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Pope Francis and Other News

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Following on from our previous post, which reported on a major new survey of Catholic opinion, today we summarize recent poll evidence about how Pope Francis is perceived to be getting on by the British public. We also include our usual miscellany of other religious statistical stories.

Pope Francis

Eight months into his pontificate, Pope Francis appears to be making some impression on the British public, according to an online poll by YouGov for The Sunday Times among 1,851 adults on 14-15 November 2013. Just over one-third (36%) think he is doing a good job, peaking at 45% of Liberal Democrats and 46% of Londoners; merely 3% believe he is doing a bad job, with 61% undecided. A similar proportion (31%) expect him to make the Catholic Church more liberal, including 45% of Liberal Democrats, 37% of Conservative voters, and 36% of both 18-24s and non-manual workers; 5% anticipate the Church becoming less liberal, while 23% forecast no change, and 42% are undecided. Pope Francis has made 17% regard the Catholic Church more positively (rising to 29% of Liberal Democrats and 27% of 18-24s), with 2% feeling more negative, and the remaining 80% having no opinion or an unaltered one on the subject.

However, the Pope is beaten into second place (on 12%), after the Archbishop of Canterbury (on 13%), as the religious leader respondents would most like to have at Christmas lunch. The majority (53%) want no religious leader sitting at their Christmas dining table, perhaps reflecting the relatively low importance which Britons attach to the religious component of Christmas. Asked about their favourite part of Christmas, its religious significance came in sixth equal of fourteen places (on 11%), with carols in eleventh position (on 7%). Spending time with family and friends (53%) and giving presents to others (37%) easily topped the list. There were substantial age differences, religious significance being highlighted by 5% of the parenting generation (25-39s) but 18% of the over-60s. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/08oexwxpab/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-151113.pdf

Curiously, The Sunday Times made absolutely no use of these poll data it had commissioned in its (arguably) somewhat over-the-top coverage of Pope Francis in its print edition of 17 November 2013. This comprised no fewer than three articles in its main section, all suggesting that the Catholic Church might be turning a corner under the Pope’s leadership. On pp. 1-2 George Arbuthnott and Luke Garratt had a piece entitled ‘“Francis Effect” Pulls Crowds Back to Church’. On p. 25 Paul Vallely (biographer of Pope Francis) contributed a full-page article headed ‘Pope Idol’, asking whether the ‘Francis effect’ is the ‘miracle’ the Church needs to reverse years of decline. In his analysis, Vallely was supported by a reporting team of eight journalists. Finally, on p. 30 there was a second editorial asserting that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin ‘Welby Can Take Heart from the Francis Effect’, although it was less certain that he could emulate it in the Church of England.

The editorial pointed to ‘a significant rise’ in congregations at Catholic churches in Britain since the election of Francis as Pope. The basis for this claim was a survey conducted by the newspaper during the previous week among the twenty-two Catholic cathedrals in England and Wales, of which thirteen responded. Eleven of these reported a rise in average Sunday attendances in October 2013 compared with a year before. Nine cathedrals provided actual figures, with congregants this October up by an average of 21% (from 11,461 to 13,862), and by 35% in the case of Leeds and 23% in Sheffield. We still await evidence about statistical trends in Catholic parishes up and down the land. Until we have that, perhaps a degree of circumspection is called for with regard to the ‘Francis effect’. After all, similar claims of a ‘Benedict bounce’ were made following the previous Pope’s visit to Britain in 2010, and that phenomenon seems to have been more aspirational than real, at least in quantitative terms.

Media portrayals of religion

Mainstream newspapers and television remain key, albeit partial and often superficial, sources of popular information about religion in Britain, according to a new book published by Ashgate: Kim Knott, Elizabeth Poole, and Teemu Taira, Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred: Representation and Change (xvi + 233pp., £19.99 as paperback or e-book). At the core of the work is a replication (in 2008-09) of a content and discourse analysis first undertaken in 1982 of three newspapers (The Times, The Sun, and The Yorkshire Evening Post), studied over two months, and three terrestrial television channels (BBC1, BBC2, and ITV1), surveyed for one week. The extent and nature of the representation of religion in these media is quantitatively summarized in chapter 2 and then scrutinized with regard to treatments of Christianity (chapter 3), Islam and other minority faiths (chapter 4), atheism and secularism (chapter 5), and popular beliefs and ritual practices (chapter 6). A wider evidence base is drawn upon to support two case studies of media portrayal of religion: the banning of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamic Dutch politician, from entering the country in 2009 (chapter 7) and the 1982 and 2010 papal visits to Britain (chapter 8). The conclusion uses six sets of paired propositions relating to religion and the media as a framework for summative evaluation of the research.

The main text of the work contains many statistics deriving from the content analysis, although relatively few (seven of each) tables and figures. However, appendices 2 and 3 do reproduce some of the most important data, which we partly digest in the table below. The overall number of references to religion and the secular sacred on television was broadly similar in 1982 and 2009, but it rose by 78% in the newspapers from 1982 to 2008, principally as a result of the substantially increased size of newspapers over the period. In both media types there was a marked shift away from coverage of conventional (organized and official) religion in general, and Christianity in particular, to common religion (supernatural beliefs and practices beyond religious organizations). Among non-Christian faiths, there was disproportionate treatment of Islam in 2008-09, much of it negative. The explanation for the greater coverage of common religion on television than in the newspapers at both dates is to be found in a plethora of television advertisements containing references to luck, gambling, magic, and the unexplained. Across all reporting of religion, there was a near doubling in the use of religious metaphors to describe otherwise non-religious subjects (from 14% to 25% in newspapers and from 12% to 20% on television).

Content type (%)	Papers	Papers	TV	TV
	1982	2008	1982	2009
Conventional religion – Christian/general	72.5	47.4	62.7	44.8
Conventional religion – non-Christian	6.6	12.2	5.5	6.0
Common religion	19.2	36.2	30.4	47.2
Secular sacred	1.3	4.4	1.6	2,1

Inevitably, the choice of survey dates and specific media titles will have conditioned some of these research outcomes. In the case of newspapers, it is therefore worth comparing the findings with those of studies by Robin Gill and Paul Baker and colleagues which BRIN has reported at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/newspaper-religion-catholic-schools/

and

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/halloween-and-other-news/

Restudies of religion

The latest in Professor Steve Bruce’s fascinating series of restudies of religion in Britain has just been published: ‘Religion in Ashworthy, 1958-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2013, pp. 92-102. It is a re-examination of the religious scene (preponderantly Anglican and Methodist) in the West Devon village of ‘Ashworthy’ (in reality, Northlew), which was originally surveyed by Bill Williams in 1958 for his classic community study of A West Country Village (1963). Although time constraints have prevented Bruce from ‘achieving the degree or duration of immersion’ that Williams did, five conclusions are reached about changes in the village’s religious life between 1958 and 2011. Inevitably, one of them touches on statistical decline in church adherence, Anglican Easter communicants and Methodist members combined reducing from 29% to 13% of the adult population over the period, the contraction in Methodist numbers being especially severe. For a pay-per-view access option, see:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/45527w70166n1707/

The previous issue of the same journal included another restudy by Bruce: ‘Religion in Gosforth, 1951-2011: A Sociology Classic Revisited’, Rural Theology, Vol. 11, No. 1, May 2013, pp. 39-49. This is based on a revisitation (in 2009-10) of the first community study by Bill Williams, of Gosforth, Cumbria, which was published as The Sociology of an English Village (1956). Here Bruce found that combined Anglican and Methodist membership as a proportion of the adult population declined from 20% to 12% over the 60 years. Pay-per-view access is available at:

http://essential.metapress.com/content/f18663039713m447/

For a discussion of methodological issues raised by the series of restudies, see Bruce’s article ‘Studying Religious Change through Replication: Some Methodological Issues’, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2012, pp. 166-82. The pay-per-view site is:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/157006812×634863

Anglican faith schools

The Education Division of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England issued a two-page statement outlining ‘The Church of England’s Contribution to Schools’ to coincide with the General Synod debate on these schools on 19 November 2013. It is clearly intended as a defence of the Anglican school sector which has come in for criticism of late, especially over admissions policies. There are currently 4,443 Anglican primary and 221 secondary schools in England, attended by approximately one million pupils. Ofsted inspections are said to show them as more effective than other schools in terms of overall effectiveness, pupil achievement, and quality of teaching, and at both primary and secondary levels. Church of England schools are also judged to be inclusive, with the same proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals as in non-Anglican schools, and almost the same proportion from black or minority ethnic backgrounds. The statement can be accessed through the link in:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2013/11/synod-affirms-cofe’s-crucial-involvement-with-schools.aspx

The Church’s claims about inclusivity have already been challenged by the Fair Admissions Campaign, which accuses the Church of ‘a flawed approach’ to the use of statistics, at:

http://fairadmissions.org.uk/fair-admissions-campaign-response-to-john-pritchards-comments-on-the-inclusivity-of-church-schools/

Islamophobia

The practice of publishing articles in the online edition of peer-reviewed journals in advance of scheduling their inclusion in a conventional printed edition is becoming more widespread, especially in the social sciences (less so in the humanities at present). Two recent exemplars both deal with Islamophobia and will be of interest to BRIN readers.

Zan Strabac, Toril Aalberg, and Marko Valenta, ‘Attitudes towards Muslim Immigrants: Evidence from Survey Experiments across Four Countries’ was published in the online edition of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 30 September 2013. It examined whether differences exist between attitudes toward immigrants in general and Muslim immigrants in particular. The data derived from online surveys by YouGov/Polimetrix of 1,000 adults aged 18 and over on 26-31 January 2009 in each of four countries: Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. One half of each national sample was asked four questions about immigrants and the other half the identical questions but about Muslim immigrants. The responses were used to generate two additive 0-100 scales, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. In Norway and Sweden there were basically no differences between the level of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant opinion, whereas in Britain and the United States (and contrary to expectation) anti-Muslim attitudes were actually found to be lower than anti-immigrant ones (with scores of 50.3 and 59.0 respectively in Britain’s case). Possible explanations for this discovery are explored. The article can be accessed at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2013.831542#.Uou1DjZFDX4

Christine Ogan, Lars Willnat, Rosemary Pennington, and Manaf Bashir, ‘The Rise of Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States’ was published in the online edition of International Communication Gazette on 10 October 2013. It is based on secondary analysis of the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Project (for Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States) and the 2010 Pew News Interest Index (for the United States alone). Predictors of attitudes to Muslims are calculated. These appear less strongly defined in Britain’s case than for several other countries, although being highly educated or a woman were associated with a more positive opinion of Muslims. The article can be accessed at:

http://gaz.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/10/1748048513504048.abstract

Gender, theology and higher education

Theology and religious studies departments in UK higher education institutions still have some way to go before achieving full gender equality, according to a report from Durham University published on 15 November 2013 (on behalf of Theology and Religious Studies UK): Mathew Guest, Sonya Sharma, and Robert Song, Gender and Career Progression in Theology and Religious Studies. The authors gathered a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data (for the academic year 2010-11), in the latter case from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and a survey of 41 of 58 departments. Whereas 60% of undergraduates in theology and religious studies were women, the proportion dropped to 42% of taught postgraduates in the subject and 33% of postgraduate research students. The average of female members of academic staff in theology and religious studies was 29% but only 16% of professors. However, for early career academics and lecturers the figure was 37%, suggesting that recruitment is beginning to make a difference to gender balance among staff. Although gender diversity remains an issue elsewhere in universities, the authors explore several factors which accentuate the problem in theology and religious studies. The report, which concludes with 11 recommendations, can be read at:

http://trs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Gender-in-TRS-Project-Report-Final.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Survey news | Tagged academics, Bill Williams, Cathedrals, Christine Ogan, Christmas, church attendance, Church of England, common religion, conventional religion, Elizabeth Poole, Faith schools, Francis effect, gender, Gosforth, higher education, International Communication Gazette, Islamophobia, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Kim Knott, Lars Willnat, Manaf Bashir, Marko Valenta, Mathew Guest, media, Muslims, newspapers, Northlew, Pope Francis, religious festivals, restudies of religion, Robert Song, Roman Catholic Church, Rosemary Pennington, Rural Theology, Sonya Sharma, Steve Bruce, students, Sunday Times, Teemu Taira, television, Theology and Religious Studies UK, Toril Aalberg, YouGov, Zan Strabac | Leave a comment

What can social surveys tell us about church attendance amongst Catholics in Britain?

