News |

British Social Attitudes, 2013

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Results have recently started to emerge from the 2013 British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey, although it will still be some time before the full dataset is available at the UK Data Archive. Meanwhile, the best available source for rather more limited online statistical analysis is the British Social Attitudes Information System, which can be found at:

http://www.britsocat.com/

BSA has been conducted by NatCen Social Research on an annual basis since 1983 (except in two years), and on behalf of the Economic and Social Research Council and a consortium of Government and charitable funders.

Interviewing is face-to-face, supplemented by a self-completion questionnaire. For the 2013 survey (undertaken between June and November) the sample comprised 3,244 adults aged 18 and over living in private households in Britain. However, many questions were only put to one of three sub-samples.

This post is confined to reporting the headline results for the religion questions posed in the 2013 BSA, with trend data for previous years, where extant. The British Social Attitudes Information System also permits, as a standard feature, analysis of all other questions by religious affiliation, and we hope to provide additional coverage from this perspective in due course.

Religious affiliation

BSA has routinely asked: ‘do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ This was question Q857 on the main BSA questionnaire in 2013. Results at ten-yearly intervals are shown in the following table:

% down	1983	1993	2003	2013
No religion	31.4	36.8	43.4	50.6
Christian – no denomination	3.2	4.6	6.6	11.8
Christian – Church of England	39.9	32.6	26.8	16.3
Christian – Roman Catholic	9.6	10.8	8.9	8.8
Christian – other	14.0	11.8	8.2	4.8
Non-Christian	2.0	3.5	6.0	7.7

It will be seen that the proportion professing no religion has steadily climbed, from 31% in 1983 to 51% in 2013, with a rise also in the number of non-Christians (from 2% to 8%). All forms of denominational Christianity have lost ground, but notably the Church of England (from 40% to 16% over the three decades) and other Protestant Christians (the Free Churches and Presbyterian Churches, down from 14% to 5%). Although the number of non-denominational Christians has virtually quadrupled, the increase has not stemmed the overall fall in Christians, from 67% to 42%.

BSA also asks about religion of upbringing (main questionnaire Q866). Setting religion of upbringing alongside current affiliation, in the table below, emphasizes the extent of loss of faith over the life-cycle, with the Church of England losing half its original constituency but even non-Christian faiths subject to a modest ‘leakage’.

% down	2013	2013	2013
	Upbringing	Current	Change
No religion	19.0	50.6	+31.6
Christian – no denomination	16.7	11.8	-4.9
Christian – Church of England	31.3	16.3	-15.0
Christian – Roman Catholic	14.5	8.8	-5.7
Christian – other	10.4	4.8	-5.6
Non-Christian	8.0	7.7	-0.3

Religious attendance

It should be noted that BSA does not ask the entire British cross-section sample about attendance at religious services other than for the rites of passage. This question (main questionnaire Q868) is only put to those declaring some religion at the time of interview and/or reporting a religion of upbringing. It is important to interpret the statistics in this light. Self-reported attendance dropped considerably between 1993 and 2003 but seems to have been more stable over the past ten years, albeit the majority of this sub-sample (58%) never worship.

% down	1993	2003	2013
Once a week or more	18.9	13.9	13.1
At least once in two weeks	3.2	2.4	2.5
At least once a month	9.0	5.8	6.4
At least twice a year	16.6	10.1	8.4
At least once a year	8.5	5.8	4.2
Less often	6.1	4.3	5.5
Never	36.7	56.7	58.4
Varies	1.0	1.1	1.4

Christianity and Britishness

Respondents were given a list of attributes which potentially define what it means to be ‘truly British’ and asked to rate their importance. One of the factors was ‘to be a Christian’ (self-completion questionnaire, Version A, Q2e). This question had been included in three previous BSA surveys, although the 2008 data are omitted from the published discussion by Zsolt Kiss and Alison Park, ‘National Identity: Exploring Britishness’, British Social Attitudes, 31, 2014 Edition, eds Alison Park, Caroline Bryson, and John Curtice (London: NatCen Social Research, 2014), pp. 64-5, which is at:

http://www.bsa-31.natcen.ac.uk/media/38202/bsa31_full_report.pdf

The results from all four surveys are shown below. It will be seen that the proportion thinking ‘to be a Christian’ is important to Britishness has reduced from just under one-third in 1995 and 2003 to just under one-quarter in 2008 and 2013. However, between 2008 and 2013 the number believing a Christian profession to be very important to British identity has doubled, while those deeming it unimportant have reduced by four points, from 75% to 71%. These changes coincide with greater public concern about Muslims (see the next item) and Christianophobia.

% down	1995	2003	2008	2013
Very important	18.5	15.1	6.2	12.5
Fairly important	13.5	15.6	17.4	12.0
Not very important	27.3	23.7	37.3	26.2
Not at all important	35.1	39.0	37.7	45.0
Can/t choose/not answered	5.7	6.6	1.4	4.4

‘To be a Christian’ came last in the 2013 list of nine factors defining what it means to be ‘truly British’, well behind sharing customs and traditions in eighth place on 50%. The top three attributes were an ability to speak English (95%), having British citizenship (85%), and respecting institutions and laws (85%).

Attitudes to Muslims

Q467 in the main questionnaire repeated a question asked in 2003 about whether Britain would begin to lose its identity if more Muslims came to live here. Far more agreed with the proposition in 2013 (62%) than in 2003 (48%), with the number who agreed strongly doubling. The growth perhaps exemplifies greater anxieties about Muslims after 7/7 and about immigrants in general. Dissentients reduced from 30% to 22% over the decade.

% down	2003	2013
Agree strongly	17.1	35.3
Agree	31.0	26.8
Neither agree nor disagree	17.0	15.0
Disagree	26.1	16.7
Disagree strongly	4.1	5.2
Don’t know/not answered	4.6	0.9

Respondents were also asked about the scenario in which a close relative married a Muslim, from two perspectives, the perceived reaction of most white people in Britain if one of their relatives was involved (main questionnaire Q656) and the likely reaction of the respondent if it was one of his/her relatives (Q659). The results are tabulated below:

% down	2013	2013
	White people	Own reaction
Mind a lot	34.0	23.4
Mind a little	36.3	21.0
Not mind	22.7	51.5
Other/DK/refused	7.0	4.0

As so often happens in sample surveys, respondents claimed a greater degree of tolerance for themselves than they were inclined to see in others. Whereas 70% thought that most white people would mind about a relative marrying a Muslim, only 44% felt that they would object themselves.

This particular question has not been asked before, in exactly the same words, but the 2003 BSA did pose a similar one, about reactions to a close relative marrying or otherwise forming a long-term relationship with a Muslim. At that time, just 25% voiced unhappiness at the prospect, 19% less than in 2013, suggesting a growth in Islamophobic attitudes over recent years.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged British Social Attitudes Survey, Britishness, Christian, church attendance, Immigration, inter-faith marriage, Islamophobia, Muslims, NatCen Social Research, religion of upbringing, Religious Affiliation, truly British | 1 Comment

Changes in Attendance at Religious Services in Britain

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Ben Clements

This BRIN post takes a historical perspective on religious attendance in Britain, looking at nationally-representative survey data covering the past three decades. Attendance is a common indicator of what sociologists of religion term ‘behaving’, often analysed alongside religious ‘belonging’ and ‘believing’. Of course, attendance data based on sample surveys need to be treated with caution given well-established concerns over the ‘aspirational’ reporting of attendance by respondents involving exaggeration of how often they actually visit places of worship. Valuable data on religious attendance are also provided via statistics produced by some religious denominations (the most obvious being the Anglican, Methodist and Catholic churches) and by periodic church censuses (church attendance figures for England between 1979 and 2005 are available from BRIN here).

The analysis here is based on data from the two surveys which ‘book-end’ the British Social Attitudes (BSA) series – those conducted in 1983 and 2012 (the latter of which has already been the subject of analysis of religion and moral issues in a previous BRIN post). This post focuses on:

(1) The extent of change over time in overall rates of attendance

(2) An analysis of which social groups are more or less likely to report that they do not attend religious services.

Earlier studies of popular religion using sample survey data, such as Michael Argyle’s Religious Behaviour (1958, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), found differences in levels of weekly church attendance in Britain based on social factors such as sex and class. Women and those in higher social classes were more likely to attend church on a weekly basis.

The BSA surveys have used the same question wording over time to ask respondents about religious attendance. The wording is as follows:

Apart from such special occasions as weddings, funerals and baptisms, how often nowadays do you attend services or meetings connected with your religion?

Once a week or more

Less often but at least once in two weeks

Less often but at least once a month

Less often but at least twice a year

Less often but at least once a year

Less often than once a year

Never or practically never

Varies too much to say

Don’t know

The full set of response options shown above has been collapsed into three groups: attends frequently (defined as once a month or more); attends infrequently (less often); and never attends. This excludes ‘don’t know’ responses. Table 1 reports the respective percentage distributions for the 1983 and 2012 surveys. To provide some wider context for religious change, Table 1 also reports the over-time data for religious affiliation (or ‘belonging’).

The proportion with a religious affiliation has decreased from just over two-thirds in 1983 to just over a half in 2012. The data for attendance also show change over time – and in the direction of less religious engagement – with the proportion who report attending religious services (whether frequently or infrequently) falling from 44.1% in 1983 to 34.3% in 2012. More specifically, there has been decline over recent decades in the proportions of both frequent-attenders and infrequent-attenders. The proportion never attending services (except for those special occasions mentioned above) has risen from over half to around two-thirds. Overall, frequent attendance at services was very much a minority activity in both 1983 and 2012 and similar proportions were classified as infrequent attenders. Non-attenders comprised the majority group in both 1983 and 2012, but a much clearer majority in the latter survey.

Table 1: Religious affiliation and attendance at religious services

	1983 (%)	2012 (%)
Affiliation
Has a religious affiliation	68.6	52.3
No religious affiliation	31.4	47.7
Attendance
Attends frequently: At least once a month or more	21.3	17.0
Attends infrequently: Less often than once a month	22.8	17.3
Total attends	44.1	34.3
Never attends	55.9	65.7

Source: compiled by the author from BSA surveys.

The second aspect of the religious attendance data examined here is variation across social groups and over time, again presenting data from both the 1983 and 2012 surveys. Table 2 reports the proportions in various social groups who, in 1983 and 2012, said they never attended religious services. There are some interesting variations in non-attendance. Looking at men and women, we can see that the latter are much less likely to report that they never attend services in the 1983 survey. This is also the case in 2012, but the gap between men and women has closed considerably. In 1983, 48.5% of women did not attend services, which had risen to 63.8% by 2012. There was much less change for men over time, increasing from 64.6% to 69.5%.

What about variation based on age group? We can see that a similar pattern is evident in both 1983 and 2012 in terms of the older age groups being less likely to report not attending services. In 1983, 73% of 18-24 year olds said they did not attend religious services, compared to 44.3% of those aged 65-74 years. In 2012, the gap between the age groups least and most likely to say they never attended was considerably reduced: at 71.9% for those aged 18-24 and 58.8% for those aged 75 and older. While the two youngest age groups show relatively little change between 1983 and 2012 in the proportions who never attend, the older age groups – with the exception of those aged 75 and over – show substantial increases in their levels of non-attendance.

Next, there are clear differences in levels of non-attendance based on the region where a respondent lives. In 1983, the proportions who did not attend services were considerably lower in Scotland (41.5%) and Wales (46.5%) than in England (58.3%) as a whole. Within England, there was noticeable variation across the nine standard regions, lowest at 51.1% in Greater London and highest at 69.3% in Yorkshire and Humberside. In 2012, however, Scotland and Wales do not stand apart in comparison with England as a whole. In fact, in Wales the proportion who report they do not attend religious services is the highest recorded in any area (at 78.5%). Moreover, Scotland’s level of non-attendance (68.8%) ranks on a par with the highest recorded for England regions (68.7% in the South West and 68.3% in Yorkshire and Humberside). Between 1983 and 2012, the increase in non-attendance is much greater for Scotland and Wales than it is for England.

