Do Aliens Walk the Earth?

Posted on April 10, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Who believes that aliens live among us? Quite a lot of us, apparently, according to a Thomson Reuters News Service poll released on 8 April.

It was conducted by Ipsos, between 4 November 2009 and 13 January 2010, in 22 countries representing three-quarters of the world’s GDP. Interviewing was via the Ipsos online panel of adults aged 18-64, with 1,000+ respondents per country (and 24,077 in aggregate).

Although the poll findings have been picked up on a huge scale by print and broadcast media around the world (as will be evident from a simple Google search), most reports (including those which have appeared in the British print media) are based on a truncated press release, which does not feature the British data.

However, topline results for all 22 countries will be found at:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/One-in-Five-20-Global-Citizens-Believe-That-Alien-Beings-Have-Com-1144745.htm

and

http://www.emediaworld.com/press_release/release_detail.php?id=878510

Overall, in these 22 countries, 20% of adults are convinced that ‘alien beings have come to earth and walk amongst us in our communities disguised as us’. In Britain the figure is 16%, placing us thirteenth in this particular league table of belief.

The top slots are filled by India (45%), China (42%), Japan (29%) and South Korea (27%), the only four Asian countries to be surveyed. Italy (25%) records the highest figure in Europe, with France, Sweden, Belgium and The Netherlands at the foot of the table (on 8 or 9%).

In general, those who believe that aliens walk the earth are most likely to be found amongst men, the under-35s and the higher educated. However, no demographic breaks are as yet available for Britain alone (at least in the public domain).

The 16% of Britons believing that aliens live among us is slightly higher than the 13% found in a YouGov poll for The Sun in July 2008 (when 37% also agreed with the statement that an alien being has visited earth).  

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National Churches Trust Survey [Updated]

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The National Churches Trust (NCT) has recently issued a press release to announce the imminent launch, on 15 April, of a questionnaire-based survey of all 47,000 Christian places of worship in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is intended to provide ‘a national picture of the current status of these buildings, including how they are maintained, funded and managed and how they interact with their communities’.

Each place of worship will be contacted by email in the first instance, wherever possible, and encouraged to complete the survey questionnaire online at http://survey.nationalchurchestrust.org For those who cannot be reached in this way, a paper version of the questionnaire will be sent by post. The questionnaire was piloted with 125 places of worship late in 2009.

The survey, NCT explains, has been designed in close co-operation with heritage organizations and Christian denominations. It is being guided by an advisory working group. The project officer for the survey is Charlotte Walshe, who can be contacted at nationalchurchestrust@surveylab.co.uk

The provisional timetable is for the responses to be collated in July and a report prepared by the end of September.

A news article about the survey in the Church Times for 26 March prompted Revd Ian Hill, statistician turned Anglican clergyman, to write a long letter to the newspaper’s editor. This was published in its issue of 1 April under the heading ‘National Churches Trust survey has flawed basis’. In particular, Mr Hill expressed concerns about non-response bias, with the potential result that the survey ‘may be less helpful than hoped’. Instead of the NCT’s census-style approach, he advocated ‘a properly sampled and stratified statistical survey’.

Andrew Edwards, NCT’s CEO, wrote in reply to Mr Hill, and his letter was published in today’s (9 April) issue of the Church Times under the heading ‘Churches survey: methodology defended’. Mr Edwards argued that the NCT had factored potential non-response bias into its planning from the outset. Having consulted with statisticians and heritage experts, he was confident that the NCT’s approach was robust and that it would ensure that the results will be representative. This will partly be achieved through the application of ‘sample balancing’ to ensure proper weighting of particular groupings of churches. Meanwhile, Mr Edwards urged places of worship to participate in the survey as fully as possible.

NCT, formerly the Historic Churches Preservation Trust (established in 1953), was relaunched in 2007. It is the only national, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and supporting places of worship used by Christian denominations throughout the UK. It promotes the use of these buildings both by their congregations and the wider community.

In a parallel initiative, as part of its Heritage at Risk programme, English Heritage is surveying a representative one-tenth of the 14,500 listed places of worship in England (85% of which are Anglican) to find out how many are at serious risk of decay. It will announce its findings on 30 June.

[Note: this post updates and replaces our original post on the same subject, dated 31 March 2010]

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Religious Easter

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

It is a little after the event, but there does appear to have been one opinion poll this Easter which took the pulse of religiosity. It was conducted online on 1-2 April by YouGov among a representative sample of 1,503 adult Britons aged 18 and over.

The poll was commissioned by the Sunday Times which included three religion-related questions in what was essentially a political omnibus study. The newspaper never actually reported on these particular questions in its print or online editions, but the relevant data tabulations have been posted by YouGov on its own website at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-ST-tracker-02.04_0.pdf

Interviewees were first asked whether they had a religious faith or not. 43% replied that they did, 51% that they did not, with 6% uncertain. Men (40%) were somewhat less likely to believe than women (46%), and those aged 18-34 years significantly less (33%) than those aged 55 and over (51%).