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Ben Clements

Summary

This post examines the evidence from recurrent social surveys bearing upon changing patterns of church attendance amongst Roman Catholics in Britain. It analyses survey data from multiple sources going back several decades. When using data based on self-reports of religious attendance we should be mindful of the limitations of this method – with respondents prone to over-reporting of their actual attendance at services – and be aware of other techniques used for collecting data on the nature and extent of participation in religious activities (such as daily time-use diaries). Also, it needs to be borne in mind that self-identifying Catholics have generally constituted around 10% of the sample in recent social surveys in Britain, based on religious affiliation questions. Therefore, since they comprise relatively small groups of respondents, this may account for some of the fluctuation between individual waves in any particular survey series. This post focuses on summarising the broader picture, rather than commenting on specific instances of change over shorter time periods.

Introduction

Church attendance statistics and the interpretation thereof for Christian denominations and traditions have featured in BRIN on numerous occasions, engendering interesting feedback and debate. Recent figures on church attendance across denominational groups have also been given prominent coverage in the broadsheets. Change and continuity in religious attendance in Britain has been examined in scholarly research, particularly in recent analyses of British Social Attitudes data (for example: Lee 2012; Voas and Ling 2010). It was also the subject a major research report issued by Tearfund in 2007 (entitled ‘Churchgoing in the UK’). Rather than take a broader perspective on patterns and trends in religious attendance in Britain, looking across religious groups, this post primarily examines attendance within a particular denomination, that of Roman Catholicism.

What can survey data from the British context tell us about the religious behaviour of Catholics? First, we briefly compare Catholics with other religious traditions, using the recently-released BSA 2012 survey. There are clear differences between Anglicans and Catholics in their levels of attendance at religious services: 41.5% of Catholics attend church frequently (once a month or more) compared to 17.4% of Anglicans. Anglicans are much more likely to report that they never attend religious services (with the exception of special occasions relating to births, deaths and marriages), at 50.3% compared to 33.6% of Catholics. Differences are less stark for those attending services infrequently (less often than once a month): 32.2% for Anglicans and 24.9% for Catholics. It is also worth noting that other Christians also show a much higher level of frequent attendance than Anglicans but not as high as Catholics. The highest level of frequent attendance is shown by members of non-Christian faiths (at 53.5%), who also exhibit the lowest level of non-attendance (25.4%)

Table 1: Attendance at religious services by religious affiliation

	Anglican (%)	Catholic (%)	Other Christian (%)	Other religion (%)
Frequently	17.4	41.5	35.0	53.5
Infrequently	32.2	24.9	22.8	21.0
Never	50.3	33.6	42.2	25.4
Unweighted N	764	291	556	151

Source: BSA 2012 survey. Weighted data.

What about Catholics’ longer-term attendance at religious services. Can we see any clear patterns – change or continuity – from longitudinal social survey data? Within the contemporary Catholic adult population, moreover, which social groups are more likely to report they attend services? This post presents and discusses the available evidence bearing upon these two questions. It first reports the evidence from a range of national and cross-national survey series and then looks in more detail at levels of church attendance amongst social groups.

Trend data on attendance at religious services

This post uses evidence from multiple surveys in order to try and get a more robust picture of any trends in attendance amongst Catholics in recent decades. We use data from the BSA surveys, British Election Study (BES), Eurobarometer (EB) surveys and the European Values Study (EVS) (the latter two being cross-national in scope). Where applicable, we present weighted percentages from the surveys and, given the caveats outlined in the ‘Summary’, also report the unweighted base (number of Catholics) for each time-point. Generally, when surveys ask about religious attendance, respondents can choose from a range of options to report how (ir)regularly they attend. However, to try to provide greater clarity of presentation and comparability across the surveys used here we generally classify attendance as follows:

Frequently-attending: at least once a month or more.
Infrequently-attending: less than once a month (or, where applicable, varies too much to say)
Does not attend: never attends.

First, we present data from the BSA surveys, covering the period from 1983 to 2012 (with the exceptions of 1988 and 1992, when they were not undertaken). The question wording used in the BSA for measuring religious attendance is as follows: ‘Apart from such special occasions as weddings, funerals and baptisms, how often nowadays do you attend services or meetings connected with your religion?’[1] The data for attendance are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Frequency of attendance at religious services amongst Catholics, 1983-2012 (BSA surveys).

We can see that there has been a decline in the proportion of Catholics reporting that they attend religious services on a frequent basis: from 55.2% in 1983 down to 41.5% in 2012. There has been a corresponding increase in the proportion who says they attend infrequently (i.e. less than once a month), rising from 19.9% to 24.9% over nearly three decades. However, the larger increase has been amongst those who do not attend services, increasing from about a fifth in 1983 (19.9%) to a third in 2012 (at 33.6%). On the evidence of the 2012 data, then, around two-fifths attend services regularly, around a quarter say their attendance is infrequent and a third do not attend. Is this trend also evident in data compiled from other longitudinal survey series?

We next present over time data from the BES studies undertaken at every general election since 1964, which have asked about attendance in most, if not all, election surveys. Note the variations in question wording used across the BES surveys, particularly the qualification ‘apart from special occasions’ in the question used from 1983-1997, akin to that in the BSA question. We report data for the period of 1964-1997. We can see that the level of frequent attendance has fallen from a high-point of 71.0% in 1964 to just over two-fifths in 1997 (at 41.7%). There have been corresponding increases in the proportions attending either infrequently (from 13.7% to 32.8%) or not at all (from 15.2% to 25.5%). Unfortunately, data on religious attendance were not collected in the 2001 and 2005 BES surveys (two differently worded questions were included in the 2010 in-person survey which asked separately about religious activities undertaken (i) with other people and (ii) by oneself).

Table 2: Frequency of attendance at religious services amongst Catholics, 1964-1997

	1964 (%)	1979 (%)	1983 (%)	1987 (%)	1992 (%)	1997 (%)
Frequently	71.0	59.0	47.8	50.5	46.8	41.7
Infrequently	13.7	33.3	26.7	26.5	24.6	32.8
Never	15.2	7.7	25.6	23.5	28.5	25.5
*Unweighted N*	134	183	452	367	387	399

Source: BES surveys. Weighted data.

Question wordings:

1964: ‘How often do you attend church?’

1979: ‘How often do you attend church, chapel, or other place of worship?’

1983-1997: ‘Apart from special occasions, such as weddings, funerals, baptisms and so on, how often nowadays do you attend services or meetings connected with your religion?’

Next we present data from two long-running cross-country surveys. Firstly, the Eurobarometer surveys (Figure 2), for which we have data covering 1973-1998 (we omit data from more recent surveys due to changes in the response options for the measure of attendance). Because of the attendance categories used in the earlier EB surveys, we have to use a slightly different classification scheme: attends once a week or more; attends less often; or does not attend. The EB question asked: ‘Do you attend religious services …?’.

Figure 2: Frequency of attendance at religious services amongst Catholics, 1973-1998 (EB surveys)

We can see that the proportion of Catholics who report attending once a week or more declined from 57.1% in 1973 to 40.8% in the late-1990s. Those attending less often (which here is more complicated as it includes those attending once a month) increased from 27.1% to 35.0% and those reporting they did not attend services increased from 15.8% to 24.3%.[2] Secondly, the next set of data comes from the European Values Study (EVS), which undertakes periodic cross-national surveys (spaced every nine years). The data here show a slightly different picture from that already discussed, in that, perhaps surprisingly, there is little change over time in the proportion who report never attending services (at 27.6% in 1981 and 27.0% in 2008). The change over time has been in the form of the proportion attending frequently declining (from over half in 1981 to about two-fifths in 2008), with a corresponding increase in the proportion attending less often (rising from 18.7% in 1981 to 33.1% in 2008). The EVS data also shows an evident decrease in the proportion who never attended in 1990, but this ‘blip’ disappears as the levels increase again in 1999 and 2008 readings.

Taken together, it would seem that the surveys tend to show a picture of fairly consistent decline, with – the EVS data partly excepted – clear decreases in the proportion attending frequently and corresponding increases in the proportions attending less often or not at all. Given this historical picture, which social groups within the contemporary Catholic population are more – or less – likely to be frequent-attenders?

Table 3: Frequency of attendance at religious services amongst Catholics, 1981-2008

	1981 (%)	1990 (%)	1999 (%)	2008 (%)
Frequently	53.7	59.4	38.7	39.9
Infrequently	18.7	22.7	30.6	33.1
Never	27.6	18.0	30.6	27.0
Unweighted N	134	142	134	167

Source: European Values Surveys. Weighted data.

Question: ‘Apart from weddings, funerals and christenings, about how often do you attend religious services these days?’

Who is more likely to attend frequently?

In this section, we use the best available survey data in order to build up a social profile of those groups within the Catholic population most likely to report attending church frequently. We do this by analysing a survey of adult Catholics in Britain (with a sample size of 1,636), conducted online by YouGov from August 31-September 2 2010 in the run-up to the papal visit. In Table 4, we present self-reported attendance rates for the following characteristics:

Sex, age group, ethnic group, social class, educational attainment, whether any children in the household, region and political party supported.

First, looking at the overall distribution, we can see that just over two-fifths report attending frequently (43.0%), nearly a third attend less often (31.9%) and those who do not attend services stand at a quarter (25.1%). This figures approximate those found in the most recent BSA survey (for 2012) shown in Figure 1. So which social groups are most likely to report that they frequently attend services? We can see that there is little difference between men and women (with slightly over two-fifths reporting they attend frequently). There are substantial differences in level of attendance by age group: those aged 65 and over stand out, with 65.8% attending frequently compared to between 33.1%-40.8% for the other age groups. There are also differences by social class, with those in the highest occupational grades more likely to report attending services frequently: 50.4% for those in the AB category (professional and managerial occupations) compared to a range of 36.6%-41.9% for those in the C1/C2/DE groups. This difference by socio-economic status is reflected in the break-down by educational attainment: regular attendance is higher for those with degree-level qualifications than for those without. Attendance is also noticeably higher for those who have one or more children in their household (at 51.1% compared to 39.6% for those with none).

The breakdown by region shows that frequent attendance is most commonly found amongst Catholics who reside in the East of England, Scotland, the South East and the Midlands (and lowest in the Yorkshire and Humberside area). We also given figures for political party attachments amongst Catholics: frequent attendance is highest amongst those who support the Conservative Party (at 49.9%) and lowest amongst those who opt for a minor party or do not support any party. Data from a 2008 survey undertaken by the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project showed that, amongst Catholics in the US, those more likely to attend church weekly included those aged 65 and over, women and those living in the Midwest and Southern regions.

Table 4: Religious attendance by social group, Catholic adults in Britain

Variable	Category	Frequently (%)	Infrequently (%)	Never (%)
*Overall*		43.0	31.9	25.1
*Sex*	Male	43.2	31.1	25.6
	Female	42.8	32.5	24.8
*Age group*	18-29	33.1	45.5	21.4
	30-44	40.8	32.0	27.2
	45-64	37.9	32.4	29.8
	65+	65.8	18.5	15.7
*Ethnic group*	White British	43.7	31.7	24.7
	Other	40.0	32.6	27.4
*Social class*	AB	50.4	34.7	14.9
	C1	41.9	33.2	24.9
	C2	36.6	32.4	31.0
	DE	39.0	25.3	35.8
*Education*	Has a degree	46.8	33.5	19.7
	Does not	37.6	30.9	31.5
*Children*	None	39.6	32.5	27.9
	One or more	51.1	30.8	18.1
*Party support*	Labour	41.5	32.5	26.0
	Conservative	49.9	30.4	19.7
	Lib Dem	43.3	36.8	19.9
	Other party	34.5	26.1	39.5
	None/don’t know	37.5	32.5	30.0
*Region*	North East	39.4	36.2	24.5
	North West	42.9	28.7	28.4
	Yorkshire and the Humber	29.5	39.4	31.1
	East Midlands	45.0	23.8	31.2
	West Midlands	46.5	30.3	23.2
	East of England	54.1	24.5	24.1
	London	41.2	34.8	24.0
	South East	48.0	30.3	21.7
	South West	38.3	38.3	23.3
	Wales	42.9	40.8	16.3
	Scotland	47.0	29.3	23.8

Source: YouGov survey of Catholics adults in Britain, August-September 2010 (n=1,636). Weighted data.

