Religious Irreligious and Other News

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Religious irreligious

New research from OnePoll has found that 76% of people in the UK do not regard themselves as religious but many of them still exhibit signs of religiosity. The study was conducted online among 1,000 adults aged 18 and over and published in headline in Iona Hartshorn’s blog post of 29 April 2014, which can be found at:

http://www.onepoll.com/religious-rituals-from-non-religious-people/

Through the kindness of OnePoll, I have had access to the detailed computer tables and been given permission to draw upon them for this note. The data are obviously the copyright of OnePoll.

There are the standard breaks by age, gender, and region. Below we present a tabular summary of a slightly less usual break, by self-assessed religiosity:

%

Religious

Non-religious

Total
Believe in God

95

35

50
Ever attend religious services

82

27

41
Had a religious marriage

63

31

38
Want a religious funeral

85

32

45
Had been christened

81

68

71
Had own children christened

63

31

39
Attended a religious school

50

20

27
Own children attended a religious school

51

15

25
Ever pray

95

43

56
Ever say grace at mealtimes

40

6

14

There is also a break by belief in God, which reveals the sort of anomalies first surfaced in Mass-Observation’s classic 1947 study of Puzzled People. For example, OnePoll discovered that, of the believers in God, 53% did not consider themselves religious, 37% never went to church, 15% did not want a religious funeral, and 13% never prayed. Of disbelievers in God, 20% wanted a religious funeral, 8% prayed monthly or more, and 4% attended church monthly or more.

Doing God in politics

A high level of support for the sentiments expressed by Prime Minister David Cameron in his recent article in the Church Times is evident from the replies of almost 800 self-identifying members of the Conservative Party to a poll which went online on the Conservative Home website on 2 May 2014. Respondents were entirely self-selecting and cannot be assumed to be representative; indeed, some have already criticized the survey as a ‘voodoo poll’. Conservative members agreed overwhelmingly that Britain is a Christian country (85%) and should be a Christian country (86%). The majority (61%) also thought that politicians should ‘do God’, which seems to have been interpreted as meaning that they should speak about their faith in public, if they have one; 29% were opposed, with 10% uncertain. However, opinion was more divided about whether the role of faith-based organizations should be expanded, with 48% in favour and 42% against. Questions were also posed about the politics of the Church of England and its possible disestablishment, but results have not been reported yet. For analysis of the other questions, see Paul Goodman’s blog of 4 May 2014 at:

http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2014/05/party-members-yes-cameron-should-do-god.html

Role models

Asked by Opinium Research to nominate the people whom they looked upon as their personal role models, relatively few UK citizens (6%) chose a religious figure, ranging by demographic sub-group between 2% in Wales and 12% in London. Overall, religious figures ranked eighth out of fourteen options, the list being headed (unsurprisingly) by parents (35%) and friends (19%). Online interviews were conducted with 2,001 adults aged 18 and over from 28 February to 3 March 2014. Data tables were published on 24 April and can be found at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4269_opinium_pr_role_models_tables_wave_1.pdf

Rev

Talking of role models, the third (and final) series of the BBC2 sitcom Rev concluded on 28 April 2014. It starred Tom Hollander as Rev. Adam Smallbone, vicar of St Saviour in the Marshes in inner-city London. Among its audience were large numbers of practising Christians, according to an online survey of 1,943 adult members of Christian Research’s Resonate panel (1,188 churchgoing laity and 755 clergy) interviewed on 25 April 2014 for the upcoming Christian Resources Exhibition. Two-thirds of this sample (including 76% of clergy) had watched some of the third series, 71% of whom had seen more than three of the six episodes. Moreover, four-fifths of the viewers agreed with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who recently said of the programme that it was ‘great viewing’ and ‘doesn’t depress me quite as much as you might think’.

Seven in ten of these practising Christians who had watched Rev found Smallbone a believable character, 63% indicated they would be willing to attend a church led by him (with or without reservations), and 62% anticipated he would have a positive effect on non-churchgoers’ perceptions of ministers. Respondents who had seen Rev were also sympathetic to the plight of financially struggling churches which St Saviour’s exemplified, with 86% agreeing that wealthier places of worship should use part of their income to support poorer ones, and 53% disagreeing that churches which are unable to pay their way should be closed. Many clergy in the sample likewise empathized with Smallbone’s predicament, arguing more strongly than the laity (29% versus 22%) that their own church provided inadequate social and pastoral support, and listing a good number of sources of frustration in their work.

As a personal member of Christian Research, I have been able to see the organization’s draft report on the survey. Non-members can read the Christian Research news release at:

http://www.christian-research.org/resonate/bbc-s-rev-survey-of-viewers-attitudes/

More generally, Christian Research has published the 2014 tariff and panel demographics for Resonate, giving some idea of its profile and potential skews, at:

http://www.christian-research.org/uploads/images/CR-insert-Layout-combo.pdf

Faith schools

Attitudes to faith schools within the broader context of school choice are explored in the FirstView of an article in Journal of Social Policy which was published online on 15 April 2014: Stratos Patrikios and John Curtice, ‘Attitudes Towards School Choice and Faith Schools in the UK: A Question of Individual Preference or Collective Interest?’ Data derive from a module on perspectives on public services which was included in surveys fielded in 2007 in all four constituent territories of the UK: British Social Attitudes Survey, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, Wales Life and Times Survey, and Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey.

Drawing on social identity theory, the authors suggest that, in general, attitudes towards faith-based schools owe more to religious identities and group interests associated with those identities rather than opinions about the merits of school choice informed by an individualistic utilitarian rationale. Although the abstract principle of school choice was very popular in these 2007 studies, and the concept of specialist schools was also backed by a majority, there was much greater public wariness about faith schools. However, the extent to which attitudes towards faith schools reflect religious identities is shown to vary between the four territories in line with the local landscapes of religion and educational provision.

The tables include breaks by religious affiliation (Catholic, Protestant, no religion) within each home nation. In all four countries support for faith schools was strongest among Catholics, and it was lowest in Scotland and Northern Ireland where the provision of faith schools is almost exclusively Catholic. It should be noted that the pattern of replies may have been influenced by a potential limitation in the question in that, while it sought views about faith schools overall, it also specifically referenced Roman Catholic schools. For access options to the article, go to:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9239600

Anglican and Methodist church growth

Anglican and Methodist experiences of church growth and decline from the eighteenth century to today are contrasted, with special reference to case studies of Yorkshire and London, in John Wolffe, ‘Past and Present: Taking the Long View of Methodist and Anglican History’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 59, No. 5, May 2014, pp. 161-77. Dipping into a range of quantitative sources, from the 1851 religious census to Peter Brierley’s contemporary church statistics, Wolffe explores the extent to which Methodism and Anglicanism have been partners or competitors at various stages of their development. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, it is argued, ‘Methodism … complemented the inherent inertia of the established Church of England by a capacity for swift and sometimes radical response to changing circumstances’. Subsequently, however, ‘the Anglican tortoise has often overtaken the Methodist hare, even as both are being pursued by the secular cheetah’. Wolffe also draws upon insights from the ‘Building on History’ project to demonstrate how history can be a resource to inform strategic thinking about present-day mission and ministry.

Violent anti-Semitism

The number of major violent incidents of anti-Semitism in the UK in 2013 was, at 95 or 17% of the global total of 554, second only to France (116), even though the UK is ranked but fifth in the world in terms of the size of its Jewish population. Outside of Israel, Jews are most numerous in the United States which recorded just 55 violent incidents of anti-Semitism in 2013, significantly fewer than the 83 in its less populous neighbour, Canada. Full details are contained in Antisemitism Worldwide, 2013, which was published by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University on 28 April 2014. The report, which also includes (pp. 55-8) a summary by Mike White of all anti-Semitic incidents in the UK notified to the Community Security Trust in 2013, can be found at:

http://kantorcenter.tau.ac.il/sites/default/files/Doch_2013.pdf

BRIN website usage

The latest management information statistics about use of the BRIN website reveal continued steady growth in traffic. In the twelve months to 1 May 2014, 155,000 pages were viewed by 63,000 unique users in 77,000 sessions. The majority of sessions (70%) were UK-based, with 10% from the USA, and the remaining fifth from 180 different countries and territories. In the just over four years since traffic measurement began in March 2010 there have been 576,000 pageviews by 204,000 users in 263,000 sessions. We currently also have 335 followers on Twitter and would welcome more. A link to each new blog post (approximately weekly) or other substantive addition to the BRIN site is tweeted. So do join us @BritRelNumbers

 

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Latest Anglican Mission Statistics and Other News

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Church of England mission statistics

The Research and Statistics Department of the Church of England published Statistics for Mission, 2012 on 21 March 2014. The report extends to 65 pages and includes 25 tables and 42 figures, with data disaggregated to diocesan level, plus extensive commentary. As well as presenting the statistics for 2012, comparisons for 2003-11 are also often given, recalculated to reflect a new estimation procedure for parishes/churches not making any return or sending an incomplete return (in 2012 some estimation was done for 27% of parishes/churches). Other procedural changes have also been implemented, so it is recommended that the methodological notes in the report be studied. The document can be downloaded from:

http://churchofengland.org/media/1936517/statistics%20for%20mission%202012.pdf

As ever, the picture which emerges from these annual returns is a complex and mixed one, both at national and diocesan levels. However, although it is certainly not all doom and gloom (for example, one-fifth of parishes exhibited some signs of growth, and 1,900 ‘fresh expressions’ of church were noted), the dominant trend remains downward. BRIN’s key headlines from the report are:

Church attendance

  • A measure of the worshipping community is reported for the first time, 1,010,000 who attend services at least once a month, 20% being aged 0-17, 52% 18-69, and 28% 70 or over (against 12% in the population, and ranging from 13% in the Diocese of London to 41% in the Diocese of Norwich)
  • Joiners and leavers are also reported for the worshipping community, 73,000 (among them 38,000 who had not previously been churchgoers) and 51,000 respectively (albeit the latter figure is believed to be an undercount), with joiners representing 7% of the worshipping community
  • All age average weekly attendance in October has slowly declined between 2008 and 2012, by 4% to reach 1,047,000 (paradoxically, more than the worshipping community), four-fifths of these individuals worshipping on Sunday (three-fifths in the case of children and nine-tenths for adults)
  • All age usual Sunday attendance halved between 1968 (when first returned) and 2012, although it has levelled out somewhat since 2009

Festival attendance

  • Christmas Eve and Christmas Day attract the largest congregations of the year (three times those on a usual Sunday), albeit somewhat smaller in 2012 (2,521,000) than 2011 and 4% less than 2008; nevertheless, attendance is affected by the day of the week Christmas falls upon and by the weather, 2006 being by far the best year in the past decade
  • Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services in 2012 achieved the greatest penetration of the population (5%) of any Anglican performance measures, the proportion rising to 9% in four southern dioceses
  • Christmas Day and Christmas Eve communicants similarly fluctuate year-on-year and represented 37% of Christmas congregants in 2012
  • Easter Eve and Easter Day attendances amounted to 1,395,000 in 2012, slightly up on 2011 but 2% down on 2008; there appears to be some variability, perhaps depending upon whether the date of Easter is early or late in any particular year
  • Easter communicants (once the litmus test of Anglican membership) represented 70% of Easter attendances in 2012 and have fallen by 4% since 2008; they equalled 8% of the adult population in 1930 but just 2% in 2012

