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Counting Religion in Britain, May 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 8, May 2016 features 31 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 8 May 2016

OPINION POLLS

Anti-Semitism (1): Attitudes of Jews toward the Labour Party

The recent row about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party seems to have further damaged its standing with the Jewish electorate. A majority (63%) of British Jews regard the Labour Party as anti-Semitic, and 66% assess its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as doing a bad job in addressing the issue. Whereas 15% of Jews voted Labour at the 2015 general election, and 32% of those who did not have considered voting Labour at some time in the past 10 years, only 7% would vote Labour now. The Jewish community remains overwhelmingly (67%) Conservative in its political allegiance, although it has only really been so since the Second World War. In part, this perhaps reflects the very low perception of anti-Semitism in that party (6%), a similar perception applying to the Liberal Democrats but not to UKIP (which 46% of Jews view as anti-Semitic). Notwithstanding the current publicity being given to anti-Semitism, 82% of Jews say they feel very or quite safe in Britain. Data derive from a survey of 1,008 members of Survation’s pre-recruited panel of self-identifying Jews in Britain, interviewed mainly by telephone on 3-4 May 2016.

The poll was commissioned by the Jewish Chronicle which published its own analysis of the results in its edition for 6 May 2016 at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/157746/labour-support-among-british-jews-collapses-85-cent

Full data tables, including breaks by demographics, are available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Full-Tables-JC-Poll-030516SPCH-1c0d0h8.pdf

Results for a question on the voting intentions of Jews in the forthcoming referendum on European Union membership were separately reported in the Jewish Chronicle for 13 May 2016, 49% being in the ‘remain’ camp, 34% in the ‘leave’ camp, and 17% undecided. These data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Full-Tables-JC-EU-Poll-030516SPCH-1c0d0h8.pdf

Anti-Semitism (2): Attitudes of Labour Party members

A bare majority (52%) of 1,031 Labour Party members interviewed online by YouGov for The Times on 9-11 May 2016 acknowledged that the Party has a problem with anti-Semitism, 38% being in denial. Moreover, 47% thought it no worse a problem in the Labour Party than in any other political party, while 35% blamed the press and opponents of Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for exploiting the issue in order to attack him (a further 49% accused them of manufacturing the problem for the same reason). Likewise, although 59% approved of the suspension from the Party of Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, only one-quarter judged the remarks leading to his suspension to be anti-Semitic and wanted him to be expelled from the Party. Data tables can be accessed via the link in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/labour-members-increasingly-bullish-on-corbyn/

Anti-Semitism (3): Attitudes of the electorate

Asked about the extent of prejudice against Jews in the UK, 29% of 1,694 Britons replied that there is a great deal or a fair amount in an online poll by YouGov for Tim Bale on 2-3 May 2016. This was five points more than in a previous survey in December 2014. Not very much prejudice was reported by 43%, none at all by 5%, with the remaining 23% unable to say. Some anti-Semitism on the part of respondents themselves was in evidence, 7% agreeing with the long-standing trope that ‘Jews have too much influence in this country’, rising to 14 per cent among UKIP supporters and 10% for men and Scottish residents. A similar overall proportion (6%) acknowledged that they would be less likely to vote for a political party led by a Jew and also disagreed with the proposition that ‘a British Jew would make an equally acceptable Prime Minister as a member of any other faith’; the number was again double among UKIP voters. Almost one-third of the sample claimed to have Jewish friends, acquaintances, or work colleagues, which is a surprisingly high ratio, given that there are relatively few Jews in the country and that they are spatially concentrated.

Bale had an article about the survey in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph for 5 May 2016, which can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/labour-voters-dont-have-a-problem-with-jewish-people-but-london/

The full data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/prmzmd3z1w/TimBaleResults_160503_Anti-Semitism_W.pdf

Perceptions of Islam

A significant degree of negativity toward both Islam and Muslims has again surfaced in a poll conducted by ComRes for Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (UK) among a sample of 2,012 adult Britons interviewed online on 22-24 April 2016. Topline findings are tabulated below, in the order in which questions were asked, except for the omission of questions about understandings of the Caliphate (a central preoccupation of the sponsor), which are too complex to summarize here. It will be seen that a majority of respondents denied that Islam is compatible with British values, while a plurality disagreed it promoted peace in the UK and believed it is a negative force in the country. Only a minority acknowledged having a good grasp of Islamic traditions and beliefs, but there was little appetite to learn more or to see Islam taught more in schools. At the same time, there was acceptance that British Muslims are seriously and unfairly disadvantaged by misconceptions of Islam. The public’s long-standing desire for a separation of religion and politics was reaffirmed. Detailed computer tables, giving breaks by a range of demographics (including religious affiliation and possession of Muslim family, friends, or acquaintances), are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ahmadi-Muslims_Perceptions-of-the-Caliphate.pdf

% across	Agree	Disagree	Don’t know
Islam promotes peace in UK	32	46	22
Possess good understanding of Islamic traditions/beliefs	32	57	10
Possess Muslim family/friends/acquaintances	41	54	5
Get most of knowledge about Islam from media	55	37	8
Islam is compatible with British values	28	56	17
Islam promotes acts of violence in UK	33	51	16
Islam is a violent religion	28	57	14
Most people in UK have negative view of Islam	72	15	13
Islam is a negative force in UK	43	40	17
Would like to know more about Islamic traditions	36	49	15
More should be taught about Islam in UK schools	38	47	15
Misconceptions of Islam negatively impact quality of life of British Muslims	67	18	15
Misconceptions of Islam negatively impact quality of life of all Britons	60	24	16
Extremist views/actions conducted in Islam’s name by Muslim minority unfairly impact perceptions of Muslims	78	12	11
No place in UK politics for religious influence of any kind	62	23	15
UK Muslims do not have unifying figurehead	45	17	38

Admiration for global religious figures

Of the three international religious leaders included in YouGov’s latest 30-nation ranking of most admired living figures, the Dalai Lama took a larger share of the vote than the Pope in 19 countries, including the United Kingdom, the Dalai Lama performing especially strongly in Australia, France, Germany, and Norway. The Pope out-performed the Dalai Lama in nine countries, most impressively in the Philippines, while in Argentina and New Zealand the two leaders were tied. Internationally, the Pope has fallen seven places since last year’s rankings, suggesting his influence may be on the wane. The veteran evangelist Billy Graham, mostly out of the limelight these days, predictably trailed the other two religious leaders, except in Egypt (where he came first of the three) and in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States (where he came second). In the United Kingdom, which Graham has missioned on several occasions, his percentage share of admiration was below the global mean, whereas for Pope Francis it was slightly above. Of course, in virtually all countries the lists were dominated by secular names. Statistics for religious figures alone are tabulated below. Topline results for all figures for all participating nations, together with an explanation of methodology, can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/wma-2016/

% share of admiration	Pope Francis	Dalai Lama	Billy Graham
Global mean	3.0	4.3	1.6
Argentina	7.0	7.0	1.0
Australia	4.8	11.4	2.1
Brazil	1.9	8.4	2.0
Canada	7.8	5.8	2.4
China	0.4	NA	0.2
Denmark	1.7	9.9	0.4
Egypt	0.7	0.6	0.9
Finland	2.3	7.0	0.8
France	7.7	10.0	0.1
Germany	1.3	10.0	0.3
Hong Kong	4.2	2.6	0.7
India	2.2	2.9	0.9
Indonesia	1.8	2.8	0.8
Malaysia	1.4	2.0	0.8
Mexico	3.7	9.1	0.8
Morocco	0.2	0.7	0.2
New Zealand	5.6	5.6	2.7
Norway	7.7	10.0	0.1
Pakistan	0.1	0.4	0.0
Philippines	20.7	2.8	1.7
Russia	1.1	2.8	0.1
Saudi Arabia	0.6	0.5	0.3
Singapore	3.4	2.5	1.7
South Africa	2.0	5.4	3.2
Spain	2.2	7.4	0.4
Sweden	2.0	8.7	0.3
Thailand	1.8	4.5	0.2
United Arab Emirates	4.1	2.0	0.9
United Kingdom	3.5	4.1	1.1
United States	8.2	3.7	5.2

Trust in religious leaders

In a separate YouGov study for YouGov@Cambridge, three-fifths of 1,742 Britons interviewed on 13-14 March 2016 said they had limited (32%) or no trust (28%) in religious leaders in general to tell the truth, peaking at 73% among those judging the current political system to be broken. Just 30% expressed a great deal or fair amount of trust in religious leaders, with marked contrasts between 18-24s (20%) and over-65s (43%) and between those thinking the political system works well (43%) and that it is broken (22%). Comparisons with a somewhat eclectic list of other groups are shown in the table, below.

% degree of trust to tell truth	Great deal/fair amount	Not much	Not at all
Friends	89	7	0
Family members	89	6	1
Academics	64	22	5
People you meet in general	50	36	6
UK military leaders	40	32	17
Religious leaders	30	32	28
Trade union leaders	24	37	27
Journalists	18	45	32
People who run large companies	17	47	27
UK government ministers	15	38	38
Senior European Union officials	13	36	40
Senior US government officials	12	38	38

The same survey explored several other matters of religious interest. Asked about the role of a ‘higher force’ (such as God, fate, or destiny) in their own lives, 5% assessed that everything which happened to them was caused by this force, 8% that most of what happened was so caused, and 22% that some of what happened was so caused. That made 35% according some role to a higher force against 38% denying it had any influence at all, the remaining 27% being undecided between the options on offer. Men (45%) and 18-24s (48%) were most likely to refute the intervention of a higher force in their lives. Membership of church or religious organizations during the past five years was reported by 8% of respondents overall, rising to 13% of over-65s and 14% of Scots. Given a list of possible conspiracy theories, the suggestion that official accounts of the Holocaust are a lie, with the number of Jews killed being exaggerated, was strenuously refuted – merely 2% agreed with the proposition (albeit 5% of UKIP voters).

Data tables for the poll can be accessed via the link at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/27/conspiracies/

Dying

Britons claim to feel far more comfortable about discussing religion with their family and friends (80%) than they do sex (50%), according to the latest poll by ComRes for the Dying Matters Coalition, for which 2,085 adults were interviewed online on 15-17 April 2016. There is also greater willingness to discuss religion than either dying (64%) or money (78%), albeit slightly more reticence than about politics (82%) or immigration (85%). Just 17% say they would feel uncomfortable talking about religion, and no more than 19% among any demographic sub-group (the Welsh being most reluctant). However, when it comes to factors potentially ensuring a ‘good death’, ‘having your religious/spiritual needs met’ is rated as the least important of the six options, with a mean score of 5.29 on a six-point scale, the list topped by ‘being pain free’ on 2.44. Addressing religious and spiritual needs is judged the single most important factor by only 5% of respondents overall, and no more than 6% in any sub-group. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NCPC_Public-polling-2016_Data-tables.pdf

Places of worship and community

Places of worship are accorded a very low priority by the public in shaping a local community, according to a recent survey commissioned by TSB Bank, for which OnePoll surveyed 4,000 UK adults online between 20 January and 18 March 2016. Indeed, asked which of 22 facilities and services were most essential, a place of worship came in penultimate position, attracting just 12% support, marginally ahead of a youth club on 10%. The list was headed by a post office (74%) and a bank (73%). Even fewer, 9% of men and 8% of women, said that the existence of easily accessible places of worship was a factor they liked about their current home. Full data tables from the poll are not in the public domain, but headline findings appear in a report from TSB at:

http://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/tsb-home-reports.pdf

Brexit

This will be the last edition of Counting Religion in Britain before United Kingdom voters decide on 23 June 2016 whether they wish the country to remain a member of the European Union (EU) or not. So, it seems appropriate to review the latest evidence about referendum voting intentions by religion. It comes from Lord Ashcroft’s online survey of 5,009 adult Britons interviewed between 13 and 18 May 2016. Respondents were not asked how they proposed to answer the actual question on the referendum ballot paper but about their inclination to vote, on a feeling thermometer running from 0 to 100, where 0-49 denoted a leaning towards remaining in the EU, 51-100 a leaning towards leaving, and 50 represented undecided. As the table below indicates, a majority of voters (52%) inclined towards the leave position, 14 points more than opted to remain. However, among Christians the gap in favour of leaving widened to 22%. A plurality of both non-Christians (49%) and religious nones (48%) was also in favour of leaving, albeit the margin over the remainers was very small (3% and 6%, respectively). See, further, page 92 of the data tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Euro_Poll_May16.pdf

% across	Remain	Undecided	Leave
All voters	38	10	52
Christian	34	9	56
Non-Christian	46	5	49
No religion	42	11	48

Voting intentions of Jews in the referendum, according to a different survey, are mentioned in the final paragraph of the first item in this edition, ‘Anti-Semitism (1)’, above. For Sikh views on the EU, see ‘British Sikh Report’, below.

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

English church census, 2016

Plans for another ecumenical census of church attendance in England, the first since 2005, have been abandoned, according to news reports in the Church Times and on the Churches Together in England website. The census was to have taken place in October, with a pilot scheduled for June. The plans had been devised by a steering group which has been meeting since autumn 2015 under the chairpersonship of the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker. But they had to be aborted after several major denominations, including most recently the Church of England itself, indicated their unwillingness to sign up to the administrative resource implications. News stories about the cancellation of the census can be found at:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/13-may/news/uk/church-census-2016-cancelled-after-c-of-e-drops-out

http://www.cte.org.uk/Articles/468006/Home/News/Latest_news_articles/Proposed_Church_Census.aspx

http://www.cte.org.uk/Groups/273292/Home/Resources/Proposed_2016_Church/Proposed_2016_Church.aspx

Sermons

The overwhelming majority (88%) of 1,800 UK churchgoers and church leaders interviewed online by Christian Research in early May disagreed with the suggestion that preaching a sermon in church is outdated. However, sermons in excess of half an hour in length appealed to only 10% of the sample, more so to men (14%) than women (6%) and to those aged 25-34 (19%) than over-65s (9%). In reality, 15% of sermons were reported as exceeding 30 minutes, the most common length (44%) being from 10 to 20 minutes. Regarding priorities for content, most emphasis (44%) was placed on biblical exposition, by men (49%) more than women (39%). Practical application was second in significance (40%), albeit preferred by more women (44%) than men (36%). Neither sex attached much importance to humour or anecdote in sermons. Four-fifths of worshippers did not mind whether the preacher was male or female, but one-fifth favoured a man in the pulpit. The research was commissioned by the Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) in the run-up to CRE International at the ExCeL Centre in London on 17-20 May, which featured a Sermon of the Year competition. As with virtually all Christian Research polling via its Resonate panel, few data have entered the public domain, but CRE has a press release at:

https://www.creonline.co.uk/news/preachers-told-give-us-content-over-comedy-please/

Church Commissioners annual report

The Church Commissioners, who support the mission and ministry of the Church of England from the proceeds of a diverse investment of £7 billion, have published their annual report and financial statements for 2015, entitled Investing in the Church’s Growth. The overall return on this investment last year was in excess of 8%, not far short of the annual average of almost 10% over the past 30 years, and well ahead of inflation. The Commissioners’ total expenditure in 2015 was £218.5 million, amounting to 15% of all spending across the Church, with their biggest single outlay (56%) being on clergy pensions (for service prior to 1998). Media coverage has focused disproportionately on the fact that Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, is shown among the Commissioners’ 20 most valuable equity assets, despite frequent accusations against Google that it fails to pay its fair share of UK tax. The report is available for download at:

https://churchofengland.org/media/2492846/churchcommissionersar2015.pdf

Fresh Expressions of church in the Diocese of Sheffield

An analysis of 56 Fresh Expressions of church (fxC) started in the Diocese of Sheffield between 1992 and 2014 has been prepared by George Lings and published by the Church Army’s Research Unit. Nearly all (47) of these fxCs are still in existence, adding 13% to the average weekly attendance in the diocese’s parish churches. Of the 2,450 fxC attenders, 35% are existing Christians, 27% dechurched, and 39% non-churched. The report is available at:

http://www.sheffield.anglican.org/UserFiles/File///CARU_Research_report_19_Sheffield_Diocese.pdf

Church of Scotland statistics

Church of Scotland statistics for the year-ending 31 December 2015, which were reported to the General Assembly meeting in Edinburgh this month, revealed a continuing decline. There were 14,788 fewer members in 2015 than 2014, a decrease of 4%, this being the net figure of 6,330 admissions and 21,118 removals from the rolls. Half the removals were as a result of deaths, which were nine times as numerous as new members received on profession of faith. The Church conducted 21,235 funerals during the course of the year, equivalent to 37% of all deaths in Scotland. There were only 3,591 baptisms, a far cry from the peak of 51,767 in 1962. Indeed, media coverage of the General Assembly highlighted the intention to give serious consideration to online baptisms (for example, via Skype or over the phone), which are already popular in America, to stem the fall. The headline statistics can be found in Appendix X of the General Assembly’s Order of Proceedings at:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/32879/Order_of_Proceedings.pdf

Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has released a summary report on its 2014-15 ‘data survey’, which was initially prepared for consideration by its Leaders’ Conference in November 2015. The FIEC was founded in 1922 as an umbrella organization for non-denominational and unattached churches and missions. It currently represents 559 ‘church gatherings’ in Great Britain and is continuing to grow. The ‘data survey’ revealed that 39,000 individuals (31,000 adults and 8,000 young people under 18) attend FIEC churches on a typical Sunday morning, an increase of 10% since a similar survey in 2003. The number worshipping at least monthly (and thus considered to be regular attenders) is, at 46,000, almost one-fifth more. Church membership stood at 27,000 in 2014-15, equivalent to 59% of regular adult attenders compared with 64% in 2003. Most (54%) of FIEC churches have fewer than 35 members, the smaller the church, the more likely it is to be in numerical decline. The proportion of Sunday attendances in the morning has risen from 58% in 1989 to 70% today, while the number of churches holding evening services has fallen over the same period, from 93% to 77%. The ratio of young people in FIEC congregations has reduced from 32% to 20% since 1989, with 13% of churches having no young people in the pews and 53% reporting no baptisms in the past year. One in seven attenders is aged 75 or over. A further data survey is planned towards the end of 2016. The summary report for 2014-15 can be found at:

https://fiec.org.uk/docs/FIEC_How_are_we_looking.pdf

British Sikh Report

British Sikh Report, 2016 is the fourth annual edition of a survey overseen by a group of Sikh professionals, and conducted (mainly online) in late 2015 and early 2016 among a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 1,416 adult Sikhs in the United Kingdom. Britain’s place in the world was a special theme of this year’s study. On membership of the European Union (EU), 57% of British Sikhs were in favour of remaining (mostly subject to reform of the EU, the survey being conducted before the British government’s agreement with the EU in February 2016), 12% wanted to leave the EU, with 31% undecided. However, 54% disagreed with allowing an unlimited number of EU migrants into the country, and 67% wanted their access to benefits to be limited. On immigration generally, although 59% agreed that migrants made a positive contribution to society, 67% feared that public services could not cope with the current level of net influx, and 53% that diversity and cohesion would be adversely affected by it. Only 32% supported Britain taking in more refugees (with 39% opposed), albeit 51% approved of greater help being given to refugees already in Europe. Other topics covered were ethno-religious self-identity, relevance of caste, observance of the Panj Kakkars, charitable giving and volunteering, attitudes to British military involvement in Syria and the retention of a nuclear deterrent, and demographics (including employment status and highest educational attainment). Gurbachan Singh Jandu contributes an article on ‘Britain’s Sikhs in 2016: A Community with Society in Mind’ (pp. 5-12). British Sikh Report, 2016 is available to download at:

http://www.britishsikhreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/British-Sikh-Report-2016.pdf

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

2021 census

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed that it intends to include a question on religious affiliation in the 2021 population census of England and Wales, using the same wording as in 2011, to ensure continuity in reporting with both 2001 and 2011 results. A primary driver for so doing is to enable organizations to meet their duties under the Equality Act 2010, which defines religion as a protected characteristic. Following public consultation, ONS is declining to extend the question, noting: ‘While data users proposed that additional information about philosophical belief should also be collected, testing ahead of the 2011 Census demonstrated that including philosophical beliefs within the question changed how respondents thought about religion. This led to them providing answers on religious belief rather than affiliation. It is therefore not intended to expand the scope of the religion question to include this aspect of the protected characteristic.’ The statement appears in section 3.9 of The 2021 Census: Assessment of Initial User Requirements on Content for England and Wales – Response to Consultation, which is available (in English and Welsh) at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/consultations/the2021censusinitialviewoncontentforenglandandwales

Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2014

Scottish Surveys Core Questions combines into a single dataset the answers to identical questions asked of an aggregate 21,000 respondents in the annual Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, the Scottish Health Survey, and the Scottish Household Survey. The report and tables for 2014, the third year of the series, have just been published by the Scottish Government, with religion as one of the 19 core questions. Overall, 44% of the Scottish population had no religion, 52% was Christian (29% Church of Scotland, 15% Roman Catholic, 8% other denominations), and 3% non-Christian. Religious affiliation was used as a variable for analysing the incidence of general health, long-term limiting health conditions, smoking, mental wellbeing, unpaid care, local crime rates, and confidence in the police. The apparent statistical significance of some religious correlates was weakened when results were standardized by age, reflecting the disproportionately elderly profile of Church of Scotland affiliates and the younger profile of nones and Muslims. However, even after age standardization was applied, the greatest prevalence of smoking was still found among Catholics and nones. More details at:

