Naughty Vicar Syndrome

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Local clergy come a close second to politicians in meriting media exposure for cheating on their spouse, according to a new survey commissioned by The Sunday Times in the wake of the controversy surrounding superinjunctions and the freedom of the press.

Fieldwork was conducted online by YouGov on 26 and 27 May 2011 among a representative sample of 2,723 Britons aged 18 and over. The detailed results from the poll are available at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-pol-st-results-27-290511.pdf

Asked whether it would be legitimate for the press to report on cases where ten categories of individual had been unfaithful to their spouse, affirmative replies were as follows:

  • a senior politician – 71%
  • a backbench politician – 65%
  • a local clergyman – 64%
  • a local councillor – 62%
  • a top professional footballer – 59%
  • a senior executive of a major corporation – 58%
  • a well-known actor – 56%
  • a television presenter – 55%
  • a former reality TV star – 51%
  • a normal member of the public – 30%

Nearly three times as many respondents wanted to see local clergy exposed in the media as opted to keep the matter private (23%), with 13% unsure what to think. The clamour for publicity about clergy was notably high among Conservative voters (71%) and the over-60s (70%).

Religious professionals may no longer command the sort of respect in the community which they once did, but it seems that we generally still expect them to be exemplary in their moral behaviour and feel entitled to know about their falls from grace.

Posted in Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Self-Supporting Ministry

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Clive D. Field

In 2009 3,100 or 27% of all the Church of England’s diocesan licensed ministers were in self-supporting ministry (SSM), sometimes described as non-stipendiary ministry. Hitherto, comparatively little has been known about these SSMs and how they are utilized by the Church.

That omission is now rectified by research published in the Church Times of 1 April 2011 (pp. 5, 22-3) and 8 April 2011 (pp. 4, 22-3, 30). These articles, together with some of the raw data in chart form, can be downloaded from:

http://www.1pf.co.uk/SSM.html

The study was undertaken by Rev Dr Teresa Morgan, Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Oriel College, Oxford and herself in the SSM, in the parish of Littlemore.

Fieldwork took place during the autumn of 2010 by means of an online questionnaire, to which 890 SSMs in the UK (but mostly from England) responded, representing 28% of the universe.

SSMs were found to contribute a significant amount of time to their ministry, with one-quarter putting in more than 30 hours a week and a further one-fifth between 20 and 30 hours. Only 15% spent fewer than 10 hours a week on their ministry.

Moreover, the overwhelming majority regarded their ministry as a privilege and a joy and had received extensive pre- and post-ordination training.

Notwithstanding, many respondents gave the clear impression that they were ‘ignored, overlooked or under-used’ in the Church, ‘parked somewhere, and left’, and ‘sidelined’. Some commented that stipendiary ministers appeared not to regard SSMs as ‘proper’ clergy and treated them badly.

Likewise, many SSMs reported a degree of stagnation in their ministry since ordination. 46% had held only one post since ordination, and 41% reported no change in their ministry during this time. Just 13% had lead responsibility for ministry in their parish or chaplaincy. 59% exercised no significant ministry beyond the Church. Almost one-quarter claimed to have received no ministerial development review.

Morgan is critical of the Church for its lack of strategy with regard to SSM and especially of the failure of dioceses to consider SSMs in their planning processes. She dismisses the raft of alleged impediments to the effective use of SSMs often cited by Church leaders, arguing that her survey has empirically disproved them.

Posted in News from religious organisations, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Assessing the Decade of Evangelism

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Clive D. Field

Resolution 43 of the 1988 Lambeth Conference called on ‘each province and diocese of the Anglican Communion, in co-operation with other Christians, to make the closing years of this millennium a “Decade of Evangelism” with a renewed and united emphasis on making Christ known to the people of his world.’ The Decade of Evangelism was certainly a strong theme in English Anglicanism throughout the 1990s, but the cause was also taken up by other denominations in the UK and overseas.

Previous research by Leslie Francis and Carol Roberts, based on the Church of England’s official annual data, has suggested that the Decade of Evangelism was a relative failure in that ‘the majority of dioceses were performing less effectively at the end of the decade than at the beginning, in terms of a range of membership statistics’. See their article ‘Growth or Decline in the Church of England during the Decade of Evangelism: Did the Churchmanship of the Bishop Matter?’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 67-81.

