Freedom of Religion

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

It is ten years since the Human Rights Act entered the statute books. To commemorate the anniversary, the campaigning organization Liberty has commissioned ComRes to undertake a poll of public attitudes to human rights. Fieldwork was conducted by telephone between 24 and 26 September 2010 among a sample of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over. The results of this survey appear at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/libertyhractpolloct10.aspx

Respondents were asked about the importance of particular rights in modern Britain. 85% said that it was vital or important to protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion, against 6% who deemed it unnecessary (including, surprisingly, 12% of 18-24 year olds). The highest level of support (90%) was found among those aged 45-54 and the AB socio-economic group.

However, freedom of thought, conscience and religion was not as highly valued as the right to a fair trial (95%), respect for privacy, family life and the home (94%), the protection of property (94%), and the right not to be tortured or degraded (91%). In terms of being vital or important, it was somewhat more prized than freedom of speech, protest and association (84%) and the right not to be detained without reason (81%).

The problem with this survey is that interviewees were not asked to prioritize, or choose between, individual freedoms. From this perspective, it is instructive to look at a Pew Global study in April-May 2007 which asked its sample of Britons which freedom mattered most to them in their personal lives. Even combining first and second choices, only 18% elected for freedom to practice their religion, a long way behind freedom to say whatever they wanted in public (40%), freedom from hunger and poverty (68%), and freedom from crime and violence (71%).

People also have qualified views about the importance of protecting religious freedoms in practice. In the 2008-09 Citizenship Survey of England and Wales 26% actually criticized the Government for doing too much to protect the rights of different religions, with 39% saying it was doing the correct amount and 27% too little. Those aged 16-24 (34%) and UK-born Asians and blacks, Muslims and black Caribbean Christians (more than two-fifths in each case) were most likely to contend that Government was not doing enough.

Churchgoing Christians are also becoming concerned that their rights are being undermined by Government policies and judgments in test legal cases. In a ComRes poll of them in December 2009-January 2010 70% agreed that the Human Rights Act’s protection for freedom of thought, conscience and religion needed more active support from politicians. 44% claimed to know somebody who had been discriminated against on the basis of religion.

Two other ComRes surveys from February 2010, in this instance among the general public, confirmed that the picture on the ground was not as rosy as could be wished. One found that 32% thought that religious freedoms in Britain had been restricted over the past ten years, the other that 44% detected Britain was becoming less tolerant of religion.

Of course, in reality, attitudes in these matters are shaped by personal prejudices and day-to-day experiences. Thus, in the 2008 British Social Attitudes Survey 69% agreed that we should respect all religions but 13% disagreed. More worryingly, only one-half wanted all religious groups in Britain to be accorded equal rights and 23% were opposed. Islamophobia doubtless accounts for many of these reservations.

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A Pot-Pourri of Beliefs

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Opinion pollsters Populus have recently released the results of an online survey of attitudes to topical questions, including a number of religious interest. Fieldwork was conducted between 20 and 23 August 2010 among a representative sample of 1,037 adult Britons aged 18 and over.

In the realm of what might be termed traditional beliefs, only 19% of Britons now accept the biblical account that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. 55% think this to be untrue, while 25% are undecided. The biggest demographic difference is between men and women, 63% and 48% respectively disbelieving the Bible story.

Conversely, 67% of adults take a Darwinian line in thinking human beings to have evolved from apes. Just 14% consider this statement untrue, with 18% uncertain. Notable here are variations by socio-economic group, with 73% of ABs being evolutionists against 61% of DEs.

A minority (37%) now believe in life after death. This is a lower proportion than in most British polls on the subject since the Second World War, although not completely unprecedented (four surveys in the 1970s returned between 35% and 37%). See the time series at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/afterlife.xls

A further 26% deny the existence of an afterlife and 37% are unclear. Women (44%) believe more than men (29%). Whereas 26% more women believe than disbelieve, for men there is a net 6% disbelief. Other groups registering large net belief figures are the 25-34s (+19%), the 45-54s (+17%), the over-65s (+14%) and the DEs (+25%).

As for alternative beliefs, opinions are less clear-cut. For example, 39% think that some people have genuine psychic powers and can foresee the future, but 32% disagree and 29% do not know. Women (50%) are almost twice as likely to believe in psychic powers as men (28%). Other highs are recorded among the middle-aged and the DEs.