Finally, levels of non-attendance are shown for several groups based on religious affiliation: Anglicans, Catholics, other Christian, and other religion. All three Christian groups show an increase in the proportion reporting that they do not attend services, but the same pattern is evident in both surveys. That is, Catholics are least likely to report not attending services, followed by other Christians, with Anglicans most likely to report they do not attend (which constitutes a bare majority of them in 2012). Interestingly, the proportion of other Christians who do not attend services nearly doubles between 1983 and 2012, but this group does include a greater proportion reporting no specific denominational affiliation in 2012, who may be less likely to take part in communal activity. Other survey-based research on churchgoing in the United Kingdom, conducted by Tearfund in 2007 showed that – compared to other Christian denominations – Anglicans were least likely to attend services, on either a weekly or monthly basis. The figures for the other religion group (which comprises adherents of non-Christian faiths) actually show a decrease in the level of non-attendance, but caution should be exercised here given that this group comprised a very small proportion of the samples in 1983 and 2012 (albeit one that has increased over time, from 2.0% to 6.0%).

Table 2: Per cent reporting that they never attend religious services, various socio-demographic factors

		1983 (%)	2012 (%)
Sex	Men	64.6	69.5
	Women	48.5	63.8

Age group	18-24	73.0	71.9
	25-34	65.9	68.8
	35-44	55.5	68.8
	45-54	48.9	66.3
	55-64	47.2	67.5
	65-74	44.3	59.4
	75+	55.7	58.8

Region	England	58.3	65.6
	North East	56.4	72.7
	North West	61.5	65.6
	Yorkshire and Humberside	69.3	68.3
	West Midlands	54.8	66.9
	East Midlands	65.1	70.7
	East Anglia / Eastern England	54.2	66.7
	South West	59.3	68.7
	South East	54.5	63.4
	Greater London	51.1	57.6
	Scotland	41.5	68.8
	Wales	46.5	78.5

Affiliation	Anglican	43.3	50.8
	Catholic	25.0	35.0
	Other Christian	23.3	43.7
	Other religion	37.1	25.9

Source: Compiled by the author from BSA surveys.

Next, variations in attendance are examined based on two indicators of socio-economic status, education (Table 3) and social class (Table 4 and Table 5). A consistent measure of education is available for both surveys, based on a question asking at what age respondents completed their full-time education (also labelled terminal education age) or whether they were still in some form of education (for example, college or university). Table 3 shows that, in 1983, those who finished full-time education aged 19 or over were less likely to report never attending services (about two-fifths said this) compared to all other groups (highest for those who left aged 17 – at 61.1%). In 2012, there is a similar pattern of non-attendance – those who left-education aged 19 years or older are less likely to report not attending services (at 57.1%), closely followed by those still in education (55.6%). Even so, the proportion of those aged 19 and over who never-attended had clearly risen over the intervening three decades, as had the proportions in the other groups (with the exception of those still in education). Another way of measuring educational background is to look at the highest qualification held by respondents. Such a measure was not included on the 1983 survey, but the data from the 2012 survey show that those holding degree-level (or above) qualifications were less likely to report never attending services (55.7%) compared to those with lower-level qualifications (such as A-Levels or GCSEs) or none at all (69.4%).

Table 3: Per cent reporting that they never attend religious services by age completed full-time education

	1983 (%)	2012 (%)
15 or under	55.8	70.1
16	59.8	75.0
17	61.1	67.7
18	56.8	65.8
19 and over	41.5	57.1
Still in education	55.9	55.6

Source: Compiled by the author from BSA surveys.

Table 4 (1983) and Table 5 (2012) show levels of non-attendance based on measures of social class. The measures are not identical, reflecting changes in the way the BSA series has adapted to changes in official classifications in this area. In 1983, we can see that those within the higher grades (professional or intermediate) are less likely to report not attending religious services (46.3% and 50.9%, respectively). In 1983, the highest levels of non-attendance are found amongst those in partly-skilled or unskilled occupations (at 61.5% and 62.4%). In 2012, the differences are narrower across categories, with all groups reporting higher levels of non-attendance. Those within the salariat (i.e. in higher-level ‘white-collar’ occupations) are slightly less likely to report that they do not attend services (63.3%), with non-attendance highest amongst those in the foreman / technicians category (at 73.1%).

Table 4: Per cent reporting that they never attend religious services by social class, 1983 (Registrar General’s Social Class)

	%
Professional	46.3
Intermediate	50.9
Skilled	61.5
Partly skilled	62.4
Unskilled	57.5
Look after home	46.5

Source: Compiled by the author from the BSA 1983 survey.

Table 5 Per cent reporting that they never attend religious services by social class, 2012 (NS-SEC analytic class)

	%
Salariat	63.3
Clerical	69.2
Petty Bourgeois	69.0
Foreman / Technicians	73.1
Working class	67.9

Source: Compiled by the author from the BSA 2012 survey.

Summary

The evidence reviewed here from the BSA surveys has shown that sex, age, religious affiliation and, to a lesser extent, socio-economic status – particularly educational background – have been and still are sources of variation in religious attendance in Britain. That is, women and older age groups – traditionally groups more likely to exhibit religious identity and involvement – are less likely to report that they do not attend services. Catholics, other Christians and adherents of non-Christian faiths are less likely to not attend compared to Anglicans. The broader picture, however, shows that, even if these historical gaps are still evident, they have often narrowed in recent decades, as a greater proportion of the adult population reports that it does not attend services in 2012 compared with 1983. Based on the evidence shown here, religious ‘behaving’ – measured as attendance at services – has clearly declined alongside religious ‘belonging’ in recent decades.

Posted in church attendance, Measuring religion, Research note, Survey news | Tagged Age, Behaving, Belonging, British Social Attitudes Surveys, church attendance, religious attendance, Religious change, Survey Data | 2 Comments

Christian Country and Other News

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Christian country?

The recent public and media debate about whether Britain is a Christian country or not, sparked by Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments before Easter, rumbles on. It has gained added impetus through Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg renewing the call for disestablishment of the Church of England (which is his Liberal Democrat Party’s long-standing policy).

In the last BRIN post, on 24 April 2014, Ben Clements subjected the controversy to empirical scrutiny by charting how the level of Christian affiliation has changed in Britain over recent decades, as reflected in sample surveys.

Here we offer a couple of poll-based time series about the public’s perceptions of whether Britain is a Christian country and should be one. In both cases there have been variations in methodology and question-wording between individual surveys, so the comparison is not entirely like-for-like, but we do get a sense of how attitudes have changed. The two tables appear at the end of this news item.

In terms of Britain being perceived as a Christian country, there has been a notable decline since the first poll on the subject, by NOP in 1965, when four-fifths of adults characterized Britain as Christian. This decrease is much as one might have expected, given the downward movement in most other indicators of Christian religious belonging, behaving, and believing since the 1960s.

Less anticipated, however, is the fact that the number considering Britain to be a Christian country reached a nadir after the Millennium and has risen since. The effect is probably exaggerated by the fact that the two YouGov surveys in 2007 asked whether Britain was mainly a Christian country, but question-wording alone probably does not fully explain what has been happening.

There appears to have been a reawakened sense of Britain’s Christian heritage and character. This may perhaps be attributed to: i) a growing backlash against multiculturalism and immigration and, particularly, deteriorating attitudes toward Islam and Muslims; ii) the influence of media and legal campaigns against allegedly ‘Christianophobic’ attitudes and behaviour, exemplified in ‘aggressive secularism’ and diversity legislation viewed as penalizing Christians; and iii) explicit and tacit support for Christianity as a bulwark of all faith on the part of some sections of non-Christian communities.

Interestingly, there seems to have been no parallel trend in response to the question whether Britain should be a Christian country. This indicator has decreased continuously since the 1960s, although it is notable that, even today, a majority (58%) thinks Britain should remain a Christian country. This is probably not true of most of those who profess no religion, but, unfortunately, there are no breaks by religion in the published tables for YouGov’s 2014 poll, despite a question on religious affiliation being asked.

So there is definite support for David Cameron among the British public in saying that Britain both is a Christian country and ought to be one. Precisely what Britons mean when they express these sentiments, given that de-Christianization mostly continues apace in practice, is pretty unclear. The fact that there are more ‘don’t knows’ on the topic than ever may suggest that there is genuine confusion.

Is Britain a Christian country?

%	Agency	Agree	Disagree	Don’t Know
3/1965	NOP	80	19	1
12/1989	Gallup	71	21	8
4/2007	YouGov	39	51	9
12/2007	YouGov	43	57	0
11/2010	ComRes	50	47	3
2/2012	YouGov	56	33	11
4/2014	YouGov	55	33	12
4/2014	ICM	56	30	14

Should Britain be a Christian country?

%	Agency	Agree	Disagree	Don’t Know
1-2/1968	ORC	81	15	3
3-4/1984	Harris	67	31	3
6-7/1987	Insight	69	22	8
2/2012	YouGov	61	22	18
4/2014	YouGov	58	23	19

Meanwhile, Michael Lipka of Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project has a statistical take on ‘Cameron’s “Christian Country”’ (using census and British Social Attitudes Survey data) at:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/24/camerons-christian-country-what-the-numbers-say-about-religion-in-the-united-kingdom/

Or post-Christian nation?

Britain’s cultural memory may be ‘quite strongly Christian’, but the reality is that it has become ‘post-Christian’ in that it is no longer ‘a nation of committed believers’. So says former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, in an interview with Cole Moreton for The Sunday Telegraph today (27 April 2014). The story is enriched by a poll which the newspaper commissioned from ICM Research, for which 2,001 adult Britons were interviewed online on 23-25 April 2014. The data tables will presumably appear on ICM’s website in due course (they are not there at the time of writing), but there is reasonable coverage of the findings in the article on pp. 1-2 of the newspaper which can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10790495/Former-archbishop-of-Canterbury-We-are-a-post-Christian-nation.html

Notwithstanding the fact that only 14% of respondents described themselves as practising Christians, with a further 38% as non-practising Christians, 56% continued to regard Britain as a Christian country, rising to 73% of over-65s and, surprisingly perhaps, including more men than women. Less than one-third (30%) said Britain was a non-religious society, although 41% thought of themselves as non-religious. A plurality of the whole sample (48%) asserted that Christians are afforded less protection for their beliefs by the state than adherents of other faiths, with the proportion reaching 57% among the over-65s, 56% for practising Christians, and 62% for non-practising Christians. Overall, 28% perceived Christians as having the same and 8% greater protection than other religions. One-half of respondents also agreed that Christians had become afraid to express their beliefs because of the rise of ‘religious fundamentalism’, with 32% disagreeing and 18% uncertain. Even two-fifths of non-religious people agreed with this statement compared with over three-fifths of Christians (both practising and non-practising).

