Scottish Religion and Other News

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Clive D. Field

 

Scottish religion

The continuing decline of religion in Scotland is documented in two publications from the Scottish Government this month. The first, published on 26 August 2015, is Scotland’s People Annual Report: Results from the 2014 Scottish Household Survey, based on interviews with 9,800 adults in private households in Scotland. The question on religious affiliation revealed that 47% of Scots professed to have no religion in 2014, 7% more than in 2009. There has been a corresponding reduction in affiliation to the Church of Scotland over this five-year period, from 34% to 28%. Other categories in 2014 were: Roman Catholics 14%, other Christians 8%, and non-Christians 3%. The report is available at: 

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/08/3720/downloads

The other publication, released on 20 August by the National Records of Scotland, was Vital Events Reference Tables, 2014, showing, inter alia, the mode of solemnization of marriage in Scotland. Results are tabulated below, with comparisons for 2004 (the year before ceremonies by humanist celebrants were permitted) and 2009. It will be seen that civil marriages now account for the majority, that the Church of Scotland has lost half its market share in the space of ten years, and that one-quarter of ‘religious’ ceremonies are now conducted by humanist celebrants. Full details are at: 

http://nationalrecordsofscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/general-publications/vital-events-reference-tables/2014/section-7-marriages-and-civil-partnerships 

Form of marriage ceremony, % down

2004

2009

2014
Civil

49.5

51.7

51.6
Church of Scotland

29.6

22.3

15.5
Roman Catholic

6.1

6.5

5.3
Other religious (excluding humanist)

14.9

13.9

14.1
Humanist

0.0

5.6

13.5

Committed Christians and moral issues

Committed Christians remain more conservative on moral issues than the British public but less than might be expected, according to an analysis of YouGov Profiles data published on 27 August 2015. The sample of committed Christians (1,707 Protestants, apparently Anglicans, and 863 Catholics) comprised members of YouGov’s online panel who both identified as Protestant or Catholic and strongly agreed with the statement that ‘my faith is important to me’. As the table below indicates, so-called ‘religious Catholics’ are more likely to favour same-sex marriage than ‘religious Protestants’, whereas for the legalization of assisted dying the position is reversed, with majorities of both groups wanting to see restrictions on abortion tightened. YouGov’s blog is at: 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/27/profile-catholic-protestant-issue/ 

% down

Religious Catholics

Religious Protestants

British public
Same-sex marriage

 

 

 
Support

50

45

66
Oppose

40

47

22
Assisted dying

 

 

 
Support

42

59

79
Oppose

48

33

13
Abortion

 

 

 
More restrictions

69

56

29
No more restrictions

17

27

47

Evangelicals and British values

The September-October 2015 issue of Idea: The Magazine of the Evangelical Alliance exclusively reveals the results of the Alliance’s online polling earlier in 2015 of a self-selecting sample of 1,730 self-identifying UK evangelicals on the subject of ‘British values’, a subject of ongoing political debate. Respondents were asked about the attributes which they judged important for being truly British, with ‘to be a Christian’ ranked only seventh on 43%, albeit 19% more than for all Britons as recorded in the British Social Attitudes Survey. Top of the list for evangelicals were ‘to respect Britain’s political institutions and laws’ (96%) and ‘to be able to speak English’ (95%), much the same priorities as for the general public. Although 93% of evangelicals thought that, historically, British values have been strongly shaped by Christianity, only 31% considered they were today, with 79% agreeing that the state’s view of British values is based on secularism rather than Christianity. Notwithstanding, 71% believed the Government right in principle to try to define and promote British values. Just 18% of evangelicals regarded Britain as a Christian country. Seemingly by way of illustration, they identified many negative traits in the population at large, notably consumerism (65%), obsession with celebrity (58%), and sexual licence/promiscuity (51%). The article can be found at:  

http://www.eauk.org/idea/british-values.cfm 

Jews and Jeremy Corbyn

British Jews tend not to be natural Labour Party supporters (only 14% of them voted for it at this year’s general election), but two-thirds (including three-fifths of Jewish Labour voters) are apparently viewing with some apprehension the prospect that Jeremy Corbyn may be elected the next Labour leader. This is according to a telephone poll of 1,011 self-identifying Jews conducted by Survation on behalf of the Jewish Chronicle on 17-19 August 2015, the headline results of which were published in that newspaper on 21 August. More than four-fifths of Jews were concerned about reports that Corbyn had referred to Hezbollah and Hamas as his friends, and about allegations that he had donated money to an organization run by Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. Seven in ten thought that politicians such as Corbyn who described themselves as anti-Zionist were in reality often or always anti-Jewish. Full data tables, including breaks by gender, age, region, and voting, are at: 

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jewish-Chronicle-Poll-August-19th4.pdf

BBC Radio 4 programmes

Programmes on religion are the least listened to genre of programming on BBC Radio 4, according to a survey of 601 medium to heavy Radio 4 listeners in the UK interviewed online by ICM Unlimited on behalf of the BBC Trust between 23 February and 10 March 2015. Just 15% claimed to listen to religious programmes, the lowest proportion of the eight categories investigated, the list being headed by news programmes (88%) and current affairs programmes (87%). Moreover, programmes on religion received the lowest ratings of the same eight categories, only 63% of their listeners evaluating them as good against 90% for listeners of news programmes. Data are extracted from ICM’s report on the survey and available at: 

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/speech_radio/research_report.pdf

GCSE O Level results

Provisional results for the June 2015 GCSE O Level examinations in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications on 20 August 2015. Those for Religious Studies (RS) are tabulated below, with comparisons for 2005. It will be seen that the number of students taking either the full or the short course in RS has fallen by 3% over the decade, a modest decrease when set against that of 13% for all subjects (or 8% for full courses alone). Moreover, this net figure disguises a doubling in entries for the full course in RS and a two-thirds reduction in candidates for the short course, which is equivalent to half a GCSE, in line with the progressive disappearance of short courses in general. For both short and full courses there has been a decennial increase of 3% in the proportion of male students taking RS, contrasting with the continuing preponderance of females at A Level RS. Full results can be found at: 

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/gcses 

GCSE RS O Level

2015

2005

% change
Full course

 

 

 
All entries

295,730

147,516

+100
% female candidates

54

57

-3
% with A*-C grades

72

69

+3
Short course

 

 

 
All entries

91,476

253,423

-64
% female candidates

48

51

-3
% with A*-C grades

58

54

+4
Full and short course

 

 

 
All entries

387,206

400,939

-3

Anglican clergy career patterns

The career paths of Anglican clergy are affected by their gender, age, and type of theological training. So concludes Kelvin Randall in his ‘Twenty Years On: The Continuing Careers of Anglican Clergy’, Theology, Vol. 118, No. 5, September-October 2015, pp. 347-53. He tracked, by means of Crockford’s Clerical Directory, the subsequent careers of those ordained to the stipendiary ministry of the Church of England or Church in Wales in 1994 (the year in which women were first ordained as priests in the Church of England). The three factors analysed especially affected the proportion still working as stipendiary clergy in 2014. The article appears in a subscription-based journal, and access options are outlined at: 

http://tjx.sagepub.com/content/118/5/347.abstract

Church of England cathedral statistics

Church of England cathedral statistics for 2014 were published on 19 August 2015. Including Westminster Abbey (a royal peculiar), the touristic appeal of English cathedrals remains impressive, visitor numbers exceeding 10 million. In terms of worship services, Christmastide continues to be the biggest draw, with 630,600 people attending during Advent and 124,800 on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, including 32,300 communicants. Easter attendees were 53,100, among them 27,100 communicants, with a further 89,300 attendees in Holy Week. Average weekly attendance was 36,600, 22% more than in 2004, the growth being in weekday rather than Sunday congregations (albeit they were down on 2013 levels). The full report is available at: 

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2279215/2014cathedralstatistics.pdf

Living with cancer

Older people living with cancer do not receive much in the way of religious or faith-based support, nor would they find it particularly useful. This is according to a report from Ipsos MORI on 24 August 2015, for which 1,004 people aged 55 and over in Britain who had received a diagnosis of cancer at any stage in their lives were interviewed online on 6-13 May 2015 on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support. Only 12% of this sample reported that they had received religious or faith-based support for their cancer, the eighth in a list of sources of support headed by information and advice (53%). Over-75s were twice as likely as those aged 55-64 to claim to have received religious or faith-based support, 19% against 10%. Asked which types of assistance they would find most useful, religious or faith-based support dropped even lower, to eleventh place for the 55-64s, being preferred by 9% of that cohort and 13% of over-75s. When the health chips are down, apparently, religion is a consolation for only a small minority. The report can be found at: 

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/SRI_Health_Macmillan_Older_People_August_2015.pdf

 

Posted in church attendance, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Je suis Charlie and Other News

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Clive D. Field

 

Last week’s news was dominated by a series of Islamist outrages in France, in which seventeen innocent people died, three police officers, four shoppers at a kosher supermarket, and ten journalists working for the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which in 2011 and 2012 had controversially published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The attack on Charlie Hebdo prompted an international campaign in defence of freedom of speech under the banner ‘Je suis Charlie’.  

Unsurprisingly, these Paris shootings were the most noticed news story of last week, according to an online poll of 2,047 Britons aged 18 and over by Populus on 7-8 January 2015. The then still unfolding events in France topped the list with 42%, far ahead of the AirAsia plane crash (9%) and the crisis in NHS hospitals (6%), which were in second and third places respectively. In another online poll, by YouGov on 8-9 January 2015 (explored in the next two items, below), only 4% of the 1,684 respondents were unaware of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, with 72% closely following the story. The implications of this new spike in radical Islamism will doubtless be the subject of further surveys in the days and weeks ahead. 

