Roman Catholic Opinion

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The recent spate of surveys triggered by the forthcoming papal visit continues with the publication this morning of a ComRes poll of a random sample of 500 UK Catholics conducted for the BBC between 6 and 9 September. Interviews were by telephone.

The full results from this poll have not yet been released.* The following headline findings are based on the discussion in today’s Sunday programme on BBC Radio 4 (which can be heard for the next seven days via the BBC iPlayer service) and on a BBC News press release at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274308

69% of Catholics expect the forthcoming papal visit to Scotland and England to be helpful to the Catholic Church in Britain. 14% fear it will be unhelpful and 17% are uncertain.

57% do not consider that their Catholic faith is generally valued by British society, almost twice the proportion who think that it is (30%), with 13% don’t knows.

62% of Catholics believe that women should have more authority and status in the Catholic Church. Identical numbers of men and women say this, but younger Catholics rather more than older ones. 30% disagree and 8% don’t know. This question was somewhat vague, but it will doubtless have been interpreted by some respondents as being code for their views on women priests.

49% of Catholics seek a relaxation in the Church’s rules on clerical celibacy, with a high of 63% for the 35-54 age cohort. 35% oppose any change and 17% don’t know what to think.

52% of Catholics claim that their faith in the leadership of the Catholic Church has been shaken by the priestly sexual abuse scandals and their subsequent handling. This is perhaps a lower figure than might have been expected, although it is ambiguous whether leadership refers to that of the Church in Britain or more globally. 43% state that their faith has not been shaken.

Commenting on the results, the ComRes chairman Andrew Hawkins writes: ‘Overall there is a sense of strong support for the Pope’s visit but disquiet both about some aspects of Papal teaching and the perception of the Catholic Church in wider society having been harmed.’

* POSTSCRIPT: The full data tabulations (with breaks by age, gender, region and social class) were later posted at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/page165564311.aspx

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Christian Research and Churchgoing

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Two articles in yesterday’s broadsheet press gave somewhat conflicting assessments of the state of religion in contemporary Britain, in the lead-in to the papal visit to Britain, which starts next Thursday.

Writing in The Guardian, Julian Glover portrayed ‘a nation of fuzzy doubters’, with believers and churchgoers in a minority but a cultural identity with Christianity still strong. There were extensive quotes from BRIN’s David Voas of the University of Manchester, who has documented (through the 2008 British Social Attitudes – BSA – Survey and other research) that there is a large middle-ground of ‘fuzzy people who don’t really care’ about religion. ‘It is not the case that Britain is getting more religious’, Voas was quoted. Glover’s article can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/religion-typical-briton-fuzzy-believer

The other piece was by Martin Beckford in the Daily Telegraph under the headline of ‘Churchgoing stabilises after years of decline, research shows’. ‘Figures obtained from several of England’s main Christian denominations suggest that the numbers of worshippers in the pews each Sunday are either stable or increasing,’ wrote Beckford. ‘The data run counter to the widely-held views that the country is becoming more secular.’ This article can be accessed at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7992616/Churchgoing-stabilises-after-years-of-decline-research-shows.html

The source of Beckford’s report was an exclusive guest post by Benita Hewitt (Director of Christian Research) on the influential Church Mouse blogsite. It was headlined ‘Church attendance in the UK no longer in decline’ and was described as ‘rather earth shattering’ news by the Mouse in the introduction to Hewitt’s post.

Hewitt herself was clear that, in the light of the Anglican, Catholic and Baptist statistics analysed to date, ‘the previous forecasts made showing continued decline have been superseded’ and that the Church is ‘no longer a dying institution but a living movement’. Her post appears at:

http://churchmousepublishing.blogspot.com/2010/09/christian-research-church-attendance-in.html

In the case of the Church of England, Hewitt demonstrated fairly steady attendance over several years on the basis of average monthly and average weekly congregations. But these are only two of a basket of measures now used by the Church of England to enumerate religious practice.

Hewitt failed to mention that the most long-standing indicator of Anglican churchgoing, usual Sunday attendance, fell by 8% between 2002 and 2008. Similarly, while she observed that her statistics exclude Christmas and Easter churchgoing, she does not note that both Easter congregations and Easter communicants fell by 4% between 2002 and 2008. Christmas communicants also dropped by 11% during the same period, although Christmas attendances rose slightly.

