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The European Social Survey: Religion in Britain

Posted on June 7, 2016 by Ben Clements

This BRIN post looks at religious data pertaining to Britain from the European Social Survey (ESS), a cross-national survey which has so far involved seven waves conducted every two years since 2002. In each wave, the UK adult population has been sampled. The most recent survey wave was conducted in 2014 – the UK country dataset has recently been released and can be downloaded (along with accompanying documentation) from the ESS website: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/.

The religious data presented here are based on analysis of the 2002 and 2014 surveys, in order to provide an over-time comparison. While each of the samples covers the UK, the small proportion of cases resident in Norther Ireland have been omitted, so that the focus it on those in living in Britain.

Four religious indicators are used here: affiliation; attendance, prayer, and personal religiosity. The analysis first examines each religious indicator in turn before looking at how different measures of religious engagement (attendance, prayer and religiosity) are associated with belonging to a particular faith or denomination. For attendance and prayer, the full set of response options provided in the ESS surveys have been collapsed into more parsimonious sets of categories. Question wordings are given underneath each table. All tables present the results from analysis of weighted data.

Religious indicators

Table 1 presents the data on religion affiliation from the 2002 and 2014 surveys. Over time, the total proportion professing some form of Christian affiliation has been broadly stable (2002: 43%; 2014: 42%). However, as an identical set of response categories was not used for Christian traditions in both surveys, this limits the observations that can be made. The proportion claiming no religious affiliation is almost identical over time (2002: 52%; 2014: 53%). The proportion recorded in 2014 is a little higher than that recorded in the 2014 British Social Attitudes survey. There has been an increase in the proportion belonging to some other religion (from 5% to 7%).

Table 1: Religious affiliation

	2002 (%)		2014 (%)
TOTAL CHRISTIAN	43	TOTAL CHRISTIAN	42
Protestant	33	Anglican	24
Catholic	8	Catholic	10
Other Christian	2	Other Christian	8
OTHER RELIGION	5	OTHER RELIGION	7
NO RELIGION	52	NO RELIGION	53

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2002 and 2014.

Questions: ‘Do you consider yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?’ and ‘Which one?’

Note: Some of the categories included under ‘CHRISTIAN’ are not equivalent between the 2002 and 2014 surveys.

Table 2 is based on responses to a question only asked of those who said they had no religious affiliation. It gauges whether they have ever belonged to a religious faith or denomination. In both surveys around three-in-ten indicate that they have (though it is slightly higher in 2014). In both years, then, a large majority of those with no current affiliation also stated that they have never had an affiliation in the past.

Table 2: Ever belonged to a particular religion or denomination (only asked of those with no affiliation)

	2002 (%)	2014 (%)
Yes	28	32
No	72	69

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2002 and 2014.

Question: ‘Have you ever considered yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?’

Table 3 presents data for the first of three measures of religious engagement – attendance at religious services (beyond going on special occasions). The picture is one of continuity over time – just under a fifth report that they attend services on a frequent basis (that is, once a month or more often); around three-in-ten attend less often; and about half said that they never attend services.

Table 3: Religious attendance

	2002 (%)	2014 (%)
Once a month or more	18	19
Less than once a month	32	30
Never	51	51

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2002 and 2014.

Question: ‘Apart from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, about how often do you attend religious services nowadays?’

Table 4 shows the responses to a question asking about prayer. It shows an increase over time in the proportion saying that they never pray, from 44% in 2002 to 50% in 2014, with small decreases in the proportions saying that either they pray at least once a week or less often.

Table 4: Prayer

	2002 (%)	2014 (%)
Once a week or more	31	29
Less often	25	22
Never	44	50

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2002 and 2014.

Question: ‘Apart from when you are at religious services, how often, if at all, do you pray?’

Moving beyond measures of religious practice, Table 5 shows responses to a question asking respondents to self-assess how religious they are. They are asked to locate themselves on a scale running from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates not at all religious and 10 indicates very religious. In Table 5, respondents have been categorised as to whether they have a low (scored 0-3), medium (scored 4-6) or high (scored 7-10) level of religiosity, as well as showing the overall mean score for the full scale. There has been some degree of change over time: the proportion with a low level of religiosity has increased from 40% to 48%. The proportion with a medium or high levels of religiosity have both fallen over time. In 2014, just under half have a low level of religiosity, 30% have a medium level (down from 36%) and 21% report having a high level (down from 24%). The average value underscores this movement towards lower levels of religiosity, decreasing from 5.0 to 3.8.

Table 5: Self-assessed religiosity

	2002 (%)	2014 (%)
Low (0 to 3)	40	48
Medium (4-6)	36	30
High (7-10)	24	21
Mean score	5.0	3.8

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2002 and 2014.

Question: ‘Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are?’

Religious engagement by affiliation

Table 6 takes the analysis of the religious data in the 2014 ESS survey a step further by looking at how the indicators of religious engagement are associated with the measure of religious affiliation. In other words, does religious engagement vary across different religious traditions? Table 6 provides a breakdown of attendance, prayer and self-assessed religiosity for Anglicans, Catholics, other Christians and those who belong to other religions. Data are not reported for those who do not have an affiliation.

A common finding across the three indicators of religious engagement is that Anglicans are less likely to be engaged. Anglicans are much less likely to say that they attend religious services on a regular basis (once a month or more); much less likely to report that they pray once a week or more; and are less likely to have a high level of personal religiosity.

Around a half of Catholics, other Christians and those affiliated to non-Christian religions say they attend services once a month or more. A clear majority in each group other than Anglicans also report praying once a week or more often. While 31% of Anglicans are categorised as having a high level of religiosity, this is considerable lower than the proportions for the other groups: Catholics: 47%; other Christians: 45%; other religion: 54%. Looked at another way, Anglicans’ mean score on the religiosity scale is 5.25; the average scores for the other groups are somewhat higher (highest at 6.53 for those belonging to other religions).

Finally, a summary measure of religious engagement was created based on the three indicators used already: attendance, prayer and self-assessed religiosity. Those respondents who met the following criteria of (i) attending services once a month or more, (ii) praying once a week or more and (iii) having a high level of religiosity were classed as having a high level of religious engagement. The proportion that is highly engaged – on this summary measure – within each affiliation category is shown in the bottom row of Table 6.

Within each religious group only a relatively small proportion can be identified as highly engaged on all three measures. The summary measure encapsulates what was found for each indicator when analysed in turn. That is, Anglicans somewhat stand apart from the other religious groups. Only 15% of Anglicans are classed as highly religiously engaged based on the summary measure, compared to around twice as many Catholics (33%), other Christians (31%) and those within non-Christian faiths (30%).

Table 6: Religious engagement by affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)
Attendance
Once a month or more	25	47	48	49
Less than once a month	43	34	33	36
Never	33	20	19	15
Prayer
Once a week or more	38	61	55	68
Less often	32	22	23	21
Never	31	17	22	11
Religiosity
Low (0-3)	23	15	14	10
Medium (4-6)	46	38	41	36
High (7 to 10)	31	47	45	54
Mean score	5.3	6.0	6.2	6.5

Proportion with a high level of religious engagement*	15	33	31	30

*Based on a combined measure of: (i) attends once a month or more; (ii) prays more than once a week; and (iii) has a high level of self-assessed religiosity.

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2014.

Religious engagement by sociodemographic group

As a final step, Table 7 shows the incidence of different religious indicators across sociodemographic groups (based on sex, ethnicity and age). Specifically, within each group, Table 7 reports the proportion with a religious affiliation, the proportion attending services once a month or more, the proportion praying once a week or more, the proportion with a high level of religiosity, and the proportion categorised as highly religious engaged (based on the summary measure discussed already).

There are some consistent features in the data. Across all indicators, women are always more religious than men: that is, they are more likely to have some form of affiliation, more likely to practice their religion, and more likely to see themselves as being very religious. Based on the combined measure of religious engagement, 13% of women are highly religiously engaged, as against a tenth of men.

Those who belong to a minority ethnic group are much more likely to be religiously engaged those who do not. With the exception of identifying with a religion, those who belong to a minority ethnic group are more than twice as likely to be religiously-engaged. Based on the summary measure (shown in the final column), 31% of those belonging to a minority ethnic group are classed as highly religiously engaged, compared to 9% of those who do not belong to a minority ethnic group.

In terms of the evidence across age groups, those aged 65 and over are most likely to be religiously-engaged, and this finding is consistent across indicators. Those in the youngest age group are consistently least likely to be religiously engaged. Based on the summary index, those aged 65 and older are twice as likely to be highly religiously engaged compared than those aged 15-29.

Table 7: Religious engagement by sociodemographic group

	Has a religious affiliation (%)	Attends services: Once a month or more (%)	Prays: Once a week or more (%)	High level of religiosity (%)	*Religiosity: Mean score*	*High level of religious engagement (%)**
Men	44	17	24	18	3.4	10
Women	50	21	33	24	4.1	13
Belongs to a minority ethnic group	67	38	56	45	5.4	31
Does not belong to a minority ethnic group	45	16	25	19	3.6	9
Aged 15-29	33	11	18	13	2.8	8
Aged 30-49	41	19	26	20	3.4	11
Aged 50-64	49	17	28	21	3.9	11
Aged 65+	64	24	39	28	4.6	16

*Based on a combined measure of: (i) attends once a month or more; (ii) prays more than once a week; and (iii) has a high level of self-assessed religiosity.

Source: Author’s analysis of ESS 2014.

Summary

Across time, the picture is generally one of stability in terms of affiliation and attendance. There was some decline in self-assessed levels of religiosity; and a rise in the proportion who do not pray.

The examination of variation in levels of religious engagement across religious groups (defined by affiliation) and across sociodemographic groups tended to reaffirm the ‘conventional wisdom’ on which segments of wider society tend to be more (or less religious). Across faith traditions, Anglicans are least religiously engaged based on the measures used here, either separately or in combination. Sociodemographically, levels of religious engagement are higher amongst women, those aged 65 and older, and particularly so within those belonging to minority ethnic groups.

Posted in church attendance, Measuring religion, Research note, Survey news | Tagged Anglicans, Behaving, Belonging, Christians, church attendance, Church of England, European Social Surveys, Other Religions, prayer, Religiosity, Religious Practice, Roman Catholics, self-assessed religiosity, Survey Data, surveys | 1 Comment

Counting Religion in Britain, May 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Clive D. Field

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

OPINION POLLS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Semitism (3): Attitudes of the electorate

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

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

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

The full data tables are at:

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

Perceptions of Islam

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

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

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

Admiration for global religious figures

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

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

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

Trust in religious leaders

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

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

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

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

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

Dying

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

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

Places of worship and community

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

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

Brexit

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

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

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

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

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

English church census, 2016

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

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

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

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

Sermons

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

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

Church Commissioners annual report

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

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

Fresh Expressions of church in the Diocese of Sheffield

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

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

Church of Scotland statistics

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

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

Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

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

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

British Sikh Report

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

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

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

2021 census

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

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

Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2014

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

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

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Protestant and Catholic differences

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

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

Catholic disaffiliation

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

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

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

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

Catholics and faith schools

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

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

Urban and rural Anglican dioceses

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

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

Polarized Jews

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

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

Digital methodologies

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

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

Implicit religion and adolescents

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

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

Journalists and religion

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

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

George Whitefield’s voice

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

British Religion in Numbers

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

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

An advanced search facility is available at:

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

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7894: What about YOUth? Survey, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Counting Religion in Britain, March 2016

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Clive D. Field

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

OPINION POLLS

Hope Not Hate

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

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

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

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

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

Religion and the European Union referendum

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

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

Freedom of religion

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

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

Belief at Eastertide

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

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

Good Samaritan

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

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

Easter eggs

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

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

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

Trust in the Church

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

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

Papal popularity

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

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

Topline results for each country are at:

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

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

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

Islamic State (1)

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

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

Islamic State (2)