Asked whether unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have visited the earth from other planets, 31% say this is the case, 31% that it is not so, with 38% unsure. Those aged 18-24 are particular disbelievers (45%, against 23% thinking the statement to be true).

As for time travel, 18% believe this to be possible, 49% impossible and 33% cannot say. 18-24s (31%) are most likely to accept the possibility, three times as many as among the over-65s (10%).

This is a somewhat disparate set of questions, and it is hard to draw very firm conclusions from them. Perhaps one of the most significant features is the large number of don’t knows, suggesting that people often struggle to engage with or comprehend the supernatural and transcendental, or perhaps simply do not care. Among those with firmer views, on the evidence here, Christian orthodoxy is more likely to be rejected than accepted.

For the full data tables from this survey, with breaks by gender, age, socio-economic group and region, see:

http://populuslimited.com/uploads/download_pdf-230810-Populus-Populus-poll—topical-questions.pdf

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Halloween

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Halloween this year falls on Sunday, 31 October. The festival is a curious hybrid of paganism and a Christian feast of the dead, but mainly the former. As Ronald Hutton has shown in chapter 37 of his The Stations of the Sun (Oxford University Press, 1996), its celebration was relatively muted in Great Britain until the latter half of the twentieth century when successively Irish and American influences brought it more to the fore.

Halloween has now been effectively hijacked by the retail industry, which is striving hard to develop a Halloween seasonal market and thus indirectly to boost observance of Halloween by Britons. Asda led the way, learning from Walmart (its American parent company), but all the other British supermarkets have followed suit.

Back in 2001, the market was only worth £12 million in this country, according to Planet Retail. It increased tenfold to £120 million by 2006 and then grew to £195 million in 2008 and £235 million in 2009, with a forecast of £280 million in 2010. Nielsen puts its value even higher, at nearer £300 million. Halloween has now become the third biggest retail event in the seasonal calendar after Christmas and Easter.

Leading the quest for even bigger revenues this year is Tesco. It has announced that it alone is expecting to sell £55 million of Halloween-related goods, including 1.4 million pumpkins, 2 million toffee apples, 1.5 million fancy dress costumes and 1 million copies of an exclusive film with Dreamworks, Monsters vs Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space. Tesco’s Halloween sales have almost trebled since 2005.

Tesco’s expected Halloween turnover of £55 million contrasts with its £20 million for Father’s Day, £28 million for Valentine’s Day, £37 million for Mother’s Day, £110 million for Easter and £320 million for Christmas.

Food manufacturers are all jumping on the bandwagon, too. For instance, Tango is giving its soft drink bottles and cans a zombie make-over, Cadbury is launching Screme Eggs and Cauldron’s Mix sweets, while Premier Foods is introducing Mr Kipling Fiendish Fancies and Mr Kipling Devil Slices.

Manufacturers and retailers would doubtless claim merely to be responding to customer demand for a new fun-filled festival for family and friends. But is this true? Unfortunately, the only British national survey which appears to exist on the subject of Halloween was conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion on 28-30 October 2009, among an online sample of 2,004 adults.

On that occasion just 14% of Britons claimed always to celebrate Halloween (compared with 41% of Americans and Canadians). 41% said that they never celebrated it and 45% sometimes did. 55% intended to carry out no Halloween-related activities during the 2009 weekend (against 26% in Canada and 14% in the USA), handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters being the commonest activity.

While 45% of Britons in 2009 associated Halloween with fun, 35% regarded it as overrated. 30% saw it as harmless, but for 31% it had connotations with paganism and for 40% with witchcraft.

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Thoughts on Trends in Church Attendance

Posted on September 30, 2010 by PeterBrierley

by Peter Brierley.

The recent debate over whether church attendance has reached a plateau, hosted at the Church Mouse blog, The Guardian and here at BRIN, has been of great interest. As a religious statistician and consultant, and editor of the seven editions of Religious Trends, I’m taking the opportunity to offer additional interpretation of the data.

It is not clear that “Catholic mass attendance has flattened out at 920,000”, as the officially published Roman Catholic mass attendance figures from 2000 to 2007 show a drop of over 8%, down from 1,000,820 in 2000 to 915,556 in 2007. However, it has risen to 918,000 in 2008.

