A Perfect Companion

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Anybody feeling a little at sea in the plethora of religious data may find a new briefing paper from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) a great boon. Written by EHRC’s research manager, David Perfect, and simply entitled Religion or Belief, it is available to download from:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/publications/religion_or_belief_briefing_paper.pdf

The 25-page paper brings together a selection of key national statistics on religion in Great Britain, sometimes as time series. The document is short enough for BRIN readers to consult directly, so no summary of findings will be attempted here. However, an annotated listing of the 19 tables may be found useful.

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

1. Religious affiliation, Great Britain, 2001, from Census

2. Religious affiliation, Great Britain, 2004/05-2008/09, from Annual Population Survey

3. Religious affiliation, England, Scotland, Wales, 2001, from Census

4. Religious affiliation, England, Scotland, Wales, 2009/10, from Integrated Household Survey

RELIGIOUS BELONGING

5. Belonging to a religion, Great Britain, 1983, 2008, from British Social Attitudes [BSA] Survey

6. Belonging to a religion by gender, Great Britain, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2008, from BSA

7. Belonging to a religion by age, Great Britain, 2008, from BSA

RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

8. Active practice of religion, England and Wales, 2008/09, from Citizenship Survey

9. Attendance at religious services, Great Britain, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2008, from BSA

10. Church attendance, England, 1979, 1989, 1998, 2005, from English Church Censuses

RELIGIOUS BELIEF

11. Belief in God, Great Britain, 1991, 1998, 2008, from BSA

12. Belief in God, United Kingdom and Europe, 2010, from Eurobarometer  

RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AND PREJUDICE

13. Perceptions of religious prejudice, England and Wales, 2005, 2007/08, 2008/09, from Citizenship Survey

14. Perceptions of more religious prejudice by religion, England and Wales, 2005, 2007/08, 2008/09, from Citizenship Survey

15. Perceptions of racial or religious harassment as a big problem, England, 2009/10, from Citizenship Survey

16. Perceptions of widespread discrimination by religion or belief, United Kingdom and Europe, 2009, from Eurobarometer

17. Perceptions of discrimination by equality strand, United Kingdom and Europe, 2009, from Eurobarometer

18. Disposal of Employment Tribunal cases by equality strand, Great Britain, 2009/10, from Employment Tribunal Statistics

19. Female Church of England clergy, England, 2000-09, from Church Statistics  

The paper concludes with a discussion of the sources (pages 20-2), mostly giving online links, and endnotes (pages 23-5).

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Getting Ahead in Life

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The traditional annual volume derived from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey was published by Sage just before Christmas. Edited by Alison Park, John Curtice, Elizabeth Clery and Catherine Bryson, The 27th Report: Exploring Labour’s Legacy was based on the 2009 survey, undertaken by Natcen between June and November that year.

Unlike the 2008 survey (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=66), which was full of religious content, the 2009 study does not immediately appear to afford such a rich mine of information. Nevertheless, it is not without value for religion-related research.

The full sample, comprising 3,421 adult Britons aged 18 and over interviewed face-to-face, was asked the usual questions about religious affiliation and attendance. These are important both in their own right and as variables for analysing the more ‘secular’ questions.

Of particular interest is the fact that, for the first time in the history of BSA, a slim majority of respondents claimed to have no religion when asked ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’

In reply, 51% self-identified as having no religion. This compares with 31% when the question was first put in 1983. The 40% barrier was not broken until 1995. The proportion was 46% in 2007 and 43% in 2008.

Of the 49% with a current religion, the principal categories were Anglican (20%), Christian – unspecified denomination (9%), Roman Catholic (9%), and non-Christian (5%).

There can be little doubt that many individuals had become less religious over time. For instance, just 19% had been brought up without a religion, 32% less than said they had no religion in 2009. Similarly, 38% had been reared as Anglicans, almost double the number who were still Anglican in 2009.

Of those with a religion, only one in ten attended services connected with it weekly or more often, and 48% never or practically never went to their place of worship.

The main sample was also asked about groups and organizations, besides parents, who should ensure children live safely without suffering abuse or neglect. Unsurprisingly, social services (66%), schools (53%) and extended families (52%) topped the list.

