Muslim and Christian News

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Clive D. Field

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

‘Hate preachers’

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

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

Integration of Muslim migrants

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

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

 

Well

integrated

Not well

integrated
Migrants from Eastern Europe

34

54
Children of migrants from Eastern Europe

42

32
Migrants from Muslim countries

21

71
Children of migrants from Muslim countries

38

53
Migrants from Pakistan

28

57
Children of migrants from Pakistan

46

40
Migrants from African countries

31

46
Children of migrants from African countries

43

33

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

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

Britishness of Muslims

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

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

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

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

Islamophobic incidents

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

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

Gilligan’s original article can be found at:

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

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

http://tellmamauk.org/news/

Fair Admissions Campaign

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

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

For more details, see:

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

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

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

Singleness and the Church

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

Methodist diaconate

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

Dean of Studies and Research, Bible Society

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

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

 

 

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Scottish Social Attitudes and Other News

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Start your week with BRIN’s latest selection of British religious statistical news, comprising three sources of data on the contemporary scene plus a reassessment of religious belonging in the Edwardian era a century ago.

Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2011

The dataset for the 2011 (June-September) Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) Survey was released by the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) on 20 February 2013 and can be interrogated by registered users via the ESDS Nesstar catalogue. The sample comprised 1,197 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed face-to-face by ScotCen Social Research.

The religion-related content was confined in 2011 to standard questions on religious affiliation and attendance at religious services. However, since the results for religion from the Scottish census of population in 2011 have yet to appear, it may be useful to note here the weighted SSA results for 2001 and 2011.

The SSA religious affiliation question (‘do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’) reveals that the majority (53%) of Scottish adults in 2011 professed no faith, up by 16% from 2001. The Christian share fell from 61% to 44% during the decade, mostly among the Church of Scotland (down from 36% to 22%). The details are given below: 

 

2001

2011
No religion

37

53
Church of Scotland

36

22
Roman Catholic

14

12
Other Christian

11

10
Non-Christian

1

3

Interestingly, claimed attendance at religious services showed less change between 2001 and 2011, albeit this is an indicator notoriously liable to inflated self-reporting. Nevertheless, regular (monthly or more) churchgoing reduced from 24% to 19%. 

 

2001

2011
Once a week or more

15

13
Once a month or more

9

6
At least once a year

14

10
Less often

3

4
Never/practically never

48

47
No religion/family religion

11

20

Evangelicals and education

Evangelical Christians ‘are a highly-educated group who appreciate and value the education they have received. Many are committed to lifelong learning and have undertaken study to better understand their faith and serve the Church. Significant numbers are involved in education as teachers, other staff or school governors.’

These are among some of the major findings in the latest report from the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals research programme, in which a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) panel of evangelicals are periodically invited to complete an online questionnaire on selected topics. This particular survey was carried out in November 2012 and elicited 1,377 responses, 77% from persons with a university education. The report Do We Value Education? was published on 26 February 2013 and is at:

http://eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Education-report-February-2013.pdf

The content of the survey is too extensive to summarize here. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that there was not complete unanimity among evangelicals about the role of religion in state schools. Although 69% agreed that all schools should have regular assemblies including a Christian act of collective worship, no more than 31% felt that religious education (with a predominantly Christian emphasis) should be a compulsory component of the curriculum for all children throughout their entire school life. This was far behind the figures for English language (82%), mathematics (76%), science (50%), physical education (39%), and computing and technology (48%).

When it came to faith schools, one-third failed to disagree with the proposition that they tend to divide communities in harmful ways, and no more than 52% agreed that church schools generally offer a higher standard of education than non-church schools. Somewhat controversially, 51% argued that church schools should always give priority in admissions to children from churchgoing families, despite the fact that 42% acknowledged that church schools do not seem to be doing a very good job at producing committed Christians among their students.

