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Likewise, Clive Field’s unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis of 1974 revealed that, until the beginning of the twentieth century, the death rate per 1,000 among lay members of the various Methodist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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Authority and Governance in the Roman Catholic Church

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Roehampton University announced on 16 June that its Archives and Special Collections are now home to the ‘Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, 1998–2002: The Queen’s Foundation Authority and Governance Archive’. The following post incorporates some edited extracts from the University’s press release as well as original material by BRIN.

Sponsored by Derwent (now Porticus UK) and established at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham, the Authority and Governance Project investigated the nature, exercise and experience of authority and governance within the Roman Catholic Church in England, Scotland and Wales. It was undertaken by an interdisciplinary group drawn from philosophy, theology, psychiatry, social welfare, and Church and business administration.

The project involved a series of conversations, interviews and conferences in which some 1,000 people from all walks of Catholic life, including laity, participated. Bishops, priests and seminarians were interviewed by NOP. The research was wide-ranging, encompassing controversial subjects that still face the Roman Catholic Church today, such as celibacy, the ordination of women and the sacramental involvement of divorced and remarried members of the Church.

Part of the project comprised a series of diocesan and parish case studies that looked at the local impact of governance and authority of the Church during periods of change or transition. Six (unnamed) dioceses were selected to form the basis of the research, four in England and two in Scotland, representing (according to multiple indicators) about one-fifth of the total strength of the Church in Great Britain.

The format of the parochial interviews with clergy and laity was conversational, with responses being generally recorded in note form, although there are also some taped interviews. The main areas investigated were:

  • the model of church as it operated locally in comparison to the official diocesan model
  • the engagement of the parish with diocesan structures and personnel and parish leadership
  • parish leadership, including lay participation and formation and mission

The archive is not yet fully catalogued, but there is a comprehensive box list. Access (by prior appointment) is subject to respect for the promises of anonymity which were given to individual respondents, dioceses and parishes involved in the research. For further information, contact archives@roehampton.ac.uk

Some of the findings from the project were reported in a series of books from several publishing houses in 2000-01. The content of these was mostly qualitative. However, some quantitative data did appear in Philip Grindell’s chapter on diocesan structures and resources in Diocesan Dispositions and Parish Voices in the Roman Catholic Church, editor: Noel Timms, Chelmsford: Matthew James Publishing, 2001, pp. 25-62.

Grindell even included a table which computed the estimated total value of the Catholic Church in Great Britain at that time. The figure he came up with was £2,259,000,000, of which 34% derived from general net assets, 32% from functional church properties, 28% from school properties, and 7% from works of art and other treasures.

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Science and Religion in the European Union

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The interactions of science with religion have featured in a number of opinion polls during the past year or so, largely in connection with the debate on the origins of the universe, and how it should be taught in schools, reignited by the 2009 Charles Darwin anniversary.

More recently, a couple of other aspects of the relationship have been explored in the European Union’s Special Eurobarometer No. 340 on science and technology, conducted as part of wave 73.1 of the main Eurobarometer in 32 countries (including two EU candidate nations and three non-EU members of EFTA).

Fieldwork in the UK was undertaken face-to-face by TNS among a representative sample of 1,311 adults aged 15 and over between 29 January and 15 February 2010. The newly-released summary report for all the countries surveyed will be found at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_340_en.pdf

The first question of relevance to us asked whether respondents considered that too much dependence is placed on science and not enough on faith. Opinion in the UK was split, with 36% agreeing with the statement, 39% disagreeing and 25% uncertain. There is, therefore, a net disagreement of 3%.

At the EU27 level, by contrast, there is a net agreement of 4% (38% agreeing and 34% disagreeing). There are 20 countries where more agree than in the UK and 11 where fewer citizens do so, the range being from 66% agreeing in Cyprus to 20% in Denmark.

There has been some shift in attitude in the UK since 2005, when the EU posed the question previously. Then there was a net 2% agreement in the UK (35% agreeing, 33% disagreeing, 32% uncertain), compared with a net 11% agreement in the EU as a whole.

Even further back, in a Gallup survey in 1996, 50% of Britons thought that religion had not been superseded by science and 40% that it had been. Thus two-fifths of the population held a very pro-science view of the world in both 1996 and 2010.

A second question in the Special Eurobarometer touched on superstition, measured by a belief that certain numbers are especially lucky for some people. In the UK 36% agree with this proposition, 43% disagree, and 21% are uncertain.

