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Women in the Church and Other News

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Women in the Church

Prompted by the recent debate (and decisive vote) about women bishops in the Church of England’s General Synod, Opinium Research resolved to test public opinion about several facets of the role of women in the Church. Questions were put to an online sample of 2,003 UK adults on 11-14 July 2014, with the results being published on 15 July. Key data are tabulated below for meaningfully-sized demographic sub-groups (unfortunately, some sub-groups, including regular churchgoers, had too few cases to be statistically reliable).

Q1.0 Women should be allowed to become bishops in the Church of England

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	56	7	37
Men	52	8	41
Women	60	6	34
18-34	52	4	43
35-54	57	7	37
55+	58	9	33
Anglican	62	7	31
Catholic	42	15	42
No religion	58	3	39

Q1.1 Women should be allowed to become clergy in the Roman Catholic Church

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	53	8	40
Men	49	9	42
Women	56	6	37
18-34	51	7	42
35-54	56	7	37
55+	51	9	40
Anglican	56	6	38
Catholic	48	24	28
No religion	54	4	43

Q1.2 The ordination of women is not consistent with Christian teaching

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	21	30	49
Men	25	25	50
Women	18	35	47
18-34	27	19	54
35-54	22	30	48
55+	15	40	45
Anglican	20	36	44
Catholic	36	24	41
No religion	15	30	55

Q1.3 Gender equality in religious organisations should be enforced by law

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	38	20	42
Men	35	22	42
Women	40	18	42
18-34	41	14	45
35-54	41	17	42
55+	32	28	40
Anglican	40	20	40
Catholic	27	35	37
No religion	40	13	46

Q1.4 Whether or not women are allowed to become priests or bishops is an important issue for the 21st century

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	46	14	40
Men	40	17	43
Women	52	10	37
18-34	43	11	46
35-54	45	14	41
55+	50	15	34
Anglican	55	10	34
Catholic	49	23	29
No religion	39	16	45

Q1.5 Whether or not women should be ordained as clergy is entirely a matter for each Christian denomination to decide

% across	Agree	Disagree	Neither/ don’t know
All	44	15	40
Men	46	12	41
Women	43	18	40
18-34	35	17	49
35-54	44	16	40
55+	53	13	34
Anglican	53	11	36
Catholic	58	18	25
No religion	32	21	48

At first sight, these results may seem a little surprising. Given the legislative and other strides taken toward gender equality in Britain, otherwise reflected in strong support in public opinion polling, the fact that, at best, only a slim majority appears to favour a greater role for women in the Church strikes one as odd. But the solution to the puzzle lies in the very substantial numbers unable to express a view on the matters surveyed (Q1.2 being a particular case in point), often, one imagines, because they considered themselves insufficiently well-informed to make a judgment or because they were indifferent to the issue. This is a phenomenon characteristic of a lot of polling on religion (see, also, the item on disestablishment, below).

Beyond that, females tended to endorse a stronger role for women in the Church than males, but the effect of age was less consistent save the disproportionate tendency of the 18-34s not to take sides. Anglicans were generally more favourable than Catholics to women assuming more responsibility in Church life, albeit almost half the latter endorsed women priests. People of no religion were only marginally more likely to take a gender diversity stance than the average, and they were disproportionately to be found among those registering as neutral or don’t know.

The full data are available at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4677_opinium_pr_women_bishops_external.pdf

British values

The so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ plot in Birmingham schools recently triggered a political debate about the need to instil ‘British values’ in our children and citizens more generally. In BRIN’s post of 28 June 2014 we noted an initial attempt by ComRes on 11-13 June to define those values, by offering a representative sample of Britons a list of twelve candidate values, from which they were asked to select the most important. They included religious freedom (which was actually ranked tenth in significance).

Subsequently, on 25-27 June 2014, ICM Research (on behalf of British Future) proposed an alternative list of ten items to its online sample of 2,030 adults aged 18 and over. On this occasion, respondents were not specifically asked to rank them but to identify any which they deemed a ‘British value’. Respect for other people’s religion and beliefs was so regarded by 52% (with highs of 67% among the over-65s and 62% for the top AB social group), placing it in seventh position. The most prized British value was respect for the law (69%) and the least respect for MPs and others in elected office (18%). Data tables are at:

http://www.icmresearch.com/data/media/pdf/British%20Future-British-Values-June%202014-V2.pdf

Disestablishment

Only one-third of Britons think the official link between the Church of England and the state is good for Britain, according to a survey by ComRes for ITV News on 27-29 June 2014, for which 2,049 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online. Support was greatest among the over-65s (41%), the top (AB) social group (40%), and retired people with a private pension (42%); it was least in Scotland (19%). The link was considered bad by 29% overall, peaking at 35% for men and in Wales and at 42% in Scotland. The remaining 38% of respondents were unable to express any view on the matter, rising to 46% in the case of the 18-24s and lowest (DE) social group, thereby reinforcing the impression from other polls that indifference and ignorance effectively help to shore up the current establishment of the Church. Full data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_EU__30th_June_2014.pdf

Gay cake row

The Christian Institute has taken up the case of the Christian family-run bakery in Belfast (Ashers Baking Company) which has been threatened with prosecution by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for its refusal to decorate a cake promoting same-sex marriage (which is not legal in the province). This followed a complaint against the business lodged by a gay activist. In pursuit of its campaign, the Institute commissioned ComRes to pose several questions to an online sample of 2,007 Britons on 16-17 July 2014, the results being published on 23 July.

Three-fifths of respondents thought the Commission had acted in a disproportionately heavy-handed way, with just 14% dissenting. A plurality (45%) agreed with the suggestion that ‘Christian-run businesses appear to be being singled out unfairly by gay activists in order to make an example of them’, and this was especially felt by men (54%), Conservatives (55%), the over-65s (62%), and UKIP voters (66%). One-quarter disagreed with the proposition (including one-third of under-35s and of Labourites and Liberal Democrats and 38% of Scots), while 30% voiced no opinion. Full results can be located at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/CI_Bakery_Poll_July_2014.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Ashers Baking Company, Bishops, British Future, British values, Christian businesses, Christian Institute, Church of England, ComRes, disestablishment, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, gender equality, ICM Research, ITV News, Opinium Research, ordination of women, priests, respect for religion and beliefs, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage | 2 Comments

Mid-Summer Miscellany

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Burka

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

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

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

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

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

Jihadists

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

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

Sunday trading

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

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

Church and clergy

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

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

Roman Catholic pastoral statistics

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

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

Religious hatred in Scotland

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

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

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

Science and Religion and Other News

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Science and religion

Public Attitudes to Science, 2014: Main Report was published on 14 March 2014. The fifth in a series which began in 2000 (but effectively going back to 1988 for some topics), it draws upon face-to-face interviews conducted by Ipsos MORI with 2,064 UK adults aged 16 and over (including a booster sample of 16-24s) between 15 July and 18 November 2013. The research was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Economic and Social Research Council. The main report can be accessed, alongside a technical report, topline findings, and detailed data tables for all adults and separately for young adults, at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3357/Public-Attitudes-to-Science-2014.aspx

As part of the contextual information gathered from respondents, a number of religion-related science questions were asked, the results of which (at headline level, for all adults) are shown in the following tables:

Q12B: ‘We depend too much on science and not enough on faith’

% down	1988	1996	2000	2008	2011	2014
Agree	44	41	38	34	29	30
Disagree	34	31	35	38	46	47
Neither	19	25	22	25	23	21
Don’t know	3	3	4	3	1	2

The number agreeing that we depend too much on science and not enough on faith has diminished over time, from 44% in 1988 to 30% today. This either reflects a growing public confidence in science or a decreased attachment to faith, and probably both. In the latest survey the proportion in agreement was highest among the DE social group (42%), Londoners (42%), over-75s (43%), respondents with low scores on a science knowledge quiz (43%), people with no educational qualifications (46%), BMEs (56%), and weekly attenders at religious services (56%).

Q12F: ‘God created the earth and all life in it’

% down	2011	2014
Agree	39	41
Disagree	37	37
Neither	21	20
Don’t know	3	3

The public is fairly evenly divided on this matter, but a small plurality of all adults inclines to creationism. However, among the 16-24s 48% in 2014 disagreed with the proposition. Agreement in the latest survey was strongest among women (47%), the over-75s (58%), the DEs (58%), people with no educational qualifications (59%), respondents with low scores on a science knowledge quiz (60%), Londoners (60%), Northern Irish (79%), BMEs (82%), and weekly attenders at religious services (90%).

Q12H: ‘It is possible to believe in a god and still hold the view that life on earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection’

% down	2014
Agree	62
Disagree	19
Neither	16
Don’t know	3

Three-fifths thought evolution compatible with a belief in a god (and, perhaps implicitly, with some kind of divine role in the origins of life). Variations by demographic sub-groups were not pronounced.

QL: ‘Which of the following comes closest to your view about the origin and development of life on earth?’

% down	2014
Humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form	19
Humans and other living things evolved over time, in a process guided by God	26
Humans and other living things evolved over time by natural selection, in which God played no part	41
I have another view on the origins of species and development of life on earth, which is not included in this list	9
Don’t know/refused	5

Answers to this question are broadly compatible with Q12H, in that about two-thirds of all adults and three-quarters of the 16-24s subscribed to the theory of evolution. However, 26% of the former thought that evolution was guided by God, with a plurality of 45% thus according God some role in the origins of humans and other living things (38% for 16-24s); this is consistent with the replies to Q12F. Just under one-fifth of the full adult sample were pure creationists, disproportionately respondents with low scores on a science knowledge quiz (41%), Northern Irish (43%), BMEs (50%), and weekly attenders at religious services (56%).

Several of the above questions find parallels in other surveys covered by BRIN. Recent examples include:

Special Eurobarometer 401 at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/end-of-year-round-up/

Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 2 at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/religious-marriages-and-other-news/

God and morality

Many people around the world continue to think it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person, but this view is more commonly held in poorer than wealthier countries, and it certainly does not reflect opinion in Britain. This is according to a compilation of data from surveys conducted in 40 countries by the Pew Research Center in Spring 2011, Spring 2013, and Winter 2013-14 and published in a 22-page report on 13 March 2014 at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/03/Pew-Research-Center-Global-Attitudes-Project-Belief-in-God-Report-FINAL-March-13-2014.pdf

British statistics are only available for three data points, the most recent being in Spring 2011, when 1,000 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed. The proportion of Britons disagreeing that it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values has increased from 73% in Spring 2002 to 75% in Spring 2007 to 78% in Spring 2011. Those thinking that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral have reduced from 25% to 20% over the same period.

Among the 39 other nations surveyed only China (14%), France (15%), and the Czech Republic and Spain (19% each) now subscribe less than Britain to the necessity of belief in God as the basis for morality. Britain also comes bottom of the list of English-speaking western countries; in the United States the figure remains as high as 53% and in Canada 31%, while in Australia it is 23%. In two nations (Indonesia and Ghana) 99% of adults contend that belief in God is a prerequisite for being moral. Twenty other countries also record majorities in favour of this position, consistently so in those with predominantly Muslim populations.

