Level candidates were preponderantly female (69.3%), compared with the all subject average of 54.4%. The RS pass rate (at grades A*-E) in RS was 98.5%, half a point above the figure for all A Levels, with 24.8% gaining A* or A in RS (marginally down on the 25.5% for RS in 2013 and also lower than the 26.0% achieved for all subjects in 2014). Results are further disaggregated by the three home nations. Entries for the AS (Advanced Subsidiary) Level in RS rose even more impressively, by 12.2%, far more than the 5.0% for all AS Level subjects. The full JCQ tables are at:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels

Church of England finance statistics

The Church of England published its national and diocesan finance statistics for 2012 on 14 August 2014, in 25 pages of tables, figures, and commentary, and based on the annual parochial returns (as distinct from the central accounts of the Church Commissioners, which are entirely separate). After three years of deficit, parishes reached break-even point in 2012 through a combination of reductions in expenditure and increased giving. However, donor income, while at a record level, has not kept pace with inflation, being up by just 0.4% on the year (reflecting lower Gift Aid payments from HMRC and slightly fewer regular donors). Full details at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2048371/2012financestatistics.pdf

Church of England clergy survey

The latest issue of the Church Times (15 August 2014, p. 5) reports that YouGov is to carry out an online survey of the background and attitudes of 5,000 Anglican clergy aged 70 and under, randomly selected from Crockford’s Clerical Directory. The poll has been commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University in connection with a new series of Westminster Faith Debates on ‘The Future of the Church of England’, to be held in Oxford during the autumn of 2014, in association with Ripon College Cuddesdon and the Church Times. For more information about the programme, go to:

http://faithdebates.org.uk/category/debates/2014-debates/oxford-faith-debates-the-future-of-the-church-of-england/

Attitudes to homosexuality

The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic change in public views of homosexuality in Britain, as recently documented by Ben Clements and Clive Field in ‘Public Opinion Toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights in Great Britain’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 2, Summer 2014, pp. 523-47. Deploying a wide range of attitudinal measures, presented in 31 tables and commentary, they demonstrate some of the key turning-points in this process of liberalization, including the setback brought about by AIDS in the mid-1980s and the rapid improvements in perceptions which have occurred since the Millennium. The abstract and options for accessing the full text of the article are located at:

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/78/2/523.abstract

In line with the journal’s template for contributions to its series of poll trends, the authors reproduce topline data only, for representative probability samples of adult Britons, and with no breaks by standard demographics, including religion (albeit relatively few surveys actually included religious affiliation as a variable). However, two of their tables do have a religion component, based on discontinued series of Gallup data. Table 14 summarizes answers to the question: ‘in your opinion, can a homosexual be a good Christian, Jew, etc. or not?’ In six of seven surveys between 1977 and 1993 around three-quarters answered in the affirmative, and just over one-tenth in the negative. However, much more discomfort was expressed about the appointment of homosexual clergy in six polls from 1977 to 1991 (Table 16), with the plurality (and, in 1986, a majority) opposed. Only in 1991 were more people reconciled to the prospect (49%) than not (41%).

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain have certainly increased since armed conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted again in Gaza in early July 2014. So much so that, among British Jewry, ‘63% say there may be no future for Jews in UK.’ Thus proclaimed the headline on the front page of the current issue (15 August 2014) of The Jewish Chronicle, the percentage appearing in thick, bold characters almost seven centimetres high. In the relatively brief story which followed, the newspaper explained that: ‘in a straw poll conducted by the JC this week, 150 people were asked: “Since the protests against the war in Gaza began, have you or your friends had a discussion about whether there is a future for Jews in the UK?” Just over 63 per cent answered “yes”’.

More information was revealed in an editorial on p. 28: ‘This week’s front-page story is not something we ever thought would be published. The poll is not scientific; we simply approached 150 people randomly in the street. But it accurately reflects the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of recent weeks. Emphatically, that does not mean that 63 per cent of us are preparing to leave. But it is deeply shocking that the stench of antisemitism is now so pungent that many in our community feel the question has to be asked.’ In an obvious slip of the pen, the editor then proceeded misleadingly to describe the poll as ‘a random sample of British Jews’.