Perceptions of Islam

The toll which Islamist terrorism takes on public perceptions of Islam was exemplified in an internally commissioned module of the YouGov poll taken in the immediate aftermath of the murders at Charlie Hebdo’s offices, on 8 and 9 January 2015. Three-fifths (61%) of the sample said that they entertained a wholly or mainly negative view of Islam, the range by demographic sub-groups being from 48% (Liberal Democrat voters) to 77% (in the case of UKIP supporters). The national figure was double the proportion holding a wholly or mainly negative view of Christianity (31%). Merely 2% regarded Islam completely positively (presumably mostly if not entirely Muslims), with 23% voicing criticisms alongside a generally positive view, and 15% unable to make their minds up. Moreover, the majority (57%) said they would feel comfortable expressing criticisms of Islam to people they knew, against 25% who would feel uncomfortable, worried, or scared about doing so (two and a half times the number saying the same about criticizing Christianity). A plurality (34%) of the whole sample and a majority (51%) of UKIP voters thought the media were more willing to criticize Christianity than Islam, with 15% saying the opposite. Data tables can be accessed via a link on a blog about the survey, posted on 9 January at: 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/09/britains-cautious-attitude-criticising-islam/

Freedom of speech

A second module in the same YouGov poll, undertaken for the Sunday Times, demonstrated majority support for the media’s right to publish content which could upset some religious believers, with a minority expressing reservations. On the original publication of the cartoons of the Prophet in Charlie Hebdo, 69% deemed it acceptable and 14% unacceptable, while 63% defended other newspapers which had chosen to reprint the cartoons. More generally, 71% agreed that the media have an obligation to show controversial items which are newsworthy even if they might offend the religious views of some people, with 11% prioritizing the avoidance of causing offence and 18% undecided. Three-fifths or more also endorsed publication in newspapers or magazines of certain specific controversial religious content, as summarized below. Data tables are at:  

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/10nth9jzk9/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-090115.pdf 

% across

Allow

Disallow
Articles or drawings criticizing and questioning the beliefs and practices of any religion

70

18
Drawings, pictures, or cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed

68

17
Articles or drawings mocking and ridiculing the beliefs and practices of any religion

61

25
Articles or drawings deliberately mocking and ridiculing religious figures like Jesus or the Prophet Mohammed

60

24

Trust in religious professionals (1)

The reputation of clergy/priests for telling the truth has improved slightly during the past couple of years, according to the results of the latest Ipsos MORI veracity index, which was published on 5 January 2015 (and for which 1,116 Britons aged 15 and over were interviewed by telephone between 5 and 19 December 2014). Clergy/priests now rank fifth among eighteen groups of professionals in terms of the public’s trust in them to tell the truth, securing a confidence vote of 71% against 24% who mistrust their veracity (albeit rising to 30% with the under-35s). However, this only restores the standing of clergy/priests to 2009 levels, and they are still 14 points below the trust figure for 1983, the first year of the index. Doctors remain the group most trusted to tell the truth (by 90% of the public) and politicians generally the least (by 16%). Full computer tables for the 2014 survey will be found at: 

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/veracity%202014%20tables.pdf

Trend data back to 1983 are at:

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

Trust in religious professionals (2)

Clergy may still be trusted to tell the truth, but religious leaders are not trusted across the board, according to the newly-released British results of the WIN/Gallup International End of Year 2014 poll, the fieldwork for which was undertaken by ORB International between 19 and 28 November 2014 among an online sample of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over (the survey was also carried out in 64 other countries). Indeed, 53% of Britons claimed not to trust religious leaders, who ranked just seventh out of ten occupations in terms of the degree of trust which they commanded, 23%, only slightly ahead of the traditional trinity of professional ‘villains’ – bankers, journalists, and politicians. The full scores are as follows: 

% across

Trust

Distrust

Don’t know
Healthcare workers

82

10

9
Teachers

75

13

12
Military

67

19

14
Judges

61

20

18
Police

59

28

13
Business people

27

50

24
Religious leaders

23

53

24
Bankers

13

75

13
Journalists

10

80

11
Politicians

7

84

10

The poll also included a couple of other questions measuring the saliency of religion in respondents’ lives. In the first, asked which of five identities was most important to them, only 7% chose religion, against 35% nationality and 25% locality. In answer to the second question, and irrespective of attendance at religious services, 30% described themselves as a religious person, peaking at 45% of over-65s, with 53% declaring they were not religious and an additional 13% they were convinced atheists. These figures demonstrate a marked secularizing shift since the question was first asked by Gallup in Britain, in March 1981, when 58% identified as a religious person, 36% as not religious, and 4% as a convinced atheist. The British WIN/Gallup International 2014 data tables are at: 

http://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/UK_Tables_V3_a.pdf

Opinium on religion

Self-assessed religiosity was also one of the questions posed in a survey released by Opinium Research on 5 January 2015, for which 2,003 UK adults were interviewed online between 19 and 23 December 2014. Results were broadly comparable with those obtained by WIN/Gallup International, with 26% agreeing they were religious (10% strongly and 17% somewhat) and 52% disagreeing (17% somewhat and 35% strongly); the remaining 22% said they were neither religious nor irreligious. In light of these findings, it was unsurprising that 70% of the sample believed that it was not important to be a Christian in order for a country to be defined as a democracy, residents of Scotland particularly taking this position (82%). Data tables, which complement those for a sample of first-time voters (already reported by BRIN), are at: 

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4966_first_time_voters_-_omnibus_-_tables_0.pdf

School choice

The low score for religion in defining personal identity, reported by WIN/Gallup International, was matched by an identical vote of 7% for religious ethos as the most important factor in parental choice of a school or college for their children aged 5-18, even though respondents were allowed to select up to five options. This emerged on 9 January 2015 when ComRes released the results of a poll commissioned by NASUWT (the teachers’ union), for which 1,019 UK parents were interviewed online on 19-21 September 2014. The most influential factors determining parental choice were: a school’s location (67%), supportive staff (54%), curriculum (41%), inspection reports (39%), reputation for dealing with bullying or behaviour (38%), and buildings and facilities (36%). The relatively low value attached to religious ethos, which was the least important factor along with a smart school uniform, chimes in with some of Linda Woodhead’s YouGov research in 2013. She found that, while faith schools might be popular with parents, it is predominantly for non-religious reasons. The ComRes data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/NASUWT_Parents_views_of_schools_or_colleges_Tables_pt1.pdf

Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo’s stunning Old Testament frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, completed in 1512, has been judged the greatest work of art ever made in an online poll of 1,642 Britons by YouGov on 21-22 December 2014, netting 25% of the vote (rising to 32% among UKIP supporters). This put him well ahead of Leonardo da Vinci, who occupied second and third places with, respectively, Mona Lisa (7%) and The Last Supper (5%). YouGov conducted its survey in two stages, first asking one set of panellists, with no prompting, ‘in your opinion, what is the greatest work of art ever made?’; and then posing the identical question to a second set, inviting them to choose from the top 15 responses volunteered by the first set. The story, incorporating a link to the full data table, is featured in a blog dated 4 January 2015 on YouGov’s website at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/04/sistine-chapel-ceiling-greatest-work-art-ever-made/

Christian conferences

The majority of speakers at 22 of the largest Christian conferences and festivals in the UK continue to be men, although the proportion of women on the platform increased from 24% in 2013 to 34% in 2014. The most ‘male-heavy’ events were the Keswick Convention and the Big Church Day Out, both of which had only 14% female speakers in 2014 (with Keswick having none in 2013). The analysis was made by Natalie Collins for Project 3:28’s UK National Christian Conferences Male/Female Speaker Statistics Report, 2014, which was published on 6 January 2015 and can be downloaded from: 

http://media.wix.com/ugd/7c3a0c_faf74569d68a4609bfd143369233fca1.pdf

Missed opportunity (1)

The current issue of The Tablet (10 January 2015, p. 34) reports that there will be no 2015 print edition of the Catholic Directory of England and Wales. The title has been published on behalf of what is now the Bishops’ Conference ever since 1838 and, inter alia, has been the principal public domain source for Catholic statistics in England and Wales, albeit their quality has left much to be desired, as frequent critiques by Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre clearly demonstrate. Although the Bishops’ Conference will be launching a new online directory on 19 January, it will apparently not include any pastoral statistics, which will be the responsibility of the 22 individual dioceses. Hopefully, this decision will be rethought, and some new published collation of national Catholic data will emerge in due course.

Missed opportunity (2)

Modern overviews of religion in Wales are comparatively rare, so expectations were inevitably raised with the recent appearance of The Religious History of Wales: Religious Life and Practice in Wales from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, edited by Richard Allen and David Ceri Jones with Trystan Hughes (Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2014, vii + 281p., paperback, ISBN 978 1 86057 079 7). With a focus on ‘the religious multiplicity of Wales’, the volume comprises 21 chapters, 19 of them on particular faith traditions (there are also cross-cutting accounts of evangelicalism and ecumenism), written by 18 different authors (a mixture of academics and faith leaders). As with most such collaborative enterprises, the contributions vary somewhat in terms of length, approach, originality of research, and quality. But a clear weakness of pretty well the whole venture is the failure to engage with religious statistics in any meaningful and holistic way, and the lack of currency in those few data which are cited; thus, there are references to the results of the 2001 but not 2011 census of religion. This exemplifies other internal evidence which suggests that the book has been several years in the making and its publication delayed. BRIN readers will certainly regret the absence of a chapter or an appendix which pulls together the key historical and contemporary Welsh religious statistics.