For the purposes of historical comparison, further analysis of the 1978 Roman Catholic Opinion Survey (which sampled 1023 Catholic adults living in England and Wales only), shows a similar social profile for frequency of attendance (based on the following question: ‘’How often do you go to Mass?’). That is, there are some similar differences based on sex, age, social class and party support. For example, 72.5% of those aged 65 and older attended frequently compared to 36.7% of those aged 15-29. In terms of social grade, 62.5% of those in the AB category attended frequently, compared to 46.9% for those in the DE category. There were some interesting differences based on age finished full-time education: the highest proportions of frequent-attenders were found amongst those who, on the one hand, had finished school aged 14 or under (60.6%) and, on the other, those who completed their education aged 17-19 years (63.5%) or aged 20 and over (70.0%). The lowest levels were found amongst those who completed their education aged either 15 or 16 years (respectively, 41.5% and 45.0%). Conservative supporters were more frequent attenders (at 59.8%), compared to Labour supporters (47.5%) or those who expressed support for another party (55.3%). Levels of attendance were not too dissimilar for men (51.8%) and women (54.5%).

Finally, BRIN readers who are interested in looking further at scholarly research on this subject, focusing on Britain or elsewhere, may like to consult the following sources;

Brenner, P. S. (2011), ‘Exceptional Behavior or Exceptional Identity?: Overreporting of Church Attendance in the U.S.’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 75 (1): 19-41.
Chaves, M. (2011), American Religion: Contemporary Trends. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, chapter 4.
Conway, B. (2013), ‘Social Correlates of Church Attendance in Three European Catholic Countries’, Review of Religious Research, 55(1): 61-80.
Lee, L. (2011), ‘Religion. Losing Faith?’, in A. Park et al. (eds), British Social Attitudes 28. London: Sage, pp. 173-184.
Lünchau, P. (2007), ‘By Faith Alone? Church Attendance and Christian Faith in three European Countries’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 22(1): 35-48.
Voas, D., and R. Ling (2010), ‘Religion in Britain and the United States’, in A. Park et al. (eds), British Social Attitudes. The 26^thReport. London: Sage, pp. 65-86.

Dr Ben Clements, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester

NOTES

[1] The unweighted number of Catholics in each BSA survey on which the data presented in Figure 1 are based is as follows: 1983: 169; 1984: 190; 1985: 197; 1986: 321; 1987: 280; 1989: 335; 1990: 252; 1991: 290; 1993: 302; 1994: 328; 1995: 335; 1996: 328; 1997: 145; 1998: 280; 1999: 278; 2000: 331; 2001: 331; 2002: 318; 2003: 399; 2004: 279; 2005: 396; 2006: 391; 2007: 376; 2008: 420; 2009: 281; 2010: 286; 2011: 287; 2012: 291.

[2] The unweighted number of Catholics in each EB survey on which the data presented in Figure 2 are based is as follows: 1973: 177; 1975: 100; 1976: 188; 1977: 182; 1978: 183; 1980: 133; 1981: 110; 1988: 87; 1989: 272; 1990: 314: 1991: 309; 1992: 208; 1993: 224; 1994: 363; 1995: 117; 1998: 103.

Posted in church attendance, Measuring religion, Survey news | Tagged church attendance, Roman Catholics, Social Surveys | Leave a comment

Secularization Restated and Other News

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven statistical news stories about religion in Britain feature in today’s post, including a summative article from Steve Bruce in reaffirmation of the secularization thesis.

Secularization restated

In Britain ‘there is no evidential warrant for describing individual beliefs and behaviour as post-secular or de-secularising’, concludes Professor Steve Bruce in a characteristically robust and entertaining restatement of the secularization paradigm: ‘Post-Secularity and Religion in Britain: An Empirical Assessment’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2013, pp. 369-84 (published on 2 October 2013). ‘Religion has become more contentious; it has not become more popular’ is his principal argument, supported by a high-level overview of statistics of religious membership, attendance, rites of passage, institutions, and beliefs. Nor, Bruce suggests, has the overall picture of (largely Christian) decline been offset by the undoubted growth of non-Christians (unfortunately, the paper was finalized before publication of the results of the 2011 census) and the emergence of alternative forms of spirituality. Nor, in a tantalizingly brief section, does Bruce find evidence of any compensating increased presence of religion in public life; indeed, he claims, there has been ongoing privatization. The article’s arguments and sources are essentially familiar (and perhaps still best read in full in their original incarnations), but relative newcomers to the secularization debate may benefit from it as an introductory discourse and compilation of data. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind a publisher’s pay-wall; for access options, go to:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2013.831642#.UlbieTZwbX4

Westminster Faith Debates

Professor Linda Woodhead released on 8 October 2013 the full data tables from the second YouGov poll she commissioned for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, in which 4,018 adult Britons were interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. The data can be found at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4vs1srt1h1/YG-Archive-University-of-Lancaster-Faith-Matters-Debate-full-results-180613-website.pdf

The tables are a substantial resource for secondary research. They extend to 65 pages and include breaks of all questions by the following variables: current voting intention, 2010 vote, gender, age, social grade, region, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, religious meeting/service attendance, and self-assessed religiosity/spirituality.

The questions cover the following religious topics: self-assessed religiosity/spirituality, religious/spiritual influences, private and public religious practices, belief in God/higher power, and sources of guidance in life. Respondents were then asked about their attitudes to: abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, faith schools, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, protests against perceived insults of faiths, immigration, the European Union, changes in British society, the welfare system, Islamist terrorism, the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church, and Margaret Thatcher versus Tony Blair as best Prime Minister.

The findings for faith schools – a discrete and substantial module in the survey – have previously been released and summarized by BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/faith-schools-and-other-news/

It would be impossible here to record the results for the full range of other subjects covered in the poll, but the final question might be worth a note. Asked which Prime Minister did more good for Britain, 39% said Thatcher, 18% Blair, 6% both equally, 28% neither, with 9% undecided. Thatcher commanded above average support from Anglicans (47%), Presbyterians (49%), and Methodists (47%). Blair was disproportionately popular with Roman Catholics (27%) and churchgoers. Muslims (42%) were most likely to say neither.

BRIN was also struck by the couple of questions surrounding Jerry Springer: the Opera, the British musical staged in London in 2003-05 before touring the UK in 2006, and which attracted strong protests from Christians on the grounds of its irreverence and profanity. Notwithstanding, the production excited little interest from pollsters at the time, so it is good to have the furore covered here, albeit almost a decade late. Reminded of the context, 52% of YouGov’s respondents felt that peaceful protests against the musical were understandable and 42% that they were justified (36% not). Catholics (54%), the historic Free Churches, Muslims (66%), and weekly attenders at services (76%) were most likely to consider the protests justified.

UK Data Service

The UK Data Service (UKDS) has recently announced the release of two historic datasets which will be of interest to BRIN users:

SN 4394: a first release of English Church Attendance Survey, 1998, undertaken by Peter Brierley, and joining the dataset for the 1989 church census, which is already held by UKDS
SN 1988: what appears to be a new edition of Conventional Religion and Common Religion in Leeds, 1982, undertaken by the University of Leeds, and based on interviews with electors and university students

More information about both studies can be found in the UKDS catalogue at:

http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

The UKDS JISCmail list provides regular free (mostly weekly) email alerts about the release of new datasets. To join the list, go to:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=UKdataservice

Religious education

A mainly qualitative assessment of the state of religious education (RE) in English primary and secondary schools is contained in a new report, Religious Education: Realising the Potential, released by Ofsted on 6 October 2013. Data mostly derive from inspections carried out in 185 schools between September 2009 and July 2012, 659 RE lessons being observed. The sample did not include voluntary aided schools or academies with a religious designation, for which alternative inspection arrangements exist. It also excluded schools judged to require special measures or given notice to improve. The overall message in the report is ‘could do better’, with eight areas of concern identified about RE. A tabular summary of the inspection data under seven headings, shown separately for primary and secondary schools, appears on p. 38. In terms of overall RE effectiveness, 42% of primary and 48% of secondary schools were considered outstanding or good, 56% and 41% respectively satisfactory, and 2% and 11% inadequate. Subject training was deemed the worst single facet of provision, with 29% of primaries and 35% of secondaries judged inadequate in this regard. The report is available at:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/religious-education-realising-potential

Evangelicals at work

Published on 7 October 2013, Working Faithfully? is the latest report from the 21st Century Evangelicals project, developed by the Evangelical Alliance and the six other partner organizations in its research club. It derives from an online survey in May 2013 of 1,511 members of the Alliance’s self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) panel of UK evangelicals. Respondents were overwhelmingly (91%) in manual employment and had a strong sense of calling in their job (69%). They mostly (84%) felt valued for the work they did, although 39% experienced work-related stress, 37% endured a working week of more than 40 hours, and 35% of men and 27% of women regularly brought work home with them. Almost half (44%) perceived Christians to suffer discrimination in employment often or sometimes, and 53% thought that Christians getting into trouble at work is a significant problem. However, no more than 12% claimed they had personally been discriminated against in employment for any reason, and just 2% because of a faith-related issue. Somewhat more (14%) said they had encountered hostility, exclusion or mocking from work colleagues on account of their faith, while 9% reported difficulties with their management because they were known as a Christian or had spoken up for Christian values. The report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Working-faithfully-PDF.pdf

Nobel peace laureates

Religious figures feature prominently in a list of past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize considered to have been most deserving, according to a YouGov poll published on 9 October 2013, 1,879 adult Britons having been interviewed online on 7 and 8 October. The data table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zdg9yb4z0f/YG-Archive-Nobel-Peace-Prize-results-081013.pdf

The top six places in the list of most deserving recipients included:

1st (37%) – Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, awarded the Prize in 1979 for her work in overcoming poverty and distress
2nd (33%) – Martin Luther King Jr, Baptist minister and American civil rights leader, awarded the Prize in 1964 for combating racial inequality through non-violence
5th (13%) – Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, awarded the Prize in 1984 for his leadership of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa
6th (12%) – 14th Dalai Lama, awarded the Prize in 1989 for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet

Noteworthy among variations by demographic sub-groups was the disproportionately strong support for Martin Luther King and the Dalai Lama among the 18-24s (43% and 24% respectively).

Emigration to Israel

On 30 September 2013 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published Immigration from the United Kingdom to Israel, by Laura Staetsky, Marina Sheps, and Jonathan Boyd, and based upon both Israeli and UK statistical sources. The report showed that 32,600 UK-born Jews or people of Jewish ancestry emigrated to Israel (a process known as making aliyah) between 1948 (when the Jewish state was founded) and the end of 2011, constituting about 1% of all immigrants to Israel during that period. Peak UK immigration to Israel occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, since when the numbers have mostly tailed off, albeit with a spike in the late 2000s. UK-born immigrants to Israel are disproportionately young, with a median age in the late 20s. Their departure for Israel has therefore pushed up the mean age of the Jewish community remaining in the UK and reduced the number of Jewish women of reproductive age in the UK, adversely affecting the community’s potential for growth. Nor is there a compensatory flow in the other direction, the number of UK-born Jews living permanently in Israel in the 2000s being, at 19,000, greater than the 15,000 Israeli Jews permanently living in the UK. For the full data and analysis, go to:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/JPRAliyahReport6thProof.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Aliyah, church attendance, discrimination, emigration, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Israel, Jerry Springer the Opera, Jonathan Boyd, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Laura Staetsky, Leeds, Linda Woodhead, Margaret Thatcher, Marina Sheps, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize, Ofsted, religious education, secularization, Steve Bruce, Tony Blair, UK Data Service, Westminster Faith Debates, work, YouGov | Leave a comment

Muslim Distinctiveness and Other News

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s round-up of eight religious statistical news stories leads on the first substantive output from an important and academic-led four-year-old sample survey of British Muslims.