Yet the very low score for religious groups (2%) was somewhat unexpected, apparently suggesting the poor public image of religious social work, doubtless not unrelated to widespread knowledge of sexual abuse of children at the hands of some Roman Catholic clergy.

As well as the face-to-face interview, respondents were invited to tackle a self-completion questionnaire. There were three versions of this, corresponding to three sub-samples into which the main sample was evenly divided.

Version A of the self-completion questionnaire incorporated a special module on inequality as part of an International Social Survey Program extension. The first question in this asked about opportunities for getting ahead in life and was answered by 958 individuals.

In reply, 9% said that a person’s religion was essential or very important in getting ahead in life, rather more than when the question was previously put, in 1987 (5%) and 1992 (3%). By 2009 religion had even assumed greater importance on this definition than race/ethnicity and gender (8% each).

But, in terms of ascriptive factors, religion was not considered as quite so essential or very important as coming from a wealthy family (14%) or having well-educated parents (31%).

It was also dwarfed by meritocratic factors such as hard work (84%), good education (74%) and ambition (71%), and by the non-meritocratic factor of knowing the right people (33%).

The full spread of responses for the importance of a person’s religion in getting ahead in life was: essential 3%, very important 6%, fairly important 10%, not very important 27%, not important at all 52%, cannot choose 2%, and not answered 1%.

There is a brief analysis of the getting ahead in life question in chapter 2 (pages 29-50) of The 27th Report: Exploring Labour’s Legacy, by Anthony Heath, Nan Dirk de Graaf and Yaojun Li on ‘How Fair is the Route to the Top? Perceptions of Social Mobility’.

The annotated questionnaire for the 2009 British Social Attitudes Survey will be found at:

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/606622/bsa%202009%20annotated%20questionnaires.pdf

POSTSCRIPT [23 February 2011]: The dataset for the survey has just been released at ESDS as SN 6695.

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Civil Partnerships

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Clive D. Field

According to a new YouGov poll, public opinion is divided about the Coalition Government’s plans, announced by the Equalities Office on 17 February, to permit civil partnerships in England and Wales to be celebrated in religious buildings, even though ‘no religious group will be forced to host a civil partnership registration’.

Government’s goal would be achieved through implementation of Section 202 of the Equality Act 2010, which revokes the explicit ban on holding civil partnership registrations in religious premises that stems from the Approved Premises (Marriage and Civil Partnership) Regulations 2005. The Section is not yet in force.

The YouGov survey was undertaken online for The Sunday Times on 17 and 18 February 2011, among a representative sample of 2,464 adult Britons aged 18 and over. The results of the study will be found on page 10 of the tables at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-ST-results-18-200211.pdf

Asked whether it should be legal for same-sex couples to hold their civil partnership ceremonies in places of worship, 42% agreed (similar to the 41% approving of same-sex marriage, in a different question), 43% disagreed, and 16% expressed no opinion.

Support for the Government’s proposal was notably strong among Liberal Democrat voters (50%) and those aged 25-39 (53%), presumably the age group most likely to be directly affected.

Opposition peaked at 60% among the over-60s and at 54% among Conservative voters, despite the Conservative Party being the major partner in the Coalition Government which is putting forward the idea.

Men were also 10 points more hostile to the plan than women, and manual workers less in favour than non-manuals. Regional differences were not marked. In Scotland, which is not affected (since this is a devolved matter), the split was 42% versus 41%.

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UK Religious Trends to 2020

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Some fascinating (but necessarily speculative) insights into ten key current religious, demographic and other changes in the UK and their potential impact upon the Churches are contained in a new publication by Peter Brierley, head of Brierley Consultancy.

Entitled Major UK Religious Trends, 2010 to 2020, the 80-page paper is a companion to the same author’s Global Religious Trends, 2010 to 2020, which we covered on BRIN last year – see http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=61

The report is designed to facilitate strategy formation and leadership development in the Churches, to ensure that their forward thinking and planning are fully grounded in the facts and reasonable assumptions.

Brierley is a statistician with 43 years’ experience of Christian evaluation, research and publishing, including lengthy spells as European Director of MARC Europe and Executive Director of Christian Research.