Membership

  • Numbers on the electoral rolls continue to decline, with sharp falls whenever the roll is renewed, followed by modest increases as new people are added to the roll; the figure was 1,187,000 in 2012, or 3% of the adult population (compared with 4% in 1995 and a peak of 15% in the late 1920s)
  • There were 23,000 confirmations in 2012, barely one-tenth of the 1901 figure, and 29% lower than in 2003, with, as always, the majority of confirmands (59%) female

Rites of passage

  • Infant and child baptisms decreased by 5% between 2003 and 2012, but, within that total, child baptisms have risen by 23%, almost certainly explained by parents seeking to maximize chances of getting their children into a church school (a similar phenomenon occurring for the same reason among Roman Catholics)
  • The absolute number of marriages conducted by the Church of England has remained broadly stable since 2003 but is much diminished from former times (according to data collected by the state rather than the Church)
  • The number of funerals conducted by the Church of England was, at 162,000, 13% fewer in 2012 than 2008 (and 50,000 less than in 2003), the 2012 figure being equivalent to 34% of all deaths (ranging from just 16% in the Diocese of London to 63% in the Diocese of Hereford)

Funeral planning

Speaking of funerals, SixthSense, the market intelligence arm of YouGov, published a new consumer report on funeral planning on 21 March 2014. This appears to contain some information that BRIN readers would find of interest, including about types of funeral and officiants at services, and which is almost impossible to obtain from other sources. Unfortunately, we have no findings to share with you since the report costs a cool £3,500 to download, which is a bit beyond our (non-existent) budget! The research is based upon two partially overlapping samples of UK adults aged 18 and over, interviewed online on 8-19 January 2014, one being nationally representative (n = 2,072) and the other of people who had organized a funeral in the past five years (n = 1,488). Public domain outputs are currently restricted to a press release at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/03/21/reflecting-personality-prevalent-modern-day-funera/

and an outline of content and methodology at:

http://reports.yougov.com/sectors/lifestyle/lifestyle-uk/funeral-planning-2014/

Clergy wellbeing

Clergy are certainly not the best-paid occupation in Britain, but they enjoy the greatest life satisfaction, according to an unpublished analysis by the Cabinet Office of ‘Life Satisfaction by Occupation in Mid-Career’, some data from which have obviously been released to the press to coincide with a new report from the Legatum Institute on Wellbeing and Policy. Using official statistics (from the Annual Population Survey for 2011-13 in the case of life satisfaction), 274 occupations were ranked in terms of mean income and satisfaction, and clergy headed the league table for the latter, with publicans and managers of licensed premises propping it up. The top ten occupations in terms of life satisfaction are:

  Occupation

Mean Income £

Satisfaction Rating (out of 10)
1 Clergy

20,568

8.291
2 Chief executives/senior officials

117,700

7.957
3 Managers/proprietors in agriculture/horticulture

31,721

7.946
4 Company secretaries

18,176

7.930
5 Quality assurance/regulatory   professionals

42,898

7.891
6 Health care practice managers

31,267

7.843
7 Medical practitioners

70,648

7.836
8 Farmers

24,520

7.808
9 Hotel/accommodation managers/proprietors

32,470

7.795
10 Skilled metal/electrical/electronic   trades supervisors

35,316

7.795

The complete table, which is based on occupations for which there were more than 200 observations, can be found on various media sites, perhaps most conveniently on the BBC’s at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26671221

There is also a visualization of the data on page 72 of the Legatum Institute report at:

http://li.com/docs/default-source/commission-on-wellbeing-and-policy/commission-on-wellbeing-and-policy-report—march-2014-pdf-.pdf?sfvrsn=5

The findings will doubtless lead to much debate (and denial) about the extent to which money buys happiness and particular occupations are ‘cushy’. The clergy have long been the butt of jokes about only working one day a week, but there is also a fairly extensive body of evidence about the stress levels which they experience.

Sigbert Jon Prais (1928-2014)

Professor Sigbert Jon Prais FBA died on 22 February 2014, aged 85. Born in Frankfurt, he left Germany with his family as a Jewish refugee from the Nazis in 1934 and settled in Birmingham, becoming a British citizen in 1946. Following tertiary education at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, his career was spent in economics, in a variety of contexts, in Britain and abroad. He had been Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Social and Economic Research since 1970. An obituary was published in the online edition of The Times for 19 March 2014 and (heavily abridged) in the print edition of 20 March; this can be viewed by subscribers.

Prais’s principal publications were, not unexpectedly, on economic subjects. However, he also had a keen interest in Jewish statistics and demography, apparently commencing with a survey of Birmingham Jewry in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. During the 1960s and early 1970s he made a major contribution to professionalizing the collection and analysis of Jewish statistics for Britain. The need was great for, in a seminal paper to a two-day conference in April 1962, he lamented that ‘there is hardly a single figure that can be quoted with any firmness for the Jewish community of Great Britain today’. He was influential in the establishment by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 1965 of a Statistical and Demographic Research Unit, and acted as its Honorary Consultant for some time.

At this period, also, Prais wrote a series of important articles on aspects of Jewish demography for the Jewish Journal of Sociology, several in conjunction with Marlena Schmool (who later became head of the Research Unit). These papers were subsequently reprinted by the Board of Deputies in its Studies in Anglo-Jewish Statistics Reprint Series. The titles which BRIN has identified are:

  • 1967 (Vol. 9, No. 2)*: ‘Statistics of Jewish Marriages in Great Britain, 1901-1965’
  • 1968 (Vol. 10, No. 1)*: ‘The Size and Structure of the Anglo-Jewish Population, 1960-65’
  • 1970 (Vol. 12, No. 1)*: ‘Synagogue Marriages in Great Britain, 1966-8’
  • 1970 (Vol. 12, No. 2)*: ‘Statistics of Milah and the Jewish Birth-Rate in Britain’
  • 1972 (Vol. 14, No. 2): ‘Synagogue Statistics and the Jewish Population of Great Britain, 1900-70’
  • 1973 (Vol. 15, No. 2)*: ‘The Fertility of Jewish Families in Britain, 1971’
  • 1974 (Vol. 16, No. 2): ‘A Sample Survey on Jewish Education in London, 1972-73’
  • 1975 (Vol. 16, No. 1)*: ‘The Social Class Structure of Anglo-Jewry, 1961’

Contributions by Prais on Jewish statistics to edited volumes include:

  • 1964: ‘Statistical Research: Needs and Prospects’, Jewish Life in Modern Britain, edited by Julius Gould and Shaul Esh, London: Routledge & Kegan Pail
  • 1972*: ‘Méthodes de recherches démographiques sur le judaisme britannique: rapport sur les travaux du groupe de recherche statistique du Board of Deputies’, Démographie ei identité juives dans l’Europe contemporaine, edited by Willy Bok and Isiel Oscar Schmelz, Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles
  • 1981: ‘Polarization or Decline’, Jewish Life in Britain, 1962-77, edited by Sonia and Vivian Lipman, New York: K.G. Saur

Asterisked publications were co-authored with Schmool. The foregoing is likely to be an incomplete list, so, if you spot omissions, do let BRIN know.

 

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Roman Catholic and Other Statistics

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Clive D. Field

A belated Happy New Year to all readers of BRIN! It has been a slowish start to 2014 in terms of new religious statistical sources, but here is a selection of seven stories to replenish your stock of data.

Roman Catholic statistics

In our post of 1 February 2013 we reported that the editor of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales had decided to discontinue publication therein of the annual statistical supplement, which had appeared for a century, as a result of her lack of confidence in the quality of the data, especially regarding their consistency. The Tablet for 21/28 December 2013 reported that, ‘thanks to the efforts of a former banker’, the statistics would be reinstated in the 2014 edition of the Catholic Directory. This has yet to appear (it will be published later this month), but, in the meantime, Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust (PRCT) has just released a preliminary table of pastoral and population statistics of the Catholic community in England and Wales for 2011 and 2012, based on a careful (but still not quite complete) editing and reconciliation of data for each of the 22 dioceses. Figures for all years between 2001 and 2012 will be available in due course. The 2011-12 picture is one of continuing decline on several performance measures, of 2.2% in the estimated Catholic population, 1.8% in Mass attendance in October (with only one-fifth of Catholics now at Mass), 3.7% in baptisms, and 18.5% in receptions of converts. There was a modest (0.5%) rise in marriages, but the figure includes mixed marriages and those celebrated in Anglican churches which were authorized by the Catholic parish priest. Deaths were 0.9% less in 2012 than 2011, with the Catholic death rate being 9.7 per 1,000. The PRCT table will be found at:

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

The data were covered by two broadsheet newspapers in their editions of 4 January 2014, The Times suggesting that the pattern of long-term decline (associated with child abuse scandals) might be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’, The Daily Telegraph concentrating on the increase in late baptisms of children (after their first birthday), which it attributed to ‘a scramble for places at the most popular Roman Catholic schools’. The Roman Catholic weekly, The Tablet, also noted the possible ‘Francis effect’ from 2013 when it ran the story a week later (11 January 2014), headlining ‘Mass Attendance Down but London Bucks the Trend’.

BRIN was contacted by the Catholic Herald for an assessment of the statistics, and we are quoted in that newspaper’s report in its edition of 10 January 2014 (p. 3 – there is also an editorial on p. 13). In more detail, the points we made were:

  • There are long-standing concerns about the quality of many Roman Catholic statistics (especially estimated Catholic population), arising from the absence of a national infrastructure for data collection and quality control, such as exists, for example, in the Church of England.
  • In many senses the decline in the Roman Catholic Church mirrors what is happening in mainstream Christian denominations in this country. However, the underlying fall would almost certainly have been much greater but for the boost given to the Church by immigration from Eastern Europe in recent years.
  • In both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England alienation is linked to the growing gulf between official Church teaching and the views of active and nominal members. This has been demonstrated by Professor Linda Woodhead’s recent research. For her study of Catholics, see: http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Catholics-press-release.pdf
  • Optimists in the Roman Catholic Church suggest that decline may be reversed by the ‘Francis effect’. We are more sceptical about this since a similar argument was put forward for the ‘Benedict bounce’ following the 2010 papal visit. It did not materialize, as the Opinion Research Business polls commissioned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2010 and 2011 demonstrated, and as confirmed by the Church’s statistics for 2009 and 2010 summarized at: http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/catholic-directory-2012/

Religion and politics

Lord Ashcroft’s latest political poll, published on 4 January 2014 and conducted online by Populus on 4-10 November 2013, included the standard background question about membership of religious groups, asked of a very large sample (n = 8,053). The proportion identifying as of no religion was, at 38%, identical to that reported in the two YouGov polls for the Westminster Faith Debates, which we covered in our last post of 30 December 2013. These ‘nones’ constituted a majority (51%) of the 18-24s in Ashcroft’s survey and a plurality (44%) of the 25-34s, with Christianity being the leading faith for other demographic sub-groups, averaging 53% and peaking at 71% of over-65s. In political terms, ‘nones’ were most likely to be found among people who had voted Liberal Democrat at the 2010 general election (44%) or the smaller number intending to vote Liberal Democrat now (41%). They were least likely to be encountered among Conservative supporters (27% in both 2010 and 2013), who were disproportionately Christian (66% in 2013). Of those who had voted Conservative in 2010 and intended to do so again, 68% were Christian, falling to 65% for voters who had defected from the Conservatives since 2010, 57% for adults who had switched to the Conservatives since 2010, and 52% for those who had not been Conservative in the past but indicated they might be in the future. UKIP supporters were 10% more likely to identify as Christian than the norm and Labour supporters 4% less. Non-Christians favoured Labour, and this was especially true of Muslims. Superficially (other factors are at work, of course), the historic connection between religion and voting is by no means extinguished. For more data, see table 69 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Blueprint-4-Full-tables.pdf

Also, watch out for the forthcoming Theos report by Ben Clements and Nick Spencer on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? BRIN will cover this as soon after publication as possible.