Muslim distinctiveness

The distinctiveness of British Muslims is explored in a short but highly significant article by Valerie Lewis and Ridhi Kashyap, ‘Are Muslims a Distinctive Minority? An Empirical Analysis of Religiosity, Social Attitudes, and Islam’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2013, pp. 617-26. Data derive from face-to-face interviews by Ipsos MORI with a sample of 480 British Muslims between January and May 2009; and from face-to-face interviews by NatCen with samples of Britons of other religious persuasions (n = 2,457) and none (n = 1,903) from the contemporaneous British Social Attitudes Survey. Muslims were found to be more religious than other Britons in terms of beliefs, practices (public and private), and salience. They were also more socially conservative on a range of topics: gender roles in the home, divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. In terms of premarital sex and homosexuality, an independent effect of Islam was documented; on other social issues Muslim attitudes tended to resemble those of other religious people. Indeed, more generally, multivariate analysis revealed that much of the difference on socio-moral opinions was due to socio-economic disadvantage and high religiosity, both factors which – Lewis and Kashyap argue – predict social conservatism among all Britons and not just Muslims. The distinctiveness of Muslims, therefore, may not be as great as it superficially seems. It should be noted that no weights were applied to the Muslim data, and that there are several caveats from the authors concerning the representative nature of the Muslim sample (including a high rate of non-response). For access options for this article, go to:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12044/abstract

Civic core

Two-thirds of all charitable activity (charitable donations and volunteering) in this country is attributable to just 9% of its citizens (the ‘civic core’). This is according to a report published by the Charities Aid Foundation on 13 September 2013 and entitled Britain’s Civic Core: Who are the People Powering Britain’s Charities? A further 67% of individuals account for the remaining 34% of charitable activity (the so-called ‘middle ground’), while 24% of the population undertake little or no charitable activity (‘zero givers’). Members of the ‘civic core’ have the greatest interest (37%) in supporting religious organizations (including places of worship), with ‘zero givers’ showing the least (10%); among the ‘middle ground’ the proportion is 20%. This trend reflects the fact that the ‘civic core’ is disproportionately composed of women, the over-65s, and people from professional/managerial backgrounds – precisely those groups most inclined to be involved with organized religion. The data derive from an online survey of 2,027 Britons aged 18 and over conducted by ComRes on 31 July and 1 August 2013, and the report is available at:

https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/CAF_Britains_Civic_Core_Sept13.pdf

Full data tables for the poll were released by ComRes on 16 September. Table 21 provides breaks for interest in religious organizations by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, ethnicity, and the monetary value of volunteering and charitable donations. Table 64 gives details about volunteering for religious organizations during the past year among the sub-group of respondents who have given practical help to a social cause. Table 89 records self-assigned ‘membership’ of religious groups (56% Christian, 8% non-Christian, 34% none). Unfortunately, religious affiliation is not used in this set of tables as a variable to analyse answers to all the other questions about charitable disposition and activity. The data tables are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/CAF_People_Power_9_August_2013_Sig.pdf

Confessions

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales reported on 2 September 2013 that the number of confessions (Sacrament of Reconciliation) is rising at many of its cathedrals. Twenty-two cathedrals were contacted by telephone or email on 21 August, of which 20 replied. Overall, 65% (i.e. 13 cathedrals) noted an increase in confessions, mostly attributing it to a ‘papal effect’ (either the visit to Britain of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, the inauguration of Pope Francis I in 2013, or both), while the remaining 35% (7 cathedrals) said confessions were ‘steady’ or ‘normal’. Actual statistics of those confessing were not cited by the Church, and it is possible that they constitute a relatively small proportion of professing Catholics. The Church’s press release is at:

http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/Home/News/Back-to-Church

The story was picked up by all the UK’s Catholic newspapers and by the Church Times, including a particularly upbeat report and leader in the Catholic Herald. Responding to the latter, in a letter to the editor published in the Catholic Herald for 13 September 2013 (p. 13), Anthony Hofler of Wolverhampton was in little doubt from his own experience that confession is falling out of fashion among Catholics, except, relatively, at Christmas and Easter. Undaunted, the front page of the same edition of the Catholic Herald highlighted responses by 32 priests to a survey about a three-year-long initiative in the Diocese of Lancaster to boost the uptake of confessions, apparently also with encouraging results. Significantly, again, no hard data were cited in this report, and none currently appear on the websites of the diocese or the diocesan newspaper, Catholic Voice.

With regard to the ‘papal bounce’, as already noted by BRIN in our post of 28 January 2012, average weekly Mass attendance was actually lower after the papal visit in 2010 than before. And, in gearing up for its Home Mission Sunday (which took place on 15 September 2013), the Church itself conceded there are ‘four million baptised Catholics who rarely or never attend Mass’ in England and Wales.

Fracking

Recent public divisions about fracking within the Church of England and other Christian groups are evidenced in new research briefly reported in the latest issue of Christian Research’s monthly ezine, Research Brief, which was emailed to subscribers on 6 September 2013:

CRACKS APPEAR IN FRACKING ARGUMENT

‘Our Resonate August omnibus, completed by 1.520 Resonate panellists, revealed that two-thirds of practising Christians regard it as valid that the church should derive income from mineral rights on property it owns (marginally higher support amongst church leaders). More than 2 in 5 regular churchgoers felt that the church should be able to profit from shale gas reserves located under land it owns, 1 in 3 were uncertain and 1 in 4 objected (to some degree). Interestingly, men (significantly so) and Londoners agreed more strongly than others. The results see-sawed the other way, 1 in 3 opposed and 1 in 5 in favour, if the land was dwelt on.’

University students’ religion

On 27 April 2013 BRIN provided preliminary coverage of research into English university students and Christianity, undertaken by a team led by Mathew Guest of Durham University, with funding from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. A major aim of the project, which collected data via online questionnaires completed by 4,341 undergraduates in 2010-11 and via in-depth interviews, was to test empirically the widespread assumption that higher education is a force for secularization. Full details of the findings were published on 12 September 2013 in Mathew Guest, Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner, Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN 9781780937847, paperback, £19.99 – also available in hardback and ebook editions). The volume was reviewed by Gerald Pillay in Times Higher Education on 12 September 2013. Guest has also contributed a substantial article about the research – entitled ‘What Really Happens at University?’ – to Church Times, 13 September 2013, pp. 27-8.

Scottish religious affiliation

The results from the religion question in the 2011 census of population for Scotland are still not available (they are expected to be included in release 2A of the census data on 26 September 2013). Meanwhile, we can note the religious affiliation question from the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS), conducted by ScotCen Social Research among 1,229 residents of Scotland aged 18 and over between July and November 2012. The marginals on the UK Data Service Nesstar site show that a majority of Scots (52%) now regard themselves as belonging to no religion, compared with 40% when SSAS commenced in 1999. A further 22% regard themselves as Church of Scotland (35% in 1999), 11% as Catholics (15%), 12% as other Christians (10%), and 2% as non-Christians (1%). This ‘belonging’ form of question-wording is known to maximize the number of religious ‘nones’, and a similar formulation is used in the Scottish census (‘what religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’). Claimed attendance at religious services (other than rites of passage) in the 2012 SSAS was 19% at least monthly, including 12% weekly or more often. These figures are down on 1999 levels (27% and 17% respectively) but are probably still aspirational to a considerable degree. The latest Scottish church attendance census, conducted by Christian Research on 12 May 2002, revealed a weekly participation rate of 11%, with no deduction for ‘twicing’.

Churchgoing in the Presbytery of Dunfermline

As noted in the previous entry, there has been no Scottish church attendance census since 2002. Nor does the Church of Scotland – as the ‘national church’ – routinely collect attendance data (in the way that the Church of England has since 1968). So there is added interest to annual churchgoing counts organized in the Church of Scotland’s Presbytery of Dunfermline since 2009, the latest on 17 and 24 March 2013. Through the kindness of Allan Vint, summary data for the Presbytery’s 24 congregations have been made available to BRIN. Total attendance in 2013 was 2,493, 4% down on the 2012 total and 14% on 2009. Attendees comprised 34% men and 66% women; 9% children, 3% teenagers, and 88% adults (with an average adult age of 63, up by four years since 2009).

Baby names

Biblical forenames remain fashionable for Jewish boys, according to a list compiled by the Jewish Baby Directory website. Analysing around 1,000 birth announcements in the Jewish Chronicle, Samuel was found to be first equal in the list of boys’ names for the Jewish year September 2012 to September 2013, with Jacob and Joshua joint third, Joseph joint fifth, and Benjamin, Ethan, Nathan and Noah in joint eleventh position. The attraction of female biblical names was less strong, with Leah in fourth place, Rachel in ninth, and Rebecca in eleventh equal. Previously popular biblical names for girls, such as Sarah and Naomi, failed to make it to the top twenty. The rankings are at:

http://www.jewishbabydirectory.com/top-baby-names-of-5773-september-2012-present/

Posted in Attitudes towards Religion, church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Survey news | Tagged baby names, biblical names, British Social Attitudes Survey, Cathedrals, Catholic Herald, charitable giving, Charities Aid Foundation, Christian Research, Christianity, church attendance, Church of Scotland, Church Times, ComRes, confessions, Diocese of Lancaster, distinctiveness, England, fracking, Ipsos-MORI, Jewish Baby Directory, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Kristin Aune, Mathew Guest, Muslims, NatCen, Pope, Presbytery of Dunfermline, Religiosity, Religious Affiliation, religious organizations, Resonate, Ridhi Kashyap, Rob Warner, Roman Catholic Church, Sacrament of Reconciliation, ScotCen, Scotland, Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, Social Capital, social conservatism, Sonya Sharma, university students, Valerie Lewis, volunteering | Leave a comment

British Social Attitudes Survey, 2012

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The results of the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey for 2012 were released by NatCen on 10 September 2013 via a dedicated website – http://www.bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk – which includes, among other outputs, a copy of the questionnaire (with marginals) and British Social Attitudes, 30, a free book (downloadable in PDF, ePub or .mobi formats) comprising seven thematic chapters of analysis and commentary. The volume is edited by Alison Park, Caroline Bryson, Elizabeth Clery, John Curtice, and Miranda Phillips.

As usual, this annual survey was undertaken by NatCen on behalf of the Economic and Social Research Council and a consortium of Government departments and charitable funders. Face-to-face interviews were conducted between June and November 2012 with 3,248 adults aged 18 and over in Britain, of whom 2,866 also filled out a supplementary self-completion questionnaire.

Three specifically religious questions were posed face-to-face, with the following results:

Although just 20% had not had a religious upbringing, as many as 48% overall professed to belong to no religion at the time of interview in 2012, a proportion which increased steadily with each generation cohort (standing at 60% for those born in the 1980s against 25% for those born in the 1920s). Church of England was still the single biggest denominational/faith category in 2012 but, at 20%, it was 16% fewer than the number brought up as Anglicans, and much reduced from the 40% recorded when the question was first put in 1983.
Among those with a current religion and/or brought up in one, weekly attendance at religious services (excluding rites of passage) now runs at 12%, with a further 8% claiming to worship at least monthly and another 14% at least once a year. By contrast, 58% worship never or practically never.
Asked whether they had ever discussed with anyone their wishes in six areas should they not have long to live, 51% said in 2012 they had discussed nothing, while 11% had discussed their spiritual and religious needs (12% in 2009). Women (15%) are more likely than men (9%) to have discussed their spiritual and religious needs, and similarly older than younger age groups, and higher than lower social grades.

Additionally, responses to all questions in the survey can be quickly analysed by religion, through the BSA Information System website at http://www.britsocat.com (prior registration is required). This facility is especially relevant for the 2012 BSA which includes numerous questions concerning morality and social values, replicated from earlier BSA studies. A sampler of what can be discovered via such analysis is included in the chapter in the book on personal relationships (focusing especially on changing attitudes to marriage, homosexuality, and abortion over three decades) by Park and Rebecca Rhead, from which the following statistics for 2012 have been extracted:

All religious groups apart from non-Christians have become more accepting of premarital sex over the past three decades, the number of Anglicans and Catholics describing it as always or mostly wrong now being reduced to one in ten (much the same as in the population as a whole), compared with almost one in three in 1983. Most tolerant of all are people of no religion, only 2% of whom in 2012 considered premarital sex to be wrong (11% in 1983). Frequency of attending religious services also has an impact; whereas 71% of non-attenders said in 2012 that premarital sex is not at all wrong, this was true of only 23% of weekly attenders at worship.
Despite a similar process of liberalization of attitudes over time, people of faith are still appreciably more disapproving of homosexuality than society at large. Indeed, the gap between the religious and non-religious on this issue is now far wider than in the past. Overall, 28% of Britons in 2012 deemed sexual relations between two adults of the same sex to be always or mostly wrong, but the proportion fell to 16% among the irreligious and climbed to 61% of non-Christians (with 35% for Catholics and 40% for Anglicans).
Religion continues to be closely associated with attitudes to abortion. Catholics are the least accepting, with only 39% supporting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy if she wishes to, against 56% of Anglicans. Those professing no religion are most supportive of all (73%, compared with 62% of all Britons). However, acceptance of abortion has increased among all faith communities since 1983; in the case of Anglicans, for example, just 34% endorsed abortion in these circumstances thirty years ago.