In his new paper he draws extensively on the empirical data which he collected in these roles, especially in undertaking church censuses and preparing successive editions of Religious Trends, to arrive at informed projections about the state of UK religion in 2020.

Brierley also utilizes the research which he has been conducting for a new book on Church Statistics, 2005-2015, to be released by ADBC Publishers (Brierley Consultancy’s new imprint) later this year.

This last-named publication is billed as giving data across all 340 denominations in the UK and will thus stand in the tradition of Religious Trends, a title that might be said to have moved off in a somewhat different direction in its new online manifestation from Christian Research (see http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=815).

The continuing eclipse of the Judeo-Christian heritage and the decline of institutional Christianity, with some pockets of trend-bucking (such as Pentecostals and larger Anglican places of worship), is the overarching (albeit nuanced) theme which unifies Brierley’s projections to 2020 in Major UK Religious Trends.

This story-line is neatly summarized in figure 6.5 on page 53, which compares the religious structure of Great Britain (rather than the UK) in 2010 and 2020.

By the latter date the Christian and non-Christian communities are estimated to balance at 50% each (with 41% professing no religion and 9% – although 12% is cited elsewhere – being of non-Christian faiths).

Among the 50% of professing Christians in 2020, just 4% will be regular churchgoers (highest in Scotland and lowest in Wales) and 46% irregular churchgoers or non-attenders. Weekday services will account for half of these worshippers.

Church membership is anticipated by Brierley to be 6% (or 7% elsewhere), the majority of it nominal.

These decreases in religious practice and affiliation are further accentuated when set against the background of a modest rise in religious provision, reflected in the forecast growth in the number of UK clergy from 36,630 in 2010 to 38,800 in 2020 and of places of worship from 50,700 to 51,900.

Figure 6.5 is complemented by table 1.12 on pages 18-19 which lists 22 quantitative and qualitative attributes of what the UK Christian scene might look like in 2020.

Brierley’s forecasts about church attendance contrast with the more cautiously optimistic reading of the contemporary situation promulgated by Christian Research since last September. Christian Research is hoping to organize a new UK-wide census of churchgoing and Christian activities this year, utilizing online data capture.

As with much of his previous work, Brierley seems to be on surest ground when writing about Trinitarian Christian denominations. Non-Trinitarian Churches and, more particularly, non-Christian faiths may be thought a little beyond his professional experience and perhaps even comfort zone.

Certainly, some of the statistics relating to non-Christian faiths, and Islam in particular, could be questioned. For example, Brierley’s estimate of Muslims has been scaled back to reflect the fact that (in his view) only half are ‘active members’, whereas the Citizenship Surveys demonstrate that four-fifths of Muslims claim to practice their religion.   

Major UK Religious Trends costs £15.00 inclusive of postage and can be ordered from Dr Peter Brierley, The Old Post Office, 1 Thorpe Avenue, Tonbridge, Kent, TN10 4PW. Cheques should be made payable to Peter Brierley.

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Hospital Chaplaincy

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The Daily Express recently ran a story headlined ‘NHS spends £25m on clergymen while hard-up hospitals have to shut wards’. Written by Victoria Fletcher, the newspaper’s health editor, the article is available online at:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/227562/NHS-spends-25m-on-clergymen-while-hard-up-hospitals-have-to-shut-wards-

It is based upon a Freedom of Information (FoI) request sent to each of England’s 226 mental health and acute hospital trusts, of which 200 replied.

Responding trusts said they spent £25,556,000 on chaplaincy services in 2009 and 2010 (I am assuming that this figure refers to a single financial year, rather than the aggregate of two calendar years).

Roughly, this equated to an average of £125,000 per trust, mostly for the salaries of clerics from the Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh faiths. Scaling up for non-responding trusts, the newspaper calculated an annual bill of nearly £30 million in England.

Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust in London was the highest spender, with a chaplaincy budget of £434,000. In Leicester the University Hospitals NHS Trust spent £341,000 on 16 part-time chaplains.

Fletcher claims that ‘the sums being spent are up to eight per cent higher than in the previous financial year’, although it is not explained how this finding relates to an earlier (but evidently broader) survey of NHS chaplaincy published by the National Secular Society (NSS) in April 2009.