Halloween

Children’s engagement with and perceptions of the autumnal and now largely secular and commercialized festival of Halloween (abbreviated from All Hallows Eve, All Hallows being an alternative rendering of All Saints Day in the Christian calendar) are illuminated in a new article by Mark Plater: ‘Children, Schools, and Hallowe’en’, British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2013, pp. 201-17. This is available to subscribers or on a pay-per-view basis at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2012.750594

Short questionnaires were completed in class in 2007 by 493 primary school pupils aged 7 (n = 127) and 11 (n = 366) in the London borough of Redbridge and Lincolnshire. The overwhelming majority of children were found to have participated in Halloween activities in some way in recent years, with 66% having significant and 23% some involvement. The combined figure of 89% ranged from 74% of those whose family background was religious to 93% in the case of non-religious. Participation was higher among pupils aged 11 (92%) than aged 7 (78%).  

The commonest Halloween activities reported by the children were: trick or treating (72%), dressing up for Halloween (70%), attending Halloween parties (57%), playing Halloween games (45%), watching scary movies (40%), walking around the streets in the dark (39%), and making Halloween-related artwork (39%). In 84% of families various forms of merchandise had been bought to support these activities at some point in recent years.

Most children (79%) said that they enjoyed Halloween but 9% did not (three-fifths of the latter being from religious families). Enjoyment was much higher in Lincolnshire (86%) than inner-city Redbridge (56%)  Asked to choose from a list of adjectives to describe Halloween, 74% selected positive (typically fun-scary and/or exciting) and 13% negative terms. Plater contrasts the relative enthusiasm of the pupils for Halloween with the reluctance of teachers to tackle it in the curriculum, which was revealed in his earlier research.

Edwardian religion

In his book Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (2006, pp. 40-87), Callum Brown characterizes Edwardian Britain as ‘the faith society’, in which there was a ‘buoyancy of Christian culture’, ‘religiosity marked the social values of almost the entire society …’, and ‘nearly every person would claim some attachment to a religion, most would be able to show an attachment to a church …’ These assertions are (partly) put to the quantitative test in a new article by Clive Field, ‘“The Faith Society”? Quantifying Religious Belonging in Edwardian Britain, 1901-1914’, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 37, No. 1, March 2013, pp. 39-63. The article can be accessed (on a pay-per-view basis) at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12003/abstract

In this paper Field collates the extant statistical evidence for church attendance and church membership/affiliation in the years before the First World War. A mixed picture is reported, with elements of sacralization and secularization co-existing. Although churchgoing was already in relative and absolute decline, one-quarter of adults (disproportionately women) still worshipped on any given Sunday, and two-fifths at least monthly. Moreover, hardly anybody failed to be reached by a rite of passage conducted in religious premises. Only 1% professed no faith and just over one-half had some reasonably regular and meaningful relationship with organized religion in terms of church membership or adherence. For children, perhaps nine-tenths attended Sunday school, however briefly.

 

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North African Islamism and Other News

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The threat posed by Islamism in North Africa is the lead story in today’s round-up of religious statistical news, with two of the other three items concerning the role of religion in state education.  

North African Islamism

Recent events in Mali and Algeria have raised the profile of ‘Islamist militants in North Africa’ to such an extent that 23% of Britons now consider them to be a great threat to this country and a further 43% a minor threat. Those regarding them as some kind of threat are concentrated among Conservative voters (77%) and the over-60s (81%, almost double the number of 18-24s, 42%, holding this view). Only 19% of Britons deem North African Islamism to pose little or no threat, with 15% undecided (including more than one-fifth of the under-40s).

Source: Online survey by YouGov of 2,119 Britons aged 18 and over on 21 and 22 January 2013. Full data posted on 24 January at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rnrn313ieq/YouGov-Survey-Terrorism-220113.pdf

Faith schools

Almost half (49%) of Britons support making all state schools secular, and thus severing existing links with particular religions. This is 11% more than implicitly back the status quo arrangement for faith schools, with 14% uncertain. The demographics of support for the proposition are interesting. Men (54%) are more in favour than women (44%), which was predictable. The age breaks are more surprising, almost the reverse of what might have been expected: it is the over-60s (54%) who most support ‘secularization’ of state schools and the 18-24s (42%) who are the least sure. Is this a tacit expression of the elderly’s suspicion of Islam and Muslim schools? Geographically, it is in Scotland (63%) where opposition to faith schools peaks, perhaps reflecting the long-standing controversies around the position of Roman Catholic state schools in Scotland. Parents of children in the state primary sector (where the majority of faith schools in Britain are to be found) are somewhat less in favour of secular schools than parents of children in the secondary sector, 42% versus 51% respectively. Conservative voters (48%) are only slightly less likely than Labourites (52%) to want to abolish faith schools.