Given that the survey has been widely reported in the online media, in Britain and overseas, thereby acquiring some authority, it is important to recognize that this is little more than a ‘voodoo poll’, to use market research industry jargon, and not necessarily representative of Jewish opinion in the country. The small sample size and inadequate sample selection process undermine its wider validity. This is a useful reminder of the difficulties of gauging the views of religious minorities which are so thinly and/or unevenly spread as not to show up in sufficient numbers in nationally representative sample surveys of all adults.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged A Levels, Anti-Semitism, asylum, Ben Clements, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, examinations, finance, Gallup Poll, homosexuality, Iraq, Islamic State, ITV News, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Joint Council for Qualifications, Linda Woodhead, Public Opinion Quarterly, religious studies, Sunday Times, The Times, Westminster Faith Debates, Yazidis, YouGov | Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Miscellany

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Burka

The burka (and thus Islam) has been in the news again during the past week, partly because the European Court of Human Rights has upheld France’s ban on wearing the full face-veil in public (a similar ban also operates in Belgium), and partly because an imam has written to The Times to point out that ‘there is no Koranic mandate for female facial masks’ and to suggest that wearing the burka in public should be made illegal in the UK.

The latest publicity has prompted Opinium Research to test the popular mood in the UK, and the company put several questions to an online sample of 2,004 adults between 4 and 7 July 2014. Topline results are tabulated below, revealing two-thirds of people in favour of banning the burka, similar to other polls in recent years, albeit one-quarter expressed some concern on the grounds of implications for human rights and individual freedoms.

%	Agree	Disagree
Burqa, or full veil, should be banned in public places	68	14
Burqa a predominantly cultural rather than religious requirement	66	8
Banning burqa would give women who wear it less freedom	24	39
Banning burqa would be serious breach of rights of women	26	46
What people wear in public legitimate topic of public debate	62	11
What people wear, even in public, entirely private matter	26	48

Breaks by sex, age, and region, which show over-55s to be most illiberal in their views on all the questions, are also available at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4663_opinium_pr_veils_tables.pdf

Jihadists

The British Muslim community has also been in the headlines because of official confirmation that several hundred of its members have been engaged in jihad in Syria and Iraq, with a proportion of them potentially continuing their struggle on their return to Britain. The news has inevitably led to public concern, as recorded in a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, for which 1,936 adults were interviewed online on 26-27 June 2014. Two-thirds of respondents felt that there was a serious danger of such jihadists undertaking terrorist attacks in this country, and this view was particularly held by Conservatives (78%), UKIP supporters (87%), and the over-60s (77%); just 17% believed the risk has been exaggerated. Social media have proved an effective vehicle for jihadist propaganda, and 61% were convinced that these media could be doing much more to prevent this happening, with 12% disagreeing and 27% unsure. Similarly, 63% of Britons considered that there was much more which Muslim community leaders could be doing to help the authorities identify young people who might become jihadists, a position again disproportionately taken up by Conservatives (76%), UKIP voters (85%), and the over-60s (74%); only 12% assessed that such leaders were doing all they reasonably could to assist, the remaining 25% expressing no opinion. In answer to a hypothetical question about having a Muslim child (including a convert), 63% said that they would inform the police if he had gone on jihad in Syria, while 8% would not, and 29% were uncertain what they would do. Full data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/s703u4qd5l/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-270614.pdf

Sunday trading

The overwhelming majority of Britons (77%) appear content with the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994, which limits the opening of large shops in England and Wales to a maximum of six hours on a Sunday. This is according to a ComRes poll for the Association of Convenience Stores, released on 1 July 2014, and for which 1,004 adults were interviewed by telephone between 28 and 30 March 2014. The survey was presumably triggered by recent agitation on the part of some of the retail giants to get these restrictions lifted. Support for the status quo was highest in Scotland (86%), to which the law does not apply, but otherwise did not vary much by demographics (including by religious affiliation). Opposition to the six-hour rule was voiced by 20%, peaking at 30% in South-East England, albeit it sprang from a variety of motives. Among this minority, 56% wished to see no Sunday opening of large shops at all, while 23% wanted their hours to be reduced; on the other hand, 5% opted for a small increase in permitted opening hours and 17% for complete deregulation of Sunday trading, enabling large shops to open for as long as they desired. Data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ACS_Public_Sunday_Trading_Tables_31_March_2014.pdf