Regionally, the lowest proportion of believers was in southern England outside London (40%), the capital itself returning 47% thanks to the greater concentration of immigrants there, who often incline to be religious. One of the most interesting breaks was by voting intention, 40% of Labour supporters having a faith as against 52% of Conservatives. Does this augur that religion will be a feature of the general election campaign?

People who declared that they had a faith were then asked a supplementary question about the religion to which they belonged. Of this 43% sub-sample, 54% stated that they were Church of England, 16% Roman Catholic, 17% some other Christian denomination and 11% of some other religion. The Anglican contingent was strongest among Conservative voters (67%) and residents of the Midlands and Wales (65%).

The full sample was finally asked whether they intended to go to any kind of religious service over the Easter weekend. 13% said that they did expect to go to a place of worship and 82% that they did not. These ‘churchgoers’ were disproportionately likely to be women, older persons and non-manual workers, albeit the demographic differences were not huge.

If 13% did actually attend a religious service, this would imply a total of more than 6,000,000 adults in the pews over the Easter weekend. This seems an implausibly high number, reinforcing past opinion poll experience that the path to salvation is paved with good intentions, with respondents consistently inflating their prospective or retrospective religious observance.

More objective data are hard to come by, the Church of England being one of the few Christian bodies to count its Easter worshippers. In 2008, the last reported year, all age Anglican attendance on Easter Eve and Easter Day was 1,415,800. This figure is actually lower than the highest attendance in an ‘ordinary’ week (1,667,000).

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Sunday Trading

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Easter may have only just been and gone, but the minds of many large-scale retailers in England and Wales are already on the Christmas season. Specifically, they are focused on the fact that Boxing Day this year will fall on a Sunday, when their opening hours will be constrained to a maximum of six on what is traditionally the first day of the New Year sales.

Although, after a bitter public and parliamentary battle, the Sunday Trading Act 1994 deregulated shop opening hours for many shops, it did so only within certain limits for most retail enterprises with over 3,000 square feet of selling space (‘most’ since certain categories of large shops are exempted).

On ordinary Sundays large shops in England and Wales can only trade for six hours, while they are prohibited from serving retail customers at all on Easter Sunday, a ban which was subsequently extended to Christmas Day by the Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004. This contrasts with Scotland, where no restrictions apply.

Sections of the retail industry periodically clamour for further liberalization, encountering the opposition of Christian groups (who are in favour of keeping Sunday special), trade unions (principally USDAW) representing the interests of shopworkers, and the owners of small (typically local and often independent) shops (who feel that their larger counterparts already have sufficient retail advantage over them).

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (in its words) ‘carried out a wide ranging and thorough review in 2006 and concluded that the current laws strike the right balance between all the interests involved.’ This review was preceded by a public consultation the year before.

In the run-up to Easter, the controversy began to flare up again. Shopping Centre ran a well-balanced article on ‘Can retail survive with the current laws on Sunday trading?’ in its issue for 17 March. The Garden Centre Group tested the law on Easter Sunday by opening many of its stores to its ‘members’ for browsing and advice, but not for purchasing.

Many retail leaders have voiced their fears about the negative impact which curtailed Boxing Day trading might have on their revenues, not least given that in 2009 footfall in UK high streets reached a record on Boxing Day, which fell on a Saturday. Topshop, New Look, House of Fraser, Selfridges, Hamleys, Boots and Burton are understood to have written to the Business Secretary to urge deregulation.

The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), which speaks for 33,500 local shops, has now entered the fray with a new opinion poll. This it commissioned from GfK NOP among a representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 16 and over, interviewed on 26-28 March. ACS issued a press release about its findings on 6 April, which will be found at:

http://www.acs.org.uk/en/Press_Office/details/index.cfm/obj_id/24C7D54D-EFF7-43F3-ADA3A8EC9FA838CC

On the Boxing Day issue, 85% of respondents opposed any extension to trading hours for this day. Those in favour numbered 13%.

More generally, 76% of the public supported the current six-hour limit for large shops on ordinary Sundays, and of the 19% who wanted the law changed, 70% advocated stronger restrictions on Sunday opening (mostly its complete abolition). Of the total sample, only 5% wanted large shops to be allowed to open longer on Sundays.

USDAW has issued a press statement welcoming the findings of the ACS poll. Its own survey of 500 shopworkers in 2008 showed that 92% rejected any relaxation of Sunday trading law, with 56% actually wanting to work fewer hours on a Sunday. Interestingly, the British Retail Consortium is not actively campaigning on the topic since the opinions of its membership are apparently divided.