 

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Christmas Observance and Other News

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Christmas observance

Prospect magazine has entered into the festive spirit by commissioning YouGov to run a few questions about how Britons observe Christmas, 1,927 adults being quizzed online on 13-14 November 2014. Nothing unusual about that, you might think – there are countless Christmas-themed polls at this time of year. This one, however, is a little different in that responses are broken down for three religious groups: Christians who claim to attend church, even if only on special occasions; Christians who do not attend church; and those professing no religion (the sub-sample of non-Christians was too small to be meaningful).  

Select findings are summarized in the following table, from which it will be seen that:

  • Church-attending Christians send more Christmas cards than non-attenders, with no religionists sending the least
  • Christians, whether attending or non-attending, are more likely to have a Christmas tree at home than no religionists
  • Church-attending Christians expect to be joined by more people for Christmas dinner than non-attenders or no religionists
  • Church-attending Christians claim to give more to charity than non-churchgoers and no religionists (a median of £50 for churchgoers, against £22 for all adults)

Of course, these differences are not necessarily directly attributable to religious factors per se but may well be shaped by socio-demographics known to be linked to religion, for example the younger profile of those who profess no religion, the relatively affluent profile of churchgoers, and so forth. 

%

Attending Christians

Non-attending Christians

No religion
Christmas cards expect to send

 

 

 
Under 30

47

61

78
More than 30

47

34

18
Expect to have Christmas tree at home

 

 

 
Yes

87

87

77
No

11

12

19
Expect to have Christmas dinner

 

 

 
At home

62

58

57
Elsewhere

37

38

40
Likely to be present at Christmas dinner

 

 

 
Up to three other people

29

38

42
Four or more other people

68

59

54
Charitable donations in past year

 

 

 
Nothing

5

8

15
Under £100

52

67

62
More than £100

35

15

14

Peter Kellner has an article about the survey in the current issue of Prospect (No. 226, January 2015, pp. 14-15). The text of the article, minus the graphics presenting the results, is also freely available online at: 

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/opinions/do-we-still-love-christmas

Full data tables for the poll are at: 

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8fkxtrmo9e/Prospect_Results_141114_Christmas_W.pdf

Leaving Christ out of Christmas

Asked what most excites them about Christmas, very few Europeans in a seven-nation Eurotrack survey by YouGov, conducted online on 20-26 November 2014, said they were excited about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. In Britain, where 1,641 were interviewed, the proportion was 13%, with a range elsewhere from 7% in Sweden to 16% in Germany. Britons get far more excited about spending time with friends and family (60%), giving presents (33%), Christmas food (31%), having a break from work (28%), and decorating their home (14%). Although 77% of the 97% of Britons who said they celebrated Christmas agreed that its ‘true meaning … has been lost’, it would appear that it was not the religious meaning which they had in mind. Topline results are at:   

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/u9prscml0t/November_Eurotrack_Xmas_Website.pdf

Christmas knowledge

Also characteristic of this time of year is the survey reminding us how relatively little some people know about the nativity story. The latest was commissioned by Brent Cross Shopping Centre, for which Mortar interviewed 1,000 UK children aged 5-12 between 15 November and 1 December 2014, using multiple choice questions. Among the findings:

  • 52% of children thought Christmas Day is the birthday of Santa Claus
  • 20% identified Jesus Christ as a footballer with Chelsea FC
  • 35% believed He was born at the South Pole
  • 27% believed He was born in a church
  • 25% thought the shepherds used Google Maps to find Jesus
  • 15% claimed the Three Kings gave Jesus a wand, tiara, and wings as gifts

Religions other than Christianity fared no better, with 30% of children suggesting Chanukah, the Jewish festival of light, is a Japanese cartoon. The Brent Cross press release is at: 

http://www.brentcross.co.uk/events/nativity-naivety

Freedom of speech

One-third (31%) of 1,219 Britons who work on a full- or part-time basis feel that they cannot speak freely about religion in their place of employment, according to a YouGov poll for New Culture Forum on 15-16 October 2014, published on 9 December. This is less than feel constrained about discussing immigration (36%) but more than are inhibited to raise moral and ethical issues (27%) or their party political preferences (20%). Londoners (44%) and UKIP voters (41%) reported being least able to speak freely about religion at work. The survey did not explicitly probe whether the concerns arose from the perceived reactions of colleagues or employers to open discussion of these four topics or fear of prosecution under the law. However, in an accompanying report (Speakers Cornered: Twenty-First Century Britain’s Culture of Silence), New Culture Forum seeks to use the poll as evidence that free speech is under attack. Data tables are at:    

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/cpzcl8kurq/NewCultureForumResults_141016_freedom_of_speech_w.pdf

Social integration

Places of worship are the most successful setting for mixing people of different social grades and ethnicities, and second most successful (after sporting events) for integrating people of different ages. This is according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph (7 December 2014, main section, p. 21) which draws upon (as yet) unpublished research by Ipsos MORI for the Social Integration Commission, for which 4,269 Britons aged 13-80 were interviewed online between 17 and 28 January 2014. The newspaper report can be read at: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11276878/Churches-are-best-social-melting-pots-in-modern-Britain.html

Pope Francis

Apart from in Greece (which is overwhelmingly Orthodox), Pope Francis is viewed unfavourably by more people in Britain (17%) than in any other EU country included in the latest report from the Pew Research Center, published on 11 December 2014. With the same exception, as can be seen from the table below, he is regarded very favourably by just 20% of Britons, about one-third the proportion in Italy and Poland, with their strong Catholic traditions, and half the level in the United States. Another 45% in Britain view the Pope somewhat favourably, producing an aggregate favourability rating of 65%, compared with a median of 84% in Europe, 78% in the United States, and 72% in Latin America. The survey was undertaken in 43 countries across the globe, with 1,000 adults interviewed by telephone in Britain between 17 March and 8 April 2014, and the report with topline findings can be read at:  

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/12/Pew-Research-Center-Pope-Report-FINAL-December-11-2014.pdf

% regarding Pope Francis

Very favourably

Somewhat favourably

Unfavourably
Italy

66

25

5
Poland

57

35

3
United States

38

40

11
Spain

34

50

9
France

30

58

11
Germany

25

57

11
Great Britain

20

45

17
Greece

8

41

24

BRIN source database update

The annual update of the BRIN source database has just taken place. New entries have been created for 151 British religious statistical sources (disproportionately sample surveys), of which 109 date from 2014 and 42 from previous years. This brings the total of sources described in the database to 2,394. The 2014 sources include many important surveys, a large number relating to Islam or Islamism (especially in Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria). However, there have also been several more general religious surveys (among them two modules in Wave 4 of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, which has a very substantial sample, and is yet to be analysed in detail on BRIN), as well as polls bearing on the debate about whether Britain is (or should be) a Christian country. A majority (but by no means all) of the 2014 sources have already featured on the BRIN news blog throughout the year. Moreover, 43 existing entries have been updated, mostly by additional subject keywords and/or publication references. The source database, which is searchable in multiple ways, can be found at: 

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

 

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Jesus Test and Other News

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

The Jesus test

Jesus Christ is not often dragged into the contemporary British political arena, but, when He is, people tend to ask what He would do or think about a current situation (or, in a few cases, even claim to know what His views are). In what the company describes as a ‘new thought experiment’, YouGov probed the British public on how they imagined Jesus would react to four political issues of the present day: immigration, same-sex marriage, (re)nationalization of the railways, and the reintroduction of the death penalty for murder. Interviews were conducted online on 24-25 November 2014 with 1,890 adults aged 18 and over.  

Needless to say, many respondents found the task impossible, with between 34% and 56% stating that they did not know what position Jesus would have taken on each issue (rising to 39% to 58% for those professing no religion). On railway nationalization, the views imputed to Jesus were much the same as those expressed by Britons overall in another survey, perhaps indicating that interviewees might have been simply playing back their own attitudes, not recognizing this as a moral/religious issue at all. On same-sex marriage, a plurality (35%) thought Jesus would have supported it, albeit this was a lower level of endorsement (by 19 points) than was found among the electorate at large last year. This difference presumably reflects popular knowledge of opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage by the major Christian Churches and the assumption that this must be rooted in Christ’s teaching.  

On the remaining two questions, Jesus and the public were apparently at loggerheads. Thus, whereas 32% more believed that Jesus would oppose than approve the reintroduction of the death penalty (49% versus 17%), in August 2014 YouGov discovered a 6% margin (45% versus 39%) for the contrary position among electors. The gap was even wider when it came to immigration, with 76% of Britons quizzed by YouGov this month wanting to see tighter controls, including (for some) the cessation of all immigration. Jesus, on the other hand, was felt to favour fewer or no restrictions on immigration (39%) compared with 15% who judged Him as supporting tighter controls.  

In a blog accompanying the survey, dated 26 November, YouGov rationalized it thus: ‘Comparing the views that people hold themselves with what they imagine Jesus would think suggests interesting insights as to how virtuous, or at least Christian, they consider their own political views to be.’ The blog has sparked a lively debate, with some comments being fairly dismissive of the whole venture, such as ‘one of the most idiotic surveys of YouGov … ever!’ or ‘most ridiculous set of questions I’ve ever been asked on YouGov’. The blog, incorporating a link to the full data tables including breaks by religious affiliation as well as standard demographics, is at: 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/11/26/the-jesus-test/

There is also an appraisal and analysis of the poll in a blog on the May2015 website, which concludes: ‘What would Jesus do? If we offer an opinion, it’s likely to be shaped by our own’. This can be found at: 

http://may2015.com/ideas/we-tend-to-think-jesus-would-do-what-we-would-do/

Some BRIN readers will doubtless be sceptical about the worth of such an investigation, and its value is certainly diminished by the high proportion of ‘don’t knows’. On balance, one reading of the data might be that they rather indicate people form their political opinions without much reference to religious factors. 