The NSS also used FoI to obtain figures on chaplaincy costs incurred by mental health and care trusts, NHS and foundation trusts and primary care trusts in England.

It likewise received a partial response, with £26,722,000 spent on the salaries of 546 full-time equivalent chaplains in England. The total for the UK was £32,014,000 which was further increased by NSS, to £40 million, by factoring in non-salary costs.

Reports from this previous NSS study are still available at:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/nhs-chaplaincy-funding.html

The new data in the Daily Express will doubtless reignite the controversy about who should pay for chaplaincy services, especially at a time of pressure on the health budget – the NHS or religious bodies.  

For those wishing to know more, there is a considerable literature on hospital chaplaincy, including the important recent book by Christopher Swift, Hospital Chaplaincy in the Twenty-First Century: the Crisis of Spiritual Care on the NHS (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009).

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Baptist Union Statistics, 2010

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Clive D. Field

‘The latest returns show a mixed but broadly positive picture for churches in the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB)’, according to the lead story in today’s issue of The Baptist Times.

Both church membership and (adult) baptisms, the traditional measures of Baptist strength, fell between 2009 and 2010, to stand at 135,536 (-1%) and 3,566 (-5%) respectively in 2010.

However, during the same period, the number of children attending Baptist churches rose by 2%, to reach 78,648, and of young people by 3½% to 39,602.

As noted last week (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=868), ministry among children and young people is also one of the few areas in the Church of England to show some encouraging signs.

Overall Baptist attendance figures have apparently not yet been analysed, but The Baptist Times states that ‘they are expected to show an increase, continuing the trend of the last decade’.

Commenting on the statistics, Revd Ian Bunce, head of BUGB’s mission department, noted that the drop in baptisms is ‘the biggest issue we need to face’, highlighting the fact that the Union is failing to retain its children and youth as they move into adulthood. The department is currently undertaking a major piece of research into this topic.

The Baptist Times also reports that there is an ongoing small net growth in the number of BUGB churches after decades of decline and closure.

Since 2005 there have been more than 70 church plants, of which 17 were ‘resurrections’ of churches which had closed or been reduced to only a handful of worshippers and 14 were ethnic minority churches, mainly in London.

The Baptist Times article can be read at:

http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/news1.htm

BRIN’s coverage of the equivalent news story last year is still available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=69

The full BUGB statistics will appear in the 2011 edition of the Union’s annual Directory, whose publication should be reasonably imminent. Regrettably, the data do not normally find their way on to BUGB’s website.

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Will Jesus Christ Return to Earth?

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Only 3% of Britons believe that Jesus Christ will return to earth before 2050, according to a YouGov poll reissued in connection with the general release in the UK this Friday of the film Never Let Me Go, which tackles the controversial topic of cloning. The prophecy of His return is otherwise known as the Second Coming, Second Advent or Parousia.

The survey was actually conducted on 12-13 August 2010, among a representative sample of 1,865 adults aged 18 and over, interviewed online. Respondents were shown a random selection of 20 predictions of things which might happen in the next 40 years, from a total list of 40 scenarios. The data tables are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-LikelyToHappen-130810.pdf

The Second Coming of Christ was the prediction thought to be least likely to come true, with 84% saying that it would probably or definitely not happen by 2050 and 13% uncertain. The 3% of people confident that Jesus would return to earth in this timeframe ranged from 1% in Scotland to 5% in London and Southern England.

The next most implausible scenarios were that: most car owners would own flying cars within 40 years, believed by 8%; an asteroid would hit earth, causing massive loss of life (12%); and the death penalty would be reintroduced into Britain (15%).

At the other end of the spectrum, three-quarters or more were convinced that, by 2050, the world would face an energy crisis, the earth would get warmer, a woman would become prime minister, and most Britons would have to work into their 70s before retiring.

The only comparator survey which I can find of the general population of Great Britain was conducted by Gallup in November 1999. Asked whether Christ would return to earth one day for a Second Coming, 25% agreed that He would, including 30% of women and of those aged 45-64, 32% of semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, and 37% of the over-65s.

In the United States, by contrast, 41% of adults thought that Christ definitely or probably would return to earth before 2050, according to a Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine study in April 2010, with 46% certain He would not and 13% expressing no views.