The Church of England official figures for adult Average Weekly Attendance (AWA) fall by 2%, from 941,000 in 2002 to 919,000 in 2008, and their children’s figures drop from 229,000 to 225,000, also a drop of 2%. The Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) adult figures fall from 838,000 in 2002 to 812,000 in 2008, a drop of 3%, and from 167,000 to 148,000 for children (a decline of 11% in 6 years). The Usual Sunday Attendance figures – which would be comparable to Roman Catholic and Baptist measurements – go from 768,000 in 2002 to 718,000 in 2008 for adults (a drop of 7%), and from 151,000 to 127,000 in 2008 for children (a drop of 16%).

What appears to be happening is that Sunday attendance is dropping, especially for children and young people, but that midweek attendance is increasing: up from 103,000 in 2002 for adults to 107,000 in 2008, and for young people (up from 62,000 in 2002 to 77,000 in 2008).

By putting midweek and Sunday attendance together, the drop in Sunday attendance is obscured. The “flattening out” therefore is a mix of Sunday decline and midweek increase.

The question is then whether those dropping out of Sunday attendance are simply switching to mid-week, or whether the ‘mid-weekers’ are new attenders. Christian Research ran a survey in 2004 which showed that the mid-weekers were often new people, but a more recent survey in 2009 run by Brierley Consulting showed that more mid-weekers were formerly Sunday attenders. In reality, the growing number of mid-week attenders is likely to be made up of a mixture of switchers and new people. While the new attenders are obviously welcome, their numbers do not as yet compensate for those dropping out.

Looking at the other denominations cited as exhibiting a plateau – the Catholics and Baptists – neither measure mid-week mass or service attendance separately, and so we cannot say what is happening here. The analysis presented thus far relates more to the Church of England, and assumes that Baptist attendance follows Baptist membership trends – which is not necessarily the case.

While of course it is important to note trends in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, it is also important to look at what is happening in the other denominations also. The Presbyterians, Methodists and United Reformed Church are all declining very rapidly; the less rapid decline in the Church of England and the Catholic Church does not offset the general pattern. The only denomination, loosely defined, which can truly be said to exhibit growth is Pentecostalism, courtesy the many black churches.

The 1998 English Church Census showed a further drastic drop in numbers attending church, compared with the earlier 1989 census. The 2005 Census showed a continuing decline, but at a reduced rate. The most recent figures for Anglicans and Catholics (important because these are the biggest denominations) show that while decline continues overall, the rate of decline is lessening. It is important to know why and where that is happening. The analysis presented thus far by Christian Research does not allow this to emerge, but it would be interesting to know – if more data is available than was published.

Peter Brierley is former Director of Christian Research. He compiled and edited the seven issues of Religious Trends, from 1997 to 2008, as well as running the English Church Censuses of 1979, 1989, 1998 and 2005, and the Scottish Church Census of 2002, 1994 and 1984. He now directs Brierley Consulting, which publishes the bimonthly bulletin FutureFirst. Contact: peter @ brierleyres . com.

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UK Defence Statistics, 2010

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Clive D. Field

We reported earlier in the year (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=151) on the statistics of religious affiliation in the armed forces collected by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) section of the Ministry of Defence and annually published online in UK Defence Statistics.

The 2010 edition of UK Defence Statistics has been published by DASA today and is available in a variety of formats through its website at: http://www.dasa.mod.uk/. Table 2.13 presents the religious profession of the services at 1 April 2010, with comparisons for 2007-09.

Excluding the 1.4% of regular armed forces personnel whose religion was not recorded, the number of self-identifying Christians in 2010 is 85.9%, a reduction of almost four points on the 2007 figure of 89.8%.

However, there are still more Christians in the forces than in Great Britain as a whole, for which the figure stood at 71.4% in the 2009-10 Integrated Household Survey (IHS). The proportion is highest in the Army (88.2%), followed by the Royal Air Force (84.0%) and Royal Navy (81.6%).

Non-Christian religions account for only 1.5% of the armed services, far less than the 8.2% recorded in the IHS. This is probably mainly explained by the ethnic profile of the forces. Although the number of BMEs has been steadily increasing of late, there still appear to be relatively few Asians (see Tables 2.9 and 2.10).

