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Atheism and Other News

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Atheism

Two-fifths (42%) of Britons now declare that they have no religion, and the plurality (45%) of these regard themselves as atheists, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by and published in The Times on 12 February 2015, for which 1,552 adults were interviewed online on 8-9 February. The proportion of self-reported atheists in the entire population is thus 19%, rising to 31% of 18-24s, although the number of Britons who definitely do not believe in any sort of God or greater spiritual power is higher still (33% overall, 46% among 18-24s), including 9% of professed Christians. People no longer seem fazed by atheism. Not only do 88% of atheists feel comfortable about talking about their lack of religious identity, while 24% of Christians who believe in God are uncomfortable discussing their convictions, but very few adults react negatively to public figures who have openly acknowledged their atheism. Thus, only 6% of all Britons and 16% of Christians who believe in God feel more negatively about Labour leader Ed Miliband and LibDem leader Nick Clegg simply because they are atheists, and no more than 13% say the same about actor and presenter Stephen Fry following his recent outburst against ‘a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain’. The Times story (with quotes by BRIN’s David Voas) is only available online to subscribers, but YouGov has a blog on the survey, with a link to the full data tables, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/02/12/third-british-adults-dont-believe-higher-power/

Future of religion

The team blog of the Theos think tank is carrying a series of guest posts on the future of religion in Britain, timed to coincide with, and to mark, the forthcoming appearance of the second edition of Grace Davie’s seminal 1994 book on Religion in Britain (on which we will report in due course). Davie is one of the Theos bloggers, with other contributions (thus far) from David Goodhew, Nick Spencer, David Voas, and Adam Dinham.

In the first post, published on 9 February 2015 and focusing on Christianity, Goodhew suggested that ‘the future … will be a persistent paradox of secularisation from above and resacralisation from below’. His conclusion stemmed from a somewhat caricatured critique of the alleged ‘dodginess’ of many national data on religion (including the Church of England’s) and examples of more localized church growth, from London and elsewhere. As I have said before on the BRIN website, Goodhew’s thesis is undermined by its lack of long-term historical perspective. His blog is at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2015/01/20/secularisation-from-above-resacralisation-from-below

The fourth blog, by Voas, was published on 12 February 2015 but previewed in The Times of 9 February. Voas predicts that the prospects for faith among white Britons are bleak and that ‘the future of religion in Britain is black and brown’, largely revolving around black-majority Churches and Islam. In terms of mainstream Christianity, he thinks that ‘the secularization of religious behaviour has reached the point of no return’; ‘the default position now is that we do not gather together to sing and pray and listen to an indifferent speaker deliver a thought for the week’, most ordained ministers having ‘the leadership ability of bank managers’. Orthodox belief has also declined, especially in God, which ‘has taken a battering’. The post is at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2015/02/02/what-is-the-future-for-religion-in-britain

Christians and politics

Churches Together in Britain and Ireland has recently launched a 2015 general election website to keep Christians briefed about issues and practicalities during the campaign, and to promote debate around its ‘Vision 2020 of the Good Society’. It has also collaborated with Church Action on Poverty (CAP) to commission ComRes to conduct an online survey of 2,135 practising UK Christians between 20 and 26 January 2015. The headline results were published by CAP on 13 February 2015 under the banner ‘Christians Tired of Short-Termism in Politics’. The press release, which includes a link to a summary report prepared by ComRes, can be found at:

http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/news/pressroom/pressreleases/archive/20150213

The poll revealed that 91% of practising Christians claimed they would be more likely to vote for a Parliamentary candidate who communicated a positive long-term vision for society, and yet 88% felt that UK politicians were more interested in short-term political concerns and that the leaders of the main political parties failed to articulate such a long-term vision. Almost without exception (97%), practising Christians agreed that Churches had a key role to play in encouraging debate about what makes a good society, with 80% considering that hitherto they had been ineffective in challenging politicians to communicate their vision for society, and 68% that Churches did not talk enough in public about matters like food poverty, homelessness, and tax avoidance.

Church of England: social action

The social action of the Church of England is examined in Bethany Eckley and Tom Sefton, Church in Action: A National Survey of Church-Based Social Action, which was published on 9 February 2015. The research, which was conducted by the Church Urban Fund (CUF) and the Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Team, was based upon an online survey of Anglican incumbents in September 2014, 1,812 of 5.097 responding (36%), with a slight skew towards larger churches and churches in London, and – possibly – an underrepresentation of those less involved in social action. Some of the questions replicated those in a previous survey by CUF in December 2011. The latest report can be read at:

http://www.cuf.org.uk/sites/default/files/PDFs/Research/Church-in-Action-2015_0.pdf

Overwhelmingly (95%), Anglican clergy agreed that ‘engaging with the poor and marginalised in the local area is a vital activity for a healthy church’, although fewer (53%) reported that ‘we are tackling poverty as a fundamental part of the mission for our church’. The social issues which presented a major or significant problem in their communities were deemed to be: isolation/loneliness (65%), family breakdown (50%), debt (47%), lack of self-esteem/hope (46%), low income (46%), unhealthy lifestyles (45%), and mental health problems (44%). Just 7% of churches admitted not to be addressing any local issues, with 27% tackling up to four, 31% between five and eight, and 35% (disproportionately in London) nine or more. The most prevalent forms of church-based social action were schools work (76%), food banks (66%, double the 2011 figure), parent and toddler groups (60%), and lunch/drop-in clubs (53%). Activities in support of credit unions were to be found in only a minority of parishes. The main barriers to increased social action by churches were identified as resource constraints, both human (leaders and volunteers) and financial.

Church of England: rural Anglicanism

A profile of the Church of England in the countryside was published by the Archbishops’ Council on 30 January 2015: Released for Mission: Growing the Rural Church (GS Misc 1092). It is based on a mixture of qualitative (47 interviews with clergy and lay people) and quantitative research, the statistics deriving from an analysis of the 2011 parochial returns, a summary of which is tabulated below. It will be seen that, in terms of churches and parishes, two-thirds of the Church of England is to be found in the countryside, but only about two-fifths of its clergy (who are disproportionately female) and attenders (except at Christmas). The pattern of church growth and decline in rural and urban parishes is similar. The report is available at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2148423/gs%20misc%201092%20-%20rural%20multi%20parish%20benefices.pdf

%	Rural	Urban
Organization
Churches	65	35
Parishes	66	34
Benefices	48	52
Deaneries	67	33
Ministry
All clergy	42	58
All incumbents	43	57
Male incumbents	40	60
Female incumbents	50	50
All assistant curates	31	69
Male assistant curates	30	70
Female assistant curates	33	67
All self-supporting clergy	47	53
Male self-supporting clergy	45	55
Female self-supporting clergy	49	51
Membership and attendance
Electoral roll	46	54
Minimum attendance	37	63
Maximum attendance	43	57
Average attendance	40	60
Sum of attendance	39	61
Christmas attendance	49	51
Church growth over 10 years
Growing	18	18
Declining	25	29
Inconclusive	57	53

British Muslims in Numbers

On 11 February 2015 the Muslim Council of Britain launched an 80-page report (including 33 tables and 4 figures) on British Muslims in Numbers: A Demographic, Socio-Economic, and Health Profile of Muslims in Britain Drawing on the 2011 Census. Prepared by the Council’s Research and Documentation Committee, with Sundas Ali as lead analyst, it examines the Muslim-related data from the 2011 census for England and Wales (Scotland, which had only 77,000 Muslims, is not really covered, despite the work’s title) under four broad headings: demographics, civic life, inequalities, labour market and education. The census findings are supplemented by other empirical evidence and accompanied by a series of ‘observations’ directed at a variety of audiences and a list of priorities for future research. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.mcb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MCBCensusReport_2015.pdf

Probably the most striking demographic is the relative youth of the Muslim community, with a median age of 25 compared with 40 in the overall population, and 33% of Muslims under 16. Taken alongside factors such as immigration, this young profile seems likely to ensure the community’s ongoing rapid growth, both absolute and relative (the absolute increase from 2001 to 2011 was 75%). In terms of national identity, as many as 73% of Muslims in 2011 stated their only identity as British (or other UK national), even though 53% were born overseas. On some indicators, the incidence of deprivation among Muslims remained high, with, for example, 46% living in the 10% most deprived local authority districts, up from 33% in 2001. However, there were also signs of greater levels of educational attainment and social mobility among Muslims.

Islamic State

New polling from YouGov for The Sunday Times, in which 1,668 Britons were interviewed online on 5-6 February 2015, has revealed that just 32% support Britain and the USA sending ground troops back to Iraq to help fight the so-called Islamic State (IS), the plurality (45%) being opposed, much the same as in October 2014 (when the question was last asked). This is despite the fact that only 20% are convinced that the current combination of Western air strikes and Iraqi and Kurdish forces will be sufficient to defeat IS, 49% alternatively indicating a need for ground troops ‘from elsewhere’. At 63%, approval of the existing RAF involvement in air strikes against IS has gone up by four points since last October, with 56% supporting an escalation of this involvement in terms of more planes and an increased number of strikes. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/k24ox3l7ay/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-060215.pdf

YouGov has also updated its Iraq, Syria, and IS tracker report to take account of the new findings. This can be viewed at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/51xpyhtlev/YG-Archives-Pol-Iraq-Syria-and-ISIS-060215.pdf

Conspiracy theories

YouGov online polling for YouGov@Cambridge on 3-4 February 2015 explored public attitudes to nine ‘conspiracy theories’, among a sample of 1,749 adults. One of them was a suggestion that some courts in the UK legal system are choosing to adopt Sharia law, which 18% thought was definitely or probably true, including 31% of UKIP voters and 26% of over-60s; a further 31% said it might or might not be true, while 51% were certain that it was false. Another potential conspiracy posited that humans had made contact with aliens but that the news had been deliberately hidden from the people, which 14% agreed was definitely or probably true against 61% who were clear it was not and 25% who were unsure. Nevertheless, belief in both these ‘conspiracies’ paled into relative insignificance compared with the 55% convinced that the Government is hiding the real number of immigrants in the country and the 52% that European Union officials are gradually seeking to take over all the UK’s law-making powers. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bhw7u94epz/GB%20Conspiracy%20Theories%20Pilot.pdf

Anti-Semitism

The All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism published the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism on 9 February 2015 and, alongside it, a sub-report summarizing the results of a Populus poll which it had commissioned, for which 1,001 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed between 22 and 25 January 2015. Asked to rate the seriousness of anti-Semitism in contemporary Britain on a scale of 1-10 (where 1 was low and 10 high), the mean score was 4.66, much as it was ten years ago (4.52), although 37% thought that the problem had worsened over the decade (against 16% who detected an improvement). Moreover, only 55% said that they would be able to explain what anti-Semitism was to somebody else, ranging from 37% of 18-24s to 71% of over-65s, while awareness of recent incidents which were widely regarded as anti-Semitic was relatively limited, the murder of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris excepted, which was known to 91%, albeit one-fifth did not classify the attack as anti-Semitic.