Francis has now teamed up with Patrick Laycock and Andrew Village to extend this analysis in ‘Statistics for Evidence-Based Policy in the Church of England: Predicting Diocesan Performance’, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 52, No. 2, December 2010, pp. 207-20. This is a subscription journal from the Religious Research Association, and the text of this paper is unfortunately not yet freely available online, although copies can be purchased (including through the British Library Document Supply Centre).

The article begins by computing percentage changes in six performance variables for 41 mainland Anglican dioceses (all except the Diocese of London, which is excluded on the grounds that it is not a homogeneous unit but a set of discrete episcopal areas). The six measures employed were: usual Sunday attendance, Easter Sunday communicants, Christmas communicants, electoral roll members, total baptisms, and total confirmations. Means were calculated, cumulatively and severally, for the start (1990 and 1991) and end (1999 and 2000) of the Decade of Evangelism.

The resultant data are presented in tables 1 and 2, with the dioceses clustered into three groupings according to the relative strength of their performance during the decade. Although all dioceses experienced decline, they decreased at a differential rate, the extremes on the aggregate basket of indicators ranging from -12% for the Diocese of Salisbury to -30% for the Diocese of Durham.

The authors then devise a set of 62 predictor variables, derived from various enumerations of the Church’s resources, comprising clergy, buildings and finance. Complex statistical modelling techniques are applied to establish links between these predictor variables and the performance variables, in an attempt to see whether diocesan policy (whether intended or unintended) impacted upon performance.

The upshot of this analysis is that, as revealed in tables 3 and 4, several policy-related factors are shown to have been positively associated with church growth (or, more pertinently in this context, a reduced speed of church decline) at the diocesan level during the 1990s. They were:

  • the number of non-stipendiary clergy
  • the number of female clergy
  • the number of planned subscribers
  • overall diocesan income
  • charitable giving as a proportion of total diocesan expenditure

There was also an inverse link with the number of church closures, suggesting that resisting church closures helped to boost diocesan performance.

In these ways, the authors infer that they have qualified any sense of the inexorability of church decline, stemming entirely from circumstances external to the influence of the Church of England. Rather, they have identified policy-related areas which, if acted upon by the Church, could make a positive contribution to diocesan performance, or at least might have done during the Decade of Evangelism in the 1990s.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Perfect Companion

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Clive D. Field

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

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

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS BELONGING

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS BELIEF

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

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

RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AND PREJUDICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in church attendance, Measuring religion, Official data | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Who Worked on Christmas Day? Not All the Clergy!

Posted on December 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Christmas Day may be both a religious festival and a secular public holiday in Britain, but many people have to, or choose to, work on the day, according to newly-released data from the Government’s Labour Force Survey, which interviews a very large sample of adults aged 16 and over resident at private addresses throughout the country.

The relevant press release does not yet seem to be available online on Office for National Statistics (ONS) or other Government websites, but, according to reports in the Boxing Day broadsheets, the data show that 881,000 Britons worked on Christmas Day in 2008, equivalent to about 3.5% of the workforce. This total was up by 19% from 741,000 in 2004 and slightly above the 872,000 in 2006.

Care assistants made up the largest number working a Christmas Day shift that year (160,000), followed by nurses (88,000), nursing auxiliaries (42,000), chefs and cooks (28,000), security guards (27,000), and police officers (25,000).

However, the occupation with the highest proportion of people working was the clergy, 57% of whom said that they worked on 25 December 2008. Some might be surprised that the figure was not even higher (as, indeed, was the ONS spokesperson, Nick Palmer), given the centrality of Christmas Day to the job, but allowance presumably has to be made for retired or sick clergy and those of non-Christian faiths.

The next highest proportions working on Christmas Day were paramedics (38%), farm managers (34%), midwives (31%), farm workers (28%), managers of licensed premises (26%), and hotel managers (24%).

Regionally, Scots were the most likely to be working on Christmas Day 2008 and residents of Northern Ireland the least (followed by London). Public sector employees were also more likely to work than their counterparts in the private sector, and women more than men.

These figures are probably confined to those who claimed that they actually attended their normal place of work on Christmas Day. They presumably exclude those who did some work from home (for example, logging on to their email or office files) and those who worked on other days during what has increasingly become a fortnight’s festive break for many employees.

Some feel for the size of this broader Christmas working community is given in a survey released by Post Office Travel Services on 27 December, based upon online interviews with 2,000 Britons. The relevant press release is, yet again, unavailable online at present, but reports in various media indicate that one in four will go to work at some stage over the festive period this year, with a further one in six working from home.