Religion and age

The lead story on the front page of The Times for 10 January 2014 (subscription access online) was a curiously headlined article by Dominic Kennedy, the newspaper’s investigations editor, on ‘Rise in Muslim Birthrate as Families “Feel British”: Census Figures Reveal “Startling” Shift in Demographic Trend’. Its key underlying fact, taken from the 2011 census, was that ‘almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim … almost twice as high as in the general population’; in stark contrast, ‘fewer than one in 200 over-85s are Muslim’. Expert comments on the findings were sought and quoted from two of the country’s leading demographers, Professors David Coleman of the University of Oxford and David Voas of the University of Essex (and BRIN). Voas apparently said that he saw no prospect of Muslims becoming a majority in Britain, although he did foresee that Muslims who worshipped might outnumber practising Christians one day (which several other pundits have also been predicting for a decade or more). The story in The Times, which has been widely reported in other print and online media in Britain and worldwide, was not actually based on any new analysis of census data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) but on a hitherto little noticed ad hoc ONS table (CT0116, created on 18 October 2013), giving a detailed breakdown of religion in England and Wales by sex by age in 2011. This was pointed out by Ami Sedghi in her post on The Guardian’s Datablog on 10 January 2014, which helpfully includes a link to the table, rather implying that The Times was raking over ‘old news’, and additionally observing that the census actually recorded more children aged 0-4 as having no religion as those who were Muslim. The blog can be read at:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jan/10/rise-british-muslim-birthrate-the-times-census

Gift aid and the Church of England

Gift aid (introduced in 1990) has been an important factor in helping the Church of England to grow its real income consistently over the past two decades, according to a post on the Civil Society blog on 17 December 2013. The Church collects over £80 million of gift aid and tax refunds each year, and it accounts for 8% of all gift aid by value and 15% by volume. Although the number of adults in usual Sunday congregations of the Church of England declined by 27% between 1980 and 2010, tax-effective subscribers (using covenants and gift aid) rose by 38% over the same period, with tax-effective subscribers equivalent to 72% of usual Sunday congregations by 2010 (almost double the 38% of 1980). More information at:

http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/blogs/content/16600/gift_aid_does_make_a_difference_to_giving_ask_the_church_of_england

Violence against the clergy

The Sunday Telegraph of 5 January and The Times of 6 January 2014 both included reports about ‘hundreds of violent attacks on the clergy’, the story subsequently being run by the Church Times on 10 January. The articles drew upon data obtained by right-of-centre think-tank Parliament Street through Freedom of Information requests submitted to police forces in England, of which 25 responded. The replies suggested that there had been more than 200 violent attacks on clergy over the past five years, a number thought to be just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ because of the inadequate and inconsistent recording of such offences. Parliament Street, which has not posted its data online, is calling upon Government to recognize attacks on clergy as constituting a religiously motivated hate crime, which would thereby attract severer penalties. The organization National Churchwatch has also been active since 2000 in documenting anti-Christian hate crime. However, so far as BRIN is aware, the best source of empirical evidence on the subject of the clergy remains the ESRC-funded research into violence against three groups of professionals (including clergy) undertaken by Royal Holloway, University of London in 1998-2001, details of which appear in the final project report at:

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/L133251036/read

State-sanctioned surveillance

In an online Resonate poll conducted by Christian Research since the leaks emanating from former American security contractor Edward Snowden, the majority (77%) of 1,134 UK practising Christians sensed that mass intelligence-gathering by the state in the UK is increasing, but 82% agreed that it is justified in order to prevent acts of terrorism and 69% considered that the level of CCTV in operation in their area was about right. The results were disclosed by the Church Times in its issue of 3 January 2014 (p. 6). Characteristically, no further information is available on Christian Research’s website. However, the website does record that membership of the Resonate Christian omnibus panel has now reached 14,000 and that surveys will be run monthly from January 2014.

Jewish emigration to Israel

Jewish immigration to Israel in 2013 was modestly (1%) up on 2012, according to data collected by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israel Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. However, the number of Jews leaving the UK for Israel (making aliyah) in 2013 was, at 510, 27% down on the previous year, albeit close to the average since the beginning of the Millennium (the range being from 300 in 2002 to 800 in 2009). This decline compared with a rise of 35% in Western Europe (and 63% in France); in the United States there was a reduction of 13%. Emigrants to Israel from the UK constituted 12% of the Western European total and 3% of the world figure. The fall in UK emigrants is attributed by some to the improving economic situation and lessened anti-Semitism in the UK, and by others to a weaker focus on aliyah following a radical restructuring of the Jewish Agency two years ago. This note derives from a press release issued by the Israeli embassy in London on 30 December 2013 and from coverage in the Jewish Chronicle for 3 January 2014. The full data do not yet appear on the Jewish Agency’s website.

 

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Scrooging Christmas and Other News

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Christmas has become such a secular festival in contemporary Britain that one might have thought that even non-religious people would have no difficulty in joining in, but our first story today shows a disproportionate dislike for Christmas on their part. The other nine brief items are not particularly seasonal but have all come to hand during the past week or so.

Scrooging Christmas

When it comes to Christmas, people who profess no religion are more likely to be saying ‘Bah! Humbug!’ this year than many people of faith, according to a YouGov poll published on 30 November 2013 for which 1,888 Britons were interviewed online on 26-27 November. Overall, 75% of Britons express a like for Christmas and 21% a dislike, but the figures are 67% and 29% respectively for people of no religion. Adherents of the two main Christian denominations, by contrast, are proportionately more disposed to like Christmas (80% of Anglicans and 82% of Catholics). Similarly, given the chance, 24% of the ‘nones’ would cancel Christmas, against 16% of all Britons, 14% of Anglicans, and 4% of Catholics. Results for other religious groups are based on too small numbers to be meaningful. The greater propensity of the ‘nones’ to dislike Christmas is not merely a function of their younger age profile, since 18-24s generally are less likely to dislike Christmas (13%) than the over-60s (27%). The data tables can be found at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/i2osjr6bxm/YG-Archive-131127-Xmasv2.pdf

Gendering conference

Women may form the backbone of most congregations, but Christian Churches in the UK still have some considerable way to go before they achieve full gender equality in terms of governance and leadership. If further proof of this was required, it was published by Natalie Collins on 13 November 2013 on her God Loves Women blog. Responding to a similar exercise in the United States, she and Helen Austin analysed the gender of speakers and presenters at 26 Christian conferences in the UK, mostly during 2013 but with a few prospective ones for 2014. The majority of these events were evangelical in nature, including substantial festivals such as Spring Harvest and Greenbelt. Of 1,072 presentations (taking account of the fact that individuals often spoke more than once at the same event), only 26% overall were made by women, albeit this was better than in the United States (19%). The UK wooden spoon went to Keswick, which had 21 male but no female speakers, but the proportion of women at the podium was also notably low at the HTB Leadership Conference (13%) and New Horizon (14%). The post can be read at:

http://god-loves-women.webs.com/apps/blog/show/35601231-are-uk-christian-conferences-sexist-

2011 census (1): aggregate data

The UK Data Service announced on 2 December 2013 that aggregate data (about households and individuals within areas) from the 2011 census are now available as Study Number 7427. They cover the full range of geographies employed in the census, from the smallest (output areas with an average of 150 persons) to the nation as a whole. At the moment, aggregate data are only provided for England and Wales, but those for Scotland and Northern Ireland will be added soon. Data (for the 2001 as well as 2011 census) can be accessed through the InFuse service at the University of Manchester, which is easy to manipulate. In the case of religion calculations can be made for 2011 at the broad (9 category) or detailed (49 category) levels. InFuse is available at:

http://infuse.mimas.ac.uk/

2011 census (2): religion and the over-85s

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a new analysis of the ‘oldest old’ in the 2011 census of England and Wales on 6 December 2013. It revealed that there were 1.25 million people aged 85 and over on census day, 24% up on the 2001 level, and 45% in the case of men (although women continued to outnumber men by more than two to one in this age cohort). Doubtless reflecting their upbringing, the over-85s remained disproportionately Christian relative to under-65s in the population, 83% against 55%, the former figure being only 1% lower than in 2001 whereas the latter dropped by 14%. Judaism was the next most followed religion among the over-85s, with 11,000 adherents (much the same as a decade before), unlike in the country at large, where it was Islam. However, the number of over-85s affiliating to a religion other than Christianity or Judaism rose by 118% during the decade, with especially big absolute growth for Hindus and Muslims. Merely 71,000 over-85s stated that they had no religion. Non-response to the voluntary religion question was higher among the over-85s (9%) than the under-65s (7%), which ONS attributes to those living in communal establishments, such as care homes, where carers may have lacked the necessary information or time to complete this question on behalf of residents. The ONS briefing can be read at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_342117.pdf

Faith schools (1)

More heat was injected into the debate on faith schools on 3 December 2013 when the Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC) published an interactive map and commentary in a bid to demonstrate the extent of religious and socio-economic selection in state-funded English secondary schools, and its effect on social and ethnic inclusion. The research features information on every mainstream state-funded English secondary school, including how religiously selective its admissions policies are, and how representative it is of the local area in terms of the number of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSMs) and pupils speaking English as an additional language. Data were derived from various central government statistics and local authority admissions directories.

On social inclusion, the key finding claimed by FAC is that comprehensive secondaries with no religious character admit 11% more pupils eligible for FSMs than would be expected given their areas, while faith secondary schools (which account for 19% of the total) admit fewer than expected (10% fewer in Anglican schools, 24% fewer in Catholic schools, 61% fewer in Jewish schools, and 25% fewer in Muslim schools). A clear correlation is asserted by FAC between religious selection and socio-economic segregation, with schools applying religious admissions criteria tending to perform least well on indicators of eligibility for FSMs and English as an additional language.

Overall, FAC calculates that 16% of secondary schools religiously select pupils to some degree, affecting 72% of all places at faith secondary schools (and 13% of all secondary places in the state sector). The proportion of places affected by religious selection rises to 50% in Anglican and virtually 100% in Catholic secondaries. FAC further estimates that 17% of places at state primary schools are also subject to religious admissions criteria, giving a combined figure of 1,200,000 places at primary and secondary levels in England.