The percentage thinking certain numbers are lucky is slightly less in the UK than the European average of 40%. 22 countries record a higher figure in agreement than the UK and just 9 a lower, the spread being from 60% in Latvia to 21% in Finland.  

But UK citizens seem to have become more superstitious since 2005. Then 29% agreed and 49% disagreed that certain numbers are lucky, representing a 7% swing towards the superstitious camp. The European average for those agreeing also rose from 37% to 40% during this quinquennium.

In sum, the religion versus science scales would still appear to be finely balanced in the UK, albeit a growing number are backing science rather than faith. At the same time, the proportion trusting in luck is also increasing. There is probably a considerable overlap between the faith and superstition constituencies.

One thing is for sure, however. Virtually nobody is looking to religious leaders to explain the impact of scientific and technological developments on society. Only 2% in the UK (the same as the EU27 average) place any credence in them in this regard, compared to 62% trusting academic or government scientists, 30% industrial scientists and 32% medical doctors.

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Gender Audit Report, Scottish Episcopal Church

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The annual meeting of the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion, took place in Edinburgh between 10 and 12 June. One of the papers under consideration was a Gender Audit Report, presented to Synod by Dr Elaine Cameron, its principal author.

The document was prepared at the request of the 2009 Synod which was concerned to recognize its commitments to the United Nations’ 2000 Millennium Development Goals and to the Anglican Consultative Council Resolution 13.31 of 2005. Data were collected during the autumn of 2009 (including through a census of Scottish Episcopal congregations on Sunday, 22 November).

The report is available to download from:

http://www.scotland.anglican.org/media/news/files/Gender_Audit_Report_General_Synod_2010.pdf

Key findings include the following:

65% of communicants in the Scottish Episcopal Church are women, ranging from 61% in the City of Edinburgh and the Diocese of Aberdeen to 68% in the Dioceses of Argyll and Brechin.

62% of (non-communicant) adherents are women, varying from 60% in Edinburgh and the Diocese of Aberdeen to 64% in the Dioceses of Brechin and St Andrews.

63% of communicants and adherents combined were women in 2009, which was slightly higher than the 60% for Episcopal churchgoers at the 2002 Scottish church census (at that time the same figure as for all Scottish churchgoers).

Despite the preponderance of women in the pews, men still tend to dominate much of the administration of the Church, accounting for 89% of the membership of cathedral chapters, 85% of conveners of diocesan committees, 70% of stipendiary clergy, 68% of provincial boards and committees, 65% of vestry treasurers, 64% of the Theological Institute, 57% of lay readers and 55% of representatives to General Synod.

However, women do constitute 60% of the lay members of General Synod and 62% of the lay members of diocesan synods, the gender averages for these bodies being skewed by the male majorities among the clergy members. At vestry level there is also a preponderance of female secretaries (71%) and child protection officers (88%).

The report concludes that ‘gendered stereotypic assumptions still prevail’ in the Scottish Episcopal Church and makes several recommendations to promote gender equality, with a further gender audit suggested for November 2012.

One of the recommendations concerns the need for more gender-inclusive language in the liturgy, a topic which, according to the summary of the Synod’s deliberations given in the Church Times for 18 June, appears to have dominated the debate on the report.

A comparable gender audit in the Church in Wales was completed in June 2008.

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American Religiosity – Viewed from Britain

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Much has been written about the perceived contrasts between a secularizing Western Europe and a continuingly religious United States. One example is the book by Peter Berger, Grace Davie and Effie Fokas on Religious America, Secular Europe? (Ashgate, 2008), synthesizing a range of evidence.

More specific, based on the International Social Survey Program 2008, is David Voas and Rodney Ling, ‘Religion in Britain and the United States’, British Social Attitudes: The 26th Report, edited by Alison Park, John Curtice, Katarina Thomson, Miranda Phillips, Elizabeth Clery and Sarah Butt (Sage, 2010), pp. 65-86.

But what is the judgment of the court of public opinion? Do the people consider that America is religious? Some new insights into this topic are available in the latest report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released on 17 June and available for download at:

http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Spring-2010-Report.pdf

Fieldwork was undertaken in 22 nations, one of them Great Britain, where 750 telephone interviews were conducted with adults aged 18 and over between 15 April and 2 May 2010 under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Contact was made with households with both landline and mobile only telephony.

Respondents were asked the simple question: ‘Is the US too religious a country or not religious enough?’