Opinion formation

What impact does religion have on shaping our personal opinions? Not a lot, apparently, at least relative to other factors, according to recent surveys by Ipsos MORI for the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland, which were published on 12 March 2014. Interviews were conducted by telephone with representative samples of 1,001 adults in Scotland on 20-25 February 2014 and of 868 in England and Wales on 8-10 March 2014. The question asked was: ‘What impact, if any, would you say each of the following factors has had in explaining why you hold the opinions that you do?’ A press release, topline results, and detailed data tables can be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3353/Scots-more-likely-to-think-their-attitudes-are-related-to-where-you-come-from.aspx

In both England and Wales and in Scotland the majority of respondents were clear that religion had no impact at all in shaping their opinions, although 6% more of the Scots than the English and Welsh said it had a big or small influence. The impact (big or small) of religion was greatest (45%) among the over-55s in Scotland but the age effect was not so marked south of the border. The topline figures are:

% down	E&W	Scot
Big impact	12	16
Small impact	16	18
No impact at all	70	65
Don’t know	2	1

A list of the various factors having some impact (aggregate of big and small) on opinions appears below. The table shows that religion was the least decisive influence on opinions in both England and Wales and Scotland, with personal experiences being dominant. With the exception of social class, each of the eight factors had more impact on the Scots than the English and Welsh, and this was especially true of country of residence, the views of parents and friends, and gender.

%	E&W	Scot
Personal experiences	85	90
Age	65	69
Social class	63	64
Country in the UK that you come from	61	75
Parents’ opinions	48	65
Friends’ opinions	47	61
Gender	34	46
Religion	28	34

Papal bestseller

The latest issue of the Catholic Herald (14 March 2014, p. 1) reports that Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel by Pope Francis has become something of a bestseller in Britain. The Catholic Truth Society (CTS), the official publisher to the Holy See, has apparently sold more than 25,000 copies since this apostolic exhortation was published on 4 December 2013, twice as many as any previous papal encyclical, and the most successful Vatican document since Unitatis Redintegratio, the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, which sold 85,000 copies in Britain after its promulgation in 1964. CTS describes the success of Evangelii Gaudium as ‘an ecclesial event’, although its sales must of course be set against the size of the Roman Catholic population of Britain (4,155,000 in England and Wales according to the Pastoral Research Centre and 841,000 in Scotland at the 2011 census). The report in the Catholic Herald is at:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/03/13/publisher-evangelii-gaudium-is-romes-biggest-seller-for-decades/

Catholic converts

The Catholic Church in England and Wales published details on 11 March 2014 of those who participated in the Rite of Election at Catholic cathedrals on 8-9 March 2014. Participants were intending adult converts to Catholicism who will be received into the Church at forthcoming Easter Vigils (some of whom will also be baptised, others already being baptised into another Christian denomination). Although not all converts are able to attend the Rite, the figures give some indication (by diocese) of trends in those joining the Catholic Church in adulthood. Discounting the special factor of the creation of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, designed for ex-Anglicans, it will be seen from the following table that the statistics have been fairly flat in recent years.

Diocese	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Westminster	797	829	734	675	712
Southwark	517	517	481	457	503
Brentwood	306	362	333	282	334
Birmingham	NA	302	255	207	213
All other dioceses	1,830	1,921	1,692	1,459	1,524
Ordinariate	NA	795	200	NA	NA
Total	3,450	4,726	3,695	3,080	3,286

Details for each diocese for all of the above years can be found via the links at:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/News/Rite-of-Election-2014

Anglican church growth

Further to our post of 18 January 2014, concerning the launch event for the overview report on the Church of England’s 18-month research programme into numerical church growth, we may note that the final reports on the individual strands of the programme are all now available for download at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/progress_findings_reports

They comprise:

[1-2] David Voas and Laura Watt, Numerical Change in Church Attendance: National, Local, and Individual Factors, 93pp.
[3a] John Holmes and Ben Kautzer, Cathedrals, Greater Churches, and the Growth of the Church, 109pp.
[3b] Church Army Research Unit, An Analysis of Fresh Expressions of Church and Church Plants Begun in the Period 1992-2012, 137pp.
[3c] David Goodhew with Ben Kautzer and Joe Moffatt, Amalgamations, Team Ministries, and the Growth of the Church, 199pp.
[4] David Dadswell and Cathy Ross, Church Planting, 88pp.

Orthodox numbers

The number of members of Orthodox churches in the UK is estimated to have roughly doubled since 2000 and stood at 460,000 in 2013, according to Dr Peter Brierley, writing in his monthly column on church statistics in the Church of England Newspaper, 14 March 2014, p. 14. This growth is mostly attributed to immigration, with, for example, big increases in Bulgarians and Ukrainians resident in this country between 2001 and 2011. Eastern Orthodox currently account for 91% of the membership (including 51% in the Greek Orthodox Church), Oriental Orthodox for 8%, and other Orthodox for 1%. The geographical distribution of the Orthodox is said to be: 86% in England, 9% in Scotland, 3% in Wales, and 2% in Northern Ireland.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Survey news | Tagged Catholic Truth Society, Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland, church growth, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Creationism, Department for Business Innovation and Skills, Economic and Social Research Council, Evangelii Gaudium, evolution, faith, God, Ipsos-MORI, morality, natural selection, opinions, origin of life on earth, Orthodox Churches, Peter Brierley, Pew Research Center, Pope Francis, Rite of Election, Roman Catholic Church, science, Vatican | Leave a comment

Papal Track-Record and Nones

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Clive D. Field

In case anybody is counting, this is BRIN’s 650th blog post since 2010.

Pope Francis one year on

Pope Francis has been Bishop of Rome for a year now, and the media have been busying themselves with seeing what difference he has made, as perceived by the Catholic faithful and adults as a whole. For example, the Catholic weekly The Tablet ran a global survey on its website between 19 February and 4 March 2014, to which a self-selecting sample of over 1,400 responded, mostly weekly Massgoers (the survey is briefly noted in the edition of The Tablet for 8 March, with the full data to be released soon). The Pew Research Center’s latest study has focused on the opinions of United States Catholics about the Pope, published on 6 March. Meanwhile, Angus Reid Global polled the general publics of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain online on 4 March 2014, including 2,013 Britons, issuing a press release containing topline results only on 7 March at:

http://www.angusreidglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ARG-Pope-First-Year.pdf

Much has been written about the ‘Francis effect’, but the Angus Reid Global study reveals that it is rather less prevalent in Britain than in the United States or Canada. Whereas three-fifths of Americans and Canadians had a positive overall view of Pope Francis, the number fell to 36% in Britain, the majority (56%) being neutral and 9% negative. Practising Catholics were most positive in Britain (92%), three times the level among non-Catholics (31%). Only a plurality of Britons (48%) assessed that Pope Francis had made a positive impact on the Catholic Church, 19% less than in Canada and 15% fewer than in America, with 44% taking a neutral position.

Although two-thirds welcomed his simple lifestyle and commitment to the poor, 70% of Britons said that Pope Francis had not succeeded in changing their own views of the Catholic Church, one-quarter acknowledging he had improved them (against 37% in Canada and 44% in America). Even 77% of lapsed or non-practising British Catholics claimed that Pope Francis’s record had failed to persuade them to strengthen their relationship with the Church, and for 6% it had made it less likely. Two-fifths of all Britons criticized the Pope for failing to do enough to tackle the scandal of sexual abuse by priests.

The poll is interesting in segmenting popular Catholicism in contemporary society and highlighting just how nominal much of it is. Asked to describe their relationship with Roman Catholicism or the Catholic Church, respondents self-identified as follows:

% down	Canada	United States	Britain
No real relationship	49	57	73
Practising Catholic	7	11	4
Non-practising Catholic	19	13	6
Lapsed Catholic	4	3	3
Raised Catholic	15	10	6
Another relationship	7	6	8

Religious profession

Populus, formerly pollster to The Times, recommenced regular (twice weekly) voting intention surveys in July 2013, and it has just announced a new partnership with the Financial Times, whereby the aggregate political data for each month will be analysed in detail in the newspaper, as part of its pre-general election coverage. The first month’s results have now been released, based on online interviews with 14,203 adult Britons between 5 and 27 February 2014. The full data tables can be viewed at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/OmOnline_Vote_February_2014.pdf

The classification section of the tables (pp. 146-53) includes responses to the standard Populus question on religious affiliation (‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’), broken down by gender, age, social grade, region, employment sector, past and current voting, educational attainment, working status, and various permutations of these attributes. The following table pulls out some key findings for the principal faith groupings, Christians, non-Christians, and people of no religion (or ‘nones’):

% across	Christians	Non- Christians	Nones
All	53	7	38
Gender
Men	52	7	39
Women	54	6	37
Age
18-24	27	11	59
25-34	35	13	48
35-44	46	7	45
45-54	57	5	37
55-64	67	2	29
65+	74	3	21
Social grade
AB	53	7	38
C1	52	7	40
C2	55	6	37
DE	54	6	38
Region
London	48	17	30
Other South-East	54	4	40
Midlands	55	7	37
North	55	5	38
South-West	48	4	47
Wales	58	2	39
Scotland	50	4	45
Employment sector
Public sector	53	9	35
Private sector	47	7	43
Current politics
Conservative	66	5	28
Labour	48	10	39
Liberal Democrat	51	6	41
UKIP	67	3	30
Education
Secondary education	59	4	36
First degree	50	7	41
Higher degree	44	16	36
Working status
Full-time worker	48	7	43
Part-time worker	51	8	38
Retired	73	3	22
Not working	41	9	48

These data broadly confirm all the other contemporary evidence, not least in terms of the effect of age. No religion is now the ‘creed’ of the majority with the 18-24s and the plurality among the 25-34s, and the over-65s are almost three times as likely to profess Christianity as the youngest cohort of adults. Gender and social grade make remarkably little difference, whereas for long periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they decisively shaped levels of religiosity. Region is significant, with the highest proportion of ‘nones’ to be found in South-West England (once the bastion of Methodism) and Scotland (once the stronghold of Presbyterianism). In political terms, Conservatives and ‘Kippers’ are disproportionately Christian, while Labourites and Liberal Democrats display a greater tendency to renounce religion. The better educated you are, the less likely you are to embrace Christianity.