The map can be found at:

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

and key findings and explanation of methodology at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/files/fair-admissions-campaign-map-briefing.pdf

Faith schools (2)

Meanwhile, the Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales has just released the results of its 2013 annual census of Catholic schools and colleges with, for the first time, separate digests for England and Wales, plus a key facts card for England. At an initial glance, the story-line for England might seem hard to square with FAC calculations, above, the CES claiming (on the basis of its census, which achieved a 98% response, and Department for Education data) that Catholic schools recruit pupils disproportionately from the most deprived areas and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It should be noted that the CES deprivation comparisons draw on the official Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI), rather than on eligibility for FSMs (the measure used by FAC, and on which, by CES’s own admission, Catholic schools certainly fall somewhat below the national average). Catholic schools are also said to outperform schools generally by 5% in terms of SATs scores for English and mathematics at age 11 and GCSE passes. In England, excluding 136 Catholic independent schools, there are 2,027 Catholic schools and colleges (equivalent to 10% of the maintained sector), attended by 770,083 students (of whom 70% are Catholic), and employing 46,664 teachers (of whom 55% are Catholic). In Wales there are 87 Catholic schools in the maintained sector, with 28,604 pupils and 1,570 teachers. The two digests can be found at:

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

London church growth

Further to our coverage of last year’s Greater London church census in our most recent post (30 November 2013), some BRIN readers may like to know of a colloquium planned for 2 May 2014 on the theme of ‘Church Growth and Decline in a Global City: London, 1980 to the Present’. The event is being organized by the Centre for Church Growth Research at Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham University and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. It will be held in Room 349, Senate House, University of London between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Confirmed speakers include: Professor David Martin (LSE), Professor John Wolffe (Open University), Dr Peter Brierley (Brierley Consultancy, which conducted the census), Dr Lois Lee (University College London), Dr Alana Harris (Lincoln College, Oxford), Dr Andrew Rogers (University of Roehampton), and Rev Dr Babatunde Adedibu (Redeemed Christian Church of God). The cost is £50 (£35 for students). For more detailed information, and to book a place, visit: www.durham.ac.uk/churchgrowth.research

Trust in professionals

Ipsos MORI updated its trust in professions (veracity) index on 3 December 2013. It covers 16 professions, including clergy (column headed ‘cle’ in the table). It will be seen that the proportion of the British public trusting clergy to tell the truth has fallen from 85% in 1983 to 66% today, with a corresponding rise in those distrusting the clergy (from 11% to 27%). The trend cannot be attributed to a generic decline in the perceived truthfulness of all professions because most of the other columns are fairly static or even show some improvement in public standing over time (especially for civil servants and trade union officials). The index can be seen at:

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

Academic confession

Professor David Martin, FBA is the elder statesman of British sociology of religion, particularly known for his writings on secularization and Pentecostalism. Now in his eighties, he has recently published a fascinating retrospect of his intellectual journey: The Education of David Martin: The Making of an Unlikely Sociologist (SPCK, pp. xi + 251, paperback, £25.00, ISBN: 978-0-281-07118-0). In it (p. 131) he reflects thus on his first major book, A Sociology of English Religion, which was published in 1967 at the height of what has since been termed the ‘religious crisis’ of the 1960s: ‘Perhaps its flaws were understandable, but I am embarrassed to have missed the decline in the second half of the sixties. I insouciantly ignored what the statistical experts in the Church of England were telling me, for example, about declines in rates of confirmation. I was dubious about using church statistics, even when, as in the case of Methodism, they were very good. If I had looked at the statistics of Methodist decline as a proportion of total population, as Robert Currie did somewhat later, I would have seen them marching steadily downwatd year by year.’

BRIN not in a spin

Scanning this weekend’s religious press, as we normally do, it was hard to avoid pausing over the headline ‘BRIN’S MISLEADING SPIN’ atop one of the letters in the Jewish Chronicle for 6 December 2013 (p. 37). BRIN caught out spinning? Surely not, when we strive so hard to be impartial! In fact, the letter was written by Rabbi Naftali Schiff in response to David Brin’s attempt ‘to put a positive spin on the figures regarding [Jewish] intermarriage’. Schiff contends that there is a serious problem of Jewish out-marriage, with less than one-third of Jews marrying in, except for the Charedi (Strictly Orthodox) community. So BRIN stands acquitted, even if (David) Brin does not.

 

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Halloween and Other News

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today (1 November) is All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day. Tomorrow (2 November) is All Souls’ Day. Yesterday (31 October) was All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. At one time, these were all important Christian festivals, but now Halloween has been transformed into something of a secular retail experience. The value of sales of Halloween-related products in the UK exceeds £300 million annually, making it the third most lucrative seasonal celebration after Christmas and Easter. But does the ringing of the supermarket tills overstate just how popular the commercially-driven (and Americanized) Halloween has become? Our first item (of five) highlights new research in this area.

Halloween

In fact, only one-fifth of Britons say they are very or quite interested in Halloween, with a similar proportion planning to celebrate it this year. This is according to two new YouGov polls released on 31 October 2013, and conducted among online samples of adults aged 18 and over. The first survey was undertaken on 28-29 October among 1,956 Britons, the second on 29-30 October among 1,862. The first was part of the regular Eurotrack omnibus, but, sadly, results for countries other than Britain have yet to be reported. The British findings from both studies can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/kiot587bn5/YG-Archive-GB-Eurotrack-results-291013-Halloween.pdf

and

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/pwd56t48sa/YG-Archive-Halloween-results-301013.pdf

In the first poll only 4% claimed to be very interested in Halloween, 16% were quite interested, 28% not very interested, and 50% not interested at all. Asked whether particular Halloween activities were a good or bad idea, majorities were against playing Halloween pranks (78%), children playing trick-or-treat (54%), and adults dressing up for Halloween (52%). There was more tolerance of making pumpkin lanterns and children dressing up for Halloween, which were judged good ideas by 68% and 66% respectively. Opinion was divided about the desirability of watching a horror movie on Halloween, but a plurality (43%) was opposed.

In the second poll, 22% expected to celebrate Halloween this year (9% definitely and 13% probably), far fewer than in the United States (59%). In terms of demographics, the figure varied most by age, standing at 40% of the 18-24s and 31% of the 25-39s, then falling to reach 8% of the over-60s (a massive 91% of whom renounced Halloween celebrations). Those anticipating wearing make-up, a costume or fancy dress for Halloween numbered 10% of adults (but 33% of 18-24s). There was less of an age disparity when it came to trick-or-treating by children, 70% of adults preferring them not to come knocking on their own door, the figure never dropping below 63% for any sub-group.

Council prayers

The latest issue of The Mail on Sunday (27 October 2013, p. 53) reports that, according to responses to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper, just 59 (or 22%) of 271 (presumably English) local councils which replied now commence their meetings with a Bible reading or formal prayers. Of the remaining 212, 19 indicated that they had stopped holding formal prayers following last year’s ruling by the High Court that councils had no legal power to hold such prayers, albeit they could do so on an optional basis. The Government insists that formal prayers can continue under the Localism Act. The Mail on Sunday story is online at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477486/Prayers-axed-town-halls-Just-22-cent-councils-Bible-reading-start-meetings.html

The last test of public opinion on this matter appears to have been by YouGov in April 2012, the poll finding that three-fifths of Britons wanted councils to be able to decide for themselves whether or not to have prayers at the start of their meetings. One-quarter thought that councils should not be allowed to commence their meetings with prayer, while 8% wished for all councils to say prayers when they began meetings.

Telling the truth

Scientists, artists, and clergy are considered the most trustworthy professions in the UK, and politicians and journalists the least, these last two groups distrusted by 62% and 30% respectively. This is according to a survey conducted by Westminster Abbey and released on 22 October 2013 in connection with the launch of the Westminster Abbey Institute (directed by Claire Foster-Gilbert). According to the Abbey’s press office, in an email to BRIN, the survey was mounted online during September and October and was open to UK residents aged 18 and over, of whom 425 completed it.

Clearly, therefore, this is a self-selecting and statistically unrepresentative sample, possibly completed by those disproportionately interested in the Abbey. This may account for the fact that fewer than 6% said that they did not trust the clergy to tell the truth, with 54% anticipating a sense of betrayal if lied to by a member of the clergy. More representative polling data, summarized in an as yet unpublished paper by the present author, have shown a loss in public standing (and thus in authority) of both Church and clergy in Britain since the 1960s. For example, in a long series by Ipsos MORI, the proportion of adults trusting clergy to tell the truth has declined from 85% in 1983 to 66% in 2013, whereas the perceived veracity of doctors, judges, scientists, and teachers has held up well.

More on veils

Yet another poll on attitudes to the veiling of Muslim women has been undertaken, this time by ComRes on behalf of Channel 4 among a sample of 1,077 Britons aged 18 and over, who were interviewed online on 23 October 2013. Results (with breaks by gender, age, region, social grade, ethnicity, and religion) were released the following day and can be viewed at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Channel_4_Niqab_Study_October_2013.pdf

The survey’s findings were fairly predictable, confirming the strength of opposition to the full face veil or niqab, especially when worn in certain public contexts, which has already been revealed by other recent studies, but the different question-wording employed by ComRes does bring an element of originality. Topline findings, in descending order of degree of negativity about face veils, are as follows:

  • 81% support a ban on wearing full face veils in certain public places such as schools, courts or hospitals (12% being opposed)
  • 81% support a ban on teachers in state schools, including free schools, wearing a full face veil in school (12% being opposed)
  • 80% disagree that the full face veil is the ultimate expression of feminism (6% agreeing)
  • 76% feel unsure of how to relate to a woman wearing a full face veil (and 19% not)
  • 74% do not feel the same with a woman wearing a full face veil as with someone not wearing it (while 16% do)
  • 71% disagree that the full face veil is empowering to the women who wear it (10% agreeing)
  • 71% do not feel comfortable with a woman wearing a full face veil (and 19% do)
  • 66% disagree that people in Britain are generally accepting of women who wear a full face veil in public (24% agreeing)
  • 64% feel uneasy with a woman wearing a full face veil (and 31% not)
  • 63% support a ban on teachers in state schools, including free schools, wearing any kind of veil or head covering in school (27% being opposed)
  • 58% support a ban on wearing any kind of veil or head covering in certain public places, such as schools, courts or hospitals (31% being opposed)
  • 56% disagree that women should be allowed to wear full face veils in public (33% agreeing)
  • 56% agree that the full face veil is demeaning to the women who wear it (25% disagreeing)
  • 55% support a ban on wearing full face veils in public (34% being opposed)
  • 48% disagree that the full face veil is a rejection of an increasingly sexualized society (23% agreeing)
  • 44% disagree that people in Britain are generally accepting of women who wear a veil or head covering in public (46% agreeing)
  • 41% feel nervous about a woman wearing the full face veil (and 52% not)
  • 35% support a ban on wearing any kind of veil or head covering in public (53% being opposed)
  • 30% feel threatened by a woman wearing the full face veil (and 60% not)

Media attitudes to Islam

A nuanced and reflective analysis of media attitudes to Islam and Muslims is to be found in Paul Baker, Costas Gabrielatos, and Tony McEnery, Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press, which was published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year (ISBN 978-1-107-00882-3, £65, hardback). Including 38 figures, 52 tables, and 11 concordances, the book is grounded in a systematic analysis of over 200,000 newspaper articles, extending to 143 million words, touching on Islam and Muslims appearing in the British press between 1998 and 2009. The articles were sourced from the Nexis UK archive which contains both broadsheets and tabloids, and right- and left-leaning newspapers. The research methodology combined corpus linguistics and discourse analysis.