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

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

The Sun and Muslim opinion

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

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

Religion and gender

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

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

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

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

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Visitor attractions

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

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

Jewish charitable giving

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

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

Jewish health

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

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

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Places of worship

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

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

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

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Jewish and Muslim MPs

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

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

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

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

London churchgoing in 1913

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

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

Religion in Bolton

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

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

Nonconformist prosopography

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

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

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

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

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

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

SN 7919: Health Survey for England, 2014

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

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

PEOPLE NEWS

Stephen Bullivant

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

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

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

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Counting Religion in Britain, January 2016

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 4, January 2016 features 25 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 4 January 2016

OPINION POLLS

Nones

On 19 January 2016 Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University delivered a lecture at The British Academy on ‘Why “No Religion” is the New Religion’. It can be listened to at:

http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2016/Why_no_religion_is_the_new_religion.cfm

The lecture was partly underpinned by an opinion poll designed by Woodhead and undertaken by YouGov among an online sample of 1,668 adult Britons on 21-22 December 2015. Asked to give their religious affiliation, 46% of adults replied that they did not regard themselves as belonging to any particular religion (i.e. they were ‘nones’), more than the 44% self-identifying as Christians (including 28% as Anglican and 8% as Roman Catholic). Nones constituted the majority among the two youngest age cohorts, being 60% of 18-24s and 55% of 25-39s, and also among Scots (52%) and Liberal Democrats (51%). They were least likely to be found among the over-60s (34%). The data table can be found on YouGov’s archive website, filed under 21 January 2016, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/publicopinion/archive/

A press release from Lancaster University on 18 January, which was the basis for much of the pre-lecture media coverage, pointed out that the proportion of nones had increased from previous YouGov surveys (being 37% in January 2013 and 42% in February 2015). In her lecture, Woodhead anticipated that ‘this trend will continue because nones tend to be young whereas Christians tend to be old; nones are being hatched while Christians are being dispatched’. Based on her previous research, both the press release and the lecture also provided some context and commentary about the religious profile of nones, who are by no means entirely secular when it comes to belief in God or even religious practices. This release can be found at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2016/why-no-religion-is-the-new-religion/

Andrew Atherstone, the evangelical Anglican theologian and historian, has an article about Woodhead’s research on nones in The Tablet for 30 January 2016 (pp. 8-9), critiquing not so much her data as her interpretation of them. This is available online, to subscribers only, at:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/7829/religious-nones-on-the-rise-but-what-s-the-truth-behind-the-data-an-evangelical-theologian-explains

Same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since March 2014 and in Scotland since December 2014. During the past three years supporters of same-sex marriage in Britain have increased from being a plurality (46% in January 2013) to a majority (56% in January 2016). This more liberal attitude has been reflected in affiliates of most religious denominations and faiths, although in many, including the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, it is still only a plurality which believes that same-sex marriage is right, just 8% ahead of Anglicans and 9% of Catholics who say it is wrong. Nones were overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage in both years. A few headline statistics are tabulated below. The 2013 data are taken from one of Linda Woodhead’s YouGov polls, those for 2016 from a YouGov poll commissioned by Jayne Ozanne (Church of England General Synod member and gay rights activist), for which 6,276 Britons were interviewed online on 19-21 January 2016. Two sets of data tables are available, one for all adults disaggregated by religious affiliation and one for professing Anglicans disaggregated by demographics. They can be found on YouGov’s archive website, filed under 29 January 2016, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/publicopinion/archive/

% down	All	Anglican	Catholic	None
January 2013
Right	46	38	36	63
Wrong	34	43	44	20
Don’t know	20	19	20	17
January 2016
Right	56	45	45	70
Wrong	27	37	36	16
Don’t know	17	19	20	14

Veracity of groups

Trust in clergy and priests to tell the truth has fallen by 18 points in Britain since 1983 (when they were the most trusted of all professions), according to the 2015 Ipsos MORI Veracity Index, conducted by face-to-face interview of 990 adults between 5 December 2015 and 4 January 2016. Although 67% do still trust clergy and priests to tell the truth, this is slightly less than say the same about hairdressers (69%) and the ordinary man/woman in the street (68%), and it is considerably less than trust doctors (89%) and teachers (86%). Just over one-quarter (27%) doubt the veracity of clergy and priests, and the proportion exceeds one-third among members of Generation X, skilled manual workers, and residents of southern England outside London. For further details, see the news blog (including a link to the full data tables) at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3685/Politicians-are-still-trusted-less-than-estate-agents-journalists-and-bankers.aspx

Hate crime

In a poll released for Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2016, 22% of UK adults claim to have witnessed at least one hate crime or hate incident based on religion or beliefs in the last year. The research was conducted by Censuswide, on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, among a sample of 2,007 respondents aged 16 and over between 2 and 7 December 2015. The Trust’s press release about the survey is at:

http://hmd.org.uk/news/quarter-british-public-have-witnessed-race-hate-last-year-two-thirds-regret-not-intervening

Radicalization

On 18 January 2016, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a £20 million initiative to improve the English language skills of Muslim women living in England. The somewhat muddled rationales for so doing included the promotion of integration, the deterring of support for extremism, and the advancement of gender equality. However, the public appears sceptical about the initiative’s potential value as a counter-extremism measure, according to a poll of 5,092 YouGov panellists in the UK on 19 January 2016. Only one-quarter felt the requirement for Muslim women to learn English would reduce radicalization in the Muslim community, while 14% thought that it would simply make matters worse; the remainder judged it would have a neutral effect (43%) or were undecided (18%). Full results are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/f0497730-be91-11e5-979a-005056900127/question/fa396930-be91-11e5-979a-005056900127/toplines

Donald Trump and Muslims

Following his call for a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has been incurring somewhat of a backlash, both in his own country and abroad, including in the UK. Here a petition calling on the Government to ban Trump from entering the UK attracted so many signatures that it warranted a debate in Parliament. Trump has retaliated by threatening to pull £700 million of planned investment in golf in Scotland if he is refused entry into the UK. Asked by Survation on behalf of the Daily Record what the Government should do in these circumstances, a plurality (47%) of 1,029 Scots interviewed online on 8-12 January 2016 opposed any ban on Trump travelling to the UK while 40% favoured it, the latter disproportionately women, under-35s, and Scottish National Party voters. The full data can be found in Table 58 at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Final-Scomnibus-I-Tables-DR-1c0d2h9-51.pdf

Islamic State (1)

A poll published in the Evening Standard on 8 January 2016, but based on online fieldwork by BMG Research among 1,585 UK adults on 9-15 December 2015, found that a plurality (44%) of respondents opposed the deployment of British ground troops in Syria and Iraq in order to defeat Islamic State (IS). One-third were in favour and 23% undecided. Opinion was sharply divided about the wisdom of letting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad remain in power to combat IS, on the lesser of two evils principle, IS constituting a much bigger threat to the UK than Assad’s regime. Some two-fifths of adults could not make up their minds on this matter, with 35% supporting Assad to defeat IS and 26% not, even if it meant that more territory was lost to IS. Data tables are at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CONFIDENTIAL-BMG-Poll-Evening-Standard-080116.pdf

Islamic State (2)

Four-fifths (82%) of Britons regard Islamic State (IS) as an enemy of the UK and 90% consider it has a bad record on human rights, according to a poll by YouGov, conducted online on 5-6 January 2016 among a sample of 1,779 adults. Most of the rest expressed no view, albeit 2% overall (and 5% in Scotland) curiously rated IS as friendly towards the UK. IS also easily topped a list of 11 countries for constituting the greatest threat to the UK, scoring 86%. Data tables can be found at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ac790k63k8/InternalResults_160106_SaudiArabia_Website.pdf

Islamic State (3)

Two-thirds of Londoners are very (25%) or fairly (41%) worried about the prospect of a terror attack on London by Islamic State (IS) during the course of 2016. This is according to a YouGov poll for LBC Radio among an online sample of 1,156 London adults on 4-6 January 2016. Most concerned were the over-60s (83%), Conservative voters (82%), and those in favour of Britain leaving the European Union (81%). About one-quarter were not very or not at all worried about IS attacking London and 8% were undecided (including 23% of the under-25s). Data tables are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/6npv0yq1wf/LBCResults_London_Boris_EUReferendum_ISISterroristattack_160106_W2.pdf

Sunday trading

The campaign to extend Sunday trading hours in England and Wales (currently limited to a maximum of six for large stores) continues to bubble along below the surface. There is naturally particular interest in such extension among London retailers, and the New West End Company has recently released fresh polling on the subject. Conducted by ComRes online on 7-14 December 2015, it has especial relevance since respondents comprised 850 retail employees in London, 55% of whom were Christians (who have traditionally observed Sundays as a day of rest). Of the whole sample, only 5% never had to work on Sundays and 60% worked every Sunday or every other Sunday. Approximately two-thirds of all retail employees supported plans to extend Sunday trading hours, viewed them in a positive light, and anticipated that they would benefit them personally (both financially and in terms of offering greater flexibility in manage their own time). Even more, around three-quarters, recognized that London requires more flexible shopping hours to accommodate the needs of the capital’s residents and tourists and to compete with online retailers. Full data tables, including breaks by religious affiliation, are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/New-West-End-Company-Sunday-Trading-Research_ComRes_data-tables.pdf

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Scottish church census

Plans have been announced for a fourth voluntary census of churchgoing in Scotland, to be taken among the country’s 4,000 places of Christian worship on 8 May 2016. It is being sponsored by a consortium of denominations and organizations who have commissioned Peter Brierley of Brierley Consultancy to organize the census by means of a two-page postal questionnaire (which can alternatively be completed online). Brierley has been involved in the three previous Scottish church censuses, in 1984, 1994, and 2002. Statistics will be gathered about the size of congregations at both Sunday and mid-week services, with numbers broken down by gender, age, and frequency of attendance. There will also be some sponsored questions. The final report will be published during spring 2017. Meanwhile, a leaflet about the census is available at:

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54228e0ce4b059910e19e44e/t/56377c30e4b0f705d4f3efc4/1446476848387/SCOTTISH+CHURCH+Census+4pager+2015.pdf

History of Christian Research

Peter Brierley has also been busy writing a valuable 4,800-word personal history of the Christian Research Association. This commenced as MARC Europe in 1983, with Brierley (the former Cabinet Office statistician and director of the Bible Society) in charge. When it had to be closed down after ten years, following the withdrawal of the subsidy from World Vision, Brierley established the Christian Research Association (usually known as just Christian Research) as a charity in 1993, and with the same aims as MARC Europe. Christian Research ceased to exist as an independent entity in 2008, when it was incorporated into the Bible Society, where it nominally exists. Brierley opted to set up his own consultancy in 2007, which he still runs, carrying on – in necessarily attenuated form – the research, publishing, and training programmes which had been associated with MARC Europe and Christian Research. To request a copy of the history, contact Brierley at:

peter@brierleyres.com

Evangelicals and health

‘Warning: the Church is seriously good for your health’. So claims the Evangelical Alliance in reporting (in the January-February 2016 issue of Idea magazine, pp. 14-15) the headline results of its online survey of the views of 1,703 self-selecting and self-identifying UK evangelicals at the end of 2015. The claim is based on the finding that ‘more than nine out of 10 evangelicals had been in good health during the past year compared to just three quarters of all English adults’. No attempt is made to explore the social correlates of good health which might explain these differences. Moreover, 93% of evangelicals agreed that they should lead healthy lifestyles to look after their God-given bodies, and 82% were opposed to the legalization of assisted dying. Miraculous healing of the sick was believed in by 98%, while 94% reported that their church offered prayer when they or a loved-one were seriously ill, albeit 59% felt there was scope for churches to strengthen their healing ministry. One-half of evangelicals thought that Christians should never try yoga nor hypnotherapy. The article is available at:

http://www.eauk.org/idea/upload/idea_magazine_january_february2016.pdf

Church of England statistics for mission, 2014

Newly-released statistics for mission for 2014 reveal that the Church of England’s overall steady long-term numerical decline is continuing, affecting all principal measures of religious participation. Most media attention on the release focused on average all-age weekly attendance at church during October, which fell below one million for the first time since the metric was introduced in 2000, to 980,000 or 1.8% of the population and 12% less than in 2004, although this figure excludes 145,000 attending services for schools held in churches. Usual Sunday attendance stood even lower, at 765,000, compared with 1,606,000 when that metric was inaugurated in 1968. Only at Christmas does the Church of England exert significant quantitative reach in terms of churchgoing, drawing in 2,400,000 attenders for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services (equivalent to 4.3% of the population), together with 2,200,000 at Advent services for the congregation and local community, and 2,600,000 at Advent services for civic organizations and schools. Take-up of the Church’s rites of passage, traditionally one of the broadest indicators of its appeal, has decreased more steeply than for churchgoing over the past decade: by 12% for baptisms, 19% for marriages, and 29% for funerals. Just 12% of babies now receive an Anglican baptism and 31% of deceased persons an Anglican funeral (against 41% in 2004). The 58-page report, incorporating extensive disaggregation to diocesan level (which naturally pinpoints some exceptions to the general trend) can be found at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2432327/2014statisticsformission.pdf