Church and clergy

In a seminal article in Social Forces in 1994 Mark Chaves sought to redefine secularization as declining religious authority. His reformulation has hitherto been little examined in a British context, but Clive Field has now used it as a framework for considering changing views of Church and clergy: ‘Another Window on British Secularization: Public Attitudes to Church and Clergy since the 1960s’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 28, No. 2, June 2014, pp. 190-218. This is, in effect, a meta-analysis of opinion poll evidence from the last half-century, derived from 125 non-recurrent surveys and 15 time series (incorporating 114 data points). Much comparative information about other institutions and professions is also provided, notably in the twelve tables. The standing of Church and clergy in Britain is shown to have diminished, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, mirroring the net decline in institutional Christianity revealed in performance indicators of church membership, attendance, rites of passage, and affiliation. This loss of status, it is argued, reflects, not merely the passive effects of a secularizing climate, but active disenchantment with policies and practices pursued by Church and clergy, especially in respect of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church. Access options for the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2014.923765#.U7cR4DZwbX4

Roman Catholic pastoral statistics

The Catholic Directory of England and Wales has been a standard source of statistical information about the Roman Catholic Church for more than a century. The statistical section was dropped by the editor from the 2013 edition, on the grounds of doubts about the quality of the data, bur reinstated in the 2014 edition (in respect of returns for 2012). Unfortunately, the new data are also flawed, according to the first of three blogs by Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre (PRC), subjecting the Catholic Directory figures to forensic examination. This first blog, published on 7 June 2014, reviewed the Catholic Directory’s table of Roman Catholic population, highlighting several problems. In brief, two dioceses failed to send in data (so there is no national total); other diocesan returns were incomplete, sometimes as a consequence of the belated or non-cooperation of parish priests; and most dioceses failed to implement adequate data collection and quality control procedures. As a result, Spencer argues, the Catholic population estimates are ‘meaningless and useless’ and ‘utterly misleading’. The claim is demonstrated by reference to the PRC’s own estimates for several dioceses. The Catholic Directory’s figures thereby exemplify the ‘highly dysfunctional statistics regime’ and ‘chaotic arrangements’ operated by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales since 2000-01. Regrettably, according to Spencer, the Catholic hierarchy has thus far ignored all proposals by the PRC to put a more systematic and credible statistics gathering process in hand. The blog can be read at:

http://www.prct.org.uk/

Religious hatred in Scotland

Criminalized religious hatred is declining in Scotland, according to Janine McKenna and Kathryn Skivington, Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2013-14, which was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 13 June 2014. In 2013-14 there were 635 criminal charges relating to religious prejudice in Scotland laid under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 or Sections 1 and 6 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. This represented a decrease of 17% on the 2012-13 total and of 29% since 2011-12. The majority of those charged were men (90%) and a plurality (47%) aged 16-30, while in 59% of cases the accused was described by the police as being under the influence of alcohol. The faiths targeted were Roman Catholicism (63%), Protestantism (29%), Islam (8%), and Judaism (2%). Almost half (48%) of victims were police officers. Many cases are still ongoing, but, of those which have already been concluded, 85% resulted in a conviction, with a monetary penalty (39%), community penalty (30%), or a custodial sentence (24%) being the principal resolutions. The report is at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00452559.pdf

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Association of Convenience Stores, Burka, Catholic Directory, church, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, Contemporary British History, crime, Islamophobia, Janine McKenna, jihad, Kathryn Skivington, Muslims, Opinium Research, Pastoral Research Centre, religious authority, religious dress, religious hatred, Roman Catholic Church, Scotland, Scottish Government Social Research, sectarianism, secularization, Sunday Times, Sunday trading, Tony Spencer, YouGov | 1 Comment

Britain Uncovered and Other News

Je suis Charlie and Other News

Twixtmas News

Huffington Post and Other Polls

Anglican Clergy Poll and Other News

Trust and Other News

Islamic State and Other News

Recent News

Recent Sources

Archives

Recent Comments

One response to “Mid-Summer Miscellany”

British Religion in Numbers is funded as a British Academy Research Project