Posted in Official data, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Psychological Type and Biblical Interpretation

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Much important work in the field of religious statistics has been undertaken by psychologists of religion. In general, it is relatively little-known outside the immediate discipline of psychology, partly, perhaps, because it tends to be based upon specialized samples rather than national surveys of the whole population.

A recent example of the genre is Andrew Village, ‘Psychological Type and Biblical Interpretation among Anglican Clergy in the UK’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2010, pp. 179-200.

Village’s research involved the completion of a questionnaire measuring psychological type preferences and biblical interpretation by 364 male and 354 female clergy ordained into the Anglican Church in the UK, mostly into the Church of England, between 2004 and 2007.

Respondents were asked to read a healing story from Mark 9:14-29 and then forced to choose between interpretative statements designed to appeal to particular psychological type preferences. Ten sensing-intuition and ten feeling-thinking pairs of statements were included.

Psychological type was measured by the Francis Psychological Type Scale. Sex was used as a control variable because of the widely reported finding that women are more likely to prefer feeling over thinking compared with men. The Village Bible Scale was also deployed to control for biblical liberalism or conservatism.

The 718 clergy showed an overall preference for introversion over extraversion, feeling over thinking, and judging over perceiving. There was no preference between sensing and intuition. The only difference between the sexes was the much stronger preference for feeling over thinking among women.

Women were found to be less biblically conservative than men. Biblical conservatism was also negatively correlated with introversion, intuition and feeling, indicating that it may have been most prevalent among clergy who preferred extraversion, sensing and thinking.

In terms of the biblical interpretative choices based on Mark 9:14-29, there were no correlations with preferences in either psychological orientation (extraversion or introversion) or attitude towards the outer world (judging or perceiving).

After allowing for sex and Bible beliefs, the number of intuitive (versus sensing) interpretative items chosen was positively correlated with a psychological preference for intuition over sensing but not with preference in the judging process. 

Similarly, the number of feeling (versus thinking) interpretative items chosen was positively correlated with a psychological preference for feeling over thinking, but not correlated with preference in the perceiving process.

The study both confirms and expands a similar project conducted in 1999-2001 by Village among a sample of 404 Anglican laity, the majority of whom had little or no theological education. This investigation is most extensively written up in his The Bible and Lay People: An Empirical Approach to Ordinary Hermeneutics (Ashgate, 2007).

While such research demonstrating a linkage between psychological type and biblical interpretation clearly has an academic purpose, it is also designed to have a practical application in the pulpit, by suggesting ways in which preaching might be shaped to allow listeners of different psychological profiles to access biblical material in their preferred styles.

The book Preaching with all our Souls, by Leslie Francis and Village (Continuum, 2008), explores this dimension further. A good general introduction to the psychology of religion is provided by Francis, Faith and Psychology: Personality, Religion and the Individual (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005).

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Church of England Statistics

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England issued two statistics-related press releases on 28 October.

The first concerned parochial finance for 2008 and licensed ministers for 2009, complementing the parochial affiliation and attendance data which were made available in February. 

The financial statistics contained some good news. Despite the recession, which has hit the wider charity sector hard, both tax-efficient planned giving and legacy giving in the Church of England continued to increase, reaching record levels. Overall parochial income was £925 million and expenditure £874 million.

As for ministry, 491 candidates were accepted to train in 2009, making a total of 1,338 in training (five-sixths over 30 years of age). 564 new clergy were ordained, 309 entering full-time paid ministry. Taking retirements and other losses into account, there was a net decrease of 128 full-time paid clergy. At the end of 2009, there were some 28,000 licensed and authorized ministers, ordained and lay, active in the Church of England.

The press release can be read at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9710.html

The data appear as part of the online edition of Church Statistics, 2008/9 (with previous years back to 2001) at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2008/statisticsfront2008.html

The second press release reported the office and working costs of the Church’s 113 bishops (44 diocesan and 69 suffragan and full-time assistant bishops) for the year-ending 31 December 2009. The total bill came to £14,952,000.

The release is at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9510.html

The data, with those for each year since 2000 (when the costs of individual bishops were published for the first time), will be found at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/bishopsofficeandworkingcosts.html

Posted in News from religious organisations | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recent Academic Journal Articles

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There follow brief reports of three recent articles in academic journals. These are subscription-based, with free access only available to institutional and personal subscribers. A pay-per-view option is also offered via the relevant publisher websites.

Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 89-92: Christopher Rutledge, ‘Looking behind the Anglican Statistic “Usual Sunday Attendance”: a Case Study’

Rutledge conducted two censuses, four years apart, of adult attendances at the main services in a suburban Anglican parish church, the first over four weeks and the second over five. He demonstrates that neither electoral roll membership nor planned financial giving is an accurate predictor of churchgoing.