Archives of Faith in the City

The archives of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas (ACUPA), which was appointed in 1983 and produced the seminal if – in some circles – controversial report on Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation in 1985, have now become available for consultation at the Church of England Record Centre. They extend to 30 boxes and 512 files, among them records of the research submitted to or commissioned by ACUPA. This includes the interview survey by Gallup Poll of 402 Anglican stipendiary parochial clergy in February-March 1985, designed to elucidate differences between those serving in Urban Priority Areas and elsewhere in terms of background, experience, and attitudes. A hierarchical catalogue for the archives can be browsed at:

http://archives.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=ACUPA

Economic impact of St Vincent de Paul Society

Oxera Consulting has completed an economic impact study of the work in England and Wales of the St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP), an international Roman Catholic voluntary organization founded in 1833 which tackles poverty and provides assistance to those in need. In its report, entitled Economic Impact of Visiting and Befriending, Oxera assessed that the visiting and befriending activities of the SVP in England and Wales have a positive economic benefit by: avoiding costs to the National Health Service; improving the quality of life of the beneficiaries; enhancing labour market outcomes; and, in the longer term, reducing costs to social services. In practice, not all the benefits could be quantified, but those which could be suggested that, conservatively, SVP’s 10,000 volunteers generate a net £11 million of welfare improvement each year, albeit the majority of this sum apparently accrues to increased wellbeing of the volunteers themselves. The report, which sets out the full workings on costs and benefits, can be read at:

http://www.oxera.com/Latest-Thinking/Publications/Reports/2015/Oxera-identifies-economic-welfare-improvement-of-%C2%A3.aspx

Baptist ministry

The final report of a review of Baptist ministry undertaken by the Ignite Project Team includes (at pp. 10-18) a statistical snapshot of the ministry, mainly extracted from the database of the Baptist Union of Great Britain Ministries Department. The database contained 2,711 names as at 22 September 2015, including those in training and applicants. Of the 1,521 active ministers, 83 per cent were men and 61 per cent were aged 51 and over, with an additional 979 ministers on the retired list. Since 1985 the number of ministers enrolled each year has been trending upwards and has exceeded that of ministers retiring, except in 2014, although the gap is narrowing. As a consequence of the growth in ministers, there were actually fewer Baptist churches without a minister in 2015 than in 1995 (440, or 23%, versus 723), and there has been a significant increase in churches with three or four ministers. About one-quarter of ministers are estimated to be part-time. The report is available at:

http://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/259034/Ignite.aspx

Cost of (Jewish) living

Writing in The Jewish Chronicle for 8 January 2016, two economists (Anthony Tricot and Andrea Silberman) have estimated the additional costs of a Jewish lifestyle in the UK (the so-called ‘Jewish premium’) as £12,700 per family a year. The additional costs were broken down as follows: £5,900 for a property in North-West London (one-fifth of British Jews living in Barnet); £1,500 for eating out in kosher restaurants; £3,000 for a Jewish faith schools supplement; £1,100 for Simchahs (such as weddings and barmitzvahs); £700 for synagogue membership; and £500 for kosher meat (which is double the cost of ordinary supermarket meat and which has inflated more than twice as fast as non-kosher meat during the past ten years). A number of other costs were not included in the basic calculation but are likely to be incurred by many Jewish families, such as Age-16 Israel Tours (£2,800 per child), post-university Israel gap years (£10,000 to £15,000), attendance at the Limmud conference (£1,270 per family), and the 400% mark-up on kosher Passover holidays. Several suggestions are made for improving the affordability of Jewish living. The article can be read at:

http://www.thejc.com/node/152005

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

2011 religious census

Since the New Year the Office for National Statistics has published three new ad hoc tables of data from the religious census of England and Wales in 2011. These can be downloaded in Excel format from:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/business-transparency/freedom-of-information/what-can-i-request/published-ad-hoc-data/census/ethnicity–identity–language-and-religion–eilr-/index.html

One of the three, Table CT0557 disaggregating religion by proficiency in English by sex by age in England, has acquired political significance in view of Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement on 18 January 2016 of a £20 million initiative to improve the English language skills of Muslim women living in England (the other three home nations being excluded from the funding). In justification, he cited the fact that 190,000 such women, according to the census, speak little or no English. The 2011 census figures for the language proficiency of adult Muslim women have been recalculated by age group and are summarized below:

% down	16-24	25-44	45-64	65+	All
Main language English	63.5	42.3	26.4	14.1	42.5
Main language not English – speak English very well/well	30.3	39.4	34.0	19.2	35.1
Main language not English – cannot speak English well	5.4	16.4	31.4	37.2	17.9
Main language not English – cannot speak English	0.8	1.9	8.1	29.5	4.5

1851 religious census

The 1851 census of religious accommodation and worship, undertaken by the Government as an extension of the decennial census of population, is an undisputed crown jewel of primary sources for the study of British church history. Its utility is being progressively enhanced by the publication of scholarly editions of the original schedules held at The National Archives in Kew. Two new such editions have appeared recently.

The Religious Census of Bristol and Gloucestershire, 1851 is published in the Gloucestershire Record Series, Vol. 29 (Gloucester: Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 2015, xvi + 428pp., ISBN 9780900197888, hardback, £30). It has been edited by Alan Munden (who already has an edition of the 1851 religious census for Northumberland and County Durham under his belt). Included are full transcripts, with annotations, of the returns for 894 places of worship, 422 of them Church of England, 211 Methodist, and 261 of other denominations. Rather confusingly, their arrangement deviates from the convention followed in most other county editions, Munden juxtaposing the original Census Office order with his own numerical hierarchy. It should also be noted that the manuscript schedules for the five registration sub-districts in Bristol city have long since been lost so that Munden has had to ‘recreate’ them from other contemporary or near-contemporary sources, inserting church attendance data from a local census in Bristol in 1881. There is a substantial 38-page introduction to and commentary on the Gloucestershire returns, together with separate bibliography, explanatory notes, guide to editorial practice, list of parishes transferred to or from Gloucestershire, specimen schedules, seven appendices, and indexes of persons and places. A map and some more intensive aggregate quantitative analysis of the results would have been valuable additions.

Religious Life in Mid-19th Century Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire: The Returns for the 1851 Census of Religious Worship has been edited by David Thompson (one of the pioneers in studying the census, especially through his 1969 doctoral thesis on Leicestershire) and is published in Cambridgeshire Records Society, Vol. 21, 2014 (viii + 275pp., ISBN 9780904323238, paperback, £27). With accompanying footnotes, it reproduces transcripts of the returns for 597 places of worship in the two counties (400 in Cambridgeshire, 197 in Huntingdonshire), of which 272 were Church of England, 144 Methodist, and 181 of other denominations. They are arranged in registration district order, with a statistical summary provided for each registration district, including attendance totals for general congregations and Sunday scholars based on the average figures in the schedules (where given) rather than the actuals for 30 March 1851 (the day of the census). There is a very full introduction (pp. 1-62) which is strong on describing the methodological and interpretative challenges of the census and on a topographical analysis of the results in these counties. There is also a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and indexes of persons and places.

ACADEMIC STUDIES

The Changing World Religion Map

Undoubtedly one of the largest-scale religious studies publishing projects of 2015 was Springer’s The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices, and Politics, edited by Stanley Brunn (ISBN 9789401793759, hardback, £809.50, also available as an e-book). This is less of the encylopedia or reference work implied by the title than a collection of 207 thematically-arranged chapters, cumulating to almost 4,000 pages. Some chapters are multinational in scope while the majority are of the case study variety. At a quick glance, only five of the essays major on the United Kingdom, two of them relating to Northern Ireland, and just one has a quantitative bent. This is Lia Dong Shimada and Christopher Stephens, ‘Mapping Methodism: Migration, Diversity, and Participatory Research in the Methodist Church in Britain’ (pp. 2997-3016). It documents the Church’s efforts in recent years to enhance the collection and exploitation of its statistics for mission, on a participatory research basis, including through the use of maps as a reporting tool and a mechanism to promote inclusivity and diversity. The contents page of the work and abstracts can be freely browsed, and copies of individual chapters obtained (mostly via purchase but some on open access), at:

http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9789401793759

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion

On a somewhat more modest scale was the 2015 edition (Vol. 26) of Brill’s annual Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, containing 18 contributions of which five were of British religious statistical interest. In the general section, Judith Muskett explored social capital among 923 friends of six English cathedrals in 2011 (pp. 57-76), while Tania ap Siôn analysed 958 prayer requests posted to the prayer board in Southwark Cathedral (pp. 99-119). In the thematic section on the psychological health of ministers, guest-edited by Leslie Francis, there are two consecutive chapters exploring the stress and coping strategies of a sample of 613 rural clergy in the Church of England in 2004: by Christine Brewster, Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins, and Gemma Penny (pp. 198-217) and Leslie Francis, Patrick Laycock, and Christine Brewster (pp. 218-36). Finally, Kelvin Randall reported on the work-related psychological well-being of 156 Anglican clergy in England and Wales based on the year 14 (2008) wave of his longitudinal study of those ordained as deacons in 1994 (pp. 291-301). For the full table of contents, go to:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004299436

Death in Britain

In Mors Britannica: Lifestyle and Death-Style in Britain Today (Oxford University Press, 2015, viii + 428pp., ISBN 9780199644971, £30 hardback), Douglas Davies offers us a fascinating anthropological-sociological overview of death in contemporary Britain, including its religious aspects. He synthesizes a vast amount of existing published research, much of it his own, and provides extensive contextual material (arguably a bit too much on occasion) and a theoretical perspective. However, he is somewhat sparing in his deployment of statistical evidence, which is largely relegated to chapter 2 and, in respect of cremation (whose growing adoption is viewed as an index of secularization), chapter 3. There is no systematic trend analysis of the various official statistics pertaining to death and coverage is also somewhat selective of available British sample surveys on public attitudes to death and associated beliefs (such as in the afterlife). The book’s webpage is at:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mors-britannica-9780199644971?cc=gb&lang=en&

Labour market penalties

Nabil Khattab and Tariq Modood have continued their investigation of employment penalties in the UK, based on an analysis of Labour Force Survey data for 2002-13, research which has been previously reported in the journal Sociology. They argue that these penalties are strongly associated with colour (mainly blackness) and culture (particularly being Muslim), black Muslims facing the highest penalty of all, but that they are not fixed, tending to vary in extent and nature. The article, ‘Both Ethnic and Religious: Explaining Employment Penalties across 14 Ethno-Religious Groups in the United Kingdom’, is published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 54, No. 3, 2015, pp. 501-22 and can be accessed online (via paywall, if not a subscriber) at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12220/abstract

Muslim women

Skaiste Liepyte and Kareena McAloney-Kocaman have explored ‘Discrimination and Religiosity among Muslim Women in the UK before and after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks’ (perpetrated by Islamists in Paris in January 2015), reporting their findings in Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Vol. 18, No. 9, 2015, pp. 789-94. Their sample was a self-selecting one of 240 Muslim women living in the UK, with a mean age of 24 years, recruited via YouTube and other online means, 153 of them before and 87 after the attacks. Greater Islamic religious practice and perceptions of discrimination were reported by the post-attack sub-sample. The article can be freely accessed online at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674676.2015.1107890