Liberalization of opinions on matters of personal relationships since BSA commenced in 1983 is substantially accounted for by generational differences, ‘intolerance’ progressively dying out as more illiberal older age cohorts are replaced by more liberal younger ones. The fact that the same pattern has occurred with religious affiliation might suggest that social liberalism is causally linked with increased secularization. Nevertheless, since even Christians have displayed greater social liberalism over three decades, the relationship is inevitably rather more complex than that.

This complexity is more fully explored in another chapter in the book, on social class by Anthony Heath, Mike Savage and Nicki Senior, which deploys multivariate analysis to study interactions, in 1984 and 2012, between thirteen measures of ‘social cleavage’ (including religion and attendance at a place of worship) on the one hand and five indicators of attitudes to welfare and four of social liberalism on the other. On social liberalism the authors conclude (p. 184):

‘By 2012 … measures of social class have … declined in importance, and there are much closer associations between liberal attitudes and the other social cleavages, notably religion, attendance at a place of worship, age and ethnicity. In 2012, as in 1984, religion and attendance at a place of worship have the strongest associations of all … This is especially the case with attitudes towards premarital sex (and related issues like ease of divorce). The relationship between liberal attitudes and religiosity has, if anything, got stronger over time, especially with respect to the acceptability of same-sex relationships. But educational level also remains a powerful predictor of liberal attitudes.’

The dataset for the 2012 BSA will eventually be available through the UK Data Service (although it is not yet).

Posted in Historical studies, Survey news | Tagged abortion, Alison Park, Anthony Heath, British Social Attitudes Survey, Caroline Bryson, church attendance, dying, Elizabeth Clery, homosexuality, John Curtice, Mike Savage, Miranda Phillips, NatCen, Nicki Senior, personal relationships, premarital sex, Rebecca Rhead, religion of upbringing, Religious Affiliation, spiritual needs | 3 Comments

Church Growth Debated and Other News

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Clive D. Field

An academic debate about church growth in Britain provides our lead story today, but we also find space for four new sources of religious statistics.

Church growth in Britain

Last year, in our post of 9 June 2012, BRIN featured Church Growth in Britain, 1980 to the Present, a collection of case studies edited by David Goodhew and published by Ashgate. Our notice of the book, which took (relatively mild) exception to Goodhew’s ‘loose talk of resacralization’, fairly limited understanding of the British religious historical context, and oversights of some key primary sources, prompted a detailed response by Goodhew on the BRIN website on 6 July 2012. This exchange can still be viewed at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/church-growth-in-britain-since-1980/

Now, the arch-proponent of the secularization thesis, Steve Bruce, has provided an extended review of the collection, taking Goodhew and several of his contributors to task in the process. His ‘Secularization and Church Growth in the United Kingdom’ will appear in the next issue (Vol. 5, No. 3, 2013) of Journal of Religion in Europe. In particular, Bruce offers a robust defence of the ‘secularization paradigm’ and critiques the ‘church growth optimists’ for their caricature of social science and the weakness of their empirical evidence and interpretations. Bruce contends that pockets of church growth, as documented by Goodhew and his colleagues, within a picture of overall decline would only refute the secularization thesis if the latter required that declining interest in Churches be universal, even, and rapid, which the thesis does not stipulate.

The same journal issue will contain Goodhew’s ‘Church Growth in Britain: A Response to Steve Bruce’, reprising much of the ground covered in the 2012 book but elaborating certain of the examples. While acknowledging the existence of significant church decline in modern and contemporary Britain (indeed, Goodhew claims – overclaims, to my mind – that the book states ‘the secularisation thesis (explicit and implicit) is true – but it is not the whole truth’), Goodhew argues that there has also been ‘significant church growth – notably in London, amongst black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities, and amongst new churches.’ Goodhew’s claims for London have recently found independent validation in the results of the London Church Census, 2012, undertaken by Peter Brierley, which appeared too late for Goodhew to take into account in his article. Neither has he been able to accommodate the latest findings about York, a case study in the collection, by Robin Gill (in chapter 6 of his Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Volume 2). The final substantive section of the article develops Goodhew’s previous caveats about national ‘net’ figures of religious change, albeit I found this particular discussion somewhat less than clear-cut.

Journal of Religion in Europe gives Bruce the last say in his ‘Further Thoughts on Church Growth and Secularization’. In this Bruce stands by his original conclusion that Goodhew ‘is quite happy for his purpose to be misunderstood in a way that falsely cheers the churches’. Bruce further counsels against the dangers of generalizing from case studies while accepting that there is much value in such studies of growing congregations. He also cites the BRIN post about Goodhew’s book as additional evidence of concerns about it.

The debate between Bruce and Goodhew is conducted in a perfectly civilized manner. However, it does not break significantly new ground, certainly not in the presentation of quantitative data. As is so often the case in academic controversy, the gap between the two parties is not as wide as it seems on the surface, in that both Bruce and Goodhew accept the coexistence of church growth and decline. The difference is essentially about the relative scale of each, how this ‘net’ picture should be interpreted and explained, and what its implications are for the long-term future of institutional religion in Britain. As Bruce has indicated in an email to me, his overriding problem with Goodhew’s book is that ‘the title, the introduction and the publisher’s spin all misrepresent what Goodhew’s contributors show: that in an overall context of decline there is also re-organization with some new outlets being created and some old ones attracting members from declining congregations’. From this perspective, I continue to side more with Bruce than Goodhew.

Community census

The UK’s religious organizations are estimated to employ 61,000 workers, with a yearly wage bill (including indirect costs) of £980 million, and to contribute £1 billion annually to the supply chain for goods and services. This is according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which prepared The Community Census on behalf of Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG) between March and May 2013, the summary report being published by EIG on 17 July 2013. In addition to CEBR’s economic impact assessment of community organizations (comprising charities and voluntary groups, heritage buildings and sites, as well as religious bodies), EIG commissioned Opinium Research to survey public attitudes to them, 2,001 UK adults being interviewed online in April. This poll revealed that a majority (57% overall, 51% of men and 62% of women) believes that their local religious organizations form an important aspect of the community, even though 59% say they personally never attend or support them (with 11% claiming to attend at least once a week and 16% at least once a month). Somewhat implausibly, the youngest age cohort (18-34 years) claims to attend most assiduously on a monthly basis, followed by the over-55s, and – finally – those aged 35-54, while 8% of the 18-34s anticipate increasing their attendance at religious organizations over the next year (against 3% nationally). The Community Census, which EIG intends to be the first in a regular series, can be found at:

http://www.ecclesiastical.com/Images/Ecclesiastical_Community_Census_Report_2013.pdf

Community life

People who actively practice a religion are more likely to volunteer, either formally or informally, and donate to charity than those who profess no religion or who have a religion but do not practice it. For example, among the religious practitioners, 40% undertake formal volunteering on a regular basis (at least once a month), compared with only 25% of the nones and non-practitioners of religion. Those who actively practice their religion are also more likely to volunteer formally (as part of a group) than informally (in an individual capacity). Much of this formal volunteering and charitable giving benefits religious organizations. The findings come from the first Community Life Survey, undertaken by TNS BMRB on behalf of the Cabinet Office as a successor to the discontinued Citizenship Survey. Initial results, based on face-to-face interviews with 6,915 adults aged 16 and over in England between August 2012 and April 2013, were published on 18 July 2013 at:

http://communitylife.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/explore-the-data.html

A Level results, June 2013

At 23,354, the number of students in the UK (excluding Scotland) sitting A Level Religious Studies (RS) in June 2013 was 1.4% more than in the previous year, notwithstanding a decrease of 1.3% in entries for all A Level subjects. It was also virtually twice the figure of 12,671 of ten years before (June 2003). The increase in RS candidates for 2013 over 2012 was somewhat greater among females (1.7%) than males (0.6%), and RS remains a disproportionately feminine choice at A Level, with 68.5% of its students being female this summer, against 54.2% for all subjects. The rise in RS entries was lower in England (1.2%) than in Northern Ireland (4.3%), while Wales actually recorded a decline of 0.7%. The pass rate for A Level RS was 98.8% this year, 0.2% more than in 2012 and 0.7% greater than the average for all subjects. The proportion achieving A* or A grades in RS was unchanged from 2012, at 25.5%, somewhat below the mean for all subjects (26.3%), females (26.6%) being more likely than males (23.2%) to achieve A* or A grades for A Level RS. The much larger number sitting AS Level RS (34,679) also grew between June 2012 and June 2013, by 3.0% in the UK, even though AS entries as a whole were down by 0.4%. For the Joint Council for Qualifications’ full analysis of the June 2013 A, AS, and AEA Level results, published on 15 August 2013, go to:

http://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels/a-as-and-aea-results-summer-2013

Anglican cathedral statistics

Cathedral Statistics, 2012, published on 12 August 2013, documents ongoing growth in several aspects of the work of the Church of England’s 42 Cathedrals and the Royal Peculiar of Westminster Abbey. In particular, all week service attendances (Sunday and mid-week combined) at the cathedrals were 3.2% higher in 2012 than 2011 and 35.1% above the 2002 level (mostly as a result of mid-week improvement). Congregations during Holy Week were 1.9% up in 2012 over 2011 and on Easter Day by 14.2%, with the Easter Day figure 10.5% greater than in 2002. Attendances during Advent, by contrast, were down by 3.9% in 2012 against 2011 and on Christmas Day by 9.2%, largely, it seems, because 25 December fell on a Sunday in 2011 but on a Tuesday in 2012. However, both Advent and Christmas attendance statistics were still higher in 2012 than in 2002, by 4.7% and 10.0% respectively, albeit communicants, both at Christmas and Easter, showed no real expansion over the decade. At 9.7 million, visitors were 1.6% more than in 2011, although much reduced from 11.1 million in 2002; to these totals must be added visitors to Westminster Abbey (1.8 million in 2012). The number of volunteers, supporting these visitors, rose by 7.1% between 2011 and 2012 and by 30.5% from 2002.

As in previous years, the report does not attempt to relate the generally improved performance of cathedrals to the wider quantitative environment of the Church of England. To quote the leader in the current issue (16 August 2013, p. 10) of the Church Times: ‘Growth [in cathedrals] … has to be seen in the context of decline in parishes. How many in the cathedral’s community have arrived there disillusioned with parish life? While a cathedral booms, churchwardens and other volunteers not far away will be stretched.’ The newspaper’s separate news coverage of the data (p. 3) highlights strengthening links between cathedrals and their local communities as an explanation for the former’s successes, and the question posed in the open-to-all poll on the Church Times website is ‘Are cathedrals good models for parish churches?’ Cathedral Statistics, 2012 is at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1820547/2012cathedralstatistics.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged A Levels, Cabinet Office, Cathedrals, Centre for Economics and Business Research, charitable giving, church attendance, church growth, Church of England, Community Census, Community Life Survey, David Goodhew, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, Joint Council for Qualifications, Journal of Religion in Europe, Opinium Research, religious organizations, religious studies, secularization, Steve Bruce, TNS-BMRB, volunteering | Leave a comment

Same-Sex Marriage and Other News

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Same-sex marriage heads BRIN’s list of six news stories today, with a fresh poll published about religious attitudes to it, just as the necessary legislation for England and Wales was clearing its final Parliamentary hurdles.

Same-sex marriage

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is firmly on course to enter the English and Welsh statute books, following completion of its final stages in the House of Lords (Third Reading) on Monday (15 July 2013) and House of Commons (‘Ping-Pong’, consideration of House of Lords amendments) yesterday evening (16 July). Royal Assent is expected later this week, with the first same-sex marriages taking place in summer 2014.