Two-fifths of those on the electoral roll did not worship during the census periods, while there were numerous regular worshippers not on the roll. Likewise, many of those who supported the church through standing orders or weekly giving envelopes did not attend services during the census. Overall, usual Sunday attendance is shown to greatly underestimate the number of people engaged with the local church.

Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 64-81: Lewis Burton, Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, ‘Psychological Type Profile of Methodist Circuit Ministers in Britain: Similarities to and Differences from Anglican Clergy’

Psychological type theory is used to profile similarities and differences between 1,004 Methodist ministers in England surveyed by Burton in 2004 and the 863 Church of England clergy profiled in an earlier study reported in Leslie Francis, Charlotte Craig, Michael Whinney, David Tilley and Paul Slater, ‘Psychological Typology of Anglican Clergy in England: Diversity, Strengths and Weaknesses in Ministry’, International Journal of Practical Theology, Vol. 11, 2007, pp. 266-84.

The two groups recorded similar profiles in many respects, especially when viewed against the profile of the UK population. However, male and female Methodist ministers were less likely to prefer intuition, and more likely to prefer sensing, compared to their Anglican colleagues. Also, male Methodist ministers were more likely to prefer feeling and less likely to prefer thinking in comparison with Anglican clergy.

The findings are interpreted to illuminate strengths and weaknesses in Methodist and Anglican ministry and to highlight areas of potential conflict, disagreement or misunderstanding in effecting cooperation between the two denominations.   

British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 307-20: Mandy Robbins and Leslie Francis, ‘The Teenage Religion and Values Survey in England and Wales: an Overview’

The Teenage Religion and Values Survey is by far the largest study of religious and moral beliefs and behaviours of young people in this country yet to be completed. It was conducted by Leslie Francis and associates throughout the 1990s by means of self-completion questionnaires from 33,982 13- to 15-year-olds in years 9 and 10 of 163 schools in England and Wales.

The survey has already been widely reported in the academic literature (see the entry in the BRIN database at http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/1780). The present article opens by reflecting on the methodology of the research as regards design, measurement and sampling. It then reviews some of the insights which it generated, especially in respect of personality, spiritual health, religious affiliation, belonging without believing, and church-leaving. The major published outputs from the survey are listed and discussed, and three lessons learned are spelled out.

The research group is currently devising a new study of similar scope for the first decades of the twenty-first century and is inviting collaborators to work with them.

Posted in Measuring religion, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Angus Reid Public Opinion Round-Up

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO, formerly Angus Reid Strategies) is the Vancouver-based public affairs practice of Vision Critical and conducts online surveys. It was originally founded in 2006 by Dr Angus Reid, a Canadian sociologist with four decades of experience in market and public opinion research.

Following considerable success in Canada, ARPO established a British adult panel (http://www.springboarduk.com) last autumn and obtained high visibility for its political polling in the run-up to the 2010 general election. But ARPO has also dipped its toes into British religious waters. Relevant questions are summarized below, with further details available at: http://www.visioncritical.com/category/public-opinion/

HALLOWEEN (fieldwork: 28-30 October 2009, n = 2,004)

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

While 45% of Britons associated Halloween with fun, 35% regarded it as overrated. 30% saw it as harmless, but for 31% it had connotations with paganism and for 40% with witchcraft. Of the various faith alternatives to Halloween, 37% said they had participated in harvest festivals.   

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – MINARETS (fieldwork: 9-12 December 2009, n = 2,002)

Following last November’s Swiss referendum which led to the prohibition on the construction of minarets on Swiss mosques, ARPO sounded out the publics of Britain, Canada and the USA on the issue. 43% of Britons claimed to have followed the story in the media.

Offered a précis of the arguments used in Switzerland, 44% agreed with the proponents of the ban and 28% with the opponents. However, 52% felt that it was unfair for the proponents to have used a poster depicting minarets as missiles.

37% of Britons said they would vote for a similar ban in our country (more than Canadians and Americans, 27% and 21% respectively), with 25% against a ban and 39% abstainers or unsure.

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – RELIGIOUS DRESS (fieldwork: 20-21 January 2010, n = 2,001)

ARPO showed respondents pictures of three items of Muslim women’s dress – the burqa, the niqab and the hijab – and asked whether their use should be forbidden in the UK in public places, at airports and at schools and universities.