Surrogate religion

Confirmation that football is a surrogate religion for its devotees, a periodic theme in the sociological literature, appears to come from a recent survey conducted by The Leadership Factor (TLF) on behalf of the makers of Warren United, a new animated sitcom about a fervent fan of a chronically disappointing football team (no, not Manchester United, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week!) Through its YourSayPays online panel, TLF quizzed 1,201 football fans (all of whom attended one or more professional games a season) in March 2014. They were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that ‘I am more likely to change my religion than the football team I support’. The majority of fans (56%) agreed with this proposition and only 18% disagreed. For the sub-set of 255 really dedicated fans who were season ticket holders with their clubs, the level of assent was still higher (75%) and dissent reduced to 10%. A press release about the poll was issued on 17 April 2014 and can be found at:

http://www.warrenunited.net/id-change-my-religion-before-my-team-say-fans/

An ancient saint

St George’s Day has been and gone for another year (it was on 23 April, in case you missed it). According to a YouGov poll for Channel 5 among 1,461 adults on 22-23 April 2014, England is seen as the UK’s home nation least good at celebrating its patron saint’s day. Just 7% think the English excel at honouring St George, compared with 8% for the Scots and St Andrew, 12% for the Welsh and St David, and 59% for the Northern Irish and St Patrick. Two-thirds would like to see the English do more to celebrate St George’s Day, disproportionately Conservative and UKIP voters and with the Scots (24%) being the main dissentients, and 69% support the day being made an official bank holiday in England. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7sicd7muvh/Channel5_Results_140422_StGeorgesDay.pdf

A modern saint

Two of the great leaders of the twentieth-century Roman Catholic Church, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, were canonized by Pope Francis in a ceremony in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City today (27 April 2014), which was also attended by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. So far as BRIN is aware, no surveys have yet been carried out in Britain to test the reactions of the public or the Catholic faithful to the canonizations. However, John Paul II was the subject of polling during the time when he was Pope (from 1978 until his death in 2005), not least in connection with his pastoral and ecumenical visit to Britain between 28 May and 5 June 1982 (which was overshadowed by the war between Britain and Argentina for control of the Falkland Islands). A digest of this polling forms part of my forthcoming article in Journal of Religion in Europe on ‘No Popery’s Ghost: Does Popular Anti-Catholicism Survive in Contemporary Britain?’ However, given the canonization, a few anticipatory points may be made here, although we will not be summarizing the many polls by Gallup about the visit itself (you will need to read the article for them).

John Paul II’s papal visit, combined with the length of his pontificate, meant he became a well-known figure in Britain, 62% of adults being able to name him in August 2003 (MORI), albeit only 7% recognized his birth name of Karol Wojtyla in November 2004 (BMRB). On the eve of his visit, in April 1982 (NOP), he was rated a very good or good religious leader by 78% and a very good or good world leader by 45%. His religious leadership qualities were still positively assessed (by 74%) in March 1993 (Continental Research), albeit he was eclipsed by fellow Catholic Mother Teresa in Gallup popularity rankings of religious figures in December 1987, December 1988, and September 1989. One-fifth of Britons continued to regard John Paul II as inspirational in December 2000 (MORI), but, by this time, his influence was waning through increasing frailty and conservatism. In June 2004 (Harris) he was rated positively by just 31% in Britain, and negatively by 29%, the positive score being lowest of the five Western European nations surveyed (and well behind Italy, on 78%). The worst of the worldwide revelations about child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests came out since John Paul II’s death, but they clearly occurred on his ‘papal watch’, and many have opposed his canonization on the grounds that he did not do enough to root out the scandal and punish the perpetrators. More generally, the perceived inadequate response to the abuse crisis by the Roman Catholic Church has been a major factor in increased polling negativity toward it during recent years, both among the public and Catholics.

When we’re 42

Newly released to the UK Data Service’s Nesstar catalogue as SN 7473 is the latest wave of the 1970 British Cohort Study, 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. Here we present the topline findings for the religion questions for all those who provided valid answers. No weighting is applicable.

Affiliation: Two-thirds of the cohort received a religious upbringing, but only half still profess a religion now, all Christian denominations losing market share, but especially the Church of England. The figures are as follows:

%	Upbringing	At age 42
None	33.0	49.8
Non-denominational Christian	14.2	13.7
Church of England	30.1	20.6
Roman Catholic	10.9	7.1
Other Christian	8.2	4.5
Non-Christian	3.7	4.3

Practices: Three-quarters never or very rarely attend any religious services, while 10% claim to go monthly or more and 15% occasionally. Attendance has diminished slightly since cohort members were aged 29, when 11% went monthly or more, 17% occasionally, and 72% never or rarely. Membership of a religious group or church organization is claimed by 7%, as is readership of factual books on religion or philosophy.

Beliefs: Disbelievers in God number 22%, with a further 14% disbelieving in a personal God. The uncertain amount to 21%, while 12% believe in God some of the time, 19% believe but have doubts, and 12% are absolutely convinced that God exists. A slim majority (52%) definitely or probably does not believe in life after death, with 18% definitely believing and 30% probably.

Opinions: Very few (6%) agree that ‘we trust too much in science, not enough in religious faith’, 57% disagreeing and 36% undecided. One-half agree that ‘people with strong religious beliefs are often too intolerant’, with just 14% saying the opposite and 35% uncertain. Still more (67%) concur that ‘around the world, religions bring more conflict than peace’, 11% dissenting and 22% expressing no view.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged 1970 British Cohort Study, changing religion, Channel 5, Christian country, church attendance, conflict, David Cameron, football, God, ICM Research, intolerance, John Paul II, life after death, Michael Lipka, patron saints, practising Christians, Religious Affiliation, religious freedom, science, St George's Day, Sunday Telegraph, The Leadership Factor, TNS-BMRB, Warren United, YouGov | 1 Comment

Easter Round-Up

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Children’s Easter knowledge

The Bible Society announced on 17 April 2014 that it had launched a five-day Bible Bedtime Challenge app as an Easter poll showed that children can confuse the Bible with fairy tales and fables. It commissioned YouGov to undertake an online survey of 1,082 British children aged 8 to 15 between 28 and 31 March 2014. Asked which symbol of Easter was most important to them, the majority (55%) of children opted for chocolate eggs, 20% for the Christian cross, and 9% for the Easter bunny. Although 76% associated Easter Sunday with the Resurrection of Christ, 11% thought it had some other connection with Jesus, 13% giving another wrong answer or none at all. Somewhat fewer (65%) knew the significance of Good Friday, 16% linking it with the Resurrection rather than the Crucifixion, and 19% otherwise replying incorrectly or not at all. While 80% were able to name Judas as the person who had betrayed Jesus, only a plurality (45%) knew that he had identified Christ by giving Him a kiss. Probed about specific incidents which might have featured in the biblical account of Easter, the children generally struggled less than might perhaps have been anticipated, albeit 6% were convinced that they included the tale of a couple who killed a sacred goose which laid a golden egg every day, and 13% the story about a hare who raced a tortoise to teach people to be patient (with a further 20% and 15% respectively unable to say). Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, region, social grade, and parental employment and marital status) can be found at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/news/files/Results-for-Easter-poll-108-1.4.14.pdf

Families’ Easter observance

The religious side of Easter did not feature prominently in the plans of 2,500 UK parents of dependent children interviewed online by OnePoll on behalf of the budget hotel chain Travelodge in April 2014. Only one in ten expected to go to church over Easter, and a similar proportion intended to eat fish on Good Friday, the day (in the Catholic tradition) of abstinence from meat. Moreover, 48% of parents reckoned that their children were ignorant of the true meaning of Easter, the most frequent associations being with the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs. For the overwhelming majority of families, Easter was going to be observed as a secular holiday only, with a projected expenditure of £2billion by parents on a combination of short breaks and an average of four day trips during the two-week Easter school holidays. Among the 35% of households intent on a staycation, the seaside was the destination for 37%, a city for 26%, and the countryside for 14%. A visit to family members (36%) topped the list of day trips, followed by museums (24%), working farms (18%), art galleries (10%), and theme parks (9%). The foregoing skeletal details have mostly been gleaned from a couple of stories on the Daily Mirror website, Travelodge’s press releases not yet being in the public domain, still less detailed data tables.

Meanwhile, a separate poll commissioned by Sainsbury’s, and published on 15 April 2014, discovered that many of the 1,000 parents interviewed would need to spend much of the Easter weekend break on chores, with 68% mentioning sorting out the garden and 60% getting on top of jobs around the house. While 77% of parents recognized Easter as an important family occasion, 87% admitted to struggling to find things to do that would appeal to the whole family. Notwithstanding, 58% expected to organize activities to keep their children and their friends entertained, and 55% opted for potentially expensive days out at UK attractions. However, when 1,000 children aged 5-12 were asked to describe their perfect Easter, the plurality (33%) prioritized being at home with their parents over going away on holiday (21%), and hanging out with their friends (15%). The best three Easter treats singled out by children were a family picnic outdoors, an Easter egg hunt at home, and seeing baby Easter animals. The Sainsbury’s press release is at:

http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/media/latest-stories/2014/0414-all-kids-want-for-a-cracking-easter-is-a-picnic-with-the-whole-family/

Also on the subject of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, on 9-10 April 2014 ComRes (on behalf of Autogas) asked 1,569 adult Britons with a car in the household how far they expected to drive over the four days. Just over one-quarter (27%) did not drive or did not expect to drive during the weekend, but 63% anticipated being on the road, with 41% planning to drive up to 50 miles, 10% from 51 to 100 miles, and 12% more than 100 miles. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Autogas_Easter_Tables_14_April_2014.pdf

Religion’s role in Britain

A plurality of Britons (35%) thinks religion generally plays a positive role in our society, but 29% see it as a negative force, and 24% do not consider that it plays any part at all in British life (the remaining 12% being undecided). Britain’s positive score is well below the global mean (59%) but similar to that of Western Europe (36%), whose average is brought down by the fact that in six countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden) the negatives outvoted the positives. Among the G7 nations Britain occupies fifth place in terms of positivity toward the role of religion, the two extremes being USA (62%) and France (20%). The most positive country of all in the world is Indonesia and Africa the most positive region.

Findings derive from the WIN/Gallup International End of Year Survey for 2013 for which 66,806 adults were interviewed in 65 countries, including 1,000 in Britain online by ORB International on 6-9 December 2013. A press release about this particular question was issued just before Easter and forms the basis of reports in The Times (‘Britons Hostile to Religion’) and Daily Telegraph (‘Britons Sceptical about Positive Role of Religion’), both for 17 April 2014. This press release is not yet on the WIN/Gallup International website. Undeterred, BRIN has located it substantially reproduced by the Sam Diego Jewish World at:

http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2014/04/16/western-europe-critical-region-religion/

Faith school exemptions

The British public is unsympathetic to appeals from some religious conservatives (including Orthodox Jews) to exempt state-funded faith schools from teaching national curriculum topics which they find contrary to their core beliefs and traditions, notably sex education and evolution. This is according to a new YouGov poll fir the Jewish Chronicle for which 2,144 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online. The poll was commissioned in the wake of the recent ruling by Ofqual, the examinations regulatory body, that schools may no longer block out external examination questions they deem unsuitable for pupils.

Asked whether faith schools should be able to refrain from delivering any form of sex education in lessons, 82% of Britons said no and only 9% yes. A smaller but still substantial majority of 67% also rejected the idea that faith schools should be able to teach creationism as a legitimate scientific theory on a par with evolution, with just 18% agreeing that they should. Opposition on both counts was apparently fairly uniform by demographics. Detailed data tables are not yet available, but an article about the survey was featured on pp. 1 and 4 of the 18 April 2014 edition of the Jewish Chronicle and is also available online at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/117450/faith-schools-must-teach-sex-say-82

Evangelical discipleship

Busyness is making a disciplined spiritual life more difficult for evangelical Christians, with 50% failing to engage with the Bible on a daily basis and 37% failing to pray daily, even though 60% report to praying ‘on the move’ and 33% resort to Bible apps on their mobile device. Moreover, 63% admit to getting easily distracted when they are spending time with God. The biblical character that most (43%) identify with is busy Martha. Younger evangelicals (born after 1980) are particularly challenged in these regards but older ones (born before 1960) still manage more disciplined and structured prayer lives and longer periods spent in private prayer and Bible study. The majority of all evangelicals (54%) also agree that most other Christians today are not very disciplined in their spiritual lives and walk with God. Only 40% feel their church does very well at discipling new Christians, and just 26% regard themselves as successfully equipped for witnessing and sharing their faith with others.