Overall, the representation of Islam and Muslims was found to be negative, with some strong tropes emerging, such as ‘one of Islam as dangerous, frightening, uncompromising and extreme’. However, it was not monolithically so, and there was also more subtle and balanced reportage: ‘on the whole, we did not find a great deal of explicit evidence of extremely negative and generalising stereotypes about Islam’. Important shifts in media portrayals were detected over time, from a focus on Islam as faith to Muslims as people, and from international stories to UK ones. An added bonus in the work, in chapter 9, is a comparable analysis of representations of Islam and Muslims in a) English books from 1475 to 1720 and b) nineteenth-century British newspapers.

 

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From St George to Prince George

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Prince George and St George both feature in today’s round-up of religious statistical news, which contains five items.

Prince George’s christening

The private christening ceremony for His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge, which took place yesterday (23 October 2013), seems to have attracted more media and public attention than might have been anticipated. One dimension of this was a short poll conducted by YouGov the day before the christening, and released on the day of the christening, in which 1,892 adult Britons were interviewed online. The data table can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rdc3a53eph/YG-Archive-Prince-George-Christening-results-231013.pdf

According to the poll, 43% of Britons still consider ceremonies such as christenings or baptisms to be important, but they are disproportionately found among professing Christians (64%), and the over-60s and Conservative voters (58% each), with only one-third of under-40s thinking such ceremonies to be relevant. By contrast, a majority of adults (52%) do not regard baptisms as important, rising to 57% for men, 57% for the 25-59 age group (the key one for child-rearing), 66% of Scots, and 73% of non-Christians.

The same proportion who agree that baptism remains important, 43%, say that they would prefer their own child (if they had one) to be baptised as a baby, increasing to 58% of over-60s and 68% of Christians. A plurality (47%) contends that children should make up their own mind when older, this being especially the view of Scots (62%) and non-Christians (69%).

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has expressed the hope that Prince George’s christening will encourage others to seek baptism for their children. Almost half (45%) of YouGov’s respondents anticipate that the royal christening will, indeed, boost the number of baptisms in the country, Conservatives being most confident (54%). A similar amount (44%) anticipate that there will be no change in the occurrence of baptisms.

On the face of it, there seems little basis for any optimism, since the long-term trend in baptisms has been relentlessly downwards. In the case of the Church of England, the best source of data, infant baptisms represented 66% of live births in England when first reported in 1902. The figure peaked at 72% in the 1920s but nosedived from the mid-1950s, dipping below 30% in 1987, below 20% in 2000, and standing at 12% in 2011.

For the United Kingdom as a whole, Dr Peter Brierley has assembled a picture from actual and estimated data for all Christian denominations which practise infant baptism. In Table 2.2 of UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends, No. 3 (2001), he shows the ratio of baptisms to live births peaking (at around 90%) in the inter-war and immediate post-war period before falling to 74% in 1960, 64% in 1970, 53% in 1980, and 42% in 1990. A revised calculation, in Table 13.8.3 of UK Church Statistics, 2005-2015 (2011), reveals a decline from 55% in 1991 to 34% in 2010, Anglicans in the four home nations having a baptismal market share of 58% by 2010, Roman Catholics 36%, and other Protestants 6%.

Religion and loneliness

Sample surveys can sometimes be useful in contrasting perception with reality. A case in point is provided by a new poll on loneliness commissioned by the BBC from ComRes for this year’s Radio 2 Faith in the World Week, in which 3,010 adult Britons were interviewed by telephone between 13 and 29 September 2013. Full data tables were published on 18 October and are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Religion_Loneliness_Survey_Britain_October_2013.pdf

Respondents were asked whether they perceived that people with a religious faith are less likely to feel lonely than people without such beliefs. Overall, opinion was divided on the issue, with 44% thinking people of faith are less likely to feel lonely and 47% that they are not. Significantly, the highest level of agreement with the statement (59%) was found among the quarter of the sample who claimed to practise their religion (in private or in public) at least once a month, perhaps implying that religion minimizes loneliness through the associational opportunities it provides and/or the comfort which it brings.

However, when interviewees were asked whether they themselves ever felt lonely, those who practised a religion were actually more likely than average to experience loneliness in some degree (55% against 48%), with even higher figures for practising Christians (57%) and those who live alone and are religious (68%). Individuals who do not practise a religion were slightly less likely than average to experience loneliness (46%), albeit this rose to 62% among the non-religious who live on their own. The highest incidence of acute loneliness (being felt all the time or regularly) in the survey was among religious individuals who lived alone (14%, more than twice the mean).

Similarly, people who practise a religion were more likely than average to report that they felt more lonely than 10 years ago (28% against 22%), while the proportion fell to 20% for those who do not practise a religion. Those who live alone and are religious were the group most likely (43%) to admit to being lonelier than a decade ago.

The apparent conundrum (that religion might increase rather than diminish loneliness) is perhaps largely explained by the fact that the over-65 cohort has the highest concentration of people who claim to practise their religion (32% versus the norm of 24%) and who live on their own (54% compared with 26% for Britain as a whole). Not unnaturally, living on one’s own is closely associated with a sense of loneliness.

All the saints

The English would like to see St George’s Day celebrated more, despite the fact that only 40% are aware of exactly when it falls (23 April). This compares with 71% who know that United States Independence Day is on 4 July and 42% that St Patrick’s Day is on 17 March. Two-thirds consider that St Patrick’s Day is now more widely celebrated here than the English patron saint’s day, with only 7% arguing that St George gets more attention. Three-quarters say that they would like to see this situation change, 41% blaming the absence of a bank holiday for St George’s Day as a reason for the lack of commemoration, and 35% attributing it to politicians’ failing to focus on St George’s Day. A majority (61%) also wants the St George’s flag flown more across the country. The findings come from a poll by ICM Research for British Future in connection with the latter’s recent Festival of Englishness. Online interviews were conducted with 2,360 adults in Britain on 9-11 October 2013, including 1,739 in England. Results have been reported in various online media.

Church of England ministry statistics

The Research and Statistics Division of the Archbishops’ Council published Statistics for Mission, 2012 – Ministry on 18 October 2013. It comprises 15 tables and 21 figures preceded by a summary and explanatory notes. The Church of England had 28,314 licensed ministers in 2012, 65% of whom received no stipend. Licensed stipendiary (mainly parochial) clergy comprised just 29% of this total, their numbers reduced by 13% since 2002. This decline was offset by a rise of 51% in self-supporting clergy over the decade, who are disproportionately female (52% in 2012 against 23% of full-time stipendiary clergy). A 6% fall in stipendiary clergy is forecast for the next five years, entirely among men, with women clergy expected to increase slowly. Women constituted 47% of candidates recommended for ordination training in 2012, but they were significantly older than male candidates; whereas 60% of male ordinands were under 40, 72% of women were over 40. The average age of full-time stipendiary clergy increased between 2002 and 2012, from 50 to 52 years for men and from 48 to 51 for women. Very few stipendiary clergy (3%) come from ethnic minority backgrounds. The report can be found at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1868964/ministry%20statistics%20final.pdf

Veils reprised

The debate about the veiling of Muslim women rumbles on, with fresh polling data released by Survation on 14 October 2013 from its immigration study conducted for Sky News on 27-29 September 2013 among an online sample of 1,508 Britons aged 18 and over. Data tables (of which those for questions 40 to 46 are relevant for our immediate purpose) have been posted at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Full-Sky-News-Immigration-Tables.pdf

As with other surveys reported on BRIN, the majority in the Survation poll was opposed to this particular aspect of Islamic women’s dress, the proportion varying somewhat dependent upon the context:

  • 84% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned in courtrooms for people giving evidence (11% disagreeing)
  • 80% want bank managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (13% disagreeing)
  • 72% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned for all front-line staff in hospitals (8% disagreeing, with a further 16% thinking it should be for individual hospitals to determine)
  • 70% want petrol station managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (22% disagreeing)
  • 68% want shop managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (25% disagreeing)
  • 68% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned for all schoolchildren in classrooms (10% disagreeing, with a further 19% thinking it should be for individual schools to determine)
  • 66% want university managers/owners to be free to ban face coverings on their premises (27% disagreeing)
  • 66% do not want schools to be able to require pupils to wear face covering veils and want the government to prevent them from doing so (26% disagreeing)
  • 60% want the wearing of full face coverings such as the niqab to be banned in public streets and open spaces (32% disagreeing)
  • 56% consider that women who wear full face covering veils like the niqab are more responsible for creating divisions and tensions in our society than the politicians and journalists who criticize veil-wearing women (26%)

 

 

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Things Unseen and Other News

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The latest report from Theos heads the list of seven religious statistical news stories today, comprising a further attempt by the think-tank to explore the spiritual hinterland which lays beyond institutional religion and to counter the picture of unrelenting secularization of British society.

Things unseen

‘For all that formalised religious belief and institutionalised religious belonging has declined over recent decades, the British have not become a nation of atheists or materialists. On the contrary, a spiritual current runs as, if not more, powerfully through the nation than it once did.’ So begins the latest report from the Theos think-tank, The Spirit of Things Unseen: Belief in Post-Religious Britain, published on 17 September 2013 alongside the data tables from the ComRes poll which underpins it (2,036 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 4 and 5 September 2013). The research, which was sponsored by CTVC as background for a new podcast venture, develops arguments originally advanced by Theos in its 2012 report The Faith of the Faithless (which covered England alone).

The Spirit of Things Unseen (28pp.) can be viewed at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/Spirit%20of%20Things%20-%20Digital%20(update).pdf

and the data tables (34pp., including breaks by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, religious affiliation, and educational attainment) at:

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

Headline findings are:

  • 77% agree that there are things in life that cannot be explained through science or other means
  • 34% believe that people’s thoughts can be influenced by spiritual forces, 27% events in the human world can be so influenced, and 23% events in the natural world
  • 59% believe in one or more of the following spiritual beings: God as a universal life force (30%), spirits (30%), angels (25%), the devil (14%), God as a personal being (13%), a higher spiritual being that cannot be called God (12%), demons (10%), or Jinns (3%) – 30% are sceptics
  • 76% believe in one or more of the following: the soul (39%), life after death (32%), heaven (26%), reincarnation (16%), hell (13%), or the power of deceased ancestors (13%)
  • 39% have undergone one or more of the following: tarot card reading (23%), star signs reading (17%), reflexology session (12%), Reiki session (8%), aura reading (6%), healing with crystals (5%), or Ayurveda session (1%)
  • 11% have visited a spiritual or faith healer or a religious leader who specializes in praying for the sick
  • 38% believe that prayer can heal people (but 50% do not)
  • 17% consider prayer to be effectual in bringing about change, 51% in creating a sense of peace, while 17% feel that prayer does not work in any way
  • 55% pray sometimes (21% at least weekly, 34% occasionally), and the rest not at all
  • 17% perceive miracles as the result of divine intervention in nature and 42% as unusual events that cannot be explained by science, while 30% say they do not exist and are simply examples of coincidence or luck
  • 16% have either personally experienced, or know somebody who has experienced, a miracle

Analysis by religion mostly shows that, while the religious often give the most spiritual responses, smaller but still significant numbers of the avowedly non-religious do so, also. This is particularly so in the case of ‘alternative’ practices, where there is no real difference between the religious and non-religious. On the other hand, there is a wide gap between the two groups when it comes to ‘traditional’ practices, such as prayer. Neither is it the elderly who consistently and disproportionately opt for spiritual answers. Women tend to be more spiritual in their replies than men.