Some anti-Semitic stereotypes continued to find favour, such as the 11% who agreed that Jews have too much power in UK media and politics and the identical proportion that they have too much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy; 15% believed that Jews talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust. The identification of British Jews with Israel was problematical for rather more, 32% thinking that British Jews always defend Israel, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of its actions, and 30% that their loyalties are either divided between Britain and Israel or vested in Israel alone. This is despite the fact that 89% acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. The number of Jews in Britain was vastly over-estimated by respondents, the average guess being 2.7 million, nine times the real figure in the 2011 census, whereas the Muslim population was over-estimated by just one-third. The poll summary can be found at:

http://www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/themes/PCAA/images/Polling-Anti-Semitism-Summary%202015.docx.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged air strikes, Aliens, All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, Anti-Semitism, atheism, Bethany Eckley, census of population, Church Action on Poverty, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Church Urban Fund, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, clergy, ComRes, conspiracy theories, David Goodhew, David Voas, Ed Miliband, ground troops, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jews, Muslim Council of Britain, Muslims, Nick Clegg, politics, Populus, practising Christians, religious census, rural Church, Sharia law, social action, Stephen Fry, Sundas Ali, Sunday Times, The Times, Theos, Tom Sefton, vision for society, YouGov, YouGov@Cambridge | Leave a comment

Church Buildings and Other News

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Church buildings

Churchgoing may be a distinctly minority activity in contemporary Britain, but as many as 45% of the population claim to have visited a church or chapel during the past year for either religious or non-religious purposes, rising to 60% of over-65s and Christians, and even including 27% of those who profess no religion. This is according to a ComRes poll for the National Churches Trust which was published on 29 January 2015, and for which 2,061 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online between 12 and 14 December 2014. Data tables have been posted at:

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

The heritage and community value of church buildings was also widely appreciated by respondents to the survey. In particular:

79% agreed that churches and chapels are an important part of the UK’s heritage and history (including 51% of religious nones)
75% agreed that it is important for churches and chapels to have good access and modern facilities to make it easier for people to use them (66% of nones)
74% agreed that church buildings play an important role for society as a venue for community activities (64% of nones)
59% disagreed that repairing and restoring historic church buildings only benefits churchgoers (55% of nones)
55% agreed they would be concerned if their local church or chapel building was no longer there (34% of nones)
39% disagreed that their local church or chapel does not play a large role in supporting people in the community (28% of nones)

Fresh Expressions

Church growth advocates, especially in the Church of England and the Methodist Church, are often keen to talk up the potential of Fresh Expressions (FEs) of church as a counterpoise to the more familiar narrative of church decline. However, a somewhat more sobering account of FEs, from theoretical and empirical standpoints, is offered by John Walker, Testing Fresh Expressions: Identity and Transformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, xv + 254p., ISBN 9781472411846, hardback). The book is divided into two substantive halves, the first being a contextual review of the existing British evidence and literature about the fall in churchgoing and secularization. The second half outlines the author’s mixed methods research in the Diocese of Canterbury from 2009, examining five parish churches and five FEs by means of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and attendance data.

Walker concludes by rejecting, on both sociological and theological grounds, any suggestion that FEs alone constitute the future of the Church. In particular, ‘fresh expressions … do not and cannot compete with the depth and breadth of life and experience of parish churches, they are no better at attracting the non-churched than parish churches, and both fresh expressions and parish churches grow through exactly the same process.’ The author presents some interesting ideas and evidence, but his research is ultimately small-scale, and it is debatable whether it benefits from being reported at such excessive length.

Religious authority: Pope vs Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is more admired in Britain than Pope Francis, according to a YouGov poll released on 30 January 2015. In January publics in some 23 countries were asked online two questions about their most admired figures from a global list of 25 men and 25 women, the answers then being combined into a single score. In Britain, the list of male personalities was headed by Stephen Hawking (on a score of 14.8), with the Dalai Lama in sixth position (6.3) and Pope Francis in ninth (5.0). Both the Pope and Dalai Lama scored more highly in Britain than the global mean (4.1 and 4.0, respectively). However, the rating of the Pope was much lower in Britain than in Brazil (17.5) and the United States (9.1), albeit it exceeded that in France and Scandinavia, where the Dalai Lama was much more likely to be admired (his French score being 14.6, with 10.5 in Sweden and 10.3 in Denmark). In the United States, Pope Francis was placed second among the most admired men, followed by Billy Graham in third spot (7.2), and the Dalai Lama in seventh (4.8). A blog about the survey is at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/30/most-admired-2015/

Religious authority: declining status of the Bible

Those who have been unable to access my article on the decline in Bible-centricism in Britain in the October 2014 issue of Journal of Contemporary Religion, because it is hidden behind a paywall, may wish to read a summary of it in the second half of a presentation which I recently gave to Bible Society staff. The first half deals with the context of the statistical measurement of religion. The presentation can be read by clicking on the following link:

Bible – Bible Society presentation

Christians and pornography

The film version of Fifty Shades of Grey hits the cinema screens next week, and in parallel Premier’s Christianity magazine has decided to publish an article in its February 2015 issue exploring the theme of Christians and pornography. To illustrate the piece, its author, Martin Saunders, ran an online survey of UK practising Christians in December 2014, to which he received over 500 anonymous replies. His sample was clearly self-selecting, and Saunders makes no claim to its statistical representativeness. Certainly, some of the results seem a little improbable (or, if true, would be seen by some as rather disturbing). For example, 55% of Christian men reported that they view internet pornography at least once a month with a further 20% accessing it less often (compared with, respectively, 15% and 20% for Christian women), 42% of Christian men acknowledging an addiction to pornography. Even 30% of church leaders admitted to viewing internet pornography at least monthly. The article can be read online at:

http://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2015/February-2015/Grey-Matter-50-Shades-pornography-and-the-shaping-of-our-brains

Muslims and the general election

The Muslim News is currently running an apparently open poll on its website to identify the top issues which may determine how UK Muslims vote in the general election on 7 May 2015, with the intention of using the findings to influence political parties to listen to the views of the Muslim community. This follows the newspaper’s recent research which suggested that the Muslim vote could shape the electoral result in as many as 40 parliamentary constituencies in England, 39 of them held by Labour or priority Labour targets. Of the 40, 25 were classed as marginal seats and 15 as safe seats, but all deemed to be capable of influence by Muslim voters, based upon a correlation of the proportion of the population which was Muslim at the 2011 census with the size of the majority for the successful candidate at the 2010 general election. It is unclear how far the analysis takes account of the disproportionately younger profile of Muslims, which is likely to mean that their share of voters will be rather less than that of the population as a whole. In all, there are said to be 80 constituencies where Muslims exceed 10% of the residents. For more information about the research, including the sensitivity tests which were applied, see:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/newspaper/home-news/muslim-voters-may-determine-next-government/

Mosques

By far the best source of information about mosques in the UK is the database maintained by Mehmood Naqshbandi as part of the (unofficial) Muslims in Britain website. According to the latest report generated from the database, on 19 October 2014 and extending to 64 pages, there are 1,743 active mosques (including prayer rooms) in the UK, of which 1,625 are in England (an estimated 37% being registered as charities). They belong to a variety of Islamic traditions, but with Deobandi (43%) and Bareilvi (24%) being the most dominant. There are 59 mosques which accommodate more than 2,000 people, the largest being a Bareilvi mosque in Bradford, with space for 8,000. The data are also analysed by parliamentary constituencies and local authorities. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.muslimsinbritain.org/resources/masjid_report.pdf

An earlier (April 2013) snapshot of the database was recently summarized on pp. 6-7 of Innes Bowen, Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam (London: Hurst & Company, 2014, x + 230p., ISBN 9781849043014, paperback). At that time, there were 1,664 mosques in the UK with an estimated capacity of 837,000. Bowen’s book is a useful introduction to the diversity of British Islam and its constituent ideologies and cultures.