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Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century by Eric Kaufmann was published by Profile Books on 25 March (xxii + 330pp., ISBN 978 1 84668 144 8, £15.00, but currently available from Amazon for £7.49).

Kaufmann is Reader in Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, whose previous books have included The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (2004) and The Orange Order (2007).

His newest work is substantially the output of a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Understanding Population Trends and Processes programme. The project website includes a substantial amount of additional background material (including reviews of this book). It can be found at:

http://www.sneps.net/RD/religdem.html

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? is, in many senses, a contribution to the long-running debate on secularisation. Far from becoming more liberal and secular, Kaufmann’s thesis runs, the facts actually point in an opposite direction.

In particular, he paints a picture of moderate religion being ‘squeezed between the Scylla of secularism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism’, with secularism increasingly losing out to a ‘demographically turbo-charged piety’. This ‘endogenous power’ of fundamentalism is portrayed as set to ‘trump secularisation’.

The key argument of the work is that ‘religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world through demography’, because, unlike the secularists and many moderate religious, their fertility alone surpasses the replacement level.

This trend, which is reinforced by the high retention rate of fundamentalists (often facilitated by their spatial and social segregation), is seen as a potential challenge to basic liberties and liberal values.

The evidence base is part historical and part contemporary. It spans three of the major religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It is drawn from most parts of the globe, although the four core chapters focus on conservative Protestants in the United States, Europe, the Muslim world and the Jewish world.

Users of British Religion in Numbers will naturally be very interested in Kaufmann’s references to Britain. These are fairly numerous, notably in the chapter on Europe, although many of them are of a fairly general politico-religious nature, rather than directly related to the main thesis, which perhaps seems least persuasive in the British context.

There is an interesting discussion of Muslim fertility (which is falling) in the UK, with a projection of the Muslim population to 2029. The above-average religious observance of non-white immigrants in London is noted. Past differential Protestant/ Catholic fertility in Northern Ireland is also mentioned.

But the most direct evidence connecting fundamentalism and fertility in Britain relates to Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Judaism, where (as several endnotes make clear) the facts remain in dispute.

In Europe as a whole Kaufmann anticipates that a process of desecularisation will occur some time after 2020, linked to the identity-driven religiosity of immigrant populations with a relatively large number of children. Politically, there will be a convergence of moral conservatives among the three Abrahamic faiths.

Kaufmann has a part-summary of his European chapter, with special reference to the Eurabia question, in ‘Europe’s Return to the Faith’, Prospect, No. 169, April 2010, pp. 56-9.

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Religion in the Armed Forces

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The UK Ministry of Defence might seem an improbable source of religious statistics. In fact, it (and its predecessor departments) has long been enquiring into the religious affiliation of the armed forces, from the 1860s for the Army, the 1930s for the Royal Navy and the 1960s for the Royal Air Force.

Data-collection is now annual, with a census point of 1 April, through the Joint Personnel Administration System since 2007. Collation is undertaken by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice section of the Ministry of Defence, with publication via the annual (now online only) UK Defence Statistics.

Table 2.13 of the 2009 edition of UK Defence Statistics contains the religious affiliation of the UK’s regular armed forces (trained and untrained, but excluding reservists and Gurkhas), and disaggregated by service, for 2007, 2008 and 2009. It will be found at:

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/modintranet/UKDS/UKDS2009/pdf/c2/Chap2Table13.pdf

The number of armed forces personnel declaring they have no religion has risen over this triennium, from 9.5 to 11.6 per cent. The proportion is greatest in the Naval Service (15.7 per cent) and smallest in the Army (9.4 per cent), with the Royal Air Force at 13.9 per cent in 2009.

Even so, all the figures are relatively small and well below the 43.2 per cent of the adult population saying they had no religion in the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey in 2008, whose ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ question is well-known for minimizing religious adherence. The corresponding 2001 population census figure for Great Britain was 15.1 per cent but has probably increased during the past nine years.

The overwhelming majority of the armed services claimed to be Christian (or of the Christian tradition, i.e. including non-Trinitarians) in 2009: 87.2 per cent overall, with 88.9 per cent in the Army, 85.9 per cent in the Royal Air Force and 83.6 per cent in the Naval Service. The equivalent 2008 BSA figure was 49.8 per cent. The 2001 population census figure for Great Britain was 71.8 per cent, using question-wording in England and Wales which some regard as ‘leading’.

Only 1.2 per cent of armed forces personnel registered as non-Christians, fewer than one-fifth of the 6.7 per cent recorded in the BSA and just one-tenth of the BSA statistic in the case of Muslims.

Of course, the two sets of data are not entirely compatible. The armed forces monitor the religion of their personnel as part of the gathering of essential background information, particularly at the point of recruitment. This information could have an intensely practical and operational purpose should a servicewoman or man be injured or killed on active duty, or otherwise fall ill while serving with the colours. This is somewhat analogous to (civilian) hospitals asking patients about their religion when being admitted for treatment. By contrast, the BSA survey simply poses its question in a way which has no potential longer-term implications.