These findings are from Time for Discipleship? – the latest report in the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals series, which was published on 13 April 2014. Data derive from 1,529 self-defined evangelicals in membership of the Evangelical Alliance’s self-selecting research panel who completed an online survey in November 2013. This is an opportunity sample which may not be representative of evangelicals as a whole, not least given that it includes an unstated proportion of church leaders. The report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=49835

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Autogas, Bible, Bible Society, children, church attendance, ComRes, Creationism, discipleship, Easter, Evangelical Alliance. faith schools, holidays, Jewish Chronicle, OnePoll, ORB International, prayer, religious festivals, religious knowledge, role of religion, Sainsbury's, sex education, Travelodge, WIN/Gallup International, YouGov | Leave a comment

Jewish and Muslim Press and Other News

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Jewish press

The Jewish Chronicle (The JC) is Britain’s longest established Jewish weekly newspaper, being founded as far back as 1841 (with its entire archive available online), and its headquarters are in London. Its current edition (4 April 2014, p. 2) highlights the findings of its latest readership research, conducted by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. This suggests that the paper is read on a regular basis by 156,000 people, equivalent to 67% of UK Jews, a figure far in excess of its circulation. The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) certificate for The JC (covering July-December 2013) shows an average print circulation of 21,370 copies, of which 99% were in the UK and Republic of Ireland. The overwhelming majority (71%) were retail and single copy sales, with 18% single copy subscription sales, 1% multiple copy sales, and 9% free distribution. Earlier audited data are only available to ABC subscribers but circulation is evidently falling since an undated readership survey on The JC’s website (which can be no later than c. 2010 from internal evidence) cites sales of 35,000 copies and a readership of 180,000, reaching 80% of Jewish households in the UK. The survey, which contains a range of other interesting facts and figures about The JC’s readership, can be found at:

http://www.thejc.com/files/pdfs/JCH%20004%20readershipsurvey%20bk.pdf

Other Jewish newspapers may also be mentioned. The London-based Jewish News was established in 1997. It is a free weekly newspaper and claims to be the only title exclusively serving the Jewish communities of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex. It is distributed via 257 distribution points in Greater London. Its latest ABC certificate, again for July-December 2013, reveals an average circulation of 31,930 copies. In 2000 it launched www.totallyjewish.com, which is described as ‘the leading web portal for British Jews’.

The weekly Jewish Telegraph was founded in 1950 and incorporated the Jewish Gazette from 1995. It is based in Manchester and regards itself as ‘Britain’s only regional Jewish newspaper’, with four separate editions for the Jewish communities of Manchester and the Midlands, Liverpool and Merseyside, Leeds and Yorkshire, and Glasgow and Scotland. No circulation data are quoted on its website, but the Liverpool edition is said to reach ‘virtually every Jewish home in that city and surrounding areas’. No subscription is mentioned, so, presumably, advertising is the main source of revenue.

The Jewish Tribune (not to be confused with the Canadian title of the same name) is a weekly newspaper for the strictly orthodox (haredi) Jewish community. Founded in 1962, it is published by Agudath Israel of Great Britain and is based in Stamford Hill, London. It has a circulation of just 2,500 copies. It is said to be the only UK newspaper to include a section in Yiddish.

Hamodia (the Hebrew word for communicator) is a subscription-based weekly English-language newspaper. It is also specifically designed for haredi communities but aimed at an international market (in America, Israel, and Europe), although its main offices are in London. It commenced in 1998 and its international readership is said to be 250,000.

Muslim press

Two English-language Muslim newspapers in the UK have recently celebrated significant anniversaries. Harrow-based Muslim News, a monthly with an annual subscription of just £12, has had its 25th birthday, having begun in February 1989, about the same time as Muslims were emerging as a distinct faith community in British public life. Its circulation was last verified by ABC in July-December 2002, when bulk distribution averaged 21,400, but copies are also distributed via other channels. Readership is currently claimed as over 150,000 with 1,500,000 hits on its website each month. In 2012, according to an advertiser pack for that year still on the newspaper’s website, there were 145,000 readers, of whom 37.6% were in London, 11.5% in Lancashire, 9.1% in the Midlands, 7.4% in West Yorkshire, 28.5% elsewhere in England, 2.5% in Scotland, 1.1% in Wales, 0.5% in Ireland or Northern Ireland, and 1.7% abroad. The gender division of readers was 55% male and 45% female, and the ethnic breakdown 65% Asian, 10% African or Afro-Caribbean, 10% Turkish, 10% Middle Eastern, and 5% other. Also in 2012, 18,000 email addresses were held by the Muslim News and available for mail shots.

The East London-based Muslim Weekly (£50 per annum and with a mean page extent of 32 A4 pages) has now completed ten years of publication, having commenced in October 2003. It claims a circulation of 50,000 copies per edition and a readership of 275,000, with each copy being read by an average of five and a half people. It is also not registered with ABC. Copies are distributed via the wholesale trade, subscriptions, and at over 200 mosques in the UK. Its readership profile is summarized on its website as: 60% male and 40% female; 68% aged 20-45; 70% married; and primarily belonging to ‘the ABC1 and C2 socio-economic groups, possessing a sizeable disposable income, and who are frequent purchasers of staples, quality and luxury items’.

Other English-language newspapers and magazines for Muslims in the UK have come and gone over the years, of which perhaps the most influential was Q News, which was published between April 1992 and October 2006, to judge from records in the national serials union catalogue. The Muslim Post weekly newspaper seems to have lasted only between 2009 and 2012.

Methodist statistics

The most recent quarterly meeting of the Methodist Council took place in Leamington Spa on 5-7 April 2014. One of the papers under consideration was MC1457, ‘Statistics for Mission Report, 2014’. Although this is not the detailed triennial statistical report for the Methodist Church for 2010-13, which will be presented to the Methodist Conference over the summer following completion of ‘verification and reasonableness checks’, it does include headline findings on the general direction of travel, as well as noting new measures and enhanced dissemination of data. The four-page report can be read at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/coun-MC14-57-statistics-for-mission-april-2014.pdf

Membership and attendance figures are said to ‘show year-on-year decreases across the connexion and suggest a narrative of general decline’. The number of Methodist members in Britain at 31 October 2013 was 208,679, 10.0% down on 231,708 in 2010, while average weekly church attendances fell from 208,962 to 193,210 (or by 7.5%) over the triennium, albeit the annual rate of decrease in churchgoing was slower in 2010-13 than it had been in 2004-07 (2.6% compared with 4.5%). Potentially even more significant than a ten-year decline of 32% in weekly attendance is the 47% drop in the community roll, Methodism’s most inclusive performance indicator, of all those in pastoral contact with the Church. The latter figure is tentatively attributed to a change in the recording and reporting of the community roll, but this explanation is not unpacked.

The report to Methodist Council was glossed in an editorial in the Methodist Recorder for 4 April 2014 (p. 6). It is said to ‘make for pretty grim reading’, the decreases being ascribed to ‘a combination of the deaths of large numbers of members, alongside very low “recruitment rates” in most churches’. Of particular concern is ‘the well-documented catastrophic decline in the involvement of young people in our churches’, which is ‘inextricably linked with the widespread absence of families in our congregations’. While the scenario of ‘oblivion in around a generation’ is dismissed, the editor’s most optimistic reading of the situation is that, if current trends persist, the Methodist Church will shrink by half in the next thirty years.

Religion and social grade

In the past, social status was often thought to be a major determinant of religious allegiance, but is this still the case today? To provide an up-to-date answer to this question, BRIN has aggregated the weighted results from online political polling by Populus for January-March 2014, conducted for Lord Ashcroft (January) and the Financial Times (February-March). The combined sample of 50,685 adult Britons aged 18 and over was asked ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ Percentages are shown below, first for religious affiliation within social grade (downwards) and then for the social grade of each religious group (across).

% down	All	AB	C1	C2	DE
Christian	53.3	54.8	51.4	54.7	52.7
Muslim	2.1	2.1	2.2	2.0	2.1
Hindu	1.0	1.2	0.9	1.2	0.6
Jew	0.7	0.8	0.7	0.3	0.7
Sikh	0.3	0.3	0.1	0.6	0.2
Buddhist	0.5	0.4	0.7	0.5	0.5
Other	2.0	1.5	1.8	1.8	3.1
None	37.9	36.4	39.6	37.3	38.1
No answer	2.2	2.4	2.6	1.6	2.0

% across	AB	C1	C2	DE
All	26.8	28.2	21.5	23.5
Christian	27.6	27.2	22.0	23.2
Muslim	27.0	29.3	20.5	23.1
Hindu	33.8	24.9	26.1	15.6
Jew	32.8	31.1	11.0	25.0
Sikh	28.4	13.5	44.0	14.2
Buddhist	22.2	37.1	20.0	20.7
Other	20.2	25.6	18.7	35.6
None	25.8	29.5	21.1	23.6
No answer	29.5	33.1	15.7	21.5

It will be seen from the across table that, overall, social grade in isolation now appears to make only a modest difference to the pattern of religious affiliation. The social grade profile of the three largest religious groups – Christians, nones, and Muslims in that order – is fairly close to the national average. Among more minority religions, the most important deviations from the norm are the disproportionately large number of Hindus and Jews in the top (AB) social grade, of Jews and Buddhists in the lower middle class (C1), and of Sikhs in skilled manual occupations (C2). There are also fewer than expected Sikhs in C1, of Jews in C2, and of Hindus and Sikhs in the lowest grade (DE). The downward picture teases out some nuances, with Christianity faring best among the AB and C2 grades, and no religion peaking among the C1s.

Since we often feature polls with breaks by social grade, a classification system which originated with the National Readership Survey and is based on the occupation of the chief income earner in the household, some BRIN readers may find the following tabular summary of the system helpful:

Grade	Status	Occupation
A	Upper middle class	Higher managerial, administrative, or professional
B	Middle class	Intermediate managerial, administrative, or professional
C1	Lower middle class	Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative, or professional
C2	Skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	Working class	Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
E	Lowest level of subsistence	State pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

The March 2014 Populus/Financial Times data tables can be found at the following URL, with a range of demographic breaks for the religion question on pp. 149-56:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/140401-Populus_FT-March-2014.pdf

Religious slaughter

The highly emotive debate about religious slaughter for Jews and Muslims, whereby animals are not pre-stunned before having their throats cut, has flared up again in Britain, spearheaded by the British Veterinary Association (BVA). John Blackwell, BVA’s President-Elect, has just called for Britain to follow Denmark’s lead in banning slaughter without pre-stunning, although Prime Minister David Cameron promised Israel, on his recent visit to the country, that he would defend Jewish shechita. Advocates of religious slaughter methods have often argued that they are as, if not more, humane as conventional techniques, which involve pre-stunning, because of a high incidence of failures in stunning.

Now, in a written response to Parliamentary Questions 192079 and 192080 on 24 March 2014, the Government has published details of incidents of mis-stunning which occurred during slaughtering in approved meat establishments between 27 March 2008 and 28 February 2014. The numbers were very small indeed, from which the BVA (in a press release issued on 5 April) has calculated the mis-stunning rate to be very much less than 1%, far below the level (anything up to 31%) sometimes claimed by defenders of religious slaughter. According to The Times for 5 April religious leaders (such as the spokesperson for Shechita UK) have reacted angrily to the Government statistics, which they consider to be inaccurate, reflecting vets failing to record properly mis-stuns in abattoirs. In its response Government also stated that the Food Standards Agency collects no data on mis-cuts in relation to religious slaughter.