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/05/7615/downloads

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Protestant and Catholic differences

‘Protestant and Catholic Distinctions in Secularization’ are examined by Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, with particular reference to the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, in Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2016, pp. 165-80. The underlying data derive from cross-sectional national surveys for the period 1985-2012, including 86,000 respondents to British Social Attitudes Surveys. In all three countries, there has been a steep decline in Protestant affiliation over time, but the remaining Protestants have generally seen heightened rates of religious practice (measured by attendance at religious services and prayer) when compared with remaining Catholics. With regard to orthodox religious beliefs, both remaining Protestants and remaining Catholics exhibit increasing levels of believing. For the incidence of religious behaviour and believing, Protestants now surpass Catholics in the United States and Canada and are said to be on track to do so in Britain. The societal implications of the ‘religious core’, at once diminished yet strengthened, are briefly assessed. Access options to the article, and to supplementary tables available online, are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2016.1152660

Catholic disaffiliation

British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys, in this case for 1991-2011 (and especially 2007-11), have also been mined by Stephen Bullivant in his study of ‘Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2016, pp. 181-97. Disaffiliates are defined as those who were brought up as Catholics but no longer identify as such, either because they regard themselves as belonging to some other religion (switchers) or to none at all (leavers). A much smaller proportion of Catholics (38%) was found to have disaffiliated than was the case with other mainstream denominations, some of the lowest retention rates being among Baptists and Methodists, only 36% and 34% of whom (respectively) stayed loyal to their faith of upbringing. Nevertheless, Catholic disaffiliations increased over time, from 25% for pre-1945 cohorts to 40% for post-1945 cohorts (a possible Vatican II effect, Bullivant suggests), and dwarfed, in the ratio of ten to one, converts to Catholicism. Men raised as Catholics were one and a half times more likely than women to disaffiliate. Moreover, a large contingent of the overall 62% of Catholics retaining their cradle identity rarely or never practised their religion, while a significant minority were even atheists or agnostics. Access options to the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2016.1152664

A somewhat broader and more up-to-date account of results from this research, focusing on England and Wales and drawing upon BSA surveys for 2012-14, can be found in Bullivant’s Contemporary Catholicism in England and Wales: A Statistical Report Based on Recent British Social Attitudes Survey Data (Catholic Research Forum Reports, No. 1, London: Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, St Mary’s University Twickenham, 2016, 18pp.). Its four chapters explore: religion in England and Wales; the Catholic population; retention and conversion; and church attendance. Catholic data are disaggregated by gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Extrapolating from BSA, Bullivant suggests that the Catholic community of England and Wales numbers (professedly) 3,800,000 against 6,200,000 brought up as Catholics. This report is freely available to download at:

http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/contemporary-catholicism.htm

Catholics and faith schools

‘Attitudes Towards Faith-Based Schooling amongst Roman Catholics in Britain’ are explored by Ben Clements in an online first article in British Journal of Religious Education. The underlying data derive from a survey of 1,062 adult Catholics in Britain by YouGov for the Westminster Faith Debates in 2013. Some support is found for the ‘solidarity of the religious’ thesis, with the more orthodox Catholics (in terms of their religious practice and beliefs) showing a greater propensity to endorse publicly-funded faith school provision for Christians and non-Christians alike. The effects of moral attitudes and socio-demographic variables (except for ethnicity) were weaker and less consistent. Access options to the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2015.1128393

Urban and rural Anglican dioceses

Owen Edwards has proposed a new model for defining rural, mixed, and urban Anglican dioceses in England and Wales, based upon 10 statistical factors, in comparison with an earlier (2001) model devised by David Lankshear. ‘Classifying “Rural” and “Urban” Dioceses of the Church of England and the Church in Wales: Introducing the Ten-Factor Model’ is published in Rural Theology, Vol. 14, No. 1, May 2016, pp. 53-65, and access options to the article are explained at:

http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14704994.2016.1154729

Polarized Jews

Jews are likely to hold more divergent and stronger views than non-Jews across a wide variety of social issues. This is according to a comparison of a 1995 study of British Jewish opinion, undertaken by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys for 1993-94, both of which permitted respondents to choose between moderate or more extreme positions in answer to 14 identically-worded questions. No subsequent survey of the British Jewish community appears to have deliberately replicated BSA questions in this way. In all but one of the 14 cases, the Jewish sample exhibited a wider spread of attitudes than BSA interviewees, which was statistically significant in 11 instances. Competing non-religious (socio-demographic and language norm) explanations for the variance are considered and dismissed. This greater polarization of Jewish opinion conforms to Jewish folklore, religious narratives, and tropes of Jewish humour. An open access version of Stephen Miller, ‘Are Jews More Polarised in Their Social Attitudes than Non-Jews? Empirical Evidence from the 1995 JPR Study’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57, Nos 1 and 2, 2015, pp. 70-6 is available at:

http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/12694/1/2%20Miller.pdf

Digital methodologies

Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion are explored in a new book edited by Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and Suha Shakkour (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, xxvi + 227pp., ISBN 978-1-4725-7115-1, £21.99, paperback). It comprises 15 fairly short chapters by 25 contributors (10 of them from the United Kingdom) which tease out the methodological lessons to be learned from online research which they have conducted, identifying key tips for future practitioners. There is also a useful bibliography of relevant primary and secondary literature (pp. 197-223). The empirical findings of the research are only incidentally reported. Digital methodologies employed, besides the fairly obvious use of online surveys, include Facebook, YouTube, videoconferencing, apps, crowdsourcing, and gaming. They can be helpful in targeting minority and otherwise hard-to-reach populations, particularly in non-Christian communities, which are the subject of several of these essays (for example, Jasjit Singh’s contribution on the religious engagement of young Sikhs). However, in statistical terms, digital research, although relatively inexpensive, often struggles to achieve representative samples and thus to generate scientifically robust data. This even applies to online surveys, which frequently rely upon self-selecting respondents. The book’s webpage can be found at:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-methodologies-in-the-sociology-of-religion-9781472571151/

Implicit religion and adolescents

Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny have examined the late Edward Bailey’s notion of the persistence of implicit religion among a sample of 8,619 adolescents aged 13-15 in England and Wales who participated in the Teenage Religion and Values Survey and who had no formal religious affiliation (nones) nor practice (never attended religious services). Implicit religion was operationalized as attachment to traditional Christian rites of passage (religious baptism, marriage, and funeral). Marriage in church was sought by 43%, a church funeral by 42%, and baptism of children by 21%. It was found that young people who remained attached to these rites displayed higher levels of psychological wellbeing than those who were not attached, suggesting, the authors contend, that implicit religion serves similar psychological functions as explicit religion. ‘Implicit Religion and Psychological Wellbeing: A Study among Adolescents without Formal Religious Affiliation or Practice’ is published in Implicit Religion, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016, pp. 61-78, and access options are explained at:

https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IR/article/view/30009

Journalists and religion

The United Kingdom’s 64,000 professional journalists are not an especially religious lot, even less so than the population as a whole. This is according to a new report from the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Neil Thurman, Alessio Cornia, and Jessica Kunert, Journalists in the UK. A random sample of journalists drawn from the Gorkana Media Database was invited to complete an online survey in December 2015, of whom 715 responded. The majority (61%) said that they had no religion, 74% that religious belief was of little (22%) or no importance (52%) to them, and 76% that religious considerations had little (28%) or no influence (48%) on their work. Moreover, as many as 45% expressed little (27%) or no trust (18%) in religious leaders, only 11% having a great deal or complete trust in them. The relatively low religiosity of journalists may be at least partially explained by the fact that they are disproportionately white and university-educated. The report is available at:

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Journalists%20in%20the%20UK.pdf

George Whitefield’s voice

Christian history is full of examples of evangelists who have preached to large crowds in the open air without any amplification of their voice. Historians have often doubted whether these crowds were quite as large as estimated at the time and, in any case, whether the preacher would actually have been audible. Now matters have been put to the test in respect of George Whitefield, the great transatlantic preacher of the eighteenth century, who is said to have attracted as many as 80,000 people on a single occasion. Braxton Boren, a graduate in both physics and music technology, has used contemporary experimental and topographical data combined with modern simulation techniques to calculate the maximum intelligible range of Whitefield’s field preaching in Philadelphia and London. He concludes that, based on Whitefield’s vocal level, he could have reached a crowd of 50,000 under ideal acoustic conditions and still half as many even when noise levels were higher or crowd density lower. Braxton’s ‘Whitefield’s Voice’ is published in George Whitefield: Life, Context, and Legacy, edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 167-89.

British Religion in Numbers

The annual update of the British Religion in Numbers (BRIN) source database has just taken place (it was deliberately delayed to allow the BRIN website to be migrated to a new platform, and, as part of that, for the database itself to be moved from MySQL to WordPress software). New entries have been created for 158 British religious statistical sources (disproportionately sample surveys), of which 121 date from 2015, 27 from 2014, and 10 from previous years. This brings the total of sources described in the database to 2,552. The 2015 sources include many important surveys, a very large number relating to Muslims, Islam, or Islamism (notably Islamic State), with a smaller cluster of polls exploring Jewish opinion and the attitudes of Britons toward Jews and anti-Semitism. Sources can be browsed at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/source-list/

An advanced search facility is available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/search/

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7894: What about YOUth? Survey, 2014

The ‘What about YOUth?’ survey was commissioned by the Health and Social Care Information Centre and conducted by Ipsos MORI through a combination of self-completion postal and online questionnaires between 23 September 2014 and 9 January 2015. It investigated the health and wellbeing of a random sample of 15-year-olds in England, which can be analysed by a raft of background variables, one of which was religious affiliation. The substantial size of the dataset (120,115 interviews, representing a response rate of 40%) makes it of particular interest. A catalogue description, with links to technical and other information, is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7894&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7963: Scottish Household Survey, 2013 and SN 7964: Scottish Household Survey, 2014

The Scottish Household Survey, initiated in 1999, is undertaken on behalf of the Scottish Government by a polling consortium led by Ipsos MORI. Information is collected about the composition, characteristics, attitudes, and behaviour of private households and individuals in Scotland; and about the physical condition of their homes. For the 2013 survey (January 2013-February 2014) data were gathered on 10,650 households and 9,920 adults; for 2014 (January 2014-March 2015) on, respectively, 10,630 and 9,800. The specifically religious content of the questionnaire for both years covered: religion belonged to; experience of discrimination or harassment on religious, sectarian, or other grounds; and incidence of volunteering for religious and other groups. Catalogue descriptions for the datasets are available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7963&type=Data%20catalogue

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7964&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7972: British Election Study, 2015 – Face-to-Face Post-Election Survey

The series of British Election Studies originated in 1963, and the post-election survey for 2015 (there was also an internet panel) was based on face-to-face interviews with a probability sample of 2,987 British electors, 1,567 of whom also filled out a self-completion module. Fieldwork was conducted by GfK NOP between 8 May and 13 September 2015, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council allocated to a research team at the Universities of Manchester, Oxford, and Nottingham. Respondents were asked whether they regarded themselves as belonging to any religion and, if so, how often they attended religious services other than for rites of passage. These are important background variables for analysing the answers to the recurrent and non-recurrent questions on political and related topics. A catalogue description for the dataset is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7972&type=Data%20catalogue

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

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Counting Religion in Britain, March 2016

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 6, March 2016 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 6 March 2016

OPINION POLLS

Hope Not Hate

Hope Not Hate, founded in 2004 to provide a positive antidote to the politics of hate, was responsible for the most detailed opinion poll on religious issues whose results were released in full this month. Online fieldwork was conducted by Populus among a sample of 4,015 adults in England on 1-8 February 2016. An overview of the findings can be found in Robert Ford and Nick Lowles, Fear & Hope, 2016: Race, Faith and Belonging in Today’s England, running to 60 pages and full of bar charts, which can be purchased from the Hope Not Hate website, priced £3 for the ebook and £4 (inclusive of postage) for the printed version. Full data, extending to 436 tables over 541 pages, and incorporating breaks by a range of standard demographics (among them religious affiliation) and segmentation by six identity tribes, are freely available at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/polls/

Overall, compared with the Fear and Hope, 2011 report, England was said to have become a more tolerant and confident multicultural society than five years ago, with attitudes towards race, immigration, and religious hate speech all becoming more positive, due mainly to growing optimism about the economy and changing demographics. However, Muslims continued to be regarded as a uniquely different and problematic religious minority, albeit concerns about them were at a lower level than in 2011. There was majority support for a range of measures to promote greater integration by Muslims.

The richness of the data source precludes comprehensive analysis here, but readers may find it helpful to have a complete checklist of the specifically religious survey questions, as follows:

Q.7	Religious affiliation
Q.16	Religion and other influences as source of identity
Q.18	Compatibility of British values with religious faith
Q.19	Words/phrases (including Christian teachings) marking out British people
Q.20	Respect for local religious leaders/other local institutions
Q.27a	Attitudes to influence of religion on laws/policies
Q.27b	Personal importance of religion
Q.27c	Perceptions of religion as force for good
Q.27d	Attitudes to tolerance of different religious/cultural beliefs
Q.29	Perceived similarity to self of Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.30	Frequency of contact with Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.31	Know well people who Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs
Q.32a	Extent to which Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs create problems in UK
Q.32b	Extent to which Jews/Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Sikhs create problems in world
Q.35a	Attitudes to relative seriousness of religious/racial abuse
Q.35b	Perceptions of relative extent of religious/racial abuse in Britain
Q.35c	Perceptions of increasing religious abuse in Britain
Q.35d	Attitudes to free speech about religion
Q.37	Attitudes to new party wanting, inter alia, to challenge Islamic extremism and restrict building of mosques
Q.38	Attitudes to campaign against religious/racial extremism
Q.39	Attitudes to campaign against new mosque
Q.40	Attitudes to violence by either side in connection with new mosque
Q.41a	Perception that Islam poses serious threat to Western civilization
Q.41b	Perception that discrimination serious problem for Muslims in Britain
Q.41c	Perception that media too negative to Muslims
Q.41d	Perception that Muslim communities need to do more about Islamic extremism
Q.41e	Perception that most Muslims have successfully integrated into British society
Q.41f	Agreement that wrong to blame entire religion for actions of a few extremists
Q.42	Reaction to seeing/hearing Muslims associated with violence/terrorism
Q.43	Sympathy for English national/Muslim extremists when violence between them
Q.44a	Support for more positive media coverage of Islam/Muslim communities
Q.44b	Support for active promotion of British values within Muslim communities
Q.44c	Support for closer monitoring of faith schools, including Muslim faith schools
Q.44d	Support for measures to enable Muslim immigrants to speak English
Q.44e	Support for high-profile campaign against anti-Muslim hatred

Religion and the European Union referendum

A by-product of the Hope Not Hate/Populus survey in England (see preceding item) is that it furnishes the first known evidence in the current European Union (EU) referendum campaign about the attitudes of different religious groups to whether the UK should remain in or leave the EU. The EU-related data will be found in Tables 364-388. A selection is presented below for the three main groups (Christians, Muslims, and nones). Unfortunately, cell sizes for other religions are too small to be statistically reliable. The voting question utilized a scale from 0 (will definitely vote for the UK to remain in the EU) to 100 (will definitely vote to leave), which was subsequently compressed by Populus into three categories (shown here). All the questions suggest that professing Christians are currently more likely than average to take up Eurosceptic positions, with Muslims the most Europhile. However, these views will be the product of a multiplicity of factors, of which religion on its own may not be especially significant.

% down	All adults	Christians	Muslims	No religion
Voting intention
Lean to voting for UK to remain in EU	34	31	40	38
More undecided	27	26	30	27
Lean to voting for UK to leave EU	39	43	31	35
Mean score	52.0	55.2	44.8	48.8
Britain does best within EU
Agree	41	39	54	40
Disagree	21	24	6	20
Britain can be just as prosperous outside EU
Agree	44	49	29	38
Disagree	25	24	36	26
Leaving EU would be security risk
Agree	44	41	64	46
Disagree	27	30	7	24
Britain should be outside EU even if economically worse off
Agree	44	49	30	49
Disagree	23	21	32	24
Leaving EU would allow Britain full control of borders
Agree	57	61	45	53
Disagree	15	14	18	17

Freedom of religion

Asked to select the single most important of 30 possible human rights, just 1% of Britons and of the publics of six other European nations prioritized the right to pursue a religion of choice (or none); in the United States, the figure was 7%. Allowed to pick four or five rights, 26% of Britons opted for religious freedom (peaking at 37% of Liberal Democrat voters), the overall proportion comparable with five of the other European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden), albeit much less than in the United States (53%). British fieldwork for the survey was conducted online by YouGov among 1,700 adults on 22-23 February 2016. International topline results and detailed British data tables are available via the post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/which-rights-matter-most/

Belief at Eastertide

Using YouGov Profiles data, YouGov has reported on the level of belief in 14 spiritual or paranormal phenomena among 12,000 people who affiliate with Christianity and a control set of 39,000 adults. From the list of phenomena, Britons overall were found most likely definitely to believe in fate and alien life, with belief in ghosts and karma more prevalent than in a creator or heaven. Only 41% of Christians definitely believed in a creator (while 18% did not), less than in fate or destiny (46%). Christians also tended to identify with the more comfortable elements of faith, 44% definitely believing in heaven against 27% in hell, and 35% in angels against 24% in the devil. Additional analysis of YouGov Profiles for 234,000 adults showed Christians and religious nones neck and neck at 46% each, with other religions on 8%. For more information, see the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/26/o-we-of-little-faith/

Good Samaritan

As part of its ongoing initiative ‘Pass It On’ (to hand down the stories and messages of the Bible to future generations), the Bible Society has been asking Britons about the contemporary meaning of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). It commissioned YouGov to run two online surveys, one among 2,057 adults aged 18 and over on 4-7 December 2015, the other among 745 children aged 8-15 on 4-9 December 2015. Seven in ten adults said they had read or heard about the story of the Good Samaritan, with 40% (including 46% of women but just 27% of 18-24s) agreeing that educating school pupils about it would help create a kinder society. However, only 13% of adults had actually passed this story on to their own children, rising to 27% of over-55s. Majorities of both adults (64%) and children (58%) claimed to be worried that Britain is becoming a less kind society, while 86% and 89% respectively thought the country would benefit if people were more willing to help each other. In practice, given various scenarios outlined in the poll, there were clear limitations to respondents’ preparedness to help strangers in need in a public place, particularly if it might cost them money and the environment appeared unsafe. Lending somebody a mobile phone to make a call seemed an especially challenging prospect, even when the stranger was a religious leader. No data tables are available online as yet, but a report – Pass It On: The Good Samaritan in Modern Britain – The Power of the Parable in the 21st Century – is available to download at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/files/good_samaritan_report_03083845.pdf

Easter eggs

Four in five (79%) of Britons disagree with the suggestion that manufacturers of chocolate eggs should avoid using the word Easter on their packaging, according to a survey of 2,050 adults conducted online by YouGov on 1-2 March 2016 on behalf of the Meaningful Chocolate Company (which has made The Real Easter Egg since 2010, including a copy of the Easter story in the box). One in nine (11%) of people agrees that Easter should be dropped from the packaging, while one in ten is undecided. The poll was commissioned in response to a tendency by some manufacturers to remove the word Easter from their boxes or to reduce it in size and reposition it on the back of the box. Data tables from the survey are not in the public domain, but there is a news report at:

http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/Stories/National?storyaction=view&storyid=2154

During the fortnight after the story broke, there was growing public and media outrage that chocolate manufacturers were airbrushing Easter from their eggs. Manufacturers were put on the spot to explain themselves, they were mocked on social media sites, and even MPs joined in the fray. Had the poll been undertaken a bit later and nearer Easter, against this backdrop, probably the majority in favour of reinstating the prominence of Easter on chocolate eggs would have been even more overwhelming.