In particular, the representation of Muslims in the services, at 0.3%, is well below the 4.2% found in the IHS. Their strongest showing is in the Army (0.5%). Their scarcity is unsurprising, given the hostility of many in the Muslim community to Britain’s military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those professing no religion have increased from 9.5% in 2007 to 12.6% in 2010, which is again less than the IHS figure of 20.5%. They are much more likely to be found in the Royal Navy (17.7%) and Royal Air Force (15.2%) than in the Army (9.8%).   

Thus, our service personnel remain nominally more religious than the rest of us. This probably reflects their desire to have a spiritual ‘insurance policy’ in the event of the worst happening on active service, as well as the embedding of religion through a strong chaplaincy network.

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Counting Catholics

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

Andrew Brown of the Guardian has just written a very interesting article on the problems of calculating the size of the Catholic community. The church defines this as those who have been baptised living within England and Wales (or in Scotland; these are separate church jurisdictions). A sociology colleague has mentioned however that church administrators do refer to “unbaptised Catholics” – theologically heterodox, but perhaps wise to the need to plan for school places and similar.

The main sources are the Catholic Church itself; the Government (specifically the Scottish and Northern Irish censuses, and data on marriages); and opinion polls and social surveys. The Church data for the most part depends on parishes estimating their community size, predominantly from mass attendance through an annual count, together with estimation of the size of the community which does not attend. This might be gauged from counting rites of passage (baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages and funerals), which are also enumerated for parish returns and sent to diocesan offices for compilation and annual report, in diocesan directories and the Catholic Directory for England and Wales.

Tony Spencer, Director of the Pastoral Research Centre, has published an assessment of data quality of various Catholic sources – diocesan directories, the Catholic Directory for England and Wales, and the Vatican-compiled Annuario Pontificio, which is difficult to access. This is discussed in some detail in A. E. C. W. Spencer (ed.), Digest of Statistics of the Catholic Community of England & Wales, 1958-2005: Volume I. A common problem is lack of clarity over how missing returns are treated.

Regarding the Catholic Directory, which is the most commonly-cited source, Spencer suggests that one issue is that data are often not supplied by some dioceses before the publication deadline. This means that the newest data are provisional but often not labelled as such, nor revised between editions. Spencer also suggests that operational definitions may vary between dioceses.

We provide here the best set of data at our disposal for England and Wales over the past decades up to 2005. The sources used have been Peter Brierley (ed.) Religious Trends 2 and Religious Trends 7 (1999, 2008); R. Currie et al. Churches and Churchgoers (Oxford, 1977); and Spencer’s Digest (2008). We also include a graph from the merged set of British Social Attitudes surveys, from 1983 to 2008. (Predicted figures for 2010 are available in Religious Trends 7, and reported data on attendance, baptisms and so on are available after 2005 from recent editions of the Catholic Directory; the latter will be added here in due course.)

For now here is a set of charts: click on the images for a high-quality version.

1. Baptisms as a percentage of live births.

The Religious Trends data originates from the Catholic Directory and may include ‘late’ baptisms. If so, it’s not really appropriate to divide this by number of live births per year. Spencer’s Pastoral Research Centre data (the red series) is restricted to infant baptisms (under 12 months) which is more acceptable.

2. Entries to Catholicism by type: infant baptisms, late baptisms, adult conversions.

This illustrates that a growing proportion of baptisms are undertaken when the child is older – partly because of falling neonatal mortality rates, and partly because families may opt for their children to be baptised at once, rather than individually soon after birth.

3. Catholics as percentage of England and Wales population.

This chart combines the Currie et al. (or CGH) estimates published in 1977, the estimates published in Religious Trends, and Spencer’s PRC estimates. The total population data are from the censuses (linearly interpolated until 1981, with ONS mid-year population estimates from 1981).

4. Percentage of five-yearly birth cohort identifying as Catholic, British Social Attitudes surveys 1983-2008.

Here we have combined all the 1983-2008 surveys and looked at the percentage reporting they are Catholic by period of birth (1900-1904, 1905-1909, etc., up to 1985-1989). Note however that the rate for each age group will be affected by differential mortality (and fertility) rates as well as tendency to retain religiosity or lapse.