An earlier Pew poll in July 2006 found that 79% of American Christians believed in the Second Coming, albeit only 20% that He would return to earth in their lifetime.

One other prediction of potential interest to BRIN readers was included in last August’s YouGov investigation. Just 15% considered it likely that we would make contact with alien life by 2050, 71% saying that it definitely or probably would not happen. Men (20%) and Liberal Democrat voters (25%) were most open to the possibility.

At the same time, 47% thought there was a chance that we would discover evidence of life elsewhere in the universe during the next 40 years.

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Inter-Faith Adoption

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Inter-faith adoption of children is acceptable to two-thirds of Britons, according to a YouGov poll released today. 2,051 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online on 2-3 February 2011. The results are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-Adoption-080211.pdf

Asked whether, assuming they were well-qualified in all other ways, adoption by a couple of a different religion to the child being adopted should be allowed, 65% of respondents said yes and 14% no, with 21% unsure.

The proportion in favour of adoption under such circumstances was especially high (73%) in the case of those aged 18-24 and Scottish residents. It was lowest among the over-60s (59%), 17% of whom were opposed, the same figure as for those who voted Conservative at the 2010 general election.

Interviewees were more comfortable about adoption by a couple of a different religion to the child than by people over the age of 60 (16%), smokers (44%), people over the age of 50 (46%), gays and lesbians (53%), single persons (53%), and those on very low incomes (53%). But support was less than for adoption by unmarried couples (73%) and couples from a different racial background to the child being adopted (77%).

The number negative about inter-faith adoption was the smallest for the nine adoption scenarios apart from adoption by a couple of a child from a different racial background, which was only 11%. Opposition was strongest (64%) to adoption by people over the age of 60.

The results partly serve as a proxy for a fair degree of racial and religious tolerance in Britain but to the persistence of some other social prejudices. However, one suspects that the findings may have differed somewhat had questioning been about adoption by members of specific religious groups.

It should be noted that the poll did not directly touch upon one of the adoption issues which has been making serious running in recent years, the sensitivities of some persons of faith about adoption by homosexual couples, and about the expectation on other adopting couples to lack bias against homosexuality, in the face of the requirements of equality legislation.

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CofE Annual Church Statistics

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Siobhan McAndrew

We have recently heard from the Revd. Preb. Lynda Barley, who is Head of Research and Statistics at the Church of England (for those of you with a subscription, Church Times interviewed her in 2008 about her dual career as statistician and cleric).

The annual Church Statistics have in recent years been available to view online. The Church of England website is currently being revamped, so that only the current edition is readily viewable, although the press releases remain for earlier years.

However, there is a programme underway to update and enhance the materials that were previously available. The Research and Statistics area of the website is now available at http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics.aspx.

Over the next few months the Research and Statistics team anticipate not only replacing the information previously available, with improved tables and charts, but also adding additional related material.

In particular, they are planning to enhance the mapping of Church of England data that has been incorporated to a limited extent in the past.

Feedback on the website as it improves will be welcome, via statistics [dot] unit [at] churchofengland [dot] org.

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Radical Islam in the Middle East

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Recent events in Egypt, with pro-democracy protesters trying to dislodge President Hosni Mubarak from power, have made almost three in five Britons worry that more countries in the Middle East will fall under the influence of radical Islam.

That is the headline finding from a YouGov poll for today’s Sunday Times in which 2,283 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online on 3 and 4 February. The full results can be viewed at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-ST-results-04-060211.pdf

17% of respondents said that they were very and 42% fairly worried about the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East. 21% were not very worried and just 7% not worried at all.

12% expressed no opinion, increasing to 17% among women and the under-40s, the groups traditionally least likely to follow this sort of news coverage.

The proportion anxious about radical Islam climbed steadily with age, from 41% among the 18-24s to 75% among the over-60s. It was a fair bit higher among Conservative voters (67%) than Labourites or Liberal Democrats. It was marginally more among men than women, manual than non-manual workers, and outside London.

This pattern of demographics tracks British attitudes to Islam and Muslims more generally, suggesting that the replies to this poll about Egyptian developments were being firmly set within a framework of domestic Islamophobia.

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