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged Audit Bureau of Circulation, British Veterinary Association, church attendance, church membership, Hamodia, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News, Jewish Telegraph, Jewish Tribune, Methodist Church, Methodist Recorder, Muslim News, Muslim Weekly, newspapers, Populus, press, Religious Affiliation, religious slaughter, shechita, social grade, stunning | Leave a comment

Latest Anglican Mission Statistics and Other News

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Church of England mission statistics

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

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

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

Church attendance

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

Festival attendance

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

Membership

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

Rites of passage

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

Funeral planning

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

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

and an outline of content and methodology at:

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

Clergy wellbeing

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

	Occupation	Mean Income £	Satisfaction Rating (out of 10)
1	Clergy	20,568	8.291
2	Chief executives/senior officials	117,700	7.957
3	Managers/proprietors in agriculture/horticulture	31,721	7.946
4	Company secretaries	18,176	7.930
5	Quality assurance/regulatory professionals	42,898	7.891
6	Health care practice managers	31,267	7.843
7	Medical practitioners	70,648	7.836
8	Farmers	24,520	7.808
9	Hotel/accommodation managers/proprietors	32,470	7.795
10	Skilled metal/electrical/electronic trades supervisors	35,316	7.795

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

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

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

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

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

Sigbert Jon Prais (1928-2014)

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

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

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

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

Contributions by Prais on Jewish statistics to edited volumes include:

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

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

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Annual Population Survey, Cabinet Office, church attendance, Church of England, clergy, funerals, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Jewish statistics, life satisfaction, Marlena Schmool, religious festivals, rites of passage, Sigbert Jon Prais, SixthSense, wellbeing, YouGov | Leave a comment

Bible Literacy and Other News

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Clive D. Field

Bible literacy

Bible literacy in Britain is falling through the generations, according to research just released by the Bible Society, which has launched a ‘pass it on’ campaign to encourage parents and other family members to ‘pass on’ a Bible story to their children (including via a Bible Bedtime App), with an overarching warning of ‘use it or lose it’. The research was conducted by YouGov and involved online interviews with 1,091 parents of children and adolescents aged 3-16 on 10-14 January 2014 and 804 children aged 8-15 on 10-13 January 2014. The Bible Society has published a report on the survey, together with tabulations of raw (unpercentaged) data with breaks by demographics for each of the samples. They can be found at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/projects/Bible-Society-Report_030214_final_.pdf

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/Pass_It_On/Results-for-Portland-Communications–(Bible-Society—Parents-Omnibus)-02-14-Parents-Omni—Counts.pdf

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/Pass_It_On/Pass-It-On-data-tables—children’s-survey.pdf

Children were asked to select stories that appear in the Bible from a list of popular children’s books, Greek myths, and fairy tales, and only 14% answered all correctly. Moreover, significant numbers of children indicated that they had not read, seen or heard anything about some of the most celebrated stories in the Bible, 93% saying so about Job, with 89% for the Tower of Babel, 87% for Saul on the road to Damascus, 85% for Solomon, 72% for Daniel in the lion’s den, 63% for the Creation, 61% for the Good Samaritan, 61% for the feeding of the 5,000, 57% for David and Goliath, 56% for the parting of the Red Sea, 54% for Joseph and his coat of many colours, 43% for the Crucifixion, 38% for Adam and Eve, 25% for the Nativity, and 23% for Noah’s Ark.

In like fashion, many parents found it hard to distinguish the plot-lines of Bible stories from Hollywood blockbusters, 54% thinking that the storyline in Hunger Games might have originated in the Bible, with 46% saying the same about the Da Vinci Code, 34% about Harry Potter, and 27% about Superman. On the other hand, 46% did not recognize the plot-line of Noah’s Ark as a Bible story, with 31% ignorant of the derivation of David and Goliath, 30% of Adam and Eve, and 27% of the Good Samaritan. Older parents (the over-55s) were found to be appreciably better than those aged 25-34 at differentiating between Bible stories and Hollywood films, reflecting the fact that they were more likely (79% versus 56%) to have engaged with Bible stories when at school. Parents in Wales were also more knowledgeable than those elsewhere in Britain.

Notwithstanding their own relative ignorance, many parents whose children had been exposed to Bible stories continued to recognize their importance. This was especially so for professing Christians, 59% of whom viewed Bible stories as providing values for a good life, 52% as important to our history and culture, and 41% as classic stories that stand the test of time. Even one-third of non-Christians agreed with each of these propositions, not far below the average of 43%, 40%, and 36% respectively. Among all parents, only 11% deemed it inappropriate for children to learn Bible stories, 62% believing such learning should take place at school, 58% at church or Sunday school, and 45% at home. Three-fifths of parents considered it the role of parents or guardians to read Bible stories to a child, yet only 31% of parents of children aged 3-8 claimed to read Bible stories to their child once a month or more.

These findings are in line with other research. Indeed, a systematic review of some 160 sample surveys of Bible ownership, readership, knowledge, literalism, beliefs, and attitudes since the Second World War demonstrates a progressive decrease in ‘Bible-centricism’ during the past 60 years. It could thus be said to lend support to the theory which sees secularization as declining religious authority, in this case the authority of the Bible as the foundation document of Christianity. This research, by the present author, will be published in Journal of Contemporary Religion later this year.

European Quality of Life Survey

The dataset for the third (2011-12) European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) has recently been released to the UK Data Service’s Nesstar catalogue. The Survey, previously conducted in 2003 and 2007, is commissioned by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. UK fieldwork was undertaken by GfK NOP between 30 September 2011 and 12 February 2012 among 2,252 adults aged 18 and over. Interviews also took place in 33 other European countries, mostly in the European Union (EU).

EQLS has been light on religion-related questions. However, in the 2007 and 2011 rounds a question was included on perceived tensions between different religious groups in each survey country, with the following results for the UK and EU as a whole (EU27), having applied the cross-national weight, and omitting don’t knows and refusals:

%	UK	UK	EU27	EU27
	2007	2011	2007	2011
A lot of tension	32.5	33.7	28.8	28.0
Some tension	53.3	50.0	46.3	48.3
No tension	11.5	16.3	19.0	23.7

A question on claimed frequency of attendance at religious services was included in the 2002, 2007, and 2011 EQLS. The question and reply options differed on each occasion but the weighted results can be collapsed into the threefold categorization shown below:

%	UK	UK	UK	EU25	EU27	EU27
	2003	2007	2011	2003	2007	2011
Once a week or more	12.6	13.5	12.6	17.0	17.4	15.3
Less often	29.3	30.9	27.7	43.5	45.1	39.3
Never	58.0	54.9	59.7	39.5	36.6	45.4

It will be seen that the majority of UK citizens (59.7% in 2011) claim never to attend religious services, 14.3% more than the EU average, with weekly attenders 2.7% less. At the same time, perceptions of tensions between different religious groups are greater in the UK than the EU, and more in the UK reported a lot of tension in 2011 relative to 2007, whereas in the EU somewhat fewer did.

Scottish Health Survey

The results of the 2012 Scottish Health Survey, undertaken by the Scottish Centre for Social Research on behalf of the Scottish Government Health Directorates and NHS Health Scotland, have likewise just been released to the UK Data Service’s Nesstar catalogue. A large sample (4,815 adults aged 16 and over in Scotland) was interviewed face-to-face and by self-completion questionnaire on a wide range of health topics.

A background question on religious affiliation was included on the schedule: ‘What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’ Weighted figures are shown below, in percentages (excluding refusals and don’t knows), together with those for 2003, the first year for which the Scottish Health Survey appears in Nesstar (the first survey was actually conducted in 1995). Unfortunately, the question asked on that occasion was different: ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ There were also methodological variations between the two surveys. Therefore, the two sets of data are not strictly comparable, which may explain why – counterintuitively – there has been no overall decline in religiosity between the two dates (although the ‘other Christian’ group has lost ground). Additionally, it should be remembered that the ‘belonging’ form of question tends to maximize the number of religious ‘nones’. Statistics refer to adults only, not the entire Scottish population (as in the 2011 census).

%	2003	2012
None	39.5	38.7
Church of Scotland	33.2	35.2
Roman Catholic	14.4	15.6
Other Christian	11.3	7.2
Other religion	1.6	3.1

BRIN has disaggregated the 2012 data by age cohort. The results, presented below, show some striking trends: a) no religion is the religious choice of the under-45s; b) Church of Scotland support is concentrated among the over-65s, and there has been an Anglican-style collapse with younger people, undermining the Kirk’s position as a national Church; c) Catholic self-identity reduces with age, being strongest among the under-45s, and offering some hope for the Church; and d) other Protestants appear to be dying out.

%	16-44	45-64	65+
None	52.5	33.5	15.9
Church of Scotland	20.6	40.6	59.5
Roman Catholic	17.9	14.0	13.0
Other Christian	4.8	8.7	10.2
Other religion	4.1	3.0	1.2

Justin Welby as hero

Asked to rate 84 famous Britons as heroes or role models, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was placed 51st by a representative sample of 4,031 adults aged 18 and over interviewed online by Vision Critical in November 2013. Welby was the only past or present religious leader to be included on the list. Top spot in the heroes index went to Falklands War veteran Simon Weston, with physicist Stephen Hawking in second position. Sportspeople did especially well, assisted by their individual prominence in the 2012 Olympics, and politicians scored consistently poorly, ranked between 55th (Boris Johnson) and 84th (Michael Gove). Under the circumstances, given that he has not been in the job that long and has less media exposure than many of the other celebrities asked about, Welby can perhaps be reasonably content with his public standing as ‘hero’. The survey was commissioned by PR agency freuds, and a headline report was published by them on 1 February 2014 at:

http://heroes.freuds.com/assets/files/FREUDS_BREWERY_JOURNAL_2014_PDF.pdf

Religion and voting, 1940s/50s-style

I am currently working on a review of statistical indicators of religious belonging in Great Britain during the ‘long’ 1950s (between 1945 and 1963), and this has led me to re-examine source material in the Mass-Observation (MO) Archive at the University of Sussex, which I first investigated back in the 1980s. Fortunately, huge quantities of the Archive are now available in a commercial digital edition from Adam Matthew Publications, Mass Observation Online, in partnership with the trustees of the Archive (who naturally retain the copyright).

MO is best known for its qualitative and participant observation techniques, but it also diversified into more conventional opinion polling after the Second World War, ultimately leading to the establishment of a market research company of the same name. Two of its largest-scale surveys, each involving interviews with representative quota samples of over 6,000 adult Britons, were undertaken for the Daily Telegraph in April-May 1948 and December 1955-January 1956, to gauge public opinion on the subject of capital punishment.

Both surveys included background questions about religion and political partisanship, and they enable us to move further back in time with the analysis of religious influences on voting which have been so well explored by Ben Clements and Nick Spencer for the era from the 1960s to the present in their recent Theos report on Voting and Values in Britain: Does Religion Count? This is a book which we covered in our post of 26 January 2014.

Unfortunately, MO’s questions were worded somewhat differently to those in the surveys used by Clements and Spencer, so we should be mindful that we are not entirely comparing like with like. MO’s religion question in both 1948 and 1955 was: ‘What Church, if any, do you usually attend?’ On this definition, 74% in 1948 and 81% in 1955 claimed a religion, so, in effect, respondents really interpreted the question as one about religious affiliation, since church attendance nationally was well below these levels at both dates. MO’s political question was: ‘Which political party, if any, do you support?’