Large majorities agreed with banning the burqa in all three situations (ranging from 72% in public places to 87% at airports), and likewise the niqab (from 66% in public places to 85% at airports).

67% considered that garments which conceal a woman’s face are an affront to British values, although, somewhat contradictorily, 58% agreed that the Government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

Far fewer felt it necessary to prohibit wearing of the hijab (from 22% in public places to 34% at airports).

CREATIONISM (fieldwork: 1-9 July 2010, n = 2,011)

Invited to explain the origin and development of human beings on earth, 68% of Britons opted for evolution (almost twice the proportion of Americans), 16% for creationism (one-third the US figure), with 15% unsure.

Creationists were especially plentiful in London (25%, perhaps reflecting the concentration of black-led churches and Muslims there) and thin on the ground in Scotland. Men were more likely to be evolutionists than women, partly because more women registered as unsure.

RESPECT FOR MINISTERS AND PRIESTS (fieldwork: 20-23 July 2010, n = 1,992)

Asked whether they had a great deal or fair amount of respect for each of 25 professional groups, 56% replied affirmatively for ministers and priests, leaving them in sixteenth position in a league table extending from doctors (91%) to car salesmen (12%).

There were no great differences by age and region, but gender was significant: 63% of women against 49% of men had respect for ministers and priests. At the other end of the scale, 39% had little or not much respect for the clergy, rising to 46% among men.

The survey replicated another ARPO poll between 13 and 26 August 2009, which showed respect for ministers and priests running at 57% in Britain, 65% in Canada and 82% in the USA.

Besides polling, the company is also responsible for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, which commenced in 2003. This includes a database summarizing 22,000 polls from around the world and from many different polling agencies. See http://www.angus-reid.com/

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trust in the Clergy

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

How trustworthy are the clergy, both absolutely and in relation to other professionals? Several opinion poll companies have tried to answer this question over the years, including Ipsos MORI, which has data on the extent to which Britons trust the clergy to tell the truth or not going back to 1983, some of which is abstracted at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/Table-9-1-Trust-Professions-Ipsos-MORI-1983-2009.xls

GfK Custom Research has undertaken a similar exercise annually since 2003, asking respondents whether they trust the clergy and other groups or not. But GfK has polled internationally and not just in Britain.

Most recently GfK surveyed 15 European countries (including by telephone in the UK) and the United States, Brazil, Colombia and India in February and March 2010 on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, with an average of just under 1,000 interviews in each nation.

GfK has issued a press release about the 2010 survey, which will be found at:

http://www.gfknop.com/imperia/md/content/gfk_nop/newsandpressinformation/100609_pm_trust_index_2010_fin.pdf

Unfortunately, it does not feature any of the UK results. However, some of these have been made available exclusively to British Religion in Numbers by Mark Hofmans of GfK Custom Research and are quoted here with his kind permission.

Across all countries, trust in the clergy stands at 58%, the range being from 33% in France to 86% in Romania. In the UK the figure is 63%, the highest in Western Europe (and 15% above the sub-continental average), closely followed by Sweden on 62%.

But UK citizens’ trust in the clergy is far less than in doctors (85%), the army (85%), schoolteachers (84%) and policemen (73%), although it exceeds confidence in lawyers (48%), managers of large enterprises (34%), journalists (21%) and politicians (14%).  

GfK report that, internationally, trust in the clergy declined by 8% between 2009 and 2010, from 66% to 58%, and by as much as 17% in Germany, which GfK largely attributes to the adverse publicity surrounding the abuse of children and young people by Roman Catholic priests and the Church’s perceived inadequate response to these events.

In the UK the fall from 2009 to 2010 was only 3%, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Roman Catholic Church in Britain has been somewhat less caught up in the scandals than its counterparts in Ireland and continental Europe. The 66% having trust in the clergy in the UK in 2009 was also 6 points higher than in 2008.

Although somewhat less that the number of Britons telling Ipsos MORI that they trust the clergy to tell the truth (71% in 2009), and notwithstanding a continuing trickle of ‘naughty vicar’ stories in the media (the latest about sham marriages), the GfK figure of 63% in the UK having confidence in the clergy is still surprisingly high (and not far behind the United States on 69%).

How do we interpret this? Is the lingering respect for clergy a recognition of the influence which they exercise in the leadership of the local communities which they serve, or do we still derive comfort from the knowledge that the clergy of all denominations and faiths set a lead in religious commitment and moral standards which the rest of us will but imperfectly follow?

Posted in Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment