Gender and the Anglican Episcopate

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England has hit the media headlines again during the past week or so over its continuing internal divisions about the issues of women’s ministry and homosexual clergy. The general public’s reactions to all this have been explored by YouGov in an online survey of 2,227 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 11-12 July. Details can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Bishops-120710.pdf

The big debates at the recent General Synod (the Church’s governing body), meeting in York, have been around how to move towards appointing women bishops without alienating traditionalists who do not recognize the authority of a female episcopate. Eventually, Synod did resolve to adopt draft legislation which (subject to further consideration by Synod in 2012 and to Parliamentary approval) would pave the way for women to become bishops on an equal footing with men by 2014.

Were it to be left to the public, 63% would allow the appointment of women bishops and only 10% would not. The remaining 27% express no opinion. Support for female bishops is more prevalent among women than men (67% versus 59%) and among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters (70% and 73% respectively) than Conservatives (58%). Opposition is greatest from Conservatives (15%) and those aged 60 and over (17%).

Another row has been about the leak (said to emanate from within the Crown Nominations Commission) that Jeffrey John, the openly gay but celibate Dean of St Albans, had been considered but subsequently rejected as a candidate for the vacant see of Southwark. This amounts to a second rebuttal for John since, in 2003, he was forced to withdraw his acceptance as Bishop of Reading, following a bitter feud over his appointment and homosexuality.

Asked whether the Church of England should permit gay bishops, public opinion is more divided than on the issue of women bishops, with 39% in favour, 27% opposed and 34% undecided. Among Conservatives and the 60+ age cohort there is actually a net opposition of 5% and 15% respectively. Only among adults aged 25-39 is an absolute majority (52%) supportive.

These reservations about gay bishops may seem surprising, given that British Social Attitudes Survey data point to much greater tolerance of homosexuality in general during the past three decades. In 2008 only 34% thought that homosexual sex was always or almost always wrong, ranging from 19% for the unreligious to 50% for the most religious.

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Salvation Army Finance

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Salvation Army’s UK Territory has just published its annual review for 2009. This includes a summary of the Army’s accounts for the financial year ending 31 March 2009, as reflected in its two main trust funds, The Salvation Army Trust and The Salvation Army Social Work Trust.

Total income in 2008/9 was £237m, representing a 2% increase on 2007/8. About one-third of this (£72m, up by 5% on the previous year) derived from social work activities, such as care homes for older people, homeless centres, family and children units, substance misuse centres and defence services centres at military bases in the UK and Germany.

The next biggest source of income was legacies (£45m, up 5%), trading (£36m, up 8%), and donations from the public (£33m, up 3%, despite the credit crunch). But the negative impact of the recession was reflected in a fall in investment income (to £14m, down 5%) and reduced gains from the disposal of properties.

Total expenditure in 2008/9 amounted to £207m, 6% more than in 2007/8. The principal outlays were on social work and defence services (41%), community programmes (20%) and church and evangelism (19%). However, a big ticket item was the cost of generating funds, at £29m or 14% of expenditure.

The surplus of income over expenditure in 2008/9 was, therefore, £30m, a seemingly healthy result. However, there was a decrease of £41m in the value of investments as a result of stock market volatility. So total reserves decreased by £11m (or 2%) to stand at £615m.

Of the total reserves, 3% are endowment funds where only the income (and not the capital) can be used, 70% are restricted funds, and 27% are unrestricted funds. The decrease in unrestricted reserves was a more worrying 16%. Moreover, the subset of unrestricted funds categorized as for general purposes is only £28m, which is below the optimum level of £43m determined by the directors of the trusts.

The Salvation Army’s annual review will be found at:

http://www1.salvationarmy.org.uk/uki/www_uki.nsf/0/B995E78AB485D126802577150050C207/$file/SA%202009%20Annual%20Review%20.pdf

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Islamophobia Unveiled

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Clive D. Field

A new opinion poll on British attitudes to Muslim women wearing full face veils was released on 8 July 2010. It is the third to be published this year.

It was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International on behalf of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. 750 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone between 15 April and 2 May 2010.

A report on the poll is available to download at:

http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/pew-global-attitudes-report-on-veil-ban-july-8.pdf

Only one question was posed, whether the respondent would approve or disapprove of a ban on the wearing of full face veils in public places, including schools, hospitals and government offices.

62% of adult Britons approved of such a ban, 32% disapproved and 6% expressed no opinion or refused to answer.

Approval varied considerably by age, with 71% of those aged 55 and over in favour of a ban, compared with 61% of the 35-54s and 52% of the 18-34s.

There were also differences of political ideology. Those categorized as being on the right were most supportive of a ban (69%), with centrists on 63% and leftists on 55%.

By contrast, variations by gender, education and income groups were negligible in Britain.

Approval of a ban was 34% higher in Britain than in the United States. It was also 3% more than in Spain.

However, it was 9% less than in Germany and 20% less than in France (the country which has been making the running over the ban, and where a parliamentary vote on the subject is expected on 13 July).

There are some indications that opinion in Britain may be hardening on the issue, although variations in question-wording can make comparisons difficult.

In January this year only 36% of people interviewed by ComRes wanted it to be unlawful to wear a burka in any public place (although 52% wanted some legal restrictions).

In February 2010 Harris Interactive found that 57% of Britons backed a ban on the burka veil in this country.

Even further ago, in October-November 2006 at the height of the controversy ignited by Jack Straw (then a Labour minister), who criticized the full veil as a psychological and practical barrier to integration, just over one-half the population agreed with his views, although a clear majority opposed a complete ban on wearing the veil in public.

For more information, see the BRIN news posts of 1 February and 3 March 2010 on ‘Should the burka be banned in Britain?’

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Religion and Youth

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Just out from Ashgate is Religion and Youth, edited by Sylvia Collins-Mayo and Pink Dandelion (ISBN 9780754667681, paperback, £17.99, but also available in hardback and as an e-book). It comprises 27 substantive chapters, mostly fairly short, many originally presented as papers at the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion Study Group conference in 2008.

Like much contemporary writing in the sociology of religion, there are strong theoretical, methodological and qualitative components in this volume, but some space is also found for quantitative empiricism, albeit more so in overseas contexts than in Britain. Nevertheless, three chapters will be of especial interest to BRIN users, two of them written by Professor David Voas, Simon Professor of Population Studies at the University of Manchester and BRIN’s co-director.

Chapter 24 (pp. 201-7) by Voas is an encouragement to employ quantitative methods in the study of youth religion, including the secondary analysis of existing datasets. Statistics are seen as a necessary adjunct and corrective to reliance upon case studies. ‘Surveys of representative samples of individuals (or congregations or anything else) are important because they allow us to generalize … In trying to discover what is happening and (broadly) why, there is no substitute for investigating the population as a whole via sample surveys.’ Some of the issues involved in measuring religion and change and in analysing survey data are then elucidated.

Chapter 3 (pp. 25-32), also by Voas, is devoted to ‘Explaining change over time in religious involvement’. This identifies age as the single most important attribute in determining the strength of religious commitment, easily trumping gender, education, employment, place of residence, denomination and so forth. The relative significance of age, period and cohort effects is briefly assessed, with cohort differences shown to have greatest impact. Various explanations (some values-related, some not) are considered for a weakening in the intergenerational transmission of religion. This leads Voas to conclude that ‘Society is changing religiously not because individuals are changing, but rather because old people are gradually replaced by younger people with different characteristics.’

Chapter 6 (pp. 47-54), by Mandy Robbins and Leslie Francis, provides an overview of ‘The Teenage Religion and Values Survey in England and Wales’. This was conducted during the 1990s, by self-completion questionnaire among 33,982 young people aged 13-15 attending 163 secondary schools. A sample of such size has the advantage of permitting meaningful disaggregations by a wide variety of sub-groups, including individual Christian denominations. The survey has already given rise to a substantial number of books, essays and articles reporting results in detail. However, it is useful in this chapter to have an overview of the findings for religious affiliation, belief and practice, together with bibliographical signposts to in-depth published analyses. The authors are now engaged on a new study of the next generation of young people, with the emphasis switched from conventional religiosity to alternative spiritualities.

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Act of Settlement – Reform Postponed

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The UK Coalition Government appears to have quietly abandoned plans, mooted by the then Labour Prime Minister (Gordon Brown) in 2009 but also backed by the Liberal Democrats before the general election last May, to reform the Act of Settlement 1701.

That, at least, is the implication of a written Parliamentary answer on 30 June by Mark Harper, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform at the Cabinet Office and Conservative MP for the Forest of Dean.

Asked by William Bain, Labour MP for Glasgow North-East, whether the Government intended to ‘bring forward proposals to change the law to enable Roman Catholics or those married to Roman Catholics to succeed to the throne’, Harper’s reply was that: ‘There are no current plans to amend the laws on succession.’

The Act of Settlement 1701 was passed at a time when there were uncertainties regarding the succession to the English throne, as well as a widespread fear of, and discrimination against, Roman Catholics. The legislation was subsequently extended to Scotland and the British Empire and Commonwealth, and its provisions remain in force.

The Act’s exclusion of Roman Catholics or persons married to a Roman Catholic from the line of succession to the throne has long been regarded as anomalous, in a society which has become religiously pluralistic and committed to equality of opportunities.

The Government’s decision to put reform of the Act on the back-burner certainly appears to fly in the face of majority opinion, according to the most recent polls.

Thus, a YouGov survey for the Sunday Times on 13-14 November 2008 (conducted online among a sample of 2,080 adults aged 18 and over) found that 62% supported a change in the law to allow a future monarch to marry a Roman Catholic and still assume the throne. 19% were opposed and 20% were don’t knows.

Support for reform varied somewhat according to demographics, particularly voting intention. Liberal Democrats were most in favour (71%), followed by Labour voters (67%) and Conservatives (61%). Support was also markedly higher among non-manual than manual workers, 66% versus 57%, and in London (66%) and Scotland (69%).

An ICM poll for the BBC on 20-22 March 2009 (carried out by telephone among 1,005 adults aged 18 and over) reported an even larger majority, 81%, backing the heir to the throne being allowed to marry a Catholic and still become monarch.

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“Islamist Terrorism”

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of 7/7, the summer’s day in 2005 when four young Muslim male bombers unleashed co-ordinated attacks on London’s public transport system, killing 52 civilians as well as themselves. These were the first suicide-bombings on British soil, although Britain’s first suicide-bomber can be traced back to Afghanistan in 1996.

In the run-up to the anniversary of 7/7, the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), which was founded in 2007 (and describes itself as a non-partisan think-tank promoting human rights, tolerance and community cohesion), has today released the preview edition of a major report, which will run to over 500 pages, on Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections (ISBN 978-0-9560013-6-8, £40).

Written by Robin Simcox, Hannah Stuart and Houriya Ahmed, the book is divided into two parts, dealing with ‘Islamist terrorism’ in, respectively, the UK and worldwide, based on individual profiles of the terrorists. However, the preview edition comprises only the executive summary and other preliminary material. This is available for download at:

http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/uploads/1278089320islamist_terrorism_preview.pdf

‘In order to be included in this report,’ it is explained, ‘individuals must have: been convicted for terrorism-related offences; committed suicide attacks in the UK; been convicted, fought or committed suicide attacks abroad and possessed significant links to the UK (having been educated there, lived there for an extended period of time or been radicalised there); or been involved in extradition cases from the UK. In addition, they must have been motivated primarily by a belief in Islamism.’

‘Islamism’ is defined as a ‘political ideology, whose key tenets include: belief that Islam is not a religion, but a holistic socio-political system; advocacy of Sharia (Islamic) law as divine state law; belief that a transnational Muslim community, known as the Ummah, should unite as a political bloc; advocacy of an “Islamic” state, or Caliphate, within which sovereignty belongs to God.’

In the absence of comprehensive official data, for which government was criticized by the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2009, CSC researchers spent two years compiling, from court records and press reports, a database of individuals involved in 127 ‘Islamism-related offences’ (IROs) in the UK between 1999 and 2009.

With only five exceptions, these IROs were carried out by men. The average age of perpetrators was 27, with the youngest 16 and the oldest 48; 68% were under 30 years. 42% were persons in employment or in full-time further or higher education, while 35% were unemployed.

69% of IROs were carried out by British citizens, supporting the theory that the UK faces its greatest threat from ‘home-grown’ terrorism. However, 46% of perpetrators had ancestry in south-central Asia. 48% were residents of London, the next two most common regions being the West Midlands (13%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (9%).

In 44% of IROs, the individual pleaded guilty. 60% of convictions were secured under anti-terrorism legislation. Sentences of ten years or longer were given in 20% of cases and a life or indefinite sentence in 19%. 21% of the convicted successfully appealed their sentences.

68% of those who committed IROs had no links with any proscribed organizations, but the other 32% did (mostly with al-Muhajiroun or al-Qaeda). Seven of the UK’s eight major bomb plot cells contained members with direct links to al-Qaeda. 31% of perpetrators (mostly British) had attended a terrorist training camp, typically in Pakistan.

Data on British-linked Islamism-inspired terrorism threats worldwide between 1993 and 2009 have yet to be released.

Other CSC publications touching on Islam and Islamism include: Hate on the State: How British Libraries Encourage Islamic Extremism; Virtual Caliphate: Islamic Extremists and their Websites; Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinions (based on online fieldwork by YouGov); Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy; and Radical Islam on UK Campuses.

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Faith in Oxfordshire

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

A team of researchers from the Applied Research Centre in Sustainable Regeneration (SURGE) at Coventry University has recently completed a £69,000 year-long research study of religion as social capital in Oxfordshire.

Commissioned by the Oxfordshire Stronger Communities Alliance (OSCA) on behalf of a consortium of eight funding partners, Building Better Neighbourhoods: The Contribution of Faith Communities to Oxfordshire Life (ISBN 978-1-84600-034-8) was launched in Oxford on 23 June. It is available to download from:

http://www.oxnet.org.uk/sites/ocva.org.uk/files/BBN%20-%20Report%20[FINAL].pdf

The research utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods. The former phase (running from June to October 2009) is reported in chapter 2 (pp. 5-29) of the document, a paper and electronic self-completion questionnaire being returned by 192 (or 40%) of Oxfordshire’s 450 places of worship. 72% of respondents were Anglican, 21% other Christian denominations and 7% non-Christian (all of the last from the City of Oxford or Cherwell district).

Over 13,000 people regularly attend their main worship services, of whom one-third are under 30 years of age. Most (85%) of the Anglican congregations live less than two miles from their place of worship, but 45% of other Christians and 91% of other faiths travel from a greater distance.

Even without grossing up for non-respondents, these 192 places of worship were found to make a substantial contribution to the wider life of the communities within which they are located. In particular, responding places of worship:

  • Employ 232 full-time, 177 part-time and 48 seasonal members of staff, with an estimated annual salary bill of £8,500,000
  • Give 150,000 community service volunteering hours each year (i.e. excluding the time which is devoted to maintaining the internal life of their places of worship), with an estimated economic value of £850,000
  • Make 221 rooms and halls available for use by the wider community, with 80,000 hours of actual use by external organizations each year
  • Attract 180,000 visitors per annum, thereby contributing £1,700,000 to the tourist economy

These findings mirror those from other recent studies of religion as social capital, at regional, sub-regional, county and city levels. A short bibliography of relevant literature will be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/commentary/drs/appendix3/index.html

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Happy Birthday, Social Trends

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 2 July the Office for National Statistics published the fortieth (2010) edition of Social Trends, the annual compilation of social data from governmental and other sources. Edited by Matthew Hughes, it can be bought as a print publication from Palgrave Macmillan (ISBN 978-0-230-24067-4, £55) but (together with data in Excel format) is also available for free download at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Social-Trends40/ST40_2010_FINAL.pdf

As usual, a few of the tables or figures in this year’s edition touch on religious matters, the principal ones being:

TABLE 2.12: marriages by type of ceremony in England and Wales, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2007 (source: Office for National Statistics). Total ceremonies in England and Wales have fallen from 352,000 to 231,500 between 1981 and 2007, and the number of religious ceremonies has declined from 51% to 33%. The proportion of religious ceremonies is higher in Scotland (48%) and Northern Ireland (71%).

FIGURE 13.17: proportion of people mixing at least once a month with others from different ethnic or religious backgrounds by location in England, April-June 2009 (source: Citizenship Survey, Department for Communities and Local Government). The most likely place to mix socially was at the shops (62%), followed by work, school or college (53%) or a pub, club, café or restaurant (47%). The figure for places of worship was 16%.

FIGURE 13.18: proportion of total amount given to charity by cause, 2008/09 (source: Charities Aid Foundation and National Council for Voluntary Organisations). Of the total £9.9 billion donated to charity, 15% is for religious causes. This is the biggest single category, followed by medical research (14%), hospitals and hospices (12%), overseas (12%), children and young people (11%), animals (5%) and education (4%). 

FIGURE 13.20: belief in God in Great Britain by gender, February 2007 (source: YouGov). 22% of adults aged 18 and over (17% of men and 26% of women) interviewed online claimed to believe in a personal God who created the world and heard their prayers, and a further 26% (22% of men and 29% of women) believed in ‘something’ but were unsure what that was. 16% of the sample, 22% of men and 10% of women, declared themselves atheists.