In Britain 47% claimed that the US is too religious, 21% not religious enough, with 14% stating that the balance is about right and 18% don’t knows. The trend is for Britons to see the US as too religious (the May 2003 figure being 33% and May 2005 39%), with a decline in those saying it is not religious enough (35% in 2003 and 27% in 2005).

The proportion of Britons thinking that the US is too religious was the second highest among all the nations covered in the survey, only being exceeded by France (71%), with Germany on 46% and Japan on 42%. At the other end of the scale, countries with Muslim majority populations recorded by far the lowest figures, including Turkey (8%), Egypt (8%), Pakistan (6%), Lebanon (3%) and Jordan (1%). 

The percentage of Britons stating that the US is not religious enough was the smallest of all the 22 countries. At 21% it was just one-third of the number of Americans holding this opinion (64%, up from 58% in 2005). Even higher figures than in the US were recorded in Jordan (89%), Egypt (81%) and Indonesia (67%). In all, majorities or pluralities in 18 nations said the US is insufficiently religious.

So, in general, Americans decidedly think that the US could do with more religion while the British increasingly feel that the US has more than enough already. This finding cannot be dismissed as a manifestation of anti-Americanism in general since 65% of Britons entertain a favourable view of the US and 73% of the American people. It either reflects the long-standing British discomfort about wearing religion on the sleeve or is yet another indicator that faith is being squeezed out of the public square in Britain.

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Organ Donation

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

As the NHS information leaflet Organ Donation and Religious Perspectives makes clear, organ donation is not a hugely controversial issue for faith communities in the UK. All the major ones support the basic principle of organ donation and transplantation.

This is even the case with Islam, for, although a minority of Muslim scholars does not believe that organ donation is permissible, the Muslim Law (Shariah) Council UK did issue a supportive fatwah on the subject in 1995. However, all religions recognize that, ultimately, this is a matter for individual choice and conscience.

A limited public opinion viewpoint on the subject is offered by a new report from the European Commission on Organ Donation and Transplantation (Special Eurobarometer 333a). Together with a UK fact-sheet, it is available for download at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_333a_en.pdf

This is based on Wave 72.3 of Eurobarometer, fieldwork in the UK being conducted by TNS between 2 and 18 October 2009. A representative sample of 1,354 adults aged 15 and over was interviewed face-to-face.

Just over three-fifths of UK citizens were in favour of organ donation. 61% said they would be willing to donate one of their own organs to an organ donation service immediately after death, and 64% would agree to donate an organ from a deceased close family member.

Of those unwilling to donate their own organs or those of a close family member (26% and 20% respectively), only 4% in the UK cited religious reasons for withholding consent, compared with 12% who distrusted the system, 25% who were scared of manipulating the human body, 22% who gave other reasons and 37% don’t knows.

The 4% giving religious reasons in the UK was three points less than the European Union (EU) 27-nation mean. Only Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Slovenia recorded lower figures. The highest in the EU were in Austria (15%) and Romania (17%). The 29% recorded in the EU candidate country of Turkey is significant on account of its largely Muslim population.

Regrettably, the published report does not disaggregate responses by religious affiliation.

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When was Secularization?

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Secularization continues to be a hotly-debated topic with academics, especially among sociologists and historians. There is certainly no consensus about its nature, timing and causation, while a few would even dispute its very existence.

The latest contribution to the literature comes from that arch-pro-secularizationist Professor Steve Bruce of the University of Aberdeen. In collaboration with Tony Glendinning, he has written ‘When was secularization? Dating the decline of the British churches and locating its cause’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 61, No. 1, 2010, pp. 107-26.

The principal aim of the article is to defend traditional sociological accounts of secularization through a critique of Callum Brown’s ‘recent-and-abrupt’ view of the process in Britain, as set out in his The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (London: Routledge, 2001, second edition, 2009), and reprised in his Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson, 2006). Brown sees the social and cultural changes of the 1960s (the permissive society as shorthand) as the trigger for the decline of institutional Christianity in Britain.

Bruce and Glendinning review, rather cursorily, the extant statistical evidence, as it relates to church membership and attendance (but with some reference to rites of passage and social surveys), to restate the more gradual and ‘lumpier’ view of secularization.

According to them, ‘the decline in church attendance began at or before the middle of the nineteenth century and the decline in membership began in the Edwardian years. At best what we see in the late 1950s and 1960s is an acceleration of a pattern established at least half a century earlier.’

They also argue, more speculatively (as they acknowledge), ‘that the explanation of decline may often be located at least a generation earlier than the period in which that decline becomes apparent because it owes as much or more to a failure to recruit children than to adult defection’.

Special significance is thus attached to ‘declining success in socializing the offspring of [church] members’. This is illustrated by data from several surveys, including a birth cohort analysis of the 2001 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey.

Within this context, attention is drawn by Bruce and Glendinning to the social dislocation, particularly in respect of family formation, caused by the Second World War. This is offered as a partial explanation for the breakdown in family transmission of religion and, thereby, religious decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. The war is also alleged to have ‘given a considerable filip’ to religious inter-marriage, which would likewise have impacted negatively upon the inter-generational transmission of faith.

While not entirely implausible, this section of the paper is not wholly convincing, nor well-evidenced (after all, Bruce and Glendinning are not historians).

In terms of religious belief and practice, the authors concede that Clive Field is ‘probably right that the war brought a small acceleration in existing trends rather than any great change’ (Field, ‘Puzzled People revisited: religious believing and belonging in wartime Britain, 1939-45’, 20th Century British History, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2008, pp. 446-79.)

To access the article by Bruce and Glendinning, check first whether your institution (if you have one) or local library has a print or online subscription to British Journal of Sociology. If not, you can order a copy of the article from the British Library Document Supply Centre or pay for short-term access via the publisher’s website at:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123320709/issue

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Missing Generation Research in the Methodist Church

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Methodist Church has announced a twelve-month ‘Missing Generation Research’ project, to be led by Trevor Durston and Liz Clutterbuck. It will focus on Generations X and Y, adults in their twenties and thirties who are largely absent from the pews.

The project has two principal aims:

  • ‘to establish what can be learnt from Methodist congregations that have a relatively smooth demographic profile over the full age range, and from this to provide guidance for other churches in their mission to the whole of society’
  • ‘to explore the attitudes of the 25-40 age group towards the Methodist Church a) from practising Methodists and b) from Christians who have previously worshipped in a Methodist context’

A combination of quantitative and qualitative research techniques will be employed, including (possibly) an online questionnaire. There will be a pilot phase. Findings will be reported to the annual Conference of the Methodist Church in summer 2011.

Additional detail may be found at:

http://www.methodistconference.org.uk/assets/downloads/confrep-18-missin-generation-research-170510.pdf

The 2005 English church census revealed that only 12% of Methodist worshippers were aged 20-44, compared with 23% for all denominations combined. A further 16% of churchgoing Methodists were under 20 and 72% aged 45 and over.

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Peter Kaim-Caudle (1916-2010)

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Peter Robert Kaim-Caudle, the German Jewish refugee from Nazi persecution who became one of Britain’s leading sociologists (holding a chair at the University of Durham for many years), died on 18 May, aged 93.

Kaim-Caudle was best-known for his writings on social policy, in British, Irish and overseas contexts, including his influential book Comparative Social Policy and Social Security: A Ten-Country Study (1973).

However, through his two surveys of religion in the Billingham Urban District of County Durham in 1957-59 and 1964-66, he made an important contribution to the development of British religious statistics.

In particular, he undertook a systematic quantification of the three rites of passage (baptisms, weddings and burials – rarely studied in the round) in a community setting and carried out local censuses of church attendance, on both Easter Sunday and an ordinary Sunday in 1959 and 1966.

This research was partially written up in his three publications: ‘Marriages in Billingham’, Durham Research Review, Vol. 3, 1960-61, pp. 97-108; Religion in Billingham, 1957-59, Billingham-on-Tees: Billingham Community Association, 1962; and ‘Church & Social Change: A Study of Religion in Billingham, 1959-66’, New Christian, 9 March 1967.

Obituaries which have been noted to date are to be found at:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obituaries/2010/0605/1224271897549.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7811800/Lives-Remembered.html

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‘Onward Pagan Soldiers’ (Daily Mail)

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 5 April 2010, we reported on ‘Religion in the Armed Forces’, based on an annual census of religious profession carried out by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice section of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The religious groupings used in the MoD’s published reports are relatively broad, not least when it comes to the category of ‘other religions’, which is said to cover ‘Druid, Pagan, Rastafarian, Spiritualist, Zoroastrian (Parsee), Wicca and Baha’i, among others’.

630 persons were included in this category as at 1 April 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Now the Daily Mail has published a partial breakdown of their number, from data supplied by the MoD in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tally of other religions in the armed forces apparently includes: 100 Pagans, 30 followers of Wicca, 60 Spiritualists and 50 Rastafarians.

See:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1284449/100-UK-servicemen-class-pagans-MoD-reveals.html

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