Slaughter of animals

UK animal welfare legislation permits slaughter without pre-stunning to be carried out in accordance with religious rites. The practice is particularly important in the Jewish and Muslim communities but is increasingly controversial with veterinarians and sections of the public, and seemingly now contrary to UKIP policy. The prevalence of slaughter without pre-stunning was revealed on 29 January 2015 when the Food Standards Agency (FSA) published the results of its September 2013 survey of animal welfare in Great Britain, during the course of which assessments were made at 301 slaughterhouses. It found that 1% of cattle, sheep and goats, and poultry were slaughtered by the Shechita (Jewish) method, none of which were pre-stunned. The incidence of slaughter by the Halal (Muslim) method was 3% for cattle (25% not being pre-stunned), 41% for sheep and goats (37% not pre-stunned), and 21% for poultry (16% not pre-stunned). Overall, 2% of cattle, 3% of poultry, and 15% of sheep and goats were not stunned prior to slaughter, the last figure having risen from 10% in a 2011 survey. For all three classes of animals the proportion slaughtered by the Halal method without pre-stunning increased significantly between 2011 and 2013, supposedly because of stronger campaigning by some Muslims who believe that stunning kills animals. The FSA report is at:

http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2013-animal-welfare-survey.pdf

Anti-Semitic incidents

The Community Security Trust (CST), which has been monitoring anti-Semitic incidents in the UK since 1984, reported on 5 February 2015 that there was a record number in 2014, 1,168, which was more than double the total in 2013 (535) and 25% above the previous highest figure of 931 in 2009. The single biggest contributing factor to this record number was the conflict in Israel and Gaza between 8 July and 26 August 2014, during which time no fewer than 501 incidents occurred. However, even controlling for the distorting effect of this ‘trigger event’, the CST still calculated that there was an underlying increase of 29% in anti-Semitic incidents in 2014 over 2013. More than three-quarters of all incidents in 2014 took place in Greater London and Greater Manchester, where the two largest Jewish communities in the UK are concentrated, with incidents in Greater London 137% above the 2013 level. Overall, abusive behaviour accounted for 76% of incidents, those involving extreme violence or assault being far less common (7%). For a full analysis and commentary, see the 41-page Antisemitic Incidents Report, 2014, which can be found at:

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202014.pdf

New Religious Movements

New religious movements (NRMs) seem to get relatively less exposure in mainstream academic research and literature than they once did, so we should welcome the recent book by James Lewis, Sects & Stats: Overturning the Conventional Wisdom about Cult Members (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2014, ix + 209p., ISBN 9781781791080, paperback). The volume provides a contemporary quantitative overview of NRMs from a global perspective, principally derived from questionnaire surveys (some undertaken by the author) of the membership of selective NRMs and analysis of national census data from Anglophone countries (but excluding the United States, which has no religion census, although some sample surveys are available). The book contains relatively little UK data, the principal exception (pp. 184-6) being toplines of the write-in responses to the 2001 and 2011 censuses.

Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2013

The complete dataset for the June-October 2013 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey was made available for secondary analysis by the UK Data Service as SN 7519 on 20 January 2015. Fieldwork was conducted by ScotCen Social Research by means of face-to-face interview and self-completion questionnaire administered to 1,497 adult Scots. Although no religion module was included, the standard background questions about religious affiliation (current and by upbringing) and attendance at religious services (by those professing a religion) were asked. These can obviously be used as variables for analysing the replies to the other questions, which, on this occasion, disproportionately related to constitutional change, alcohol, mental health, and policing.

Magna Carta

In 2015 we are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, one of the most iconic of all historical documents, the four surviving copies of which have been briefly reunited at The British Library and the House of Lords this week. Yet, beyond knowing that it is significant, many Britons remain unaware of or hazy about its actual content, which was determined by a specific set of circumstances operating in 1215. Although it could be said to have influenced the development of some human rights, in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights sense, Magna Carta cannot be regarded as the progenitor of them all. An example is ‘freedom of religion’, which is only covered in Magna Carta to the more limited extent that chapter 1 established the freedom of the English Church (then Roman Catholic, of course) from state (royal) interference. Nevertheless, 16% of 1,630 Britons interviewed online on 1-2 February 2015 for Index on Censorship thought that Magna Carta had mentioned freedom of religion, including 25% of Liberal Democrats and 22% of over-60s. This was a somewhat lower proportion than the 25% of the public who had given a similar reply to Ipsos MORI in October 2012. The YouGov data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/xysuhertyl/IndexOnCensorshipResults_150202_Magna_Carta_W.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged anti-Semitic incidents, Bible, Christianity magazine, church attendance, church buildings, Church of England, Clive Field, Community Security Trust, ComRes, Dalai Lama, Diocese of Canterbury, Food Standards Agency, freedom of religion, Fresh Expressions, general election, halal, Index on Censorship, Innes Bowen, James Lewis, Jews, John Walker, Magna Carta, Martin Saunders, Mehmood Naqshbandi, mosques, Muslim News, Muslims, National Churches Trust, New Religious Movements, politics, Pope Francis, pornography, Religious Affiliation, ScotCen Social Research, Scotland, Scottish Social Attiutudes Survey, shechita, slaughter of animals, YouGov | Leave a comment

ComRes on Religion and Other News

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Clive D. Field

ComRes on religion

Exactly half the whole population (and 71% of those professing no religion) now denies that religion is a force for good in the world, according to a ComRes poll for ITV News on 16-18 January 2015, for which 2,036 adults were interviewed online. Only 24% overall agreed with the proposition with 26% undecided. Christianity was viewed somewhat more positively, a plurality (39%) agreeing that it is a force for good in the world (peaking at 55% of over-65s and 63% of Christians), against 30% who disagreed (including 53% of religious nones) and 31% who did not know. However, although 44% judged that religious leaders in Britain should not get involved in political debates (compared with 34% who thought they should), in practice there was majority support for some specific recent interventions: 65% approved of the criticisms made by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York of the behaviour of shoppers in the Black Friday sales; 63% of their charge that Britain has become dominated by consumerism and selfishness; and 50% of religious leaders speaking out about economic inequality. Data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_Religion_20th_January_2015.pdf

British Cohort Study

On 27 April 2014 BRIN included in one of its regular weekly round-ups of religious statistical news an item on ‘When we’re 42’. This contained a preliminary (topline) analysis of a short religion module which had formed part of the latest wave of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS), which has been following the lives of babies born in Britain one week in 1970. Information was gathered by TNS BMRB between May 2012 and April 2013 from 9,841 members of the cohort at the age of 42, by a combination of face-to-face interview and self-completion questionnaire, the religion questions appearing on the self-completion form.

A much fuller (27-page) analysis of the module, incorporating various cross-tabulations, was published on 21 January 2015 as Centre for Longitudinal Studies Working Paper 2015/1: David Voas, The Mysteries of Religion and the Lifecourse. It will also appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Longitudinal and Life Course Studies but meanwhile can be accessed via the link at:

http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/page.aspx?&sitesectionid=939&sitesectiontitle=Recent+working+papers

The press release for the report led on the substantial gender differences which were found in the two religious beliefs which were enquired into, an emphasis which was then reflected in the media coverage, although the phenomenon is hardly novel and, as Voas comments, still lacks a clear resolution. Perhaps of greater interest are his methodological conclusions and observations arising from the research, with a plea to avoid over-reliance on single-item measures of religiosity. This is exemplified in the sevenfold religious typology proposed by the author in table 8, based on pooling BCS data about religious identity, religious attendance, and belief in God and life after death, and which demonstrates that religiosity is far from being a black and white matter. The table is reproduced below:

Label	Description	%
Non-religious	Does not have a religion and believes in neither God nor life after death	28
Nominally religious	Identifies with a religion but believes in neither God nor life after death	7
Unorthodox non-religious	Does not have a religion or does not attend services, believes in God or life after death but not both	21
Unorthodox religious	Has a religion and attends services at least occasionally, believes in God but not life after death (or vice versa)	5
Non-identifying believers	Does not have a religion but believes in God and life after death	10
Non-practising religious	Has a religion and believes in God and life after death but does not attend services	14
Actively religious	Has a religion and believes in God and life after death and attends services	15

Religious affiliation

Lord Ashcroft’s latest themed political opinion poll was published on 14 January 2015, this time on public attitudes to the National Health Service. Fieldwork was conducted online between 14 and 24 November 2014 among adults aged 18 and over, and, as usual, there was a background question asked about religious affiliation: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Summary weighted findings appear below, with comparisons from previous years, from which it will be seen that Christian disaffiliation and profession of no faith are proceeding relatively rapidly. The full results (with breaks by gender, age, social grade, region, employment sector, working status, educational attainment, and voting intention) can be found in table 149 of the data tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/NHS-poll-Full-data-tables.pdf

% down	11/2011 All	11/2012 All	11/2013 All	11/2014 All	11/2014 18-24	11/2014 65+
Christian	56.4	55.0	52.6	53.7	32.4	72.1
Non-Christian	6.6	6.5	7.4	7.0	13.3	3.2
No religion	35.2	36.3	37.7	37.0	49.4	23.4
Refused	1.8	2.2	2.3	2.4	4.9	1.3
N =	5,000	20,066	8,053	20,011	2,402	4,201

Rating Pope Francis

Pope Francis was quick to condemn the Islamist outrages in Paris, but he subsequently raised more than a few eyebrows when he told journalists that there were limits to freedom of expression and that the faith of others should not be insulted, even cracking a joke in the process about punching anybody who foul-mouthed his own mother. The majority of Britons (51%) disagreed with the Pope’s (unguarded) statement (Londoners and UKIP voters most strongly, on 59%), against 36% who supported it, according to an online poll by YouGov among 1,747 Britons on 18-19 January 2015. Reviewing his pontificate more generally, 51% thought that the Pope is doing a good job, up by 15 points over two YouGov surveys undertaken during his first year in office in 2013, and very few (7%) suggested he is doing a bad job, as many as 42% being undecided. Almost one-quarter (23%) claimed they had a more positive view of the Catholic Church as a result of Pope Francis, albeit the plurality who hold a negative view of the Church is still as large as ever (36%, the same as in November 2013), the over-60s being most negative (48%). Nearly two-fifths (39%, 8 points up on November 2013) anticipated that the Pope would make the Church more liberal, notwithstanding there is as yet little tangible evidence that its teachings are about to be ‘modernized’ in any substantive way. A blog about the survey was published on 20 January 2015, with a link to the data tables, at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/20/pope-francis-approval-rise/

Immigration

A plurality (47%) of the British public believes that immigration has weakened Christian values in Britain, according to an online poll by Survation for the think-tank Bright Blue, for which 1,052 adults were interviewed between 12 and 16 September 2014 (although the results were only released on 19 January 2015). The proportion holding this view soared to 81% among UKIP voters and also constituted a majority for several other demographic sub-groups, including retired people (66%), the over-55s (62%), Conservative voters (56%), the lowest (DE) social grade (55%), men (54%), and married persons (53%). Just 19% of the whole sample disagreed with the proposition that immigration had weakened Christian values in Britain, while 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 8% registered as don’t knows. On a related matter, and referring to a recent situation in real life, 66% of Britons favoured granting asylum in the UK to a woman from a strongly Muslim country who had been threatened with execution because of her Christian beliefs. Data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GB-Population-tables.pdf

The same questions were also posed to a separate sample of 1,307 current Conservative voters between 12 and 30 September 2014, and these data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Conservative-Voters-tables.pdf

Anti-Semitism – Jewish perspectives

Anti-Semitism was again in the media spotlight during the past week, in the wake of the recent Islamist outrages in France, in one of which four Jews were murdered in an attack on a kosher supermarket. The heightened coverage of anti-Semitism is being underpinned by original empirical research.