Fuzzy nones

Speaking of ‘nones’, Professor Linda Woodhead has been undertaking further analysis of her two YouGov surveys from January and June 2013 for the Westminster Faith Debates, in which 8,455 Britons were interviewed online. This is presented in her blog on the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network website, posted on 7 March 2014, which reaffirms that, in matters of people’s religion, there are no rigid blacks and whites. Whereas David Voas has illuminated the ‘fuzziness’ of the nominally faithful, Woodhead suggests that such ‘fuzziness’ also characterizes the nones and that the majority do not conform to a Richard Dawkins style of secularism. Only 43% of the ‘nones’ in her samples described themselves as atheists, with 40% agnostics and 16% believers in God. A handful even engaged in religious or spiritual practices. They were more likely to be indifferent to religion than antagonistic to it. The blog can be read at:

http://blog.nsrn.net/2014/03/07/launch-series-the-fuzzy-nones/

Atheism

And still speaking of ‘nones’, a recent addition to the Oxford Handbook series is The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, edited by Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-964465-0, xvi + 763p., hardback, £95.00). Although only published in late November, it is already reprinting, a testimony to the increasing academic interest in the subject of no religion. The book is multidisciplinary and global in its approach, comprising 46 chapters written by 53 contributors. Unfortunately, relatively little consideration is given to the quantitative aspects of the subject, the principal exception being chapter 36 (pp. 553-86), by Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera on ‘A World of Atheism: Global Demographics’. This mainly focuses on an analysis of data about atheists and agnostics from the 2008 International Social Survey Program, including breaks by gender, age, education, and marital status.

Callum Brown also briefly touches on the statistics for people of no religion in chapter 15 (pp. 229-44) on ‘The Twentieth Century’. However, a more comprehensive source of numbers for the English-speaking world is his 2012 book Religion and the Demographic Revolution (Boydell Press), especially on pp. 105-23, and his earlier article in Archiv für Soxialgeschichte (Vol. 51, 2011, pp. 37-61). Another recent essay by Brown, albeit more qualitative, will also be of interest: ‘Men Losing Faith: The Making of Modern No Religionism in the UK, 1939-2010’, Men, Masculinities, and Religious Change in Twentieth-Century Britain, edited by Lucy Delap and Sue Morgan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 301-25).

Dr Robert Currie (1940-2012)

On 3 November 2012, shortly after his death, BRIN carried a short appreciation of the life and work of Dr Robert Currie, who had a long association with Wadham College, Oxford as Fellow (from 1967) and Emeritus Fellow (from 2000). A much fuller obituary has now appeared in the 2013 edition (pp. 120-34) of the Wadham College Gazette, which has literally just been distributed to old members. Rather it comprises a quartet of obituaries, by Currie’s friend Professor Sir Brian Harrison, former colleague Professor Qassim Cassam, former student Ciara Fairley, and son Daniel. The ground covered includes Currie’s pioneering contributions to the study of religious statistics in the British Isles, initially those of Methodism (in his Methodism Divided, 1968) and then of all denominations (in his Churches and Churchgoers, 1977, written with Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley).

Posted in People news, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Angus Reid Global, atheism, Callum Brown, Financial Times, International Social Survey Program, Linda Woodhead, Michael Ruse, nones, Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, Pope Francis I, Populus, Religious Affiliation, Robert Currie, Roman Catholic Church, Stephen Bullivant | 1 Comment

Church of England Health Check and Other News

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Church of England health check

Further to our post of 31 January 2014, we now note the appearance of the second and third instalments of the ‘Church Health Check’ series being run in the Church Times. In the issue for 7 February 2014 (pp. 21-8) there were various essays by academics and insiders focusing on the leadership and structure of the Church of England. Those which had a particularly quantitative dimension were by:

Professor Linda Woodhead who examined (pp. 21-2) the Church’s statistics of ministry for 2012, concluding that ‘there are no longer enough troupers left to keep the show on the road, and the show will have to change’ – see further the BRIN post of 24 October 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/from-st-george-to-prince-george/
Professor Leslie Francis who summarized (pp. 26-7) his research into psychological type profiling of Anglican bishops, to determine whether the Church has the right sort of episcopate – see the BRIN post of 30 November 2013 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/st-andrews-day-and-other-news/
Professor David Voas who reported (pp. 26-7) on the importance of clergy leadership qualities to church growth, noting ‘there are strong associations between growth and personality type, but none between growth and attendance on leadership courses’ – see the BRIN post of 18 January 2014 at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/anglican-church-growth-and-other-news/

The same issue of the Church Times also contained (p. 2) two shorter reports quoting further findings from the newspaper’s 2013 readership survey, which attracted 4,620 self-selecting respondents. They revealed that 73% expressed confidence in the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury (7% disagreeing), but just 23% had confidence in the General Synod (37% disagreeing and 41% undecided), and 37% in the Archbishops’ Council. Sub-nationally, 69% (71% among laity) had confidence in their local clergy and 63% in their diocesan bishop. On matters of sexual morality, Anglo-Catholics and Broad Anglicans were shown to be more liberally disposed than Evangelicals, suggesting that the Church of England’s internal strife over homosexuality is far from over. Among Evangelicals, 63% disapproved of ordaining practising homosexuals as priests and 65% as bishops, while 75% were opposed to same-sex marriage in church and 51% to the blessing of such relationships. There was more sign of consensus on another historically contested issue (but now with just one final hurdle to clear in July’s General Synod following this week’s debate), that of women bishops, with support running at 76% for Anglo-Catholics, 77% for Evangelicals, and 93% for Broad Anglicans. These two reports are freely available online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/7-february/news/uk/poll-lack-of-trust-in-synod

The third instalment of the ‘Church Health Check’ can be found in the current issue of the Church Times (14 February 2014, pp. 21-7) and is devoted to the social impact of the Church of England. This has a rather limited quantitative element. However, the lead article by Professor Linda Woodhead (pp. 21-2) draws upon her 2013 Westminster Faith Debates surveys to illustrate how people still connect to the Church in ways apart from regular attendance at public worship, while also noting that take-up of all three church-based rites of passage has diminished. Some of the Opinion Research Business polling for the Church of England over the last decade or so is also relevant in this context, a couple of examples of which can be viewed through the Research and Statistics link webpage (which, incidentally, is in desperate need of an overhaul and update to consolidate the archival material) at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics.aspx

The same issue of the Church Times (p. 3) carries further results from the 2013 readership survey, revealing that 67% of this sub-set of Anglicans are currently involved in some form of unpaid community work (volunteering), with 35% active in two or more fields. Education (19%), local community action (18%), cultural activities (18%), children’s work (12%), and social welfare services (10%) were most frequently mentioned by the self-selecting sample. Volunteering by these clergy and lay churchgoer respondents is said to be at least twice as great as by the population at large, as recorded in Government surveys. See further:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/14-february/news/uk/if-you-need-help,-turn-to-a-churchgoer

Finally, the issue of 14 February 2014 contains a full page (p. 17) printing nine letters from readers in response to the first two instalments of ‘Church Health Check’.

Catholics polled on family life – the sequel

On 8 November 2013 BRIN reported on the Roman Catholic Church’s global consultation of the views of the faithful on family life, including vexed issues such as contraception and same-sex relationships, in preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, to be held in the Vatican on 5-19 October 2014. The consultation, by means of a 40-question survey instrument, attracted significant attention, not to say controversy, inside and outside the Catholic Church. It was criticized in some quarters for its inadequate methodology and theologically opaque content, although the Vatican was at pains to point out that it was not an opinion poll and that the Church’s teaching is not determined by majority popular vote.

Notwithstanding, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales took the lead in putting the questionnaire online and received a healthy response (albeit small in relation to the size of the Catholic population). According to the Catholic Herald (7 February 2014, p. 2) and The Tablet (8 February 2014, p. 28), the Conference received some 16,500 completed questionnaires. The bulk of these (12,266) were filled in online, mainly by laity (80%), with 69% being married and 38% parents. One-fifth of respondents were in ‘positions of responsibility within the Church’, including priests, teachers, and pastoral assistants, while 24% were aged under 45 years and 30% 65 and over. The figures exclude 1,163 responses from 57 other countries, which were forwarded to the relevant Church authorities.

In deference to the Vatican, the Conference has declined to publish its report on the results of the English and Welsh consultation in advance of the Extraordinary Synod (as have the bishops in the United States, Canada, and Australia), despite the fact that both the German and the Swiss Bishops’ Conferences have already published their respective national reports, containing a strong message on the need for ‘reform’. It would be surprising if any different message emerged from England and Wales, given that polling of Catholics in Britain during recent years has demonstrated a wide gulf between opinions in the pews and the Magisterium of the Church. Newly-released polling of 12,000 Catholics worldwide (excluding Britain) by Univision (the television network serving Hispanic America) has revealed similar disaffection, with the partial exception of Africa, as have national surveys by Catholic media and institutions in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. There is a helpful summary of some of this international research in The Tablet for 15 February 2014 (p. 30).

2011 census: Church of Scotland parish profiles

Overseen by Revd Fiona Tweedie, the Statistics for Mission Group of the Church of Scotland has now completed the task of preparing parish profiles of selected data from the 2011 census of population for Scotland. The profiles, which take the form of attractive 12-page PDF documents comprising charts and tables, include details of religious affiliation. They are available to download through the ChurchFinder on the Church of Scotland website (using the ‘Parish statistics’ link from the table of search results) at:

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/church_finder/

Invisible church

Speaking of the Church of Scotland, Steve Aisthorpe (the Kirk’s Mission Development Worker, North) has recently written an interesting 26-page preliminary report on Investigating the Invisible Church: A Survey of Christians who Do Not Attend Church. It is based on a survey of a random sample of 5,523 people in the Highlands and Islands contacted by telephone in the autumn of 2013, 2,698 of whom gave a short interview. Of these 934 identified themselves as Christians who do not attend church and agreed to take part in a more detailed study, and 430 (46%) eventually completed and returned the online and postal questionnaire, comprising almost 80 items. Critical Research oversaw the recruitment of participants, data entry, and statistical analysis, while funding came from the Church of Scotland’s Mission and Discipleship Council and three other partners. The report is at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Investigating%20the%20invisible%20church.pdf

The headline finding from the study was that 44% of the population of the Highlands and Islands, representing some 133,000 individuals, are professing Christians who are not currently engaged with a local congregation, although only 15% had never attended church regularly in the past and 23% had attended for more than 20 years (with a further 27% for more than 10 years). Inevitably, a good proportion of these are ‘cultural Christians’, but a surprisingly large number (50%) scored highly (more than 30 out of 50) on the Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, which aims to measure the extent to which faith underpins everyday life. Disillusioned respondents may have been with the Church, and their reasons for church-leaving were explored in detail, but 72% were not disappointed with God, with 50% regarding themselves as part of a worldwide Christian community and 41% as on a spiritual quest beyond religious institutions. There was no simplistic partition into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ here.