Source: Online survey by YouGov of 1,750 Britons aged 18 and over undertaken on 6 and 7 January 2013 for Prospect magazine. Full data tables were posted on 24 January, to coincide with publication of Peter Kellner’s feature about the survey in the February 2013 issue of Prospect. The tables are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gzklm8utri/YG-Archive-Prospect-results-070113-education-state-schools.pdf

EBacc and RE

The Government’s introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) is having a negative impact on school provision of non-EBacc subjects, including religious education (RE), according to a new survey of schoolteachers. Among respondents, 13% reported a decline in provision for RE in their schools as a consequence of the EBacc (3% more than recorded that their schools were planning to cut RE in a similar survey in May 2011). Comparable reductions in provision for other non-EBacc subjects were: 14% for citizenship, music, and personal, social and health education; 15% for information and communication technology; and 16% for art, and design and technology.

Source: Online survey of over 2,500 schoolteachers by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), the largest teachers’ union. No methodological details were given in the press release about the survey issued by the NASUWT on 23 January 2013. However, by analogy with the 2011 study, it seems probable that the sample comprised members of the NASUWT working in secondary schools in England, and reporting on the experiences of their own schools. The press release can be found at:

http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/Whatsnew/NASUWTNews/PressReleases/EBaccSurvey#

Ageing priests

Quite a bit is known about the age profile of Church of England clergy (see, for example, Tables 23 and 24 in Church Statistics, 2010/11), but less information has been available about Roman Catholic priests. Now, thanks to new research by the Movement for Married Clergy (MMC), we know that only 4% of secular clergy in England and Wales in 2012 were aged 40 and under, and 38% aged 60 and under. That left 27% aged 61-70 and 35% over 70 years. Projecting the data forward by a decade, the MMC notes ‘a danger sign about replacement’, not least considering that, although ‘secular priests continue to remain in parishes until 70, the most effective work is done by those below the age of 60’.

Source: Analysis by the MMC of the dates of birth of 1,074 secular priests in seven English and Welsh dioceses in 2012, representing 26% of all such priests in England and Wales. Information was either extracted from published diocesan directories or provided by diocesan offices. The analysis is unpublished but has been generously supplied to BRIN by Dr Michael Winter, MMC’s chairman. It should be noted that the snippet about the study in the Catholic Herald of 18 January 2013 is garbled.

 

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Homophobia and Faith Schools

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Clive D. Field

Compared with five years ago, ‘[gay] pupils in faith schools are now no more likely to report bullying than those in non-faith schools, even though faith schools are still less likely than schools in general to take steps to prevent and respond to homophobic bullying.’

These are two of the key findings from The School Report: The Experiences of Gay Young People in Britain’s Schools in 2012, written by April Guasp and published by Stonewall (the lobbying organization for gays) on 5 July. It can be downloaded from:

http://www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/school_report_2012.pdf

The report is based upon an online survey completed, between November 2011 and February 2012, by 1,614 young Britons (aged 11-19) who were lesbian, gay or bisexual (or thought they might be) on their experiences in secondary schools and colleges.

The survey was conducted and analysed by Helen Statham, Vasanti Jadva and Irenee Daly of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. 29% of respondents said they had a religious belief, and 11% attended a faith school.

The results comparing faith schools with all schools have been extracted by BRIN from the report and are tabulated below:

  Faith schools All schools
The school says that homophobic bullying is wrong

37%

50%
The school responds quickly to homophobic bullying

24%

31%
Teachers who hear homophobic language never challenge it

36%

26%
Teachers and other staff make homophobic comments

22%

17%

Faith schools, therefore, still have some way to go to close the gap on other schools in their handling of homophobia, if these data are fully representative (unfortunately, the section on the survey methodology is extremely brief, but the sample will, presumably, have been self-selecting in large part).

 

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Inclusivity of Faith Schools

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Clive D. Field

‘England’s faith state schools are on average failing to mirror their local communities by shunning the poorest pupils in their area, an analysis by The Guardian of the latest government figures shows’, Simon Rogers wrote on the newspaper’s datablog on 5 March 2012.