Trust in the Church

The most recently published trust in institutions module of nfpSynergy’s Charity Awareness Monitor, conducted in April 2015 among 1,000 adults aged 16 and over, revealed that 36% of Britons trust the Church quite a lot (26%) or a great deal (10%), a similar proportion to previous years (the survey has been running annually since 2006). The majority (55%) trusts the Church very little (27%) or not much (28%). The most trusted institutions are the armed forces (77%) and National Health Service (70%). Slides containing topline results can be downloaded (after free registration) from:

http://nfpsynergy.net/press-release/trust-charities-now-lowest-eight-years-scotland-and-northern-ireland-have-higher-trust

Papal popularity

In a WIN/Gallup International survey of the publics of 64 nations at the end of 2015 but not released until Easter, 54% overall entertained a very or somewhat favourable opinion of Pope Francis, 12% held an unfavourable view, with 34% undecided. In Britain, where the fieldwork was conducted online by ORB International among a sample of 1,000 adults on 19-28 November 2015, the plurality (46%) was neutral, with 37% favourable and 17% unfavourable. Britain ranked 46 out of 64 in terms of favourability towards the Pope, just behind Sweden and just ahead of Greece, the whole list being headed by Portugal (94%) and Philippines (93%). Not unexpectedly, favourability tended to be highest in predominantly Catholic countries. The proportion of Britons who were very favourable to the Pope was 9%, not much more than one-third of the global average of 24%, although the figures were an identical 5% for those holding a very unfavourable opinion. A report can be found at:

http://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/Opinion_Pope_Francis_Q8_Press_Release_v16-3-2016___.pdf

Topline results for each country are at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s=pope-more-popular-than-world-leaders-easter-2016-poll

The same survey also asked about favourability toward other world leaders. In Britain, Barack Obama (66%), David Cameron (42%), and Angela Merkel (40%) were all given higher ratings than the Pope, François Hollande the same (37%). These comparative data have been online for some time at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/global-q4-only-final.pdf

Islamic State (1)

A poll by YouGov conducted among an online sample of 2,459 Britons on 23 March 2016, the day after the attacks by Islamic State (IS) in Brussels left 32 people dead, found 77% very or fairly worried that IS would attempt a terrorist attack on British soil, just 4% saying they were not worried at all. Concern was highest among over-60s (86%), women (85%), Conservative voters (84%), and Londoners (83%). Only 11% thought the war against IS was being won, while three times that number agreed IS was actually getting stronger, including 48% of UKIP supporters. A blog about the snap survey, incorporating a link to the full results, is available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/23/were-failing-fight-against-isis-public/

Islamic State (2)

There have been calls recently for the killing by Islamic State (IS) of Christians and Yazidis (a Kurdish-speaking religious minority) in Iraq and Syria to be formally recognized as genocide. The calls have thus far been resisted by the British Government but appear to enjoy the support of a majority of the British public, according to an online poll by ComRes among 2,023 adults on 16-17 March 2016, commissioned by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Asked what the Government should be doing about the killing of Christians and Yazidis by IS, 63% thought it should be officially recognizing the killing as genocide, 69% wanted it to raise the issue at the United Nations Security Council with a view to onward referral to the International Criminal Court, 59% endorsed it launching its own enquiry into claims that IS had committed genocide, and 68% agreed that it should be using Britain’s broader international influence to ensure the killing is classified as genocide and the IS leadership brought to account. There was very little opposition to each of these proposed measures being taken by the Government, although about one-quarter of the population was undecided on each statement. Data tables, including breaks by religious affiliation, can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ADF_Genocide-Tables_March-2016.pdf

The Sun and Muslim opinion

In the November 2015 edition of Counting Religion in Britain, we reported on a telephone poll by Survation of 1,003 British Muslims conducted in the wake of the Islamist outrages in Paris, and of the developing row surrounding the presentation of the findings by The Sun (which commissioned the survey) in its issue of 23 November 2015. The newspaper’s reporting of the poll, particularly its suggestion of substantial sympathy among Muslims for individuals who left the country to fight on behalf of Islamic State in Syria, triggered an unusually large number of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). IPSO has now investigated the matter and has upheld the lead complaint by Muslim Engagement and Development. IPSO has ruled that The Sun ‘failed to take appropriate care in its presentation of the poll results, and as a result the coverage was significantly misleading’. Accordingly, the newspaper has been found guilty of breaching Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice and has been required by IPSO to publicize the decision, in print and online, in remedy of the breach. IPSO’s judgment can be read in full at:

https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/rulings/IPSOrulings-detail.html?id=331

Religion and gender

A helpful compilation of contemporary global data about the (generally) greater religiosity of women than men, together with an exploration of the various theories surrounding gender differences in religion (including a possible link to female labour force participation), is contained in the latest report from the Pew Research Center, The Gender Gap in Religion around the World. This was prepared under the direction of Conrad Hackett. The data on religious affiliation relate to 192 countries and derive from national censuses and surveys. Those on religious practices and belief are taken from Pew’s own surveys in 84 countries. In Britain atheists were more likely to be men (56% versus 44%), but women were 5% more likely to attend religious services weekly (15% versus 10%), 9% more likely to pray daily (23% versus 14%), and 7% more likely to say that religion was very important in their lives (25% versus 18%). Regrettably, measures of gender differences in belief in heaven, hell, and angels, which are also available for many countries, were not asked by Pew in Britain, although they have been covered by other survey agencies here. The Pew report can be downloaded at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2016/03/Religion-and-Gender-Full-Report.pdf

Meanwhile, the dataset from the Spring 2014 Pew Global Attitudes Project has been released. Questions of British religious interest concern attitudes to Jews and Muslims; opinions of Pope Francis; and the perceived threat to the world from religious and ethnic hatred. This dataset (and earlier ones) can be downloaded from:

http://www.pewglobal.org/category/datasets/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Visitor attractions

Westminster Abbey was the UK’s top ecclesiastical destination for tourism in 2015 and the fourteenth most frequented UK visitor attraction, among member organizations of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA). It drew 1,664,850 fee-paying customers, 3% fewer than in the previous year. St Paul’s Cathedral was two places behind, with 1,609,325 visitors, 10% down on 2014. Canterbury Cathedral came thirty-fourth, with 957,355 visitors, a fall of 5%. Prominent among the former monastic ruins were Fountains Abbey (371,012 visitors) and Whitby Abbey (146,277), in the care of, respectively, the National Trust and English Heritage. Several places of worship administered by the Churches Conservation Trust appeared in the bottom quartile of the 230 properties on the ALVA list, while the sole designated religious museum (St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow) attracted 143,967 free visitors, up 5%. Visitor figures for ALVA members for 2015 and all years back to 2004 are available at:

http://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423

Jewish charitable giving

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has published a new report, the first on the topic since 1998, on the charitable giving of the country’s Jews: David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, Charitable Giving among Britain’s Jews: Looking to the Future. The underlying data derive from the Institute’s 2013 National Jewish Community Survey, which elicited 3,736 responses from a self-selecting and non-probability convenience sample. A very high proportion of these respondents (93%) claimed to have given something to charity during the year prior to interview, although a much smaller number (28%) had donated more than £500. The report identified the three most important variables which predict the scale of charitable giving of British Jews as age (older Jews being both more generous and habitual donors), strength of Jewish identity and engagement, and level of income. It forecast that secularization of the mainstream Jewish population may lead to a decline in giving, as may the growth in strictly Orthodox Jewry, which will reduce the overall wealth of the Jewish community, also increasing its charitable needs. The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2016.Charitable_giving_among_Britains_Jews.pdf

Jewish health

A 2015 survey of 507 members (207 children, 300 adults, the latter disproportionately female) of Salford’s 7,500-strong strictly orthodox (Charedi) Jewish population has surfaced sundry health issues. It was sponsored by NHS Salford Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and conducted by Jonny Wineberg and Sandi Mann by means of focus groups and questionnaires. Particular concerns were raised by the researchers about immunization take-up, healthy eating, amounts of exercise (especially among men), and attitudes to mental health. Although alcohol consumption by adults was not generally a problem, 12% were classed as binge-drinkers on the Jewish Sabbath. A 54-page report of the survey can be found at:

http://archive.jpr.org.uk/download?id=2721

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Places of worship

A relatively little-known aspect of religious data is that the state collects statistics of places of worship through a process of certification to the Registrar General laid down under an Act of 1855. This is a valuable source of information, notwithstanding certain limitations, in particular that the duty only applies to England and Wales, does not extend to the Church of England and Church in Wales, and is optional (albeit certification confers certain financial advantages and is a prerequisite for subsequent registration of a building for the solemnization of marriages).

A full-page article in The Times on 28 March 2016 used the certifications for 2010 and 2016 to highlight changes in the country’s religious landscape, notably the contraction in mainstream Churches and the growth of newer manifestations of Christianity and non-Christian faiths as a consequence of inward migration. Over this six-year period, places of worship belonging to the United Reformed Church reduced by 8% and to the Methodist Church by 6%. Salvation Army, Quaker, and Roman Catholic ones were down by around 3%. On the other hand, there were more Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, up by 17% and 39% respectively, while places of worship certified to Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims increased by one-quarter. ‘For every Church of England church that has closed over the past six years, more than three Pentecostal churches and almost two mosques have opened’, the newspaper’s journalist, Kaya Burgess, reported in the piece which was variously headlined, according to edition, including as ‘Anglican Faith Sinks in Sea of Diversity’. Subscribers can read the full text at:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article4722614.ece

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Jewish and Muslim MPs

In general, MPs from a Jewish or Muslim minority background in the UK House of Commons are not statistically more likely than MPs from other backgrounds to address issues of concern for Jews or Muslims in the House of Commons. This is according to a content analysis of 3,103 Early Day Motions (EDMs) sponsored by 38 Jewish MPs and 196 by 11 Muslim MPs between 1997 and 2012 compared with a control group of EDMs tabled by non-minority MPs. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that religious background was a vastly inferior predictor of raising minority issues than ‘institutional’ factors such as holding a leadership legislative role, representation of a constituency with a substantial minority population, and length of Parliamentary service. The research is reported in Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, ‘Does Religion Count for Religious Parliamentary Representation? Evidence from Early Day Motions’, Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2016, pp. 129-52. Access options to this article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13572334.2015.1134905

In an article in the advance access edition of Parliamentary Affairs, the same author applies the same methodology to Parliamentary Questions for Written Answers (WPQs) asked by the same group of MPs over the same timescale (39,877 WPQs by the Jewish and 2,398 by the Muslim MPs). An identical conclusion is reached about the limited impact of a religious minority background on engagement with minority issues in the House of Commons. Access options to Kolpinskaya’s ‘Substantive Religious Representation in the UK Parliament: Examining Parliamentary Questions for Written Answers, 1997-2012’ are outlined at:

http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/03/pa.gsw001.abstract

London churchgoing in 1913

Late Victorian and Edwardian London had a reputation for relatively low levels of religious practice, as evidenced in the census of church attendance conducted in the capital by the Daily News in 1902-03. In 1912-13 its successor, the Daily News and Leader, attempted to replicate this census but was forced to abandon it at an early stage in the face of concerted opposition from both Anglicans and Nonconformists. In its place was substituted a survey of the religious and social work of the metropolitan churches, which was published in 1914. The story of ‘the census that never was’ has been pieced together for the first time by Clive Field, who also explains the reasons for its significance, within the context of the broader scholarly debate about whether Edwardian Britain was a ‘faith society’. ‘“A Tempest in the Teapot”: London Churchgoing in 1913 – The Census That Never Was’ appears in London Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 82-99. Access options to this article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03058034.2015.1108624

Religion in Bolton

Although Mass-Observation’s pioneering social survey of industrial Worktown (Bolton), Lancashire in the late 1930s is generally well-known, no serious investigation has hitherto taken place of its sub-project on religion. Clive Field has now published a preliminary survey of the extant and somewhat disordered documentation, enabling a basic history of the sub-project to be constructed for its principal phase in 1937-38, spanning organization, research methodology, and plans for a book which never saw the light of day. The account is underpinned by detailed references to relevant material in the Mass-Observation Archive, thereby facilitating future scholarly exploitation. Briefer descriptions are also provided of subsequent phases of Mass-Observation’s religion research in Bolton, during the early months of the Second World War and in the summer of 1960. A summative assessment finds that the overall output from the sub-project is somewhat disappointing and methodologically impoverished (notably in the limited recourse to quantification), more illuminating of religious institutions in the town than of the role of religion in the everyday lives of ordinary Boltonians, especially non-churchgoers. Access options for ‘Religion in Worktown: Anatomy of a Mass-Observation Sub-Project’, Northern History, Vol. 53, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 116-37 are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0078172X.2016.1127629

Nonconformist prosopography

Mary Riso casts light on the lives as well as the deaths of Victorian Nonconformists in her new book, The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, xvi + 276pp., ISBN 9781472446961, £65.00 hardback, also available as an ebook). It is based upon an analysis of 1,200 obituaries published between 1830 and 1880 in the magazines of four denominations, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Of course, obituaries cannot be regarded as an approximation of a cross-section of the laity of these denominations. In this instance, their limitations also include a tendency to become progressively less formulaic and less spiritual in content over the half-century covered and for their subjects to become increasingly more male and middle class. A methodological chapter (pp. 29-56) explores some of these difficulties. Setting these considerations aside, the sample is large enough to permit some quantification, with statistics appearing throughout the text and, in figure format, in appendix B (pp. 231-47). The analysis is by theme (theology; lifestyle and social mobility; social background; age at death; and religious experience) within denomination. The book’s webpage can be found at:

https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472446961

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7899: National Survey of Young People’s Well-Being, 2010

The National Survey of Young People’s Well-Being, 2010 was a collaboration between the Children’s Society and the University of York, with data collection the responsibility of the National Foundation for Educational Research. A self-completion online questionnaire was filled in, during December 2010 and January 2011, by 5,443 children aged 8-15 in years 4, 6, 8, and 10 of schools in England. It covered a range of measures of well-being and some background information, including religious affiliation (‘what would you say your religion is?’), allowing a ‘not sure’ response alongside ‘none’ and the major world faiths. The religion question does not appear to have been asked in the successor Children’s Worlds Survey, England, 2013-2014. For a full description of the 2010 dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7899&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7919: Health Survey for England, 2014

The Health Survey for England, 2014 is the twenty-fourth in a series of annual studies designed to monitor trends in the nation’s health. It is commissioned by the Information Centre for Health and Social Care and conducted by NatCen Social Research and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. It is undertaken through a combination of face-to-face interview, self-completion interview, and clinical and other measurements. A number of core health-related topics are explored each year with additional topics investigated on a more occasional basis (mental health being a special focus in 2014). A question ‘what is your religion or belief?’ was one of the background variables included in the self-completion booklet given to the 8,077 adults aged 16 and over interviewed in 2014, with reply options of no religion, Roman Catholic, other Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and any other religion. This permits analysis of the religious correlates of particular health conditions and attitudes. For a full description of the dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7919&type=Data%20catalogue

PEOPLE NEWS

Stephen Bullivant

Stephen Bullivant is the inaugural director of the new Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society which has been established at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. It will function as an international hub for research and engagement activities in the interaction between religion and economics, sociology, and political science. The Centre’s current major research projects are on the Scientific Study of Nonreligious Belief; Catholic Social Teaching, Policy, and Society; and Humanae Vitae at 50. A Catholic Research Forum also operates from the Centre, comprising a number of smaller initiatives, including a statistical profile of Catholics in England and Wales compiled from British Social Attitudes Surveys; an investigation among Catholics who no longer regularly attend Mass, in partnership with the Diocese of Portsmouth; and research into the uptake of free school meals in Catholic state schools, in collaboration with the Catholic Education Service. The Centre’s website can be found at:

http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

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Counting Religion in Britain, February 2016

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 5, February 2016 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 5 February 2016

OPINION POLLS

Prayer

Two-fifths (42%) of 2,023 Britons answered in the affirmative when asked by YouGov ‘do you ever pray?’ in an online poll on 2-3 July 2015. Of those who claimed to pray, 26% said they did so once a day or more. This information appears on the website of Prayersonthemove, an initiative coordinated by SPCK, which in February 2016 posted 3,000 prayer advertisements on the London Underground and 500 on buses in Tyne and Wear, with more advertisements to follow on buses in Birmingham later in the year. Meanwhile, the website can be found at:

http://prayersonthemove.com/

Upon enquiry, data tables are available from SPCK upon request, subject to uncontentious conditions. They reveal that, besides the basic information about the frequency of prayer, reasons for praying or not praying were also sought. Those who prayed were additionally asked the subjects of their prayers and whether they believed that prayer can be answered. SPCK also commissioned a separate survey of the incidence of prayer among an online sample of 1,027 Londoners on 17-19 September 2015.

Lent (1)

Three-quarters of people in the UK did not plan to give up anything for Lent this year, according to an online poll of 2,075 adults by YouGov for Homepride Flour on 13-14 January 2016. The remaining 25% aimed to give up something, although not all knew what, at the time of interview. Chocolate was the top forfeit, to be forsaken by 10% of the population, followed by sweets (6%), and alcohol and fizzy drinks (5% each). Those keenest on Lenten abstinence were: 25-34-year-olds (34%), residents of the North-West (32%), 18-24-year-olds (31%), and women (30%). The least observant were: residents of Yorkshire and the Humber (16%) and Wales (18%), men (20%), over-55s (20%), and residents of Eastern England (20%). Since fieldwork was conducted approximately four weeks before the start of Lent on 10 February, it is possible that good intentions never became a reality in some instances. Also, as with New Year’s resolutions, many folk may not have persisted in their abstinence. One-half the sample anticipated that they would be celebrating Pancake Day on 9 February, with 28% recognizing it as the start of giving something up for Lent and 15% as an important religious occasion. Full data tables are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ic5oyo75fe/Results-for-Homepride-Flour-Pancake-Day-010216.pdf

Lent (2)

So much for the good intentions of the previous poll. In a second online survey by YouGov, undertaken on 10 February 2016 (the first day of Lent) and completed by 5,022 Britons, it transpired that just 9 per cent actually planned to give something up for Lent (about one-third of the aspirational 25% of a month before), with a further 8 per cent still undecided. If the figures are taken at face value, the most abstaining group this year were 18-24-year-olds (16%), followed by women and Liberal Democrat voters (12% each). Results can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/6dd75d10-cfe1-11e5-a405-005056900127

Church buildings

Almost three-fifths (57%) of the British public report that they have visited a church building in the past year, either for a religious service (37%), to attend a non-religious activity (18%), or as a tourist (23%). This is according to a survey conducted by ComRes for the National Churches Trust, for which 2,038 adults were interviewed online on 16 and 17 December 2015. Asked what would most encourage them to visit churches in the future, 43% replied a friendly welcome, 34% the provision of toilets, 32% a café or refreshment area, 29% comfortable seating, 28% access to useful visitor information, and 26% heating. There was overwhelming recognition (by 84% of the whole sample and 91% of over-65s) that Christian places of worship constitute an important part of the UK’s heritage and history, with 60% (including 68% of women) favouring Government funding in order to preserve this heritage asset for future generations. Their social value, as community space, was acknowledged by 83%. Full data tables, including breaks by standard demographics and religious affiliation, are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/National-Churches-Trust_Perceptions-of-Churches.pdf

Pope versus Trump

During his return flight to the Vatican after his recent trip to Mexico, Pope Francis took on Donald Trump, front-runner as US Republican presidential candidate, suggesting the latter was ‘not Christian’ because of his wish to build a wall on the American-Mexican border when, to the Pope’s mind, Christians should be building bridges. According to an online poll of 6,245 British YouGov panellists on 19 February 2016, 47% of adults thought the Pope’s comments were appropriate, including 60% of 18-24s and 63% of Liberal Democrats. Just over one-quarter (28%) judged the Pope had been out of order, especially over-60s (37%), Conservatives (39%), and UKIP voters (60%), while 25% were undecided. Data can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/d6912da0-d6ed-11e5-a405-005056900127

Sunday trading

The Government has tabled amendments to the Enterprise Bill to incorporate its long-held ambition to further liberalize Sunday shopping hours in England and Wales, which are currently limited to a maximum of six for large stores. At the heart of its plans is the proposal to devolve to local authorities and elected mayors decisions for extending the hours large shops could trade on Sundays. YouGov has recently tested public reaction to the Government’s policy through an online poll of 1,896 residents in England and Wales, a plurality of whom (48%) supported the idea of shops being open for longer on Sundays, with 33% against and 19% undecided. This result is perhaps unsurprising, given that 56% admitted that they already regularly shop on Sundays, with 21% anticipating they would do even more shopping on Sundays, in the event of hours being extended. Opinion was more finely balanced about local authorities having the final say, with 39% in favour and 34% not, while 58% agreed that smaller, local shops would lose out from more liberalization and 63% expected confusion to arise from different areas having different hours. Topline results only are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jsnx2yhl1n/YG-Archive-160209-SundayTradingHours.pdf

Meanwhile, in its response to the Government’s amendments, USDAW (Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers) issued a press release drawing renewed attention to the survey of 10,536 USDAW members working in retail conducted by Telsolutions in September 2015. This revealed ‘35% of staff in large stores currently want to work less hours on Sundays, 58% say they are already under pressure to work Sundays when they don’t want to, and more than a third of staff were “not usually” or “never” allowed a Sunday off.’ The full report on the survey, entitled Is Sunday Working Working for Retail Staff?, is still available to download at:

http://www.usdaw.org.uk/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=e401039e-75f9-4675-8216-56fa579b65b0

Holocaust Memorial Day

Christian Research has filed the following report on its website, based on online interviews with practising Christians and church leaders in membership of its self-selecting Resonate panel: ‘Nearly 90% of Christians believe it is important to have a day to commemorate the Holocaust – however, nearly 65% of those surveyed felt not enough attention is given to other groups that suffered under the Nazis. In a questionnaire we launched in the lead up to Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January, the majority of respondents also believed there should be a commemorative day for all the genocides of the past 100 years, such as Armenia, Cambodia, and Rwanda.’ Members of Christian Research can access additional results from this survey by logging on via the link at:

http://www.christian-research.org/reports/holocaust-memorial-day-and-ramadan-exam-changes-survey/

Islam and British values

The majority (51%) of adults think there is a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, according to a YouGov poll for YouGov@Cambridge among an online sample of 1,729 on 13-14 January 2016. The proportion rose to 61% among Conservative voters, 63% of over-60s, and 81% of UKIP supporters. One-quarter disagreed with the proposition, saying instead that Islam is generally compatible with British values, this view being especially popular with Liberal Democrats (42%) and 18-24s (44%). An additional quarter were neutral or undecided. Results were comparable with a previous YouGov@Cambridge study in March 2015 which found 55% taking the fundamental clash option. The data table is available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/mkhbqsloy4/1.JAN_GB_16_Pat10.pdf