The areas explored in the quantitative phase emerged from a previous qualitative phase in 2012-13, in which 30 Christians not attending a local church were interviewed in depth. The report on this qualitative phase (dated July 2013) is also available at:

https://www.resourcingmission.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/Faith_journeys_beyond_the_congregations.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

The Community Security Trust (CST)’s 32-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2013 was published on 6 February 2014. It revealed that the number of such incidents recorded in the United Kingdom in 2013 was, at 529, 18% lower than in 2012 and only just over half the post-1984 high of 931 incidents in 2009. CST believes the fall in anti-Semitism since 2012 to be genuine and to reflect the lack of anti-Jewish ‘trigger events’ in 2013, such as had caused two temporary spikes in 2012. However, CST still reckons there is ‘significant underreporting’ of anti-Semitic incidents both to itself and the police, and that the true figure is considerably higher. Of the 529 recorded incidents in 2013, over three-quarters took place in Greater London and Greater Manchester, with 69 categorized as violent assaults, although none constituted ‘extreme violence’ (amounting to grievous bodily harm or a threat to life). The most common category, with 368 incidents, was of abusive behaviour, including verbal abuse, albeit these were 23% down on 2012. One-quarter of all incidents were assessed as having far right, anti-Israel, or Islamist motivations. In the minority of cases where a physical description of the perpetrator could be obtained, 62% were white and 25% South Asian. The report, including a profile of incidents by category and month for each year from 2003 to 2013, can be read at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202013.pdf

Values profile of Britain

The January 2014 issue of Modern Believing (Vol. 55, No. 1) is a special theme issue, devoted to ‘What British People Really Think’, and guest-edited by Professor Linda Woodhead. Using data from a variety of sources, but especially from her January and June 2013 YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, it depicts what the British think about abortion (pp. 7-14); women bishops (pp. 15-26); same-sex marriage (pp. 27-38); euthanasia (pp. 39-48); God, religion, and authority (pp. 49-58); and society, politics, and religious institutions (pp. 59-67). There is also an introduction (pp. 1-5) and conclusion (‘A Values Profile of Britain’, pp. 69-74) by Woodhead. Non-subscribers to the journal, and non-members of subscribing institutions, may struggle to access these articles. The new publisher (Liverpool University Press) does not appear to be offering the option to buy a print copy of this special issue only, while downloads cost an eye-watering £25 per (shortish) article via the following link:

http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/n37414k210jp/?p=a25311fb53864bfe817f0c15f25adc56&pi=0

POSTSCRIPT [18 February 2014] BRIN has now ascertained that single copies of this entire issue can be purchased for £15.00, more cost-effective than the article download option. To order a copy, contact Liverpool@turpin-distribution.com

Faith under fire

Do soldiers turn to God when they are on the front line? Some provisional answers to this question are apparently contained in a postgraduate thesis submitted to the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies by Revd Peter King, who was chaplain to the Queen’s Royal Hussars during a bloody tour to Helmand province between October 2011 and April 2012, during which 23 British soldiers were killed and dozens more severely wounded. The research was featured in The Sunday Times, 9 February 2014, Main Section, p. 20 in an article by the newspaper’s defence correspondent, Mark Hookham. King surveyed more than 200 men in his 400-strong battle group, finding that 80% professed some religion and 63% reported that they were more likely to frequent religious services while on operations than when in barracks. An Easter service held by King in a cookhouse in Afghanistan had been attended by about 100 men, of whom one-quarter received Holy Communion. Almost half (46%) of the soldiers interviewed by King said they had prayed in Afghanistan, and the same proportion carried or wore a symbol of faith. An awareness of the presence of God had been felt by 17%, and a few even described a religious experience at the front.

POSTSCRIPT [7 April 2014]: The research has now been published as Peter King, ‘Faith in a Foxhole? Researching Combatant Religiosity amongst British Soldiers on Contemporary Operations’, Defence Academy Yearbook, 2013, pp. 2-10, freely available online at:

http://www.da.mod.uk/publications/library/miscellaneous/58520%20DA%20Yearbook%202013.pdf/view

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Afghanistan, Andrew Village, anti-Semitic incidents, Anti-Semitism, Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, census of population, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Church Times, Community Security Trust, Critical Research, David Voas, euthanasia, family, Fiona Tweedie, health check, Highlands and Islands, Hoge Intrinsic Religiosity Scale, homosexuality, Jews, leadership, Leslie Francis, Linda Woodhead, Mark Hookham, ministry, Mission and Discipleship Council, Modern Believing, non-churchgoers, parishes, Peter King, Queen’s Royal Hussars, Religious Affiliation, Roman Catholic Church, same-sex marriage, social impact, soldiers, Statistics for Mission Group, Steve Aisthorpe, Sunday Times, values, Vatican, volunteering, Westminster Faith Debates, women bishops, YouGov | Leave a comment

Anglican Church Growth and Other News

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Anglican church growth

The Church of England’s ambitious 18-month research programme into numerical church growth, sponsored by the Spending Plans Task Group accountable to the Archbishops’ Council and Church Commissioners, is nearing its end, and findings are beginning to be released. The programme comprises three strands involving research teams at the University of Essex (headed up by Professor David Voas, also of BRIN); St John’s College, Durham; and Ripon College, Cuddesdon. The strands relate to: the analysis of existing data collected annually by the Church; church profiling (a special survey of a representative sample of churches, to which 1,700 or 46% responded); and structures (with sub-strands on cathedrals, fresh expressions of church and church plants, and amalgamations and team ministries). The research has employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods and has also taken account of existing literature on church growth.

The first primary published output from the programme, issued on 16 January 2014, is the report From Anecdote to Evidence: Findings from the Church Growth Research Programme, 2011-2013. It identifies factors associated with church growth (pp. 7-11); describes where growth is to be found (pp. 12-22), including four case studies; and pinpoints factors associated with church decline (pp. 23-9). Rather than attempt to rehash the report here, it is probably easiest to let BRIN readers explore it for themselves (if you are pressed for time, there is an executive summary on pp. 5-6). It can be read at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/report

There is also an infographic of key findings at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/infographic

and a Church of England press release at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2014/01/signs-of-growth.aspx

Coinciding with the report, a Church Growth Faith in Research Conference took place in London on 16 January 2014, attended by some 200 delegates, mostly from within the Church of England, but including some academics, journalists, and members of other denominations. Overviews were provided of all the strands of the research programme, typically via parallel breakout sessions. There was also the bonus of a presentation by Dr Mike Clinton of King’s College London about his complementary Experience of Ministry Project, which is surveying cross-sections of clergy in 2011, 2013, and 2015 and has a longitudinal component.

The morning plenary session by David Voas on national, local, and individual factors affecting numerical change in church attendance was undoubtedly the most general and the most interesting slot on the conference programme (at least for me). Voas has been responsible for the data analysis and church profiling strands. His key message was that, in order to grow again, the Church of England needs to improve retention of its children and young people, and to invest in provision for teenagers and young adults (churches with youth workers, for instance, are more likely to grow than those without). Evangelism of adults has limited potential, Voas continued, since, according to British Social Attitudes Surveys, people do not tend to change their religious identity much during adulthood.

Theoretically, such retention should be possible, since the ratio between children and adults in the Church of England is not much different from in the whole population. However, European Values Surveys indicate that Anglicans do not attach great parenting priority to the transmission of faith to their children, just 11% among nominal Anglicans and no more than 36% of the religiously active ones, the latter statistic being highlighted by Andreas Whittam-Smith, First Church Estates Commissioner and chair of the conference. A further recommendation from Voas, noting the Church’s attendance high during Advent and at Christmas, was to look again at the other festivals to ‘make Christmas come more than once a year’. He also thought that the parochial model of the Church should be examined afresh, since the research suggested it was breaking down.

Notwithstanding such key messages, both Voas and Dr Bev Botting, the Church of England’s Head of Research and Statistics, stressed that there was no single and simple recipe for growth in the Church of England. They also emphasized that, while the research programme had been able to isolate some of the factors affecting church growth and decline, it had not necessarily been able to establish causation. Voas pointed out that certain factors, such as churchmanship, which seemed significant at bivariate analysis stage faded away in importance when it came to multivariate analysis.

Voas and, particularly, Botting highlighted continuing issues surrounding the completeness and quality of the Church’s annual statistics-gathering from parishes. In his breakout session on methodology, Voas drew attention to the weak correlation (0.29) between the incidence of church growth self-reported in the survey of churches in summer 2013 and objective measures of growth in those churches derived from the Church’s own central data. Various explanations for the discrepancy can be advanced, but one reading is obviously that survey respondents were too optimistic in recalling the degree of growth experienced by their churches. Moreover, the model proposed by Voas could only explain one-quarter of self-reported church growth (even less of objective growth).

Presentations and recordings from the conference will be made available on the church growth programme’s website in due course, as will the final reports from each research strand or sub-strand. The website also contains much other useful contextual information. It can be found at:

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

Rating the Pope

The current Pope may be enjoying a higher and more positive public profile than his predecessor, but there is little evidence yet of a decisive ‘Francis effect’ in terms of British opinion. This is suggested by a multinational YouGov poll on ‘the most admired people in the world’ conducted for The Times and published on 11 January 2014. Fieldwork was conducted, through a mixture of online and mobile phone interviews, with 13,895 adults in 13 countries (representing in aggregate over half of the global population). It took place after the death of Nelson Mandela and after Time magazine had chosen Pope Francis as its ‘person of the year’. Participants were asked two open-ended questions, seeking write-in answers about a) the most famous person in the world and b) the living person most admired by them.

Across all 13 countries combined Pope Francis was ranked fourth, with a score of 3.43%. However, in six nations (China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Russia) he did not make the top ten. In the remaining seven his score and ranking are shown in the table below, the Pope’s vote in Britain being only one-sixth of the level recorded in the United States and equivalent to just one-third of professing British Catholics:

	% score	national ranking
United States	21.07	1
Brazil	16.82	1
Germany	16.13	1
France	12.79	2
Australia	5.47	3
Great Britain	3.66	3
Nigeria	1.48	9

The British list was headed by Her Majesty the Queen (18.74%) followed by Barack Obama (8.57%). The Dalai Lama came in fifth place, with 3.09%, just behind Sir Richard Branson (3.43%) and immediately ahead of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2.63%). Unless one counts Richard Dawkins (the arch-atheist) as such in 25th place (with 0.69%), no other religious figure made the British top thirty, which is bad news for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Evangelist Billy Graham scored well in the United States (6.10%) but to a much lesser extent globally (0.49%).

Stephan Shakespeare (YouGov’s CEO) had a full-page article about the results of the survey in The Times for 11 January (main section, p. 26). There is also a detailed blog by William Jordan on the YouGov website at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/01/11/infographic-bill-gates-most-admired-world/

Decline in the Archdiocese of Glasgow

The Archdiocese of Glasgow, which is widely regarded as the heartland of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, has embarked upon a strategic review of pastoral provision in response to a sustained and long-term decline, which is far in excess of the contraction in the city’s population (down just over 10% between the 1991 and 2011 censuses, although it has started to rise again recently). Some key statistics are contained in the December 2013 issue of Flourish, the Archdiocese’s journal, from which the following table has been compiled:

	1991	2012	% change
Parishes	109	94	-14
Diocesan priests	196	85	-57
Catholic population	252,676	189,576	-25
Mass attendance	75,790	43,579	-43
Baptisms	4,050	2,245	-45
First communions	3,692	1,970	-47
Marriages	1,229	775	-37
Funerals	2,962	2,282	-23

Integrated Household Survey

Data for the Government’s January-December 2012 Integrated Household Survey, the largest pool of official social data apart from the census of population, have just been released for online analysis in the Nesstar catalogue (UK Data Service, SN 7419). The questions put to the sample of 338,174 UK citizens included one on ‘what is your religion?’ and the percentage distribution of replies for Great Britain and its constituent home nations are shown below (all data are weighted):

	England	Wales	Scotland	Britain
No religion	29.0	36.1	37.8	30.1
Christian	61.3	60.3	58.6	61.1
Buddhist	0.5	0.2	0.3	0.4
Hindu	1.6	0.3	0.4	1.4
Jew	0.5	0.1	0.1	0.5
Muslim	5.2	1.7	1.5	4.7
Sikh	0.7	0.1	0.2	0.6
Any other	1.2	1.3	1.2	1.2

Worship and criminality

‘People who regularly visit a place of worship are less likely to be involved in low level crime and delinquency’, according to a (statistics-free) press release by the University of Manchester on 15 January 2014. The research, funded by the Bill Hill Charitable Trust and to be published in full later in the year, was undertaken by PhD student Mark Littler on the basis of a survey of 1,214 UK young people aged 18-34 in July 2013 and in-depth qualitative interviews. Information was gathered on eight measures of delinquency: littering, skipping school/work, using illegal drugs, fare dodging, shoplifting, music piracy, property damage, and violence against the person. The most significant correlations were found for shoplifting, illegal drugs, and music piracy. The press release, including comments by Littler, is available at:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=11380

Religious hostilities

Social hostilities involving religion in the UK declined somewhat between December 2011 and December 2012 but remained at a high level relative to 197 other countries, according to research published by the Pew Research Center on 16 January 2014. The Center’s social hostilities involving religion score, an index calculated from 13 different measures of religion-related tensions and crime available from public domain information sources, dropped for the UK from 6.3 in 2011 to 6.0 in 2012, although it was substantially greater than when first calculated in 2007 (when it stood at 1.6). By contrast, the government restrictions on religion index, based on 20 measures, was unchanged for the UK between 2011 and 2012, registering 3.0 in both years, a score which was judged moderate in relation to other nations. For full details about the methodology and results of this research, consult the full report at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/01/RestrictionsV-full-report.pdf

Army chaplaincy in the First World War

With the centenary of the First World War fast approaching, BRIN will naturally be keeping a look-out for new publications which explore the religious aspects of the conflict, especially including the statistical perspective. A recent book by Peter Howson fits the bill in not neglecting the quantitative dimension of the subject of army chaplaincy: Muddling Through: The Organisation of British Army Chaplaincy in World War One (Solihull: Helion, 237pp., ISBN 978-1-909384-20-0). A total of 185 army chaplains died during the war, 52% as a direct consequence of enemy action. Three-fifths of the deceased were Anglicans, who accounted for 57% of all chaplains serving in the Army on 11 November 1918, when hostilities stopped. Below we reproduce a simplified (and arithmetically corrected) version of table 2 in the volume, showing the denominational breakdown by theatre of war of all Army chaplains at the time of the Armistice:

	UK	Western Front	Other theatres	Total
Anglican	709	878	398	1,985
Presbyterian	75	161	66	302
Wesleyan	60	127	69	256
United Board	60	126	64	250
Welsh Calvinist	4	5	1	10
Salvation Army	0	4	1	5
Catholic	78	389	184	651
Jew	4	8	4	16
Total	990	1,698	787	3,475

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Archdiocese of Glasgow, army chaplains, church growth, Church of England, crime, David Voas, First World War, Integrated Household Survey, Mark Littler, Peter Howson, Pew Research Center, Pope Francis I, Religious Affiliation, religious hostilities, Roman Catholic Church, The Times, YouGov | 1 Comment

Pope Francis and Other News

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Following on from our previous post, which reported on a major new survey of Catholic opinion, today we summarize recent poll evidence about how Pope Francis is perceived to be getting on by the British public. We also include our usual miscellany of other religious statistical stories.

Pope Francis

Eight months into his pontificate, Pope Francis appears to be making some impression on the British public, according to an online poll by YouGov for The Sunday Times among 1,851 adults on 14-15 November 2013. Just over one-third (36%) think he is doing a good job, peaking at 45% of Liberal Democrats and 46% of Londoners; merely 3% believe he is doing a bad job, with 61% undecided. A similar proportion (31%) expect him to make the Catholic Church more liberal, including 45% of Liberal Democrats, 37% of Conservative voters, and 36% of both 18-24s and non-manual workers; 5% anticipate the Church becoming less liberal, while 23% forecast no change, and 42% are undecided. Pope Francis has made 17% regard the Catholic Church more positively (rising to 29% of Liberal Democrats and 27% of 18-24s), with 2% feeling more negative, and the remaining 80% having no opinion or an unaltered one on the subject.

However, the Pope is beaten into second place (on 12%), after the Archbishop of Canterbury (on 13%), as the religious leader respondents would most like to have at Christmas lunch. The majority (53%) want no religious leader sitting at their Christmas dining table, perhaps reflecting the relatively low importance which Britons attach to the religious component of Christmas. Asked about their favourite part of Christmas, its religious significance came in sixth equal of fourteen places (on 11%), with carols in eleventh position (on 7%). Spending time with family and friends (53%) and giving presents to others (37%) easily topped the list. There were substantial age differences, religious significance being highlighted by 5% of the parenting generation (25-39s) but 18% of the over-60s. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/08oexwxpab/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-151113.pdf

Curiously, The Sunday Times made absolutely no use of these poll data it had commissioned in its (arguably) somewhat over-the-top coverage of Pope Francis in its print edition of 17 November 2013. This comprised no fewer than three articles in its main section, all suggesting that the Catholic Church might be turning a corner under the Pope’s leadership. On pp. 1-2 George Arbuthnott and Luke Garratt had a piece entitled ‘“Francis Effect” Pulls Crowds Back to Church’. On p. 25 Paul Vallely (biographer of Pope Francis) contributed a full-page article headed ‘Pope Idol’, asking whether the ‘Francis effect’ is the ‘miracle’ the Church needs to reverse years of decline. In his analysis, Vallely was supported by a reporting team of eight journalists. Finally, on p. 30 there was a second editorial asserting that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin ‘Welby Can Take Heart from the Francis Effect’, although it was less certain that he could emulate it in the Church of England.

The editorial pointed to ‘a significant rise’ in congregations at Catholic churches in Britain since the election of Francis as Pope. The basis for this claim was a survey conducted by the newspaper during the previous week among the twenty-two Catholic cathedrals in England and Wales, of which thirteen responded. Eleven of these reported a rise in average Sunday attendances in October 2013 compared with a year before. Nine cathedrals provided actual figures, with congregants this October up by an average of 21% (from 11,461 to 13,862), and by 35% in the case of Leeds and 23% in Sheffield. We still await evidence about statistical trends in Catholic parishes up and down the land. Until we have that, perhaps a degree of circumspection is called for with regard to the ‘Francis effect’. After all, similar claims of a ‘Benedict bounce’ were made following the previous Pope’s visit to Britain in 2010, and that phenomenon seems to have been more aspirational than real, at least in quantitative terms.

Media portrayals of religion

Mainstream newspapers and television remain key, albeit partial and often superficial, sources of popular information about religion in Britain, according to a new book published by Ashgate: Kim Knott, Elizabeth Poole, and Teemu Taira, Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred: Representation and Change (xvi + 233pp., £19.99 as paperback or e-book). At the core of the work is a replication (in 2008-09) of a content and discourse analysis first undertaken in 1982 of three newspapers (The Times, The Sun, and The Yorkshire Evening Post), studied over two months, and three terrestrial television channels (BBC1, BBC2, and ITV1), surveyed for one week. The extent and nature of the representation of religion in these media is quantitatively summarized in chapter 2 and then scrutinized with regard to treatments of Christianity (chapter 3), Islam and other minority faiths (chapter 4), atheism and secularism (chapter 5), and popular beliefs and ritual practices (chapter 6). A wider evidence base is drawn upon to support two case studies of media portrayal of religion: the banning of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamic Dutch politician, from entering the country in 2009 (chapter 7) and the 1982 and 2010 papal visits to Britain (chapter 8). The conclusion uses six sets of paired propositions relating to religion and the media as a framework for summative evaluation of the research.

The main text of the work contains many statistics deriving from the content analysis, although relatively few (seven of each) tables and figures. However, appendices 2 and 3 do reproduce some of the most important data, which we partly digest in the table below. The overall number of references to religion and the secular sacred on television was broadly similar in 1982 and 2009, but it rose by 78% in the newspapers from 1982 to 2008, principally as a result of the substantially increased size of newspapers over the period. In both media types there was a marked shift away from coverage of conventional (organized and official) religion in general, and Christianity in particular, to common religion (supernatural beliefs and practices beyond religious organizations). Among non-Christian faiths, there was disproportionate treatment of Islam in 2008-09, much of it negative. The explanation for the greater coverage of common religion on television than in the newspapers at both dates is to be found in a plethora of television advertisements containing references to luck, gambling, magic, and the unexplained. Across all reporting of religion, there was a near doubling in the use of religious metaphors to describe otherwise non-religious subjects (from 14% to 25% in newspapers and from 12% to 20% on television).

Content type (%)	Papers	Papers	TV	TV
	1982	2008	1982	2009
Conventional religion – Christian/general	72.5	47.4	62.7	44.8
Conventional religion – non-Christian	6.6	12.2	5.5	6.0
Common religion	19.2	36.2	30.4	47.2
Secular sacred	1.3	4.4	1.6	2,1

Inevitably, the choice of survey dates and specific media titles will have conditioned some of these research outcomes. In the case of newspapers, it is therefore worth comparing the findings with those of studies by Robin Gill and Paul Baker and colleagues which BRIN has reported at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/newspaper-religion-catholic-schools/

and

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/halloween-and-other-news/

Restudies of religion

The latest in Professor Steve Bruce’s fascinating series of restudies of religion in Britain has just been published: ‘Religion in Ashworthy, 1958-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2013, pp. 92-102. It is a re-examination of the religious scene (preponderantly Anglican and Methodist) in the West Devon village of ‘Ashworthy’ (in reality, Northlew), which was originally surveyed by Bill Williams in 1958 for his classic community study of A West Country Village (1963). Although time constraints have prevented Bruce from ‘achieving the degree or duration of immersion’ that Williams did, five conclusions are reached about changes in the village’s religious life between 1958 and 2011. Inevitably, one of them touches on statistical decline in church adherence, Anglican Easter communicants and Methodist members combined reducing from 29% to 13% of the adult population over the period, the contraction in Methodist numbers being especially severe. For a pay-per-view access option, see:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/45527w70166n1707/

The previous issue of the same journal included another restudy by Bruce: ‘Religion in Gosforth, 1951-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 1, May 2013, pp. 39-49. This is based on a revisitation (in 2009-10) of the first community study by Bill Williams, of Gosforth, Cumbria, which was published as The Sociology of an English Village (1956). Here Bruce found that combined Anglican and Methodist membership as a proportion of the adult population declined from 20% to 12% over the 60 years. Pay-per-view access is available at:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/f18663039713m447/

For a discussion of methodological issues raised by the series of restudies, see Bruce’s article ‘Studying Religious Change through Replication: Some Methodological Issues’, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2012, pp. 166-82. The pay-per-view site is:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/157006812×634863

Anglican faith schools

The Education Division of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England issued a two-page statement outlining ‘The Church of England’s Contribution to Schools’ to coincide with the General Synod debate on these schools on 19 November 2013. It is clearly intended as a defence of the Anglican school sector which has come in for criticism of late, especially over admissions policies. There are currently 4,443 Anglican primary and 221 secondary schools in England, attended by approximately one million pupils. Ofsted inspections are said to show them as more effective than other schools in terms of overall effectiveness, pupil achievement, and quality of teaching, and at both primary and secondary levels. Church of England schools are also judged to be inclusive, with the same proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals as in non-Anglican schools, and almost the same proportion from black or minority ethnic backgrounds. The statement can be accessed through the link in:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2013/11/synod-affirms-cofe’s-crucial-involvement-with-schools.aspx

The Church’s claims about inclusivity have already been challenged by the Fair Admissions Campaign, which accuses the Church of ‘a flawed approach’ to the use of statistics, at:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/fair-admissions-campaign-response-to-john-pritchards-comments-on-the-inclusivity-of-church-schools/

Islamophobia

The practice of publishing articles in the online edition of peer-reviewed journals in advance of scheduling their inclusion in a conventional printed edition is becoming more widespread, especially in the social sciences (less so in the humanities at present). Two recent exemplars both deal with Islamophobia and will be of interest to BRIN readers.