‘The Roman Catholic Church, which has repeatedly insisted that its schools are “inclusive”, comes out as particularly unrepresentative of the local communities it serves. Three-quarters of Catholic primary and secondary schools have a more affluent mix of pupils than their local area … The same is the case for Church of England primary and secondary schools.’ Non-religious schools, by contrast, tended to reflect their neighbourhoods.

The findings, which cover 16,781 primary and 2,753 secondary schools (excluding special needs schools), ‘will fuel claims that faith schools have been picking pupils from well-off families by selecting on the basis of religion’.

These conclusions derive from a database created by The Guardian by merging, at both local authority and postcode levels, elements of two datasets published by the Department for Education: a criterion of inclusivity (pupil eligibility for free school meals, a key measure of poverty) extracted from the Department’s spending database; and address and school type derived from the ‘spine’ (the Department’s official list of schools). Analysis focused on a comparison of Anglican, Catholic and non-religious schools (there being too few state schools of other denominations or faiths).

As Rogers notes, the research does pose certain methodological challenges, which will doubtless be picked up by proponents of faith schools in the coming days. In particular, ‘one big area of disagreement is whether you take the postcodes for where pupils actually live, or you do what we did, which is to compare each school to all the schools in their area. We decided to go for the latter as we wanted to see how each school compares to its peers in the area.’

We can probably expect both Anglicans and Roman Catholics to come out of the corner fighting on the issue. Only recently, as noted by BRIN, the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales has trumpeted (drawing on data from a Department for Education study in 2009-10) that a higher proportion of pupils at its schools come from the 10% most deprived areas than those attending English schools as a whole. See:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/catholic-school-statistics-2011/

The Guardian’s datablog, with further commentary and access to the full database, can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/05/faith-schools-admissions

An article about the research, by Jessica Shepherd and Rogers, was also published in The Guardian of 6 March 2012, including reactions from Anglican and Catholic spokespersons and the British Humanist Association. This is at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/05/church-schools-shun-poorest-pupils?INTCMP=SRCH

 

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Census Christians

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Clive D. Field

‘UK residents who think of themselves as Christian show very low levels of Christian belief and practice’ and ‘are overwhelmingly secular in their attitudes on a range of issues from gay rights to religion in public life’, according to research released yesterday (14 February 2012) by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK).

The study was conducted for the Foundation by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with UK adults aged 15 and over between 1 and 7 April 2011, immediately after the decennial population census schedules had been completed, including the voluntary question on religious profession, which was being posed for the second time.

Ipsos MORI’s main questionnaire was directed to the 1,136 individuals (equivalent to 54% of the full screening sample of 2,107) who said that they were recorded as Christians in the census by the person completing the household schedule – or would have recorded themselves as Christians if they had answered the question themselves. The Foundation characterizes them as ‘Census-Christians’, and the following topline data relate exclusively to this sub-sample.

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY

45% regarded themselves as a religious person, but 50% did not. More nuanced answers emerged from another question in which 30% considered themselves to have strong religious beliefs and to be a Christian, 29% to be a Christian but not to have strong beliefs, 19% to have been brought up to think of themselves as a Christian but not to have strong religious beliefs, 12% not to be religious at all, and 8% as spiritual rather than religious.

Asked why they were recorded, or would have recorded themselves, as Christian in the 2011 census, 41% said that they tried to be a good person and associated that aspiration with Christianity, 31% that they genuinely attempted to follow the Christian religion, 26% that they had been brought up as Christian even though they were not religious now, 6% that they had ticked the option automatically without thinking, 5% that they felt uncomfortable about the growing influence of other religions, and 4% that Christian was another way of expressing their Britishness.

In reply to a different question, 40% equated being a Christian to being a good person, against 24% who mentioned upbringing, and 22% who spoke in terms of belief in Jesus Christ.

Quizzed more generally why they identified themselves as Christian, 72% cited baptism, 38% parental affiliation, 37% their Sunday school attendance as a child, 28% their belief in the teachings of Christianity, 21% their education in a Christian school, 19% their previous churchgoing, 19% their current churchgoing, and 13% their partner’s Christianity (multiple responses were possible).

35% said that, as a child, they had learned most about Christianity from a church or Sunday school, 30% from their parents or family, and 29% from their school.

Although 60% claimed that Christianity was important in their life, 81% said that it had no influence on their social networks, 69% no influence on their choice of marriage partner, and 78% no influence on which candidate they would vote for in a general election. 

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

54% believed in God (two-thirds of whom said that Christianity is just one way, rather than the only true way, of knowing Him), 32% thought of God in terms of the laws of nature or some kind of supernatural intelligence, and 6% disbelieved.

44% regarded Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the saviour of mankind, 32% as a man and role model, 13% as a mere man, with 4% disbelieving in His existence.

32% believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus, 39% in His spiritual but not physical Resurrection, with 18% disbelieving in the Resurrection.

20% did not believe in heaven and 40% did not believe in hell, versus 63% and 41% who did believe (completely or to some extent). There was a strong attachment (64%) to fate and, to a lesser extent, to other alternative belief systems.

RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

29% claimed to have attended a Christian church service (other than a rite of passage) at least once a month during the previous year, but 49% had not worshipped during the year (two-thirds of whom had not been to church within the past five years or had never been).

27% stated that they had participated in some religious activity remotely during the past month, for example by watching or listening to a religious broadcast on television, radio or the internet, or by receiving a home visit from a member of their church pastoral team. 17% had so participated between one month and one year previously, but 53% not at all during the past twelve months.

35% prayed independently and from choice (i.e. when not at church) once a week or more, 25% less frequently, and 37% never or almost never. 21% did not even believe in the power of prayer compared with 63% who did.

15% had read the Bible independently and from choice within the last week, 32% within the last month or up to three years ago, 36% more than three years ago, and 15% never. Reflecting this limited acquaintance with the scriptures, just 35% of these Christians correctly named the first book of the New Testament.

ATTITUDES TO MORALITY

23% viewed the Bible as a perfect guide to morality, 42% as the best guide even though some of its teachings are inappropriate today, and 24% argued that there were better ways of knowing right from wrong.

In determining right from wrong, 54% mostly looked to their own inner moral sense, 25% to family and friends, and only 10% to their religion.

On specific matters of morality more of these self-identifying Christians took a ‘liberal’ than a ‘traditional’ stance, with 63% endorsing abortion, 61% full legal equality between homosexuals and heterosexuals, 59% assisted suicide, 57% extra-marital sex, and 46% homosexual relations.

ATTITUDES TO RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

54% supported state-funded faith schools for their denomination, 53% for any Christian denomination, and 44% for any religion (opponents numbering 16%, 15%, and 23%). However, almost as many opposed (36%) as endorsed (39%) the statutory requirement that children in state-funded schools should participate in a daily act of broadly Christian worship.

15% wanted religious education in state-funded schools to teach children to believe Christianity, 8% to teach children to believe whatever faith the school subscribed to, 7% to teach knowledge of Christianity but not of other faiths, and 57% to teach knowledge of all world faiths even-handedly.

38% did not want creationism to be taught in science lessons in state-funded schools against 31% who took the contrary line, with 29% uncertain.

ATTITUDES TO RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE

78% agreed that religion should be a private matter and that governments should not interfere in it, while 74% did not want religion to have any special influence on public policy. Nevertheless, 32% still agreed (and 46% disagreed) that the UK should have an official state religion. 92% contended that the law should apply to everybody equally, regardless of their religious beliefs.

Only 26% favoured the continuing presence of Anglican bishops in the House of Lords (32% against) and 32% the cost of hospital chaplains being met from NHS budgets (39% opposed).

SUMMATION

These results suggest that there may have been a dramatic ten-year fall in the number of professing Christians in the UK, from 72% in the 2001 census to 54% today. It remains to be seen whether this finding will be validated by the 2011 census data when they are eventually published. As BRIN has consistently noted, the measurement of religious profession is notoriously difficult, and differing methodologies and question-wording produce different results. Other Government sources, such as the Integrated Household Survey, still point towards quite high levels of ‘cultural Christianity’.

The ‘revelation’ that many who claim to be Christian fall short of Christian ideals in terms of their practices, beliefs and attitudes is not especially surprising. It has been documented in a wealth of studies since sample surveys began in Britain. Mass-Observation’s report into Puzzled People in Hammersmith in 1944-45 was one of the first to document some of these inherent contradictions in popular religion. Nonetheless, the Ipsos MORI data are helpful in quantifying systematically, and within a census context, the wide variation in the extent to which Christianity impacts upon, and has real meaning in, the everyday lives of Christians in the UK.

Ipsos MORI’s press release, topline results, and full computer tabulations (extending to 366 pages!) will be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2921/Religious-and-Social-Attitudes-of-UK-Christians-in-2011.aspx

Two press releases about the survey from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science are available at:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644941-rdfrs-uk-ipsos-mori-poll-1-how-religious-are-uk-christians

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644942-rdfrs-uk-ipsos-mori-poll-2-uk-christians-oppose-special-influence-for-religion-in-public-policy

A commentary on the statistics by the think-tank Ekklesia is at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/16278

and by the National Secular Society at:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/02/poll-reveals-majority-of-christians-support-secular-outlook

Coincidentally, the Ipsos MORI results appeared on the same day that the Conservative Muslim peer, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who is currently leading the largest ministerial delegation from the UK to the Vatican (reciprocating the papal visit to Britain in 2010), wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph entitled ‘We Stand Side by Side with the Pope in Fighting for Faith’ and criticizing ‘militant secularisation’.

The newspaper took the opportunity to run an instant online poll of its readers (obviously, being a self-selecting sample not necessarily representative of that readership, still less of the national population). By 10 pm on 14 February 13,493 votes had been cast, with the following (and perhaps surprising) pattern of responses to the question ‘Are you worried by the threat of militant secularism in Britain?’:

  • Marginalising religion is a form of intolerance seen in totalitarian regimes – 17.3%    
  • People should worship in private and not display religious symbols in public – 14.6%    
  • People should feel proud to worship in public and display their faith – 12.7%   
  • Secularisation is not a threat to this country – 55.4%   

 

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Should Ethics be Taught?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Clive D. Field

While church connection helps to promote moral and ethical behaviour and worldviews among young people, religious schools do not have a consistently positive impact in that regard.

This is the inference which can be drawn from the charts and summaries contained in a somewhat skeletal report entitled Should Ethics be Taught? Published a few months back, it is available to download at:

http://www.moneyandmorals.org/resources/userfiles/Jabe%20MM%20Survey%20Web%202011%20-%20Printed%20version.pdf

Commissioned by the Money & Morals secondary school programme, a project of the Jewish Association for Business Ethics, the underlying data in the report derive from questionnaires completed by 10,000 year 9 and 10 pupils (aged 13 to 15) at schools in England and Wales in 2008-10. They were compiled by Jemma Penny, of the St Mary’s Centre in Wales, in association with Professor Leslie Francis of the University of Warwick.

Churchgoing students were found to be less likely to condone cheating in examinations, fare-dodging on public transport and shoplifting than their non-worshipping counterparts. However, pupils at religious schools were actually more tolerant of all three moral failings than those at county schools. 

Churchgoing students also tended to be more positive about their future life in the workplace than non-church-attenders. But differences between pupils at religious and county schools on these questions were less conclusive, albeit the former were 3% more optimistic about the contribution which they could make to the world than the former (69% versus 66%).

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English Baccalaureate and Faith Schools

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Clive D. Field

A Government press release on 31 August trumpeted that its controversial introduction of the English Baccalaureate (or eBacc) has had an immediate impact on reversing the historic decline in pupils taking ‘traditional’ or more ‘academic’ GCSE subjects. And nowhere does this appear more so than in faith schools.

The eBacc was introduced as a performance measure in the 2010 school league tables. It measures where pupils have secured a C grade or better in GCSEs or accredited international GCSEs across a core of subjects: English, mathematics, two sciences, history or geography, and a language.

To check on the eBacc’s effect, the Department for Education commissioned the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to undertake a survey of English maintained secondary schools between 23 June and 21 July 2011. A representative sample of 1,500 schools was approached to take part, of which 692 did so (578 by telephone and 114 online), a response rate of 46%.

Overall, the study found that a greater proportion of Year 9 pupils, who in most cases would have very recently made their GCSE selection, were taking GCSE subjects that could lead them to achieving the eBacc than was the case with Year 10 pupils – 47% and 33% respectively.