Moreover, Church of England baptisms were down by 8% between 2002 and 2008, confirmations by 19%, marriages and blessings by 6%, funerals by 16% and electoral roll membership by 3%. The overall picture is, therefore, more mixed than the one Hewitt paints.

For English and Welsh Roman Catholics, Hewitt observed that the decline in mass attendance was halted in 2005 and the figure has been steady since then. She does not offer any explanation for this.

Most commentators would attribute this trend, not to the religious practice of indigenous Catholics (which is probably still declining), but to the positive impact of immigration, from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, of devout Catholics.

With the economic recession, the net inflow of Eastern European Catholics (for example, from Poland) now seems to be turning into a net outflow, so this immigrant brake on the decline in mass-going may be purely temporary.

An even cheerier assessment is given by Hewitt of the state of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, whose church attendance rose between 2007 and 2008. It is certainly the case that, on a number of measures, the Baptists can be shown to have bucked the secularizing trend, including being more successful than most mainstream Christian denominations in reaching ethnic minorities.

Here again, however, Hewitt only tells part of the story. Overall, the Baptist data for 2002-08 are mixed. For more information, see the earlier BRIN news post at:

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

The Methodist Church is a fourth denomination to collect church attendance statistics, but they publish them only triennially, with the next data not due until summer 2011. The most recent figures showed an average decline of 14% in all age whole week attendance between 2005 and 2007, with even greater decreases for children (32%) and young people (30%).

The problem with using denominational data for calculating church attendance is that, because differing methodologies and periodicities are employed, the information is not truly comparable. Also, of course, many denominations do not count their churchgoers.

Only a national census of church attendance would provide a definitive answer, and none has been held in England since 2005. Nevertheless, it is significant that Peter Brierley, the architect of that census and a former Director of Christian Research, is forecasting continuing decline. See our earlier news post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=319.

Another potential difficulty with Hewitt’s analysis is that she is dealing in absolute numbers, and not relative to the population, which is known to be increasing significantly through birth and immigration. So, church attendance figures which appear flat may actually still conceal relative contraction.

One way of detecting these relative movements is from sample surveys of the national population. Although they are known to exaggerate the actual extent of churchgoing, since (for various reasons) people tend to over-claim their religious beliefs and practices, they can still provide a guide to the direction of travel.

The medium-term trend from the British Election and BSA Surveys is decidedly downwards. However, in support of Hewitt’s thesis, it is interesting that, among those professing a religion, those claiming to attend religious services at least monthly were stable comparing 2005 and 2008.

The lessons of church history are also worth bearing in mind. Religious change can be an extremely slow and long-term process. This is not necessarily inconsistent with short-term (year-on-year) volatility in particular measures of religiosity. This is best illustrated historically in church membership statistics, originally tabulated by Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley, and now republished by BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#ChurchesandChurchgoers.

In sum, there are lots of caveats to be considered when reading Hewitt’s blog. It is far from certain that a modern-day revival is just around the corner. The dragon of secularization is still not slain.

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Holocaust Education

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Policy-makers and older generations of Britons sometimes get worried that the Holocaust, and the events of the Second World War more generally, are fading from the public memory. Last year, for instance, there was extensive media coverage of a study by the London Jewish Cultural Centre and Miramax which revealed that many secondary school pupils did not know about Auschwitz, some even regarding it as a brand of beer.

Now YouGov has released the results of a survey it conducted on 1-2 July this year among 2,233 adults aged 18 and over drawn from its online panel. The poll asked about the importance of British schoolchildren learning about eleven periods and events in European history.

The Holocaust topped the list, 80% regarding it as very or fairly important that schoolchildren learn about it. Communism (72%) and Fascism (69%) came second and third, with the Enlightenment (45%) and German and Italian unification (41%) in the bottom two places. The Reformation scored 53%.

The importance attached to teaching about the Holocaust varied with age, from 69% among the 18-24s to 78% for the 25-39s, 83% for the 40-59s and 85% for those aged 60 and over. However, the youngest age cohort still attached the greatest significance to the Holocaust of all the periods and events on offer.

Women (83%) also deemed the Holocaust more important than men (77%) and the ABC1s (84%) more than the C2DEs (75%). Among voters, Liberal Democrats were most supportive (88%). At 82%, London and the rest of southern England regarded teaching of the Holocaust as a little more important than elsewhere in Britain.

The full results of the survey will be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-SchoolSubjectsEuropeanHistory-080910.pdf

The questions on European history formed part of the same poll which covered religious education, for which see http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=512.