Zan Strabac, Toril Aalberg, and Marko Valenta, ‘Attitudes towards Muslim Immigrants: Evidence from Survey Experiments across Four Countries’ was published in the online edition of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 30 September 2013. It examined whether differences exist between attitudes toward immigrants in general and Muslim immigrants in particular. The data derived from online surveys by YouGov/Polimetrix of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over on 26-31 January 2009 in each of four countries: Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. One half of each national sample was asked four questions about immigrants and the other half the identical questions but about Muslim immigrants. The responses were used to generate two additive 0-100 scales, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. In Norway and Sweden there were basically no differences between the level of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant opinion, whereas in Britain and the United States (and contrary to expectation) anti-Muslim attitudes were actually found to be lower than anti-immigrant ones (with scores of 50.3 and 59.0 respectively in Britain’s case). Possible explanations for this discovery are explored. The article can be accessed at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2013.831542#.Uou1DjZFDX4

Christine Ogan, Lars Willnat, Rosemary Pennington, and Manaf Bashir, ‘The Rise of Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States’ was published in the online edition of International Communication Gazette on 10 October 2013. It is based on secondary analysis of the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Project (for Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States) and the 2010 Pew News Interest Index (for the United States alone). Predictors of attitudes to Muslims are calculated. These appear less strongly defined in Britain’s case than for several other countries, although being highly educated or a woman were associated with a more positive opinion of Muslims. The article can be accessed at:

http://gaz.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/10/1748048513504048.abstract

Gender, theology and higher education

Theology and religious studies departments in UK higher education institutions still have some way to go before achieving full gender equality, according to a report from Durham University published on 15 November 2013 (on behalf of Theology and Religious Studies UK): Mathew Guest, Sonya Sharma, and Robert Song, Gender and Career Progression in Theology and Religious Studies. The authors gathered a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data (for the academic year 2010-11), in the latter case from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and a survey of 41 of 58 departments. Whereas 60% of undergraduates in theology and religious studies were women, the proportion dropped to 42% of taught postgraduates in the subject and 33% of postgraduate research students. The average of female members of academic staff in theology and religious studies was 29% but only 16% of professors. However, for early career academics and lecturers the figure was 37%, suggesting that recruitment is beginning to make a difference to gender balance among staff. Although gender diversity remains an issue elsewhere in universities, the authors explore several factors which accentuate the problem in theology and religious studies. The report, which concludes with 11 recommendations, can be read at:

http://trs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Gender-in-TRS-Project-Report-Final.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged academics, Bill Williams, Cathedrals, Christine Ogan, Christmas, church attendance, Church of England, common religion, conventional religion, Elizabeth Poole, Faith schools, Francis effect, gender, Gosforth, higher education, International Communication Gazette, Islamophobia, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Kim Knott, Lars Willnat, Manaf Bashir, Marko Valenta, Mathew Guest, media, Muslims, newspapers, Northlew, Pope Francis, religious festivals, restudies of religion, Robert Song, Roman Catholic Church, Rosemary Pennington, Rural Theology, Sonya Sharma, Steve Bruce, students, Sunday Times, Teemu Taira, television, Theology and Religious Studies UK, Toril Aalberg, YouGov, Zan Strabac | Leave a comment

Prayer and Other News

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post features eight religious statistical news stories, leading on an analysis by BRIN of the answers to one of the questions in the latest round of the European Social Survey, whose results have just been released.

Prayer

Data from Round 6 (2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS) have recently been released for most of the 30 participating countries and can be accessed at http://nesstar.ess.nsd.uib.no. UK fieldwork was undertaken by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with 2,286 adults aged 15 and over between 1 September 2012 and 7 February 2013. The standard short battery of ESS religion questions was included in the schedule: self-assessed religiosity, current and former religious affiliation, churchgoing, private prayer, and experience of religious discrimination. Trend statistics (weighted) for the claimed frequency of private prayer (i.e. apart from during religious services) in the UK appear below (figures in percentages):

	2002	2004	2006	2008	2010	2012
Every day	19.1	18.6	18.1	17.9	17.5	17.6
More than once a week	6.9	9.2	7.5	6.4	5.3	6.9
Once a week	5.2	5.0	5.3	5.2	5.0	7.0
At least once a month	6.1	6.0	5.8	6.0	5.7	5.3
Only on special holy days	2.1	2.5	1.4	1.9	2.2	1.9
Less often	16.9	16.7	15.7	14.8	15.9	14.5
Never	43.8	42.1	46.3	47.7	48.4	46.8

As ever with sample surveys, there are some fluctuations in results between surveys. Nevertheless, comparing 2012 with 2002, it will be seen that the proportion of UK citizens claiming to pray once a week or more has stayed the same (31.2% in 2002, 31.5% in 2012), although the number never praying has risen by three percentage points over the decade and is well in excess of the European average in 2012 (37.9%). In 2012 the UK ranked ninth of 24 countries in terms of percentage of the population never praying, as shown in the following table.

Czech Republic	70.5	Germany	36.9
Denmark	58.2	Russian Federation	36.4
Estonia	57.3	Iceland	33.2
Netherlands	55.3	Switzerland	32.9
Sweden	55.3	Finland	32.6
Belgium	53.9	Portugal	23.9
Norway	52.0	Bulgaria	23.9
Slovenia	47.3	Slovakia	22.7
United Kingdom	46.8	Kosovo	15.4
Hungary	41.3	Ireland	14.2
Spain	40.0	Poland	10.8
Israel	38.6	Cyprus	4.8

Faith tourism in Wales

A Wales Faith Tourism Action Plan was launched at St Asaph’s Cathedral by the Welsh Government on 25 October 2013 as part of its long-term strategy to boost tourism. The plan’s 2020 vision is ‘to exploit the full potential of Wales’ places of worship for the visitor economy and to exploit the visitor economy for the purpose of sustaining Wales’ places of worship’. It aims to build upon the existing contribution which places of worship make to Welsh tourism. In 2011 (the last year for which data are available) St David’s Cathedral was the seventh most popular free visitor attraction in Wales. According to Visit Wales, the top five places of worship in that year in terms of visitor numbers were:

St David’s Cathedral	262,000
Norwegian Church, Cardiff	149,000
Brecon Cathedral	120,000
Tintern Abbey	70,000
Llandaff Cathedral	40,000

During 2012 visitors from the UK spent an estimated £12 million while visiting cathedrals, churches, and other religious sites in Wales. More details about the initiative can be found at:

http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/tourism/2013/8125137/?lang=en

Barristers on the veil

The majority of barristers (57%) favours a ban on defendants wearing the full face-veil or niqab during the whole of a criminal trial, and a further 34% support a ban when the defendant is giving evidence. This is according to a single question online poll of members of the Bar Council conducted during October 2013 on behalf of The Times, and summarized by Frances Gibb, the newspaper’s legal editor, in an article in The Times for 2 November 2013 (available online to subscribers). Over 400 barristers responded via Survey Monkey. The poll has been triggered by the public debate about the case of a Muslim defendant who had insisted on wearing the niqab in court but who had been told by the judge she must remove it when giving evidence.

Bonfire Night

The chairman of the Edinburgh Secular Society recently called for a purely secular alternative to Bonfire Night on 5 November, to rid it of its anti-Catholic overtones, arguing that the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes or even the Pope was an offensive way to connect to the failed plot by Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. In response, a spokesperson for the Free Church of Scotland branded the secularists as ‘the puritanical killjoys of the 21st century’.

In practice, the tradition has long since moved on, and the effigies burned on bonfires are no longer just of individuals associated with the Gunpowder Plot but can be of any living public figures or celebrities who are disliked. This year a Kent bonfire society gained widespread publicity for choosing Katie Hopkins, former contestant in The Apprentice, as its annual ‘guy’, to be burned in effigy.

According to a YouGov poll, conducted online on 3-4 November 2013 among a sample of 1,747 Britons, the public is evenly divided (43% each way) on whether it is acceptable or unacceptable to burn well-known people in effigy on bonfires on or around 5 November. Men (55%) are far more likely to find it acceptable than women (31%). Somewhat fewer adults (28%) deemed it acceptable to burn an effigy of Hopkins. As for Bonfire Night itself, 24% anticipated they would be celebrating it this year, while, in a separate YouGov poll on 30-31 October, 45% said they preferred Guy Fawkes Night to Halloween, with only 13% preferring Halloween. The Bonfire Night tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/sz92wiohpx/YG-Archive-131104-Bonfire-Night.pdf

Christmas carols

BRIN has tried to spare you Christmas stories for as long as possible this year, but we cannot hold out indefinitely! Especially since there are only six full weeks to go before the festivities. Our seasonal coverage opens with news from OnePoll, published on 4 November 2013, that its latest online survey of adults aged 18 and over has confirmed Silent Night as the nation’s favourite Christmas carol, taking 59% of the vote. The carols in second to fifth positions were: O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and Away in a Manger. A majority (62%) of the sample said they would open their door to Christmas carollers. OnePoll also found that 23% of people who celebrate Christmas go and see a nativity play, and that 55% admit to having performed themselves in Christmas ‘shows’, three-quarters of which were nativity plays. The press release is at:

http://www.onepoll.com/fairytale-of-new-york-is-top-favourite-christmas-song/

Adoption

To mark the start of National Adoption Week, on 4 November 2013 First4Adoption launched a campaign to increase the number of adopters in England, working in partnership with Home for Good, a Christian agency which aims to make adoption and fostering a significant part of church life. The campaign is targeting faith communities, among others, on the basis of survey data gathered by Kindred and Work Research on behalf of the Department for Education. The research, which was quietly published earlier in the year, is being newly promoted to help underpin the campaign. It comprised both qualitative and quantitative interviews, the latter conducted online among a sample of 4,948 English adults aged 18-65 between 30 November and 5 December 2012. Quotas were set for age, gender, and region to ensure that a national cross-section was achieved. The survey revealed that among the demographic groups most predisposed to adopt or foster children were: a) the 31% of people who claim actively to practice their religion, whatever it is; and b) the 5% who profess to be Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs. In fact, 55% of those who said they were certain or very likely to adopt a child described themselves as actively practising their religion. This was seen by the researchers as part of a wider association between predisposition to adopt and ‘an altruistic streak’. The survey has been partially reported at:

http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/families/adoption/a00223862/adopter-recruitment