TABLE 13.21: attendance at church or religious services or meetings (other than rites of passage) by gender in Great Britain, 2008 (source: British Social Attitudes Survey, National Centre for Social Research). 57% of adults aged 18 and over stated that they never or practically never attended religious services, 63% of men and 52% of women. 14% were regular attenders (once a fortnight or more), 12% of men and 15% of women, rising to 19% among those aged 65 and over. 53% of the sample reported that religion was not at all important in their daily lives, 61% of men and 45% of women.

This will be the last edition of Social Trends to appear as a print publication. Henceforth, it will be disseminated solely via the web, with material being added throughout the year.

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Caring for Places of Worship

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Churchgoing may be declining, but, according to an omnibus survey conducted for the Church of England, 85% of the adult population visited places of worship for some reason in 2009, whether for an event, personal interest or to attend a service. Many visitors will naturally have been drawn to them for their historical importance.

You certainly do not need to be religious to appreciate the significance of places of worship to the country’s architectural heritage. England alone has 14,500 listed places of worship (4,000 Grade I, 4,500 Grade II* and 6,000 Grade II). In fact, 45% of all Grade I listed buildings are places of worship.

Although the overwhelming majority of these listed church buildings are Anglican parish churches, many of them pre-dating the Reformation, a significant minority are Free Church. There is also a relatively small number of listed non-Christian places of worship, approximately one-half of which are synagogues and one-quarter mosques.

But what state are these religious premises in? In an attempt to improve its evidence base, English Heritage (the official champion of England’s historic buildings) has undertaken the first ever physical condition survey of a 15% representative sample of England’s listed places of worship.

Headline findings from the survey appear in Caring for Places of Worship, 2010, which was published by English Heritage on 30 June. The document is available to download from:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/caring-for-places-of-worship-report/caring-places-of-worship-2010-report.pdf/

In the aggregate, 11% of listed places of worship were found to be in a poor or very bad physical state and thus potentially at risk. The figure stood at 14% for Grade I buildings and 13% for Grade II*, compared with 8% for Grade II. Thus, the most important places of worship are relatively in greatest danger.

Rural places of worship are also at more risk than urban ones (13% against 9%), although inner-city buildings are an exception to the rule in London and Birmingham. An above-average incidence of listed places of worship in poor or very bad condition was reported in the West Midlands, South-East and East, and a lower than average number in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North-East.

Of the 89% of listed places of worship not deemed to be at risk, approximately two-fifths were judged to be in good condition and the remainder in fair condition. Dr Simon Thurley, English Heritage’s CEO, described this finding as ‘a huge testament to the hard work and altruism of their congregations. They take on responsibility for their building in addition to their commitment to worship and community service, finding almost all the necessary funding from their own pockets.’

English Heritage simultaneously released results from evaluations of the impact of two major schemes to provide financial support for listed places of worship. These are the Repair Grant for Places of Worship Scheme (RGPoWS), jointly funded by English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and which has benefited 11% of listed places of worship since 2002; and the Government-financed Listed Places of Worship Scheme (LPoWS).

The evaluations were carried out by BDRC Continental through interviews in April-May 2010 with 100 recipients of RGPoWS grants and 300 recipients of LPoWS grants made since 2005. Summaries of the evaluations are published at:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/k-o/key-findings-rgpow.pdf

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/k-o/lpows-key-findings.pdf

For over three-fifths of grant recipients the repair and maintenance of their place of worship is a constant major concern. Grants helped them plan a more certain future for their building, avoiding more costly repairs later on, and also to increase the number of visitors and broaden community use. Grants further benefited the local economy since 90% of grant recipients exclusively used local businesses to undertake repairs.

In the case of recipients of RGPoWS grants, which are invariably for more than half the cost of the scheme, 76% claimed that they could not have completed the restoration work without help from the RGPoWS, and 30% that they would have had to close their building but for the RGPoWS.

Even for recipients of LPoWS grants, which are limited to 17.5% of the cost, 20% would not have been able to complete the repair and maintenance work at all without the LPoWS and 18% would only have been able to complete some of the work.

A parallel investigation by the National Churches Trust, which covers the whole of the UK and includes non-listed as well as listed buildings, is expected to report later in the year.

NOTE: In conjunction with the main survey, Jewish Heritage UK was funded by English Heritage to survey the state of 37 listed synagogues in England between March and June 2009. A separate report on this study, Synagogues at Risk, is available at:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/synagogues-at-risk/synagogues-at-risk.pdf/

This contains detail additional to an assessment of the physical condition of the building, including information about frequency of services, average attendance at services, and membership size and trends.