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Religious Census of Berkshire in 1851

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 30 March 1851, for the first and last time, a government survey of religious accommodation and attendance was undertaken throughout Great Britain as part of the decennial census of population. Information was gathered from the minister or lay official in charge of each place of worship, who was asked to complete a manuscript schedule.

Although the outcome of the religious census was published at the time, in separate reports for England and Wales and Scotland in 1853-54, results were only disaggregated to registration district, county and large town levels. Moreover, some questions in the schedules were not tabulated at all, while replies about the numbers in the general congregation and Sunday schools were unhelpfully conflated. Many returns also included valuable remarks.

These manuscript schedules therefore contain much information not available in the printed reports. Embargoed for 100 years, they are now increasingly appearing in modern scholarly editions. With the recent publication of Berkshire Religious Census, 1851, ed. Kate Tiller (Berkshire Record Society, Vol. 14, 2010), the returns for 20 English counties are now available in this way, in addition to the whole of Wales.

The appearance of the Berkshire volume also means that the schedules for all three counties forming the Church of England Diocese of Oxford have been printed, Tiller being responsible for the Oxfordshire edition (Oxfordshire Record Society, Vol. 55, 1987) and Edward Legg for Buckinghamshire (Buckinghamshire Record Society, Vol. 27, 1991).

Oxford is an especially interesting diocese since its energetic and reforming bishop from 1845 to 1869, Samuel Wilberforce, was the most vociferous critic of the taking of the religious census, inside and outside Parliament. His opposition extended right up to the eleventh hour before census day and was reactivated by the publication of the report for England and Wales in 1854.

Tiller’s edition of the Berkshire returns follows the pattern of her Oxfordshire volume and, indeed, the model of several other county editions. A transcript, arranged alphabetically by place name, of the 448 returns for Berkshire churches and chapels fills 104 pages. It is preceded by 60 pages of introductory material covering the background to the religious census and its results in the county, although there is limited quantitative analysis. An index, running to 25 pages, completes the book.

Excluding some duplicate returns, there were 435 places of worship in Berkshire in 1851, of which 202 were Anglican, 86 Old Dissent and 122 Methodist. Based on the experience of other counties, it seems certain that some Methodist services will have been missed by the census machinery, and it is a pity that Tiller has not been able to check for omissions against contemporary circuit plans and other documents. A distinguishing feature of Berkshire is that Primitive Methodism was the largest Nonconformist denomination in terms of attendances, a dominance which it had achieved in just 20 years.

The volume can be purchased from the Berkshire Record Society, Berkshire Record Office, 9 Coley Avenue, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 6AP for £25.00 plus £2.50 postage and packing.

Tiller’s research for this edition has led to two spin-off publications: ‘The place of Methodism: a study of three counties in 1851’, Methodism and History: Essays in Honour of John Vickers, eds Peter Forsaith and Martin Wellings (Applied Theology Press, 2010); and ‘Chapel people in 1851: the example of Berkshire’, Chapels and Chapel People, ed. Chris Skidmore (Chapels Society, 2010).

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Attitudes towards the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts: Data from the British Election Study

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Ben Clements

Ben Clements, University of Leicester.

I recently wrote about the British Election Study 2009/10 as a resource, providing some tables on how vote choice and attitudes to party leaders differed across religious communities.

As well as asking the British electorate in detail about their voting behaviour, perceptions of parties and their leaders, and the dynamics of general election campaigns, a series of questions taps into views on both long-standing policy debates and more recent political issues.

For instance, by using evidence from the BES 2005 and the BES 2009/10 we can compare attitudes on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts by religious affiliation.  Tables 1 and 2 show approval or disapproval of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in response to an identical question administered in each of the two BES surveys.

 

TableIraq

TableAfghan

What is evident from Tables 1 and 2 is that, while opinion tends to be against British involvement in both conflicts across the different categories, levels of disapproval are highest amongst Muslims (though slightly more so in the case of Iraq). Also, across all categories, higher proportions respond ‘don’t know’ in relation to the situation in Afghanistan, despite Britain’s military involvement there since 2001 (with a fifth of Muslims unsure).

Ben Clements is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester, with interests in the study of elections, public attitudes to the EU, and the work experiences of the visually-impaired. He is currently working on a book on religious affiliation and political attitudes in Britain, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. He can be contacted at bc101@leicester.ac.uk

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Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Yet another opinion poll has been published in the run-up to the state and pastoral visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England between 16 and 19 September. But this one is different, since it is about the liturgical predilections of British Catholics and not about papal popularity!