Mosque in EastEnders

The BBC is reported to be including a mosque on the new set of its long-running television soap EastEnders, in order better to reflect the East End of London and to increase the potential for storylines. The proposed development is regarded as ‘a good thing’ by 23% of the British public, and particularly by 18-24s (37%) and Liberal Democrats (40%). It is opposed by 24%, especially by Conservatives (30%) and UKIP voters (57%). The remainder are neutral (37%) or do not know what to think (16%). The survey was conducted by YouGov among 4,750 members of its online panel on 23 February 2016, and the results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/0f2353d0-da15-11e5-a405-005056900127

Islamic State (1)

Islamic State (IS) is regarded as the second most important issue facing Britain at the moment, selected by 40% of 1,694 adults interviewed online by YouGov on 20-21 January 2016. It is the number one concern for 18-24-year-old Britons (38%), who are far less exercised than others about the overall top issue of immigration and asylum (17% versus 49% nationally). Above-average anxiety about IS is recorded by Conservatives (51%), UKIP voters (47%), and over-60s (46%). Preoccupation with IS stands slightly lower in Britain than in France (42%), where IS occupies first place in the list of problems. In Germany, by contrast, IS is selected as an important issue only by 28%, Germans being focused much more on the European refugee crisis (59%) and immigration and asylum (52%). IS also drops down the domestic agendas in Baltic countries, scoring 28% in Denmark, 27% in Norway, 22% in Sweden, and 13% in Finland. International topline results from this latest Eurotrack survey can be found at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7vc25691sq/Eurotrack_January_Trackers_Immigration_Website.pdf

Data for Britain alone, with breaks by demographics, are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gy8vfbc62s/Eurotrack_GB_Full_Website.pdf

Islamic State (2)

The recent suggestion made by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that the British government should seek ‘back channel’ talks with Islamic State has been rejected by a majority (57%) of 1,511 UK adults in an online poll by BMG Research for the Evening Standard on 21-25 January 2016. Most dismissive of the idea were over-55s, Conservative and UKIP voters, self-assigned right-wingers, people wanting the UK to leave the European Union, and those for whom immigration/asylum was the top political issue. Self-described religious persons were slightly more against a dialogue (60%) than the non-religious (54%). Just 22% of all UK residents were in favour, particularly Labour supporters, left-wingers, and Londoners. One-fifth (21%) were undecided. A short article about the survey appeared in the Evening Standard on 12 February and full data tables are available at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CONFIDENTIAL-BMG-Poll-for-Evening-Standard-120216.pdf

Astrology

The majority (56%) of the British public do not believe in astrology and star signs, and this is especially true of men (72%). Just under one-third (31%) think there is definitely or possibly some truth in astrology and star signs, and these are disproportionately women (42%) and Londoners (40%). Don’t knows number 13%. The poll was conducted by YouGov among 5,569 members of its online panel on 26 February 2016, and the results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/0b115dc0-dc75-11e5-a405-005056900127

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Christian conferences

The overall proportion of female speakers at 21 UK national Christian conferences edged up by 1% in 2015, to 36%, according to the third annual analysis by Natalie Collins for Project 3:28. The figure varied enormously by individual conference, from 10% to 62%. The report can be found at:

http://media.wix.com/ugd/7c3a0c_9c7c6ce00b4f4fd58bb690df6414b7b5.pdf

Methodist Statistics for Mission

A downbeat report on ‘Methodist Statistics for Mission, 2015’ was received at the recent quarterly meeting of the Methodist Council. It anticipated that Methodist membership is likely to fall below 200,000 in 2015/16, for the first time in almost two centuries. Four-fifths of Methodist churches did not make any new members during the course of the previous year. The need is flagged to review reporting measures and processes in the light of ‘challenging circumstances’, including a reappraisal of the Methodist community roll, first introduced in 1969 as an indicator of those in pastoral contact with the Church. Little information is available about the age, gender, and ethnicity of members, but the hope is expressed that a mooted ecumenical church census in England and Wales in 2016 might fill the gap. The report is available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/media/1938012/coun-MC16-15-Statistics-for-Mission-january-2016.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

In 2015 the Community Security Trust logged 924 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, a fall of 22% from 2014 but still the third highest annual total recorded by the Trust since figures were first collected in 1984, notwithstanding the absence of any major trigger event during the year related to the situation in Israel and Gaza. Three-quarters of all incidents in 2015 occurred in Greater London and Greater Manchester, home to the UK’s two largest Jewish communities. Three-quarters took the form of abusive behaviour, while 9% involved violence. The Trust continues to believe that there is significant under-reporting of incidents both to itself and to the police. The 44-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2015 is available at:

https://cst.org.uk/data/file/1/9/Incidents_Report_2015.1454417905.pdf

Jewish Year Book

The Jewish Year Book, a major source of UK Jewish statistics (and much other information about UK Jewry) since it first appeared in 1896, is to cease publication with immediate effect – there will be no 2016 edition. Vallentine Mitchell, the title’s publishers since 1994, have said that it is no longer economic in the light of falling library and other institutional sales. It was Joseph Jacobs, the inaugural editor of the Jewish Year Book and author of Studies in Jewish Statistics (1891), who pioneered the inclusion of a statistical section, in the 1896-97 edition (pp. 27-33). The centenary edition in 1996 also contained an important retrospective essay (pp. ix-xvii) by Marlena Schmool, ‘A Hundred Years of British Jewish Statistics’. The 2015 edition is still available, priced £37.50, at:

http://www.vmbooksuk.com/collections/newly-published/products/9780853039785

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Hospital chaplains

Recent data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre reveal that the number of chaplains working in the National Health Service in England has declined by 17% between 2010 and 2015, from 1,107 to 916. The proportion of female chaplains has increased from 32% to 37% over the same period. The Excel file ‘Number of Chaplains Employed by the NHS, 2010-2015’ can be found by searching:

http://www.hscic.gov.uk

Personal wellbeing

The Office for National Statistics has published measures of personal wellbeing in the UK for the three years from April 2012 to March 2015, derived from approximately half a million interviews on the Annual Population Survey. The four indicators are: ‘how anxious did you feel yesterday?’; ‘how happy did you feel yesterday?’; ‘how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?’; and ‘to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?’ These were measured on a scale running from 0 (not at all) to 10 (completely). The Excel tables of results contain breaks by personal characteristics, including religion, mean scores for which are tabulated below.

It will be seen that those without religion have the lowest scores of any faith group on the happiness and worthwhile measures and come near the bottom on life satisfaction; however, they experience lower levels of anxiety than the national average and any other group apart from Sikhs. Religion per se may not wholly or even largely explain this pattern, which is likely to be influenced by a range of interconnecting factors. Commenting on the figures to the Daily Telegraph, Professor Linda Woodhead suggested that faith was probably only a small element in generating happiness: ‘You might say if it is “the opium of the people” they need to up the dose.’ The tables can be downloaded at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-429189

Mean scores	Anxiety	Happiness	Satisfaction	Worthwhile
No religion	2.90	7.22	7.41	7.58
Christian	2.92	7.47	7.60	7.86
Buddhist	3.09	7.41	7.40	7.61
Hindu	3.11	7.57	7.60	7.74
Jewish	3.15	7.37	7.51	7.90
Muslim	3.05	7.33	7.41	7.64
Sikh	2.89	7.45	7.50	7.72
Any other religion	3.19	7.26	7.31	7.70
UK average	2.93	7.38	7.53	7.76

Religious education teachers

The number of people applying to train as religious education (RE) teachers in England and Wales has surged in the first few months of the 2016 recruitment cycle, according to data compiled by the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS) and highlighted in a press release from the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education. Applications for RE places as at 18 January 2016 were 31% up on the corresponding figure for 2015 (850 against 650), even though those for all secondary teacher training places were down by 1%. Offers of conditional places for RE had already more than doubled over the corresponding point in 2015. The increase in applications to train to teach RE follows the launch of a campaign by the Religious Education Council of England and Wales to encourage graduates and career changers into the discipline. The press release is at:

http://www.natre.org.uk/news/latest-news/trainee-re-teacher-applications-soar-press-release/

The UCAS report is available at:

https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/utt_publicstats_application_18jan2016_report_b_1.pdf

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7871: Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2013

Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2013 is the second (but first ‘official’) release of an annual statistical publication of the Scottish Government, gathering into one output responses to identical questions in the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, Scottish Health Survey, and Scottish Household Survey. It provides detailed information on the composition, characteristics, and attitudes of Scottish households and adults across a number of topic areas, including equality characteristics, housing, employment, and perceptions of health and crime. In 2013 there were 21,038 responses to the individual variables, among them religious affiliation (categorized as none, Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, other Christian, Muslim, and other). The official report on the 2013 surveys, to be found with the dataset documentation, contains tables showing country of birth by religion, ethnic group by religion, and religion by demographics, including sexual orientation). Supplementary tables are available online at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/12/8775/downloads Nones were the most numerous ‘religious’ group in 2013 (43%), surpassing adherents of the Church of Scotland (31%). For a full description of the dataset, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7871&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7872: Taking Part, 2014-15

The Year 10 dataset for ‘Taking Part: the National Survey of Culture, Leisure, and Sport’ has been released. The survey is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Arts Council England, Sport England, and Historic England. Fieldwork for April 2014-March 2015 was undertaken by TNS-BMRB, through face-to-face interview with a sample of 9,817 adults aged 16 and over living in private households in England. Topics covered were spare-time activities and participation in arts, libraries, archives, museums, heritage, walking, cycling, and sports, as well as barriers to and factors affecting such participation. Demographics included two questions on religion: ‘what is your religion?’ (according to census categories) and ‘are you currently practising this religion?’ These can obviously be used as variables to analyse replies to any of the questions on participation in culture, leisure, and sport. For a full description of the dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7872&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7889: Crime Survey for England and Wales, 2014-15

The Crime Survey for England and Wales, formerly known as the British Crime Survey (there has been a separate survey in Scotland since 1993), commenced in 1981. It is now conducted annually, on a rolling basis, by TNS-BMRB on behalf of the Office for National Statistics. Fieldwork for April 2014-March 2015 involved face-to-face and self-completion interviews with 33,350 adults aged 16, and over and 2,374 children aged 10-15, resident in private households. Topics covered experience of crime (including perceived religiously-motivated hate crime) during the preceding 12 months, attitudes to a range of crime-related issues, and a basket of demographics (among them religious affiliation). The affiliation question, which did not differentiate between particular Christian denominations, can be used to analyse replies to all the crime-related questions. For a full description of the dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7889&type=Data%20catalogue

PEOPLE NEWS

David Voas

Professor David Voas, a leading quantitative sociologist of religion and co-director of British Religion in Numbers, became Professor of Social Science and Head of the Department of Social Science at University College London on 1 February 2016. He was formerly Professor of Population Studies at the University of Essex (2011-16) and Simon Professor of Population Studies at the University of Manchester (2007-11).

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2016

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Counting Religion in Britain, December 2015

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 3, December 2015 features 34 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 3 December 2015

OPINION POLLS – GENERAL

Religious affiliation

Lord Ashcroft has returned to the polling fray with his first very large-scale survey since his recent serious illness, interviewing 20,054 UK adults aged 18 and over online between 20 November and 2 December 2015. The subject was attitudes to the European Union, but, as usual, a question on religious affiliation was included in a battery of background variables. The wording was: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Results by home nation are summarized in the table, below. Full results disaggregated by other demographics can be found in table 67 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Europe-poll-tables-Dec-15.pdf

% down	United Kingdom	England	Wales	Scotland	Northern Ireland
Christian	51	51	54	50	69
Non-Christian	7	7	4	3	2
No religion	40	40	42	46	27

Guessing games

Ipsos MORI has been continuing its ‘Perils of Perception’ research, asking respondents to guess the answers to sundry factual questions and then comparing them with the actual statistics. The latest survey was conducted in 33 countries between 1 and 16 October 2015, including in Britain where 1,000 adults were interviewed online. One of the questions this year was: ‘out of every 100 people, about how many do you think do not affiliate themselves with any religion – that is, atheists, agnostics, and those who say they do not identify with any religion?’ In Britain the average guess was 45%, which Ipsos MORI noted as being 20 points above the actual census of population figure. While this is true, religious affiliation questions are notoriously sensitive to variant wording and coding, and the public’s guestimate on this occasion was actually quite close to the proportion of religious nones found, for example, in the British Social Attitudes Surveys. A slide presentation featuring toplines from the ‘Perils of Perception’ study is at:

https://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IpsosMORI/the-perils-of-perception-in-2015-ipsos-mori/5

Who wants spiritual progress?

Not many of us is the answer, according to YouGov polling of 18,235 adults in 17 countries across the world (fieldwork dates not given). They were asked to think about their whole lives and to say which of 12 things they most wanted and which single one they wanted most overall. Scores were then calculated by balancing the two figures, to give a measure incorporating both the breadth and intensity of the desire. Spiritual progress was one option, picked by just 4% of the UK sample (being ranked ninth), and by no more than 13% in any nation (United States and Indonesia heading the list in this regard). In the UK, love (19%), better health (15%), money and my own family (12% each) were the top priorities. A blog about the survey and an interactive table of topline results can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/23/wants/

Religion as personal value

Religion also attracted relatively little support as a personal value, whether in the UK or the European Union (EU) as a whole, according to preliminary results from Eurobarometer 84.3, undertaken by TNS on behalf of the European Commission. UK fieldwork took place between 7 and 16 November 2015 among a sample of 1,314 adults aged 15 and over. Respondents were presented with a list of 12 values and invited to select a maximum of three which were most important to them, the findings being tabulated below, from which it will be seen that religion was ranked bottom. Religion was also included as an option on two further lists, of factors which most created a feeling of community among EU citizens and which best represented the EU. Topline data are in the annex which can be accessed via the link at:

http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/PublicOpinion/#p=1&instruments=STANDARD

%	UK	EU
Respect for human life	41	36
Human rights	39	40
Peace	37	45
Individual freedom	25	27
Equality	25	20
Rule of law	20	13
Respect for other cultures	20	9
Tolerance	18	17
Democracy	16	25
Solidarity/support for others	9	18
Self-fulfilment	5	9
Religion	5	6

Leaving Christ out of Christmas (1)

Family and not faith is important to Britons at Christmas, according to a news release from the British Academy in advance of its New Year series of debates and other events around faith. The Academy commissioned YouGov to poll an online sample of 1,751 adults on 14-15 December 2015 on the most and least important aspects of the Christmas period for them. Spending time with family and friends was most important for 65% followed by having time off work (12%). Faith/Christianity was the choice of only 7%, and no more than 12% in any demographic sub-group (among the over-60s and in Scotland). Moreover, faith/Christianity actually topped the list of the least important aspects of the Christmas period, at 33%, being especially unpopular among the under-40s. Linda Woodhead had a comment piece about the survey in The Times for 23 December, describing Christmas as ‘this sacred ritual of kindred’, while the full data table is at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/22iawbpysa/BritishAcademyResults_151215_ChristmasHolidays_Website.pdf

Leaving Christ out of Christmas (2)

In similar vein, an online poll by BMG Research for the Evening Standard on 9-15 December 2015 found that for 74% of 1,585 UK adults the highlight of the festive period would be a traditional Christmas Day dinner with family or friends. The next favourite activity was giving and receiving gifts (60%), although only 32% enjoyed going shopping for presents. Celebrating the birth of Christ was a favourite aspect of Christmas for a lowly 18%, ranging from 14^ of under-35s to 24% of over-65s. Singing carols was enjoyed by 21%, and going to church on Christmas Day by 10% (the least attractive of the available options). Slightly more, 12% (including 17% of over-65s), said they would definitely worship over the Christmas period and a further 16% said they might, the remaining 72% having definitely decided they would not attend (66%) or being unsure (6%). An article about the survey appeared in the Evening Standard for 23 December and full data tables are at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/CONFIDENTIAL-BMG-UK-Omnibus-Dec15-Evening-Standard-Christmas-poll_1.pdf

Neighbours at Christmas

Almost four in five Britons (78%) anticipated talking to their neighbours over the Christmas period, and 18% said they would be speaking with neighbours who were mostly of a different religion to themselves. In a further 29% of cases the neighbours were mostly of the same religion, while the remaining 31% apparently did not know which faith their neighbours followed. Londoners and black and minority ethnic (BME) persons were the groups most likely to be talking to neighbours of a different religion at Christmas. The survey was conducted between 4 and 8 December 2015 by Ipsos MORI on behalf of The Challenge charity among an online sample of 1,170 adults aged 16-75, including a booster of BMEs. Data tables are at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3677/Eight-in-ten-Britons-will-speak-to-their-neighbours-over-Christmas.aspx

Religion and later life

The relative irreligiosity of the young is well documented. Time was when older age cohorts scored highest on most indicators of religious belonging, behaving, and believing, but there are signs that this is beginning to change. A small piece of evidence derives from an Ipsos MORI poll for the Centre for Ageing Better, for which 1,389 adults aged 50 and over across England were interviewed face-to-face between 25 September and 18 October 2015. They were asked two questions which touched on religion. The first required them to identify factors of importance in contributing to a good later life. Religion/faith was one of the options and was selected by just one person in the entire sample. The second question concerned social groups with which respondents had been involved during the previous 12 months. Religious groups, including attendance at a place of worship, was one possible reply, which 10% claimed to participate in (ranging from 6% of persons in their early 50s to 14% of over-75s). Data tables are at:

http://laterlife.ageing-better.org.uk/resources/cfab_lli_2015_data_tables.pdf

Karma

Asked online by YouGov on 15 December 2015, a plurality (41%) of 4,009 UK adults and a majority (52%) of women claimed to believe in karma, the Eastern spiritual principle of cause and effect whereby the intentions and actions of an individual influence his or her future in terms of happiness or suffering. Around one-quarter (24%) were undecided whether they believed, while 28% disbelieved and 7% were unsure what karma is. However, when karma was more fully explained, 15% more of the believers saw the potential effect as psychological rather than spiritual, and only 27% anticipated that a good deed today would in practice increase the likelihood of something good happening to them tomorrow (59% saying there would be no effect). This suggests that people’s understanding of Eastern-style religious concepts and practices may be neither secure nor internally consistent. Results of the survey are posted at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/ecb30710-a313-11e5-b9b0-005056900127

Perceptions of Jews and Muslims

On behalf of Prospect magazine, YouGov has recently conducted 48 separate online surveys among representative samples of adult Britons, each survey exploring perceptions of a specific group of people, defined by a combination of gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. Each of the 48 groups was scored according to five positive qualities (intelligence, honesty, industry, politeness, and helpfulness) and five negative attributes (violence, fare-dodging, drug-taking, promiscuity, and drunkenness). The table below shows the topline scores for groups involving Jews and Muslims, the only two religious categories which were covered, together with their rank order (out of 48 groups). It will be seen that Jews were rated more favourably than Muslims and, within both categories, women more favourably than men. Muslim men in their 20s had the lowest rank order of these 12 groups, although white men in their 20s were the most derided of all 48 groups. White women in their 60s were the most praised group. Peter Kellner has an article about the surveys, ‘Good Will to All Men’, in Prospect, No. 238, January 2016, pp. 16-19. A blog, with a link to an interactive data table (permitting analysis by gender, age, social grade, region, and voting), is available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/14/young-white-men-most-derided/

	Positive average	Negative average	Overall rating	Rank order
Jews
Jewish man in his 20s	50	-48	49	22
Jewish man in his 40s	51	-52	52	17
Jewish man in his 60s	58	-59	58	6
Jewish woman in her 20s	58	-55	56	9
Jewish woman in her 40s	55	-62	59	5
Jewish woman in her 60s	52	-57	54	11
Muslims
Muslim man in his 20s	36	-40	38	34
Muslim man in his 40s	36	-45	40	31
Muslim man in his 60s	42	-56	49	21
Muslim woman in her 20s	40	-63	52	18
Muslim woman in her 40s	36	-65	51	19
Muslim woman in her 60s	31	-70	50	20

Pre- and post-Paris attitudes to Muslims

There has been ‘a surprising resilience’ of British attitudes toward Muslims following the Islamist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, according to Rob Ford and Maria Sobolewska of the University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences. They commissioned YouGov to poll two online samples (n= 1,707 and 1,621, respectively) of Britons on 10-12 November (as it turned out, immediately before the attacks) and on 17-18 November (immediately afterwards), asking identical questions on each occasion. Some headline results are tabulated below, from which it will be seen that attitudes toward Muslims did not significantly harden in the aftermath of the attacks, and, indeed, there was a modest softening. Of course, this relative lack of movement in public opinion may not really be a cause of great optimism, which Ford and Sobolewska incline to embrace, but simply reflect the large degree of pre-existing negativity or at least ambivalence about Muslims. Perhaps the real and enduring significance of these surveys is that they appear to answer the doubting Thomases who are too ready to dismiss event-driven polling on the grounds that it captures the public mood in the heat of the moment, and thus atypically. Ford and Sobolewska have a blog about the research, including a link to the topline data, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/23/after-paris-surprising-resilience-british-attitude/

% down	Pre-attacks	Post-attacks
Muslims have a lot to offer British culture
Agree	32	34
Neither agree nor disagree	32	31
Disagree	35	35
Western European and Muslim ways of life are irreconcilable
Agree	51	49
Neither agree nor disagree	28	27
Disagree	21	24
Muslims in Britain have respect for culture and way of life of others
Agree	23	27
Neither agree nor disagree	23	22
Disagree	53	50

Donald Trump on Muslims

The recent call by Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican Party presidential nomination, for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, either as immigrants or tourists, has caused a bit of a backlash, both there, in Britain, and around the world. YouGov tested the pulse of public opinion by running a snap poll of 4,608 UK adults online on 8 December 2015. Asked whether they thought Trump’s proposal would be an appropriate policy for the United States, 64% said it would not be. One-quarter deemed it appropriate, including 61% of UKIP voters. Further information and a link to the data is available in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/09/brits-oppose-muslim-policy-pockets-approval/

One component of the backlash against Trump in Britain was an online petition calling for him to be banned from entering the UK. By 10 December this had attracted around 400,000 signatures, prompting YouGov to run another snap poll among its UK panellists that day, to which 5,506 responded. Approximately two-fifths (39%) thought Trump should be banned from the UK on account of what he had said against Muslims, while 47% disagreed and 14% were undecided. Results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/3c456cd0-9f24-11e5-ba8c-005056900127

Ethno-religious integration

A surprisingly large number of UK adults appear ambivalent about the desirability of schoolchildren integrating across religious or racial boundaries, according to a YouGov poll of 2,092 people interviewed online on 19-20 November 2015 on behalf of The Challenge charity. Asked whether ‘every school child should participate in group activities with children from different faith/ethnic backgrounds to their own, either in school and/or in their local community’, just 64% were in agreement, with 11% disagreeing, and 21% neutral. Affirmative answers ranged from 48% to 82% by demographic sub-group, and negative ones from 7% to 20%. There was no analysis of opinion by religious affiliation. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/yaviwesgx1/Results-for-The-Challenge-Statement-Test-20112015.pdf

OPINION POLLS – ISLAMIC STATE

Polls in this section are arranged in chronological order by last date of fieldwork.