On the same day as the House of Lords gave the Bill an unopposed Third Reading, YouGov published its latest online poll on same-sex marriage, undertaken on behalf of Centreground Political Communications on 2-3 July 2013 among 1,923 Britons aged 18 and over. It revealed that 54% of adults support changing the law to allow same-sex couples to marry, with 36% opposed, and 10% undecided. This is the eighth occasion on which YouGov has posed the question since December 2012, just prior to the Bill’s introduction into the House of Commons. Each of these polls has produced a majority for change, ranging from 52% to 55%.

Right to the last, however, people of faith continue to resist same-sex marriage, albeit by a narrow margin. In the Centreground survey 44% of those regarding themselves as belonging to a particular religion supported same-sex marriage, 48% were against, with 9% uncertain. By contrast, 69% of the 42% of respondents who had no religion backed same-sex marriage, and just 20% were opposed. It will be interesting to see whether, in the face of defeat of the majority faith line on same-sex marriage in the courts of Parliament and public opinion, religious communities will now rethink their positions. The YouGov table is at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2wp76zkopq/YG-Archive-Centre-Ground-results-030713-same-sex%20marriage.pdf

BRIN’s post of 4 February 2013, reviewing the religious aspects of same-sex marriage, as reflected in opinion polls, on the eve of the House of Commons Second Reading debate on the Bill, is still online at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/marriage-same-sex-couples-bill/

Interviewed by YouGov, a plurality of the British public has thought the Church of England wrong to oppose same-sex marriage, as shown below:

	22-23/11/12	14-15/3/13	27-28/3/13
	(%)	(%)	(%)
Right	38	39	37
Wrong	48	48	49
Don’t know	13	14	13
N	1,812	1,918	1,918

Alternative Queen’s Speech

Last month (June 2013) a group of backbench Conservative MPs tabled a raft of 40 Bills intended as an Alternative Queen’s Speech, comprising measures to ‘recapture the common ground, where most views are’. Pollster Lord Ashcroft decided to put these proposals to the test and commissioned Populus to gauge public reaction to them. Online interviews were conducted with 2,036 adult Britons on 28-30 June 2013, the sample being split into two, one half (sub-sample A) being asked about each Bill topic introduced as ‘ideas that some people have suggested ought to become law’, the other half (sub-sample B) informed that they were suggestions ‘various Conservative MPs have said they would like to see become law’. Results were published by Ashcroft on 16 July at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Alternative-Queens-Speech-poll-Full-tables.pdf

One of the proposals was for a Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it illegal to wear face coverings in public, including the burka, thereby implicitly targeting Muslims. This was supported by 59% of sub-sample A and 61% of sub-sample B, a similar level to other polls on the subject (especially a clutch of them in 2010), and opposed by 22% and 20% respectively. Support peaked at 73% of over-65s in A (79% in B), 70% of Conservatives (75%), and 90% of UKIP voters (76%). Opposition was especially to be found among the 18-24s (42% in A) and Liberal Democrats (35% in A).

Another measure in the Alternative Queen’s Speech was the Charitable Status for Religious Institutions Bill, which would provide for a presumption that such institutions meet the public benefit test for charitable status (following a recent high-profile case involving the Charity Commission and Exclusive Brethren), although the actual question put by Populus was subtly different, ‘presuming that churches deserve charity status’. A plurality (39%) in both sub-samples was undecided about this matter, with 37% in agreement with the purposes of the Bill in A and 36% in B, and 24% and 25% respectively against. Most in favour in sub-sample A were over-65s (42%), Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (43% each), and Scots and UKIP voters (44% each). Conservative support stood at 45% in sub-sample B and UKIP at 56%. BRIN is not aware of a directly comparable question having been asked before.

Church of England social action survey

The flow of reports seeking to document the contribution of faith communities to social capital shows no sign of drying up. The latest was published on 10 July 2013 by think-tank ResPublica in association with Resurgo Social Ventures, and on behalf of the Church of England: James Noyes and Phillip Blond, Holistic Mission: Social Action and the Church of England. It is available to download from:

http://www.respublica.org.uk/documents/mfp_ResPublica%20-%20Holistic%20Mission%20-%20FULL%20REPORT%20-%2010July2013.pdf

The report is underpinned by quantitative data obtained by Research by Design (RBD), questionnaires being completed by 589 adults who attended Sunday worship at 17 Anglican churches (16 in England, 1 in Scotland) on 24 February 2013. The overwhelming majority of respondents were aged 45 and over (88%) and white (96%), broadly in line with the Church of England’s diversity audit of 2007. There is a separate report by Dave Ruston of RBD on its survey, including the full text of the questionnaire, at:

http://www.researchbydesign.co.uk/cofe/report/test.pdf

Levels of social action were found to be higher among churchgoers than the general public (data for the latter being taken from the Citizenship Survey, 2009-10), albeit the difference may be explained in part by the higher age profile of worshippers. Thus, 79% of church congregations had engaged in formal social action (organized through voluntary groups) during the previous 12 months compared with 40% of the public; informal social action was recorded by 90% and 54% respectively. The commonest manifestations of formal social action were promoting the church (66%) and volunteering for Christian charities (60%). The main examples of informal social action were keeping in touch with someone who has difficulty getting out (75%), giving advice (61%), and looking after a property or a pet for someone who is away (55%). Although most churchgoers said their faith motivated their social activism, most also agreed that they were comfortable helping folk who have different values or religious beliefs to their own. Notwithstanding their social roles, churchgoers were divided about David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, 37% feeling part of it, 30% not, and 33% failing to understand it.

Faith in Research conference

The Church of England is making available online the presentations given at its latest annual Faith in Research conference, held on 20 June 2013. Among those so far available, BRIN readers will especially value the Church of England Strategy and Development Unit’s ‘Church Growth Research Programme: An Update on Progress at the 12-Month Stage’; and Linda Woodhead’s keynote ‘The Church of England: A Changing Church in a Changing Culture’, which explores the conundrum of ‘a national church out of step with its nation’. Woodhead draws upon the findings of two online YouGov polls concerning moral issues which she commissioned, in January and June 2013. BRIN has already documented the first of these polls through its coverage of this year’s Westminster Faith Debates; we will feature the second survey in detail as soon as the data tables become available. See also Ruth Gledhill’s article in The Times for 5 July 2013, which quotes Woodhead at length. The Faith in Research presentations can be downloaded at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-2013.aspx

Sixty years on

In his latest monthly column for the Church of England Newspaper (‘Sixty Years’, 14 July 2013, p. 15), Peter Brierley tries to summarize (from actual data and ‘reasonable estimates’) the religious changes which have occurred in the UK since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He calculates that: a) church membership has fallen from 19% of the population in 1953 to 8% today; b) average Sunday congregations have declined from 14% of the population in 1973 to 6% today; c) the number of churches has fluctuated within the range of 50,000-55,000 during the Queen’s reign; and d) ministers have decreased from 42,000 in 1953 to 37,000 today. Two charts show members, churches, and ministers for each tenth year between 1953 and 2013.

British Institute of Public Opinion

Sample surveys are a vital source of data on religious topics, and it was Henry Durant’s British Institute of Public Opinion (BIPO) – later Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited – which brought them to the fore. Although Durant did not conduct a full-scale survey on religion until 1957, and only asked about religious affiliation intermittently (for the first time in 1943), the BRIN source database reveals how indebted we are to BIPO/Gallup for shining a light on popular religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in Britain. Relatively little has been written about BIPO’s history and methods, so – even though it does not focus on religion (Durant himself is said to have believed that ‘religion was no longer an important factor shaping public opinion’) – BRIN readers will probably still be interested in Mark Roodhouse, ‘“Fish-and-Chip Intelligence”: Henry Durant and the British Institute of Public Opinion, 1936-63’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2013, pp. 224-48. The author’s conclusions are fairly damning: ‘The sample survey was not a precision tool for “taking the pulse of democracy”. It contained irredeemable flaws that homogenized the private opinions of a skewed cross-section of British society, while commercial pressures forced Durant to make trade-offs between cost and quality, and clients’ needs and best survey practice.’ This judgment seems rather harsh and overstated, for many of the BIPO problems which Roodhouse describes (including dependence on quota sampling and part-time interviewers) were characteristic of the early days of opinion polling and market research both in Britain and the United States.

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged Alternative Queen's Speech, Big Society, British Institute of Public Opinion, Burka, Centreground Political Communications, charitable status, church attendance, church growth, church membership, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Conservative MPs, Dave Ruston, face coverings, Faith in Research, Gallup Poll, Henry Durant, Islamophobia, James Noyes, legislation, Linda Woodhead, Lord Ashcroft, Mark Roodhouse, Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, ministers, Muslims, opinion polls, Peter Brierley, Phillip Blond, Populus, religious institutions, Research by Design, ResPublica, Resurgo Social Ventures, same-sex marriage, social action, Social Capital, Twentieth Century British History, volunteering, YouGov | Leave a comment

Chaplaincy ‘Wars’ and Other News

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Clive D. Field

It is not an unusual occurrence for religious statistics to be debated and contested, but those relating to hospital chaplaincy seem to be especially prone to feature in public rows. Two competing pictures of what is happening to the number of chaplains lead today’s post, followed by the usual miscellany of seven other news stories.

Hospital chaplaincy

Two pieces of research into chaplaincy provision in NHS hospitals in England have produced seemingly conflicting results. On 27 June 2013 BBC Local Radio announced that the Freedom of Information (FOI) request which it had submitted to 163 acute hospital trusts (and to which 98% responded) had found that 39% had cut back on the chaplains (or full-time equivalents) they employed during the past five years (2009-13), against a backdrop of economies in the NHS. And 47% of trusts had reduced the number of hours chaplains were on duty, the lost hours amounting to 1,380 (or 8% of the total), although another 25% had increased hours. In the 114 trusts where chaplains had left in the past five years, their posts had not been replaced in 36% of cases while 46% of trusts had refilled them but on a lower pay band or shorter hours. BBC press releases on the study (the third including a link to an Excel file containing the data for each trust) are at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23011620 and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/lr-nhs-chaplain.html and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22990153

However, the National Secular Society (NSS), which has long campaigned against publicly-funded NHS chaplains, reported in Newsline (its weekly ezine) on 28 June that its own still incomplete research, again via FOI, among all 230 English health trusts (acute and non-acute) appeared to suggest that ‘since 2009 the number of chaplains has remained largely the same’, notwithstanding serious losses in NHS nursing posts over the same timescale. According to the NSS, 485 full-time equivalent hospital chaplains are employed by the 85% of trusts which have replied to date, compared to 546 in the completed NSS survey undertaken in 2009. The Newsline article, including a link to data from individual trusts which have responded thus far, is at:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/newsline-28-june-2013.pdf

Mappiness is …

Meditating and engaging in religious activities are the thirteenth most likely source (of forty) to make us feel happier, according to a ‘league table’ published in a feature article by Kathryn Cooper in The Sunday Times for 30 June 2013 (main section, p. 12, behind a paywall), and based on the ‘Mappiness’ research project at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mappiness is an app for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices, which 56,900 UK users (presumably, disproportionately young) have downloaded since August 2010 as a tool for measuring their momentary well-being (in contrast to most research into well-being, which relies on recall of recent or past experiences). Each self-selecting participant receives a randomly-timed ‘ding’ once or more each day asking them to complete a short survey of well-being, including a note of their current activity and whereabouts, within one hour of the ‘ding’. Unsurprisingly, intimacy/making love topped the index, increasing happiness levels by 14.2%, while being sick in bed came bottom, depressing happiness by 20.4%. Meditating/religious activities improved perceptions of happiness by an average 4.9%, not far behind drinking alcohol, which was in eleventh position (with a positive score of 5.7%). More information about Mappiness is at:

http://www.mappiness.org.uk/

Short-term trends in religious affiliation

In our post of 22 June 2013 we included a news item about the ‘Making Sense of the Census’ study day and of Clive Field’s presentation there about changing patterns of religious affiliation. Some use was made in this presentation of data obtained by Populus (including in its polls for Lord Ashcroft) in response to the question ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ We can now present (below) the findings (as percentages) from these online Populus surveys of adult Britons aged 18 and over, aggregated into six-monthly periods from January 2011 to June 2013. No strong short-term trends emerge from the table, which is perhaps unsurprising, since there is always a degree of sampling error and other variations arising from such polls (not least with regard to non-Christian faiths). Nevertheless, the broad picture is clear. On this particular question-wording, just over half of adults profess to be Christians and about one-third claim to have no religion.