Pope Francis on the European Union

Talking of religion and politics, Pope Francis seems to have set the cat among the pigeons by a speech to the European Parliament on 25 November 2014 in which he made several forthright remarks about the current state of the European Union (EU), which he likened to a grandmother who was no longer fertile and vibrant. In a poll for The Times Redbox on 26-27 November 2014, YouGov asked 1,970 Britons whether they thought the Pope had spoken the truth about the EU and whether he had been right to express his opinion at all. Overall, 62% felt that what he had said about the EU was true (rising to 73% of Conservatives, 71% of UKIP voters, and 74% of over-60s), while 54% defended his right to speak out (against 22% who judged him in the wrong, with 24% undecided). Data tables are at: 

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/yebku7qamp/RedBoxResults_141127_Pope_Francis_Website.pdf

Islamic State

The autumn has seen a marked diminution of interest on the part of pollsters and their clients in surveying public attitudes to the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. But on 25 November 2014 ICM Research released the topline findings from a new multinational poll which had been commissioned by the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya. Based on telephone interviews between 7 and 11 November, including 1,002 in Britain, it revealed an appreciably greater appetite for their country’s participation in military intervention against IS among Britons than the French or, more especially, Germans. The Anglo-German difference is especially striking, given that the identical proportion (two-thirds) in each nation agreed that European involvement in military action against IS would increase the threat posed by radical Islamism in Europe, whereas only 45% of the French shared this view. Results are summarized below, while data tables are at: 

http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/RS-Airstrikes-Comb%20-%20Nov%2014.pdf

% supporting country’s involvement in

Britain

France

Germany
Airstrikes against IS

65

49

35
Ground operations against IS

53

41

20
Both

49

37

16
Neither

18

28

55

Also pertinent to the above is another recent poll, not previously reported on BRIN, by ComRes for ITV News on 24-26 October 2014, 2,004 Britons being interviewed online. This showed that a plurality (49%) agreed that the rise of IS was probably a direct result of British and American military involvement in the Middle East, with 26% dissenting and the identical proportion undecided. At the same time, 42% believed that Afghanistan would face a similar fate to Iraq and Syria under IS unless international forces remained in the country. Data tables are at: 

http://comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_27th_October_2014.pdf

Youth social action

Two-fifths of UK young persons aged 10-20 have participated in some meaningful form of social action (defined as ‘practical action in the service of others to create positive change’) during the past 12 months, but the proportion is slightly higher among those who profess a religion (43%) than those who do not (37%). The headline appears in Youth Social Action in the UK, 2014, which was published on 24 November 2014, and based on research undertaken by Ipsos MORI for the Cabinet Office and Step up to Serve. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,038 young persons between 11 and 22 September 2014. The report is available at:   

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/sri-ecf-youth-social-action-in-the-uk-2014.pdf

Liking the Church of England

YouGov Profiles, a new interactive segmentation and media planning tool, enables profiles to be built of people who ‘like’ a particular brand, person, or thing, showing what differentiates them from their natural ‘comparison set’ in terms of demographics, lifestyle, personality, brands, favourite entertainments, online activity, and media consumption. Statistical relationships between those who ‘like’ the brand, person, or thing in question and the ‘comparison set’ are expressed as ‘Z scores’, under 1 being weak, from 1 to 2 medium, and 2 and above strong. The source database comprises information gathered from YouGov’s 200,000-strong UK survey panel. The profiler can be searched at: 

https://yougov.co.uk/profiler#/

You may well struggle to extract data about specific religious groups, either because the sub-sample is rather small (for instance, there are only 104 individuals who ‘like’ the Catholic Church) or because there is nothing directly relevant; thus, keying in ‘atheists’ generates data for panel members who ‘like’ The Ruts (music artist), The Mist (film), and The Rats (novel). Moreover, any profiles recovered should not be interpreted as an approximation of a national cross-section of the group concerned. As YouGov explains, what is revealed is ‘the quintessential, rather than the average, member of that group’. BRIN strongly recommends that you read the FAQs before starting to use the tool; these are at: 

https://yougov.co.uk/find-solutions/profiles/

By way of illustration, we can take the Church of England, whose YouGov profile features in the latest edition of the Church Times (28 November 2014, p. 4), based on the 1,187 individuals who said they ‘like’ that Church. Although certain of their attributes and behaviours are predictable, and consistent with what is known from other research, in some respects they are, as the Church Times puts it, ‘off-beam’, including an unexplained preponderance in the Midlands and North-West. Still, if you want to amuse yourself by finding out what some ‘Anglicans’ eat, where they shop, what they watch on television, which newspapers they read, and so forth – all in relation to their ‘comparison set’ – then go to: 

https://yougov.co.uk/profiler#/Church_of_England/demographics

Cathedral statistics

Cathedral Statistics, 2013 was published by the Church of England’s Research and Statistics Department on 24 November 2014, comprising 13 tables, 12 figures, explanatory notes, and commentary. It includes comparative data back to 2003, albeit methodological changes significantly impact comparisons for Holy Week and Advent. The finding headlined by the Church was the increase in midweek attendances at cathedrals since 2003 (doubling in the case of adults), although Sunday congregations have remained more stable during the past decade. Easter attendances and communicants were slightly down on 2012 levels, those for Christmas somewhat improved, but turnout at both these festivals is notoriously variable, influenced by their timing (whether Easter is early or late, the day of the week on which Christmas falls) and the state of the weather. Visitor numbers rose to 10,248,000 (but were still less than in 2003), to which Westminster Abbey added another 2,000,000. The report, which is the subject of a sober editorial in the current issue of the Church Times (‘these figures offer challenges as well as reassurance to cathedrals’, 28 November 2014, p. 14) can be read at:  

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/50eac70851c7245ce1ce00c45/files/Cathedral_Statistics.pdf

FutureFirst

The latest issue (No. 36, December 2014) of FutureFirst, the bimonthly bulletin of Brierley Consultancy, has just been published. As usual, packed into its six A4 pages are sundry news stories about recent socio-religious research, this time including a couple of pieces with BRIN connections. Research by David Voas into the factors promoting or inhibiting growth in the Church of England is summarized in ‘Anglican Growth’, on pp. 1 and 4, while Clive Field writes on p. 6 about ‘Attitudes to Church and Clergy in Britain’ (based on his recent article in Contemporary British History). Peter Brierley also has an analysis on p. 3 of the YouGov poll of Anglican clergy conducted for Linda Woodhead this summer; he especially highlights gender variations within theological positions. New subscriptions to FutureFirst cost just £20 per calendar year; contact peter@brierleyres.com for more information.   

Advent calendars

Today (30 November 2014) is the first Sunday in Advent, but research by the Church of England Newspaper (28 November 2014, p. 1) has revealed that only 31 (3%) of the 976 Advent calendars on sale in stores on London’s Oxford Street had a religious theme. The dominant images were of One Direction, Hello Kitty, Frozen, and Santa Claus. 

Religion in the First World War

The secondary literature on religion and the First World War in Britain has disproportionately focused on ‘trench religion’, the faith of the fighting men and the experiences of their chaplains. Using statistical evidence, wherever possible, Clive Field takes a look at the domestic front in a new article entitled ‘Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning: Religious Belonging in Britain during the First World War’, War & Society, Vol. 33, No. 4, October 2014, pp. 244-68. He shows that church attendance rose briefly at the start of the war but fell away thereafter in the Protestant tradition, accelerating a pre-existing trend, which was not reversed after 1918. The disruption caused by the war to the everyday life of organized religion, Field suggests, probably accounted for the decrease, rather more than loss of faith. Church membership also declined during the war in the Anglican and mainstream Free Churches, albeit not for other denominations and faiths, but it temporarily revived after the war. This was not the case for non-member adherents and Sunday scholars whose reduction was more continuous. Access options for the article are outlined at: 

http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/0729247314Z.00000000041

 

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news, visualisation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Halloween and Other News

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Halloween

Halloween is almost upon us again! It is next Friday (31 October 2014). Strictly speaking, it is All Hallows’ Eve in the Christian calendar, but since the Millennium it has been transformed in the UK into a seasonal festival in the American mould, surpassed only by Christmas and Easter in its value in the commercial calendar. In 2001 it was estimated that only £12 million of Halloween-themed products were sold in this country, whereas today the value of the Halloween market is said to range from £230 million (according to Mintel) to £443 million (Webloyalty/Conlumino), with Planet Retail’s forecast being £330 million. The fact that Halloween this year falls on a Friday and during school half-term breaks is thought likely to increase its observance still further. Since average spend per consumer on Halloween remains relatively low, there is felt to be quite a lot of potential for ongoing growth.

Such is the commercial importance of Halloween, especially to the supermarkets, that it now drives a fair amount of market research, much of which remains locked up behind paywalls. However, the Webloyalty/Conlumino report was put into the public domain on 24 October 2014 and can be briefly summarized here. Of the total Halloween spending of £421 million in 2013, 33% was on costumes, 31% on food, 21% on decorations, and 15% on entertainment and stationery. Two-thirds of consumers questioned in September 2014 anticipated celebrating Halloween in some shape or form the following month (the most common activities expected to be giving out sweets to trick or treaters and carving a pumpkin), and 57% thought they would buy something for Halloween, with £11 the likely amount of money to be parted with. Despite this apparent enthusiasm, 63% agreed that Halloween is not a real festival but a commercial opportunity, 56% claimed to be indifferent towards it, and 50% said they would not open the door to trick or treaters. Asked whether Halloween is bad because it focuses on the occult, 23% agreed, 36% disagreed, and 41% were neutral. The Webloyalty/Conlumino report is at:

http://www.webloyalty.co.uk/images/uk-halloween-research-webloyalty-2014.pdf

Meanwhile, 42% of 2,067 Britons have told Populus, in an online poll for Hubbub (the charity behind Pumpkin Rescue – no, we jest not) carried out on 10-12 October 2014, they have at some time bought a pumpkin to carve or decorate for Halloween. Those professing no religion were slightly more likely to have done so (45%) than Christians (42%) or non-Christians (36%). After hollowing out and carving the pumpkin, most respondents throw the insides away, but one-third claimed to have cooked with them. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Hubbub-Pumpkin-Research-Full-Tables.pdf

Contemporary beliefs

Doubtless also prompted by the imminence of Halloween, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! London attraction released the headline results of a survey into UK beliefs on 28 October 2014, which were initially picked up by The Times and Daily Star. The study was commissioned by Ripley’s from 72 Point and conducted online by the latter’s polling partner, OnePoll, between 7 and 10 October 2014. The sample comprised 500 children aged 8-12 and 1,500 adults aged 18 and over. Full data tables are not available, nor (one suspects) are they ever likely to be, but there are two press releases which can be read at:

http://www.ripleyslondon.com/believe-aliens-god/

and

http://www.72point.com/coverage/brits-aliens/

As with other media-focused polls investigating the supernatural, it is not always easy to reconcile the findings with those from other sample surveys into religious and cognate beliefs. This is especially so in relation to belief in God, which fluctuates markedly in surveys and is heavily dependent upon question-wording, and particularly upon the way in which ‘God’ is defined. For the record, this is the Ripley’s league table showing how comparatively badly God fares when pitted against other extra-terrestrial beings:

Belief in (%)

Adults

Children
Ghosts

55

64
Aliens

51

64
UFOs

42

50
Angels

27

27
God

25

33

YouGov@Cambridge polling

New YouGov polling on defence and foreign policy issues has been released in connection with this year’s YouGov@Cambridge Forum, which was held on 23 October 2014. Here we focus on the Islamist-related aspects, concerning attitudes to a range of actions which could be taken against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq (fieldwork on 13-14 October 2014) and Syria (14-15 October 2014) and the Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria (25-26 September 2014). Samples of approximately 2,000 adults were interviewed online for each survey. Topline results are summarized below, but detailed data tables can be accessed at:

http://cambridge.yougov.com/archive/

Support for

Against IS in Iraq

Against IS in Syria

Against Boko Haram in Nigeria
RAF air strikes

60

60

38
Unmanned aerial drone strikes

61

62

46
Royal Navy missile strikes

58

58

37
Supplying heavy weapons to local forces

45

NA

24
Supplying small arms to local forces

47

NA

29
Sending in regular UK troops

30

NA

19
Sending humanitarian supplies via charities

67

NA

63
RAF dropping humanitarian supplies

79

NA

71
Sending UK military advisers

63

NA

62
Sending UK special forces to rescue hostages

68

65

55
Cooperating with Iranian government

NA

52

NA
Cooperating with Russian government

NA

49

NA
Cooperating with Syrian government

NA

37

NA

Perception and reality

‘The British public are often very wrong about the basic make-up of their population and the scale of key social issues’, Ipsos MORI has concluded from its analysis (published on 29 October 2014) of a multinational survey of knowledge about nine topics, two of them religion-related. The two pertinent questions asked were ‘Out of every 100 people how many do you think are Muslim?’ and ‘Out of every 100 people how many do you think are Christian?’ Average guesses were computed from the answers given and compared with the true national proportions. Fieldwork was conducted online between 12 and 26 August 2014 among a sample of 1,000 Britons aged 16-64 via Ipsos Global @dvisor.

As in most of the other 13 nations surveyed, Britons massively overestimated the proportion of Muslims in the population, the average guess being 21%, which was almost four times the actual number of Muslims recorded in the 2011 census. They likewise underestimated the presence of professing Christians, suggesting they only represented 39% of the population whereas the census recorded 59%. These ‘perils of perception’, as Ipsos MORI describes them, doubtless contribute to the growth of Islamophobia and to the sense that Christian tradition and culture are being undermined. Results for Britain and major Western European and North American countries are shown below. They have been abstracted from a press release and slide show which can be found at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3466/Perceptions-are-not-reality-Things-the-world-gets-wrong.aspx

%

Overestimate of Muslims

Underestimate of Christians
Belgium

+23

-18
France

+23

-14
Germany

+13

0
Great Britain

+16

-20
Italy

+16

-14
Spain

+14

-15
United States

+14

-22
Canada

+18

-21
Posted in Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anglican Clergy Poll and Other News

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Anglican clergy poll

As anticipated in our post of 12 October 2014, the complete results of the YouGov survey of Anglican clergy were published on 23 October. The poll was designed by Professor Linda Woodhead and commissioned on behalf of Lancaster University, Westminster Faith Debates, and other partners in connection with the current series of debates on the Future of the Church of England. Respondents comprised 1,509 clergy aged 70 and under from the Anglican Churches in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland who answered 30 questions online between 14 August and 8 September 2014. They had been selected on a random basis (every third name) from Crockford’s Clerical Directory, and questionnaires sent to the 5,000 of the resulting sample of 6,000 for whom email addresses were available. The response rate thus appears to be around 30%.  Full tables (with breaks by gender, age, year of ordination, country, and ministerial role) are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/5f5s31fk47/Results-for-Anglican-Clergy-Survey-08092014.pdf

Additionally, a press release has been issued in which Woodhead makes the following points:

  • Anglican clergy are united by a strong faith in a personal God and commitment to the parish system, 83% in each case
  • They are marked out from lay Anglicans and the rest of the population by their left-wing, ‘old Labour’, views, including attachment to a generous welfare system
  • They tend towards morally conservative positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and – especially – assisted dying
  • Attitudes are often sharply split between the third of clergy who are evangelical and the rest, the former tending to dissent from the official Church line that Anglicans should learn to ‘disagree well’

An abbreviated version of the press release can be found at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2014/cofe-clergy-concerned-with-protecting-the-welfare-budget/

Some of the questions were specific to the clergy, but others replicated those put to a sample of adult Britons by YouGov on behalf of Westminster Faith Debates in June 2013. This permits comparisons between the clergy, the general population, and the Anglican section thereof, as follows:

% down

Clergy

Britons

Anglicans
Since 1945 British society has become

better

38

27

25
worse

34

51

60
Britain has benefited from immigration in

some ways

96

60

52
no ways

2

32

41
Welfare budget should be

reduced

17

46

52
maintained

31

24

23
increased

44

15

13
Abortion time limit of 24 weeks should be

increased

5

6

5
kept

32

40

39
reduced

43

29

33
Same-sex marriage is

right

39

46

38
wrong

51

37

47
Legal prohibition on assisted suicide should be

kept

70

14

14
changed

22

76

77

Other surveys of Anglican clergy have been carried out in the past, but have mostly had a different focus, on religious beliefs, aspects of ministry, or psychological type. Comparisons with the current YouGov study are therefore difficult. However, we may note that clerical support for disestablishment appears to have diminished somewhat over the years. Whereas Gallup found it running at 30% of full-time clergy in December 1984 and 35% in August 1996, it had fallen to 14% 30 years later, 81% wishing to retain all or some of the trappings of establishment.

Heritage at risk

The latest debate in the Future of the Church of England series was devoted to heritage, and it was fitting that, on the very same day the debate took place (23 October 2014), English Heritage published the 2014 Heritage at Risk Register. This is the first since the register began in 1998 to include a fairly comprehensive inventory of places of worship judged to be at risk. In the past year the organization has visited all those considered to be in poor or very bad condition on the basis of local reports. As a result, it is now known that, of the 14,775 listed places of worship in England, 887 or 6.0% are at risk, accounting for 15.4% of all 5,753 sites on the at risk register. The greatest number (805) are Anglican. The regional breakdown of at risk places of worship is shown below. To search the register, and for more information about it, go to:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/heritage-at-risk-2014/

 

Places of worship at risk

As % of all sites at risk
South-West

163

9.6
South-East

116

20.9
London

73

11.3
East

115

25.8
East Midlands

105

26.1
West Midlands

76

17.4
North-West

115

24.0
Yorkshire

98

12.6
North-East

26

9.1
ENGLAND

887

15.4

In a complementary move, ChurchCare, the Church of England’s national agency for supporting its places of worship, has been working, with the financial assistance of English Heritage, to develop the Church Heritage Record, a publicly accessible database of church buildings integrated with a Geographic Information System. This will have an educational and engagement mission alongside its primary role in church planning. When launched in Spring 2015, it will contain over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England, covering a wide variety of topics from architectural history and archaeology to worship and the surrounding natural environment.

Number problems

The current issue (Vol. 16, No. 2, 2014) of DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions is a theme issue devoted to ‘The Problem with Numbers in the Study of Religions’. Guest edited and introduced by Bettina Schmidt, it contains seven substantive research articles offering case studies of Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, and the British Isles (the latter including a further essay by Martin Stringer on superdiversity with reference to religion in Handsworth, Bitmingham in the 2011 census, as well as a qualitative study by Simeon Wallis of English adolescents who identify with no religion). There is an insightful afterword by BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas (pp. 116-24), which both offers a commentary on the individual papers and, drawing on his own research, illuminates the ‘serious problems of validity and reliability in measuring religion’ while simultaneously advancing a compelling case for quantification. The issue is freely available online at:

http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/DISKUS/index.php/DISKUS/issue/view/8

From the British perspective, perhaps the single most important contribution is by Kevin Brice on ‘Counting the Converts: Investigating Change of Religion in Scotland and Estimating Change in Religion in England and Wales Using Data from Scotland’s Census,  2001’ (pp. 45-69). Factoring in ethnicity, this cross-references the questions on religion of upbringing and current religion asked in Scotland in 2001 (but not in 2011, when only current religion was investigated) in order to quantify life-cycle change in religion, albeit not differentiating between Christian denominations. The overall extent of religious change was 13.5% in Scotland in 2001 (ranging from 2.2% for Pakistanis to 21.1% for Black Caribbeans), with 85.7% of all changes involving a move to no religion, and with leaving Christianity for no religion a very dominant trend for almost all ethnic groups. Notwithstanding, there were also subsidiary trends, including a not insignificant movement from none to Christian. This is a valuable piece of historical analysis, with the detail embedded in 11 tables, but its subsequent application to produce estimates for religious change in England and Wales in 2011 inevitably raises some doubts, with Brice himself conceding that some of the estimates are ‘far from robust’. As Voas suggests in his afterword, perhaps greater recourse to the potential of sample surveys for measuring religious change would have been revealing.

Church growth

Further to the release of its substantive findings at the beginning of 2014, the Church Growth Research Programme of the Church of England has been conducting some follow-on work. Particular mention should be made of a new report from Fiona Tweedie entitled Stronger as One? Amalgamations and Church Attendance. She finds that in urban areas benefice structure does not have any statistically significant effect on the likelihood of growth or decline in attendance, and that in other areas the relationship between the two variables is complex, but with no evidence to suggest that the more churches are amalgamated, the greater the chances of numerical decrease. Moreover, attendance patterns in parishes with a team ministry do not differ substantially from those without. In letters to the Church of England Newspaper (17 October 2014) and Church Times (24 October 2014), her conclusions have been challenged by David Goodhew and Bob Jackson, who point to ‘problematic data’, ‘technical statistical issues’, and failure to distinguish between different sizes of church as the source of their misgivings. The 45-page Stronger as One? report can be read at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Reports/Stronger_as_One1.pdf

A further conference in connection with the Church Growth Research Programme has now been scheduled for 4 December 2014, at the Cutlers Hall, Sheffield, with BRIN’s David Voas as one of the keynote speakers. Entitled ‘From Evidence to Action’, conference details can be found at:

http://www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk/news/23

Islamic State

The so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria was the fifth most noticed news story of last week, mentioned by just 7% of 2,038 Britons interviewed online by Populus on 22 and 23 October 2014. It had been in second position the previous week and in the top spot (currently occupied by the Ebola outbreak) for several weeks before that. In third place last week was the (Islamist-related) shooting in Ottawa, noted by 9%.

In another newly-released Populus poll for We Believe in Israel and the Jewish Leadership Council, and principally concerned with British attitudes toward Israel, 77% entertained a very cold and unfavourable view of IS (the bottom of a 10-point scale), with a further 11% regarding them unfavourably (points 1-4). Nevertheless, 5% held IS in a favourable light (points 6-10), rising to 14% among the 18-24s. The word most often used to describe Israel was Jewish (40%), 63% endorsing Israel’s right to exist as a majority Jewish state, albeit more than two-thirds of these qualified their support with the proviso that Israel should agree to the existence of a separate Palestinian state. Fieldwork was conducted online between 10 and 12 October 2014, among a sample of 2,067. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/OmIsrael_BPC.pdf

The latest Ipsos MORI Political Monitor asked a half-sample of 501 adults, interviewed by telephone on 11-14 October 2014, what role the British military should play against IS. In reply, 59% backed their deployment abroad to fight IS, 17% giving as their reason the direct threat to British interests and 42% the threat to other people’s rights and freedom. Opposition to the intervention of Britain’s armed forces against IS stood at 34%. The question was somewhat ambiguous because intervention could have been interpreted to mean RAF bombing of IS, the engagement of British troops in Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS, or the commitment of British ground troops in direct combat with IS, the first two of which are already happening. Data tables are at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Oct2014_PolMon_Tables_Web_foreignpolicy.pdf

In its most recent poll for The Sunday Times, undertaken on 23-24 October 2014 on the basis of 2,069 online interviews, YouGov found that 76% of the population supported the removal of British citizenship from those who possess dual nationality or are naturalized Britons and who have been fighting with IS, with only 10% opposed. Two-thirds (with 19% against) also wanted to see Parliament change the law so that British citizenship could be removed from people born in Britain and who have no other nationality but have been fighting with IS. Responding to the Islamist gun attack on the Canadian Parliament, 77% thought there was a risk of a similar attack occurring in this country. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tg001pwhwn/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-241014.pdf

Media coverage

Thanks and congratulations are due to regular BRIN contributor Ben Clements for his two recent posts on religion data in the British Election Study 2015 panel. These seem to have excited some media interest, with coverage thus far in The Catholic Herald, 24 October 2014, p. 6 (also quoting BRIN co-director David Voas); The Tablet, 25 October 2014, p. 29; and The Times, 25 October 2014, main section, p. 92.

 

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Latest Surveys on Islamic State

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

With the referendum on Scottish independence now held, polling attention has begun to swing back to the crisis created by the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Here we report the studies which have appeared since our last blog post on 21 September 2014, arranged in chronological order of fieldwork. It should be noted that no survey was taken completely after the parliamentary debate and vote, on 26 September, in favour of British involvement in air strikes against IS in Iraq. All polls were conducted online among representative samples of British adults aged 18 and over. Topline results only are given below, but breaks by standard demographics can be found by following the links to the full data tables.

8-9 September 2014 [published 26 September 2014]

Asked to choose the most important of five current news stories, 40% of the 2,099 interviewed by YouGov for Newsweek put IS and the beheading of foreign captives in first place, just ahead of the Scottish independence referendum on 35%. The Ebola outbreak in Africa came third, on 11%, with the pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge and the leaking online of nude photos of celebrities trailing at 2% and 1% respectively. However, when asked to rate the same stories according to the degree of their personal interest in them, the Scottish referendum (40%) relegated IS into second position on 25%. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ex0m19sls5/Newsweek_Results_140909_Kate_Middleton_Website_140926.pdf

21-22 September 2014

How should we (and the media) describe the Islamist organization which has advanced throughout parts of Iraq and Syria during the summer, and which has recently rebranded itself as ‘Islamic State’? Britons seem unclear as to how to answer this question, according to a YouGov poll among a sample of 1,671. Only 19% personally elected for IS, against 16% preferring ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the group’s earlier title), 11% Un-Islamic State (a purely made-up name, by British imams, suggesting the group’s activities are the antithesis of Islam), 27% some other designation, with 28% undecided. By contrast, 49% of Americans chose ISIS, even though the Obama administration has tended to use ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, another former title). In both Britain and America just one-third thought the media should cite the term favoured by the organization concerned, i.e. IS in this instance, the plurality recommending use of the most accurate nomenclature, with 13% of Britons and 7% of Americans urging a deliberately insulting description. British data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/v2v4emmnwp/InternalResults_140922_IslamicState_W.pdf

and American tables at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/px7wyur5cz/tabs_OPI_IS_name_20140922.pdf

22-23 September 2014

A plurality (46%) disapproved of Britain and the USA sending ground troops back into Iraq in order to help fight IS, with 29% approving and 25% undecided, in a YouGov poll of 2,141. However, of those who were opposed or uncertain, 39% wanted the option of deploying ground troops to be kept open. Data tables are at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/25/full-results-troops-iraq/

24-25 September 2014

IS was the most noticed news story of the week for 34% of the 2,128 Britons interviewed by Populus, pushing the Scottish independence referendum into second place on 25%, and no other story scoring more than 4%. The question was entirely open-ended.

24-25 September 2014

Support for RAF air strikes against IS in Iraq increased to 57%, up from 53% on 18-19 September, in this YouGov poll for The Sun of 1,972 Britons. There was also a majority (51%) for RAF air strikes against IS in Syria, although the government is not currently pursuing this option. A plurality (48%) backed strikes in both Iraq and Syria. The majority (54%) disapproved of the commitment of ground troops. Endorsement of RAF involvement in the dropping of humanitarian aid to the victims of IS rose by six points during the week, to reach 81%. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9cr35g8rud/SunResults_140925_Iraq_IS_W.pdf

24-26 September 2014

A plurality of 45% agreed with the proposition that Britain should take part in air strikes against IS in both Iraq and Syria, in this ComRes survey of 2,003 for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday. One-quarter (26%) disagreed, with 29% undecided. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/IoS_SM_Political_Poll_28th_September_2014_8723.pdf

25-26 September 2014

Attitudes to the IS crisis remained fairly steady in the latest YouGov study, for The Sunday Times, among a sample of 1,992 adults, albeit support for RAF air strikes against IS nudged up to 58% overall and 53% in the case of IS in Syria. There was continued opposition (by 68%) to the payment of ransoms to free British hostages held by IS, but 33% felt there was more that the government could be doing to rescue them. The threat posed by IS was deemed sufficiently strong to warrant Britain co-operating with the governments of Iran (54%) and Syria (36%), whatever their faults. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/j77kqbuqsf/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-260914.pdf

Tracker

The latest tracker of YouGov polling on IS can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/efwcliflou/YG-Archives-Pol-Iraq-Syria-and-ISIS-140925.pdf

Muslim predisposition to radicalism

At least 500 British Muslims are currently believed to be waging jihad in the Middle East, not all of them fighting with IS. Some insights into what might be the drivers for predisposition to Islamist extremism among young Muslims are offered in a new article published on 24 September 2014 in the open access, online journal PLOS One (Vol. 9, No. 9): Kamaldeep Bhui, Brian Everitt, and Edgar Jones, ‘Might Depression, Psychosocial Adversity, and Limited Social Assets Explain Vulnerability to and Resistance against Violent Radicalisation?’ The authors’ question was answered through face-to-face interviews, conducted by Ipsos MORI in 2011-12, with a quota sample of 608 men and women aged 18-45 of Pakistani or Bangladeshi family origin and of Muslim heritage living in East London and Bradford.

Radicalization was measured through a 16-item module exploring sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. Such sympathies were not widely expressed but, where they were, they were found to be most prevalent among those reporting depression and the importance of religion in their everyday life. Conversely, resistance to radicalization was associated with larger numbers of social contacts, less social capital (in terms of satisfaction with residential area, trust in neighbours, and feelings of safety), unavailability for work due to housekeeping or disability, and not being born in the UK. While calling for more research, the authors conclude that their findings point towards a preventive approach to radicalization, through tackling depression, promoting wellbeing, and, possibly, enhancing social capital. The text of the article and two supplementary tables (containing results from the 16 Likert-style radicalization statements) is located at:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0105918#s5

Other aspects of the same research were published in a previous article in PLOS One (Vol. 9, No. 3, March 2014): Kamaldeep Bhui, Nasir Warfa, and Edgar Jones, ‘Is Violent Radicalisation Associated with Poverty, Migration, Poor Self-Reported Health, and Common Mental Disorders?’ This revealed that only 2.4% of the sample showed some sympathy for violent protest and terrorist acts. They were disproportionately under 20, in full-time education, born in the UK, English-speakers at home, from high earning households, and healthy. Those with poor health, migrants, and older people were more likely to condemn radicalization, while discrimination, poverty, social and health inequalities, political engagement, and attitudes to foreign policy were not found to be relevant factors. This first article is at:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0090718

 

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Trust and Other News

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

Trust (1)

Public trust in the Church of England is lower than in other non-political national institutions, according to the results of an Ipsos MORI survey for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which were published on 13 September 2014. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 2,008 adults aged 15 and over in Britain on 18-24 July 2014. Respondents were asked to assess their trust in 14 institutions on a scale from 0 to 10, the mean score for the Established Church being 5.36, only rising above 6 in the case of readers of mid-market daily newspapers and those broadly satisfied with the present system of government. The scores for all institutions follow:

 

Mean score
Armed forces

7.74
Charitable/voluntary sector

6.51
Police

6.49
Monarchy

6.38
Legal system

5.86
Bank of England

5.85
BBC

5.75
Church of England

5.36
Local government

4.90
Welsh Assembly

4.77
Scottish Parliament

4.67
Westminster Parliament

4.20
Westminster government

4.13
Political parties in general

3.76

The study also covered support for the protection by law of 10 rights and freedoms. Freedom of religion was ranked eighth in order of importance, although it was only seven points behind the most highly prized freedom (the right to a fair trial). Variation by demographic sub-groups ranged from 83% to 94%. Support for each of the rights and freedoms is tabulated below:

Strongly/tend to support

%
Right to a fair trial

96
Right to freedom from slavery

95
Right to a private/family life

95
Freedom of speech

95
Right to liberty

94
Right not to be tortured/degraded

92
Right to protest

91
Freedom of religion

89
Right to life

79
Right not to be charged for a non-crime

71

The data tables (pp. 1-3 and 114-16 being particularly relevant) will be found at:

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/jrrt-state-of-the-nation-tables-2014.pdf

Trust (2)

Clergy/priests are the profession most trusted to tell the truth by MPs, in a survey released by Ipsos MORI on 9 September 2014, for which 143 MPs were interviewed face-to-face between 9 June and 6 August 2014. Indeed, the proportion of MPs trusting clergy/priests completely or a fair amount was, at 86%, 20 points greater than among the general public in November 2013. Judges (83%), scientists (82%), and doctors (76%) also performed well on the MPs’ veracity index, as they did with the public, with bankers (18%), estate agents (12%), and journalists (11%) being deemed the least trustworthy by MPs.  For more information, see the slideshow at:

http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IpsosMORI/the-view-from-westminster-ipsos-mori-m-ps-survey-1978-2014/4

Religion of dependent children

Release Sup. 3 of the 2011 census results for England and Wales, dated 9 September 2014, included Table LC2123EW: religion of dependent child by sex. Fully interactive, and searchable to the lowest level of census geography, it revealed that, across the country as a whole, 51% of dependent children were recorded as Christian, 8% as Muslim, 3% as of another religion, 30% as of no religion, and 8% as not stated. However, there were many areas where Christians were in a minority, including Birmingham (the centre of this summer’s alleged Trojan Horse plot in schools), where there were more Muslim dependent children (97,100) than Christian (93,800). The table can be accessed at:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/lc2123ew

Islamic State

The polling scene has recently been dominated by the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence, but there have continued to be some surveys on the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria since our last post on 4 September 2014. Polls are arranged in chronological order of fieldwork, and were conducted online among samples of adults aged 18 and over.

21-29 August 2014

This Eurotrack survey by YouGov appears to be the first to study British attitudes to the IS crisis in a comparative context, in this case measured against those in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. There were 2,021 respondents in Britain. Six questions were posed about Iraq, with some notable differences in national opinion, including when it came to the willingness of countries to take part in air strikes against IS targets. Britain and Denmark were most likely to contemplate such action (at 42% in each case), while Finland and Germany were least enthusiastic (26%). But perhaps the most significant variations emerged when participants were questioned about giving asylum in their country to Iraqi Christians and non-Christians. As can be seen from the table below, Britons were, after the French, the least well-disposed to this scenario, with non-Christians being less welcome than Christians in all countries. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/rkvalht3o6/August_Eurotrack.pdf

Approval (%) of

granting asylum to

Iraqi Christians

Iraqi non-Christians
Denmark

50

37
Finland

58

48
France

35

22
Germany

47

41
Great Britain

38

27
Norway

46

37
Sweden

61

54

3-5 September 2014

Support for some form of British military intervention against IS reached 60% in this Opinium Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph, for which 2,002 UK individuals were interviewed; only 20% were opposed to British action from the air or on the ground. Approximately four-fifths endorsed tough new powers against British jihadists fighting with IS, in the shape of seizure of their passports, stripping them of their citizenship, and banning them from re-entering the UK. Data tables are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op4829_telegraph_iraq_tables.pdf

4-5 September 2014

Support for RAF air strikes against IS built to 52% in this YouGov poll among 1,961 Britons for the Sunday Times, even reaching 48% for air strikes against IS in Syria (11 points up on the week before). Opposition was voiced by 68% to the payment of ransoms for the release of British citizens held hostage by IS, with 62% in favour of a military rescue operation. Half the sample felt that British Muslim leaders should be doing a lot more to dissuade British Muslims from going to Iraq to join IS, just 22% thinking the Muslim leadership was doing all it reasonably could. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e6yfutr1ad/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140905.pdf

Household income

In an online poll by Populus on 29-31 August 2014, the 2,010 respondents were asked to provide information about their religion and total household income prior to tax. Correlating the answers to the two questions, it can be shown that non-Christians were disproportionately likely to come from the poorest households (with an income of under £14,000), while those professing no religion were to be found in above-average numbers in the richest households (with an income over £28,000). Christians were more clustered in households with a middling income. Results are summarized below, and the source data are on p. 35 of the tables at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OmFood_Fraud-income-break.pdf

%

Up to £14k

£14k-£28k

Over £28k
All

23

43

33
Christians

21

50

29
Non-Christians

30

35

35
No religion

24

36

39

Premier Christian Radio audience

Premier Christian Radio, the evangelical (and sometimes controversial) station broadcasting primarily in London and South-East England (but also receivable on Freeview and the national DAB multiplex) has announced that it reached its biggest ever audience in its twenty-year history during the second quarter of 2014. According to official RAJAR figures, its average weekly listening by adults aged 15 and over in London and the South-East was 240,700 in this period, equivalent to 2% of the population served. The rise follows a rebranding exercise and the launch of a new website (incorporating listen again features) earlier in the year. However, historic data back to 2010, tabulated below, indicate that there has been some volatility in Premier’s audience, so it is too soon to say whether this increase will be sustained. These statistics can be examined in more detail, including for the pre-2010 era, at:

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

Period

Weekly

audience

persons

Weekly

audience

hours

Hours

per

listener
2010 Q1

141,000

1,456,000

10.4
2010 Q2

143,000

1,708,000

12.0
2010 Q3

213,000

2,405,000

11.3
2010 Q4

164,000

1,833,000

11.2
2011 Q1

135,000

808,000

6.1
2011 Q2

235,000

2,339,000

9.9
2011 Q3

181,000

1,461,000

8.1
2011 Q4

89,000

1,076,000

12.0
2012 Q1

153,000

1,147,000

7.5
2012 Q2

172,000

1,881,000

10.9
2012 Q3

164,000

1,568,000

9.6
2012 Q4

175,000

2,069,000

11.8
2013 Q1

138,000

979,000

7.1
2013 Q2

156,000

1,522,000

9.8
2013 Q3

147,000

1,373,000

9.3
2013 Q4

160,000

1,141,000

7.1
2014 Q1

97,000

865,000

8.9
2014 Q2

241,000

2,435,000

10.1

Education of Anglican bishops

The Church Times has surveyed the secondary and tertiary educational backgrounds of the Church of England’s 112 serving bishops. One half were found to have been educated at an independent school, with 36% attending a grammar school and 13% a comprehensive school. Two-fifths (42%) had taken their first degree at Oxford or Cambridge, with Durham University accounting for a further 17%. The newspaper collected the data following the recent publication of a report on Elitist Britain? by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which documented a bias towards independent and Oxbridge backgrounds among other national leaders. Details are available for each individual bishop at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/5-september/news/uk/half-the-bishops-in-the-c-of-e-were-educated-privately

 

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British Academy Recognition and Other News

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Clive D. Field

 