YouGov (1)

In an online poll for The Times, conducted among 1,657 adults in Britain on 30 November and 1 December 2015, YouGov reported a sharp drop in public support for RAF air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria, down from 59% on 23-24 November to 48%. The poll was published in The Times on 2 December, to coincide with the House of Commons debate on the issue, which resulted in MPs backing the Government’s motion to extend air strikes from Iraq to Syria. The survey also covered the possible return of British ground troops to Iraq to fight IS, and the commitment of British and US ground troops against IS in Syria, opinion being evenly divided in both cases. Data tables can be accessed via Peter Kellner’s blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/02/analysis-sharp-fall-support-air-strikes-syria/

YouGov (2)

Interviewed by YouGov on the day, 2 December 2015, of the House of Commons debate about extending air strikes against Islamic State (IS), 74% of 11,410 UK adults correctly anticipated that MPs would vote in favour of bombing IS in Syria, only 8% forecasting the opposite outcome. Results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/a9a2ba00-98d8-11e5-a807-005056900127

YouGov (3)

An ostensibly separate survey of YouGov panellists on 2 December 2015 found that 86% judged it right for Parliament to be debating the extension of air strikes against Islamic State, albeit only 14% expected to feel safer from terrorism in three years’ time in the event of a vote to extend strikes (34% saying they would be less safe). Results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/03/debate-syria/

YouGov (4)

A snap poll of YouGov panellists on 3 December 2015, following Parliamentary approval of, and the commencement of, British air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria, revealed significant reservations on the part of the public. Just 22% were confident that this had been the right thing to do, while 25% were unsure but relieved that something was being done, 31% believed air strikes would not help and would result in the loss of innocent lives, and 15% were horrified that Britain was intervening where it had no right to do so. On the other hand, 41% supported the deployment of British ground troops against IS in Syria, now or in the future, 48% being opposed. There was pessimism about the prospects for defeating IS in Syria, 32% suggesting that it would never happen, and 60% that it would take over one year (including 35% saying it would take more than three years). Results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/04/effect-uk-action-syria/

YouGov (5)

In an online poll among 1,672 adults on 2-3 December 2015, Youov posed the same three questions about fighting Islamic State (IS) in the air and on the ground as in their survey of 30 Novemnber-1 December (reported above). Fieldwork took place partly before and partly after the House of Commons vote in favour of British air strikes against IS in Syria. A further drop in support for such strikes was revealed, down to 44%, with Labour voters particularly likely to have had a change of heart. For YouGov’s analysis of the trends, and a link to the full data tables, see the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/12/06/support-syria-air-strikes-falls-again/

YouGov (6)

On behalf of WalesOnline, YouGov polled 1,005 Welsh adults between 30 November and 4 December 2015 about their attitudes to British air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria (a plurality of 45% approving), and their assessment of such strikes increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the UK (54% thinking so). The data table is at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/1lrr4w9u45/WalesOnlineResults_December15_Syria_w.pdf

ComRes

Even after the House of Commons vote for British participation in air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria, less than half (47%) of the British public endorsed them, with 33% disapproving and 20% uncertain. Even fewer (25%) favoured the imminent involvement of British troops in a ground war against IS in Syria, with 48% opposed, while 32% judged that there were no circumstances under which British troops should engage in ground combat with IS. The findings emerged from an online poll of 2,049 adults by ComRes for the Independent on Sunday conducted on 9-11 December 2015. Topline results were published in the Independent on Sunday on 13 December and the full data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IoS-SM-Political-Poll-December-2015.pdf

Ipsos MORI

Very few adults (9%) think British participation in air strikes against Islamic State in Syria will make Britain safer from terrorism, while 44% consider it will make it less safe, and a further 44% that it will make no difference. Optimists did not rise above 17% in any demographic sub-group. The poll was conducted by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the Evening Standard among a sample of 1,040 Britons interviewed by telephone on 12-14 December 2015. Topline results were published in the Evening Standard on 17 December and the full data table is available via the link at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3672/Few-believe-air-strikes-in-Syria-will-make-Britain-safer.aspx

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life

The independent Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, convened by the inter-faith Woolf Institute, Cambridge in September 2013 and chaired by Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, has published its final report under the title of Living with Difference: Community, Diversity, and the Common Good. It was prepared by a team of 20 commissioners, including several academics. Its findings and recommendations have proved controversial, not least in appearing to challenge the notion of the UK as a Christian society and the role of the Church of England within it. Ruth Gledhill, former religious affairs correspondent of The Times, has described it on the Christian Today website as ‘the worst report I’ve ever read’. The recurring theme is the need to learn to understand and live with differences, differences which are said largely to have arisen from the growth of non-Christian faiths and of people of no religion. Although the Commission took evidence, in the form of responses to a public consultation, local hearings, weekend seminars, and personal interviews, it did not undertake any new quantitative research. Rather, it relied (in Appendix A and elsewhere) upon the official censuses of religious profession, a range of sample survey data, and faith-based investigations. These statistics are not treated systematically, as an overview of changes in the religious landscape over recent decades, but selectively, in support of the various topics into which the report is sub-divided, such as education, media, dialogue, social action, and law. The report is at:

https://corablivingwithdifference.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/living-with-difference-community-diversity-and-the-common-good.pdf

Church and community night shelters

A total of 2,171 people stayed in the network of church and community night shelters, mostly in London, linked with the national Christian homelessness charity Housing Justice between October 2014 and May 2015, according to Church and Community Night Shelter Network Impact Report, 2014-2015. The majority of guests were male (86%) and aged 26-50 (66%). Three in ten stayed for longer than one month, and 39% received assistance to move from the shelter into their own accommodation. An estimated 231,000 volunteer hours were given to be alongside the guests. The report is available at:

http://www.housingjustice.org.uk/data/files/Shelters/CCNS_IMPACT_report_2014_15.pdf

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Christmas Day working

The last official figures, from the Labour Force Survey, of the number of people working on Christmas Day in the UK relate to 2012. However, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has updated them for 2015 in the light of employment growth during the intervening three years. The TUC estimate was that 905,000 individuals would be working on 25 December in 2015, 5% more than in 2012, and equivalent to 3% of all employees. The largest groups were expected to be care workers and home carers (168,000) and nurses and nursing auxiliaries/assistants (135,000). According to the TUC, there would be 20,000 clergy ‘on duty’, 6,000 fewer than in 2012 (the reason for this not being stated), which represents 52% of Christian ministers in the UK (as recorded in the current edition of Peter Brierley’s UK Church Statistics). The TUC press release is at:

https://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace-issues/work-life-balance/employment-rights/working-time-holidays/over-900000-workers-set

Religion on Jersey

The States of Jersey, a self-governing Crown Dependency, have published a report on the Jersey Annual Social Survey, 2015. Data were collected by means of a self-completion postal questionnaire sent to a random sample of 3,200 Jersey households in June-July 2015, requesting it to be filled in by the household member who next celebrated their birthday and who was aged 16 or over. There was a 52% response, and results were weighted to be representative of the island’s population as a whole. For the first time, a question on religious affiliation was included. This revealed that 54% of Jersey residents claimed to have a religion, 39% did not, with 7% unsure. Religious nones peaked at 52% among 16-34s, falling to 17% of over-65s. Of those professing a religion, 97% were Christians, mostly equally divided between Church of England (Jersey being part of the Diocese of Winchester until quite recently) and Roman Catholic. The report on the survey is available at:

http://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20administration/R%20JASS%202015%2020151202%20SU.pdf

Hate crimes

Newly-released data from the Metropolitan Police reveal that both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes increased by more than three-fifths during the 12 months to November 2015 compared with an average rolling annual growth of 4% for all crime categories. Anti-Semitic crimes numbered 483 in the Metropolitan Police area in 2014/15 compared with 299 in 2013/14, up by 61.5%, while Islamophobic crimes amounted to 818 in 2014/15 against 499 in 2013/14, a jump of 63.9%. This worrying expansion in religious hate crimes reflected the domestic fallout from international tensions, most recently after the Islamist attacks in Paris, but, according to a police spokesperson, was also linked to improved reporting by the public of religious hate crimes and greater awareness of them on the part of police officers. An interactive page for the figures can be found at:

http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/index.php

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Yearbook of International Religious Demography, 2015

Volume 2 of the Yearbook of International Religious Demography (ISSN 2352-1147), which was launched by Brill in 2014, has recently appeared, edited by Brian Grim, Todd Johnson, Vegard Skirbekk, and Gina Zurlo. It provides an annual snapshot of religious population statistics analysed at the global and continental levels (in parts 1 and 2, respectively), together with a series of eight case studies in part 3 (none specific to the UK) and a list of data sources in part 4. A publication of the International Religious Demography Project, which is also responsible for the World Religion Database, the volume can be bought in print or as an e-book for €89 and is more fully described at:

http://www.brill.com/products/reference-work/yearbook-international-religious-demography-2015

Religion and Britishness

Using descriptive and multivariate analyses of the 2008/09 Home Office Citizenship Survey (HOCS) for England and Wales, Saffron Karlsen and James Nazroo have examined the extent to which there are ethno-religious differences in a sense of ‘Britishness’ (undefined in HOCS) and in perceptions of the compatibility between Britishness and other cultural/religious identities among nine minority groups spanning four world faiths (Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism). Comparisons are also drawn with an earlier survey for 2000/01. The authors’ findings are especially used to ‘expose the straw man manufactured by Governments and policy commentators’, which has raised questions about the integration and loyalty to the country of British Muslims who, in reality, according to this study, make a strong claim to Britishness. ‘Ethnic and Religious Differences in the Attitudes of People towards Being “British”’ was published in Sociological Review, Vol. 63, No. 4, 2015, pp. 759-81, and access options are outlined at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-954X.12313/abstract

Religion and party choice

In an article first published in the online edition of British Journal of Political Science in April 2014 but not formally assigned to an issue (Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 907-27, plus six tables of regression models) until 18 months later, James Tilley uses the sequences of British Election Studies stretching back to 1964 and British Social Attitudes Surveys from 1983 to demonstrate that religious cleavages have proved remarkably resilient in an ostensibly secular Britain. The relationship between religion and party preference, he argues, is not primarily due to the social composition of the various religious groups, nor to ideological differences between them (in terms of social conservatism, economic leftism, or national identity). Rather, particular denominations are associated with parties that represented their denominational interests in the early twentieth century, these linkages mainly being underpinned by parental transmission of party affiliation within denomination. Data are presented separately for England and Wales and for Scotland, and for the principal religious groups (Church of England, Church of Scotland, Nonconformist, Roman Catholic, and no religion), also controlling for religious practice. ‘“We Don’t Do God”? Religion and Party Choice in Britain’ can be accessed by journal subscribers or on a pay-per-view basis at:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9915556&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0007123414000052

Religion and substances

Using data from a sample of 12,252 young people in the UK in 2011-12, Gemma Penny and Leslie Francis have probed the relationships between ‘Implicit Religion, Explicit Religion, and Attitude toward Substances: An Empirical Enquiry among 13- to 15-Year-Old Adolescents’, Implicit Religion, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2015, pp. 373-97. Having initially explored the prevalence of implicit religion, operationalized as attachment to traditional Christian rites of passage, the authors went on to test (and confirm) the hypothesis that explicit religiosity (operationalized as church attendance) and implicit religiosity (as defined above) are both associated with proscriptive attitudes towards substances. Access options to the article are outlined at:

https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IR/article/view/28054

Scottish sectarianism

A recent issue of Scottish Affairs (Vol. 24, No. 3, 2015) comprised six articles on the theme of sectarianism in contemporary Scotland, based upon a combination of new quantitative and qualitative research and reflection on previous research. Of particular statistical interest is Rachel Ormston, John Curtice, Stephen Hinchliffe, and Anna Marcinkiewicz, ‘A Subtle but Intractable Problem? Public Attitudes to Sectarianism in 2014’ (pp. 266-87), deriving from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey for 2014, for which 1,501 residents of Scotland were interviewed face-to-face by ScotCen Social Research. It revealed a major disjunction between popular perceptions of the generalized existence of anti-Catholic or anti-Protestant prejudice, which were quite high (88% believing it was a problem affecting at least some parts of Scotland), and direct observation or experience of specific forms of sectarian behaviour in their own locality or lives, for example in terms of harassment or job discrimination. ‘So many members of the Scottish public seem to think that religious discrimination and sectarianism are things that happen in Scotland, but not in their area, and not to them.’ Another important quantitative paper is Michael Rosie, ‘The Sectarian Iceberg?’ (pp. 328-50), which revisited existing census and sample survey data, including the influential NFO Social Research poll of sectarianism in Glasgow in 2002. The print edition of the entire issue of Scottish Affairs can be purchased from Edinburgh University Press for £8 or individual articles bought online at:

http://www.euppublishing.com/toc/scot/24/3

Religion and science

The UK’s biological and physical science community is not especially religious, according to initial findings from the Religion and Public Life Program (based at Rice University in the United States), and published in the report A Global Lab: Religion among Scientists in International Context, written by Elaine Howard Eklund, David Johnson, Sarah Hamshari, Kirstin Matthews, and Steven Lewis. With major financial support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, biologists and physicists were surveyed in eight countries (France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and United States), with responses obtained from 9,422 of them, 42% of those approached. Among the weighted sample of 1,531 respondents in the UK (55% male, 45% female), 65% described themselves as agnostic or atheist and 59% as neither religious nor spiritual, while 65% never prayed and 60% never or practically never attended religious services. Detailed results from the research will eventually appear in three books, which are being written, and 17 academic papers are currently under review or in process. Meanwhile, the summary report can be read at:

https://rplp.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/RPLP/A%20Global%20Lab%20Conference%20Summary%20Report_2015_1201.pdf

Press representations of Muslims and Islam

In a post on the Radicalisation Research website, Paul Baker and Tony McEnery discuss ‘The British Press and Radicalisation’, summarizing the findings of their forthcoming report for the charity MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development). Using corpus-based discourse analysis techniques, the authors have studied the representation of Muslims and Islam in the British press over time, with reference to 11 broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. Comparing 1998-2009 with 2010-14, they demonstrate a trend away from labelling both Muslims and Islamic in extremist terms but a slight increase in descriptions of Islam in these terms. This suggests that the labelling of extremism has become less personalized, more associated with the religion rather than its people. At the same time, the press is projecting a growth in radicalization and attributing it in the main to extremist interpretations of Islam. The essay can be read at:

http://www.radicalisationresearch.org/debate/baker-british-press-and-radicalisation/

NEW DATASET AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7851: Scottish Health Survey, 2014

The Scottish Health Survey, established in 1995, is undertaken by ScotCen Social Research on behalf of the Scottish Government. The 2014 study involved face-to-face and self-completion interviews and clinical/physical measurements with 4,659 adults resident in private households throughout Scotland between January 2014 and February 2015. Replies to the various health questions can be analysed by a range of background variables, including religion. The wording of the religion question was: ‘what religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’ Response options comprised the major world faiths plus pagan, although Christians were sub-divided between Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, and other (with the facility to write in a specific denomination). The dataset description is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7851&type=Data%20catalogue

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2015

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Counting Religion in Britain, November 2015

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 2, November 2015 features no fewer than 41 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 2 November 2015

OPINION POLLS – GENERAL

Religious affiliation

ORB International’s latest surveys for The Independent included the pollster’s standard question on membership of religious groups (response options being limited to each of the major world faiths plus categories for other religions and none). Fieldwork was conducted online on 23-25 October and 18-19 November 2015 among samples of, respectively, 2,015 and 2,067 adults aged 18 and over in Britain. The data tables, with breaks by standard demographics, are at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/october-2015poll.pdf

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/omnovemberpoll.pdf

Freedom of speech

The latest release of data from the Spring 2015 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Project covered the attitudes towards free expression among publics in 40 countries. Fieldwork was co-ordinated by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, with 999 adults aged 18 and over interviewed by telephone in Britain between 8 and 28 April 2015. Respondents were asked about the importance which they attached to being able to practice their religion freely and whether people should be able to make public statements which are offensive to religion or beliefs. They were also invited to assess how important religion was in their own lives, a question asked several times before in Britain by Pew, albeit not since 2011. A majority (54%) replied that it was not too important or not at all important to them, albeit this was lower than the 61% of four years before. The Pew report is available at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/11/Pew-Research-Center-Democracy-Report-FINAL-November-18-2015.pdf

Lord’s Prayer and cinemas

News that Digital Cinema Media had refused to run in cinemas a Church of England pre-Christmas advertisement based on the Lord’s Prayer, on the grounds that it might cause offence to people of non-Christian faiths or none, prompted YouGov to mount a snap poll on the subject among its panellists. When the context was explained to them, 55% of respondents thought the advertisement should have been screened, notwithstanding that 67% rarely or never pray themselves (with just 9% claiming to pray every day). Results were reported on 24 November 2015 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/24/lords-prayer-and-praying/

Funerals

Funerals remain a relatively under-researched area, notwithstanding that this is the one rite of passage for which faith bodies continue to be majority providers, at least nominally. Although it lacks any specifically religious component, a new online poll from YouGov, undertaken on 9-10 November 2015, gave interesting insights into how far the sample of 1,639 adults had thought about their funeral and the disposal of their body. Data are available via the link in the blog post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/12/two-thirds-british-people-have-imagined-their-own-/

Life after death

YouGov has replicated six questions originally posed by the British Institute of Public Opinion (later known as Social Surveys, Gallup Poll) in 1939. YouGov’s fieldwork was conducted among an online panel on 1-2 November 2015, with 1,716 respondents aged 18 and over. Gallup, by contrast, employed face-to-face interviewing with quota samples of Britons aged 21 and over. One of the repeated questions concerned belief in life after death. Whereas in 1939 just under one-half of adults believed and just over one-third disbelieved, in 2015 the proportions were reversed. A link to the 2015 data table can be found in the blog post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/03/britain-1939-less-accepting-refugees-less-fond-cit/

Remembrance Day

To coincide with this year’s event, Survation released the results of two polls on attitudes to Remembrance Day which were commissioned by British Future. Online panel fieldwork was conducted as far back as 8-15 May 2015 among samples of 3,977 adults in Great Britain and 1,056 in Scotland. Two questions were asked, one about wearing a poppy, and the other about whether the commemoration caused frictions between people of different faiths and ethnicities. Data, which include breaks by religious affiliation, are available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/BF-Poppy-Release-GB.pdf

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/BF-Poppy-Release-Scot.pdf

Religion at Christmas

The importance attached to the religious aspect of Christmas was investigated by ComRes in an online poll for Premier Christian Media on 23-24 September 2015 (but only recently released), for which 2,016 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed. They were asked to signal their agreement/disagreement with six statements regarding the religious meaning of Christmas. Data tables, including breaks by religious affiliation as well as standard demographics, are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PremierChurchads_Christmas-Starts-with-Christ.pdf

Religious texts

Respondents to an online poll from YouGov about the changing status of books were asked which single book they would want to save from being destroyed forever. They were given four options to choose from, one of which was a religious or sacred text, selected by 14% of the sample, well behind a reference work and a novel in first and second places, respectively. The survey was commissioned by Ideate Research for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and it was completed by 2,186 adults aged 18 and over on 4-6 November 2015. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/y2zm3xks3z/Results-for-Ideate-AHRC-Wave2-061115.pdf

Scots and organized religion

Ipsos MORI’s latest Scottish Public Opinion Monitor, which surveyed 1,029 adults aged 16 and over in Scotland by telephone between 9 and 16 November 2015, included a short battery of Likert-style statements about social changes. One was ‘organised religion is not for me’, with which 68% agreed and only 28% disagreed, thus confirming other recent research which suggests that Scotland is rapidly secularizing. The data table is available at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3658/Scots-expect-health-social-care-and-police-services-to-get-worse-in-the-next-ten-years.aspx

British attitudes toward Israel

The attitudes to Israel of 2,007 adults aged 18 and over in Great Britain have been investigated by Populus on behalf of BICOM (Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre). Fieldwork was conducted online on 16-18 October 2015. Questions included public reactions to the existence of a majority Jewish state in Palestine, both today and going back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Opinions were also sought regarding other current players in the Middle East, among them Islamic State and the danger which it poses to the UK’s security. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/British-Attitudes-Towards-Israel-October-2015.pdf

World War III

Pope Francis has warned that World War III has begun in a ‘piecemeal’ fashion. On 18 November 2015, after the Islamist attacks in Paris, YouGov gave its online panellists an opportunity to say whether they agreed with the Pontiff that we are now in World War III and also whether, regardless of their agreement/disagreement, they thought he had been right to say what he did. Although 53% of the 4,757 UK adults who replied believed he had been right to voice his opinion, only 38% agreed with him. Results, weighted to be representative of the population as a whole, are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/c7983230-8ddc-11e5-adf5-005056900127

Muslim attitudes

In the wake of the Islamist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, Survation polled 1,003 Muslims aged 18 and over in Britain by telephone on 18-20 November. Questions covered: relative importance of British and Muslim identity; perceived degree of integration of Muslims into British society; responsibility of Muslims and UK Islamic leaders to condemn terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam; and attitudes to Islamic State (IS) and the bombing of IS in Syria. Results were reported in The Sun, the newspaper which commissioned the survey, on 23 November, while the full data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Islamic-Identity-Community-Relations-Survey.pdf

The poll proved controversial and triggered an unusually large number of complaints to the. Independent Press Standards Organisation. The concern arose particularly from the presentation and interpretation of the findings by The Sun, not least its front-page headline ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy for Jihadis’. Even the pollsters distanced themselves from the newspaper’s reporting. However, some criticism was also directed against Survation’s methodology (which it had used before). In brief, respondents were sampled based on a modelled probability of self-identifying as Muslim and using a range of demographic indicators. Prior to interview they were asked to confirm that they were Muslim, including non-practising. Apparently, YouGov, The Sun’s normal pollster, declined to pitch for the contract. For a flavour of the negative coverage, see:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/23/sun-poll-respondents-found-using-list-of-muslim-surnames

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/24/sun-poll-british-muslims-jihadi-sympathy-survation

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-sun-front-page-on-british-muslims-sympathy-for-jihadis-attracts-record-complaints-a6745756.html

For Survation’s published defence of itself, see:

http://survation.com/statement-on-survations-poll-of-muslims-for-the-sun/

OPINION POLLS – ISLAMIC STATE

There has been a strong polling focus this month on attitudes to, and potential British actions against, Islamic State (IS). This follows the renewal of the political debate about extending British participation in coalition air strikes against IS from Iraq to Syria and also arises from the aftermath of the Islamist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, which resulted in the death of 130 people. The polls are arranged below in chronological order by date of fieldwork.