The results for both years are presented below, omitting Jews (too few of whom were interviewed) and refusals, abstracted from the tabulation sheets in MO Archive TC 47-10-E and TC 72-2-E respectively, which are reproduced in Mass Observation Online:

1948 % across	None	Lab	Con	Lib	Other	Undecided	Uninterested
Not attend church	18	38	30	3	3	5	3
Church of England	12	23	52	4	1	5	3
Roman Catholic	17	41	25	3	1	5	3
Nonconformist	11	35	25	18	1	5	4
Church of Scotland	19	28	40	5	1	3	4
Other	23	34	27	8	1	4	3
All	15	30	40	6	1	5	3

1955 % across	None	Lab	Con	Lib	Other	Undecided	Uninterested
Not attend church	18	45	24	3	2	4	3
Church of England	11	30	46	5	1	4	3
Roman Catholic	19	47	24	3	1	3	3
Nonconformist	12	33	32	10	1	5	6
Church of Scotland	9	35	35	4	2	6	6
Other	17	32	29	8	2	3	7
All	13	35	37	5	1	4	4

The tables broadly confirm the findings of Clements and Spencer for subsequent periods, not least in showing that Anglicans were disproportionately Conservative and Roman Catholics disproportionately Labour.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Survey news | Tagged Archbishop of Canterbury, Bible, Bible literacy, Bible Society, Bible stories, children, church attendance, Daily Telegraph, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, European Quality of Life Survey, freuds, GfK NOP, heroes, Justin Welby, Mass-Observation, parents, politics, Religious Affiliation, Scottish Centre for Social Research, Scottish Health Survey, tensions between religious groups, Vision Critical, YouGov | 3 Comments

End-of-Year Round-Up

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

This will be the final news post on BRIN for 2013. It features 11 sources which have come to hand over the Christmas period. This year we have been able to bring you 63 general posts containing 310 different news stories. We hope that they have been of interest and value. We will be back in 2014. Meanwhile, we wish you all a Happy New Year.

Christmas religion (1)

Britons appear less likely than Americans to uphold the religious dimension of Christmas, according to a poll by Angus Reid Global published on 23 December 2013, in which 998 Britons were interviewed online between 9 and 11 December. The proportion of Britons saying the religious aspect of Christmas was meaningful to them personally was not much more than half that of Americans (39% against 70%), with a similar transatlantic disparity between those planning to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day (40% versus 72%). One-quarter of Britons claimed they would attend a special Christmas service during December and one-fifth a regular religious service in the month, whereas two-fifths of Americans had the same plans in each case. Some 16% of Britons stated that they normally attended church monthly or more (compared with 18% of Canadians and 37% of Americans). Fewer Britons (48%) than Canadians (64%) or Americans (66%) reported they had been raised in a Christian household that attended church. In all three nations preferences for Christmas carols against Christmas songs were almost evenly balanced, albeit more Britons (39%) than Americans (35%) intended to sing carols. Overwhelmingly, Christmas was said to have become too commercialized (by 84% in Britain), but 14% of Britons also regarded it as too religious. Whatever the good intentions of respondents, it seems improbable that the anticipated levels of religious observance of Christmas were achieved in practice, certainly in Britain. Topline data from the poll can be found at:

http://www.angusreidglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Angus-Reid-Poll-Christmas-Religion.pdf

Christmas religion (2)

Britons may have been taught a lot (30%) or a little (55%) about the Bible when at school, but their knowledge of the biblical accounts of the Christmas story is often shaky, according to a ComRes survey for the Christian Institute published on 21 December 2013, 2,055 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 18-19 December. Some of their false assumptions about the biblical version of the nativity are perhaps understandable, such as the 84% who thought that three kings visited Jesus (the Gospels only referring to wise men from the East), or the 34% who recalled the Bible specifying He was born on 25 December (whereas the Gospels do not cite a specific date). However, other errors were more of the ‘exam howler’ variety, including 7% who were convinced that a Christmas tree is mentioned in the Bible and 4% that Father Christmas appears there. The biblical knowledge of the older age cohorts tended to be sounder than that of the younger, reflecting the fact that they were more likely to have been taught a lot about the Bible during their schooldays. The ComRes data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Christian_Institute_Christmas_Knowledge_Survey_December_2013.pdf

and a Christian Institute press release at:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/brits-believe-santa-present-at-jesus-birth-new-poll-reveals/

Christmas Day shopping

Christmas Day is fast becoming a retail extravaganza. Not only were record numbers of independent shops (16,000) open on Christmas Day this year, but online shopping also hit a new peak. Before the event, Barclaycard estimated that 31% of adults would shop online on Christmas Day, with anticipated purchases of £350 million, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. Afterwards, Experian reported that there had been 114 million visits to online shopping sites in the UK on Christmas Day, 6% more than in 2012, with over 1% of all online searches on Christmas Day including the words ‘sale’ or ‘sales’. Christmas Day shoppers almost certainly outnumbered Christmas churchgoers several times over. However, when the Mail on Sunday contacted 42 senior Church of England bishops for their reactions to this exponential rise in Christmas Day trading, and its compatibility with the spiritual values of Christmastide, only a handful felt able to comment. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London were among those keeping their heads down on the subject. The Mail on Sunday article can be read at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2527696/Church-silent-record-number-stores-set-stay-open-Christmas-Day.html

Westminster Faith Debates: new analyses of data

Professor Linda Woodhead continues to draw upon the January and June 2013 YouGov polls conducted for the Westminster Faith Debates to provide fresh insights into religion in Britain. On 28 November 2013 she took advantage of the publication by the Church of England of the Pilling Report on Human Sexuality to highlight ‘a revolution in Anglican attitudes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage not reflected in official teaching’, based upon the opinions of 2,381 self-identifying Anglicans in the YouGov surveys. Her press release can be found at:

http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WFD-Pilling-press-release.pdf

On 22 December 2013 Woodhead issued another press release headed ‘“No Religion” is the New Religion’, with 38% of adult Britons in the two YouGov polls professing no religion. The number varied greatly by age cohort, rising to 48% of the under-30s (among whom only 26% were Christians), but falling to 27% of over-60s (58% of whom were Christians). Indeed, the majority (55%) of those aged 18 or 19 had no religion, and no religion was the biggest single faith category for everybody under 50 years. Although a plurality (43%) of ‘nones’ were atheists, 40% were agnostics, and 16% believers in God. Only 13% of ‘nones’ were found to be hostile to religion in the Richard Dawkins sense, in that they had no religion, admitted to being atheist, and regarded the Church of England and Roman Catholic Churches as negative forces. These hostile ‘nones’ were disproportionately (62%) male. ‘Nones’ were more liberal than the rest of the population in their attitudes to personal morality, and this was enhanced by the age effect (young people also being more liberal). This press release is not yet available on the Westminster Faith Debates website but doubtless will be in the New Year. In the meantime, Woodhead has a blog on the same subject (dated 20 December 2013) at:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/blogs/linda-woodhead/why-no-religion-is-the-new-religion/

Westminster Faith Debates: the book

The book of the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates has been published by Darton, Longman and Todd recently: Religion and Personal Life, edited by Linda Woodhead with Norman Winter (ISBN 978-0-232-53018-6, £8.99 paperback, also available as an e-book). The debates are presented in condensed form (based on recordings and transcripts), together with additional research findings (from the special YouGov poll on ethical opinion in Britain commissioned in January 2013), media reactions, and teaching materials. New commentary and reflection is offered in each of the six debate chapters, which deal with: abortion and stem cell research; sexualization of society; religion and gender; the traditional family; same-sex marriage; and assisted dying. A seventh chapter is devoted to ‘why do God?’ with Delia Smith and Alastair Campbell in conversation.

Recent Eurobarometers

The European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys continue to include occasional questions touching on religion, and a couple of recent reports exemplify this. Interviews are conducted face-to-face with representative samples of the adult population aged 15 and over in each member state of the European Union (EU). United Kingdom fieldwork is carried out by TNS UK.

Special Eurobarometer 401, published in November 2013, was on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Science and Technology and included interviews with 1,306 UK citizens (between 27 April and 14 May 2013) as part of Eurobarometer 79.2. Inter alia, the report revealed that adults in the UK were fairly evenly split about whether ‘we depend too much on science and not enough on faith’, 36% agreeing (EU average 39%), 34% disagreeing (32%), and 30% undecided (29%). The pattern of results was broadly similar to Eurobarometer 73.1 in Spring 2010, albeit the dissentients in the UK were 5% fewer in 2013. Hardly anybody (2% in the UK, 1% in the EU) viewed representatives of the various religions as being best qualified to explain the impact of scientific and technological developments on society, by far the lowest score for the 12 groups investigated. Topline findings are presented on pp. T11-T13 and T23 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_401_en.pdf

Standard Eurobarometer 80.1, undertaken in the UK on 2-17 November 2013 among 1,326 adults, enquired into which of 12 factors most created a feeling of community among EU citizens (a maximum of three responses being permitted). Relatively few (10% in the UK, 11% in the EU) singled out religion, which – in the UK’s case – was just one-third the level of the top-scoring unifying factors of sport and culture. Only citizens of Cyprus (27%) and Romania (24%) considered religion to be especially important in creating a sense of EU-wide identity. The question had previously been asked in Eurobarometer 79.3 six months before, when 8% in the UK had mentioned religion. Topline data are on pp. T176-T177 at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb80/eb80_anx_en.pdf

Spatially concentrated Jews

The fourth report in the Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s series on the 2011 UK population census was published on 19 December 2013. Written by David Graham, and entitled Thinning and Thickening: Geographical Change in the UK’s Jewish Population, 2001-2011, it demonstrates how that population is becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of core geographical areas. The ten local authorities which experienced the largest absolute increases in Jews between 2001 and 2011 accounted for 36% of UK’s Jews in 2001 but 44% in 2011, whereas the ten places which registered the biggest absolute decreases over the decade saw their aggregate share of the UK Jewish population fall from 23% in 2001 to 18% in 2011. The former list comprised: Barnet, Hackney, Hertsmere, Salford, Haringey, Gateshead, Bury, St Albans, Nottingham, and Epping Forest. UK Jews overwhelmingly (97%) lived in England in 2011, with Scottish numbers contracting by 8% between the two censuses. Areas of ‘thickening’ population are said to be growing as a result of migration from areas of ‘thinning’ population and as a consequence of differing age profiles, resulting in high birth rates in the thickening cores and high death rates in places which are thinning. The report is available at:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/Thinning_and_Thickening.Final1.pdf

Religious hate crimes

BRIN readers may have noticed media coverage in recent days of a partial survey of religious hate crimes undertaken by the Press Association on the basis of Freedom of Information requests sent to police authorities in England and Wales. However, the media seem to have overlooked an important interdepartmental Government report on the subject, prepared by the Home Office, Office for National Statistics, and Ministry of Justice, which was published on 17 December 2013: An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales. This brings together, for the first time, data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, a continuous survey of adults aged 16 and over), police statistics of recorded crime, and certain other sources. According to the CSEW for 2011/12 and 2012/13, there are on average 70,000 incidents of religiously motivated hate crime each year, evenly divided between personal and household crimes. This represents a sharp increase on the 39,000 incidents for the previous four years, back to 2007/08. Overall, in 2011/12 and 2012/13, 0.1% of English and Welsh citizens were victims of a religiously motivated hate crime during the 12 months prior to interview, but the proportion increased sharply (to 1.5%) for Muslims. The CSEW reporting period spanned March 2010 to February 2013 so excluded the spike in Islamophobic incidents which followed the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in May 2013. Non-whites generally were more susceptible (0.7%) than whites to be victims of religious hate crimes. Religious hate crimes comprised 25% of all hate crimes estimated from the CSEW (55% for race) but only 4% of hate crimes recorded by the police (against 85% for race). In 2012/13 the police registered just 1,573 religious hate crimes (24% entailing violence against the person), suggesting, by comparison with the CSEW, that the vast majority go unreported. For extensive commentary and tables, go to:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-hate-crime-in-england-and-wales