The spiritual beings and beliefs questions do not seem wholly satisfactory, being too compressed. More generally, it could be argued that Theos might have been better served by replicating at least a few questions from earlier surveys, which would have had the advantage of facilitating comparisons over time. As it is, the hint (dropped several times in the report) that what is essentially a single survey snapshot might suggest that Britain is actually becoming more spiritual is evidentially unproven and thus unconvincing. As such, the debate about the current and future religious state of the nation seems set to run and run.

Storm in a bed and breakfast cup

The long-running legal case of husband and wife Peter and Hazelmary Bull versus Martin Hall and Steve Preddy moved to the Supreme Court on 9 and 10 October 2013, more than five years after the incident which gave rise to it. The Bulls are devout Christians and owners of a B&B in Cornwall, who had refused a double room to Hall and Preddy (a homosexual couple in a civil partnership), on grounds of religious conscience. A County Court in 2011 had originally found the Bulls in breach of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 and awarded damages to Hall and Preddy. A subsequent appeal by the Bulls to the Court of Appeal was dismissed last year. No date has yet been fixed for a hand-down of judgment by the Supreme Court.

To coincide with the Supreme Court phase of the case, Lancaster University issued a press release on 9 October 2013 reporting the findings of two questions about the case which had been added to the second of the YouGov surveys commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, 4,018 Britons having been interviewed online on 5-13 June 2013. The ‘bad news’ in this poll for the Bulls is that a majority of adults (57%) do not believe that B&B owners should be allowed to discriminate against guests on the basis of the latters’ sexual orientation, and this includes a majority or plurality of all major religious groups (for example, 52% of Anglicans and 51% of Catholics). Even the most certain believers in God are anti-discrimination (49%), although 53% of weekly churchgoers are pro-discrimination. The better news for the Bulls is that a plurality (49% against 40%) think it wrong that they were ordered to pay damages. Lancaster’s press release, which has been covered by the Church Times (11 October 2013, p. 6) and The Tablet (12 October 2013, p. 28) is at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/uploads/docs/2013_10/1381315862_Christian_B&B_poll_Press_Release.pdf

Contemporary British Jewry

‘British Jews place a premium on communal belonging, albeit without an excess of piety or religiosity. They hold conservative political loyalties balanced by some liberal social views.’ So conclude sociologists Professor Linda Woodhead and Professor Steven Cohen in their analysis of the 318 self-identifying British Jews interviewed for the two YouGov polls which Woodhead commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, with online fieldwork on 25-30 January and 5-13 June 2013. Their article, ‘Who do we think we are? Here are the facts’, contains comparisons with other religious groups in Britain and with American Jews. It was published in the print edition (p. 2) of the Jewish Chronicle for 11 October 2013 and in the online edition at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/112220/new-surveys-shed-light-who-we-are

Clergy stress

Stress among the clergy has been the subject of serious sociological and psychological study for over a quarter of a century, one of the earliest empirical surveys being Ben Fletcher’s Clergy under Stress (1990). In preparation for its Building Resilience symposium (in London on 15 October and York on 17 October 2013), St Luke’s Healthcare for the Clergy commissioned Christian Research to poll 492 ordained UK clergy in August 2013, some results being published in a press release on 23 September 2013. It is assumed (but not explicitly stated) that respondents were members of Christian’s Research’s online panel, Resonate. Asked how they felt in themselves, 37% of clergy replied ‘positive and energized’, 50% said they had more good days than bad, but 12% admitted to struggling or barely coping. Although 58% had rarely or never considered giving up their role in the Church, 33% had done so occasionally, and 8% often or very frequently. Over half (53%) had never received training to understand or manage stress, with all but 23% willing to take up one or more resources to help in this regard. For further details, follow the ‘Building Resilience symposium press release’ link at:

http://www.stlukeshealthcare.org.uk/publications

Bishops’ office and working costs

On 7 October 2013 the Church Commissioners published a 13-page report on the office and working costs of the Church of England’s 113 diocesan and suffragan bishops for the year ending 31 December 2012. They amounted to £18.1 million, representing an increase of 6% over the 2011 figure. Staff were the biggest single expenditure (50%), albeit their costs grew by less than average (4%). Costs are itemized for each individual bishop, as they have been for the past 12 years, 28 of them (among them the two archbishops) actually returning a lower figure in 2012 than for 2011. On the other hand, expenditure by the Bishops of Leicester and Southwark was up in cash terms by over £50,000. Additional to these office and working costs, stipends and employer’s national insurance and pension contributions for bishops came to £5.5 million, with a further £4.7 million spent on maintaining the houses, office premises, and gardens of the archbishops and diocesan bishops (including Lambeth Palace). The grand total of central expenditure on Church of England bishops in 2012 was, therefore, £28.3 million, but this still excludes the housing costs of suffragan bishops, which are met by dioceses. The report is available at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1862748/bishops%20office%20and%20working%20costs%202012.pdf

Scottish Methodist lay preachers

Right from its origins in the eighteenth century, Methodism has been dependent upon the voluntary efforts of local (lay) preachers to conduct many of its worship services, and this remains the case today. Indeed, in Scotland the proportion of services at which they officiated rose from 31% in 1996 to 39% in 2010, partly in reflection of a 31% reduction in ordained ministers in Scotland over the same period. These Scottish local preachers (both ‘fully accredited’ and ‘on trial’) are increasingly women, 39% in 1996 and 47% in 2010. They are also a progressively elderly group, with mean ages of 55 in 1996 and 64 in 2011, and with a corresponding fall in the number in full-time paid employment. In line with society, formal education levels of local preachers continue to improve, those with first or higher degrees growing from 47% in 1996 to 58% in 2011. In addition to taking preaching appointments, local preachers hold other offices in Methodism (especially church council member), while their principal leisure pursuits are reading, sport, walking, music, and gardening. These details are taken from John Sawkins, ‘Methodist Local Preachers in Scotland: Characteristics and Deployment, 1996 and 2011’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 59, No. 3, October 2013, pp. 89-101.

Quaker membership statistics

Finally, an ‘overdue’ item. The 2013 Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain took place on 24-27 May, and one of the sequence of ‘documents in advance’ was a 12-page ‘tabular statement’ of membership for the year ending 31 December 2012. In total there were 478 local meetings with 13,906 members, of whom 37.4% were men, 62.3% women, and 0.3% children under 16. Member incomings during the year numbered 535, of which 66.5% were by application and 33.5% by certificate (i.e. transfer from Britain or another Yearly Meeting). Outgoings amounted to 726 (191 more than incomings), of which 33.1% were through termination of membership, 44.6% by death, and 22.3% by certificate. The Quaker death rate for the year was 23 per 1,000, well above the national average, and thus suggesting an ageing membership. Besides members, there were 8,681 attenders and 2,004 children recognized as connected with Quaker meetings but not in membership. On p. 11 will be found a record of Britain Yearly Meeting membership, disaggregated by sex, quinquennially from 1935 to 1970 and annually thereafter. Membership has not fallen so severely as for other historic Free Churches, only by 28.0% over these 77 years. The tabular statement is at:

http://www.quaker.org.uk/files/Tabular-statement-2013-web.pdf

 

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Religious Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven new sources of British religious statistics feature in today’s bulletin, leading with the latest set of official annual figures on the mode of solemnization of marriages in England and Wales.

Marriages (England and Wales), 2011

The number of marriages solemnized in religious ceremonies in England and Wales dropped by 6% between 2010 and 2011, notwithstanding that the overall total of marriages increased by 2% over the same period. The decline affected all denominations and faiths, including the Church of England and Church in Wales, which conducted 7% fewer weddings in 2011 than 2010, despite the former’s push over recent years to stimulate public interest in getting married in church. The fall in religious marriages since 2001 has been 18%, in contrast to all marriages which have contracted by just one-half a percentage point. The proportion of religious marriages to the total has slumped from 99% in 1838 to 84% in 1901 to 67% in 1966 to 30% in 2011, 1976 being the year when civil ceremonies overtook religious ones.

Perhaps reflecting the struggles which many Christian denominations have had to come to terms with divorce, both partners in religious marriages continue to be more likely to be entering their first marriage than do their counterparts at civil ceremonies (82% against 60% in 2011, albeit the former figure has dipped from 95% in the late 1960s as divorce has spread even among people of faith). Couples undergoing a civil marriage are also 10% more likely to be cohabiting before marriage than those marrying in a place of worship; however, the latter figure had climbed to 78% in 2011 (compared with 41% in 1994). So, whatever their traditional teaching against it, the Churches have clearly had to accommodate themselves to a society in which living together (i.e. sex) before marriage is the norm. Were they not to turn a blind eye to it, religious marriages would simply implode.

The foregoing data (still provisional for 2011) are taken from a bulletin issued by the Office for National Statistics today (26 June 2013) and from associated reference tables, all of which may be accessed at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/marriages-in-england-and-wales–provisional-/2011/index.html

Global threats

Given a list of eight possible international concerns, 55% of Britons selected Islamic extremist groups as a major threat to the country, second only to international financial instability (59%), and ahead of global climate change (48%), North Korea’s nuclear programme (45%), Iran’s nuclear programme (42%), political instability in Pakistan (31%), China’s power and influence (29%), and US power and influence (22%). This is according to the latest release of data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with fieldwork undertaken (by Princeton Survey Research Associates International) in 39 countries in Spring 2013 (including Britain, where 1,012 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone between 4 and 27 March 2013). Nevertheless, Islamic extremist groups were even more likely to be categorized as a major threat in several other leading developed nations: Italy (74%), France (71%), Spain (62%), Germany (60%), Japan (57%), and the US (56%). In Britain an additional 33% considered Islamic extremist groups to be a minor threat and only 6% no threat at all. Topline tables were published on 24 June 2013 at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/06/Pew-Research-Center-Global-Attitudes-Project-Global-Threats-Report-FINAL-June-24-20131.pdf

Origins of life

The creationist view of the origin and development of life on earth is held by only a minority of UK citizens, according to Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 2, undertaken by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with 1,396 adults and 460 young people aged 14-18 between 21 May and 22 October 2012, but not published until 17 May 2013. Just 23% of adults and 21% of young people agreed that ‘humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form’, rising to 28% of over-65s, 27% of women, and 27% of those with no educational qualifications. A further 22% of adults and 18% of young people thought that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time, in a process guided by God’. But the biggest number in both groups, 50% of adults and 57% of young people, subscribed to the theory that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time as a result of natural selection, in which God played no part’. The proportion peaked (68%) among those scoring most highly on a quiz about scientific knowledge which was a component of the research. A wide range of documentation about the survey, including data in Excel format (T146 is the relevant table for this question) and the main report (with analysis on pp. 32-3), is available at:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Reports/Public-engagement/WTX058859.htm

These results are broadly consistent with those obtained in Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 1, conducted in 2009. They also accord with evidence from other pollsters, although variations in question-wording and methodology make strict comparisons difficult. This evidence has been summarized thus by Clive Field in an, as yet, unpublished paper: ‘the creation in Genesis is now widely rejected in favour of evolutionist interpretations. This appears to have been a relatively recent phenomenon. Two-thirds to four-fifths now accept human beings have developed from earlier species of animals, while believers in the so-called young earth creation theory (that God made human beings in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years) fell from 29% in 1995 to below one-fifth in the most recent polls (2006-12). Excluding a fairly significant number of “don’t knows”, majority opinion is unevenly split between theories of Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (the latter still admitting some possible role for God or supernatural planner). Many do not see any inherent contradiction between evolution and Christianity in accounting for the origin of life on earth and thus can believe in both, and there is broad support for all explanations of the origin being taught in schools.’