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

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religious Census, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Alan Munden, Andrea Silberman, Andrew Atherstone, Anthony Tricot, Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, Baptist ministry, Baptist Union of Great Britain, Bashar al-Assad, BMG Research, Brierley Consultancy, Bristol and Gloucestershire, British Academy, Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire Records Society, Cathedrals, census of population, Censuswide, Charlie Hebdo, Christian Research, Christine Brewster, Christmas, Christopher Stephens, church attendance, Church of England, Church of England Record Centre, clergy, clergy and priests, ComRes, cost of living, Daily Record, David Thompson, death, Donald Trump, Douglas Davies, economic impact, English language skills, entry ban, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Evening Standard, Faith in the City, Gallup Poll, Gemma Penny, Gloucestershire Record Series, ground troops, hate crimes, Health, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, human rights, Huntingdonshire, Ignite Project Team, Ipsos-MORI, Iraq, Islamic State, Jayne Ozanne, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish lifestyle, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Judith Muskett, Kareena McAloney-Kocaman, Kelvin Randall, Labour Force Survey, labour market penalties, LBC Radio, Leslie Francis, Lia Dong Shimada, Linda Woodhead, London, Mandy Robbins, Mental Health Religion and Culture, Methodist Church, Muslim women, Muslims, Nabil Khattab, New West End Company, Oxera Consulting, Patrick Laycock, Peter Brierley, prayer request, proficiency in English, psychological well-being, radicalization, Religious Affiliation, religious census, Religious discrimination, religious nones, Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, retail employees, rites of passage, same-sex marriage, Scotland, Scottish church census, Skaiste Liepyte, Southwark Cathedral, St Vincent de Paul Society, Stanley Brunn, stress, Sunday trading, Survation, Syria, Tania ap Sion, Tariq Modood, terror attack, The Changing World Religion Map, The Tablet, threat, truth, Urban Priority Areas, veracity, visiting and befriending, YouGov | 1 Comment

The 1957 Youth Research Council Survey of Young People’s Religion and Lifestyles

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Siobhan McAndrew

It’s my pleasure to announce the publication online of a survey dataset, the 1957 Youth Research Council Survey of Young People’s Religion and Lifestyles (SN 7933). This is a project on which I’ve worked for some time, to digitise and make more widely available a large-scale survey of English youth fielded almost 60 years ago.

This project was originally of BRIN inspiration: Clive Field serves as a trustee on the Pastoral Research Centre Trust, a social research institute established and directed by the demographer and religious sociologist Tony Spencer. Clive suggested this project as one where digitisation would help preserve a valuable and high-quality data source both for wider use by sociologists of religion, and for the longer term. He summarised the data source as follows in his 1987 work on religious data sources:

‘[A] major study… conducted in January and February 1957 by the Roman Catholic Young Christian Worker movement with technical assistance from the [Newman Demographic Survey]. Interviews were held with 8,196 persons aged fifteen to twenty-four living in randomly selected streets of twenty-eight London boroughs and thirty English provincial towns and cities with a population in excess of forty thousand. The full questionnaire, which was given to all non-Anglican respondents and to thirty per cent of the five thousand Church of England adherents, covered socio-demographic characteristics, belief in god, Christ heaven and hell, attendance at Sunday school or catechism, public worship and Holy Communion, and confirmation. Proper weighting (to correct for the over-representation of Catholics and fifteen to nineteen year olds) and analysis of the data was never completed on account of shortages both of time and money, and the only significant publication to have arisen from the project was a special double issue of New Life’ (Field 1987: 263).

The survey was conducted jointly by the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and the Newman Demographic Survey (NDS) under a joint committee, namely the Youth Research Council. The YCW interest lay in gathering data for the YCW’s international congress in Rome. It had an activist mission: its motto then and now was ‘See, Judge, Act’. National associations were asked by the YCW headquarters in Brussels to report on young workers in their countries. Frank Lane (1926-1993), then a full-time organiser for the YCW and later to become its chief administrator in England, contacted the Newman Demographic Survey for advice.

Tony Spencer established both the Newman Demographic Survey, in 1953, and the PRC as a legacy organisation in 1964. Inconsistency of funding and programmatic independence caused difficulties for the NDS, as detailed on the PRC website. Spencer managed much of the work of the NDS and PRC alongside a civil service career, military service, and then an academic career at Queen’s University Belfast. He also gave service to the wider community as founder of Lagan College, the first integrated school in Belfast, established in 1981. More on the founding of Lagan College can be learned here.

The YRC 1957 study was a particularly attractive project for many reasons. Commercial polling had come to Britain in the 1930s via Gallup, and government surveys were in their early stages in the 1950s. Among academic studies, the Glass mobility study of 1949, the Family Expenditure Survey of 1961, and British Election Study from 1963 were the first major examples. So it hails from the earlier years of survey research in Britain, and having this dataset available to the scholarly community helps turn this period from one of historical interest to one of social scientific interest. What are apparently the ‘relics of history’ are amenable to standard analytic tools and arguably of contemporary interest.

Even in the US, where the quantitative study of religion is firmly established, the earliest survey data available on religion are Gallup polling data from 1939. Notable early US studies include Gerhard Lenski’s sample of 656 Detroit residents in 1958, reported in his 1961 classic, The Religious Factor, and the first large-scale surveys of American religiosity launched in 1963 by Charles Glock and Rodney Stark.

The detail it provides on young English Catholics is also important. It is now largely forgotten that Irish immigrants were once seen as a social and cultural threat, and it may be that analysis of these data will help shed light on the successful integration of a distinct religious minority.

Further, it is of good quality for a study of its time and comparable quality would be very expensive nowadays when young people are hard-to-reach by survey researchers. There is lots of evidence in the archives of care and thought given to sampling and questionnaire design, with further details in the survey’s Technical Report. Expert advice was sought from survey researchers in government and at Gallup, and also from the Director of Mass Observation. Of the towns and boroughs which were selected for the stratified sample, a 2 per cent sample was taken of those aged 15-24.

The survey was also fascinating in terms of how it was produced. There was almost no funding available – £200 provided by the YCW in 1956, worth about £4500 now. That had to cover the printing of questionnaires and tabulation of the responses for computer analysis as well as the analysis itself. The survey was fielded by volunteers from the Young Christian Workers, mostly young people in their teens and early 20s, with little free time outside work. The survey design, coding up of responses and analysis of the headline results depended very much on the NDS and its advisers working in an entirely voluntary capacity, in the interests of gathering data on youth religiosity and particularly Catholic religiosity at a time of high immigration from Ireland in particular. A similar study nowadays – face-to-face, aiming for good coverage of minority communities – would require funding of several hundreds of thousands of pounds, according to one reviewer of the project.

More importantly, the dataset provides an important insight into youth lifestyle and attitudes to religion in late industrial society. This period is now slipping farther back in British memory, and yet is still part of our present: the majority of that cohort is still alive. Accordingly, the survey is both history and social science, informing us of the youth of the Silent Generation, which is now enjoying retirement or still working, still volunteering and politically-active, and caring for dependents. The target population is now aged 74 to 83. Their social attitudes are borne of memories of wartime and post-war austerity, strong trade unions and a large manufacturing sector, almost full employment in their formative years, and for a lucky few, the provision of free university education. While the late 1950s are commonly thought of as the age of beatniks and rock’n’roll, there is actually little evidence of widespread cultural change – that apparently awaited the 1960s – although 1957 was arguably the first year when television dominated the radio. In providing additional data on what young people were doing on Sundays, and the societies and clubs they belonged to, the survey also tells us of youth leisure and civic life at the time.

For completion of the digitisation project, I was very lucky to be awarded what was, coincidentally, a similar amount of funding by the Nuffield Foundation to that originally provided by the YCW. The practical side was interesting in that there were not many exemplars; very helpful advice on data capture was provided by economists Andrew Newell and Tim Leunig.

On beginning the project, it also seemed that there was a certain amount of data loss – to damp and some boxes of forms were lost so that about half the London boroughs are not represented. The IBM punchcards were also lost over the years. 5832 responses survive.

An example of an original form is given below (click on the images for enlarged versions). Many written-in answers had been coded by the original coding team, notably one Mrs Jane Platts, whose work in coding occupations was stellar. The closed responses had also been ringed by the interviewer, and again back at the NDS offices where checks were made for consistency. The excellent Digital Divide Data took receipt of the set of scanned images and recorded responses in an Excel spreadsheet for further processing.

This spreadsheet then required further cleaning and checking (and the written-in responses to religious questions remains to be done). The published dataset, available in both SPSS and Stata formats, includes the close-form variables; written-in responses to questions on how time was spent last Sunday, associational memberships and occupation; a number of derived variables; full variable labelling; and has the different types of missingness identified. The Technical Report explains further.

Finally, I created poststratification weights using 1951 Census data together with Spencer’s own estimates of the 15-24 Catholic population of England.

In further posts I will give some examples of individual responses to particular questions to help give a flavour of religious attitudes at the time. There is also the potential for interesting qualitative work drawing on the written-in responses, marginalia and survey paradata.

For now, thanks are due the Nuffield Foundation for funding digitisation costs (SGS/37651). Some of this work was also completed while I was Marston Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, supported by the Marston Family Trust, for which I am extremely grateful; this dataset will inform further work on youth socialisation. The UK Data Service, particularly Louise Bolger and Karen Dennison, were very helpful in advising on preparing the dataset for publication.

For their technical and practical help in digitising the survey, and agreement for granting of copyright clearance for publication online, thanks are also due to:

Phil Callaghan, National President, Young Christian Workers England and Wales

Chhuon Chipon, Digital Divide Data, Cambodia

Martin Cooney, Servicepoint UK, Manchester

James Duff, Conservation Team Leader, John Rylands University Library

Kate Duncan, Digital Divide Data, New York

Clive Field OBE, Director of British Religion in Numbers and Honorary Research Fellow of the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester

Anthony Heath, Professor of Sociology, University of Oxford

Michael Hornsby-Smith, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey

Johanna Juselius, former graduate student in Social Change, University of Manchester

Tim Leunig, then Associate Professor in Economic History, London School of Economics

Tessa Liburd, graduate student in Sociology, University of Manchester

Andrew Newell, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex

Paul Norman, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Leeds

David Voas, Director of British Religion in Numbers and Head of Department of Social Science at UCL Institute of Education

Particular thanks are due to Tony Spencer, whose extraordinary efforts led to the fielding and then preservation of the survey. In turn, in the report of the survey’s headline results made in 1958, he paid tribute to the numerous volunteers who knocked on doors interviewing respondents:

‘to the National Organisers and Regional Leaders who spent weeks travelling the country, preparing street lists by day and briefing interviewers in the evenings: to the Y.C.W. Headquarters Staff who administered and maintained the momentum of the work: and above all to the many hundreds of members of the Y.C.W. and of the Legion of Mary, Knights of St. Columba, the Cell, the Children of Mary, youth clubs, teachers and training colleges and University students, who spent night after night and several week-ends, in wet or cold weather, calling at every house in a particular street, doing one or two interviews and then going on to the next listed street, perhaps some way away, and returning another day to call again at houses where everyone, or all of the young people of the household were found to be out’ (Spencer 1958: 8-9).

References

Barley, Lynda, Field, Clive D., Kosmin, Barry A., and Nielsen, Jorgen S (1987), Reviews of United Kingdom Statistical Sources XX: Religion (Pergamon Press, Oxford).

Spencer, A.E.C.W. (1958), ‘Youth and Religion’, New Life, Vol. 14, pp. 1-59.

The full technical report is available here: http://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/7933/mrdoc/pdf/7933uguide.pdf

In terms of papers analysing data from the survey:

Siobhan McAndrew and Lindsay Richards, ‘Nothing to Do in the Affluent Society’ (Working Paper) examines youth leisure and associational memberships in terms of religious affiliation. Further work is underway with Stephen Bullivant looking specifically at religious practice and belief.