It is one in a series of surveys commissioned by Paix Liturgique, a movement of Roman Catholic laity based in France and dedicated to the extraordinary form of the Latin Rite. Other national surveys have been conducted in France in 2001, 2006 and 2008, Italy in 2009, and Germany and Portugal in 2010.

The current Pope stated in a motu proprio of 2007 that the Mass can be celebrated both in its modern or ordinary form (i.e. in the vernacular, with the priest facing the congregation and Holy Communion received standing) and in its traditional or extraordinary form (i.e. in Latin and Gregorian chant, with the priest facing the altar and Holy Communion received kneeling).

The purpose of Paix Liturgique’s polling is to ascertain how far the Catholic laity is aware that the two forms of the Mass are permitted, and how much demand potentially there is for the extraordinary form, or Latin Mass.

Fieldwork in Britain was undertaken online by Harris Interactive France between 21 and 28 June 2010, among a sample of 6,153 adults aged 18 and over. From these were filtered 800 professing Roman Catholics.

Details of the poll are contained in a 10-page report from Harris, which can be downloaded from:

http://www.paixliturgique.fr/securefilesystem/FICHIERLISTE/FICHIERLISTE_20100903151657_harris_-_paix_liturgique_-_gb_juin2010.pdf

Paix Liturgique’s commentary on the survey can be found in its Lettre, 246 of 3 September, which has been translated into English and posted on the Protect the Pope website at:

http://protectthepope.com/?p=940

A short article about the poll also appears on the front page of the Catholic Herald of 3 September, which can be read at:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/09/03/poll-almost-half-of-mass-goers-would-attend-older-form/

The following summary is derived from a combination of all the above, together with a two-page five-nation comparison of Paix Liturgique’s polling kindly supplied to BRIN by the organization’s press officer.

24% of Britain’s self-identifying Catholics claim to attend Mass weekly and 8% monthly, the combined figure of 32% being in excess of France and Portugal (19%) and Germany (10%), albeit lower than Italy (51%). The remaining British Catholics attend on holy days (10%) or occasionally (46%), with 12% never going to Mass.

39% of all Britain’s Catholics are aware that Mass can be celebrated in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms, which is less than in France, Germany and Italy. The other 61% do not realize this. However, among weekly and monthly Mass-goers awareness stands at 63%.

45% would consider it normal for both forms to be celebrated regularly in their own parishes (rising to 55% for weekly and monthly Mass-goers), with 21% regarding it as abnormal and 34% having no opinion.

Given the chance to attend Mass in the extraordinary form in Latin, but without it replacing the ordinary form in English, 16% of all Catholics say they would attend the traditional Mass weekly and 11% monthly.

When the same question was put to the regular (weekly or monthly) Mass-goers alone, 43% say they would attend the extraordinary form every week and 23% once a month. The combined figure of 66% is higher even than Italy, as well as far more than in France, Germany and Portugal.

Unsurprisingly, Paix Liturgique concludes that the poll is a ringing endorsement of its cause and emphatic proof of the ‘astounding deficiency’ of the British Roman Catholic hierarchies in promulgating knowledge of the motu proprio.

Paix Liturgique’s letter ends on an interesting methodological note. Because of the relatively small proportion of Catholics in Britain (13%), Harris had to poll a much larger number of adults than in Catholic countries. Consequently, at €10,000, this has been Paix Liturgique’s most expensive survey to date.

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Alternative Medicine

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Alternative medicine has been in the news again recently, on account of the ongoing debate about whether homeopathic remedies should be available on the National Health Service.

This has prompted YouGov to conduct an online survey on 30-31 August about belief in alternative medicine among a representative sample of 1,548 adult Britons aged 18 and over. The results were posted on the YouGov website on 2 September at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-YouGov-AlternativeMedicine-310810_0.pdf

Respondents were asked how effective a treatment nine forms of alternative medicine were, with definitely, possibly, probably not and definitely not as the four principal options.

In terms of definitely being an effective treatment, chiropracty and osteopathy topped the list at 23%, with acupuncture not far behind at 18%. The other six remedies scored between 1% and 8%.

Extending the net, to embrace those who said the treatments were possibly as well as definitely effective, saw six remedies rising to more than 50%: acupuncture (66%), chiropracty (66%), osteopathy (65%), herbal medicine (51%) and reflexology (50%).