BMG Research

On behalf of the Evening Standard, BMG Research surveyed an online sample of 1,528 UK adults on 11-17 November 2015 about their views on extending British air strikes against Islamic State from Iraq to Syria. Interviews were carried out both immediately before and after the Islamist attacks in Paris on 13 November, and the full data tables give the results separately for these two phases. The survey featured in the Evening Standard for 18 November 2015. Data tables are at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/BMG_Research_Evening_Standard_Opinion_Poll_171115.pdf

Opinium

Opinium Research quizzed an online sample of 2,003 UK adults on 13-17 November 2015 about how cases such as that of Mohammed Emwazi, the British ‘Jihadi John’ who executed Western hostages, and who was recently killed in a British and American drone strike, should be handled. Specifically, they were asked whether an attempt should have been made to capture him and put him on trial or whether, given the difficulty of doing so, killing him by drone was appropriate. Data tables are promised but have yet to materialize online. In the meantime, a blog about the poll is at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/ideally-trial-if-not-drone-strike

YouGov (1)

On behalf of The Times, YouGov took the pulse of public opinion toward Islamic State (IS) in the wake of the Islamist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, interviewing a sample of 1,688 adults online on 16-17 November. Respondents were asked whether they approved or disapproved of: RAF participation in air strikes against IS in Syria; Britain and the United States sending ground troops back into Iraq to help fight IS; Britain and the United States sending ground troops into Syria against IS; and the British and American drone strike which killed Mohammed Emwazi, otherwise known as Jihadi John. Views were also sought about the adequacy of the powers of the British authorities to combat the IS threat in Britain, and the level of concern felt about an IS attack in Britain. The poll results were covered in The Times on 18 November and in a blog post on YouGov’s website the same day, the latter also including a link to full data tables – see:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/18/brits-less-accepting-syrian-refugees-wake-paris-at/

Much the same suite of questions was also asked by YouGov, on behalf of The Times, of 1,443 members of the Labour Party on 19-23 November 2015, with a view to seeing whether they agreed with the seemingly less hawkish position taken against IS by their leader (Jeremy Corbyn) than adopted by Prime Minister David Cameron. Data tables can be accessed via the link in the blog post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/24/analysis-corbynistas-stay-loyal-few-others-share-h/

Survation (1)

As part of a broader survey commissioned by Leave.EU, Survation polled an online sample of 1,546 UK adults aged 18 and over on 16-17 November 2015 about their attitudes toward military action (including air strikes in Syria) against Islamic State in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris. Data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Final-Leave.EU-Tables-161115CBLCH-1c5d4h6.pdf

ComRes (1)

Also in the immediate aftermath of the Islamist attacks in Paris, ComRes conducted a poll for the Daily Mail among an online sample of 1,061 adults aged 18 and over on 17 November 2015. The subject matter was attitudes to terrorism, including toward Islamic State (IS). The IS-related questions concerned: support for air strikes, and the commitment of ground troops, against IS; the likelihood of such military action increasing the risk of a terrorist attack in Britain; the prospects for defeating IS with or without military action; and approval/disapproval of the killing of Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John). Findings were published in the Daily Mail for 19 November 2015, with full data tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Daily-Mail_Terrorism-Survey_November-2015.pdf

ORB International

ORB International undertook a survey among an online sample of 2,067 adult Britons on 18-19 November 2015 on their attitudes to the extension of British air strikes, and the commitment of British ground troops, against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Data tables are at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/omnovemberpoll.pdf

ICM Unlimited

In an online survey by ICM Unlimited among 2,013 adult Britons on 18-20 November 2015, views were sought about: (1) British involvement in air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria, with or without the consent of Parliament; and (2) whether British military intervention against IS would make the Middle East safer or more dangerous. Data tables are at:

http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/OlOm-ISIS-Survey.pdf

ComRes (2)

On behalf of The Independent and Sunday Mirror, ComRes polled an online sample of 2,067 adults aged 18 and over on 18-20 November 2015 about: (1) British involvement in air strikes and a ground war against Islamic State (IS); and (2) the killing of British citizens in Syria who had joined IS. Findings were reported in the Independent on Sunday for 22 November 2015, and data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/SM-IoS_Political-Poll_November-2015-4123.pdf

YouGov (2)

Almost four-fifths of Londoners are very or fairly worried about an Islamic State terrorist attack on the capital, according to a YouGov poll for the Evening Standard among an online sample of 1,008 London adults on 18-21 November 2015. Results were published in the Evening Standard for 27 November, with the data table available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/m64386ibnw/Internal_Results_151123_ISIS_and_Refugees_Website.pdf

YouGov (3)

The November 2015 wave of Eurotrack, undertaken online by YouGov in seven Western European nations (Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden) on 19-24 November, included several questions about terrorism and Islamic State (IS). Respondents, including the 1,699 in Britain, were asked whether Western countries were doing enough to combat IS in Iraq and Syria; whether their national police and security services had sufficient powers to combat any IS threat at home; and about their fears of an IS terrorist attack in their own country. Topline results only are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/hdfr2e6nua/Copy%20of%20November_Eurotrack.pdf

YouGov (4)

YouGov conducted an online poll of 1,659 Britons on 23-24 November 2015 in connection with a YouGov@Cambridge symposium on Syria and the European Union. Questions covered three broad areas: attitudes toward British military action (in the air and on the ground) against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria; the handling of Syria and IS issues by British and world political leaders, including David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn; and possible resolutions of those issues, among them co-operation with the government of President Bashar al-Assad and negotiation with IS. Data tables are available via the link at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/27/regret-over-opposition-2013-syria-vote-beginning-s/

YouGov (5)

An online poll by YouGov on 25-26 November 2015 asked 1,623 Britons whether they thought a decision on military intervention against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria should be taken collectively by the European Union or be a matter for individual member states. Only one-third favoured a decision being made at the European level. The data table is at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/27/eu-standing-army/

Survation (2)

On behalf of the Daily Mirror, Survation polled an online sample of 1,026 UK adults on 26-27 November 2015 about their attitudes to British involvement in air strikes, and to the commitment of British ground troops (now or in the future), against Islamic State in Syria, including about the potential for air strikes to heighten the risk of a terror attack in the UK. Results featured in the Daily Mirror on 28 November 2015, while data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Syrian-Intervention-Poll.pdf

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Christians and the refugee crisis

The attitudes of UK practising Christians to the international refugee crisis were explored in an online poll conducted by Christian Research in November 2015 and commissioned by Embrace the Middle East, a Christian charity originating in 1854. Respondents comprised 1,055 members of Christian Research’s Resonate panel. Full results have not been released, but there is a brief press release at:

http://www.embraceme.org/news/embrace-survey-finds-vast-majority-uk-christians-ready-and-willing-help-refugees

Church of England finances

The Church of England has published a financial overview for 2004-13, conveniently bringing together information on income and expenditure from over 12,000 parishes, 44 dioceses, 41 cathedrals, and three National Church Institutions (Church Commissioners, Archbishops’ Council, and Church of England Pensions Board). The report is available at:

https://churchofengland.org/media/2401072/financial_overview_1__copy.pdf

Catholic schools

The Catholic Education Service for England and Wales has published the digest of its 2015 census of Catholic schools and colleges, which, for the second year running, achieved a return of 100%. In separate reports for England and Wales, there are details of: the number, type, and size distribution of schools and colleges; the number of pupils disaggregated by school type, Catholicity, ethnicity, and deprivation; and the number, qualifications, Catholicity, and ethnicity of teaching and support staff. Appendices provide additional breaks by diocese. The reports can be accessed via the links at:

http://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/ces-census

Israelis in Britain

The latest report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) is David Graham’s Britain’s Israeli Diaspora: A Demographic Portrait. It is largely based upon the results of the 2011 UK census, including many tables specially commissioned by JPR from the Office for National Statistics. These revealed 23,221 Israelis (defined by birth or citizenship) living in the UK in 2011, the highest ever recorded number, 73% of whom were Jewish either by religion or ethnicity, equivalent to 6% of the Jewish population of the UK. In fact, during the first decade of this Millennium there were more Israeli migrants to Britain than British emigrants to Israel. The 20-page report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2015.Britains_Israeli_diaspora.pdf

Islamophobia

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has published a substantial (272-page) report by Saied Reza Ameli and Arzu Merali entitled Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK. In chapter 5 (pp. 123-84) it seeks to document Muslim experiences of Islamophobia based upon a sample (implicitly self-selecting) of 1,782 Muslims in 2014, 1,148 of whom completed a hard-copy questionnaire and 634 an online survey. To judge from the demographics which are quoted, respondents were disproportionately young, of Pakistani heritage, educated to degree level, from middle income groups, and practising Muslims. One in eight informants were not actually resident in the UK, and 1% were not even Muslim. Comparisons are drawn with a similar survey in 2009-10, to which there were only 336 respondents, with many indicators apparently revealing perceived worsening Islamophobia over the period. The tone of much of the text gives it the air of a political tract and, combined with a doubtful survey methodology, weakens the case for considering the work as an objective and balanced piece of empirical research (notwithstanding several academic endorsements quoted on the back cover). The report costs £5 to download in PDF format and £10 in paperback, but an eight-page executive summary is freely available at

http://www.ihrc.org.uk/attachments/article/11559/Executive%20Summary-UK-ll-02.pdf

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Religion of prisoners

The Ministry of Justice’s National Offender Management Service has published its Offender Equalities Annual Report, 2014/15, with associated data tables. This includes details of the religious affiliation of the prison population of England and Wales as at 31 March 2015. Of 85,664 prisoners, 49% professed to be Christian, 31% to have no religion, and 14% to be Muslim. The proportion of Christians was actually 0.5% higher than in 2009 and of religious nones four points fewer; this somewhat counterintuitive trend may reflect a shift in the age profile of the prison population, away from the under-25 cohort. The report is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/noms-annual-offender-equalities-report-2014-to-2015

Religion of armed forces

The Ministry of Defence’s biannual diversity statistics for UK armed forces personnel as at 1 October 2015 presented a rather different religious profile to that of prisoners: 77% of the 152,150 regular forces were Christian, 21% of no religion, and a mere 0.3% Muslim. The distribution was very similar among the volunteer reserve. The report and data tables are at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-biannual-diversity-statistics-2015

Youth social action

Meaningful social action by young people in the UK is rather more prevalent among those professing some religion (45%) than those without (39%). Among those classified as committed to social action, the proportion with some faith is 52%. Overall, 49% of young people expressed a religious affiliation and 46% did not. The findings emerged from face-to-face interviews conducted, by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the Cabinet Office, with 2,021 10- to 20-year-olds between 2 and 19 September 2015. The definition of social action used in the survey was ‘practical action in the service of others to create positive change’. A presentation about the study, which is designed to support a Government campaign to advance youth social action, is at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/sri-youth-social-action-in-uk-2015.pdf

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Personal saliency of religion

Clive Field provides an additional lens on the scale and chronology of secularization in modern Britain by reviewing opinion polls on the personal saliency of religion conducted between the 1960s and the present day. Six self-rating measures were derived from both non-recurrent and serial surveys: religiosity (binary questions), religiosity (non-binary questions), spirituality versus religiosity, importance of religion, importance of God, and difference made by religion. The conclusion is that saliency of religion indicators present one of the bleaker pictures of the extent of secularization, worse than affiliation or belief in God data, with self-assessed non-religiosity in Britain higher than in most other Western European countries. The article, ‘Secularising Selfhood: What Can Polling Data on the Personal Saliency of Religion Tell Us about the Scale and Chronology of Secularisation in Modern Britain?’, is published in Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2015, pp. 308-30. Access options are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13617672.2015.1095520

Clergy well-being

Revisiting an 11-year-old dataset of 722 rural clergy, Christine Brewster found only partial linkages between churchmanship and psychological well-being (as measured via the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire). Although theological liberals did experience higher well-being than theological conservatives, controlling for sex, age, and personality, there was no significant difference between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics nor between charismatics and non-charismatics. Possible explanations for these results are briefly offered. Her article, ‘Churchmanship and Personal Happiness: A Study among Rural Anglican Clergy’, is published in Rural Theology, Vol. 13, No. 2, November 2015, pp. 124-34, and access options are outlined at:

http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1470499415Z.00000000050

Clergy theological constructs

In ‘Go and Observe the Sower: Seeing Empirical Theology at Work’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2015, pp. 155-83, Leslie Francis and Andrew Village sought to operationalize two theological constructs, one concerning the nature of being human (rooted in a theology of individual differences) and the other concerning the nature of the Church (rooted in ecclesiology). These constructs were tested among a sample of 1,418 clergy living in England who self-selected to reply (online or by post) to a questionnaire included in the Church Times in 2013. The data revealed that, after controlling for sex and age, both constructs explained significant variance in three measures dividing clerical opinion: traditional moral belief, traditional religious belief, and traditional worship. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15709256-12341325

Clergy leadership skills

Personality has substantial effects on the self-rated leadership strengths of Anglican clergy, although the psychological types which have positive associations are often not those most commonly found among these clergy. In particular, there is arguably a shortage of ordained ministers characterized by extraversion and thinking (rather than introversion and feeling). So conclude Laura Watt and David Voas on the basis of an online survey of 1,480 clergy, 95% in stipendiary ministry, in April-July 2013 in connection with the Church of England’s church growth research programme. ‘Psychological Types and Self-Assessed Leadership Skills of Clergy in the Church of England’ is published in Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Vol. 18, No. 7, 2015, pp. 544-55. Access options are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674676.2014.961250

Attitudes of British Jews toward Israel

The Attitudes of British Jews towards Israel, and to that country’s current policies and conduct in the Middle East, are considered in a new research report published by City University and written by Stephen Miller, Margaret Harris, and Colin Shindler. The study was funded by Yachad, a British, pro-Israel, pro-peace campaigning group, although the authors are at pains to stress their independence of the funding body. Fieldwork was undertaken by Ipsos MORI between March and July 2015 among 1,131 adult British Jews aged 18 and over. The sample was recruited using a combination of: random sampling of individuals on the electoral register with distinctive Jewish surnames; exhaustive sampling of Jewish members of an online panel maintained by Ipsos MORI; and a structured (discriminative) approach to online snowball sampling. An interesting feature of the research is a scale of hawkishness-dovishness in opinions of Israel, based on responses to 41 attitude statements. The report is available at:

http://yachad.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/British-Jewish-Attitudes-Towards-Israel-Yachad-Ipsos-Mori-Nov-2015.pdf

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 6614: Understanding Society, wave 5

The dataset for wave 5 of Understanding Society (United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study) has been released. Face-to-face interviews were completed by NatCen Social Research with 41,041 adults aged 16 and over in the UK between 8 January 2013 and 5 June 2015. Topics covered included the importance of religion to a sense of personal identity; pride in religion; religious affiliation (by upbringing and current); and religion as a source of harassment and discrimination. The dataset description is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=6614&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7836: Community Life Survey, 2014-15

The Cabinet Office’s Community Life Survey touches on the role of religion in relation to community life, including volunteering and charitable giving. Background questions are also asked about religious affiliation and self-assigned practice of religion. The 2014-15 survey was conducted by TNS BMRB between 1 July 2014 and 30 April 2015, among a face-to-face sample of 2,022 adults aged 16 and over in England, with 2,323 respondents completing an online or postal questionnaire. The dataset description is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7836&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7839: Integrated Household Survey, January-December 2014

The Integrated Household Survey is the largest pool of UK social data after the decennial census of population. In 2014 323,935 individuals aged 16 and over were interviewed, face-to-face or by telephone. A question on religious affiliation is included, using the census categories. The dataset description is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7839&type=Data%20catalogue

Posted in Historical studies, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, Religious Census, religious festivals, Religious prejudice, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged advertisement, air strikes, Andrew Village, armed forces, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arzu Merali, Bashar al-Assad, being human, BICOM, BMG Research, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, British Future, British Jews, Cabinet Office, Catholic Education Service for England and Wales, Catholicity, charitable giving, Christian Research, Christians, Christine Brewster, Christmas, Church of England, Church Times, City University, clergy, Clive Field, Colin Shindler, Community Life Survey, ComRes, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, David Cameron, David Graham, David Voas, Digital Cinema Media, Embrace the Middle East, European Union, Eurotrack, Evening Standard, finance, freedom of speech, freedom to practice religion, funerals, Great Britain, ground troops, ICM Unlimited, Ideate Research, importance of God, importance of religion, Independent Press Standards Organisation, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Integrated Household Survey, integration, Ipsos-MORI, Iraq, Islam, Islamic Human Rights Commission, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Israel, Israelis, Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish state, Jihadi John, Journal of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Empirical Theology, Labour Party, Laura Watt, leadership skills, Leave.EU, Leslie Francis, life after death, London, Lord's Prayer, Margaret Harris, Mental Health Religion and Culture, Middle East, military action, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice, Mohammed Emwazi, Muslims, NatCen Social Research, National Offender Management Service, nature of the Church, negotiation, opinion polls, Opinium Research, ORB International, organized religion, Palestine, Paris, Parliament, people of different faiths, Pew Global Attitudes Project, police and security services, Pope Francis, poppy, Populus, prayer, Premier Christian Media, pride in religion, Princeton Survey Research Associates International, prisoners, psychological types, psychological well-being, Religiosity, Religious Affiliation, Religious discrimination, religious meaning, religious texts, Remembrance Day, Resonate, Rural Theology, Saied Reza Ameli, saliency of religion, schools and colleges, Scotland, spirituality, Stephen Miller, Survation, Syria, terrorism, terrorist acts, The Independent, The Sun, The Times, TNS-BMRB, Understanding Society, United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, United States, volunteering, Western countries, World War III, Yachad, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge, youth social action | Leave a comment

Ten Years On

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Clive D. Field

In this post we summarize seven new pieces of research touching on inter-religious relations in Britain ten years on from the London bombings on 7 July 2005 and in the aftermath of the recent Islamist massacre of British tourists in Tunisia.

Tenth anniversary of 7/7 (1)

To mark the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, the UK edition of the Huffington Post is running a mini-series on ‘Beyond the Bombings’. This was launched on 3 July 2015 with a feature about a poll commissioned from YouGov, for which 1,578 adult Britons were interviewed online on 23-24 June 2015.

Perhaps the most striking finding of the survey was that a majority (56%) now considers that Islam, as distinct from Islamic fundamentalist groups, poses a threat (27% major, 29% some) to Western liberal democracy. This represents an increase on the levels immediately after 9/11 in 2001 (32%) and immediately after 7/7 in 2005 (46%). The groups most antipathetic to Islam in 2015 are UKIP supporters (83%), over-60s (71%), and Conservatives (63%). Just 15% assess that Islam presents no threat at all, the under-25s being most optimistic (33%).

Moreover, as many as 15% (five points more than in 2005) agree that a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to the country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism, rising to 45% of UKIP voters and 23% of over-60s. An additional 60% think there is a dangerous minority of disaffected Muslims, even if the great majority is peaceful and law-abiding, while merely 20% overall (but 36% of under-25s) accept that practically all British Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding and deplore terror attacks carried out in the name of Islam.

The Huffington Post feature can be found at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/03/77-bombings-muslims-islam-britain-poll_n_7694452.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

and the full data tables, which also cover attitudes to multiculturalism and the perceived likelihood of further terror attacks on the scale of 7/7, are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7kjmsq2f6j/HuffingtonPostResults_150624_British_Muslims_W.pdf

Tenth anniversary of 7/7 (2)

Another organization commemorating 7/7 by a new survey was British Future which released the results of its Survation poll on 2 July 2015, for which 3,977 Britons aged 18 and over had been interviewed online between 8 and 15 May 2015, including booster samples of Scottish and BME (black minority ethnic) respondents, which, inter alia, yielded a respectable unweighted number of 457 Muslims. Data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/British-Future-7-7-Poll-GB-Tables.pdf

The majority (54%) considered that community relations across ethnic and faith groups had deteriorated in the decade since 7/7, 19% saying they had got much worse and 35% slightly worse, with 37% perceiving no change and 9% some improvement. There was much less variation by demographic sub-groups than one might have imagined, albeit as many as 68% of UKIP voters discerned that relations had got worse.

Asked whether they thought the British public did not hold ordinary British Muslims responsible for the Islamist terrorists behind 7/7, 51% agreed, 22% disagreed, and 27% were neutral. The dissentients, i.e. those who implicitly said that the public did hold British Muslims responsible, included 36% of Muslims, just three points less than the 39% who said the public did not see them as responsible.

When the question was put in more personal terms, the majority (56%) accepted that Britain’s Muslims were opposed to the terrorist ideology behind 7/7, but 14% disagreed, with as many as 30% undecided. Those doubting Muslim opposition to terrorism included 28% of UKIP voters, 29% of those with the least positive attitude to immigration, and 27% with the least positive attitude to the European Union. Unsurprisingly, 72% of Muslims contended that their co-religionists were opposed to the ideology behind 7/7, yet even 12% of them claimed otherwise.

Tunisian massacre

The murder of 38 tourists (including 30 Britons) by an Islamist gunman in a beach resort just north of Sousse, Tunisia was the most noticed news story of last week, according to an online poll by Populus of 2,052 adult Britons on 1-2 July 2015. It was mentioned by 66% of respondents. Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Combating Islamic State (1)

Three-quarters of Britons are very or fairly worried that IS may attempt a terrorist attack in Britain, and only 19% are not, according to a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times conducted online among 1,531 adults on 2-3 July 2015. Over-60s (88%) are almost twice as anxious as the under-25s (47%), while UKIP and Conservative voters are also particularly concerned (87% and 84%, respectively). A plurality (45%) does not believe the police and security services have sufficient powers to combat IS in Britain, and a majority supports giving them wider powers, for example to monitor personal communications, to extend the period of detention without charge in the case of terrorist suspects, and to reintroduce control orders.

Three-fifths agree that Britain and other Western countries should be doing more to counter IS in Iraq and Syria, including two-thirds of men, over-60s, Conservative and UKIP voters. Most Britons (57%, peaking at 71% among Conservatives) now favour extending RAF air strikes against IS to Syria, as well as Iraq, with just 21% disapproving. However, opinion is more divided about committing British and American ground troops to combat IS in either Iraq or Syria, with approximately two-fifths for and against in each case. A blog on the survey, with a link to the full data tables, can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/07/05/most-would-approve-raf-air-strikes-syria/

There is a tracker of all YouGov polling on IS at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/dl5mxnrekm/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers-Iraq-Syria-and-ISIS-030715.pdf

Combating Islamic State (2)

Fewer than half (47%) of Britons feel that it will be possible to beat the threat posed by IS at the present time, with women (39%) being far less confident than men (56%). This is according to a poll by ICM Unlimited conducted for the Daily Mirror among an online sample of 2,001 adults on 1-3 July 2015. Although pluralities backed airstrikes against IS (48%), building up local armies to fight IS (46%), and the assassination of IS leaders (41%), there was more reluctance to commit British or other ground troops (30%). And just 32% had confidence that military action would make the region safer, 29% convinced that it would make it still more dangerous. In a follow-up survey of 2,016 adults on 3-5 July, there was also a minority holding positive views of IS, 3% being very favourable and 6% somewhat favourable toward them (against 80% being very unfavourable). In the absence of data tables in the public domain, the fullest accounts of the survey are currently to be found in two articles on the Mirror’s website at:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/isis-cannot-beaten-fear-more-6009156

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-terror-attacks-inevitable-theres-6016015

Postscript: Data tables for both surveys have now been posted at:

http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/2015_mirror_isis_poll-2.pdf

Anti-Semitism

The Anti-Defamation League has recently (30 June 2015) updated The ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism, the first (2014) edition of which was covered by BRIN on 22 May 2014 at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/adl-index-of-anti-semitism/

For the update, between 10 March and 3 April 2015, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research conducted interviews, mostly by telephone, with 10,000 adults aged 18 and over in 19 countries, including Great Britain, 500 interviews in each apart from 1,000 in the United States. As in 2014, ADL created index scores by asking whether 11 negative statements about Jews were true or false, assent to at least six of them being taken as evidence of anti-Semitic sentiments. Britain, with 12%, registered the fourth lowest score of all 19 nations, after Denmark, the United States, and The Netherlands, with Turkey, Greece, and Iran being most anti-Semitic (with scores of 71%, 67%, and 60%, respectively).

Responses to the 11 statements in Britain in 2015 were as follows:

% across	True	False	Don’t know
Jews are more loyal to Israel than Britain	41	45	15
Jews still talk too much about what happened in Holocaust	26	65	9
Jews have too much power in international financial markets	22	64	14
Jews have too much power in business world	21	68	11
People hate Jews because of way Jews behave	19	72	9
Jews have too much control over US government	18	64	18
Jews don’t care what happens to anybody but their own	16	77	7
Jews have too much control over global affairs	15	76	8
Jews think they are better than other people	15	77	7
Jews have too much control over global media	12	76	12
Jews are responsible for most of world’s wars	6	88	6

As the following table of attitudes to five religious groups in Britain in 2015 reveals, Muslims are regarded in the most unfavourable light, with Jews viewed almost as positively as Christians, notwithstanding that only 27% interact with Jews very or somewhat often and 15% not at all.

Attitudes to (% across)	Favourable	Unfavourable	Unrated
Christians	87	7	6
Jews	83	7	10
Buddhists	80	5	15
Hindus	79	7	13
Muslims	62	25	13

Besides the national cross-sections, an additional 100 interviews with Muslims were carried out by telephone in areas of high Muslim concentration in each of six Western European countries, including Britain, between 23 March and 8 April 2015. The smallness of the samples should encourage caution in interpreting the results, but it can be noted that Muslims in each country were found to have a very high anti-Semitic index score relative to the national average (54% versus 12% in the case of British Muslims).

To access the press release, executive summary, and (interactively) country-by-country results for the 2015 update, follow the links at the foot of the home page of The ADL Global 100 website at:

http://global100.adl.org/

Holocaust denial

According to the ADL poll, above, Holocaust denial, in the sense of the Holocaust being regarded as a myth which did not happen, is a negligible problem: 0% took this position in Britain, while 90% asserted that, not only did the Holocaust happen, but that the number of Jews who perished as a result has been fairly described by history.

Nevertheless, Holocaust denial, which is not illegal in Britain, remains a sensitive matter for British Jews, 64% of whom believe that it should become a criminal offence, with a majority among all age cohorts, including 56% of under-35s. This is according to a Survation telephone poll for the Jewish Chronicle on 17-23 June 2015, for which 1,023 Jewish adults were interviewed. The result was briefly reported by the newspaper in the edition for 3 July 2015 at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/138711/two-thirds-say-they-want-denial-banned

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged 7/7, Anti-Defamation League, Anti-Semitism, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, British Future, Buddhists, Christians, community relations, Daily Mirror, Hindus, holocaust, Huffington Post, ICM Unlimited, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Muslims, Populus, Sunday Times, Survation, Syria, terrorism, Tunisia, YouGov | Leave a comment

Mid-Year Round-Up

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Immigration and the religious landscape

Were it not for immigration, the speed of secularization in England and Wales might have been even faster. That is one gloss that could be put on a report from the Office for National Statistics on 18 June 2015: 2011 Census Analysis: Ethnicity and Religion of the Non-UK Born Population in England and Wales. For the proportion of UK-born residents professing no religion in 2011 was, at 27%, almost double the figure among the non-UK-born (14%). However, the situation appears to be changing and, for those arriving in the UK between 2007 and 2011, it was 17%. Also, although there were 3,567,000 foreign-born Christians in England and Wales in 2011, they still accounted for a minority of all immigrants, so their numbers alone could not offset the largely intergenerational process of disaffiliation from Christianity which is at work among the native-born. Some media coverage of the report, as in the Daily Telegraph for 19 June 2015, p. 6 (‘migrants are mainstay of Christian faith’), is therefore rather misleading. In relative terms, Sikh immigration has fallen continuously since 1981, and even Muslim immigration has tailed off somewhat since the Millennium, albeit non-UK-born Muslims still outnumber the UK-born. Summary data are tabulated below. Fuller information can be found in 2011 Census Tables DC2207EW (country of birth by religion by sex) and CT02652011 (country of birth by year of arrival by religion) which can be accessed via the links embedded in the report at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_407038.pdf

% down	UK-born	Non-UK-born: total	Non-UK-born: 2007-11 arrivals
No religion	26.9	13.8	16.9
Christian	61.1	47.5	47.5
Buddhist	0.2	2.0	2.8
Hindu	0.6	7.3	7.2
Jewish	0.4	0.7	0.6
Muslim	2.6	19.0	16.3
Sikh	0.5	2.4	1.2
Other religion	0.4	0.6	0.4
Not stated	7.3	6.7	7.1

Predicting the demise of British Christianity

Writing in The Spectator on 13 June 2015, and projecting forward on the basis of evidence from the census of population and sample surveys, Damian Thompson suggested that 2067 will be the year in which the profession of Christianity will finally disappear from the British Isles, with Anglicanism set to vanish in 2033. See:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9555222/2067-the-end-of-british-christianity/

Ramadan (1): knowledge of

We are mid-way through the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which, in terms of fasting, began on 18 June 2015. To mark the event, and the launch of the broadcaster’s ‘My Ramadan’ mini-season, BBC Religion and Ethics commissioned an opinion poll from TNS among a sample of 2,036 Britons aged 16 and over. It revealed that, although the majority of the public agrees that cultural diversity is a positive thing, only 52% claim to have a clear understanding of what Ramadan is about, falling to 43% among over-65s. A plurality believes that it is just devout Muslims who do not eat or drink anything during the daylight hours of Ramadan. No data tables for the survey are in the public domain, but the BBC press release of 18 June can be read at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/my-ramadan

Ramadan (2): retail value of

‘Ramadan spurs increase in grocery sales’, Retail Week reported on 23 June 2015. ‘UK’s largest supermarkets have seen a rise in sales because of the holy month of Ramadan, with the Islamic festival becoming the most important retail event after Christmas and Easter. The Big Four [supermarkets] are expecting sales to increase by about £100m over the next month as the UK’s three million Muslims embark on fasting.’

Combating Islamic State

Two-thirds of 999 Britons interviewed by telephone on behalf of the Pew Global Attitudes Project on 8-28 April 2015 approved of the US-led military action being taken against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, with one-fifth opposed and 15% undecided. The level of support was lower than in several other Western countries such as France (81%), US (80%), Australia (77%), Italy (70%), and Spain (67%) and in Middle Eastern nations such as Israel (84%), Lebanon (78%), and Jordan (77%). However, approval of US President Barack Obama’s handling of IS was higher in Britain (43%) than the US (40%), with disapproval at 37% and 54% respectively. For the Pew topline report, released on 23 June 2015, see:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/06/Balance-of-Power-Report-FINAL-June-23-20151.pdf

Anti-Semitism

The UK’s Jewish population is far more fearful of Islamist extremists (61%) than it is of neo-Nazis (16%), according to a new Survation poll for the Jewish Chronicle, conducted predominantly by telephone among 1,023 members of a pre-recruited adult Jewish panel between 17 and 23 June 2015. The remainder fear neither or are undecided. A majority of Jews (72%) is opposed to anti-Semitic groups being allowed to stage peaceful demonstrations in Jewish areas, with only 22% in favour, while 62% support Jews holding counter-demonstrations to anti-Semitic rallies (with 29% against). Data tables, disaggregated by gender, age, and region, are available at:

http://survation.com/?attachment_id=8032

The context of the survey is an imminent planned protest by far-right activists in Golders Green, London against the alleged ‘Jewification’ of the area. However, the Jewish Chronicle’s headline about the poll (‘Ban Golders Green Rally, Say 72 Per Cent’) is somewhat misleading since respondents were not specifically asked whether that particular event should be banned.

History of Church of England finance

An important new book by Sarah Flew brings the tools of accountancy and financial management to bear on the history of the Established Church in England, not so much in the round as through a case study of the funding of home missionary organizations in the Diocese of London during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Philanthropy and the Funding of the Church of England, 1856-1914 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015, xv + 251p., ISBN 9781848935006, hardback, £60, with ebook editions for £24) is based on a wide range of hitherto little-used archival and other primary sources, and includes a good dose of tables. Flew charts the progressive decline in Christian philanthropy and its connection with secularization. More information is available at:

https://www.pickeringchatto.com/titles/1783-9781848935006-philanthropy-and-the-funding-of-the-church-of-england-1856-1914

Britain’s Last Religious Revival?

Apologies for the plug, but prospective purchasers of my new book on the statistics of religious change in Britain between 1945 and 1963 (mentioned in my BRIN post of 8 March 2015) may like to know that, for a limited period (until 29 February 2016), copies can be bought by individuals direct from the publisher at a 30% discount.

Just quote ‘PM15THIRTY’ when ordering the book from the Palgrave Macmillan website at http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/britain-s-last-religious-revival–clive-d–field/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137512529 or via email to orders@palgrave.com.

For full terms and conditions applicable to the discount, see:

http://www.palgrave.com/page/Palgrave-discount-codes-terms-and-conditions/

Posted in Historical studies, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Anti-Semitism, BBC, census of population, Christianity, Church of England, Clive Field, Damian Thompson, Diocese of London, finance, home missions, Immigration, Islam, Islamic State, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Office for National Statistics, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Ramadan, Religious Affiliation, Sarah Flew, supermarkets, Survation, The Spectator, TNS | Leave a comment

Good Death and Other News

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Good death

Time was when religion was the cardinal attribute of a ‘good death’. But no more, it seems, according to a ComRes survey for the National Council for Palliative Care published on 18 May 2015, for which 2,016 adult Britons were interviewed online on 29-30 April. Asked to rank six factors in terms of importance for ensuring a ‘good death’, only 5% put ‘having your religious/spiritual needs met’ in first position while 60% placed it last, the mean score being 5.27 out of six. The next score was 3.68 for being involved in decisions about end-of-life care, and the lowest of all (and thus the most popular option) was 2.33 for being pain free. Indeed, for 33% the top priority was being pain free, for 17% being with family and friends, and for 13% retaining one’s dignity. There were comparatively few variations by demographics, apart from in London where having religious/spiritual needs met was the most important factor for 11%, although even here 47% rated it least significant. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/National-Council-for-Palliative-Care_Public-opinion-on-death-and-dying.pdf

Geographical knowledge

They may be among the most iconic landmarks in the country, but a significant minority of Brits are unable to recognize Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral as being in the UK. This is according to a poll of 2,000 adults conducted on behalf of Mercure Hotels and published on 22 May 2015. Shown pictures of a number of famous locations, and given multiple choice answers, 65% correctly identified St Paul’s Cathedral but 28% confused it with The Vatican and 6% thought it was somewhere else. Canterbury Cathedral was recognized by 82% but 15% claimed it was Notre Dame in Paris, with 2% suggesting other places. A similar lack of knowledge was displayed for more secular landmarks. No data tables are available, and this summary is taken from the report at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3091436/Great-Stupid-Britain-New-survey-finds-Brits-think-Brighton-Pavilion-Taj-Mahal-Mr-Darcy-s-Pemberley-real-stately-home-St-Paul-s-Vatican.html

Meanwhile …

St Paul’s Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, has been voted the nation’s favourite building in a survey for UKTV published on 21 May 2015, for which 2,000 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online by OnePoll during April. St Paul’s Cathedral attracted a vote of 38%, with Stonehenge and the Houses of Parliament in second and third places (with 30% and 26%, respectively). Other ecclesiastical buildings to make the top 20 were Westminster Abbey (eighth, 14%), Durham Cathedral (eleventh, 8%), and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (fourteenth, 8%). St Paul’s Cathedral also topped the poll for being the most impressive feat of design in the country, being voted for by 68%, almost double the figure for Westminster Abbey (38%). No data tables have been released, but UKTV’s press release can be found at:

http://corporate.uktv.co.uk/news/article/nations-favourite-buildings-revealed/

Faith-based social action

The latest attempt to quantify faith-based social action was published by the Cinnamon Network on 20 May 2015: Cinnamon Faith Action Audit National Report. It derives from an online survey of 4,440 local churches and other faith groups in 57 locations throughout the UK in February 2015, of which 2,110 responded saying they were actively working to support their local community; 94% of them were Christian. These 2,110 groups were mobilizing 139,600 volunteers and 9,177 paid staff to benefit 3,494,634 individuals in 2014 through 16,068 projects with a total financial value of £235 million (including a calculation of volunteer hours at the living wage level). Scaled up for the 60,761 faith groups in the UK, faith-based social action is estimated by the Cinnamon Network to be worth over £3 billion per annum and to support over 47 million beneficiaries. However, it should be noted that the sample was recruited through the invitation of local champions and may not be statistically representative. The report is available at:

http://www.cinnamonnetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Final-National-Report.pdf

Ethnic minorities and the general election

Black and minority ethnic (BME) Britons have traditionally favoured the Labour Party, but one-third voted for the Conservatives in the 2015 general election (held on 7 May), according to a Survation poll for British Future conducted among an online sample of 2,067 BMEs between 8 and 15 May 2015. Voting by religious groups (for the 79% of the sample who voted) is tabulated below, from which it will be seen that the Conservatives especially appealed to Buddhist, Hindu, and Sikh electors, Labour to Muslims, and the smaller parties to Buddhists and the non-religious. British Future’s press release of 25 May 2015 is available at:

http://www.britishfuture.org/articles/ethnic-minority-votes-up-for-grabs/

Full data tables can be found at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/BFBME-Tables-25-05-15.pdf

% across	Conservative	Labour	Other parties
All BMEs	33	52	15
Christian	31	56	13
Muslim	25	64	11
Buddhist	54	25	21
Hindu	49	41	10
Sikh	49	41	10
Not religious	26	50	24

Young people and Muslims

There is significant negativity toward Muslims on the part of young people, according to findings from a study of 5,945 10-16-year-olds at 60 English schools in 2012-14 and published by Show Racism the Red Card (SRTRC) on 19 May 2015. This is associated with an exaggerated notion of the size of the Muslim presence in England, the average estimate by pupils being 36% of the population, seven times the real figure. Questionnaires had been sent to schools ahead of visits by the SRTRC team, and, although the sample is not claimed as being representative, the ethnic and religious profile is said to broadly match the 2011 census.

Summary data have been published by The Guardian at:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/19/most-children-think-immigrants-are-stealing-jobs-schools-study-shows

They reveal that:

42% acknowledge there are poor relations between Muslims and non-Muslims
41% view forced marriages as being common in Islam
31% agree that Muslims are taking over England
29% think Muslim women are oppressed
26% believe Islam encourages terrorism and extremism
19% disagree that Muslims make a positive contribution to English society
14% disagree that Islam is a peaceful religion

Slightly different figures are quoted in the SRTRC press release at:

http://www.srtrc.org/news/news-and-events?news=5776

Islamic State

There has been limited British polling of attitudes to Islamic State (IS) thus far this year, doubtless because of pollsters’ preoccupation with the general election campaign but also perhaps because of a perception that IS has suffered some setbacks (until very recently, that is). However, a YouGov survey published on 22 May 2015, and conducted online among 1,494 Britons on 18-19 May, has found that 50% of all adults (and 63% of over-60s) assess that IS has become more powerful over the past six months and only 5% less, with 32% detecting its position as stable. Although only 33% are aware for certain that the RAF is currently taking part in air strikes against IS, 59% approve of such RAF participation and 55% would like to see it scaled up (men particularly so, 67%). Full data tables, minus breaks by voting intention (which seem to have all but disappeared from pollsters’ websites following their poor performance in the general election, now the subject of independent audit), are available via the link in the blog post at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/05/23/public-back-raf-air-strikes-worry-isis-winning/

Anti-Semitism

On 13 May 2015 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) published an important 32-page policy paper summarizing some (but by no means all) recent research into British anti-Semitism and outlining the principles of a future research strategy in this area: Jonathan Boyd and L. Daniel Staetsky, Could it Happen Here? What Existing Data Tell Us about Contemporary Antisemitism in the UK. The paper covers: a) the attitudes of non-Jews toward Jews, principally on the basis of surveys undertaken by the Pew Global Attitudes Project and the Anti-Defamation League and of anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust (CST); b) Jewish responses to anti-Semitism, taken from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) studies and the JPR’s 2013 National Jewish Community Survey; and c) an analysis of the perpetrators of anti-Semitism, mainly from CST and FRA data. The report is available for download at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2015.Policy_Debate_-_Contemporary_Antisemitism.pdf

To quote JPR: ‘The report demonstrates that existing data present a complex and multi-faceted picture of reality, proving some existing hypotheses beyond any reasonable doubt, but challenging others. It further maintains that research data on antisemitism in the UK vary in quality, and many of the outputs seem to generate far more heat than light. It argues that much more work needs to be done in coordinating research efforts, maximising the value of existing datasets, focusing on the areas of greatest concern, and ensuring that any data collected and analysed are strongly concentrated on the most important issues: understanding the threat, assessing whether it is growing, declining or stable, and providing genuine policy insights for international, national and Jewish communal leaders, as well as Jews more generally.’ Significantly, there is no mention here of non-Jewish (including academic) audiences for research data in this field.

Reflections on religious surveys

Abdul-Azim Ahmed reflects on the utility (and pitfalls) of sample surveys on religion and belief in a post on the On Religion blog on 5 May 2015 at:

http://www.onreligion.co.uk/7-out-of-10-people-are-sick-of-surveys/

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged Abdul-Azim Ahmed, Anti-Semitism, British Future, Canterbury Cathedral, Cinnamon Network, ComRes, Daniel Staetsky, end-of-life care, ethnic minorities, faith-based social action, general election, good death, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islam, Islamic State, Jonathan Boyd, Mercure Hotels, Muslims, National Council for Palliative Care, On Religion, OnePoll, RAF, religious/spiritual needs, Show Racism the Red Card, Social Capital, St Paul's Cathedral, Survation, UKTV, voting, Westminster Abbey, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

Religiosity and Other News

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Self-assessed religiosity

In our post of 11 January 2015, we reported on the British results from the WIN/Gallup International End of Year 2014 poll, focusing on a question about trust in religious professionals, but also noting findings on two other religion-related topics, one of them self-assessed religiosity. On 13 April 2015 WIN/Gallup International and ORB International, which undertook the British fieldwork, posted online the full religiosity data and an associated religiosity index for the 64,000 respondents from 65 countries participating in the global poll. These can be downloaded from:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s=are-you-a-religious-person-poll-results-from-65-countries

Britain came 59th out of 65 nations in terms of the proportion of the population self-rating as a religious person, with just 30%, under half the global mean (63%) and well behind Thailand at the head of the index (94%). The six countries less religious than Britain were Hong Kong, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan, and China. Two-thirds of Britons either described themselves as not a religious person (53%) or a convinced atheist (13%), with 4% undecided. The results for selected countries, arranged by region, are shown below.

% across	Religious person	Not religious person	Convinced atheist
Global mean	63	22	11
Europe
Austria	39	44	10
Belgium	44	30	18
Czech Republic	23	45	30
Denmark	42	40	12
Finland	56	32	10
France	40	35	18
Germany	34	42	17
Great Britain	30	53	13
Greece	71	15	6
Ireland	45	41	10
Italy	74	18	6
Netherlands	26	51	15
Poland	86	10	2
Portugal	60	28	9
Russia	70	18	5
Spain	37	35	20
Sweden	19	59	17
Switzerland	38	46	12
North America
Canada	40	41	12
USA	56	33	6
Asia
China	7	29	61
India	76	21	2
Japan	13	31	31
Korea	44	49	6
Pakistan	88	10	1

The number of Britons self-rating as religious seems first to have been measured (by Opinion Research Centre) in January-February 1968, when it stood at 58%. It was 36% when recorded by YouGov earlier this month. The question has been asked many times in between, albeit with variant wording, leading to some volatility in results. However, there has been a clear pattern of decline in religiosity since the 1990s, with, during the first half of the present decade, between 55% and 75% viewing themselves as irreligious. This is a much higher proportion of adults than professed no religion in the 2011 census of Britain (25%) or in the 2012 Integrated Household Survey (30%) or who doubted or denied the existence of God or a higher power in two YouGov polls of 2013 (35%).

Personal well-being

Christians tend to experience the highest levels of personal well-being in the UK and Muslims and religious ‘nones’ the lowest. This is suggested by an analysis of aggregated data for adults aged 16 and over from the Annual Population Survey for April 2011-March 2014 which was published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 27 March 2015 as How Does Personal Well-Being Vary by Sex, Disability, Ethnicity, and Religion? Respondents were asked to assess, on a scale running from 0 to 10, overall ‘how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?’; ‘to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?’; ‘how happy did you feel yesterday?’; and ‘how anxious did you feel yesterday?’ Means for each of these four measures are tabulated below, while the report, with links to data tables, can be read at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_400162.pdf

Mean scores out of 10	Life satisfaction	Life worthwhile	Happiness yesterday	Anxiety yesterday
All adults	7.46	7.70	7.33	3.03
No religion	7.34	7.51	7.15	2.98
Christian	7.54	7.81	7.43	3.01
Buddhist	7.31	7.57	7.39	3.23
Hindu	7.48	7.66	7.46	3.26
Jewish	7.44	7.81	7.31	3.29
Muslim	7.27	7.52	7.20	3.28
Sikh	7.39	7.67	7.32	3.23
Other	7.25	7.62	7.25	3.27

ONS does not attempt to explore the root cause of these religious differences in any detail, except to note that variations between and within equality groups generally can be attributed to various factors, including socio-economic characteristics and self-reported state of health. The relatively older age profile of Christians and younger profile of Muslims and ‘nones’ is likely to account for some of the difference, as is the relative deprivation of Muslims.

Muslims and non-Muslims

In our last post, on 12 April 2015, we reported on a telephone survey of Muslim opinion conducted by Survation for Sky News, noting that a parallel online poll of 1,001 non-Muslim Britons aged 18 and over had also been conducted for comparative purposes, the data tables for which were not then available. The tables for the latter study have now been released and can be found, together with the Muslim data, via links in a blog at:

http://survation.com/british-muslims-is-the-divide-increasing/

A comparison of Muslim and non-Muslim views is shown below, revealing a gulf on all issues, and very wide on some. This exemplified that 44% of non-Muslims admitted to being more suspicious of Muslims than they had been a few years back, rising to 49% of men and over-55s.

% down	Muslims	Non-Muslims
Values of Islam
Compatible with British values	71	22
Incompatible with British values	16	52
British Muslims doing enough to integrate
Agree	64	18
Disagree	21	57
Muslims should condemn terrorism carried out in name of Islam
Agree	51	67
Disagree	40	17
Sympathy with UK Muslims fighting in Syria
A lot/some	28	14
None	61	77
Police/MI5 contributing to radicalization of young Muslims
Agree	39	16
Disagree	29	50

Further recent exploration of anti-Muslim sentiment is contained in Ingrid Storm’s post on the Democratic Audit UK blog on 17 April 2015. Using data from the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey, she shows that Muslims continue to be less accepted than other religious or ethnic minorities in Britain. She suggests that ‘negative media portrayals of Muslims and associations with Islamist terrorism amplify prejudice against this group among all parts of the population.’ See:

http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=12510

Anglican church growth

Revd Dr Mark Hart, Rector of Plemstall and Guilden Sutton in the Diocese of Chester, has just (13 April 2015) published ‘From Delusion to Reality: An Evaluation of From Anecdote to Evidence’, the Church of England’s influential report (January 2014) on its church growth research programme (2011-13) which is now being used to drive ‘Reform and Renewal’ in the Church. A mathematician and engineer by background, Hart carefully reviews From Anecdote to Evidence in the light of the original research by Professor David Voas and Laura Watts of the University of Essex. Hart concludes that ‘From Anecdote to Evidence systematically misrepresents or misinterprets the underlying report by David Voas and Laura Watts, thereby exaggerating the usefulness of the findings for numerical growth’.

More specifically, Hart highlights eight major weaknesses in From Anecdote to Evidence, the first being its over-dependence upon self-reported assessments of growth, which are inflated and biased, rather than using statistical data from parish returns. On the basis of his critique, he calls into question both the From Evidence to Action initiative designed to encourage parishes to implement the findings presented in From Anecdote to Evidence, as well as the decision to borrow at least £100 million from the future, using Church Commissioners’ funds, in order to advance the ‘Reform and Renewal’ agenda for the Church, doubting that this will give an adequate return on investment either in terms of finance or church growth. Hart’s 18-page paper is extensively covered in the Church Times for 17 April 2015 (main report on p. 5, leader comment on p. 12) and can be downloaded in full from:

http://revmarkhart.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/from-delusion-to-reality.html

Upcoming events

The Church of England’s annual ‘Faith in Research’ conference is to be held at Novotel, Birmingham on 14 May 2015. The theme this year is ‘Everyone Counts’, the title of a congregational survey carried out in a sample of Anglican parishes in 2014, and about whose results Sarah Barter-Godfrey will be talking. Other plenary speakers include Professor Leslie Francis on psychological type and the Church of England, and Tom Sefton and Bethany Eckley on church-based social action. There are also parallel sessions on ministry, mission, occasional offices, and church growth. More details at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences.aspx

‘Rethinking Modern British Studies’ is an international conference hosted by the University of Birmingham on 1-3 July 2015. Its extensive programme includes several panel sessions on religious themes, including one on the last day on ‘Public Opinion, Polling and Cultural and Religious Change in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Britain’, with papers by Marcus Collins (on measuring permissiveness), Clive Field (on indicators of religiosity), and Ben Clements (on the religious beliefs and social attitudes of Catholics). More details at:

https://mbsbham.wordpress.com/programme-rethinking-modern-british-studies/

Professor Linda Woodhead is running a residential course on ‘Britain’s Religious Crisis’ at Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden on 3-5 July 2015. Drawing on her own empirical research, she intends to: highlight the growing values gap between religion and society; chart the rapid rise of religious ‘nones’ and the ‘seculigious’; review the battles for the soul of traditional religion and the role of politics and the media; and suggest how to resolve the crisis and move forward. More details at:

https://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/events/events-courses-list/britains-religious-crisis

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged Annual Population Survey, atheists, British Social Attitudes Survey, church growth, Church of England, Democratic Audit, Faith in Research, Ingrid Storm, Islam, life satisfaction, Linda Woodhead, Mark Hart, Muslims, non-Muslims, Office for National Statistics, ORB International, Religiosity, religious person, Sky News, Survation, well-being, WIN/Gallup International | Leave a comment

Religion and Public Affairs

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Britons on Christianity in the public square

Five times as many people (73% versus 15%) think that Britain has become less of a Christian country over the past five years than dissent from the proposition, according to a ComRes poll for Christian Concern conducted among an online sample of 2,057 Britons aged 18 and over on 31 March and 1 April 2015, and published on 5 April. Notwithstanding, a plurality (47%) still considers that Britain’s Christian heritage continues to bring benefits to the country today compared with 32% who say the opposite, and a majority (55%) welcomes the fact that Easter is marked primarily as a Christian festival against 33% who view it as little more than two Bank Holidays together. There is also majority support for the rights of Christians in the workplace, with 52% believing they should be able to refuse to act against their conscience without being penalized by their employer, 66% wanting legal protection for the wearing of Christian symbols such as the cross in the workplace, and 72% deeming it wrong that health care workers should be threatened with the sack for offering to pray with patients. Unsurprisingly, Christians are much more well-disposed than religious ‘nones’ to an ongoing public profile for Christianity, albeit a minority is not, while many of the ‘nones’ also defend Christian freedoms. In terms of age, the over-65s display the most conservative views about the place of Christianity, with 18-24s adopting a more liberal position. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Christian_Concern___Easter_Poll___April_2015.pdf

Britons on assisted dying

The British public is overwhelmingly in favour of legalizing assisted dying within defined parameters, and there is very little difference between the views of Christians overall and the national average. This is according to the results of one of the largest ever surveys on the subject, undertaken online by Populus on behalf of campaign group Dignity in Dying on 11-19 March 2015, and released in full on 7 April. The major findings are summarized below, with detailed data tables available at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Dignity-in-Dying-Poll-March-2015-WEBSITE-DATATABLES.pdf

% across	All	Christians	Non-Christians	Nones
Attitude to assisted dying becoming law
Support	82	80	68	88
Oppose	12	14	26	6
Attitude to own MP backing such a law
More positive to them	53	49	47	61
More negative to them	10	11	23	5
MPs voting on legalizing assisted dying
Should take account of constituents’ views	67	69	60	68
Should vote according to own opinion	21	22	24	20
House of Commons should allocate time after general election for full debate on assisted dying
Agree	79	80	64	81
Disagree	11	12	23	8
Would assist terminally ill loved one to die even if it meant breaking the law
Would assist	44	43	37	49
Would not assist	29	32	39	23

Unfortunately, the attitudes of followers of individual Christian denominations were not recorded, but it seems likely that, as in other studies where they have been, Roman Catholics would have been most opposed to legalizing assisted dying. In this Populus poll non-Christians were more than twice as opposed on several of the key questions asked, albeit the majority even of them endorsed assisted dying. The most supportive religious group of all were the ‘nones’, but not by a big margin. Lord Falconer of Thoroton has signalled his intention to bring back his bill to legalize assisted dying as soon as the new Parliament assembles after the general election; the bill ran out of time in the old Parliament.

Britons on Scientology

The Church of Scientology, founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, has been in the media spotlight again recently, principally as a result of its negative portrayal in Alex Gibney’s controversial new documentary Going Clear. This has prompted YouGov to test the British public’s awareness of and attitudes to the movement in an online poll of 1,906 adults on 3-4 April 2015. Knowledge is minimal, with 75% professing to know nothing or very little, 23% something, and just 2% a lot. This did not prevent 61% dismissing Scientology’s claims to being a real religion, only 8% thinking it is, rising to 14% among 18-24s and those with some knowledge of it; the remaining 31% were unable to express an opinion. Moreover, 45% found the beliefs of Scientology less credible than those of Christianity, peaking at 62% with those who knew something about it. The achievement of spiritual enlightenment is one of Scientology’s core beliefs, which a plurality of 38% considered to be probably attainable, with 30% disagreeing and 32% uncertain, although it is debatable how much this question was actually understood. The majority (54%) did not regard themselves as spiritual while 41% said they were (12% very and 29% slightly), compared with 60% and 35% respectively when YouGov last probed the matter in September 2011. However, too much should not be read into the differences as spirituality is a rather elusive concept, difficult to operationalize, with surveys on the topic yielding fluctuating results. A blog about this latest YouGov study, with a link to the data tables, was published on 8 April at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/08/scientology-not-real-religion-public/

Professing Anglicans and the general election

The Church of England has often been seen as a natural ally of the Conservative Party, and an analysis of YouGov’s aggregate polling of 35,000 electors in March 2015, commissioned by the Church Times, certainly confirms that professing Anglicans are disproportionately likely to favour the Conservatives. Whereas, as the table below shows, the Conservatives and Labour were tied nationally, on 34% each, the Conservatives had a commanding 21% lead among Anglicans. Catholics, by contrast, were more disposed to Labour (42%) than Conservatives (31%). For the Church Times report, see:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/10-april/news/uk/tories-can-count-on-the-c-of-e-voters-tell-polls

% down	All electors	Anglican electors
Conservative	34	48
Labour	34	27
Liberal Democrat	7	6
UKIP	14	16
Other parties	11	3

Practising Christians and the general election

Four-fifths of 1,960 practising (churchgoing) Christians aged 16 and over think Britain is heading in the wrong moral direction, while two-thirds believe that it is harder to be a Christian in Britain today than it was in 2010. This is according to a ComRes survey undertaken online in the UK between 13 and 17 March 2015 and published on 9 April by Premier Christian Radio, which sponsored the study, in a press release at:

http://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Election-Deficit-not-a-top-concern-for-Christians

Asked which of the leaders of the four main parties they most associated with six statements about the role of faith in politics, a majority of practising Christians ranging from 55% to 78% replied ‘none of them’, with David Cameron being the only one to shine a little (see table, below). However, even Cameron had blotted his copy-book in the eyes of respondents, with 71% denying that his time as Prime Minister had been good for Christians in Britain (and 52% saying that it had actually been bad), and 78% claiming that he had been wrong to laud the legalization of same-sex marriage as one of his proudest achievements.

Leaders of four main parties associated with … (%)	None of them	David Cameron
Places importance on own faith in political decision-making	78	12
Exhibits Christian values in political beliefs	68	20
Exhibits Christian values in personal life	66	23
Likely to build on Britain’s Christian cultural/political heritage	59	23
Encourages involvement of faith groups in politics	58	24
Committed to protecting religious freedom	55	18

The three most important of 13 named policy areas for determining the personal vote of practising Christians were: managing the NHS (42%), ensuring the benefits of economic growth are felt by all (41%), and making the welfare system fairer (33%). These are not necessarily the highest priorities of the electorate as a whole (for instance, immigration and the European Union came well down this sample’s list of concerns) nor of the main political parties. Even reducing the government budget deficit preoccupied no more than 20% of practising Christians, and promoting UK economic growth just 16%. The latter was the major policy area where practising Christians regarded the Conservatives as having a big advantage over Labour (50% versus 13%), followed by reducing crime and anti-social behaviour. Otherwise, the rating of the parties was either closer or Labour was seen as the more credible option, notably when it came to ensuring economic equality, improving housing affordability, making the welfare system fairer, managing the NHS, and caring for the elderly.

Regrettably, although full data tables for the survey are available, including breaks by age, gender, region, and denomination, they are not up to the usual ComRes standard of presentation and clarity. They can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Premier-_-Election-Priority-Polling.pdf

Jews and the general election

Among electors intending to vote in the forthcoming general election, and after discounting undecideds and refusals, Jews are more than twice as likely to favour the Conservatives and far less likely to support UKIP as the population as a whole. This is according to the latest Survation telephone poll of 566 self-identifying British Jews for the Jewish Chronicle on 2-7 April 2015, compared with the same company’s national poll for the Daily Mirror on 8-9 April. A summary of voting intentions appears below, with full data tables for the Jewish survey available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/General-Election-Poll-Tables.pdf

% down	Jewish electors	All electors
Conservative	69	30
Labour	22	36
Liberal Democrat	2	8
UKIP	2	15
Other parties	5	11

The pro-Conservative stance of British Jews doubtless reflects their relatively affluent status, but it also appears to be determined by perspectives on Israel and the Middle East. Almost three-quarters (73%) of Jews claimed that the views of British political parties towards Israel would be very or quite important in influencing their own vote. Three-fifths (61%) contended that the Conservatives had the best policies for Israel and the Middle East, and 65% felt that, of the party leaders, David Cameron had the best approach to these issues. A similar proportion (64%) considered that Cameron as Prime Minister would have the best attitude to the Jewish community in the UK, against only 13% for Labour’s Ed Miliband. Indeed, in its coverage of the poll (10 April 2015, pp. 1, 4, 28), the Jewish Chronicle was particularly struck by Miliband’s ‘shocking’ standing, asking how a supposedly Jewish politician could make ‘such a terrible fist of attracting Jewish voters?’

Muslims and current issues

Most British Muslims (71%) see no incompatibility between the values of British society and those of Islam, according to a telephone poll of 1,001 Muslims, conducted by Survation for Sky News from 10 to 16 March 2015, and published on 10 April. Just 16% disagreed. A majority also felt that Muslims were already doing enough to integrate into British society (64%) and that they had personally encountered no more suspicion from non-Muslims than a few years previously (62%). However, there was some ambiguity when it came to matters of terrorism. Two-fifths overall (and 46% of women) did not believe it was the responsibility of Muslims to condemn terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam, while 28% of all Muslims (including 33% of women and 32% of under-35s) said that they had a lot or some sympathy with young Muslims who had left the UK to join fighters in Syria. A plurality (39%) agreed that the actions of the police and MI5 were contributing to the radicalization of young Muslims. Data tables, with breaks by gender, age, and region, are available at:

http://interactive.news.sky.com/2015/PDFs/Sky-Muslim-Poll.pdf

Survation also undertook an online survey of 1,000 non-Muslims, which has yet to be reported in full. A few results were mentioned in a Sky News press release, two being polar opposites of the Muslim voice, with 58% of non-Muslims considering that Muslims were not doing enough to integrate into British society and 52% that the values of British society and Islam were incompatible. The press release is at:

http://news.sky.com/story/1462023/poll-majority-have-no-sympathy-with-extremists

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Anglicans, assisted dying, Christian Concern, Christian country, Christianity, Christians, Church of England, Church Times, ComRes, Conservative Party, David Cameron, Dignity in Dying, Easter, Ed Miliband, general election, Islam, Israel, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Labour Party, Muslims, non-Muslims, party leaders, politics, Populus, Premier Christian Radio, religious freedom, Scientology, Sky News, spiritual enlightenment, Survation, terrorism, voting, workplace, YouGov | 1 Comment

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