BRIN secures British Academy recognition

The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, announced on 23 July 2014 that BRIN is to be one of fine new Academy Research Projects in the social sciences. Following an open and peer-review-based competition, BRIN has been awarded funding for five years in the first instance, with the potential for further support thereafter. BRIN and the four other projects ‘have been recognised for the excellence of their scholarship, and the promise and exciting nature of their programmes’. The British Academy’s announcement can be found at:

http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/1123

Ipsos Global Trends Survey, 2014

Britain has often been placed toward the bottom of international league tables of religiosity, and this continues to be the case according to the newly-published inaugural Ipsos MORI Global Trends Survey, 2014. Fieldwork was undertaken online in 20 developed and developing countries in two waves (3-17 September and 1-15 October 2013) among a sample of adults aged 16/18-64 (thereby excluding the over-65s, who tend to be the most religious cohort, as well as the group least likely to use the internet). Britain was ranked sixteenth in terms of identification of its citizens with any religion or faith (57% against the unweighted global mean of 71%), and sixteenth equal for the personal importance of religion/faith (27%, with 64% of Britons saying it was not important to them). It was also fifth equal for agreement with the statement that ‘organised religion is not for me’ (72%, with just 21% dissenting and 7% uncertain). The most consistently religious of the nations investigated were Argentina, Brazil, India, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. Topline results can be extracted from the survey website at:

http://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com

Prospects for religious revival

In an important new article, ‘Late Secularization and Religion as Alien’, published on 17 July 2014, Steve Bruce of the University of Aberdeen argues that it is ‘sociologically implausible’ that secularization could be reversed in the UK since there are too many obstacles to ‘religious revival’, whether of Christianity or other creeds. In particular, ‘the shared stock of religious knowledge is small, the public reputation of religion is poor, and religion is carried primarily by populations that are unusual in being drawn either from a narrow demographic or from immigrant peoples’. These ‘carriers of religion’ in the UK have been allegedly reduced to elderly women, residents of rural peripheries, Poles, West Africans, and Muslims, leading to the conclusion that ‘religion is now alien’. ‘Being religious is no longer a characteristic that is thinly but fairly evenly distributed throughout the population: it is concentrated in specific minority populations, which reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do.’ The article is published in Open Theology, Vol. 1, 2014, pp. 13-23 and available for free download at:

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2014.1.issue/issue-files/opth.2014.1.issue.xml

No religion hotspots

In a recent post on the Nonreligion & Secularity blog, dated 21 July 2014, Katherine Sissons of the University of Oxford explores the potential of DataShine, a data visualization tool developed at University College London, for the study of the distribution of no religion in the 2011 census: ‘“Godless Cities” and “Religious Enclaves”? The Distribution of Religion and Nonreligion in England and Wales’. She cautions against an over-simplistic interpretation of the data, noting that, although there are some apparent no religion urban ‘hotspots’ (such as Brighton and Norwich), religious and non-religious populations are generally not as spatially segregated as is often assumed, with, for example, above average levels of irreligion occurring in several more rural areas, such as large parts of Wales, East Anglia, and the South-West. The post can be read at:

http://blog.nsrn.net/2014/07/21/godless-cities-and-religious-enclaves-the-distribution-of-religion-and-nonreligion-in-england-and-wales/

Churches and social capital

‘The Church in England reaches approximately 10 million people each year through its community activities, even excluding “familiar” church activities – Sunday services, Christmas, Easter, Harvest, baptisms, weddings, and funerals.’ So concludes Paul Bickley in a new report prepared by Theos think tank for the Church Urban Fund: Good Neighbours: How Churches Help Communities Flourish. The report itself is largely based on an analysis of twelve case studies of the work of Church of England congregations in areas of high deprivation but is informed by an online survey from ComRes among 2,024 English adults aged 18 and over between 19 and 21 February 2014.

Respondents in the national study were first asked to select from a list of community activities and services (i.e. delivered by churches, charities, or voluntary organizations, rather than by private companies or the state) those which they or someone in their immediate family had accessed in the last twelve months. Almost half (48%) reported accessing such activities and services and 43% not. Among those who had taken up the provision, 51% recalled that it had come from a church or a church group (the tables fail to clarify how this figure was calculated). Setting aside weddings or funerals, the majority of this voluntary provision was church-based in only six areas: pastoral support for pub- and club-goers (68%), marriage/relationship advice (64%), food banks (56%), community events such as lunch clubs and cafés (56%), assistance of asylum seekers/migrants (55%), and counselling/befriending services (50%). In the other eleven areas secular agencies predominated.

Good Neighbours can be read at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/PDFs/Research/Good%20Neighbours%20Report-CUF-Theos-2014.pdf

and the ComRes data tables at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Theos_and_Church_Urban_Fund___Churches_in_the_Community___Final_Data___25th_February_2014.pdf

United Reformed Church statistics

The General Assembly of the United Reformed Church met in Cardiff on 3-6 July 2014, and this provides an opportunity to record its latest Britain-wide statistics, which reveal a pattern of decline characteristic of most of the ‘historic’ Free Churches (the United Reformed Church itself evolved after 1972 as a union of several previous denominations). The following table has been abstracted from:

http://www.urc.org.uk/statistics.html

 

2012

2013

% change
Churches

1,512

1,487

-1.7
Active ministers

615

576

-6.3
Retired ministers

900

915

+1.7
Active lay preachers

484

479

-1.0
Serving elders

11,229

10,247

-8.7
Non-serving elders

8,791

8,396

-4.5
Members

61,627

59,077

-4.1
Regular attenders

20,596

19,968

-3.0
Average congregation

61,725

59,828

-3.1
Children associated with Church

44,771

42,076

-6.0
Children worshipping at main service

15,504

15,473

-0.2

Faith and Belief Scotland

Faith and Belief Scotland: A Contemporary Mapping of Attitudes and Provisions in Scotland, by Anthony Allison, is a report on research undertaken in 2013-14 by the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Equality Unit of the Scottish Government. The project was designed to investigate the compliance of Scottish councils with the Public Sector Equality Duty of The Equality Act 2010 in respect of religion and belief as a protected characteristic. Data-gathering comprised qualitative research in eight council areas and an online national survey completed by 1,407 adults aged 16 and over between December 2013 and March 2014.

Although respondents to the online survey were drawn from all 32 Scottish councils, the method of distribution of the questionnaire (‘through various religion and belief mailing lists and popular social media platforms’) means that the sample cannot be considered as statistically representative. In particular, relative to the results of the 2011 Scottish census, adherents of the Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic Church appear to be seriously under-represented and non-Christians and those professing no religion to be over-represented.

Nevertheless, the 37 questions in the online survey do yield some interesting findings, including the significant number of people who rejected the Equality Act’s definitions of religion (43%) and belief (38%), seemingly because they incorporate the lack, as well as the existence, of religion and belief. It is also noteworthy that only 7% of respondents regarded Scotland as a Christian country, with 33% viewing it as a post-Christian or secular nation, and 60% as a society of many religions and beliefs. In part reflection of this fact, there was a significant amount of discomfort with religious organizations providing schools (47%), adoption (39%), and foster care (38%), while 47% were opposed to state funding of religion or belief groups (with 34% in favour).

The report can be found at:

http://faithandbelief.div.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Faith-and-Belief-Scotland-FINAL-VERSION-OF-REPORT.pdf

An interactive map, permitting analysis of all 37 questions by gender, religion or belief group, and council is at:

http://faithandbelief.div.ed.ac.uk/fabs/

Anti-Semitism

A spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the UK has arisen this month as a direct consequence of the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in much the same way as occurred with the similar conflict in January-February 2009. The Community Security Trust is reporting that the number of incidents in this country is currently running at double the level which would be expected under ‘normal’ circumstances (approximately 100 since 1 July 2014 compared with 58 for the whole of July 2013). Recent YouGov polling (as tabulated below) also indicates that, since Israeli military action commenced on 8 July 2014, Britons have been somewhat and increasingly more sympathetic to the Palestinian than the Israeli cause, although the plurality remains neutral and a substantial minority is undecided.

Sympathize with (%)

13-14/7/14

20-21/7/14

24-25/7/14
Israelis

14

14

14
Palestinians

20

23

27
Neither

40

40

41
Don’t know

26

23

19

 

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Science and Religion and Other News

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Science and religion

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

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

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

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

%   down

1988

1996

2000

2008

2011

2014
Agree

44

41

38

34

29

30
Disagree

34

31

35

38

46

47
Neither

19

25

22

25

23

21
Don’t know

3

3

4

3

1

2

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

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

% down

2011

2014
Agree

39

41
Disagree

37

37
Neither

21

20
Don’t know

3

3

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

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

% down

2014
Agree

62
Disagree

19
Neither

16
Don’t know

3

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

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

% down

2014
Humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form

19
Humans and other living things evolved over time, in a process guided by God

26
Humans and other living things evolved over time by natural selection, in which God played no part

41
I have another view on the origins of species and development of life on earth, which is not included in this list

9
Don’t know/refused

5

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

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

Special Eurobarometer 401 at:

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

Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 2 at:

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

God and morality

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

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

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

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

Opinion formation

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

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

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

% down

E&W

Scot
Big impact

12

16
Small impact

16

18
No impact at all

70

65
Don’t know

2

1

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

%

E&W

Scot
Personal experiences

85

90
Age

65

69
Social class

63

64
Country in the UK that you come from

61

75
Parents’ opinions

48

65
Friends’ opinions

47

61
Gender

34

46
Religion

28

34

Papal bestseller

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

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

Catholic converts

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

Diocese

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014
Westminster

797

829

734

675

712
Southwark

517

517

481

457

503
Brentwood

306

362

333

282

334
Birmingham

NA

302

255

207

213
All other dioceses

1,830

1,921

1,692

1,459

1,524
Ordinariate

NA

795

200

NA

NA
Total

3,450

4,726

3,695

3,080

3,286

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

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

Anglican church growth

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

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

They comprise:

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

Orthodox numbers

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

 

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