Catholics polled on family life

In preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, to be held at the Vatican on 5-19 October 2014, the Roman Catholic Church is consulting the global faithful about family life. It has drawn up a 40-question survey instrument covering the following ten areas:

Diffusion of the teachings on the family in scripture and the Church’s magisterium
Place of marriage according to natural law
Pastoral care of the family in evangelization
Pastoral care in difficult marital situations
Same-sex unions
Education of children in ‘irregular’ marriages
Openness of married couples to life issues (including contraception)
Relationship between the family and the person
Other challenges and proposals
Further comments

It is hard to be charitable about the design of the questionnaire, whose content lacks any kind of social scientific rigour. The questions are all of the open variety, calling for free text responses, and with no pre-set reply codes. They are mostly expressed in complicated language, with an excess of ecclesiastical jargon, and are sometimes ‘leading’. The short demographics section is very deficient and does not even ask for the respondent’s gender. On these various counts, as well as because all respondents will be entirely self-selecting, it is unlikely that any useful (or at least representative) statistics will emerge from the survey.

Presumably, however, it was not the Vatican’s intention to engage in grass-roots-led and evidence-based development of doctrine and policy. As Archbishop Bruno Forte, Secretary of the Extraordinary Synod, has clearly explained: ‘The Synod does not have to decide on the basis of the majority of public opinion’.

All the national bishops’ conferences have been asked to disseminate the survey. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has chosen to do so by making the questionnaire available online, with an option to complete it via Survey Monkey (with no obvious safeguards against misuse). Apparently, there is also to be a printed version in The Universe, a Catholic weekly. The closing date for responses is 30 November 2013.

According to James Bone, Vatican correspondent of The Times writing in that newspaper on 6 November 2013 (‘Vatican Survey Gives Catholics Chance to Question Their Faith’), the Vatican has been somewhat put out by the exercise in ‘direct democracy’ on the part of the English and Welsh bishops.

For more information, go to:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/Featured/Synod-of-Bishops-on-the-Family-2014

Christian Research’s new website

Christian Research has recently launched a new website at:

http://www.christian-research.org/

The public domain pages on the site seem mainly concerned to promote Christian Research’s consultancy services, including the potential of its online panel of some 12,000 churchgoers and church leaders (Resonate). At this stage at least, the public pages do not contain much actual research data, and certainly no substantive details of published Resonate polls, although copies of a few past publications by Christian Research are advertised for sale.

The Religious Trends section of the website can only be accessed by those paying an annual membership fee to Christian Research. The section replaces the printed edition of Religious Trends, the seventh and last edition of which was published as far back as 2008. The online version of Religious Trends remains remarkably thin and not particularly current. Indeed, in terms of content, it seems to have moved on very little from the launch version which we covered on BRIN in our post of 6 January 2011. There are sub-sections on: introduction; the world and its religions; UK church overview; Anglicans UK; other UK Churches; the Bible; and other research reports.

As it currently stands, Christian Research’s Religious Trends online compares unfavourably with Dr Peter Brierley’s research outputs, in FutureFirst and UK Church Statistics, the second edition of which will be out next year. As the former director of Christian Research, Brierley was responsible for all the print editions of Religious Trends and much else besides.

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged adoption, Bar Council, barristers, Bonfire Night, Christian Research, Christmas carols, Department for Education, effigies, European Social Survey, Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, faith tourism, family, Ipsos-MORI, Kindred, Muslims, nativity plays, niqab, OnePoll, Peter Brierley, prayer, religious dress, religious festivals, religious trends, Roman Catholic Church, The Times, Wales, Work Research, YouGov | Leave a comment

Devil in the Detail

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Eight religious statistical news stories feature in our latest miscellany, starting with a survey on belief in the Devil and ending with a public consultation on the future of the decennial population census in Britain, to which some BRIN readers may wish to respond. Our next post will concentrate on the results of the religion question in the last (2011) census of Scotland.

Devil

Belief in the existence of the Devil is three times as great in the United States (57%) as it is in Britain (18%), according to YouGov data published on 27 September 2013, 1,919 Britons having been interviewed online on 24-25 September and 1,000 Americans on 12-13 September. The current British figure is 16 points lower than when Gallup first posed a similar question in February 1957. Disbelievers now number 65% (compared with 42% a half-century earlier), with 17% undecided. Belief in the Devil does not vary hugely by most demographic variables, but it does by religion, being 7% for the non-religious, 25% for Christians, and 41% for non-Christians.

The national results are identical for belief that some people can be possessed by the Devil or another evil spirit: 18% yes (against 51% in the United States), 65% no, and 17% don’t know. This belief again peaks among non-Christians (37%) and is lowest for the non-religious (10%). Of these British believers in possession, 6% think that it occurs frequently, 12% occasionally, 33% rarely, and 6% never (the rest being uncertain). Among these believers in possession, 35% believe in the power of exorcism, with no major demographic fluctuations (even by religion), 18% do not, and 47% cannot make up their minds. YouGov’s blog post about the study, with links to full data tables, is at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/09/27/18-brits-believe-possession-devil-and-half-america/

Religious discrimination and the young

Interviewed online by ComRes for BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat programme, 72% of 1,001 adults aged 18-24 considered that young people today are more tolerant than their parents of different ethnic groups, religions, and sexual orientations. They also identified religious discrimination as the second most widespread form of discrimination in Britain (39%), after racism (58%) and just ahead of homophobia (36%). No more than 5% denied that Islamophobia exists in the UK, and 60% accepted that Muslims have a negative image among the British public (compared with 11% to 17% for the five other world faith communities).

At the same time, significant numbers of these young adults themselves exhibited negativity towards either Islam or Muslims. The Islamic faith was described as traditional by 88%, set in its ways by 81%, disrespectful of women by 67%, unequal by 63%, separate by 61%, intolerant by 52%, and violent by 37%. The Muslim community was often not thought to share the same values as other people (44%), nor to be doing enough to combat extremism (39%). More than one-third (37%) had no regular interactions with Muslims in any context, 27% distrusted them (against 12% to 16% for members of the other faiths), and 28% thought the country would be better off with fewer Muslims (13% to 17% for the other faiths).

Fieldwork took place between 7 and 17 June 2013, but the extensive data tables (481 pages) were only released on 25 September. They may be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Radio_1_Newsbeat_Discrimination_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Christians and wills

The Church Times for 20 September 2013 (p. 6) carried a brief report about a new study by Christian Research among its online panel (Resonate). Respondents numbered 1,917 churchgoers aged 45 and above and church leaders. Of those who had made a will, 45% said that they had left money to a charity, a much higher proportion than the norm. According to Remember a Charity, only 7% of all wills in the UK contain a charitable bequest. BRIN has so far failed to discover any more details about this survey. It is certainly not publicized on the current Christian Research website, which is sparse and, it is claimed, ‘soon’ to be replaced.

Anglican mindsets

To the same issue of the Church Times (20 September 2013, p. 16), Professor Linda Woodhead contributed an important article ‘A Gap is Growing within the Church’. This continues the analysis of two YouGov polls she commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, on ethics and personal life (25-30 January, n = 4,437) and ethics and public life (5-13 June, n = 4,018). Her main thesis, underpinned by the survey data, is that, in both contexts, majority Anglican opinion is a ‘mirror image’ of the official teaching and policy of the Church of England. On personal morality most Anglicans espouse liberalism (in the sense that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how to lead their lives) and fairness, whereas the Church inclines to authoritarian-paternalism, and the maintenance of difference, altogether occupying the ‘conservative’ ground. In matters of public life, however, the roles are reversed, majority Anglican views veering towards the free market and ‘Little England’ ends of the spectrum, while the Church is more social welfarist-paternalist and cosmopolitan in outlook. ‘In short’, Woodhead writes, ‘Anglicans have a good deal in common with the Government. They are in line with The Guardian on personal issues, but the Telegraph or even the Mail on wider social and economic matters.’ She also notes a values gap between Church and society, which widens as the age range is descended, perceived discrimination against women and gay people being significant factors in the disaffection of the young from the Church of England.

Religion and depression

The claim is often made, especially on the basis of research undertaken in the United States, that religion promotes psychological well-being, but the contrary appears to be the case in a multinational study reported in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 43, No. 10, October 2013, pp. 2109-20: ‘Spiritual and Religious Beliefs as Risk Factors for the Onset of Major Depression: An International Cohort Study’. Written by a team of ten academics (with Michael King of University College London as corresponding author), the data derive from 8,318 adults aged 18-75 attending general practices in seven countries (including 1,331 in the UK, 66% of whom were women) and followed up at six- and twelve-month intervals in 2003-04. The overall conclusion is that ‘holding a religious or spiritual life view, in contrast to a secular outlook, predisposed people to the onset of major depression and that such beliefs and practice did not act as a buffer to adverse life events’. This was particularly so in the UK, where the 27% of the sample claiming a spiritual understanding of life (without practising a religion) were almost three times as likely to experience an episode of depression than the secular group (32% of respondents). The odds ratios (adjusted and unadjusted) for the onset of major depression were also higher than the seculars for the 41% in the religious group, albeit the difference was not as marked as for the spiritual group. The explanation advanced is that ‘people predisposed to depression increase their search for existential meaning in religion and spirituality’. For access options to the article, go to:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8988733&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0033291712003066

Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s blockbuster thriller novel (2003) and film (2006), which has been frequently denounced as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, was the most-read of nineteen works of modern fiction in a survey conducted by Opinium Research in which 2,001 UK adults were interviewed online between 19 and 22 July 2013. More than one-third (36%) of all adults claimed to have read it, including 42% of the over-55s. Data tables were released on 25 September 2013 and are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op3710_opinium_pr_adult_literacy_tables.pdf

Scotland’s Jews

The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has published the final report on Being Jewish in Scotland, written by Fiona Frank, Ephraim Borowski, and Leah Granat. It derives from a mixed methods research project, which commenced in November 2011 with funding from the Community Safety Unit of the Scottish Government. It ultimately involved more than 300 Scottish Jews (about 5% of the total, albeit possibly not representative) who either attended 30 focus groups or (n = 155) participated in one-to-one interviews or completed a survey form. The report is essentially a qualitative document but drawing upon pre-existing statistical evidence. Although the experience of living in Scotland was largely found to be positive, some anti-Semitism was revealed, leading to a sense of insecurity. Four-fifths of respondents were also concerned about ‘increasingly acrimonious attacks on Israel’. Being Jewish in Scotland can be read at:

http://www.scojec.org/news/2013/13viii_bjis_report/report.pdf

Beyond 2011

The Office for National Statistics issued a public consultation document on 23 September 2013 on The Census and Future Provision of Population Statistics in England and Wales. Two principal options for taking the census forward have been identified: a) a census once a decade, as in 2011, but primarily completed online; and b) a census repurposing existing government data with new compulsory annual surveys completed by a sample of households (cumulatively covering about half the population over a decade). Further details about these options, a SWOT analysis of them, the consultation questions, and how to respond (by 13 December 2013), together with links to two supplementary reports (one of which, Summary of the Uses of Census Information, contains sundry references to religion), can be found at:

http://ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/get-involved/consultations/consultations/beyond-2011-consultation/index.html

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Anglicans, BBC, Beyond 2011, census of population, Christian Research, Church of England, Church Times, ComRes, Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, depression, Devil, Ephraim Borowski, exorcism, Fiona Frank, Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Leah Granat, Linda Woodhead, Michael King, Muslims, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, Psychological Medicine, Religious discrimination, Roman Catholic Church, Scotland, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, wills, YouGov | Leave a comment

Muslim Distinctiveness and Other News

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s round-up of eight religious statistical news stories leads on the first substantive output from an important and academic-led four-year-old sample survey of British Muslims.