Murder of Lee Rigby

The brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamist terrorists on 22 May 2013 was the equal top news story of 2013, according to a YouGov poll for The Sun on 17-18 December, for which 1,937 adult Britons were interviewed online. It was the choice of 17% of respondents, the same proportion as selected the death of Nelson Mandela and the investigations into sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile as being the biggest news story, with the birth of Prince George and the conflict in Syria being in fourth and fifth positions (13% and 10% respectively). The fact that the trial of Rigby’s murderers was in its final stages at the time of fieldwork, culminating in a guilty verdict from the jury on 19 December, may partly explain the overall salience of the story. The case was seen as especially important by UKIP supporters (28%) and the over-60s (22%). The data table is at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/kfslu2z1sg/Sun_Results_131218_SunAwards.pdf

Secularisation and Humanist History blog

Callum Brown, Professor of Late Modern European History at the University of Glasgow and an authority on secularization in British and international contexts, launched his Secularisation and Humanist History website on 16 December 2013. It ‘hosts discussion on the social and cultural history of humanism and allied secular positions’ and features blogs based on the author’s own research and on current news. It can be accessed at:

http://humanisthistory.academicblogs.co.uk/

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England’s annual Faith in Research conference will take place in Birmingham on 4 June 2014. Preliminary information about the event has been published recently, together with a call for abstracts for papers (with abstracts to be submitted by 24 January). If you are interested, go to:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences/faith-in-research-june-2014.aspx

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Angus Reid Global, Bible, Callum Brown, census of population, Christian Institute, Christmas, Christmas carols, Christmas Day, church attendance, Church of England, community feeling, ComRes, Crime Survey for England and Wales, David Graham, Eurobarometer, European Union, Faith in Research conference, hate crimes, Home Office, humanism, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Islamophobia, Jews, Lee Rigby, Linda Woodhead, Mail on Sunday, Ministry of Justice, Muslims, no religion, nones, Norman Winter, Office for Natrional Statistics, personal life, police, Religious Affiliation, religious festivals, religious knowledge, science, secularization, shopping, The Sun, TNS UK, Westminster Faith Debates, YouGov | 1 Comment

Christmas and Other Themes

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The Christmas season always seems to inspire some light-hearted as well as serious research, and our post today includes festive examples of both genres, plus a few other statistical news stories which have come to hand in the past week or so. They clear BRIN’s decks this side of Christmas, but we shall be back again shortly afterwards.

Contemporary nativity

If Jesus was born in the UK today, it would most probably be in the Yorkshire Dales (27%) or London (24%), according to the 1,000 UK adults aged 18 and over who completed an online survey by OnePoll on 25 November 2013. Moreover, his likeliest birthplace today would be a garden shed (32%), Premier Inn or Travelodge (18%), or a squat (15%). A chocolate orange (14%) or socks (11%) topped the list of presents for this contemporary Jesus. Asked which nativity character they would prefer to be, an angel (25%, rising to 40% of females, even though every angelic name in the Bible is masculine) or a wise man (22% overall, 30% among males) were the most popular choices, with Mary and Joseph trailing well behind on 8% and 4% respectively. The University of Manchester scientist Professor Brian Cox exemplified a modern wise man for 31% of respondents, followed by newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald (16%), and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson (12%); only 9% saw the current Archbishop of Canterbury as fitting the part of a wise man. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, and region) were released by the Bible Society, which commissioned the poll, on 17 December 2013 and are available at:

http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/news/files/December%202013/2013-Nativity—full-data-tables.pdf

Nativity plays

The overwhelming majority (83%) of 480 working fathers surveyed by officebroker.com said they found it difficult to get time off work to see their child perform in a nativity play, and only 16% were able to do so every year. Although 89% professed they would like to attend the nativity, regardless of the role played by their child, a choosier 11% of dads would only go if their child was playing the part of Mary or Joseph. The principal source of data about the survey is the online edition of the Daily Mail for 12 December 2013 at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522280/The-dads-wont-attend-nativity-plays.html

Christmas cards

One-third of UK businesses claim to be shying away from sending Christmas cards to customers this year for fear of offending their personal beliefs and being seen as insensitive. This is according to research conducted by Your Say Pays on behalf of Pitney Bowes in December 2013 among an online sample of 1,000 business respondents. See the Pitney Bowes press release dated 11 December 2013 at:

http://pressroom.pitneybowes.co.uk/festive-cheer-feels-the-pinch-as-consumers-cut-back-on-christmas-cards/

Christmas carols

O Holy Night, first performed in 1847, has topped Premier Christian Radio’s poll of Christmas carols, it was announced on 15 December 2013. The poll had been running on the Premier website for several weeks and was completed by a self-selecting sample. O Holy Night (Cantique de Noël, with words by Placide Clappeau and melody by Charles Adam) took 15% of the vote. It narrowly beat Hark the Herald Angels Sing (14%), with In the Bleak Midwinter in third place on 11%. Silent Night, which tends to head most other lists of favourite carols, came fourth on this particular list, with 9% support. Joy to the World was fifth (7%). The full top ten can be seen at:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/o.holy.night.is.nations.favourite.carol/35064.htm

Christmas churchgoing

Of 3,330 readers of The Sun, 9% anticipate they will go to church this Christmas, according to a yuletide survey published in today’s edition (19 December 2013, pp. 20-1) of the newspaper. No details of methodology are given. The figure is almost certainly likely to be aspirational in large part, reflecting good intentions that will not be translated into reality. Nevertheless, the proportion is somewhat lower than in more representative polls of the adult British population conducted in recent years. The lower incidence of Christmas churchgoing among readers of The Sun probably reflects the fact that they are more likely to be men and manual workers (as revealed in the National Readership Survey), groups which are relatively poor attenders at public worship.

Bible knowledge

Although four-fifths of Britons claim to have read the Bible, they are often ignorant about its content, according to a new online poll of 2,000 adults commissioned to mark the release on 26 December 2013 of DVD and Blu-Ray editions of The Bible mini-series, recently shown on UK television (Channel 5). Even the true significance of Christmas Day was a mystery to 16%, while one-fifth had no idea that Christ died on Good Friday, and one-quarter was unfamiliar with the story of God creating the world in six days. Sadly, this is one of those media-sponsored surveys for which it is virtually impossible to lay one’s hands on the full results. The best report BRIN has seen to date, and that was very brief, appeared in The Times for 14 December 2013. We will keep searching, but we suggest that you do not build your hopes up!

Fifty-six years on

In February 1957 Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited carried out a major opinion poll into religion on behalf of the News Chronicle, 2,261 Britons aged 16 and over being interviewed face-to-face. Many of these questions have just been replicated by YouGov for Prospect, among an online sample of 1,681 Britons aged 18 and over on 24-25 November 2013. The following 1957-2013 comparison has been constructed from Peter Kellner’s article, ‘Ye of Little Faith’, in Prospect, Issue 214, January 2014, pp. 40-1 (supplemented by Gallup’s 1957 documentation).

%	1957	2013
God
Personal God	41	17
Spirit/life force	37	52
Neither	6	28
Don’t know	16	23
Jesus Christ
Son of God	71	27
Just a man	9	29
Just a story	6	22
Don’t know	14	21
Devil
Is	34	22
Is not	42	49
Don’t know	24	29
Life after death
Is	54	33
Is not	17	33
Don’t know	29	34
Religion
Can answer today’s problems	46	19
Largely old-fashioned	27	58
Don’t know	27	23
World’s need
Greater economic security	48	81
More religion	36	8
Don’t know	16	11
Church and politics
Keep out	53	41
Express views	36	45
Don’t know	11	14
Church-State connection
Should continue	37	27
Should end	37	51
Don’t know	26	23

YouGov also polled its respondents about a couple of other topics not probed by Gallup in 1957, although they have been covered in subsequent surveys by other companies. Asked about the origin of life on earth, only 8% in 2013 subscribed to the biblical account, 14% opted for intelligent design, 60% believed in the theory of evolution, and 19% were uncertain. On the Resurrection of Christ, 26% believed that He had returned to life on the third day after crucifixion, 48% did not, and 26% were undecided.

Kellner’s take on these statistics is, unsurprisingly, that there has been ‘a collapse of faith in the central tenets of Christianity’ during the past half-century. Certainly, there have been substantial falls in key traditional beliefs, of 24% in a personal God, 44% in Jesus as the Son of God, and 21% in life after death. At the same time, there have been steep rises of 31% in those thinking religion an irrelevance to solving modern problems, and of 33% in the conviction that greater economic security – not religion – is what the world needs. A majority (51%) now favours the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Full data tables from this poll are now (21 December 2013) available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/3s35pyaa5c/YG-Archive-131125-Prospects.pdf

Freedom of religion

Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (which is protected under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998) is regarded as vital or important by 89% of Britons, and as useful by 6%, with only 4% viewing this right as unnecessary. This is according to the results of a telephone poll conducted by ComRes for Liberty among 1,002 adults aged 18 and over on 22-24 November 2013, and published on 10 December to mark United Nations Human Rights Day. This was a higher level of support for freedom of religion than in previous annual ComRes surveys, the first of which appears to have been undertaken in May 2009. Nevertheless, freedom of religion was somewhat less prized than some other freedoms, respect for privacy, family life, and the home being deemed vital or important by 97%, with 96% saying the same about the right to a fair trial and the protection of property. The data table, with breaks by demographics, can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Liberty_Human_Rights_Tracker_Data_Tables_November_2013.pdf

Gender segregation

Gender segregation for religious reasons at meetings of university societies and groups is strongly opposed by the British public, according to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times published on 15 December 2013, in which 1,846 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed online on 12-13 December. Only 12% thought separate seating areas for men and women should be allowed on campus, although the proportion rose to one-fifth among 18-39s. Opponents of gender segregation stood at 69%, peaking at 85% of over-60s and Liberal Democrats, with 19% uncertain what to think. The survey was triggered by Universities UK guidelines (withdrawn on 13 December following intervention by the Prime Minister and others) which suggested that segregation was permissible if no disadvantage was caused. The debate has mainly centred on segregation of audiences at university Islamic societies. Full results of the YouGov poll are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jljqincr91/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-131213.pdf

BRIN source database update

The annual update of the BRIN source database has just taken place. New entries have been created for 129 British religious statistical sources, of which 83 date from 2013 and 46 from previous years. This brings the total of sources described in the database to 2,243. The 2013 sources include many important sample surveys, such as the three commissioned for the Westminster Faith Debates, and polls on topical issues, such as religion and same-sex marriage, the state of the Catholic Church under the two popes of 2013, Islamist terrorism (especially after the murder of Lee Rigby), and Muslim women’s dress. Moreover, 37 existing entries have been updated, mostly by additional subject keywords and/or publication references. The source database, which is searchable in multiple ways, can be found at:

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

Early Christmas present

Many BRIN readers will be aware of the hard work put in by Dr Siobhan McAndrew at the University of Manchester in helping to establish BRIN when she was our full-time project officer in 2008-10, and of her various contributions to the website since that time. We now extend to her and her husband our warmest congratulations on the birth of their daughter, Ramona, on 7 December 2013 at St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester. As we are supposed to be good at statistics, we had better quote the birth weight, which was 4lb. 14oz. Siobhan and daughter are now back home, and both are fine, Siobhan tells us in a recent email.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged afterlife, Bible knowledge, Bible Society, businesses, Christmas, Christmas cards, Christmas carols, Church and State, church attendance, Church of England, ComRes, Devil, disestablishment, evolution, fathers, freedom of religion, gender segregation, God, human rights, Jesus Christ, Liberty, nativity, nativity plays, officebroker.com, OnePoll, origin of life on earth, Peter Kellner, Pitney Bowes, politics, Premier Christian Radio, Prospect, religious festivals, Resurrection, Siobhan McAndrew, Sunday Times, The Bible mini-series, The Sun, universities, wise men, YouGov, Your Say Pays | Leave a comment

St Andrew’s Day and Other News

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today is St Andrew’s Day, as you might have noticed from the latest and attractive ‘Google doodle’. However, their patron saint’s day is not going to be much celebrated by Scots, according to the first of nine reports in today’s BRIN post. Religious decline is a theme running through several of the other stories.