The spreadsheet including the data used to create these charts will be posted here later today. There are data gaps which need filling in (by consulting Catholic Directories from the 1970s, allowing for the estimates being flawed) but this is as far as we have reached at present.

Update (9.30pm)
The spreadsheet is now available here.

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Methodist Statistics for Mission Report

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Methodist Church of Great Britain has always been one of the most numerate of the Christian denominations in this country. It began the regular collection and publication of statistics as far back as 1766. In recent decades, while collection has continued to be annual, publication has been triennial. The current triennium covers 2008-10, with a summative report on Methodist numbers to be made to the Methodist Conference meeting in Southport in June-July 2011.

Methodists are presently gearing up for the October 2010 count, the data for which are now gathered online. By way of a warm-up to that exercise, the Research Department of the Connexional Team published on 23 September a comprehensive quantitative profile of the Methodist Church in 2009-10, prepared by Nigel Williams on the basis of the 2009 count. In addition to the main 306-page resource pack (which includes data at connexional, district and circuit levels), church-level statistics and an atlas of Methodist locations are also available in separate files. All this information can be accessed at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/StatisticsForMission

A few headlines from this wealth of data may be noted here, with comparisons with the final year of the 2005-07 triennium.

MEMBERS

There were 241,000 church members in 2009, a fall of 20% since 2007. Even without taking deaths and other losses into account, the number of confirmations in 2009 (2,565) was less than members ceasing to meet (3,435). The bulk of the membership is to be found in suburban (35%), small town (29%) or village/rural (19%) neighbourhoods, with just 16% from inner cities or council estates.

ATTENDERS

The adult average all week attendance in 2009 was 193,000, 10% less than in 2007. For teenagers and the under-13s the decreases were 12% and 34% respectively. At 228,000, total attendances had dropped by 13% in two years. Most adults continued to worship on Sundays, midweek services contributing only an extra 11% on top of Sunday congregations, whereas for children and teenagers midweek services added 67% and 53% to the Sunday totals. These data are relevant to the recent debate about whether the decline in churchgoing has ended. See http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=551

FRESH EXPRESSIONS

Fresh Expressions of church are often said to offset declines in the more traditional indicators of Methodist religious practice. 893 Fresh Expressions are identified in this latest report, mostly in the Café Church, Messy Church, Third Place or Cell Group categories. However, there is no reason to believe that those associated with these initiatives are excluded from the attendance figures. There is a separate presentation about Fresh Expressions in Methodism at:  

http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/stats-Fresh-Expressions-Analysis-0910.ppt

COMMUNITY ROLL

The number of those linked to the Methodist Church but not members in 2009 was 315,000, 17% down on 2007. The overall community roll, including members, stood at 556,000, 14% fewer than in 2007.

RITES OF PASSAGE

Excluding local ecumenical partnerships, the Methodist Church conducted 35 of every 1,000 funerals, 12 of every 1,000 marriages and blessings, and 11 of every 1,000 baptisms and thanksgivings in 2008-09.

LAY OFFICE-HOLDERS

There were 56,000 Methodist lay office-holders in 2009, equivalent to 23% of the membership or 10% of the community roll. Methodism, therefore, really works its supporters hard! Only 1.4% of these office-holders were under 24 years of age.

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Harvest Festivals

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Some form of public thanksgiving, secular or religious, for the successful bringing-in of the harvest can be traced back to pagan times in Britain. However, harvest festival services, in the sense with which most of us will be familiar from church or school, really caught on in the mid-nineteenth century.

Now the harvest tradition is probably slowly dying out. That, at least, is the conclusion being drawn by some commentators from a recent YouGov poll conducted online among 2,200 adults on behalf of the campaign group Eat Seasonably, which is funded by Defra, and aims to promote Britain’s seasonal produce of fruit and vegetables. It is hoping to reignite the fashion for harvest festivals.

Four-fifths of those interviewed by YouGov said that they no longer celebrated harvest festivals. Moreover, of the one-fifth doing so, less than one-third (29%) took solely fresh fruit or vegetables to church or school. One-half brought in only tinned or dried food, with 54% listing tinned baked beans as a staple offering.

A national survey early in 2009, commissioned to mark the launch of the TV channel Blighty, found similar results, with less than one-quarter of adults reporting that they attended harvest festivals.