However, for pupils attending faith schools the figure was 55% for year 9 pupils, 8% above the mean and 10% more than in non-religious schools. At year 10 41% of pupils in faith schools were taking eBacc subjects compared with 31% in schools that did not have a religious character. This appears to confirm the relatively more ‘traditional’ approach to the curriculum of the faith-based school sector.

Just under half of schools (45%) indicated that subjects and courses had been withdrawn from the curriculum or failed to recruit enough students for the 2011/12 academic year. Most of the courses withdrawn were BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) courses, many of which are regarded as ‘soft’ subjects by some politicians and educationalists.

No mention is made of religious studies (RS) as a withdrawn subject in the short report on the results of the survey, prepared by Sam Clemens of NatCen, but many faith leaders fear that the eBacc will fairly quickly curtail the growing popularity of RS as a GCSE, since RS has not been designated by Government as part of the eBacc core.

The report is available to download at:

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB150.pdf

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English Schools and Community Cohesion

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The Education and Inspections Act 2006 placed a new duty on the governing bodies of maintained schools in England to promote community cohesion.

In order to see how much progress schools had been making, the previous Labour administration commissioned Ipsos-MORI to survey a sample of them, through a combination of self-completion postal questionnaires and telephone interviews. 804 schools responded, of which 321 were primary, 348 secondary and 135 special schools. 174 were faith and 630 non-faith schools.

Although fieldwork took place between 10 February and 14 May 2010, the Ipsos-MORI final report (by Chris Phillips, Daniel Tse and Fiona Johnson) was only published by the Department for Education on 28 February 2011 (as Research Report DFE-RR085). Entitled Community Cohesion and PREVENT: How Have Schools Responded? it is available to download at:

http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RR085.pdf

This post highlights only those findings which touch on religion.

82% of all schools associated the term ‘community cohesion’ with faith, which came third in a list of fifteen possible word-associations, only citizenship (87%) and multiculturalism (85%) scoring more highly. Bottom of the list came violent extremism (31%) and radicalization (27%).

In 56% of schools the senior leadership team was said to have a great deal of knowledge about the different faiths in the school and the local area. This proportion was somewhat less than for knowledge of different ethnic origins and cultures (60%) and different socio-economic groups (63%).

In 47% of schools the teaching staff was said to have a great deal of knowledge about the different faiths, but this fell to 26% in secondary schools (compared with 52% in primary schools). The topline figure was better than for awareness of different ethnic origins and cultures (43%) and different socio-economic groups (41%).

School governors were felt to be relatively uninformed about the different faiths, just 33% of schools reporting that they had a great deal of knowledge about them (a mere 2% above the level for support staff). Statistics for governors’ knowledge of different ethnic origins and cultures and different socio-economic groups were not that much better, 35% and 38% respectively.

In trying to learn more about and understand better the different religions in the community, the most frequently-cited tool was contextual or demographic data for pupils on the roll (72%), followed by consultation with or surveys of parents (62%), local authority guidance or training (55%), consultation with or surveys of pupils (50%), and guidance from Government or Teachernet (42%).

Schools were asked how much knowledge they had about the performance and experience of pupils from some different religions relative to other pupils. The proportion claiming to have a great deal of knowledge was 41% for the achievement of worse academic results, 38% for a greater likelihood of exclusion, 38% for a greater propensity to be bullied, and 23% for a reduced likelihood of applying for a place at the school.

All these percentages were lower than for the comparable questions about different ethnic origins and cultures and different socio-economic groups.

In respect of pupils from different faiths, just 10% of schools had taken any action to address academic under-performance of these groups within the past two or three years, the statistics for exclusion (3%), bullying (4%) and application for places (4%) being still smaller. In each case many more schools had conducted a review of the topic and concluded that no action was necessary, but another third had not even carried out a review.

Just 3% of schools (virtually all primary schools) reported that they used links with local faith groups and places of worship to promote community cohesion. This is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the subsequent claim by 14% of schools that they had developed such links since the introduction of the statutory duty to promote community cohesion.

Religious education topped the list of curriculum subjects used to promote community cohesion, being cited by 89% of schools. This was 2% more than for citizenship lessons and 8% above geography and English.

Differences between faith and non-faith schools in tackling community cohesion were more limited than expected. While issues of faith and religion appeared to be more of a concern for faith than non-faith schools, as reflected in their perceived knowledge of them (especially by senior leadership teams), the approaches used to promote cohesion, monitor its effectiveness and involve the broader community did not vary dramatically between faith and non-faith schools.

The survey also covered the extent of school compliance with the then Government’s agenda for preventing violent extremism (PREVENT). 7% of all schools (but 14% of secondary schools) said that they had actually obtained information and/or support from local religious leaders in this matter. Five times that number (37%) wanted local religious leaders to provide more help in building pupil resilience to violent extremism, which was only 8% less than those looking to the police for assistance.

Attitudes to PREVENT overall and approaches used were broadly similar between faith and non-faith schools, except that faith-status primary schools were more likely than their non-faith counterparts to say they knew a fair amount or more about the PREVENT-related schools policy. No similar difference emerged among secondary or special schools.

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Roman Catholic Schools in England and Wales

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

As we noted three months ago (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=650), the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales (CESEW) has sometimes been accused of excessive secrecy in guarding its statistical data.

This is notwithstanding the fact that Roman Catholic schools account for about one in ten of all maintained school places in England and Wales and receive 100% of their running costs and 90% of their capital funding from the state.

However, the CESEW has started the New Year on the front foot by releasing on 10 January two new quantitatively rich 40-page reports which, it is claimed, ‘demonstrate that Catholic schools are rated consistently better than other schools’ and ‘show just how well taxpayers’ money is spent when it is channelled into Catholic schools.’

This assessment seems likely to fan the flames of the often acrimonious debate about the principle and practice of faith schools, especially since the CESEW’s chairman (Malcolm McMahon, Bishop of Nottingham) has taken the opportunity of the new publications to attack the National Secular Society, teachers’ leaders and their ‘friends in Parliament’ who are campaigning for the abolition of faith schools.

The first document is the Digest of 2009 Census Data for Schools and Colleges, only the third in the series (the others being for 2007 and 2008), although the tradition of conducting an annual census of Catholic schools, teachers and pupils dates back to 1959. 94% of the Catholic schools in England and Wales made a return in 2009.

80% of the 2,289 Catholic schools in England and Wales in 2009 were primary, 17% secondary, 1% tertiary, and 2% all through. 94% were maintained and 6% independent. 96% were in England and 4% in Wales. Diocesan totals ranged from 18 in Wrexham to 252 in Birmingham.

74% of the 736,000 pupils in maintained Catholic schools and colleges were Catholic, falling to 65% in Wales, but only 41% of the 41,000 pupils in independent Catholic schools were Catholic. Proportions of Catholic teachers were lower: 57% of 44,000 in maintained schools and 40% of 5,000 in independent schools.

Pupil intakes appeared socially quite diverse. ‘The data shows that Catholic schools have similar proportions of children eligible for free school meals as schools nationally have, and are more ethnically mixed than schools nationally’.

The second report is entitled Value Added: the Distinctive Contribution of Catholic Schools and Colleges in England and has been written by Peter Irvine, retired HMI and education consultant. The data derive from Ofsted inspections in 2005-09 and test and examination results for Key Stages 1-5 in 2007-09.

Findings particularly highlighted by CESEW in its press release include the following (others may be picked up from the executive summary on pp. 6-8):

  • ‘In terms of overall effectiveness, Ofsted judged 73% of Catholic secondary schools to be outstanding or good, compared to 60% of schools nationally. For primary schools, 74% of Catholic schools were judged outstanding or good compared to 66% nationally.
  • In terms of the contextual value added measure, 58% of Catholic secondary schools had above average scores, compared to 39% of schools nationally.
  • The proportion of pupils gaining level 4 or above in Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) at age 11 was consistently around 5% higher in Catholic schools than in schools nationally.
  • At GCSE level, the proportion of students obtaining 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C (including English and Maths) was consistently at least 6% higher in Catholic schools than in schools nationally.’

The two reports, with accompanying press release, can be downloaded from:

http://www.cesew.org.uk/standardnews.asp?id=10080

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