St Andrew’s Day

St Andrew is the favourite Scottish saint (from a list of nine) of 35% of 1,225 Scots interviewed online by YouGov on 12-14 November 2013, easily beating St Mungo (9%) and St Columba (8%). Notwithstanding, no more than 20% had plans to celebrate St Andrew’s Day in any way this year, even though it falls on a Saturday, while 64% definitely had none. The highest proportions intent on celebration were to be found among the 18-24s (32%) and full-time students (37%), the lowest among 25-34s (13%) and Glaswegians (12%). The low figure for Glasgow seems to be related to the fact that St Mungo is the favourite saint for 17% of the city’s residents, perhaps because he features in Glasgow’s coat of arms. The data tables, published on 28 November, are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/o9p509n5op/YG-Archive-St-Andrew’s-131112.pdf

Is Christianity dying in Britain?

BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas of the University of Essex, published an interesting post on The Conversation blog (run on behalf of a consortium of 13 British universities) on 27 November 2013. Entitled ‘Hard Evidence: Is Christianity Dying in Britain?’ the article was prompted by the recent prognostication of George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, that the Church of England is ‘one generation away from extinction’. Voas contends that ‘the reality is less dramatic, but the story is not altogether wrong’. Using British Social Attitudes Survey data from 1983 to the present, Voas demonstrates that young adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to profess a religion, and that the Church of England has been particularly badly impacted by this trend. The same phenomenon can be seen with regard to churchgoing and ‘orthodox’ religious beliefs. Although more ‘unorthodox’ supernatural beliefs have been sustained, Voas does not think they amount to much: ‘these “beliefs” are casual in the extreme: cultivated by popular culture and its delight in magic and Gothic romanticism, held in the most tentative and experimental way, with no connection to any meaningful spirituality’. In short, ‘Lord Carey is at least half right’. The post can be read at:

https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-is-christianity-dying-in-britain-20734

Is the Church of England dying?

Another blogger to have been inspired by Carey’s remarks is John Hayward, of the University of South Wales, who has been applying mathematical models to church growth for the best part of twenty years now. He runs a fascinating (if not always easy to follow) Church Growth Modelling website, which includes a blog. In his latest post, on 20 November 2013, he writes (positively) about ‘George Carey and Church Decline’. Hayward’s preceding post, on 9 October 2013, concerned ‘The Decline of the Church of England’, informed by an analysis of Anglican attendance data for 2001-11 (which were published earlier in the year). In this article Hayward deployed the ‘general limited enthusiasm model’ (based on the theory that church growth is driven by a sub-group of church members – enthusiasts – who are instrumental in bringing about conversions) to reach the following conclusion: ‘although the church is slowly declining, the most likely scenario is that it will avoid extinction and start growing again around 2035. The enthusiasts in the church, those responsible for the growth, should start increasing around 2020. Although church attendance will stabilise, it will be well below current levels. The church has some work to do in conversion and retention if it is to see the revival-type growth needed to regain its impact on society.’ For more information, go to:

http://www.churchmodel.org.uk/LongDecline3.html#summary

Episcopal psychology

Bishops in the Church of England differ from their male clergy on three of the four aspects of psychological type, being more likely to prefer extraversion over introversion, sensing over intuition, and judging over perceiving. Although there are no differences between bishops as a whole and clergy in respect of the fourth aspect, preference for thinking over feeling, thinking was found to be privileged more among diocesan than suffragan bishops. These conclusions derive from data gathered from 168 Anglican bishops (75 of whom are currently in office, and 93 not), and reported in Leslie Francis, Michael Whinney, and Mandy Robbins, ‘Who is Called to be a Bishop? A Study in Psychological Type Profiling of Bishops in the Church of England’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2013, pp. 135-51.The findings are mostly in line with hypotheses developed from present expectations regarding the office of bishop, but the authors suggest that, in making future episcopal appointments, the Church might be served better by an alternative psychological type profile than manifested in the past and present. Access options to this article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13617672.2013.801647#.UpZUhTZFDX4

Urban and rural religion

Professing Christians are more likely to live in rural than urban areas of England and Wales, according to 2011 Census Analysis: Comparing Rural and Urban Areas of England and Wales, published by the Office for National Statistics on 22 November 2013. Whereas Christians accounted for 59.3% of the total population at the 2011 census, the proportion was 66.9% in rural locations against 57.6% in cities and towns. The rural-urban Christian differential of 9.3%, which was somewhat greater than in 2001 (8.2%), is probably largely age-related, the median age being eight years higher in rural than urban areas, but another contributing factor is that rural dwellers are more likely to have been born in the UK. By contrast, non-Christians are concentrated in urban areas, where they represent 9.9% of residents, compared with just 1.5% in rural districts; this distribution tracks the concentration there of ethnic minorities and persons born outside the UK. The disparity is especially large for Muslims, who constitute only 0.4% of people in the countryside but 5.8% in cities and towns. The number professing no religion is marginally higher in urban than rural areas (25.4% versus 24.1%) but urbanization alone can hardly be said to explain the loss of faith. Overall, 81.5% of English and Welsh reside in urban and 18.5% in rural areas. The report is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_337939.pdf

Godless Norwich

When the 2011 census results for religion in England were published last December, Norwich stood out as being the local/unitary authority with the largest number of those professing no religion (42% against a national average of 27%), earning the city the sobriquet ‘godless’. As one might expect, the reality is a little more complex than that, and Peter Brierley has now prepared an interesting 4,000 word briefing on the religious scene in Norwich (and Norfolk more generally), which he has circulated to subscribers with the December 2013 (No. 30) issue of FutureFirst, the magazine of Brierley Consultancy. In addition to explaining the high incidence of ‘nones’ in terms of the disproportionate presence of young people (notably students) and Asians (especially Chinese) in the city, he shows that Norwich does not come at the bottom of the league table with respect to self-identifying Christians and church attenders. Indeed, estimated churchgoing in 2012 was higher in Norwich than in Norfolk, and just 0.1% short of the English mean, even if it had reduced by one-half since 1989. To obtain a copy of the paper, contact Dr Brierley at peter@brierleyres.com

London, the exceptional case?

Further to our preliminary notice, in our post of 14 June 2013, we can now report the publication of far more detailed results from, and commentary on, the Greater London church census held on 14 October 2012, undertaken by Brierley Consultancy on behalf of the London City Mission: Peter Brierley, Capital Growth: What the 2012 London Church Census Reveals (174pp., including 95 tables and figures, ADBC Publishers, ISBN 978-0-9566577-6-3, £9.99, from peter@brierleyres.com). Still more data (especially regarding individual boroughs) will become available in April 2014, in the London church census section of UK Church Statistics, 2010-2020.

In essence, London, once a byword for irreligion, is currently bucking the national trend of declining church attendance, thanks largely to immigration, changing patterns of churchmanship (52% of London churchgoers are now evangelicals), and church planting (with 17% more churches in the capital in 2012 than 2005). The headline all-age attendance figures (grossed up from data for 54% of places of worship, derived from a combination of census forms and extrapolations from previous information) are tabulated below, with comparisons from four previous church censuses:

	1979	1989	1998	2005	2012	1979-2012 % change
Anglican	140,500	98,500	101,100	90,300	84,800	-39.6
Roman Catholic	333,700	293.000	237,200	195,400	198,300	-40.6
Methodist/Baptist/URC	101,200	83,400	86,100	76,100	68,200	-32.6
Pentecostal	57,500	82,700	93,700	152,700	229,000	+298.3
Other	63,100	92,000	99,800	108,500	141,200	+123.8
Total	696,000	649,600	617,900	623,000	721,500	+3.7
Total as % population	10.1	9.6	8.6	8.3	8.8

Thus, in absolute terms, total churchgoing was 16% more in 2012 than in 2005, and even 4% more than in 1979. Relative to population, London churchgoing is now restored to the level of the late 1990s. However, the increase was concentrated among newer manifestations of Christianity, particularly Pentecostal and New Churches, with Anglican, Catholic, and traditional Free Churches all struggling.

Brierley comments on the overall growth between 2005 and 2012 (p. 53): ‘That is a considerable increase, almost offsetting the national decline in churchgoing outside London in the same period. So, because of London’s increase, national church attendance in England remained virtually static (instead of declining) between 2010 and 2012! This remarkable impact is because London’s church attendance in 2012 is about a quarter (24%) of that of the whole country.’ However, he cautions that: ‘the increase seen between 2005 and 2012 in London is not expected to continue. The number of people attending church in Greater London is likely to fall slightly in the immediate future, dropping to perhaps 704,000 by 2020.’ The principal reason for this forecast lies in the large number of small churches whose attendance is collectively declining.

Paul Flowers

Reverend Paul Flowers, ex-chairman of the Co-op Bank, who has suffered a fall from grace through perceived failings in both his professional and private life, has the dubious honour of being the first Methodist minister ever to feature in a British opinion poll. Several questions about him were included in YouGov’s weekly omnibus for the Sunday Times on 21-22 November 2013 for which 1,867 adult Britons were interviewed online. Asked to apportion blame for his appointment as chairman, 45% laid the responsibility at the door of the Co-op board, while 19% pointed the finger at the former Financial Services Authority for inadequate regulation and 16% at politicians in the co-operative movement for supporting Flowers. Two-thirds (67%) backed Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to set up an independent enquiry into how Flowers was appointed chairman (17% dissenting), and 72% wanted Flowers prosecuted for his alleged use of hard drugs (and 13% not). The full data appear on p. 6 of the tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/q0ir85hkfv/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-221113.pdf

Religious education

The National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) published its fifth survey on the impact of the English Baccalaureate on religious education (RE) in secondary schools on 29 November 2013. Data were gathered in May-June 2013 by means of an online questionnaire completed by a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 580 schools. The survey revealed that at Key Stage 4 26% of all state schools are failing to meet their legal or contractual obligations to teach RE to all under-16s (rising to one-third of community schools and academies without a religious character), with 12% failing at Key Stage 3. The number of RE subject specialist staff was set to decline in 2013-14 in one-fifth of schools, with one in five RE lessons currently being delivered by non-specialists in 31% of schools. The timetable for RE had been reduced in a minority of schools, especially at Key Stage 4, and in 2013-14 29% of schools will be attempting to deliver the full GCSE course in Religious Studies in less than the recommended number of learning hours. The survey is available at:

http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/NATRE_EBacc_Survey_2013_final.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Bishops, Brierley Consultancy, British Social Attitudes Survey, census of population, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Co-op Bank, David Voas, English Baccalaureate, George Carey, Greater London, John Hayward, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Leslie Francis, London City Mission, Mandy Robbins, mathematical modelling, Michael Whinney, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, NATRE, Norwich, Office for National Statistics, patron saints, Paul Flowers, Peter Brierley, pyschological type profiling, Religious Affiliation, religious education, rural religion, schools, Scotland, St Andrew's Day, Sunday Times, The Conversation, urban religion, YouGov | 1 Comment

Christian Country and Other News

Easter Round-Up

Latest Anglican Mission Statistics and Other News

End-of-Year Round-Up

Christmas and Other Themes

Recent News

Recent Sources

Archives

Recent Comments

One response to “St Andrew’s Day and Other News”

British Religion in Numbers is funded as a British Academy Research Project