In polls conducted for the Church of England attendance at harvest festival services during the past year was claimed by 20% of Britons in 2003, 24% in 2005 and 20% in 2007. As with all recalled religious practice, it is likely that these figures are somewhat inflated.

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Integrated Household Survey – First Release of Data

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

New estimates of the religious profile of Great Britain were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 23 September, in the form of the first release of data from the Integrated Household Survey (IHS) for April 2009 to March 2010.

The IHS is a composite household survey combining the answers from six ONS household surveys to produce an experimental (ie still to be assessed by the UK Statistics Authority) dataset of core variables. It is the largest social survey ever attempted by ONS and represents the biggest pool of UK social data after the decennial population census.

The aim of the IHS is to produce high-level estimates for particular themes to a greater precision and lower geographic area than current ONS household surveys. Religion is one of the themes covered in Britain (but not in Northern Ireland), and in 2009-10 data on it are available for 442,266 respondents.

The question posed was: ‘What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?’ This differs somewhat from the various questions asked about religious affiliation in the separate home nations at the 2001 census.

In response, and with missing values apparently excluded from the baseline, 20.5% of British people claimed to have no religion, 19.6% in England, 28.0% in Wales and 24.7% in Scotland.

At unitary authority or county level, Slough had the highest level of religious affiliation in England (93%), while Brighton and Hove had the lowest (58%). In Scotland there was a high of 92% in Inverclyde and a low of 62% in Midlothian. In Wales the range was from 81% in Flintshire down to 67% in Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Swansea.

71.4% of all Britons stated that they were Christians, ranging from 69.0% in Wales to 72.3% in Scotland. The 2001 census figure for Britain was 70.6%, taking the current religion data for Scotland. However, this is calculated against a baseline which includes those who did not answer the religious question (which was voluntary in 2001).

The next largest religious group in the IHS was the Muslim community, at 4.2% of the British population (4.7% in England and 1.2% in Wales and Scotland). This equates to 2,520,000 individuals (against the mid-2009 population estimate, the latest available), lower by 350,000 than the calculation just released by Pew which was the subject of our post at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=598.

Other faith communities recorded in the IHS were Buddhists (0.4%), Hindus (1.4%), Jews (0.5%), Sikhs (0.6%) and other religions (1.1%).

All the above data are extracted from the statistical bulletin and appended documentation to be found at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=15381

IHS data will also be made available via ESDS.

This is a preliminary news post only. In due course, BRIN would hope to undertake a fuller analysis of these and subsequent IHS data (the rolling IHS dataset will be published by ONS at quarterly intervals).

POSTSCRIPT [23 October 2010]

The dataset for the 2009-10 IHS was released by ESDS on 22 October as SN 6584. It is now available for secondary analysis. See:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6584

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The Sun Shines Some Light

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

BRIN readers might not naturally think of The Sun, perhaps Britain’s most famous weekday tabloid newspaper, as a source of religious intelligence. However, as part of its polling contract with YouGov, it did add a couple of questions on topical issues to a survey conducted online on 20 September among a representative sample of 772 British adults aged 18 and over.

The first sought to quantify what is already being described as the ‘Benedict bounce’, following the recent papal visit to Britain. Respondents were asked whether, on the basis of what they had seen and heard, their opinion of the Pope had changed as a result of the visit. 15% said that their opinion had become more positive and 9% more negative. For 61% the visit had made no difference to their views, while 16% could not say. The positive impact of the visit on perceptions of the Pope was most evidenced among Conservative voters, the under-25s, and residents of London, the Midlands/Wales and Scotland (the three regions where the main events of the visit had been staged). The data tables can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-PopesVisitReaction-results-200910.pdf

The second topic covered was that of halal meat, on the back of tabloid newspaper reports that restaurants and caterers are increasingly using halal products surreptitiously, without overtly telling their customers. 73% of Britons in The Sun poll thought that food providers should be required to label halal meat as such and 20% that they should not. The most notable demographic variation was by age, the under-25s (57%) being least insistent on labelling and the over-60s (81%) the most. This follows the general trend of questions relating to Muslim issues whereby younger people are more sympathetic than their elders. For the data tables, see:  

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Halal_Food-results-200910.pdf

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