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Long-Living Methodists

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The current issue (24 June 2010, p. 2) of the Methodist Recorder, the weekly newspaper for Methodists in Great Britain, reports the death of Stanley Lucas of Cornwall. Aged 110 (he was born on 15 January 1900), he was thought to be not only the oldest male member of the British Methodist Church but one of the oldest men in the world.

Is this sort of longevity characteristic of Methodists? Seemingly, yes. Analysis of the family announcements printed in the Methodist Recorder shows that in 1973 the mean age of death for laity was 77.9 years for men and 83.0 for women, figures which had risen by 2008 to, respectively, 83.9 and 91.1 – well above the life expectancy for the population as a whole.

The position for male Methodist ministers is similar, with a mean age of death of 83.4 years for those whose obituaries appear in the 2009 edition of the Minutes of the Annual Conference and Directory of the Methodist Church. Too few Methodist women ministers die each year to draw any meaningful conclusions, as yet.

Nor is the phenomenon new. For instance, Kenneth Brown (A Social History of the Nonconformist Ministry in England and Wales, 1800-1930, Clarendon Press, 1988, table 5.8) calculated the average age of death for ministers commencing their ministry between the 1830s and 1920s. Thus, for those starting between 1890 and 1919 the average was: Wesleyan Methodist 73.7, Primitive Methodist 74.9 and United Methodist 72.0 years.

Other relevant ministerial data were gathered by Tim Allison, a medical doctor, for his ‘An Historical Cohort Study of Methodist Ministers Examining Lifespan and Socioeconomic Status’ (University of Manchester MSc thesis, 1995). This studied four cohorts of Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist ministers born in 1850-54 and 1880-84. The thesis is partly written up in Tim Allison and Selwyn St Leger, ‘The Life Span of Methodist Ministers: An Example of the Use of Obituaries in Epidemiology’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Vol. 53, 1999, pp. 253-4.

Likewise, Clive Field’s unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis of 1974 revealed that, until the beginning of the twentieth century, the death rate per 1,000 among lay members of the various Methodist denominations in Britain was appreciably below the national level, especially in Wesleyan Methodism.

Methodist commentators, both in the Victorian era and since, were quick to point out that the longevity of Methodists was not accidental. They posited a clear link between a religious, ‘clean’ and virtuous life on the one hand and a long one on the other. The avoidance of physical and moral excess was especially advocated.

An increasingly important dimension of this for Methodism was abstinence from intoxicating drinks, a stance which was apparently vindicated by data from life assurance companies showing much lower death rates for teetotallers.

In practice, Methodist folk memory has tended to exaggerate the penetration of temperance sentiments among the Methodist laity (for its actual extent, see Clive Field, ‘“The Devil in Solution”: How Temperate were the Methodists?’, Epworth Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2000, pp. 78-93).

Of equal significance, perhaps, particularly during the twentieth century, has been the disproportionate appeal of Methodism to relatively higher socio-economic groups which tend to experience lower mortality rates. This is allied with their residence in suburban, small town and rural areas where environmental conditions also favour longer life.

All in all, the demography of religion, whether historical or contemporary, is a fascinating topic and one which has been relatively little studied in the British context. BRIN would be delighted to hear from anybody who is presently working in this field.

POSTSCRIPT [4 July]: This post has attracted a considerable degree of interest with the media, bloggers and general public.

The Methodist Church issued a press release about it on 25 June entitled ‘Methodists live longer than the average Brit’. This is at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.newsDetail&newsid=446

In turn, this has informed coverage in the print and online news media, including:

‘Methodists “live more than seven years longer than rest of population”’, Daily Telegraph, at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7855002/Methodists-live-more-than-seven-years-longer-than-rest-of-population.html

‘Methodists outliving the average Brit’, Christian Today, at

http://www.christiantoday.co.uk/article/methodists.outliving.the.average.brit/26181.htm

‘Lives of Methodists are longer than average, statistics suggest’, Church Times, at

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=96990

‘Longevity a “characteristic of Methodism”’, Methodist Recorder, 1 July [not available online].

The broadcast media have also picked up the research, including Premier Christian Radio on 28 June. Clive Field was interviewed about the findings for the Sunday Sequence programme on BBC Radio Ulster on 4 July.

Prompted by the BRIN research, there is a string of pertinent and sometimes amusing comments about Methodist longevity on the Ship of Fools website at:

http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=010193;p=1

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