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, Historical studies, Measuring religion, Religion and Social Capital | Tagged Catholic faith, church attendance, Digital Divide Data, Digitisation, Frank Lane, Gallup, Mass-Observation, Newman Demographic Survey, Nuffield Foundation, Pastoral Research Centre Trust, Religious Practice, Social Surveys, Sunday Activity, Tony Spencer, UK Data Service, Young Christian Workers, youth, Youth Research Council Survey 1957 | 1 Comment

Cost of Dying and Other News

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Cost of dying

Insurance company SunLife released the report of its ninth annual survey of the cost of dying on 13 October 2015. It was based on interviews conducted by YouGov, online on 8-20 May 2015 among 1,507 UK adults who have organized a funeral during the past four years, and by telephone between 16 April and 13 May among 100 UK funeral directors. The average cost of a basic funeral was found to have risen by 92% between 2004 and 2015, slightly less for a cremation (90%) and rather more for a burial (94%). A relatively tiny proportion of the absolute cost in 2015 (£3,693) was accounted for by the fee payable to the clergy or officiant at the funeral (£152 in 2015 for either a burial or cremation), a rise of 73% since 2007 which was substantially more than the 19% increase in doctor’s fees over the same period. Although religious funerals are still in a slight majority, this last bastion of religion is probably underpinned as much by tradition as by conviction. Of the sample of bereaved, just 1% admitted to knowing all the deceased’s funeral preferences, with 31% even having no idea whether their loved-one would have wished to be buried or cremated, and 53% uncertain whether to hold a religious or non-religious service. The report can be downloaded via the link at:

https://www.sunlifedirect.co.uk/press-office/cost-of-dying-2015/

Church of England buildings

The first attempt in many years to audit the Church of England’s stewardship of its 15,700 church buildings was published on 12 October 2015: Report of the Church Buildings Review Group, chaired by the Bishop of Worcester and established by the Archbishops’ Council and Church Commissioners. It surveys the statistical and theological context before setting out general principles and specific recommendations for the future management of the Church’s places of worship. Some of the national quantitative information is tabulated below, from which it will be seen that 57% of all churches (and 67% of listed buildings) are to be found in rural districts, where only 17% of the population lives. Although per capita attendance is higher in the countryside than in urban/suburban areas, the average attendance is less than one-third in the former than the latter. Future closure of some churches is envisaged and the downgrading of others to ‘festival church’ status, involving the cessation of regular worship in favour of occasional offices and major seasonal services only. The report, which also includes data disaggregated to diocesan level, is available at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2383717/church_buildings_review_report_2015.pdf

	Urban	Suburban	Rural
Distribution (% across)
Population	25	58	17
All churches	12	31	57
Listed buildings	8	24	67
Church attendance	20	52	28
Other indicators
Population per church building	7,300	6,600	1,000
Attendance per capita (%)	1.4	1.6	2.9
Attendance per building	103	104	30
Average annual capital expenditure per building (£)	17,700	14,200	6,800

Cumbrian churches

One day after the Church of England national buildings report was published, the Churches Trust for Cumbria, an independent charity established in 2008, very belatedly released the results of its own interdenominational church buildings survey, the fieldwork for which was conducted as far back as 2012-13. The research covered two-thirds of the 600 Anglican, Methodist, and United Reformed churches in the county, highlighting the immense challenges which they face. Almost half (48%) expressed serious concerns regarding their financial viability. Only two-fifths (42%) appear to have been used for worship on a weekly basis. More than one-third (37%) were not used for non-worship purposes more than three times a year. Just 7% of congregations were aged 18 or under, with significant numbers more than 70 years of age – 47% in the Church of England, 51% for the Methodist Church, and 64% for the United Reformed Church. The report, which is somewhat lacking in terms of data and confusing in its presentation, can be viewed at:

http://www.carlislediocese.org.uk/uploads/1356/Churches_Trust_for_Cumbria_Report_2015-pdf.html

Baptist Union research

The latest meeting of the Baptist Union Council took place on 7-8 October 2015. Among the reports received was one on ‘Fit for Mission’, for which Stuart Davison presented some preliminary findings from an ongoing piece of research among Baptist churches, to which 684 (35%) have responded so far. One interesting (albeit predictable) result concerned the big difference between the perception and reality of whether churches are growing or declining, the reality being measured in terms of membership numbers. The following table presents the headline data. Are churches in self-denial or is membership no longer an appropriate performance indicator? A report of the Council meeting is at:

http://www.baptist.org.uk/Articles/450911/Baptist_Union_Council.aspx

Churches … (% down)	Perception	Reality
Declining	13	49
Constant	49	25
Growing	36	26

Clergy well-being

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

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

Undergraduate religiosity

The higher degree of religiosity among women than men is a persistent feature of the religious landscape. Yet it may not be the function of biological sex per se as of basic psychological differences in levels of psychoticism, which are lower among women. This finding emerges from a study of the frequency of churchgoing and prayer and attitudes toward religion of 1,682 undergraduate students in Wales at an unspecified date. The authors (Gemma Penny, Leslie Francis, and Mandy Robbins) claim to be first in exploring whether sex differences in religiosity persist after individual differences in personality have been controlled for, concluding that once personality is factored in ‘biological sex adds no further impact on religiosity’. The data are reported in ‘Why are Women More Religious than Men? Testing the Explanatory Power of Personality Theory among Undergraduate Students in Wales’, Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2015, pp. 492-502. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674676.2015.1079603

Religious hate crimes

On 13 October 2015 the Home Office published Statistical Bulletin 05/15 on Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2014/15 by Hannah Corcoran, Deborah Lader, and Kevin Smith. Of the 52,528 hate crimes recorded by the police in that year, 3,254 (6%) were religion- or belief-related, a rise of 43% on 2013/14. The increase is mainly thought to reflect improved police recording but there was almost certainly some genuine growth in religion hate crimes, linked to trigger events leading to Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism. However, even these figures still represent a significant under-count, due to under-reporting, the Crime Survey for England and Wales suggesting that the true number of incidents of religiously-motivated hate crime each year may be as high as 38,000, fairly evenly split between household and personal crimes. Muslims are most likely to be victims of such crimes. The Statistical Bulletin and associated tables can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2014-to-2015

Strictly Orthodox Jewry

The latest research report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) was published on 15 October 2015: Daniel Staetsky and Jonathan Boyd, Strictly Orthodox Rising: What the Demography of British Jews Tells us about the Future of the Community. It explores the implications of the ‘extraordinary demographic growth of the strictly Orthodox sub-population’ in British Jewry, which is attributed to its high birth rate and low mortality. Making particular use of population pyramids, the authors assess the current and possible future numerical relationships between, and respective characteristics of, the strictly Orthodox and non-strictly Orthodox Jewish communities.

The evidence base mostly comprises estimates derived from the 2011 census of England and Wales, including what is claimed to be the first presentation in the public domain of estimates of British Jewish fertility. The latter show that the strictly Orthodox possess the highest fertility of any religious group in the country and, all other things remaining unchanged, it is set to become the majority of British Jews during the second half of this century. The picture which emerges, through the growth of the strictly Orthodox, is thus one of reversal of the long-standing contraction of British Jewry and of its increasing religiosity. According to the Jewish Chronicle (16 October 2015, p. 14), aspects of the tone and content of the research have come under fire from the Interlink Foundation (an Orthodox charity). This is especially true of JPR’s estimate of the current maximum size of the Orthodox sub-population (43,500) and of the point at which it will account for half of Jewish births (2031). Interlink calculates that there are actually 58,500 Orthodox Jews and that they will provide the majority of births much sooner than 2031. JPR’s report can be downloaded from:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/publication?id=4222#.Vh_ayMtdHX6

Jewish prisoners

The Jewish Chronicle for 9 October 2015 (p. 6) carried a news report about the ‘huge leap in [the] number of Jews behind bars’. This was based upon statistics supplied by the Ministry of Justice, from its National Offender Management Service (NOMS), in response to a Freedom of Information request made by the newspaper. The number of Jews in prison in England and Wales has apparently increased by 82% between 2002 and 2015, nearly four times more than the national prison population. It currently stands at 327, with violence against the person, theft, and drug offences the commonest causes of conviction of Jews. The same source also revealed significant growth in Muslim and Buddhist prisoners since 2002 while there are more than one-third fewer Anglican prisoners. The full NOMS data should be published in due course, but, in the meantime, the Jewish Chronicle report will be found at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/146678/huge-leap-number-jews-behind-bars

Baha’is

There are brief references to the early Baha’i presence in Great Britain in Peter Smith, ‘The Baha’i Faith: Distribution Statistics, 1925-1949’, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 39, No. 3, September 2015, pp. 352- 69. However, there are no data on British Baha’i membership for this period. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12207/abstract

Dalai Lama’s insights

The British government and royal family have been rolling out the red carpet this past week for the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, according to a YouGov poll for the Free Tibet Campaign, the British public is inclined to side with the assessment of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, regarding the government’s motivations for its policy toward China and the protection of human rights in Tibet. ‘Money, money, money. That’s what this is about. Where is morality?’ asked the Dalai Lama. The majority of Britons (69%) agreed with his verdict, while only 8% thought he was wrong with 23% undecided. Online fieldwork was on 14-15 October 2015 among 1,671 adults. The data table is at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jypdg9dbnd/FreeTibetResults_151015_China_Website.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religious prejudice, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Baha'is, Baptist Union, China, Christine Brewster, church attendance, church growth, church membership, Church of England, churches, Churches Trust for Cumbria, churchmanship, clergy fees, Crime Survey for England and Wales, Cumbria, Dalai Lama, Daniel Staetsky, Free Tibet Campaign, funerals, Gemma Penny, Home Office, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Jonathan Boyd, Journal of Religious History, Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins, Mental Health Religion and Culture, Methodist Church, Ministry of Justice, Muslims, orthodox Jews, personality differences, Peter Smith, prisoners, psychological well-being, religious hate crimes, religious prejudice, Rural Theology, SunLife, Tibet, undergraduate students, United Reformed Church, Wales, YouGov | Leave a comment

Exploring Religious Data in the British Social Attitudes 2014 Survey

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Ben Clements

The latest British Social Attitudes 2014 survey has recently been released via the UKDS, which holds all of the other surveys in the BSA series (as well as the data having being added to the online British Social Attitudes Information System). This post explores religious data available in the 2014 survey.

Religious Belonging

The BSA has asked a question on (current) religious affiliation in every survey conducted since 1983. The figures from the 2014 survey are similar to those obtained in recent years. Around half said they had no affiliation (49%), while those with an affiliation divided into Anglicans (18%), Catholics (8%), other Christian (17%: consisting of 5% with a specific affiliation and 12% with no denominational affiliation), and those belonging to some other religion (8%).

The full set of data on religious affiliation, covering 1983 onwards, is shown in Figure 1, visualised in an area chart which displays the proportion within each of the five categories across time. Noticeable are the clear decline in the proportion affiliating as Anglican (40% in 1983); the growth in the proportion identifying with some other religion (3% in 1983); and the steady increase in those with professing no affiliation – often labelled ‘religious nones’ (32% in 1983). The proportion self-identifying as Catholic was 10% in 1983.

Not shown on the chart but also an important aspect of change in religious belonging is the shift within the other Christian category: those who identify as such but without any specific denominational tradition have become a greater share of this group over time, with a decreasing proportion professing a clear denominational association – in particular, with the Nonconformist churches. The proportion identifying as Christian with no specific denominational allegiance was just 3% in 1983 while those with a denominational allegiance comprised 14%. The proportion in the other Christian category has remained static over time, but there has been considerable change within. Whereas in 1983 self-identification as Anglican was more than twice the level found for other Christian (excluding Catholics), in 2014 the levels are almost identical.

Figure 1: Religious Affiliation in Britain, 1983-2014

Source: BSA surveys.