	1-6/11	7-12/11	1-6/12	7-11/12	1-6/13
Christian	56.6	55.7	56.4	54.9	55.4
Muslim	2.3	1.7	2.2	1.9	2.4
Hindu	1.3	1.0	1.0	0.8	0.9
Jew	1.0	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.7
Sikh	0.2	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.3
Buddhist	0.7	0.6	0.8	0.7	0.7
Other	2.4	2.5	2.5	2.2	2.1
No religion	32.8	35.4	33.6	36.1	35.3
Refused	2.8	2.1	2.4	2.2	2.3
N	23,454	21,097	19,339	49,147	38,260

Making sense of the census

Abby Day and Lois Lee have now prepared a summary report of the study day on ‘Making Sense of the Census’, hosted by the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group (SocRel) on 18 June 2013, which will be found at:

http://socrel.org.uk/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Day-Abby-and-Lois-Lee-2013-Making-Sense-of-the-Census-Report-FINAL-AD-LL.pdf

Black majority churches

The London Borough of Southwark is reputed to have been the home of the country’s first Black Majority Church (BMC), in 1906. It is therefore appropriate that the borough should have been the subject of a two-year study (from June 2011 to June 2013) of the so-called ‘new’ BMCs which have developed in Britain since the 1950s. In Southwark’s case, the phenomenon has been associated with people of African, and particularly West African, origin. Indeed, according to Andrew Rogers of the University of Roehampton, who was principal investigator for the project and wrote the final report on it which was published on 20 June 2013, ‘Southwark is the African capital of the UK’. It is home to at least 240 and possibly as many as 300 new BMCs, disproportionately in the north of the borough, and with no fewer than 25 to be found on the Old Kent Road alone, which is just a mile and a half long. Collectively, these new BMCs attract 24,000 congregants on a Sunday, more than 8% of the population, and perhaps representing ‘the greatest concentration of African Christianity in the world, outside of Africa’. Rogers and his team (a partnership drawn from the University, Southwark for Jesus, and Churches Together in South London) have deployed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to examine these new BMCs, from the perspective of demographics, ecclesiology, ethnicity and culture, community engagement, ecumenical matters, and premises and planning. The report – Being Built Together: A Story of New Black Majority Churches in the London Borough of Southwark – includes 22 tables and 9 figures. It can be found at:

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/uploadedFiles/Page_Content/Courses/Humanities/Being_Built_Together/Being%20Built%20Together(SB)%20web%20(D).pdf

Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland

There was a 24% decrease in 2012-13 (over 2011-12) in charges reported with a religious aggravation under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, according to Amy Goulding and Ben Cavanagh, Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2012-13, which was published by Scottish Government Social Research on 14 June 2013. Even if we factor in the 75 further charges for religious hatred brought under Section 1 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, which came into force on 1 March 2012, there was still a decline of 15% (from 901 to 762). The fall was particularly to be found in charges referring to Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, down respectively by 44% and 24%, but there were increases in charges where conduct was derogatory towards Islam (from 19 in 2011-12 to 80 in 2012-13) and Judaism (from 14 to 27). A single incident in Glasgow accounted for 57 of the anti-Islam charges. Overall, 41% of religiously aggravated charges were in Glasgow. Of all the accused, 91% were men, 91% were aged 16-50, and 49% were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the offence. The main charges brought were threatening or abusive behaviour (56%) and breach of the peace (20%). Full details at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0042/00424865.pdf

Global Methodist statistics

David Jeremy provides an introduction to the historical statistics of world Methodism (including the UK) in his ‘Church Statistics and the Growth of Global Methodism: Some Preliminary Descriptive Statistics’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, edited by William Gibson, Peter Forsaith, and Martin Wellings (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 87-107). His account is drawn from several international (commencing with the Ecumenical Methodist Conference of 1881) and national sources which, not altogether unexpectedly, are sometimes difficult to reconcile with each other. This is even true of membership, which is the most commonly-cited measure of Methodist belonging. The data points which specifically refer to the UK and other individual countries are for 1880, 1910, 1955, and 2006, although global figures are also given for several further years. Membership/population density in the UK declined from 2.5% in 1880 to 2.4% in 1910 to 1.6% in 1955 to 0.5% in 2006. This decrease is symptomatic of a wider shift in global Methodism from developed to developing countries. The essay does not particularly enhance accessibility or understanding of UK Methodist statistics but it does conveniently locate them in a broader geographical context.

Inter-war religion

The timing of secularization in Britain remains a contested topic among historians and sociologists, some regarding it largely as a post-Second World War phenomenon (with the 1960s a critical decade), others viewing it as a more gradual process commencing in the Victorian era. The inter-war years (1918-39) have been little studied in this context, notwithstanding a coincidence of social, economic, and political circumstances which might have been expected to trigger religious change. In ‘Gradualist or Revolutionary Secularization? A Case Study of Religious Belonging in Inter-War Britain, 1918-1939’, Church History and Religious Culture, Vol. 93, No. 1, 2013, pp. 57-93, Clive Field reviews the extent of religious belonging during this period, with reference to quantitative evidence, from two perspectives: churchgoing, and church membership and affiliation. Trends in church attendance are documented, including the demographic variables which shaped it and the effect of innovations such as Sunday cinema and Sunday radio broadcasts of religious services. A conjectural religious profile of the adult population of Britain, c. 1939 reveals that, while, relative to population, there was only marginal growth in professed irreligion and non-Christian faiths since c. 1914, there was accelerated decline in religious worship (notably in terms of regularity) and active affiliation to Protestant denominations. This shift to nominalism particularly impacted the historic Free Churches (the phenomenon had long existed in the Church of England). Examination of these two religious indicators for the inter-war years thus lends further support to the view that secularization in Britain is best seen as a progressive and protracted process. In accordance with the policy of the publisher, Brill, the post-print version of the article has been made available on the author’s personal website at:

http://clivedfield.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/interwar-religion-chrc-2013-published.pdf

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Abby Day, Amy Goulding, Andrew Rogers, BBC Local Radio, Ben Cavanagh, black majority churches, BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group, census of population, church attendance, Church History and Religious Culture, church membership, Churches Together in South London, Clive Field, Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, David Jeremy, England, Freedom of Information, happiness, hospital chaplains, inter-war period, Kathryn Cooper, Lois Lee, London, London School of Economics, Mappiness, meditation, Methodism, National Health Service, National Secular Society, Populus, religious activities, Religious Affiliation, religious hatred, religiously aggravated offending, Scotland, SocRel, Southwark, Southwark for Jesus, Sunday Times, University of Roehampton, well-being | Leave a comment

Religious Marriages and Other News

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven new sources of British religious statistics feature in today’s bulletin, leading with the latest set of official annual figures on the mode of solemnization of marriages in England and Wales.

Marriages (England and Wales), 2011

The number of marriages solemnized in religious ceremonies in England and Wales dropped by 6% between 2010 and 2011, notwithstanding that the overall total of marriages increased by 2% over the same period. The decline affected all denominations and faiths, including the Church of England and Church in Wales, which conducted 7% fewer weddings in 2011 than 2010, despite the former’s push over recent years to stimulate public interest in getting married in church. The fall in religious marriages since 2001 has been 18%, in contrast to all marriages which have contracted by just one-half a percentage point. The proportion of religious marriages to the total has slumped from 99% in 1838 to 84% in 1901 to 67% in 1966 to 30% in 2011, 1976 being the year when civil ceremonies overtook religious ones.

Perhaps reflecting the struggles which many Christian denominations have had to come to terms with divorce, both partners in religious marriages continue to be more likely to be entering their first marriage than do their counterparts at civil ceremonies (82% against 60% in 2011, albeit the former figure has dipped from 95% in the late 1960s as divorce has spread even among people of faith). Couples undergoing a civil marriage are also 10% more likely to be cohabiting before marriage than those marrying in a place of worship; however, the latter figure had climbed to 78% in 2011 (compared with 41% in 1994). So, whatever their traditional teaching against it, the Churches have clearly had to accommodate themselves to a society in which living together (i.e. sex) before marriage is the norm. Were they not to turn a blind eye to it, religious marriages would simply implode.

The foregoing data (still provisional for 2011) are taken from a bulletin issued by the Office for National Statistics today (26 June 2013) and from associated reference tables, all of which may be accessed at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/marriages-in-england-and-wales–provisional-/2011/index.html

Global threats

Given a list of eight possible international concerns, 55% of Britons selected Islamic extremist groups as a major threat to the country, second only to international financial instability (59%), and ahead of global climate change (48%), North Korea’s nuclear programme (45%), Iran’s nuclear programme (42%), political instability in Pakistan (31%), China’s power and influence (29%), and US power and influence (22%). This is according to the latest release of data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with fieldwork undertaken (by Princeton Survey Research Associates International) in 39 countries in Spring 2013 (including Britain, where 1,012 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone between 4 and 27 March 2013). Nevertheless, Islamic extremist groups were even more likely to be categorized as a major threat in several other leading developed nations: Italy (74%), France (71%), Spain (62%), Germany (60%), Japan (57%), and the US (56%). In Britain an additional 33% considered Islamic extremist groups to be a minor threat and only 6% no threat at all. Topline tables were published on 24 June 2013 at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/06/Pew-Research-Center-Global-Attitudes-Project-Global-Threats-Report-FINAL-June-24-20131.pdf

Origins of life

The creationist view of the origin and development of life on earth is held by only a minority of UK citizens, according to Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 2, undertaken by Ipsos MORI through face-to-face interviews with 1,396 adults and 460 young people aged 14-18 between 21 May and 22 October 2012, but not published until 17 May 2013. Just 23% of adults and 21% of young people agreed that ‘humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form’, rising to 28% of over-65s, 27% of women, and 27% of those with no educational qualifications. A further 22% of adults and 18% of young people thought that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time, in a process guided by God’. But the biggest number in both groups, 50% of adults and 57% of young people, subscribed to the theory that ‘humans and other living things evolved over time as a result of natural selection, in which God played no part’. The proportion peaked (68%) among those scoring most highly on a quiz about scientific knowledge which was a component of the research. A wide range of documentation about the survey, including data in Excel format (T146 is the relevant table for this question) and the main report (with analysis on pp. 32-3), is available at:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Reports/Public-engagement/WTX058859.htm

These results are broadly consistent with those obtained in Wellcome Trust Monitor, Wave 1, conducted in 2009. They also accord with evidence from other pollsters, although variations in question-wording and methodology make strict comparisons difficult. This evidence has been summarized thus by Clive Field in an, as yet, unpublished paper: ‘the creation in Genesis is now widely rejected in favour of evolutionist interpretations. This appears to have been a relatively recent phenomenon. Two-thirds to four-fifths now accept human beings have developed from earlier species of animals, while believers in the so-called young earth creation theory (that God made human beings in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years) fell from 29% in 1995 to below one-fifth in the most recent polls (2006-12). Excluding a fairly significant number of “don’t knows”, majority opinion is unevenly split between theories of Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (the latter still admitting some possible role for God or supernatural planner). Many do not see any inherent contradiction between evolution and Christianity in accounting for the origin of life on earth and thus can believe in both, and there is broad support for all explanations of the origin being taught in schools.’