Funeral hymns

Put on the spot, a plurality (44%) of 2,427 adult Britons did not know what song, hymn or piece of music they would like to be played at their funeral, and a further 11% did not want any music to be played. The remaining 45% nominated a particular song, hymn or piece of music, but none took more than 1% of the vote. The most popular religious or allied items were Abide with Me (the choice of 30 respondents), Jerusalem (28), Amazing Grace (22), How Great Thou Art (21), and The Lord is My Shepherd/Psalm 23 (20). The poll was conducted online by ComRes on behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care on 3-6 May 2013, in advance of Dying Matters Awareness Week (13-19 May), although the full data tables were not published until 12 June at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Marie_Curie_Gardens_Final_Data_Tables_9_May_2013.pdf

Youth and religion

A YouGov poll of 940 18- to 24-year-olds for The Sun, conducted online on 14-19 June 2013 and published on 24-25 June, confirms the relatively weak hold which religion has over Generation Y, those born in the 1980s and 1990s. A mere 8% profess membership of a church or religious group (compared with 21% who belong to a gym). One-tenth claim to attend religious services once a month or more, with 56% never going and a further 18% less than annually. Only 12% say they are influenced a lot or a fair amount by religious leaders, even less than celebrities (21%), brands (32%), and politicians (38%), and way behind friends (77%) and parents (82%). Just 14% recognize religion as more often the cause of good in the world against 41% who agree that it is mostly the source of evil, the remainder being neutral or uncertain. No more than 25% believe in God, although another 19% accept that there is some kind of spiritual greater power; 38% believe in neither and 18% are undecided. And only 38% identify with a religion, 56% with none. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, and education) are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jgdvn3vm4b/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-190613-youth-survey.pdf

while commentary on the survey can be found at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/06/24/british-youth-reject-religion/ and

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4981030/yougov-survey-on-britains-young-adults.html

Methodist statistics

The Methodist Church of Great Britain has recently made available its statistics for mission report for the connexional year 2012/13 (representing the position as at October 2012, and based on a 98% response from local churches). Comparing with the year before, the picture which emerges is one of continuing decline on most performance indicators, with significant annual decreases in those with the loosest attachment to the Church, reflected in the figures for the community roll and rites of passage (the fall in membership and attendance was less marked). The following table has been compiled from data available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/ministers-and-office-holders/statistics-for-mission

 

2011

2012

% change
Members

All

221,879

219,359

-1.1
New

3,183

2,903

-8.8
Died

6,889

6,938

+0.7
Ceased to meet

4,734

4,052

-14.4
Community roll

513,671

453,990

-11.6
Attendances

All age weekly average: Sunday

202,573

197,592

-2.5
All age weekly average: midweek

33,035

32,814

-0.7
Adult weekly average

199,626

196,365

-1.6
Children/young people weekly average

33,794

33,736

-0.2
Rites of passage

Baptisms/thanksgivings

11,227

10,505

-6.4
Marriages/blessings

3,710

3,570

-3.8
Funerals

22,327

21,505

-3.7

Psychological type and churchmanship of Anglican clergy

The relationship of psychological type preferences to three forms of self-assigned churchmanship (Anglo-Catholic, Broad Church, evangelical) is explored by Andrew Village in ‘Traditions within the Church of England and Psychological Type: A Study among the Clergy’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2013, pp. 22-44. The sample comprised 1,047 Anglican clergy ordained in the United Kingdom (mostly into the Church of England) between 2004 and 2007 who responded to a self-completion postal questionnaire. The majority of clergy were found to prefer introversion over extraversion, but this preference was more marked among Anglo-Catholics than evangelicals. Anglo-Catholics also showed preference for intuition over sensing, while the reverse was true for evangelicals. Clergy of both sexes exhibited an overall preference for feeling over thinking, but this was reversed among evangelicals. These variations could not be wholly explained by differences in the level of conservatism or charismaticism across the traditions, suggesting that they were linked to preferences for different styles of religious expression in worship. In short, Village argues, people gravitate to traditions that match their psychological type, especially in respect of the perceiving function. The analysis is preceded by a fairly extensive literature review of psychological type and religion. The abstract and full-text access options for the article are at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/10.1163/15709256-12341252

 

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Climbing the Papal Mountain and Other News

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Clive D. Field

 

Today’s post covers three news stories, two of which test public reactions to the religious landscape following, respectively, the resignation of the Pope and last month’s four cases of alleged religious discrimination appealed to the European courts.

Climbing the papal mountain

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to leave office at the end of this month, following the announcement of his resignation, his successor will have a veritable mountain to climb, if he is to hold together the Roman Catholic Church and improve its image and influence with non-Catholics.

In a post-resignation poll only about one-fifth (22%) of adults in Britain now consider the Catholic Church to be a force for good in the world, 45% disagreeing (and thus implicitly saying it is a force for ill), and 32% undecided. If we assume that all professing Catholics reckon their Church to be a force for good, then the corollary is that not much more than one-tenth of the rest of the population does so.

Among all Britons, the number in agreement with the proposition never rises above 28% for any major demographic group (and that for the over-65s, Welsh, and Scots), while dissentients represent a majority of the 45-64s, in the South and North-East of England, and among supporters of several smaller political parties.

Comparison with surveys around the time of the papal visit to Scotland and England in September 2010 indicates that the public standing of the Church has taken a real battering during the final two and a half years of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

The current 22% positive rating of the Catholic Church contrasts with 31-33% recorded by Opinion Research Business in identical questions about the Church as a force for good on 14-16 and 22-24 September 2010 and 9-11 September 2011; with 41% by Ipsos MORI on 20-26 August 2010; and 47% by Populus on 10-12 September 2010.

Some commentators have argued that modernization of the Catholic Church demands the appointment of the next Pope from the developing rather than the developed world, reflecting the fact that it is in the former that the Church is growing while in the latter it is in decline, notably losing the battle against secularism in Western Europe. The possibility of an African Pope is often mentioned in this context, with Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana the most cited name and, currently, a bookie’s favourite.

Britons, however, do not seem hugely enthusiastic about the prospect of the Church moving in this direction. Asked whether ‘it would be a positive step for the Catholic Church if they chose an African for their next Pope’, 33% agree, with 19% disagreeing, and 48% having no opinion (and probably no real interest in the matter either). The groups most in favour of an African Pope are the 25-34s (42%), Scots (41%), and Labour voters (43%). Most opposed are men (24%), residents of South-West England (28%), and UKIP supporters (26%).

Source: The two questions about the Roman Catholic Church were included in the online regular political survey by ComRes for The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on 13-14 February 2013, although it appears that, in the end, neither newspaper made use of these particular findings. The sample comprised 2,002 Britons aged 18 and over. Full data appear on pp. 89-96 of the tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/IoS_SM_Political_Poll_Feb_2013.pdf

Wearing religious clothing and symbols at work

Public attitudes to the wearing of religious clothing and symbols in the workplace vary according to the clothing or symbol concerned and to the occupation of the person wearing it.

So finds new research commissioned in the wake of the four British cases of alleged faith discrimination recently adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In one of them, the ECHR found against the UK Government in the action brought by Nadia Eweida, who was sent home by her employer (British Airways) in 2006 for refusing to remove a chain necklace with a small silver Christian cross.

In the study, opinion was sought about the entitlement to wear three religious items (a chain necklace with a Christian cross, a Jewish kippah/skullcap, and an Islamic burka) in four professional situations: flight attendant, nurse, teacher, and accountant. The number believing that people in the UK should be allowed to wear the item under each circumstance is as follows: 

 

Cross

Kippah

Burka
Flight attendant

81

68

22
Nurse

70

60

18
Teacher

77

68

22
Accountant

85

77

47
Mean

78

68

27

The table reveals greatest comfort with individuals wearing the Christian cross at work, albeit this is deemed somewhat less acceptable for a nurse than for the other three occupations. This caveat doubtless reflects recall of the case of Shirley Chaplin whose employers, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, had ordered the removal of her crucifix and chain on health and safety grounds. Chaplin had also appealed to the ECHR but, unlike Eweida, unsuccessfully. Opposition to a nurse wearing a cross peaked at 30% among the 18-24s and Liberal Democrat voters.

The Jewish article of clothing, the kippah, is deemed slightly less acceptable than the Christian symbol, with a mean score ten points lower. Some may find a slight hint of anti-Semitism here. However, a majority of adults still support its wearing in all four contexts, even by nurses where disagreement is greatest (30% overall, and rather more among the over-60s and Conservative voters).

But the burka worn by female Muslims finds no real favour at all, even when worn by an accountant, who is presumably less likely to come into regular contact with the public than a flight attendant, nurse, or teacher. Of course, the fact that the burka is so much larger and more ‘intrusive’ than the other two items (respondents were reminded that it covers the body and face) may well have influenced thinking.

Nevertheless, a plurality (47%) do endorse an accountant wearing a burka, whereas for the other three occupations opposition ranges from 67% to 72%. The over-60s are especially hostile, from 81% to a burka worn by a flight attendant to 86% when worn by a nurse, and a majority (51%) even arguing an accountant should not be allowed to wear it.   

Public hostility to the burka has been evidenced in numerous other opinion polls during recent years, as already noted by BRIN. The garment is clearly widely seen as ‘un-British’ and as a manifestation of Muslim reluctance to integrate into mainstream society. Therefore, attitudes to the burka are inextricably bound up with views of Islam, about which there continue to be many reservations relative to Judaism and, still more, to Christianity which is still implicitly regarded as defining Britain’s heritage and culture. 

The research is an interesting example of how principles of religious equality and liberty, to which most Britons would doubtless say they are committed, can be qualified when translated into real-life situations which are the cause of controversy and annoyance.