The BSA surveys have since 1991 asked about the religion (if any) that a respondent was brought up in. In 2014, 30% of respondents said they had been raised as Church of England/Anglican, 15% as Roman Catholic, 27% were raised in some other Christian tradition, with 9% brought up in some other religious faith. Nearly a fifth said they were not raised within a religious faith (19%). Back in 1991, when the question was first asked, the proportions were somewhat different. Well over half (57%) reported being raised as Church of England/Anglican, 14% as Roman Catholic, over a fifth within some other Christian tradition (22%), and 3% within a non-Christian faith. Just 6% said they were not brought up within a religious faith – a figure which has therefore tripled over recent decades. The proportion saying they were raised as Anglican / Church of England has therefore nearly halved over this period.

Religious Behaviour

The BSA surveys have also asked questions on religious behaviour, including on a regular basis about religious attendance and – in 2004 and 2014 – about membership of religious organisations and churches. Data on attendance and membership broken down by affiliation are shown, respectively, in Tables 1 and 2. Church attendance is divided into three categories: frequently (once a month or more often); infrequently (less often than once a month); never attends.

Table 1 shows that, across the categories, regular attendance is least common amongst Anglicans (18%) and much more common amongst Catholics (40%), other Christians (34%), and particularly those belonging to other religions (62%). Data from the 1983 survey show that, similarly, Anglicans were least likely to report being regular-attenders (18%), compared to other Christians (47%) and Catholics (55%). Infrequent attendance is most prevalent amongst Anglicans and they are also most likely to say they never attend services (beyond special occasions). Those belonging to other religions are least likely to report that they never attend services – less than a fifth. Splitting the other Christian category into those with and without a specific denominational affiliation, the latter group have reported higher levels of regular attendance. In 1983, 52% of those with a denomination affiliation said they attended frequently compared to 22% of those with no denomination. Three decades later, this difference is still evident: 48% of those with a denominational affiliation say they attend church regularly compared to 29% of those with no denominational allegiance.

Table 1: Attendance at religious services, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)
Frequently	18	40	34	62
Infrequently	30	26	26	21
Never	52	34	40	17

Source: BSA 2014 survey.

Question wording: ‘Apart from such special occasions as weddings, funerals and baptisms, how often nowadays do you attend services or meetings connected with your religion?’

Overall, the proportions belonging (actively or otherwise) to a religious organisation or church fell somewhat over the decades, from 35% to 26%. Those who used to belong comprised 24% and 25% in, respectively, 2004 and 2014. The proportion saying they had never belonged to such a group rose from just over two-fifths to nearly half.

Table 2 reports data based on affiliation from the 2014 survey. Anglicans are least likely to say that they are active within a group (29%), with active participation most evident amongst Catholics (32%). Catholics are also most likely to say that they are inactive members of a group. Overall, around two-thirds of Catholics belong to a group, compared to two-fifths of Anglicans, and around half of other Christians and those from some other religion. Anglicans and those from other religions are most likely to say they have never belonged to a church or religious organisation. Dividing the other Christian category into those with and without a denominational affiliation again shows a clear difference in levels of involvement. Of those with some form of denominational affiliation, around two-third either actively or passively belong to a church or religious organisation, considerably higher than the two-fifths of non-denominational Christians who say they do so.

Table 2: Belongs to a religious organisation or church, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)
Belong, actively participate	19	32	27	26
Belong, don’t actively participate	20	34	21	22
BELONG	39	66	48	48
Used to belong	24	21	31	15
Never belonged	36	13	21	37

Source: BSA 2014 survey.

Question wording:

‘About belonging to different kinds of groups or associations. Do you belong and actively participate; belong but don’t actively participate; used to belong but do not any more; or have never belonged to – a church or other religious organisation?’

Social Attitudes

The BSA surveys also ask a range of question probing social and political attitudes, which can be examined on the basis of religious belonging or behaviour. Two such examples are used here: same-sex equality and tolerance for religious extremists.

In overall terms, opinion in favour of marriage equality for same-sex couples has increased markedly over time: from 13% in 1989 to 49% in 2007, and settling at around three-fifths in more recent surveys. Table 3 reports the proportions agreeing that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, based on religious affiliation. The proportions agreeing with the statement have risen considerably over time. Even so, on each occasion, those with no affiliation are most likely to agree with same-sex marriage (increasing from 20% in 1989 to 74% in 2014). While very small proportions of Anglicans, Catholics and other Christians agreed in in 1989, about a half did so in 2014. The proportions in agreement amongst those from non-Christian religions are clearly lower (33% in 2014), although it should be noted that they obviously represent small proportions of the BSA survey samples.

Table 3: Percent agreeing that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, by religious affiliation

	1989 (%)	2007 (%)	2012 (%)	2013 (%)	2014 (%)
Anglican	10	32	43	46	49
Catholic	14	57	48	56	53
Other Christian	6	40	49	44	52
Other religion	–	33	36	23	33
No religion	20	60	70	69	74

Source: BSA surveys. Combines ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’.

Question wordings:

1989: ‘Do you agree or disagree that … Homosexual couples should have the right to marry one another.’

2007-2014: ‘How much do you agree or disagree that … gay or lesbian couples should have the right to marry one another if they want to.’

Finally, Table 4 reports attitudes towards a question asking about religious extremists being allowed to hold public meetings asked in the 2004 and 2014 surveys. In overall terms, attitudes on this question have hardened over time: in 2014, the proportion thinking religious extremists should (definitely or probably) be allowed to hold public meetings is 23%, lower than the 33% expressing the same view in 2004. The same is also the case for each group based on religious affiliation. In general, around a fifth to a quarter think they should be allowed in 2014, with large majorities against – highest at 78% of Anglicans. In 2004, the proportions in favour were in the range of 29-40%, with smaller – but still clear – majorities opposed (with the exception of other Christians, at 49%).

Table 4: Attitudes towards religious extremists being allowed to hold public meetings, by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)	No religion (%)
2014
Should definitely or probably be allowed	19	21	20	22	25
Should probably or definitely not be allowed	78	70	73	70	69
Don’t know	3	9	7	9	6
2004
Should definitely or probably be allowed	33	29	40	33	31
Should probably or definitely not be allowed	61	65	49	67	63
Don’t know	6	6	11	0	6

Source: BSA surveys.

Question wording: ‘There are a number of groups in society. Should religious extremists be allowed to hold public meetings?’.

BRIN readers might be interested in earlier posts which used BSA survey data to look in more detail at affiliation and attendance – both levels of change overall and variation across social groups:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2015/socio-demographic-groups-and-religious-affiliation-in-britain/

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/changes-in-attendance-at-religious-services-in-britain/

Posted in Research note, Survey news, Uncategorized, visualisation | Tagged British Social Attitudes, British Social Attitudes Surveys, British society, Christianity, Christians, church attendance, Church of England, gay rights, group membership, Non-Denominational Christians, Religious Affiliation, religious attendance, religious belonging, religious extremism, Roman Catholics, same-sex marriage, social attitudes, Survey Data | 1 Comment

Talking Jesus and Other News

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Talking Jesus

Newly-published research from the Barna Group on behalf of the Church of England, Evangelical Alliance, and HOPE throws light on perceptions of Jesus, Christians, and evangelism among UK and English adults. Fieldwork was conducted by ComRes on 12-29 July 2015 among a representative sample of 3,014 UK adults aged 18 and over (including 2,545 in England) plus a booster sample of 1,621 practising Christians (1,592 in England). The UK cross-section comprised 58% self-identified Christians and 42% who were not (one-half of whom were atheists or agnostics). Under one in six of the Christians (10%) were practising, as defined by praying, reading the Bible, and attending church services at least monthly. Copies of the questionnaire (for the cross-section), executive summary of the main report (for England), a booklet Talking Jesus: Perceptions of Jesus, Christians, and Evangelism in England, and presentations of results both for the UK and England are available to download at:

http://www.talkingjesus.org/research/downloads.cfm

Three-fifths (61%) of UK adults thought Jesus was a real person who actually lived. The proportion fell to 57% of under-35s and non-practising Christians and rose to 79% of ethnic minority respondents. A further 22% of the entire sample considered Him a mythical or fictional character, and 17% were undecided. The number believing Jesus was God in human form who lived in the first century was much lower (22%), the alternative propositions that He was a prophet or spiritual leader but not God or that He was a normal human being and not God being subscribed to by 29% and 17% respectively. Two-fifths believed in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, 17% in a literal sense as related in the Bible (including 52% of black adults) and 26% more figuratively, while 14% explicitly rejected the resurrection, the remainder being uncertain or denying that Jesus was real. The commonest words used to describe Jesus were: for all adults – spiritual (49%), loving (48%), and peaceful (47%); and for practising Christians – loving (93%), wise (88%), and inspirational (88%).

Two-thirds (67%) of UK non-Christians said that they knew a practising Christian, three-quarters of them as a family member (35%) or friend (38%). Among non-Christians knowing Christians, 64% rated the latter as friendly, 52% as caring, 46% as good humoured, and 39% as generous, but some more negative qualities of Christians were also identified, including narrow-minded (13%), hypocritical (10%), uptight (7%), and homophobic (7%). Some two-fifths (38%) of non-Christians claimed to have had a conversation with a Christian about Jesus, but only about one-fifth of them reacted positively to the experience, 60% being uninterested in knowing more about Christ. For their part, the overwhelming majority of practising Christians (85%) felt a responsibility to talk to non-Christians about Jesus, 52% saying that they were always looking for opportunities to do so, and 66% that they had done so within the past month. However, only 19% of non-practising Christians regarded evangelism as their responsibility, and 40% did not feel comfortable talking to non-Christians about Jesus.

The survey also explored the personal faith journey of practising Christians. Nearly all (93%) said that they had been a Christian for 11 years or more. Just 15% reported one sudden decision to becoming a Christian (akin to conversion), while 18% recalled several key decisions, 23% described a journey over time, and 42% attributed their faith to growing up in a Christian family. Besides nurture in a Christian home other positive influences on their faith included attending church services (29%), reading the Bible (28%), and conversations with a Christian they knew well (27%). Non-practising Christians were much more likely to highlight the importance of growing up in a Christian family (72%) as the principal factor in their faith journey.

Transforming Scotland

In our post of 6 September 2015, we flagged up another recent publication by the Barna Group: Transforming Scotland: The State of Christianity, Faith, and the Church in Scotland (ISBN 978-0-9965843-0-2, £30, inclusive of postage, order via Barna’s online store). A copy of this 175-page book is now to hand, and we tabulate below a selection of findings from one of the main elements of the research, an online survey by ComRes of 1,019 Scots on 9-16 June 2014. The questionnaire is somewhat eclectic and imbalanced, shaped by the Protestant evangelical ethos which imbues Barna. The whole book is also inadequately contextualized, both historically and in terms of awareness of other contemporary sources, especially academic ones. The bibliography of secondary research is pitiful and omits any reference to the writings of Callum Brown and Steve Bruce.

% down	All	Men	Women	18-24	25-44	45-54	55+
Regular church attendance
As a child	61	59	62	45	51	70	70
As a teenager	21	23	19	4	16	20	30
As an adult	13	12	13	1	6	14	21
Never	31	33	29	54	41	24	18
Private Bible reading
Never	63	60	66	62	70	64	57
Less than once a year	17	18	16	12	15	14	22
Less than once a week	13	15	11	16	8	17	13
Weekly or more often	7	7	7	11	6	6	9
Bible literalism
Actual word of God	3	3	3	5	3	3	2
Inspired word of God	26	25	27	31	22	28	27
Not inspired by God	16	17	16	8	14	18	21
Just another book of teachings	41	45	36	42	44	39	38
Attitudes to Christianity
Favourable	55	54	56	50	47	56	63
Unfavourable	27	32	24	35	32	21	24
Importance of religious faith in personal life
Yes	29	28	29	31	23	27	33
No	61	63	58	58	64	59	60
Contemporary Scotland
Christian nation	31	36	26	25	25	32	38
Secular nation	19	21	18	22	20	20	18
Post-Christian nation	17	20	14	27	15	14	16
Nation in spiritual transition	15	17	14	14	15	15	16

Scottish Referendum Study

Preliminary analysis of the results of the second (post-vote) wave of the Scottish Referendum Study, for which 3,700 Scots aged 16 and over were interviewed online by YouGov on 22-26 September 2014, indicates that the majority of Catholics (58%) voted in favour of Scottish independence in the referendum on 18 September 2014, as did 52% of religious nones, whereas the majority of Protestants (60%) opposed it, including 81% of Anglicans. Headline data (differing slightly from those presented by the Scottish Referendum Study team six months ago) were reported by the BBC on 18 September 2015 at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-34283948

Organ donation

Within three months Wales will become the first UK home nation where there will be a legal presumption of consent to donate organs after death unless a clear objection to do so has been registered. According to a survey by ICM Unlimited, and carried out among 4,042 adults on 29-31 July and 21-23 August 2015, 62% of Britons support this new legislation in Wales and only 20% oppose it. However, opinions vary by religious profession, the extremes of endorsement apparently being from 64% of atheists or agnostics down to 34% of Muslims. A similar range of attitude was found in response to the question about extending the Welsh opt-out policy for organ donation to the rest of the UK, which was backed by 51% of all Britons but by 55% of atheists or agnostics and 28% of Muslims. No data tables are available in the public domain, the foregoing information appearing in a press release by ICM on 9 September at:

http://www.icmunlimited.com/media-centre/blog/wales-opts-in-to-organs-will-the-rest-of-the-uk-follow

Measuring religious affiliation

Clive Field’s article on ‘Measuring Religious Affiliation in Great Britain: The 2011 Census in Historical and Methodological Context’, Religion, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2014, pp. 357-82 is now freely available in PDF and HTML formats at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rrel20/44/3

Islamic State

British attitudes toward military action against Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East have hardened slightly in the past two and a half months, according to a YouGov poll for The Times on 15-16 September 2015, for which 1,649 adults were interviewed online. Approval of RAF participation in air strikes against IS in Syria is up two points, to 59% (including seven in ten Conservative and UKIP voters), while disapproval is down two points, to 19%. A plurality (40%) approves the deployment of British and American ground troops in Iraq to help combat IS, peaking at 47% of men and UKIP voters, with disapproval at 36%, down three points on July. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/0f34cl5n9e/TimesResults_150916_Corbyn_W2.pdf

A second YouGov poll, for The Sunday Times, revisited the matter of air strikes within the context of a series of questions about the emerging policies of the new Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. The sample comprised 1,601 Britons interviewed online on 17-18 September 2015. Asked whether they supported ruling out British participation in air strikes against IS, only 22% did so, with 56% opposed, disproportionately Conservative and UKIP voters (72% each), men (67%), and over-60s (64%). Even a plurality of Labour voters (40%) was opposed to their leader’s stance. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/i41vkd4xdd/SundayTimesResults_150918_Website.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religious beliefs, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Barna Group, Bible, Christianity, Christians, church attendance, Church of England, Clive Field, ComRes, Evangelical Alliance, evangelism, HOPE, ICM Unlimited, importance of religious faith, Islamic State, Jesus Christ, non-Christians, organ donation, practising Christians, Religious Affiliation, Scotland, Scottish Referendum Study, Sunday Times, Syria, The Times, YouGov | Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Miscellany

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Christian voters: post-election

A ComRes poll for Tearfund published on 17 June 2015, and conducted online between 14 and 17 May, revealed details of how 1,507 practising (churchgoing) UK Christians had engaged with the 2015 general election on 7 May. Excluding those who either did not vote or declined to reveal how they had voted, the distribution of party support is tabulated below, alongside data for the electorate as a whole (taken from a YouGov survey of 92,945 voters between 6 and 18 May 2015). It will be seen that practising Christians were less likely than voters overall to back the Conservative, Labour, and UKIP parties, and they were above-average supporters of the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Liberal Democrats were especially popular with members of the historic Free Churches, reflecting a legacy of Nonconformist endorsement of Liberalism. The small number of Catholics interviewed (41 unweighted) is a matter of concern and may have negatively impacted the Labour vote.

% down	Practising Christians	All voters
Conservative	32	38
Labour	27	31
Liberal Democrat	17	8
UKIP	9	13
Green	10	4
Other	5	7

Asked which factors had been most important in helping them decide which party to vote for, 18% of practising Christians mentioned the economy, 13% their affinity for the party, 12% the qualities of the prospective MP, and 11% the promotion of equality/social justice. More generally, the main issues facing Britain today were assessed as inequality/social justice (27%), spiritual/religious decline (18%), immigration/asylum (14%), poverty (12%), NHS (11%), and lack of morality (10%). Issues perceived as facing the world over the next ten years differed somewhat, with environment/climate change topping the list at 28% and the threat posed by Islam/Islamization in fourth place with 15%. Detailed computer tabulations for the poll, including breaks by standard demographics, churchmanship, and denomination, are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tearfund_-Post-Election-Polling.pdf

BME voters: pre-election

Not published until well after the general election (on 15 June), but with online fieldwork conducted beforehand (between 16 February and 5 March 2015), was a survey by Survation for Bright Blue among 1,231 black and minority ethnic (BME) Britons. It was specifically designed to capture BME attitudes to immigration and the Conservative Party, including breaks by religious affiliation, but several more general religion-related questions were also posed, which are our focus here. In line with other research, BMEs exhibited relatively high levels of religiosity. Only 14% claimed to have no religion, Christians (38%) and Muslims (30%) being most numerous. Of those professing a faith, just one-fifth said that it was not very or not at all important to them, 42% deeming it extremely and 38% quite important. However, fewer (36% of the whole sample) reported being an active member of a local religious group, with peaks of 43% among the under-35s and 50% for Muslims. On immigration matters, 78% denied that, for being truly British, one had to be a Christian, even a majority of Christians agreeing, while 79% (including the same proportion of Muslims) felt it right that a woman from a strongly Muslim country threatened with execution because of her Christian beliefs should be given asylum in the UK. Full data tables can be found at:

http://survation.com/archive/2015-2/

Social capital (1)

Based on data from the last two waves (1999, 2008) of the European Values Study and the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Survey, Ingrid Storm considers ‘Civic Engagement in Britain: The Role of Religion and Inclusive Values’, European Sociological Review, Vol. 31, No. 1, February 2015, pp. 14-29. By means of logistic regression, she tests four hypotheses by identifying the religious and other correlates of membership of and volunteering for a range of organizations, within a theoretical framework of bonding versus bridging social capital (as proposed by Robert Putnam). A principal conclusion is that religion increases volunteering primarily through bonding rather than bridging social networks. However, there are many subtleties to the arguments and findings which it would be impossible to do justice to in the limited space which can be devoted here. Fortunately, the article is available on an open access basis, for anybody to read, at:

http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/1/14.full.pdf+html

Social capital (2)

Further analysis of the findings of the 2012 and 2014 National Church and Social Action Surveys, undertaken by Jubilee+ and last featured by BRIN in our post of 15 March 2015, has suggested that church-based social action initiatives are perceived to have a positive impact on church growth, in terms of people being added to local congregations, as well as being a social good. However, the extent of the impact is not uniform and varies according to factors such as the type and duration of social action and church size and location. More information is contained in the executive summary of Geoff Knott, Social Action and Church Growth, which can be found at:

http://www.jubilee-plus.org/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=153728

European Values Study

Better late than never, we should report publication of an important collection of 17 essays on the results of Wave 4 (2008) of the European Values Study (EVS, the fieldwork for which was actually conducted in Britain between August 2009 and March 2010): Value Contrasts and Consensus in Present-Day Europe: Painting Europe’s Moral Landscapes, edited by Wil Arts and Loek Halman (Leiden: Brill, 2014, ISBN 9789004254619, hardback). The volume, which is ‘attuned to both the descriptive and the theory-testing traditions of the EVS’, is arranged thematically rather than geographically, and operates mainly at the European level, so there is relatively little country-specific content. Nevertheless, the two chapters on religion contain some interesting insights:

Nienke Moor, ‘Religious Vitality and Church Attendance in Europe’ (pp. 213-30)
David Voas and Stefanie Doebler, ‘Secularization in Europe: An Analysis of Inter-Generational Religious Change’ (pp. 231-50)

Freedom of worship

Asked which of six freedoms or rights they thought most important, freedom to worship whatever god or religion people wanted was ranked fifth by 1,000 children aged 8-14 interviewed online about Magna Carta by OnePoll in May 2015, securing 16% of the vote. The top freedom was that nobody should be enslaved (45%). The information is derived from a graphic published in The Sunday Times, 14 June 2015, main section, p. 14. At the time of writing, no public domain online report of the survey has been traced.

Church of Scotland statistics

Church of Scotland congregational statistical returns to the recent General Assembly, for the year ending 31 December 2014, revealed a continuing sharp decline in the Kirk. A ten-year comparison of key performance indicators, expressed as absolute and relative figures, is tabulated below, with the full returns appended to the report of the Legal Questions Committee, on pp. 6.10-6.14 of the General Assembly ‘blue book’ at:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/27119/2015_Vol_I_Blue_Book.pdf

Absolute figures	2004	2014	% change
Congregations	1,541	1,379	-10.5
Elders	41,621	31,146	-25.2
Communicants: all	535,834	380,163	-29.1
Communicants: admissions	9,136	4,643	-49.2
Baptisms	7,745	4,045	-47.8
Relative figures	2003	2013	% change
Communicants as % of adult population	13.7	9.0	-34.0
Admissions as % all communicants	1.7	1.4	-19.6
Baptisms as % of births	15.6	8.2	-47.5

Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland

Neil Davidson’s report on Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland in 2014-15 was published by the Scottish Government on 12 June 2015. The number of charges with a religious aggravation under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 was 569, 4% less than in 2013-14, 17% less than in 2012-13, and 37% less than in 2011-12 (when there were 897 charges). The decrease is only partly attributable to the use, during the past three years, of separate charges under Section 1 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, for this accounted for only 48 additional religious charges in 2014-15, making a total for the year of 617. The report is at:

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00479075.pdf

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has also released headline findings from a poll of Scottish public opinion about the 2012 Act as it affects offensive behaviour at football matches. The survey was conducted by YouGov in early June 2015 among an online sample of 1,044 Scottish residents. There was overwhelming (80%) support for the legislation, with 82% finding offensive sectarian singing and chanting at football matches and 78% disagreeing that they constituted an important part of football culture. Summary data appear in a set of PowerPoint slides at:

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00478775.pptx

Islamic Relief polling

On 15 June 2015, on the eve of Ramadan, Islamic Relief issued a press release publicizing a YouGov poll it had commissioned among a sample of 6,641 UK adults on 5-9 June. Relatively few data were actually cited, but two conclusions were drawn by Islamic Relief: a) a sharp decline in support for refugees, the number of people saying they should not be welcomed to Britain increasing by almost one-third compared to another YouGov survey a year before; and b) what were described as ‘hugely negative’ views of Muslims. The latter claim seemingly derived from the answers to an open question in which respondents were asked to mention three words or phrases which they associated with the term ‘Muslim’, ‘terrorism’ topping the list with a score of 12% and ‘extremist’ cited by 5%. The press release is at:

http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/news/poll-on-eve-of-ramadan-shows-hugely-negative-view-of-muslims-and-sharp-decline-in-support-for-refugees/

Intrigued to know more, BRIN asked for a copy of the detailed data tables from this poll, which Islamic Relief generously (and expeditiously) provided. These contain breaks for all questions by most key demographics, including religious affiliation but excluding voting intention. Two additional points are worth highlighting. First, a majority of the population has had personal experience of Muslims living in the UK, principally as work colleagues (32%), as fellow school pupils (either themselves or their children, 29%), or as close relatives or friends (16%). Just 39% denied ever having any close contacts with Muslims during their educational, leisure, or professional lives, peaking at 53% of over-55s, 57% of retired persons, 62% of Presbyterians, and 74% of residents in Northern Ireland. Second, there was an exceptionally high (94%) awareness that Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims, albeit 21% considered that it should not be celebrated openly in the UK, a plurality of 49% disagreeing with that proposition, with 29% neutral or undecided. An abridged version of the data tables, missing some of the breaks by demographics, was posted by YouGov on its website on 18 June at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3kri630dkh/Results-for-Islamic-Relief-Islam-in-the-UK-150618.pdf