For all nine forms of alternative medicine, women were greater believers than men. This is the most obvious demographic variation, although the high proportion of don’t knows, ranging from 18% to 46% per treatment, makes it harder to detect trends.

Unfortunately, faith-healing was not included as an ‘alternative medicine’ in this poll. The nearest we come to it are Reiki (a Japanese Buddhist spiritual practice), which half of the sample appeared not to have heard of and only 4% rated as effective; and the crystal therapy beloved of New Agers but viewed as definitely effective by just 1%.

MORI polls in 2003 and 2006 found that 24% and 26% respectively of adults believed in faith-healers, 20% of men and 32% of women at the latter date. These and earlier figures from 1968 to 1998 can be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/faithhealingbelief_000.xls

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Gallup on the Importance of Religion

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Clive D. Field

A Gallup press release issued today (31 August) reports on surveys which the organization carried out in 114 countries during 2009 into the importance of religion in everyday life. Telephone or face-to-face interviews were conducted with approximately 1,000 adults in each country.

The global median proportion of respondents who said that religion played an important part in their daily lives was 84%. Individual figures ranged from Estonia (16%) to Bangladesh (99%), with a strong national correlation between socio-economic status and religiosity, suggesting that faith is a vital coping mechanism in the developing world.

In the poorest countries, with average per capita incomes of $2,000 or less, the median proportion who said religion was important stood at 95%. In contrast, the median for the richest nations (with per capita incomes higher than $25,000) was 47%. The United States (65%) was the most significant wealthy country to buck this trend.

The United Kingdom came 109th in the league table, with 27% of its citizens saying religion was important in their lives and 73% not. Besides Estonia, only Hong Kong, Japan, Denmark and Sweden recorded lower percentages. Of our major Western European partners, Italy scored 72%, Spain 49%, Germany 40% and France 30%.

The press release and table will be found at:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/Religiosity-Highest-World-Poorest-Nations.aspx#1

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Scotland and the Pope

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Pope Benedict XVI’s state and pastoral visit to Great Britain is almost upon us, and there remains much speculation in the national and international print, broadcast and online news media about the extent of opposition which he will encounter while he is in the country between 16 and 19 September.

However, according to an upbeat press release issued yesterday (29 August) by the Scottish Catholic Media Office (SCMO), whatever problems the Pope may face in England (he does not actually visit Wales), his time in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 16 September may be relatively trouble-free.

SCMO’s confidence derives from a poll which it commissioned from Opinion Research Business, among a representative sample of 1,007 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed on 7-9 June 2010, as well as from intelligence that the Protest the Pope campaign has abandoned plans for a big demonstration in Scotland.

The survey found that only 2% of Scots strongly objected to the papal visit with another 3% saying they objected. Six times as many (31%) claimed to be very or fairly favourable, which is about double the proportion who gave their current religion as Roman Catholic at the 2001 Scottish census. The remainder (63%) were neutral. So perhaps apathy rather than hostility is the main risk to the visit in Scotland.

Some commentators have suggested that the low level of opposition to the papal visit in Scotland is quite encouraging, considering the country’s history of sectarian strife. Tom Peterkin, Scottish Political Editor for Scotland on Sunday, took it as a sign in yesterday’s edition that ‘Scotland’s sectarian wounds appear to be healing’. However, he failed to note that fieldwork for SCMO’s survey was some three months ago, and a lot of water has passed under Catholic bridges since that time.

Two other religion-related questions were posed in the poll, presumably to be used in the cross-analysis of replies to the papal visit question. Unfortunately, the full data tabulations with breaks by these variables and standard demographics are not yet online.

The first of these additional questions was ‘Irrespective of whether you go to church, do you regard yourself as a Christian?’ In reply, 70% said yes, 5% more than gave their current religion as Christian in 2001. 26% did not consider themselves to be Christian and 2% affiliated to a non-Christian faith.

The second question concerned frequency of attendance at religious services, other than for rites of passage. 20% claimed to go once a week or more often, 26% once a month or more, 28% less often and 33% never. These figures seem improbably optimistic, even in relation to earlier opinion poll data and certainly compared with trends revealed by the Scottish church attendance censuses of 1984, 1994 and 2002. In 2002 11% of the Scottish population attended on census Sunday.

SCMO’s press release can be found at:

http://www.scmo.org/articles/poll-shows-opposition-to-the-papal-visit-evaporating.html

 

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