The Jewish Chronicle has published the second in its new series of Jewish topical issues polls, undertaken by Survation among a representative sample of 939 UK Jews (including secular and non-practising) aged 18 and over, who were interviewed by telephone on 19-20 January 2015. Notwithstanding greater efforts being made by the authorities to protect Jews, 58% claimed not to have noticed any increased police presence in their own areas during the past fortnight (against 40% who had), with Jewish over-55s most likely to have detected no improvement (70%). Asked whether the Government was doing all it could to combat anti-Semitism, only 33% answered in the affirmative, while 55% thought it should be doing more (rising to 61% of female Jews and 64% of under-35s). However, there was majority welcome (60%) from UK Jews for the letter which the Communities Minister had written to Muslim leaders calling for renewed efforts on their part to explain how Islam can be part of British identity. Data tables, with breaks by age, gender, and region, are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jewish-Issues-Poll-2.pdf

As well as summarizing the results of its own poll, the current issue of The Jewish Chronicle (23 January 2015, pp. 6-7, 35) also allocated space to continued discussion about the validity of the poll of Jews conducted online by the Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA) between 23 December 2014 and 11 January 2015, whose findings were rather alarmist (as featured in our last post on 18 January 2015). In The Jewish Chronicle, CAA chair Gideon Falter had an article strongly affirming the ‘bulletproof’ nature of his organization’s research, while distinguished academic (and Holocaust survivor) Michael Pinto-Duschinsky urged the newspaper’s readers ‘don’t trust these misleading figures’, backing up previous criticisms of them by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Alderman, a regular columnist on The Jewish Chronicle, called for an end to ‘point-scoring’ about the CAA survey of Jews, although he was skating on somewhat thin ice himself since he had apparently made some use of the CAA data in an article he had written for The Spectator.

Anti-Semitism – public opinion

A survey of public attitudes to Jews and the Holocaust was published by the European Jewish Congress on 21 January 2015. It was designed by 202 Strategies and undertaken by Survation among a sample of 504 UK adults aged 18-35 (48% of whom described themselves as not religious), who were interviewed online between 8 and 10 January 2015. A significant minority of respondents was found to have ambiguous, prejudiced, or ill-informed views on both topics, albeit some might consider a few of the questions to be a little leading. Although a majority (53%) acknowledged the existence of anti-Semitism in the UK, 23% denied it and 24% were undecided. Three-fifths had been taught about the Holocaust at school but fewer, 40%, regarded it as the most important event in European history over the last century, just 34% knew who Adolf Eichmann was, 31% underestimated the number of Jews who had perished in the Holocaust (with a further 21% unable to answer at all), and only 29% were aware of Holocaust Memorial Day. One in seven inclined to Holocaust denial in that they agreed ‘the evidence surrounding the Holocaust is not complete and I would need to see more proof to believe without a doubt that it occurred’. A similar proportion (15%) backed the introduction of a legal requirement for businesses owned by Jews to have a special form of identification (22% saying the same about Muslim businesses) and 15% wanted individual Jews to carry religious identification (13% wishing to see a similar obligation on Christians). One-quarter thought it very or somewhat likely that laws discriminating against Jews could be passed in Europe today, and 24% anticipated that another Holocaust might happen in Europe during their lifetime. Full data tables have not yet been released (and may not be, since 202 Strategies rather than Survation did the analysis), but a 16-page report is available at:

http://www.eurojewcong.org/docs/UKpoll.pdf

The Conversation of 22 January 2015 contained a preliminary analysis by Tim Bale of a poll which he had commissioned from YouGov to gauge voter reactions to the prospect of a Jewish politician leading a political party and becoming Prime Minister. This is more than a distant scenario, given that Ed Miliband leads the Labour Party and might, after the May general election, become the first British Jewish Prime Minister since 1880, albeit – conceivably – at the head of a minority or coalition government. In fact, only one-third of all UK voters are aware of Miliband’s religious background, and even fewer of those intending to vote Labour than for the other parties. Even if they were aware, for the vast majority (83%) it would apparently make no difference to their electoral choice. However, 13% of UKIP voters would be less likely to vote for a party with a Jewish leader, twice the proportion of Conservative and LibDem voters who said this, and three times the number of Labour voters. UKIP voters were also least likely (48%) to see a Jewish prime minister as equally acceptable as one from another faith, compared with 62% of all voters and 72% of Labour voters. More generally, just 10% agreed that Jews have too much influence in the country, a reduction from 18% in 2004 (albeit UKIP supporters are still at 18%). Bale’s post, which is a spin-off from his forthcoming Oxford University Press book on the Labour Party under Miliband, can be read at:

http://theconversation.com/british-voters-open-to-a-jewish-prime-minister-but-some-are-more-welcoming-than-others-36611

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion

Among the 11 essays in the latest edition (Vol. 25, 2014) of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, an annual published by Brill, are a couple which might interest BRIN readers, details of which are given below:

pp. 2-16, Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, ‘Religious Identity, Mystical Experience, and Psychopathology: A Study among Secular, Christian, and Muslim Youth in England and Wales’ – a survey of the incidence of mystical experience and its association with psychoticism and neuroticism among 203 Muslim, 477 Christian, and 378 religiously unaffiliated young people aged 14-18 attending 12 schools in England and Wales

pp. 78-108, Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip and Sarah-Jane Page, ‘Religious Faith and Heterosexuality: A Multi-Faith Exploration of Young Adults’ – a survey of the sexual values, attitudes, and behaviour of 515 self-defined heterosexual religious young adults aged 18-25 living in the UK

Posted in Measuring religion, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged 1970 British Cohort Study, 202 Strategies, Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, Anti-Semitism, Bright Blue, Campaign against Antisemitism, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Christian values, ComRes, David Voas, Ed Miliband, Eric Pickles, European Jewish Congress, force for good, God, heterosexuality, holocaust, Immigration, ITV News, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Leslie Francis, life after death, Lord Ashcroft, Mandy Robbins, Muslims, mystical experience, politics, Pope Francis I, psychopathology, Religious Affiliation, religious leaders, Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Sarah-Jane Page, Survation, The Conversation, Tim Bale, TNS-BMRB, YouGov | 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 Catholic Directory of England and Wales, Charlie Hebdo, Christian conferences, Christianity, clergy, ComRes, David Ceri Jones, democracy, France, Ipsos-MORI, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, media, Michelangelo, NASUWT, Natalie Collins, Opinium Research, ORB International, parents, Populus, Project 3:28, Prophet Mohammed, religious ethos, religious leaders, Richard Allen, schools, self-assessed religiosity, Sistine Chapel, Sunday Times, trust, Wales, WIN/Gallup International, women speakers, works of art, YouGov | Leave a comment

Twixtmas News

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Hopefully, BRIN readers have had a good rest over Christmas. In case any of you ‘switched off’ from the religious statistical news during the festivities, here is a round-up of seven stories which made headlines between 24 and 29 December 2014. This will definitely be our last news post of 2014, but we will naturally be back in 2015. A Happy New Year to you all!

Belief in the Christmas story

Although 65% of 2,087 adult Britons interviewed online by YouGov on 16-17 December 2014 believed that Jesus Christ really existed, and no more than 18% disbelieved, only minorities accepted four key elements in the nativity story (as summarized in the table, below). Not unexpectedly, the proportions believing in the biblical account of Christ’s birth were considerably higher among those who acknowledged His existence as an historical figure than those who rejected it (four-fifths or more of the latter dismissing each of the four components of the story). Belief was also greatest among women and the over-60s. There was most scepticism about the Virgin Birth, which even 63% of believers in Jesus either disbelieved or were unsure about. This is a feature which has distinguished polling on religious beliefs since the first scientific study by Mass-Observation in Hammersmith in 1944-45. The YouGov data tables were published on 24 December 2014 and can be accessed from a link embedded in a brief blog post on the Christmas story at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/12/24/public-opinion-christmas-story/

% across	Believe	Disbelieve	Don’t know
Newborn Jesus laid in a manger	47	29	24
Wise men guided by a star brought Jesus gifts	37	44	19
Angel appeared to shepherds to announce birth of Jesus	28	51	20
Jesus was born to a virgin	24	55	21

Christmas Day working

An Office for National Statistics press release on 24 December 2014 revealed that 863,000 people, equivalent to 2.9% of the total UK workforce, worked on Christmas Day in 2012 (the last year for which data are currently available), ranging from 2.1% in London to 3.6% in the North-East. Clergy headed the list in terms of the proportion at work on Christmas Day (49%), followed by communication operators (28%), paramedics (25%), prison officers (25%), and farm workers (20%). However, measured in actual numbers at work on Christmas Day, clergy were only sixth in the league table, with 26,000 on duty, compared with 136,000 care workers and 120,000 nurses or nursing auxiliaries. Data derive from the Labour Force Survey. The press release (which incorporates a link to the full data in Excel format) is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp29904_390385.pdf

Christmas carol ‘top of the pops’