Islamophobia

On 18 June 2015 the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist, and Post-Fascist Studies at Teesside University published the third of its annual reports on Islamophobic incidents, based on data recorded by the Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) initiative: Mark Littler and Matthew Feldman, Tell MAMA Reporting, 2014/2015: Annual Monitoring, Cumulative Extremism, and Policy Implications. During the period in question (1 March 2014-28 February 2015) there were 548 anti-Muslim incidents, a significant reduction on the 734 cases for 2013-14, when there was a pronounced spike following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of London at the hands of Islamists. Of these 548 incidents, 73% occurred online, fewer than half of which were notified to the police, and mostly involving anti-Muslim abuse or anti-Muslim literature, rather than actual threats. As might be expected, specific Islamist outrages were responsible for short-term increases in incidents, notably following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris on 7 January 2015. The report is available at:

http://www.tees.ac.uk/docs/DocRepo/Research/Tell_Mama3.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged BMEs, Bright Blue, church attendance, church growth, Church of Scotland, Civic Engagement, ComRes, David Voas, Ethnic Minority British Election Survey, European Sociological Review, European Values Study, football matches, general election, Geoff Knott, Immigration, Ingrid Storm, Islamic Relief, Islamophobia, Jubilee Plus, Loek Halman, Mark Littler, Matthew Feldman, Muslims, National Church and Social Action Surveys, Neil Davidson, Nienke Moor, OnePoll, practising Christians, Ramadan, religious freedom, religious prejudice, religiously aggravated offending, Scotland, sectarianism, secularization, Social Capital, Stefanie Doebler, Sunday Times, Survation, Tearfund, Teesside University, Tell MAMA, voting, Wil Arts, YouGov | Leave a comment

Easter Religion and Other News

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Easter religion

In what, for many, will be a welcome break from the general election coverage, YouGov has undertaken a replication for the Sunday Times of several questions about Easter and religion first asked two years ago. The latest sample comprised 1,906 adult Britons interviewed online on 3-4 April 2015. Detailed results, including breaks by standard demographics and by self-assessed religiosity, can be found on YouGov’s archive pages for 5 April 2015 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/publicopinion/archive/

A topline comparison of the 2013 and 2015 results is tabulated below; breaks for the youngest and oldest cohorts are also shown. Obviously, because of sampling error, too much should not be made of the differences between the two surveys, but it is noticeable that, for all the indicators, the movement is in the direction of the least religious position. Easter is overwhelmingly regarded as a secular occasion, and more than three-fifths of Britons no longer describe themselves as religious, deem religion of importance in their lives, nor regard themselves as a practising member of a faith.

%	2013 all	2015 all	2015 18-24	2015 60+
Religiosity
Religious	NA	36	NA	NA
Not religious	NA	62	NA	NA
Importance of religion to own life
Important	31	29	23	39
Not important	66	68	72	59
Practising member of a religion
Yes	NA	35	31	39
No	NA	62	68	59
Belief in God
Believe in God	38	35	24	44
Believe in spiritual higher power	21	20	19	21
Believe in neither	30	34	47	27
Belief in Jesus Christ
Son of God	39	30	16	38
Real historical figure but not Son of God	30	37	49	37
Probably did not exist	13	14	18	9
Most important part of Easter
Spending time with friends/family	47	42	38	45
Having time off work	19	21	21	5
Religious importance	15	13	8	21
Planned churchgoing over Easter
Yes	15	14	16	18
No	79	83	79	80
Belief in Resurrection
Christ came back to life after crucifixion	31	29	18	36
Christ not come back to life after crucifixion	47	50	63	40

Religious liberty in business

In last week’s news blog we reported on a ComRes survey for the Christian Institute in which a sample of Northern Irish adults was asked for their views about the right of business people to freedom of speech and religious liberty when providing goods or services to customers. The poll results had been released to coincide with civil court action in Belfast against a Christian bakery which had declined to ice a cake with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage. Court proceedings have concluded, but no judgment has been made. A comparable survey has also been undertaken by ComRes in Britain for the Christian Institute, among 2,020 adults interviewed online on 18-19 March 2015, and the data tables (including breaks by demographics and religious affiliation) published on 30 March at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Christian-Institute-_Freedom-of-Speech.pdf

Respondents were asked whether it was appropriate for court action to be taken against business people in a variety of scenarios, several of which had a religious component, as follows:

%	Go to court	Not go to court
Muslim printer refusing to print cartoons of Prophet Mohammed	10	71
Atheist web designer refusing to design a website promoting creationism	8	72
Muslim film company refusing to produce a pornographic film	7	76
Christian bakery refusing to make a cake celebrating Satanism	9	71
Roman Catholic printing company declining to produce adverts for abortion	12	68
Christian bakery refusing to make a cake promoting same-sex marriage	13	68

It will be seen that the findings are reasonably consistent for all six scenarios, with around seven in ten thinking the actions of the business people did not constitute grounds for court proceedings and only one in ten believing that they did. Even among persons professing no religion never more than 18% (in the case of the Christian bakery and the cake promoting same-sex marriage) favoured court action being taken. Of course, it would have been possible to have asked the questions in reverse, with the rights of the spurned customers paramount, in which case – consistent with general public support for diversity legislation – the results for several of the scenarios would probably have been rather different.

Future of world religions

The UK will cease to have a Christian majority by 2050, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center on 2 April 2015: The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050. It forecasts that, by the middle of this century, Christians will account for only 45% of the UK population, compared with 64% in 2010. Over the same four decades, the proportion of religiously unaffiliated is expected to rise from 28% to 39% (which seems rather modest, given the rate of increase among adults between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was running at 1% per annum), of Muslims from 5% to 11%, and of all other religions from 3% to 4%. Baseline numbers are derived from the census, which uses a particular question-wording to determine religious affiliation; other formulations produce higher figures for religious ‘nones’. Pew has used a range of sources to compute trends in fertility, life expectancy, age structure, migration, and religious switching (regarded as the five principal drivers of population growth) in the years to come. For a detailed explanation of the methodology, as well as the complete results by countries (including the Channel Islands), regions, and religious groups, consult the report at:

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2015/03/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsFullReport.pdf

News from Brierley Consultancy

The April 2015 membership mailing by Brierley Consultancy included a couple of items which some BRIN readers may find of interest. One is No. 38 of the bimonthly magazine FutureFirst, which contained the usual mix of longer and shorter news contributions, among them a lead article by Philip Hughes on ‘Does Faith Give You Better Health?’ The answer to the question, based on British data from the 2011 International Social Survey Programme, was generally that ‘attendance at religious services has little impact on health’, in that it was not one of the top five demographic determinants of health. However, at the level of causation, it was found that smoking and alcohol consumption were the biggest negative influences on self-reported health status, and that those who attended church monthly or more often were much more likely never to have smoked or never to have drunk alcohol than non-attenders at church, the differences being statistically significant. The article is best read in the full version, available on request from Brierley Consultancy. The second item is a 16-page report by Peter Brierley entitled Growing Churches: The Encouragements and Challenges Highlighted by the 2014 Grace Baptist Church Census. The census covered all UK Grace Baptist churches, which have a combined membership of 7,900, and revealed that there was an overall growth in worshippers of 7% between 2010 and 2014, with just 14% of congregations experiencing decline and 48% of Grace Baptists attending two services on Sunday (three times the number of all English churchgoers in 2005). For more information about these items, contact:

peter@brierleyres.com

Nonconformist historical statistics

The latest and, regrettably, final volume in Michael Watts’ history of Protestant Nonconformity in England and Wales was published on 19 March 2015: The Dissenters, Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Nonconformity, by Michael Watts with the assistance of Chris Wrigley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, xviii + 493p., ISBN 978-0-19-822969-8, £85.00, hardback). It covers the years 1860-1906, the previous volumes, published in 1978 and 1995, respectively dealing with the period between the Reformation and French Revolution and 1791-1859, the latter including an important statistical analysis of the results of the 1851 religious census and the pre-1837 non-parochial registers. Since the author died in 2011, his mooted fourth volume on the twentieth century will never appear.

The third volume makes good use of statistical evidence throughout and includes no fewer than 101 tables in the appendix. These are devoted to four main topics:

Members, adherents, and Sunday scholars by denomination (tables 1-6)
Church and chapel attendance by denomination in London, 1851, 1886-87, and 1902-03 (tables 7-27)
Church and chapel attendance by denomination in 50 towns and groups of villages, 1851 and 1881 (tables 28-78)
Occupations of male Dissenters by denomination recorded in baptismal and marriage registers for 22 cities and counties, 1850-59 to 1970-79 (tables 80-101)

There is also accompanying textual analysis of the data on membership and attendance on pp. 85-91 and on occupations on pp. 101-9. This demonstrates that, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, both Nonconformist membership and attendance were beginning to decline relative to population and that the social basis of congregations was narrowing. The provision of occupational data for the twentieth century is an unexpected bonus and considerably extends current knowledge of the subject as hitherto summarized by Clive Field, ‘Zion’s People: Who Were the English Nonconformists?’ – a trilogy of articles published in the Local Historian in May, August, and November 2010.

Anglo-Jewry database, 1851

On 23 March 2015 the UK Data Service released, as Study Number 7668, the Anglo-Jewry Database, a prosopographical resource containing details of the vital events, residences, and occupations of 29,275 Jewish inhabitants of the British Isles in 1851, representing the overwhelming majority (90%) of the Jewish community at that time. The dataset was compiled by a team of 270 contributors worldwide from the population census and a wide variety of other sources, published and unpublished. More information, including links to documentation, is available at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7668

It is also possible to search the database on the JewishGen website at:

http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/1851/introduction.htm

and to order a print-on-demand index at:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/petra-laidlaw/an-index-to-the-jewish-community-of-the-british-isles-in-1851/paperback/product-21815428.html

Finally, it can be mentioned that Petra Laidlaw, principal investigator for the project, has two analytical articles on ‘Jews in the British Isles in 1851’ in Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2011, pp. 29-56 and Vol. 55, No. 1, 2013, pp. 114-57.

European Jewish Research Archive

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has recently soft-launched the European Jewish Research Archive, which it has set up with financial support from the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe. The archive is a free-to-use online repository of research on European Jewish communities that has been published in the form of books, reports, articles, or other media since 1990 and, wherever possible, includes the full text for downloading. It can be searched by author, title, topic, publication year, genre, original language, and geographic coverage. A search under UK currently results in 191 hits. To consult the archive, go to:

http://archive.jpr.org.uk/home

Islam and British values

A majority of Britons (55%) think there is a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, according to a YouGov survey for YouGov@Cambridge released on 26 March 2015 and featured in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph four days later. The sample comprised 1,641 adults interviewed online on 22-23 March. The proportion discerning a fundamental clash was highest among UKIP voters (89%), Conservatives (68%), and over-60s (67%). Only 22% deemed Islam to be compatible with British values, including 39% of both 18-24s and Liberal Democrats, while 10% disagreed with both propositions and 13% did not express an opinion. Data tables are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/30/majority-voters-doubt-islam-compatible-british-val/

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged Anglo-Jewry Database, Brierley Consultancy, British values, business people, Chris Wrigley, Christian Institute, Christians, church attendance, church growth, ComRes, court action, customers, Easter, European Jewish Research Archive, freedom of speech, God, Grace Baptist Churches, Health, importance of religion, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, International Social Survey Programme, Islam, Jesus Christ, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Jews, Michael Watts, Muslims, Nonconformity, occupations, Peter Brierley, Petra Laidlaw, Pew Research Center, Philip Hughes, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, Religious Liberty, Resurrection, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge | Leave a comment