Funeral hymns

Put on the spot, a plurality (44%) of 2,427 adult Britons did not know what song, hymn or piece of music they would like to be played at their funeral, and a further 11% did not want any music to be played. The remaining 45% nominated a particular song, hymn or piece of music, but none took more than 1% of the vote. The most popular religious or allied items were Abide with Me (the choice of 30 respondents), Jerusalem (28), Amazing Grace (22), How Great Thou Art (21), and The Lord is My Shepherd/Psalm 23 (20). The poll was conducted online by ComRes on behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care on 3-6 May 2013, in advance of Dying Matters Awareness Week (13-19 May), although the full data tables were not published until 12 June at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/Marie_Curie_Gardens_Final_Data_Tables_9_May_2013.pdf

Youth and religion

A YouGov poll of 940 18- to 24-year-olds for The Sun, conducted online on 14-19 June 2013 and published on 24-25 June, confirms the relatively weak hold which religion has over Generation Y, those born in the 1980s and 1990s. A mere 8% profess membership of a church or religious group (compared with 21% who belong to a gym). One-tenth claim to attend religious services once a month or more, with 56% never going and a further 18% less than annually. Only 12% say they are influenced a lot or a fair amount by religious leaders, even less than celebrities (21%), brands (32%), and politicians (38%), and way behind friends (77%) and parents (82%). Just 14% recognize religion as more often the cause of good in the world against 41% who agree that it is mostly the source of evil, the remainder being neutral or uncertain. No more than 25% believe in God, although another 19% accept that there is some kind of spiritual greater power; 38% believe in neither and 18% are undecided. And only 38% identify with a religion, 56% with none. Full data tables (with breaks by gender, age, and education) are available at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jgdvn3vm4b/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-190613-youth-survey.pdf

while commentary on the survey can be found at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/06/24/british-youth-reject-religion/ and

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4981030/yougov-survey-on-britains-young-adults.html

Methodist statistics

The Methodist Church of Great Britain has recently made available its statistics for mission report for the connexional year 2012/13 (representing the position as at October 2012, and based on a 98% response from local churches). Comparing with the year before, the picture which emerges is one of continuing decline on most performance indicators, with significant annual decreases in those with the loosest attachment to the Church, reflected in the figures for the community roll and rites of passage (the fall in membership and attendance was less marked). The following table has been compiled from data available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/ministers-and-office-holders/statistics-for-mission

	2011	2012	% change
Members
All	221,879	219,359	-1.1
New	3,183	2,903	-8.8
Died	6,889	6,938	+0.7
Ceased to meet	4,734	4,052	-14.4
Community roll	513,671	453,990	-11.6
Attendances
All age weekly average: Sunday	202,573	197,592	-2.5
All age weekly average: midweek	33,035	32,814	-0.7
Adult weekly average	199,626	196,365	-1.6
Children/young people weekly average	33,794	33,736	-0.2
Rites of passage
Baptisms/thanksgivings	11,227	10,505	-6.4
Marriages/blessings	3,710	3,570	-3.8
Funerals	22,327	21,505	-3.7

Psychological type and churchmanship of Anglican clergy

The relationship of psychological type preferences to three forms of self-assigned churchmanship (Anglo-Catholic, Broad Church, evangelical) is explored by Andrew Village in ‘Traditions within the Church of England and Psychological Type: A Study among the Clergy’, Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2013, pp. 22-44. The sample comprised 1,047 Anglican clergy ordained in the United Kingdom (mostly into the Church of England) between 2004 and 2007 who responded to a self-completion postal questionnaire. The majority of clergy were found to prefer introversion over extraversion, but this preference was more marked among Anglo-Catholics than evangelicals. Anglo-Catholics also showed preference for intuition over sensing, while the reverse was true for evangelicals. Clergy of both sexes exhibited an overall preference for feeling over thinking, but this was reversed among evangelicals. These variations could not be wholly explained by differences in the level of conservatism or charismaticism across the traditions, suggesting that they were linked to preferences for different styles of religious expression in worship. In short, Village argues, people gravitate to traditions that match their psychological type, especially in respect of the perceiving function. The analysis is preceded by a fairly extensive literature review of psychological type and religion. The abstract and full-text access options for the article are at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/10.1163/15709256-12341252

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Rites of Passage, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, cause of evil, cause of good, church attendance, church membership, Church of England, churchmanship, clergy, Clive Field, ComRes, Creationism, evolution, funerals, global threats, God, hymns, Ipsos-MORI, Islamic extremist groups, Islamophobia, Journal of Empirical Theology, Marie Curie Cancer Care, marriages, Methodist Church, Office for National Statistics, origins of life, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Princeton Survey Research Associates International, psychological type, Religious Affiliation, religious leaders, rites of passage, The Sun, Wellcome Trust Monitor, YouGov, young people | Leave a comment

London Churchgoing and Other News

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Christianity dominates the latest BRIN post, including the revelation that the Church in London is growing overall in terms of attendance at services, news which will give heart to church growth advocates. However, we also find space for a rare national survey of attitudes of the Sikh community.

London Church Census

Church attendance in Greater London grew by 16% between 2005 and 2012, from 620,000 to 720,000, representing 9% of the capital’s population at the latter date, and thereby bucking the downward trend in most national religious indicators. The number of places of worship in London also rose during these seven years, by 17% from 4,100 to 4,800. Growth was especially to be found among black majority and immigrant churches, which together accounted for 27% of all Christian places of worship in London in 2012 and 24% of churchgoers. Black people were far more likely to attend services than whites (19% against 8%), and in Inner London 48% of worshippers were black.

This reliance upon ethnicity and migration also explains other facts revealed by the census, such as that 14% of all churches use a language other than English or that 52% of attenders are in evangelical churches (reflecting the evangelical proclivities of black Christians). By contrast, many traditional, smaller places of worship (with congregations under 200) are still contracting; they represent 50% of churches but just 22% of churchgoers. Overall, Anglicans are declining and Catholics only just growing. Moreover, the net increase of 100,000 worshippers from 2005 to 2012 disproportionately comprised women (82%), although the female majority in congregations as a whole was much lower (56%). The mean age of attenders was 41 years, ranging from 33 in the Pentecostal and New Churches to 56 for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches.

These are among the initial findings from the London Church Census, undertaken by Brierley Consultancy on 14 October 2012 (an ‘average Sunday’) and sponsored by the London City Mission. They are contained in Peter Brierley, London’s Churches Are Growing! What the London Church Census Reveals (Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2013, 16pp.) and in Brierley’s article in FutureFirst, No. 27, June 2013, pp. 1, 4. Copies of both publications are available (for a charge) from the author by emailing peter@brierleyres.com. A full report on the census will be published as a book in October and more detailed tables will appear in the second volume of UK Church Statistics, due in 2014. Meanwhile, comparative churchgoing data for Greater London in 1979, 1989, 1998, and 2005 are available in the various reports by the Bible Society, MARC Europe, and Christian Research on the English church censuses conducted in those years.

Evangelical church life

Life in the Church?, published on 4 June 2013, is the latest quarterly report from the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals research project, conducted online among a self-selecting panel of evangelical churchgoers in the UK. Respondents to this latest survey, undertaken in February 2013, numbered 1,864, of whom 53% were men and 47% women. They comprised 1,207 existing and 657 new panellists. The Evangelical Alliance describes them as an ‘opportunity sample’ and is careful to avoid any claims that it is ‘statistically representative’, noting, in particular, the serious under-representation of older women, the concentration of respondents in London and the southern half of England, and the disproportionate number of church leaders (34%). The summary report is at:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/church-life-report-may-2013.pdf

while full data can be requested from g.smith@eauk.org

In the available space, we can only pick out a few of the more interesting (to BRIN) results:

89% of panellists attended church weekly (including 20% who worshipped twice each Sunday), with 51% also taking part in prayer groups; among other common involvements for non-leaders were: leading worship/reading scripture or prayers in services (37%), leading a home group or Bible study (34%), taking part in church-linked social action (32%), and working with children or young people (31%)
61% of evangelicals said their church had lots of children attending, 59% that it was predominantly middle class, 47% that it included people from most socio-ethnic groups in the community, 47% that it was good at helping disabled persons, 41% that it had a large number of committed young people attending, 37% that it had more women than men, and 26% that it was predominantly elderly
Respondents were generally satisfied with their experience of church life, 68% describing themselves as very happy with it, and 76% feeling that they were growing spiritually as part of their church and sensing the presence of God when it met; on the other hand, 16% believed there were too many cliques in their church, 15% had often thought about leaving for another place of worship, and 9% reported a lot of conflict and discontent in their church
Church leaders overwhelmingly received positive endorsement from their congregations in terms of their leadership style and commitment; however, 13% considered that their leader was too controlling and domineering, while 7% acknowledged a difficult relationship with their leader
80% of panellists agreed that women should be allowed to preach or teach during public worship and 73% to hold senior leadership positions in the church, yet only 16% of current sole church leaders were female and 36% of leaders in a team
71% of evangelicals expected their own church to grow over the next twenty years (13% dramatically and 58% somewhat), albeit just 47% currently were; but only 41% expected the wider UK Church to grow (against 45% anticipating a decrease, 29% dramatically and 16% somewhat)

Theology of occasional churchgoers

Christmastide seems increasingly to be the season for occasional churchgoers to appear in the pews, and the empirical theological dimensions of this in an Anglican context are explored in a new essay by David Walker (currently Bishop of Dudley but recently designated as the next Bishop of Manchester): ‘How Far is it to Bethlehem? Exploring the Ordinary Theology of Occasional Churchgoers’, Exploring Ordinary Theology: Everyday Christian Believing and the Church, edited by Jeff Astley and Leslie Francis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 137-45.

Walker’s evidence derives from a survey of attenders at two evening carol services in Worcester cathedral in 2009 and one afternoon and one evening carol service in Lichfield cathedral in 2010. Questionnaires were completed by 1,151 attenders, of whom 460 were categorized as occasional churchgoers (attending less than six times a year). They included proportionately more men and younger people than are found among regular Anglican churchgoers. Besides demographics, the survey deployed Likert scales to measure attitudes to the carol service, the Christmas story, Christian belief, moral issues, and public religion.

A selection of findings appears below:

Motivations for attending the carol services included: the music (94%), to be reminded of the Christmas story (75%), to feel close to God (55%), to worship God (55%), and to find the true meaning of Christmas (52%)
There were strong preferences for carol services to be candlelit (78%), to contain traditional rather than modern hymns (76%), and to involve the congregation (75%), while 94% expected the service to be uplifting
Occasional churchgoers engaged more with the mystery than the history of the Christmas story, with assent to some key biblical components of Christmas commanding levels of belief of only around one-half, including 58% in the stable, 57% in the shepherds, 55% in the wise men, and 42% in the Virgin Birth
Although 67% considered themselves Christian and 63% wanted Christianity to have a special place in the country, just 13% believed Christianity to be the only true religion, and 53% argued that Christians should not try to convert people, preferring to put pluralism above dogma – the lowest scores for Christian belief were for statements about the literal truth of scripture

British Sikh Report

British Sikh Report, 2013: An Insight into the British Sikh Community was published on 6 June 2013 and is intended to be the first in a series of annual surveys, with the aspiration of becoming ‘the leading light in respect of statistics for the British Sikh community’. It has been put together by ‘an independent team of Sikh professionals from all walks of life in their twenties and thirties’, including academics, following consultation with a range of Sikh and non-Sikh partners.

The research derives from a self-selecting sample (recruited by snowballing techniques) of 662 Sikhs living in Britain who completed an online, English-language questionnaire. The nature of the methodology will mean that respondents may not necessarily be statistically representative of all British Sikhs. In particular, they appear to be disproportionately male (65%, compared with 51% of all Sikhs in England and Wales at the 2011 census) and with a somewhat lower median age than the norm.

The questions in the 2013 survey spanned eleven topic areas: interest in Sikh culture and heritage; representation of Sikhs in the media; identification with and importance of a caste; attendance at Gurdwara; perceptions of gender equality in the Sikh community; political engagement; identity, including nationality, ethnicity, and family; health and well-being; employment; experience of racism; and provision for older people. The report summarizes the findings in each area and concludes with a set of policy recommendations for each. It can be accessed at:

http://www.britishsikhreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/BSR-2013.pdf

Some of the results challenge stereotypes held about Sikhs. For example, notwithstanding the egalitarian spirit of the Sikh faith, 46% of the interviewees felt that there was no true gender equality in the British Sikh community, with 43% of female Sikhs reporting that they had experienced gender discrimination. Likewise, it transpires that only a minority of Sikhs do not eat meat, 21% being vegetarians and 3% vegans. On the other hand, the Gurdwara remains central to Sikh life, with 71% claiming to visit one at least once a month (39% at least weekly, 32% at least monthly).

One of the most depressing findings is that 75% of Sikhs (79% of men, 66% of women) have experienced racism. Of those who have, 28% recalled an incident during the past six months and 53% one in the past eighteen months. Notwithstanding, 95% of Sikhs take pride in being British or living in Britain (45% to a great extent, 38% to a moderate extent, and 12% slightly).

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Survey news | Tagged 21st Century Evangelicals, British Sikh Report, carol services, Christmas, church attendance, church census, church growth, church life, Church of England, David Walker, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Lichfield Cathedral, London, London City Mission, ordinary theology, Peter Brierley, religious festivals, Sikhism, Worcester Cathedral | Leave a comment

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