As in previous years, Classic FM radio invited its listeners (not representative of the adult population, of course) to vote online for their favourite Christmas carol from 1 December 2014 onwards, ‘tens of thousands’ doing so. The results of the poll were officially announced in ‘The Nation’s Favourite Carols’, broadcast on Christmas Day, with the top five also listed in several newspapers on 22 December. For the first time since 2002, Silent Night was the most popular carol, displacing O Holy Night, which had headed the chart for 11 years in succession. The change may doubtless be attributed in large measure to the centenary of the Christmas truce in 1914, which was reportedly inaugurated by German troops singing Stille Nacht (the original German-language version) from their trenches. The top 10 carols are shown below, while the top 30 appear on Classic FM’s website at:

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/collections/christmas-music/nations-favourite-christmas-carols-2014/

Silent Night
O Holy Night
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
In the Bleak Midwinter (Holst version)
O Come All Ye Faithful
In the Bleak Midwinter (Harold Darke version)
Once in Royal David’s City
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Away in a Manger
Joy to the World

Alcohol and religion

An online poll by ComRes on 12-14 December 2014, commissioned by brewer AB InBev and published on 29 December, has revealed some modest differences in alcohol consumption among the various faith groups (some of which will be accounted for by demographic effects). As the table below shows, among the sample of 2,061 adults aged 18 and over, those professing no religion were more likely than average to drink alcohol and least likely to be giving it up or reducing their intake in January. Christians were just one point behind as alcohol drinkers, with non-Christians well below the norm for alcohol consumption, albeit they registered the largest proportion expecting to give it up or reduce their intake in January. Data tables are at:

http://comres.co.uk/polls/AB_InBev_Alcohol-free_beer_at_Chirstmas_and_New_Year_Data_tables_18_December_2014.pdf

%	Ever drink alcohol	Expect to reduce/give up alcohol in January
All Britons	80	18
Christians	83	20
Non-Christians	53	24
No religion	84	15

Obesity and religion

Did any BRIN readers notice headlines in the online media over Christmas such as ‘Holy Roast! Religious Brits More Likely to Be Overweight than Atheists’? The source of the story turns out to be an article in the online first edition of Journal of Religion and Health by Deborah Lycett: ‘The Association of Religious Affiliation and Body Mass Index (BMI): An Analysis from the Health Survey for England’. Examining data for 7,414 adults aged 16 and over interviewed (and measured) for the 2012 Health Survey for England, she discovered that religious affiliation was associated with an unadjusted 0.91 kilograms per square metre higher mean BMI, the association being strongest among professing Christians. Although some of the higher BMI was explained demographically, it was not accounted for by smoking status, alcohol consumption, or physical activity level. Even after all adjustments had been made on the linear regression models, affiliates of a religion still had an 0.58 kilograms per square metre higher mean BMI than the irreligious, with Protestants greater than Catholics. A significantly higher waist-to-hip ratio was also seen in Christian and Sikh men. The author observes that: ‘As the study reported here is cross-sectional, it cannot provide any suggestion of whether religion or higher BMI comes first and as such cannot be used to determine cause and effect, but it provides sufficient evidence for further exploration’. Options for accessing the article are outlined at:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-014-9975-3

First-time voters

It is only about four months to go now before the next UK general election (it is scheduled for 7 May 2015), and already the opinion polling machine is cranking up for it. It is expected to be a hard-fought contest, and the electoral choices of first-time voters (those currently aged 17-22, who were not old enough to vote in the 2010 election) are likely to be critical in determining the outcome. Opinium Research, in partnership with The Observer, polled 503 of these first-time voters online on 18-22 December 2014, with extensive data tables of results made available on 27 December at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4966_first_time_voters_-_ftv_-_final.pdf

One thing is pretty clear from the survey: religious influences seem to hold little sway over this first-time voter generation and therefore, by implication, are unlikely to be a significant factor in affecting how they will cast their votes. Just 11% strongly agreed that they are religious, with a further 18% somewhat agreeing, while a majority (56%) disagreed (the remaining 14% being neutral). In a throwback to last year’s debate about whether Britain is or should be a Christian country, merely 10% identified being a Christian as an essential feature of a nation being considered as a democracy, the remaining 90% stating it was an unimportant characteristic. Shown a list of famous people, no more than 10% recalled the Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) discussing politics and current affairs, and under one-quarter of this minority actually agreed with what he said. As if to illustrate the point, first-time voters held socially liberal views on several of the issues on which the Churches have been seen by some as dragging their feet (by upholding ‘traditional’ morality), with, for example, 77% of first-time voters supportive of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and 78% finding nothing wrong in sex outside marriage.

Moral leadership

Speaking of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has not had the best of Christmases. First, he was struck down with pneumonia, having to ‘deliver’ his Christmas Day sermon online, and then he was given a relatively modest rating for moral leadership in a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, for which 2,109 Britons were interviewed online on 18-19 December 2014. Panellists were presented with a list of famous names and asked to choose three or four who provided the best moral leadership. Archbishop Welby was placed fourth, with 15%, after Her Majesty the Queen (34%), the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (30%), and Malala Yousafzai (the Nobel Peace Laureate, 19%). Prime Minister David Cameron came fifth (8%) and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, fifteenth (5%), the same as Labour leader Ed Miliband but behind actress Judi Dench and former footballer David Beckham, among others. Data tables are not yet online (hopefully, they will be in the New Year), but an article about the survey was published on the front page of the main section of the newspaper on 28 December 2014 (only available online to subscribers).

Posted in Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious beliefs, Survey news | Tagged AB InBev, alcohol, Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of Westminster, attributes of a democracy, Body Mass Index, Christmas carols, Christmas Day working, Christmas story, Classic FM, clergy, ComRes, Deborah Lycett, first-time voters, Health Survey for England, Jesus Christ, Journal of Religion and Health, Justin Welby, Labour Force Survey, moral leadership, Obesity, Office for National Statistics, Opinium Research, religious festivals, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, The Observer, Vincent Nichols, YouGov | Leave a comment

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 Advent calendars, Cabinet Office, Cathedrals, church attendance, church membership, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Church Times, Clive Field, ComRes, David Voas, death penalty, European Union, First World War, France, FutureFirst, Germany, ICM Research, Immigration, Ipsos-MORI, Islamic State, ITV News, Jesus Christ, military action, Peter Brierley, politics, Pope Francis, railway nationalization, Rossiya Segodnya, same-sex marriage, social action, Step up to Serve, The Times, War and Society, YouGov, YouGov Profiles, youth | Leave a comment

Public attitudes towards women bishops

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Ben Clements

Given important recent developments in the long-running debate on the issue of women bishops in the Church of England, this post provides a brief review of topline and group attitudes using recent data from opinion polls. Several polls on the topic of women bishops and the Church of England have been conducted by YouGov and ComRes, based on nationally-representative samples of the adult population in Britain (on their initial release, many of these surveys were covered in earlier BRIN posts).

Table 1 shows the topline findings for YouGov surveys conducted between 2010 and 2013. The general pattern is for public opinion to be very favourable towards the Church of England allowing women to become bishops. The level of support is somewhat lower for the two surveys where an additional response option has allowed respondents to declare that they have no opinion either way (which significant minorities do). Across surveys, only around a tenth of respondents are opposed to women being allowed to become bishops.

Table 1: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England

	Should allow (%)	Should not allow (%)	Have no opinion either way (%)	Don’t know (%)
11-12 July 2010	63.0	10.0	24.0	3.0
7-8 July 2012	77.0	11.0	–	12.0
8-9 July 2012	55.0	12.0	30.0	4.0
22-23 November 2012	78.0	10.0	–	11.0
14-15 March 2013	80.0	11.0	–	10.0
27-28 March 2013	78.0	9.0	–	13.0

Source: YouGov surveys.

Table 2 shows topline response for three ComRes surveys conducted in 2012, which have used differently-worded response options. The overall picture is similar to that obtained from Table 1. Opinion is very firmly in favour of women bishops in each survey. Around a tenth of respondents are opposed. It is also worth noting that ComRes asked a question on this issue to its CPanel of churchgoing Christians aged 18 years and older. This survey, conducted in September 2012, found that 57% of respondents either strongly or tended to support women bishops being allowed in the Church of England, with 38% opposed to some degree (only 5% said they did not know). Another question on this issue in the same survey found that 51% agreed that the Church of England should allow women to become bishops, compared to 34% who disagreed and 15% who did not know or could not state a view.

Table 2: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England

	Should allow (%)	Should not allow (%)	Don’t know (%)
4-5 July 2012	74.0	12.0	15.0
	Agree (%)	Disagree (%)	Don’t know (%)
24 August-9 September 2012	79.0	11.0	9.0
	In favour (%)	Against (%)	Don’t know (%)
16-18 November 2012	67.0	13.0	20.0

Source: ComRes surveys.

A more recent Opinium survey of the UK adult population, conducted in July 2014, posed separate questions about women becoming bishops in the Church of England and becoming part of the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. The distribution of responses was similar for each question. Majorities agreed with each of these propositions and very few disagreed. Interestingly, the levels of don’t know responses were comparatively high compared to those recorded in Table 1 and Table 2 (this poll was discussed in more detail in a BRIN post at the time).

Moving on from the overall state of public opinion, what about variation in attitudes across socio-demographic and religious groups? Table 3 presents the views of different groups based on analysis of the YouGov survey from late-March 2013. Again, data are shown for indicators of religious belonging, behaving and believing.

In terms of socio-demographic groups, women are slightly more in favour of women bishops than men while support is slightly lower amongst those in the DE social grade. In terms of religious groups, Catholics, adherents of non-Christian religions and those who attend religious services on a frequent basis are less supportive. Even so, around two-thirds of Catholics, adherents of non-Christian faiths, and frequent-attenders support women bishops. The opinions of occasional attenders are broadly similar to those who do not attend religious services. Levels of support are similar for Anglicans and other Christians. In terms of believing, support is somewhat higher amongst those who believe in a spiritual higher power (but not in God). Support is lowest amongst those who don’t know whether they believe in a God or higher spiritual higher power, but this does not translate into higher levels of opposition. Rather, around a third of this group does not have a clear view either way on this issue.

Table 3: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England, by social and religious group

	Should allow (%)	Should not allow (%)	Don’t know (%)
All	77.9	9.0	13.0
Male	74.0	10.3	15.8
Female	81.6	7.9	10.4
15-24	75.9	8.6	15.5
25-34	76.2	4.9	18.8
35-44	76.0	11.0	12.9
45-54	78.6	8.8	12.6
55-64	80.0	10.5	8.8
65-74	79.3	10.4	10.4
75+	73.8	14.3	11.9
AB	79.7	10.4	9.9
C1	80.0	8.3	11.7
C2	78.9	7.5	13.7
DE	72.5	9.5	18.0
Church of England	82.5	7.5	10.0
Catholic	67.1	19.5	13.4
Other Christian	82.4	7.6	9.9
Other religion	66.7	10.8	22.5
No religion	79.1	7.7	13.2
Frequently attend	65.8	23.0	11.3
Infrequently attend	82.9	8.0	9.1
Never attend	80.6	6.6	12.8
Believe there is a God	75.1	13.9	10.9
Do not believe in a God, but believe there is some sort of higher spiritual power	86.5	6.3	7.3
Do not believe in a God or higher spiritual power	80.6	6.5	12.9
Don’t know	64.0	3.9	32.0

Source: YouGov survey, 27-28 March 2013.

Summary

This brief review of recent survey data on the views of British adults towards women bishops has shown that usually sizeable majorities have taken positions supportive of this move. There has been some variation in levels of support and opposition across population groups, even though negative sentiment has been the preserve of very small minorities of the adult population. Higher levels of opposition are evident amongst older age groups, Catholics, non-Christian faiths, as well as those attending religious services on a regular basis.

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Behaving, believing, Belonging, Church of England, ComRes, gender equality, opinion polls, Opinium Research, ordination of women, public debate, religious belonging, Survey Data, women bishops, women clergy, YouGov | Leave a comment

Bible Versus Darwin and Other News

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Bible versus Darwin

Given a list of 30 books, and invited to select three which they considered to be most valuable to humanity (as opposed to having read or enjoyed), 37% of the 2,044 adult Britons recently questioned by YouGov for the Folio Society put the Bible in top spot, narrowly ahead of what is often thought to be its arch rival, Darwin’s Origin of Species (35%). However, in the battle between religion and science, Darwin won out among men (37% against 36% for the Bible), while women put the Bible (38%) ahead of Darwin (33%). In regional terms, the Bible scored most highly in Northern England (41%). Asked why they had opted for the Bible, the most frequent response was because it ‘contains principles/guidelines to be a good person’. The Koran came in eighth position, on 9%. The top ten titles are shown below.

		%
1	Bible	37
2	Origin of Species – Charles Darwin	35
3	Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking	17
4	Relativity – Albert Einstein	15
5	Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell	14
6	Principia Mathematica – Isaac Newton	12
7	To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee	10
8	Koran	9
9	Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith	7
10	Double Helix – James Watson	6

The survey has been widely reported in British and overseas print and online media during the past few days, from which the above summary has been compiled. Irritatingly, the Folio Society’s press release is not yet posted on its website, and the data tables are not yet in YouGov’s online archive either.

Religious liberty

Religious liberty issues are of some concern to a minority of the electorate, according to a ComRes poll conducted for the Christian Institute in the 40 most marginal constituencies of England and Wales. Fieldwork was carried out online among 1,000 adults between 18 and 26 September 2014. Full data tables have yet to be released into the public domain (albeit they have been generously made available to BRIN by ComRes), but a news release from the Christian Institute (on 31 October 2014) is available online at:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/poll-shows-voters-concerned-over-religious-liberty-threats/

Two-fifths (39%) of the sample disagreed with the proposition that religious liberty in Britain had been improved by the current Coalition Government, with just 11% in agreement and 50% recorded as don’t knows. A plurality (44%) thought that UK law should ensure that people are not forced to provide goods or services that violate their beliefs, while 31% dissented from the view that enforcement of equality should always take precedence over conscience in law. Asked whether ‘the tide of legislation has gone too far in elevating equality over religious freedom’, 43% agreed, 21% disagreed, and 35% were undecided. One-third believed that Britain should follow the example of other nations in offering asylum to displaced Christians in Iraq, and 17% said that they would be more likely to vote in the forthcoming general election for a party which promised to grant such asylum.

The Christian Institute’s purpose behind the poll was presumably to ascertain the extent to which neglect of religious liberty might cost politicians votes in May 2015. In practice, however, this seems highly unlikely since we know from a myriad of other polling that it is topics such as the economy, immigration, and the health service which are foremost in the public mind. When it comes to the crunch, religious issues per se generally do not have saliency in British politics.

Jewish vote

Talking of religion and politics, Ed Miliband’s condemnation of Israel’s ground operation in Gaza this summer seems to have upset many Jewish voters, according to a survey published by the Jewish News on 6 November 2014. Three in ten admitted that they would be less likely to vote Labour at the next general election as a result of Miliband’s comments, and 16% that they would be more likely to vote Labour (perhaps suggesting a certain lack of sympathy for Israel’s actions). A plurality (39%) stated that they would not have voted for Labour in any case, with 15% intending to vote Labour anyway.

Overall, 48% of the 1,300 Jewish News readers questioned online on 3-5 November 2014 said that they would vote Conservative if a general election were to be held now (rising to 63% among orthodox Jews), 19% Labour, 8% UKIP, 4% Green, 3% Liberal Democrat, with 16% undecided. The economy was ranked as the top political issue by 85%, followed by the National Health Service (57%), Israel (51%), education (49%), and Europe (40%). The majority (56%) said that a party leader’s or a local candidate’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be a major factor in determining how they voted. For further information, go to:

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/general-election-poll-results-lipman-test/

The usual caveat applies: the poll was evidently completed via a self-selecting sample alerted via various Jewish organizations, so it may not be representative of Britain’s Jewish community as a whole. The pattern of prospective voting by Jews is certainly a little different from the British Election Study (BES) 2015 panel (analysed by Ben Clements for BRIN on 17 October 2014), which was 46% Conservative, 30% Labour, 5% LibDem, and 12% UKIP. However, the BES data were based on only 134 Jews and omitted the undecideds, so the comparison is by no means exact. Moreover, a lot of the fall in the Labour vote between the two surveys may be accounted for by the negative reaction to Miliband’s criticism of Israel. Capturing the opinions of minority religious populations is no easy task.

Blasphemy

Asked about five different types of content in television and film, only 7% of the British public are concerned about blasphemy, compared with 17% who object to racism, 14% to sex, 14% to swearing, and 11% to homophobia, with 37% not being troubled about any of them or undecided. Blasphemy is of most concern to the over-60s (10%) and Conservative voters (9%) and of least concern (4% each) to people aged 25-39 and Labour supporters. The survey was conducted by YouGov for The Sunday Times among 2,022 adults, who were interviewed online on 6 and 7 November 2014. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ggg23xnvxt/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-071114.pdf

Anglican statistics

The Church of England’s Statistics for Mission, 2013 were published on 10 November 2014 in 63 pages of tables, figures, commentary, and methodological notes. They are based upon an 80% completion rate of parochial returns, with estimation being used for the remaining data. The report revealed a by now all too familiar picture of slow net decline, with some more dramatic reductions (for example, electoral roll membership dropped by 9% last year, which saw its first renewal since 2007), but also tempered by some pockets of growth. As columnist Giles Fraser commented in The Guardian for 15 November 2014 (p. 40), ‘it seems that the Church of England continues to slip quietly into non-existence’ while, at the same time, ‘it is holding up pretty well, despite seriously adverse market conditions’.

A variety of measures of all age churchgoing were included; in descending order of magnitude these are: Christmas attendance 2,368,400 (equivalent to 4% of the English population); Easter attendance 1,272,000; worshipping community 1,056,400; average weekly attendance 1,009,100 (2% of the population); average Sunday attendance 849,500; and usual Sunday attendance 784,600. Additionally, an estimated 5,000,000 individuals attended special services during Advent. Overall, it was calculated that 24% of churches were declining, 19% growing, and 58% stable. Enhanced information about joiners and leavers indicated that losses arise from death/illness (38%), moving away (32%), leaving the church (17%), and moving to another local church (14%). Gains derive from joining church for the first time (46%), moving into the area (29%), returning to church (14%), and moving from a local church (12%). Statistics for Mission are at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2112070/2013statisticsformission.pdf

Disestablishment

Only 29% of Britons think the official link between the Church of England and the state is good for Britain, according to a ComRes survey for ITV News between 31 October and 2 November 2014, for which 2,019 adults were interviewed online. The range by demographic sub-groups was from 16% in Scotland to 39% among retired people with a private pension. A similar overall number (30%) believed that establishment is a bad thing, while the plurality (41%) was unable to express a view. The results were comparable with previous polls by ComRes this year (27-29 June and 12-14 September) which posed the identical question. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_6th_November_2014.pdf

English and Welsh Catholic statistics

Tony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre Trust has recently published, as a blog, the second part of his critique of the collation of Catholic statistics in England and Wales printed in the 2014 edition of the Catholic Directory. This part covers mass attendance, baptisms, marriages, and receptions, together with some overarching reflections on the quality of Catholic data. It also describes the Trust’s own plans for future publications on pastoral and demographic statistics. The blog can be found at:

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

Sectarianism in Scotland

Earlier this year, Equality Here, Now released on its website an analysis of the religious composition of the workforce in Scottish local authorities, concluding that there continues to be significant institutional discrimination in the employment of Catholics. A robust response to this has just been published by Steve Bruce in ‘Sectarian Discrimination in Local Councils and Myth-Making’, Scottish Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, November 2014, pp. 445-53. He points out the fundamental methodological flaw of Equality Here, Now in drawing conclusions from very incomplete data (religious affiliation only being available for 14% of council staff). He also presents an alternative way of interpreting these partial statistics, suggesting that, in general, ‘self-declared Catholics and self-declared Protestants are present in ratios that fit local council profiles [in the census of population] reasonably well’. Access to the article can be gained from:

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/scot.2014.0043

The original Equality Here, Now report can still be read at:

https://sites.google.com/site/equalityherenow/home/performance-on-equalities/performance-of-councils—general/catholics-work-and-local-authorities-in-scotland-2014

On retreat

The Autumn 2014 issue of Promoting Retreats: The Newsletter of the Association for Promoting Retreats includes (on pp. 7-9) a summary by Ben Wilson of a survey of the membership of the Association earlier this year, to which 200 members (approaching one-quarter of the total) responded. Two-thirds of them were aged 65 and above, with one-third over the age of 75, and almost two-thirds were women. One-fifth had joined the Association within the past five years, while one-third had been in membership for more than two decades. Members currently attended an average of one retreat and two non-residential quiet days each year. Time constraints (56%), cost (34%), and distance to the nearest retreat house (20%) were cited as the main barriers to going on retreat more often. The newsletter can be read at:

http://www.promotingretreats.org/downloads/2014-2-Autumn.pdf

Islamic State

Things have been a bit quiet on the polling front of late regarding the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but the British public has certainly not forgotten about the group, 78% regarding it as a very or fairly serious threat to Britain in the most recent YouGov poll, for which 2,003 adults were interviewed online on 12-13 November 2014. This was a slightly higher proportion than said the same about al-Qaeda (72%) and significantly more than with Iran (40%) or Russia (38%). The data table is at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/i0qdjx3dhs/InternalResults_141113_threats_Russia_Ukraine.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Association for Promoting Retreats, Ben Wilson, Bible, blasphemy, Catholic Directory, Charles Darwin, Christian Institute, Church and State, church attendance, Church of England, ComRes, disestablishment, Equality Here Now, Folio Society, Iraq, Iraqi Christians, Islamic State, ITV News, Jewish News, Jews, joiners and leavers, Koran, Origin of Species, Pastoral Research Centre Trust, Religious Liberty, retreats, Roman Catholic Church, Scottish Affairs, sectarianism, Steve Bruce, Sunday Times, Syria, television and film, Tony Spencer, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

Huffington Post and Other Polls

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Huffington Post religion poll

As part of its new ‘Beyond Belief’ series, The Huffington Post UK commissioned Survation to carry out a short online survey about religion among 2,004 Britons on 31 October and 1 November 2014. Results were published on 4 November 2014. Full data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Huffington-Post-Results.pdf

while the Huffington Post’s analysis of the survey, by Jessica Elgot, is at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/03/religion-beyond-belief_n_6094442.html

The first of the three questions concerned self-assessed religiosity. The majority (61%) of the sample did not consider themselves religious, whereas 31% described themselves as somewhat religious and 8% as very religious. The non-religious were somewhat over-represented among men, those aged 35-64, residents of Northern England and Scotland, and non-manual workers, with two-thirds of each of these groups saying they were not religious. The proportion of very religious was, not unexpectedly, highest for those professing a religion, as well as with the younger age cohorts and Labour voters (probably reflecting a concentration of, respectively, non-Christians and Roman Catholics).

Asked about the influence of religion on society, 52% thought it caused more harm than good, this view being held especially strongly by the non-religious (62%), the 55-64s (60%), and Liberal Democrats (60%). Just under one-quarter (24%) felt religion did more good than harm, peaking at 66% for the very religious, with 24% undecided.

In similar vein, 56% deemed atheists and religious people as equally likely to be moral, only 6% considering atheists to be less likely to be moral than the religious against 12% who assessed atheists as the more moral, with 26% unable to comment. Even among the self-designated very religious, no more than one-fifth claimed atheists to be less likely to be moral than religious people. The long-standing conflation of ethics and Judeo-Christian culture appears to be collapsing.

Religious affiliation

Populus has just released another large-scale survey containing details of religious affiliation. Online interviews took place throughout October 2014 with 18,330 adult Britons, each of whom was asked ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Results are summarized below, indicating that age is now far more important than gender or social class in shaping religious identity (age probably also contributes to the differences by voting intention). Full details can be found in table 12 at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmFT_October_BPC3.pdf

% across	Christian	Non-Christian	No religion
All	54	7	37
Men	52	7	38
Women	55	6	36
18-24	29	13	52
25-34	40	11	45
35-44	49	8	41
45-54	54	5	39
55-64	66	3	29
65+	74	3	23
AB	54	8	36
C1	54	5	37
C2	54	7	37
DE	53	7	38
Conservative	69	5	25
Labour	49	11	37
LibDem	52	6	40
UKIP	64	3	32

Religious hate crimes

One UK resident in 20 claims to have been the victim of a self-defined religious hate crime during the past 12 months, according to a poll by Opinium Research published on 5 November 2014, for which 2,002 online interviews were conducted between 14 and 17 October 2014. The incidence of religious hate crimes was slightly less than those related to disability and race (6% each) and the same as for sexual orientation, gender prejudice or gender identity. Young people aged 18-34 were most likely to say they had been the victim of a religious hate crime (13%), although this age group disproportionately reported being a victim of any hate crime (26%, which was double the national average). Religious hate crimes took many and multiple forms, including harassment (64%), physical assault (52%), internet abuse (52%), domestic abuse (49%), verbal abuse (45%), hate mail (43%), vandalism (36%), and bullying (34%). Data tables are at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/sites/ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/files/op4924_opinium_pr_hatecrime_tables__0.pdf

Religious bake off

The gay cake row, which we covered in our post of 29 July 2014, has flared up again. The case involves a Christian family-run bakery in Belfast (Ashers Baking Company) which was threatened with prosecution by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for its refusal to decorate a cake promoting same-sex marriage (which is not legal in the province), on the grounds that it would be contrary to the family’s beliefs. YouGov has just tested public opinion on the subject for a second time (the first being by ComRes in July 2014), interviewing 2,022 Britons online on 6-7 November 2014. It found that 56% deemed the action of the company acceptable and 33% unacceptable, with the strongest support coming from Conservatives (67%), over-60s (69%), and UKIP voters (74%). It also recorded disapproval by 65% of the Equality Commission’s threat of legal proceedings against the bakery unless compensation is paid to the person who requested the cake, approval running at 25% (and no more than 35% in any demographic sub-group). At the same time, majorities ranging from 56% to 80% regarded it as unacceptable for owners of services to decline access to them by a gay couple. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ex7ykytmu1/InternalResults_141107_cultural_beliefs_Website.pdf

Drinking habits

A ComRes poll for Channel 4 News published on 3 November 2014, but conducted online on 24-25 September 2014, discovered that 17% of the 2,144 Britons aged 16 and over who were questioned never drink alcohol, with a further 18% not having consumed any during the week prior to interview. Asked whether there were any factors which prevented them from drinking alcohol, 5% of the whole sample cited their own religious beliefs (rising to 11% of 16-24s and 10% of Londoners, presumably disproportionately non-Christians in both cases), 2% their family’s religious beliefs, and 1% their friends’ religious beliefs. Data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Channel_4_Drinking_habits_survey_26_September_2014.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (1)

Just over one-third (35%) of a representative sample of 1,629 Britons told YouGov, in an online pre-Halloween survey for The Sun on 26-27 October 2014, that they believed in life after death, a reduction from the earliest polling on the topic by Gallup (48% in 1939 and 49% in 1947). Belief was substantially greater among women (43%) than men (26%), and it was also high in London (42%), where the concentration of immigrants has raised levels of religious belief generally. Almost the same proportion of the whole population (34%) believes in ghosts, with still more (39%) convinced that houses can be haunted, and 28% even claiming to have seen or felt the presence of a supernatural being. However, very few (9%) state that they have communicated with the dead. Data tables are at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/otjwvdct9z/SunResults_141027_Ghosts-Website.pdf

Supernatural beliefs (2)

Meanwhile, another survey by OnePoll for price comparison website confused.com, on 21-23 October 2014, has reported that 31% of 2,000 UK adults have lived in a property they thought was haunted, one-sixth of whom had moved home as a result. The most common haunted occurrences were strange noises (53%), shadows moving around the house (30%), items disappearing without explanation (28%), rooms suddenly becoming chilly (27%), sighting of a ghost (17%), and doors opening and closing of their own accord (16%). Anxieties about the supernatural apparently influence house-buying decisions, with 39% saying they would be put off a property if they knew something bad had happened there, 31% if it was built on an ancient burial ground, 28% if they believed it was haunted, 25% if it was located next to a cemetery, and 11% if it was numbered 13. No data tables are available in the public domain, but there is a press release at:

http://www.confused.com/press/releases/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-causing-brits-a-fright

Halloween

Opinium Research reported on 30 October 2014 that 40% of UK adults intended to celebrate Halloween the following day, most commonly by watching a scary film on television (20%), going to or hosting a party (17%), dressing up (17%), carving a pumpkin (15%), or going trick-or-treating (12%). It was the youngest generation, aged 18-34, which most enjoyed the various aspects of Halloween, such as dressing up (61%), parties (60%), scary films (58%), Halloween recipes (55%), and trick-or-treating (47%). Overall, 52% of the population expressed a dislike for trick-or-treating and 42% admitted to having pretended not to be at home in order to avoid a visitation from the trick-or-treaters. Data tables and methodological details are not available, but there is a press release at:

http://ourinsight.opinium.co.uk/survey-results/brits-hiding-away-trick-or-treaters

Child abuse

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently admitted, in a private letter subsequently publicized on the Exaro website, that the sexual abuse of children has been ‘rampant’ in the Church of England and other British institutions in recent times. A substantial majority (69%) of the British public agrees with his assessment of the situation, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times on 30-31 October 2014, for which 1,808 adults were interviewed online. Among the over-60s the proportion rose to 82% and for UKIP voters it was 86%. Only 16% suggested that Welby was exaggerating the scale of the problem, with 15% uncertain what to think (32% for the 18-24s). Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n965i9mzb8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-311014.pdf

Anglican clergy poll

In the Church Times for 31 October 2014 (p. 12), Linda Woodhead provided further analysis of the results of the YouGov poll of Church of England clergy which she commissioned in August-September 2014 (and which we have covered in two recent BRIN posts). Her article can be read online at:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/31-october/comment/opinion/clergy-are-more-like-old-labour-than-new

A critique of the article by Jonathan Chaplin appeared in the form of a letter to the editor in Church Times for 7 November 2014 (p. 16).

Posted in Survey news | Tagged alcohol, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ashers Baking Company, atheists, Channel 4 News, child abuse, Church of England, Church Times, clergy, ComRes, confused.com, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, ghosts, Halloween, haunted houses, Huffington Post, Jessica Elgot, Jonathan Chaplin, life after death, Linda Woodhead, morality, OnePoll, Opinium Research. Populus, religion as cause of harm, Religious Affiliation, religious hate crimes, same-sex marriage, self-assessed religiosity, Sunday Times, supernatural, Survation, The Sun, YouGov | Leave a comment

Catholic Family and Other News

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Catholic family

The Roman Catholic Church’s fortnight-long Extraordinary Synod on the Family ends in Rome today. It has attracted surprisingly little attention in the general (non-Catholic) British media, although its outcomes are now being reported as a victory for conservative forces in the Church, particularly on gay issues. So far as is known, the Synod has not been informed by any scientific test to determine how far British Catholics, professing or practising, are in tune with the Church’s official teaching on family matters. The Church’s own consultation questionnaire, in the autumn of 2013, was something of a public relations disaster, being poorly designed and imperfectly administered; in any case, the findings of this survey in England and Wales and in Scotland have been kept secret. No non-Catholic agency has stepped in to take the pulse of Catholic opinion in the run-up to the Synod, so the latest data which we have of a representative nature are those collected by YouGov for Westminster Faith Debates in June 2013, which revealed a big gap between the hierarchy and people in the pews. The tables from this poll are still available online at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/k0rbt8onjb/YG-Archive-050613-FaithMatters-UniversityofLancaster.pdf

That said, we probably should mention (just about) a global enquiry which has been run by the Catholic weekly The Tablet between 3 and 14 October 2014, via an 18-item open access online questionnaire. This was answered by an entirely self-selecting (and therefore probably quite unrepresentative) sample of more than 4,300 individuals, 57% of them from the United States (where the poll was highlighted on conservative blogs). According to The Tablet, one-quarter of respondents lived in the United Kingdom or Ireland, but their answers are not in the public domain, albeit there is a published tabulation of the views of 84 divorced and remarried British or Irish Catholics, which can be found at:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/texts-speeches-homilies/4/470/what-you-are-hoping-for-from-the-synod-for-the-family-our-survey-results-in-full-

Islamism (1)

Polling interest in the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria appears to be waning. This is the first weekend in more than two months that The Sunday Times has not included a module of questions about IS in its weekly poll conducted on its behalf by YouGov. Although IS remained the second most noted news story of last week, it attracted just 11% of the vote, compared with 50% for the Ebola outbreak, according to a Populus survey on 15 and 16 October 2014 among an online sample of 2,039 adults. The only other recent poll to note was undertaken online by ComRes for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday, also on 15 and 16 October 2014, with 2,000 respondents. Asked whether the US and UK governments were right to refuse to pay ransoms to terrorist groups such as IS, 60% agreed, 13% disagreed, and 27% did not know what to think. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/IoS_SM_Political_Poll_Additional_Questions_19th_October_2014.pdf

Islamism (2)

The Times of 2 October 2014 (p. 13) contained a report on recent research by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), at King’s College London. It was based on a study of 471 male and 54 female jihadists who had travelled to Syria and Iraq, overwhelmingly to join Islamic State (IS) or the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front. Biographical details were gleaned from interviews and social media. Comparative data on 378 German jihadists were obtained from that country’s intelligence service. Key findings from the newspaper coverage of the British research are quoted below, but no further information is currently available on the ICSR website.

‘The UK jihadists tend to be better educated, more affluent and have more social mobility compared to their counterparts in Europe. The typical British fighter was aged 18-24 and had received a sixth-form education, though some had degrees. Before going to the Middle East a majority had an involvement in activist groups focused on global Muslim issues, such as the Palestinian conflict, and many were involved in street-preaching groups. British jihadists tend to have South Asian backgrounds, reflecting the dominant ethnicities within British Islam, while men of North African extraction are the most numerous among mainland European fighters. Some British jihadists had criminal convictions, mostly for drugs or petty crime.’

Religious and ethnic hatred

Asked to select the greatest threat to the world from a list of five current dangers, 39% of Britons put religious and ethnic hatred in first place, with a further 22% placing it second, and still larger numbers of those on the political right. This is according to the results of a question asked in the most recent Pew Global Attitudes survey and released on 16 October 2014. Fieldwork was conducted in 44 countries between March and June 2014, including in Britain where 1,000 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone from 17 March to 9 April. The report and topline results from the question on world dangers can be read at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/10/Pew-Research-Center-Dangers-Report-FINAL-October-16-2014.pdf

The proportion of Britons citing religious and ethnic hatred as the world’s biggest danger in Spring 2014 was actually higher than in all other countries studied apart from Lebanon (58%) and the Palestinian Territories (40%), and it was considerably larger than the European average of 15% and the United States figure of 24%. However, it was somewhat diminished from the levels in Britain in Summer 2002 (43%) and Spring 2007 (45%), which were presumably influenced by the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in, respectively, New York in 2001 (9/11) and London in 2005 (7/7). The growing gap between the rich and the poor was perceived as the greatest global risk for 25% in Britain in 2014, pollution and other environmental problems for 16%, the spread of nuclear weapons for 14%, and AIDS and other infectious diseases for 4%.

Hate crimes: England and Wales

Hate Crimes, England and Wales, 2013/14, by Byron Creese and Deborah Lader, was published as Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/14 on 16 October 2014. The police recorded 44,480 hate crimes in the year, of which 2,273 (5%) were categorized as religiously motivated, somewhat more than disability hate crimes (1,985) and transgender hate crimes (555) but less than sexual orientation hate crimes (4,622) and race hate crimes (37,484). All five strands demonstrated an increase between 2012/13 and 2013/14, which was partly a function of better reporting and partly of a genuine rise, especially, in the case of race and religion hate crimes (the latter up by 45%, from 1,573), growth following the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013. Public order offences and criminal damage or arson were the commonest forms of religion hate crimes. The bulletin is at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364198/hosb0214.pdf

Religion and equality: Scotland

The Scottish Government published on 14 October 2014 an Analysis of Equality Results from the 2011 Census of Scotland. Chapter 3 (pp. 66-98) is devoted to religion and contains 31 charts, 2 figures, and 2 tables, together with brief commentaries thereon. Breaks are given for religion by age, gender, marital status, cohabitation, ethnicity, national identity, country of birth, age of arrival in UK, length of residence in UK, urban/rural classification, English/Scottish language skills, language used at home, dependent children, and health. The report is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0046/00460679.pdf

Atheism

Matt Sheard applies prosopographical techniques to autobiographical and oral history sources to produce a partially quantitative profile of non-elite British atheists between 1890 and 1980. He demonstrates that the process of atheization was principally a phenomenon of childhood and adolescence and often associated with weak religious backgrounds. Sheard’s ‘Ninety-Eight Atheists: Atheism among the Non-Elite in Twentieth Century Britain’ was published on 13 October 2014 in the open access journal Secularism and Nonreligion as Vol. 3, Article 6, and is available online at:

http://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/article/view/snr.ar/

Church decline

Ruth Gledhill has covered on Christian Today the recent analysis by Ben Clements on BRIN of religious affiliation data from the first wave of the British Election Study (BES) 2015 panel. She concentrates particularly on the ‘massive decline’ in affiliation over the fifty-year history of BES. She also interviews BRIN co-director David Voas about the prospects for the Churches. He sees immigration as the principal engine of any church growth which is occurring and the failure to recruit the children of churchgoers as the main reason for church declension. Nevertheless, he does not predict the virtual extinction of the Church of England, thinking that the seemingly relentless decline will bottom out at some point. Gledhill’s article is at:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/exclusive.new.figures.reveal.massive.decline.in.religious.affiliation/41799.htm

London knowledge

YouGov polled 1,966 Britons online on 16-17 October 2014 about their attitudes to the restitution of the Elgin Marbles to Greece, prefacing the survey with a series of true or false statements to test the public’s knowledge of London. Whereas 78% correctly identified Sir Christopher Wren as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, fewer (53%) denied that Westminster Abbey is the main Roman Catholic Church in London, 19% thinking that it is. In fact, the Abbey, although of Catholic origin before the Reformation, is now a Royal Peculiar in the Church of England, and Westminster Cathedral is the principal Catholic place of worship in the capital. Data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8y47s60k62/InternalResults_141017_London_Elgin_Marbles_Website.pdf

Posted in News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged atheism, Ben Clements, British Election Study, Byron Creese, census of population, Christian Today, ComRes, David Voas, Deborah Lader, equality, Extraordinary Synod on the Family, hate crimes, Home Office, Independent on Sunday, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, Islamic State, Islamism, jihadists, London, Matt Sheard, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Populus, ransoms, Religious Affiliation, religious and ethnic hatred, Roman Catholic Church, Ruth Gledhill, Scotland, Secularism and Nonreligion, St Paul's Cathedral, Sunday Mirror, The Tablet, The Times, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | 1 Comment

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