Muslim distinctiveness

The distinctiveness of British Muslims is explored in a short but highly significant article by Valerie Lewis and Ridhi Kashyap, ‘Are Muslims a Distinctive Minority? An Empirical Analysis of Religiosity, Social Attitudes, and Islam’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2013, pp. 617-26. Data derive from face-to-face interviews by Ipsos MORI with a sample of 480 British Muslims between January and May 2009; and from face-to-face interviews by NatCen with samples of Britons of other religious persuasions (n = 2,457) and none (n = 1,903) from the contemporaneous British Social Attitudes Survey. Muslims were found to be more religious than other Britons in terms of beliefs, practices (public and private), and salience. They were also more socially conservative on a range of topics: gender roles in the home, divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. In terms of premarital sex and homosexuality, an independent effect of Islam was documented; on other social issues Muslim attitudes tended to resemble those of other religious people. Indeed, more generally, multivariate analysis revealed that much of the difference on socio-moral opinions was due to socio-economic disadvantage and high religiosity, both factors which – Lewis and Kashyap argue – predict social conservatism among all Britons and not just Muslims. The distinctiveness of Muslims, therefore, may not be as great as it superficially seems. It should be noted that no weights were applied to the Muslim data, and that there are several caveats from the authors concerning the representative nature of the Muslim sample (including a high rate of non-response). For access options for this article, go to:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12044/abstract

Civic core

Two-thirds of all charitable activity (charitable donations and volunteering) in this country is attributable to just 9% of its citizens (the ‘civic core’). This is according to a report published by the Charities Aid Foundation on 13 September 2013 and entitled Britain’s Civic Core: Who are the People Powering Britain’s Charities? A further 67% of individuals account for the remaining 34% of charitable activity (the so-called ‘middle ground’), while 24% of the population undertake little or no charitable activity (‘zero givers’). Members of the ‘civic core’ have the greatest interest (37%) in supporting religious organizations (including places of worship), with ‘zero givers’ showing the least (10%); among the ‘middle ground’ the proportion is 20%. This trend reflects the fact that the ‘civic core’ is disproportionately composed of women, the over-65s, and people from professional/managerial backgrounds – precisely those groups most inclined to be involved with organized religion. The data derive from an online survey of 2,027 Britons aged 18 and over conducted by ComRes on 31 July and 1 August 2013, and the report is available at:

https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/CAF_Britains_Civic_Core_Sept13.pdf

Full data tables for the poll were released by ComRes on 16 September. Table 21 provides breaks for interest in religious organizations by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, ethnicity, and the monetary value of volunteering and charitable donations. Table 64 gives details about volunteering for religious organizations during the past year among the sub-group of respondents who have given practical help to a social cause. Table 89 records self-assigned ‘membership’ of religious groups (56% Christian, 8% non-Christian, 34% none). Unfortunately, religious affiliation is not used in this set of tables as a variable to analyse answers to all the other questions about charitable disposition and activity. The data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/CAF_People_Power_9_August_2013_Sig.pdf

Confessions

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales reported on 2 September 2013 that the number of confessions (Sacrament of Reconciliation) is rising at many of its cathedrals. Twenty-two cathedrals were contacted by telephone or email on 21 August, of which 20 replied. Overall, 65% (i.e. 13 cathedrals) noted an increase in confessions, mostly attributing it to a ‘papal effect’ (either the visit to Britain of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, the inauguration of Pope Francis I in 2013, or both), while the remaining 35% (7 cathedrals) said confessions were ‘steady’ or ‘normal’. Actual statistics of those confessing were not cited by the Church, and it is possible that they constitute a relatively small proportion of professing Catholics. The Church’s press release is at:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/News/Back-to-Church

The story was picked up by all the UK’s Catholic newspapers and by the Church Times, including a particularly upbeat report and leader in the Catholic Herald. Responding to the latter, in a letter to the editor published in the Catholic Herald for 13 September 2013 (p. 13), Anthony Hofler of Wolverhampton was in little doubt from his own experience that confession is falling out of fashion among Catholics, except, relatively, at Christmas and Easter. Undaunted, the front page of the same edition of the Catholic Herald highlighted responses by 32 priests to a survey about a three-year-long initiative in the Diocese of Lancaster to boost the uptake of confessions, apparently also with encouraging results. Significantly, again, no hard data were cited in this report, and none currently appear on the websites of the diocese or the diocesan newspaper, Catholic Voice.

With regard to the ‘papal bounce’, as already noted by BRIN in our post of 28 January 2012, average weekly Mass attendance was actually lower after the papal visit in 2010 than before. And, in gearing up for its Home Mission Sunday (which took place on 15 September 2013), the Church itself conceded there are ‘four million baptised Catholics who rarely or never attend Mass’ in England and Wales.

Fracking

Recent public divisions about fracking within the Church of England and other Christian groups are evidenced in new research briefly reported in the latest issue of Christian Research’s monthly ezine, Research Brief, which was emailed to subscribers on 6 September 2013:

CRACKS APPEAR IN FRACKING ARGUMENT

‘Our Resonate August omnibus, completed by 1.520 Resonate panellists, revealed that two-thirds of practising Christians regard it as valid that the church should derive income from mineral rights on property it owns (marginally higher support amongst church leaders). More than 2 in 5 regular churchgoers felt that the church should be able to profit from shale gas reserves located under land it owns, 1 in 3 were uncertain and 1 in 4 objected (to some degree). Interestingly, men (significantly so) and Londoners agreed more strongly than others. The results see-sawed the other way, 1 in 3 opposed and 1 in 5 in favour, if the land was dwelt on.’

University students’ religion

On 27 April 2013 BRIN provided preliminary coverage of research into English university students and Christianity, undertaken by a team led by Mathew Guest of Durham University, with funding from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. A major aim of the project, which collected data via online questionnaires completed by 4,341 undergraduates in 2010-11 and via in-depth interviews, was to test empirically the widespread assumption that higher education is a force for secularization. Full details of the findings were published on 12 September 2013 in Mathew Guest, Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner, Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN 9781780937847, paperback, £19.99 – also available in hardback and ebook editions). The volume was reviewed by Gerald Pillay in Times Higher Education on 12 September 2013. Guest has also contributed a substantial article about the research – entitled ‘What Really Happens at University?’ – to Church Times, 13 September 2013, pp. 27-8.

Scottish religious affiliation

The results from the religion question in the 2011 census of population for Scotland are still not available (they are expected to be included in release 2A of the census data on 26 September 2013). Meanwhile, we can note the religious affiliation question from the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS), conducted by ScotCen Social Research among 1,229 residents of Scotland aged 18 and over between July and November 2012. The marginals on the UK Data Service Nesstar site show that a majority of Scots (52%) now regard themselves as belonging to no religion, compared with 40% when SSAS commenced in 1999. A further 22% regard themselves as Church of Scotland (35% in 1999), 11% as Catholics (15%), 12% as other Christians (10%), and 2% as non-Christians (1%). This ‘belonging’ form of question-wording is known to maximize the number of religious ‘nones’, and a similar formulation is used in the Scottish census (‘what religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’). Claimed attendance at religious services (other than rites of passage) in the 2012 SSAS was 19% at least monthly, including 12% weekly or more often. These figures are down on 1999 levels (27% and 17% respectively) but are probably still aspirational to a considerable degree. The latest Scottish church attendance census, conducted by Christian Research on 12 May 2002, revealed a weekly participation rate of 11%, with no deduction for ‘twicing’.

Churchgoing in the Presbytery of Dunfermline

As noted in the previous entry, there has been no Scottish church attendance census since 2002. Nor does the Church of Scotland – as the ‘national church’ – routinely collect attendance data (in the way that the Church of England has since 1968). So there is added interest to annual churchgoing counts organized in the Church of Scotland’s Presbytery of Dunfermline since 2009, the latest on 17 and 24 March 2013. Through the kindness of Allan Vint, summary data for the Presbytery’s 24 congregations have been made available to BRIN. Total attendance in 2013 was 2,493, 4% down on the 2012 total and 14% on 2009. Attendees comprised 34% men and 66% women; 9% children, 3% teenagers, and 88% adults (with an average adult age of 63, up by four years since 2009).

Baby names

Biblical forenames remain fashionable for Jewish boys, according to a list compiled by the Jewish Baby Directory website. Analysing around 1,000 birth announcements in the Jewish Chronicle, Samuel was found to be first equal in the list of boys’ names for the Jewish year September 2012 to September 2013, with Jacob and Joshua joint third, Joseph joint fifth, and Benjamin, Ethan, Nathan and Noah in joint eleventh position. The attraction of female biblical names was less strong, with Leah in fourth place, Rachel in ninth, and Rebecca in eleventh equal. Previously popular biblical names for girls, such as Sarah and Naomi, failed to make it to the top twenty. The rankings are at:

http://www.jewishbabydirectory.com/top-baby-names-of-5773-september-2012-present/

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged baby names, biblical names, British Social Attitudes Survey, Cathedrals, Catholic Herald, charitable giving, Charities Aid Foundation, Christian Research, Christianity, church attendance, Church of Scotland, Church Times, ComRes, confessions, Diocese of Lancaster, distinctiveness, England, fracking, Ipsos-MORI, Jewish Baby Directory, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Kristin Aune, Mathew Guest, Muslims, NatCen, Pope, Presbytery of Dunfermline, Religiosity, Religious Affiliation, religious organizations, Resonate, Ridhi Kashyap, Rob Warner, Roman Catholic Church, Sacrament of Reconciliation, ScotCen, Scotland, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, Social Capital, social conservatism, Sonya Sharma, university students, Valerie Lewis, volunteering | Leave a comment

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