Source: Three online surveys undertaken among Britons aged 18 and over by YouGov for the YouGov-Cambridge think-tank: on 29-30 January 2013 (n = 1,939, on attitudes to the cross); 3-4 February 2013 (n = 1,712, on attitudes to the kippah); and on 30-31 January 2013 (n = 1,914, on attitudes to the burka). The results are discussed in a YouGov-Cambrdige blog post of 20 February 2013 at:

http://www.yougov.polis.cam.ac.uk/?p=4412

The detailed data tables are located at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3xu7auqj0x/YGCam-Archive-results-300113-European-Court-Human-Rights.pdf

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/es1qzi4mv7/YGCam-Archive-results-040213-European-Court-Human-Rights-Kippah.pdf

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ep1emkef5f/YGCam-Archive-results-310113-European-Court-Human-Rights-Burka.pdf

Anglican church-led social action

Four-fifths (82%) of parishes in the Church of England have provided informal support to people in their community who have requested help, and 54% run organized activities to address at least one local social need. The latter figure ranges from 39% of churches whose congregation numbers fewer than 50 people to 94% where it exceeds 250; and from 80% in parishes based on council estates to 47% in the most rural areas. More than one social need is being formally met in 29% of parishes. Activities most commonly offered are: support with school work (69%), care for the elderly (54%), and parent and toddler groups (51%). Food banks are managed by 28% of parishes, although this is now likely to be an underestimate.

Community problems being tackled, formally or informally, by more than two-thirds of parishes comprise lack of self-esteem/hope, homelessness, mental health, and family breakdown/poor parenting. At the other end of the spectrum, more than one-half of parishes admit to doing very little or nothing to alleviate poor housing, benefit dependency, unemployment, unhealthy lifestyles, low education, crime/anti-social behaviour, or low income. While working relationships with schools are active and very close in three-quarters of parishes, the same is true of less than one-fifth in the case of the police, poverty charities, councils, local businesses, and social services.

Source: Online sample survey of Anglican incumbents undertaken by the Church Urban Fund (CUF) on behalf of the Church of England in December 2011. Of the 2,960 clergy invited to participate, 865 or 30% did so. There was an under-representation of rural parishes and small churches in the responses. Key findings are summarized in Bethany Eckley, The Church in Action: A National Survey of Church-Led Social Action, newly published and available at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Research/The_Church_in_Action_Church_Urban_Fund_2013.pdf

It should be noted that this is actually the third report to have been issued by CUF on this survey. The first was Growing Church Through Social Action: A National Survey of Church-Based Action to Tackle Poverty, prepared by Benita Hewitt of Christian Research Consultancy, the agency which undertook the fieldwork; and the second a four-page summary of it, Growing Church Through Social Action. As their titles imply, their focus was especially on the church growth aspects of the research. These earlier reports have already been discussed on BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/church-growth-and-social-action/

 

 

Posted in News from religious organisations, Organisational data, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trust in Clergy and Other News

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Clive D. Field

While waiting for the first tests of public opinion to the sudden resignation of Benedict XVI as Pope, here is a batch of six recently-published sources of British religious statistics on a miscellany of subjects.

Trust in clergy

Clergy/priests are the sixth most trusted group in a list of seventeen read out by Ipsos MORI in a telephone survey of 1,018 Britons aged 18 and over conducted on 9-11 February 2013 and published on 15 February. Clergy/priests were trusted to tell the truth by 66% of the sample, a figure exceeded only for doctors (89%), teachers (86%), scientists (83%), judges (82%), and television news readers (69%).

As might have been anticipated, the list was propped up by estate agents, MPs in general, bankers, journalists, and politicians in general; in each of these cases seven-tenths or more of adults stated that they did not trust these groups to tell the truth. However, 27% also said the same about clergy/priests, with 7% expressing no opinion.

The truthfulness of clergy/priests was not subject to major demographic variations, but it is interesting to note that some of the highest scores came from the 18-24s (72%), owner occupiers (70%), Scots (74%), intending voters for the Conservatives (76%) and UKIP (72%), and from those satisfied with the Coalition Government (75%).

For both topline and detailed data, go to:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3133/Politicians-trusted-less-than-estate-agents-bankers-and-journalists.aspx

Although clergy/priests might well take comfort from their relatively positive performance in this poll, they should not get too complacent. An Ipsos MORI time series clearly shows that trust in them to tell the truth has fallen fairly steadily from 85% in 1983, with the level of distrust rising from 11% in the same year. See:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Veracity2011.pdf

Beginning of life

People of faith are more likely than those without religion to say that human life begins at conception. Overall, a plurality (44%) of Britons takes this view, but the proportion rises to 50% among Anglicans and Muslims and 60% among Catholics and Baptists, whereas for the ‘nones’ it falls to 34%. For the ‘very religious’, it is higher still: two-thirds of those who say they get some guidance in life from God, religion, religious leaders, or religious teachings. This same set of groups is also three times more likely than the norm to want to see abortion banned altogether: one-fifth or more as opposed to 7% for all respondents.

For adults as a whole, life is thought to start at some point during pregnancy by 30% but not until the baby is born by 17%, both options being selected by an above-average number of persons professing no religion (36% and 21% respectively). Don’t knows amounted to 8%, including one-third of those who preferred not to declare what their religious affiliation was.

The data come from the YouGov survey of 25-30 January 2013 for the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, the abortion aspects of which we have already covered in our post of 12 February. The full data tables for all these questions were released on 14 February and are available at:  

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/a0c0uf8c2g/YouGov-Survey-University-of-Lancaster-Results-130130.pdf

Lenten intentions II

Further to the coverage in our post of 9 February, YouGov has conducted a second online poll about the intended observance of Lent this year. Fieldwork took place on 10-11 February 2013 (before the start of Lent on 13 February) among 1,691 adult Britons aged 18 and over. Of these 27% said that they had plans to give something up for Lent, not dissimilar to the 24% recorded in the earlier poll. Full data tables (which also cover the anticipated consumption of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday) are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9szci1h69s/YG-Archive-110213-Pancake-Day.pdf

Religious affiliation

The latest survey to collect information about religious affiliation was conducted by ComRes for Marie Curie Cancer Care on 6-8 February 2013. A total of 2,601 Britons aged 18 and over was interviewed online. In reply to the question ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ 53% said Christian, 8% non-Christian, and 37% none, with 2% preferring not to say.

The number professing no religion peaked among the under-45s (49% for the 18-24s, 46% for the 25-34s, 43% for the 35-44s), falling to 22% with the over-65s. There was also an above-average proportion of ‘nones’ in the lowest (DE) social group (42%), among private sector workers (42%), in the North East (42%), and in the South East (44%).

People who reported that somebody close to them (a relative or friend) had died in the last three years were somewhat less likely to declare themselves to have no religion (35%) than those who had not been bereaved on this timescale (39%); they were also more prone to say that they were Christian (55% against 52%). Perhaps the proximity of death still exercises a marginal pull towards the religiosity end of the religious-secular spectrum? For more detail, see Table 43 in the dataset at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Marie_Curie_Perceptions_of_Death_Data_February_2013.pdf

Inflated churchgoing

The tendency for respondents in sample surveys to exaggerate the frequency with which they attend public religious services is a well-known fact. It is described, somewhat euphemistically, as ‘measurement error’.

The outcome of the ‘prestige effect’, whereby people are still reluctant to admit that they are not so ‘religious’ as they or society feel they should be, the gap between reality and aspiration can be clearly seen by comparing the number who attended church on a typical Sunday in the last (2005) English Church Census with those claiming to worship weekly in polls around the same time.

However, the phenomenon is by no means peculiarly British but can be found internationally, too, including in North America. Philip Brenner, a sociologist from the University of Massachusetts Boston, is one of the scholars who has studied it, with his most recent research reported in the Winter 2012 issue (Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 361-83) of Sociology of Religion: ‘Investigating the Effect of Bias in Survey Measures of Church Attendance’. It is far from being a light read and will win no prizes for linguistic accessibility! Although this is normally a subscription journal, Brenner’s article is, at the time of writing, free to view (apart from the three appendices) at:

http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/4/361.full.pdf+html

Brenner’s approach is to compare the reports of churchgoing in time use diaries with claims made in national sample surveys between the 1970s and early 2000s. Fourteen countries are investigated (United States, Canada, and twelve in Europe). In the case of Great Britain, the evidence derives from a comparison of time diaries for 1974-75, 1983-84, 1987, 2000-01, and 2005 with fifteen multinational surveys of adults from 1975 to 2006 in which fieldwork was undertaken in Britain.

The author’s particular concern is to establish whether the over-reporting of church attendance in surveys is related to the individual demographic ‘predictors’ commonly associated with religious practice. He has therefore compared the replies of sub-groups with regard to Sunday churchgoing in both the diaries and the surveys by means of logistic regression models. The demographic variables employed were: gender, age, marital status, presence of children in the household, educational attainment, and household income. Religious affiliation was excluded through insufficiency of data.

The core of this analysis is to be found in Table 1, which is entitled ‘testing the equality of residual variation assumptions and equality of underlying coefficients’. His principal conclusion (to paraphrase) is that there is very little evidence to suggest that demographic sub-groups respond differentially when reporting churchgoing in sample surveys against time diaries.

The over-reporting of church attendance which Brenner presupposes to exist in North American surveys (but generally not in European ones) is said at one point of the text not to be rooted in demography but to reflect the tendency of North Americans to ‘view religiosity as a more central part of their identities’.

However, in the conclusion, it is admitted (perhaps somewhat contradictorily) that the gap between time diaries and survey results probably reflects differences in data collection method, between directive (in the surveys) and non-directive (in the diaries) techniques.

Anglican episcopate

‘Bishops are a touchy subject within the Anglican Church. They wield a lot of power and matter more than most people realise, but because of this their origins have rarely been studied in a dispassionate way nor their present functions honestly weighed up in the light of the needs of the Church within a modern society’.

In his new book, deriving from his D.Min. thesis at the University of Wales Bangor in 2009, Michael Keulemans (an associate priest of the Church in Wales) attempts to rectify these deficiencies. Bishops: The Changing Nature of the Anglican Episcopate in Mainland Britain (2012) is available in hardcover, softcover, and ebook editions from http://www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk

Apart from a good deal of historical context, two major surveys are included in the work. The first examines the background and careers of diocesan bishops in England, Wales, and Scotland at twenty-year intervals between 1905 and 2005 (chapters 6, 7, and 8). The second, employing a self-completion postal questionnaire, looks at attitudes towards the bishop’s role of 255 serving clergy and 358 leading laity (churchwardens or equivalent) in four Anglican dioceses (two in England, one each in Wales and Scotland), and compares them with those of 25 bishops who retired between 2000 and 2008 (chapters 10 and 11).

Although now around five years old, the second survey inevitably touches on a couple of issues which remain (controversially) current in the Anglican Communion: practising gay and women bishops. On the latter, 72% of clergy, 67% of laity, and 84% of retired bishops endorsed female bishops. Respondents from the Scottish diocese (Edinburgh) were notably supportive (83% of clergy and 82% of laity). There was much less enthusiasm for practising gay bishops: 30% of clergy, 17% of laity, and 25% of retired bishops.

 

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