At the same time, despite the abolition of compulsory church parades immediately after the Second World War, religion is quite institutionalized and embedded within the armed services, principally through a strong chaplaincy network (and an Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre in Hampshire, to train and support the chaplains). This, plus the natural desire to take out a spiritual ‘insurance policy’ in the event of the worst happening in the front line, perhaps contributes to an explanation of why our armed forces are nominally so much more religious than the rest of us.

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Secular Easter

Posted on April 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Easter may be the holy of holies in the Christian calendar, but for most of us it is little more than a longish secular holiday, moderately ruined in many years (including 2010) by indifferent weather. International Christendom still cannot agree on a fixed date for Easter (as provided for in Britain by the as yet unimplemented Easter Act 1928, which would move the festival towards mid-April, when the weather might hopefully be better).

The secular undercurrent of Easter is clearly brought out in a survey conducted by 72Point for B&Q (the UK’s largest home improvement and garden centre retailer) in March, among a sample of 3,000 adults. The top five anticipated Easter activities are: relaxing (36%), visiting family (34%), gardening (33%), starting DIY jobs (24%) and day trips to the beach or park (24%). Seven in ten believe that the long bank holiday weekend is the best time to freshen up the home and garden, with the average person expecting to spend 15 hours this Easter doing just that. The most popular Easter jobs for women are cleaning (72%) and tidying (70%), for men fitting shelves (65%) and building furniture (55%).

This home and garden improvement bug is likely to be partially curbed in England and Wales by the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994. Although this liberalized shop opening hours on ordinary Sundays, large shops (those with more than 3,000 square feet of selling space) are prohibited from serving retail customers on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. This Easter the law is being challenged by the 73 stores in the Garden Centre Group, which will be open on Easter Sunday for browsing and advice, but not for purchasing items. When public opinion was last tested on the subject, in March 2008, by GfK NOP for the Keep Sunday Special campaign, 44% of Britons had not noticed or were unaware that large shops were closed on Easter Sunday, and 79% of the remaining 56% were not bothered by the closure.

A second secular institution of Easter is the holiday or outing. According to the Automobile Association’s membership panel, run by Populus, 56% of 17,500 UK motorists interviewed online in March anticipated that they would take to the roads this Easter. Of these 44% were planning day trips and 31% a weekend break in the UK. Of those not driving, 39% expected to go on (or return from) an overseas holiday. A similar survey, by One Poll for the RAC in March among 2,000 respondents, found that 76% of drivers planned to be on the roads over Easter, equating to more than 20 million of the country’s 31 million registered cars. 

A third Easter tradition is indulgence, epitomized by the consumption of chocolate Easter eggs. A new survey from mystery shopping company Retail Active, conducted by email among a sample of 2,000, has revealed that even 70% of dieters will suspend their regime and consume chocolate over Easter. Children aged 10-14 (the peak age for Easter egg consumption) will eat an average of 13 eggs each, containing 2.6kg of chocolate, over the Easter holiday, taking in 12,900 calories and 650 grams of fat. 77% of adults allow their children to tuck into Easter eggs first thing on Easter morning, before having breakfast or even a drink, and 70% of parents have adopted the American tradition of ‘hunt the Easter egg’. The lowest consumption rate, one egg each, was reported by those aged 40-59 and 75 and over.

Meanwhile, does religion get a look-in? Comparatively little research has been conducted into popular attitudes to and the observance of Easter as a religious festival in Britain. The principal exception to this is Clive Field, ‘It’s all chicks and going out: the observance of Easter in post-war Britain’, Theology, Vol. 101, No. 800, March/April 1998, pp. 82-90, which is now somewhat dated. The most important recent poll on the subject was conducted by ComRes for Theos in February 2008, among a sample of 1,100 adults interviewed by telephone. The data tabulations for this survey will be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/Theos-Easter-Poll.aspx

All that we know for 2010 so far is that, in a survey of 430 of its customers by HolidayExtras.com in March, a mere 4% said that the religious celebration is the most important aspect of Easter for them. This compares with 53% who replied that they were most looking forward to spending some quality time with their family, and 30% who were relishing the break from work.

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Church of England Cathedrals

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England published headline mission statistics for 2009 for its 43 cathedrals on 30 March. They will be found at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/cathedralattendances1995to2009.pdf

Key findings and trends include the following:

  • The number of worshippers attending cathedral services across the average week has increased by 24% since 2000 but is now falling, being 32,700 in 2009
  • Sunday attendances were 16,400 in 1995, rose to 18,500 in 2005 but have since fallen slightly, standing at 18,100 in 2009   
  • Attendance at midweek services is very significant, adding 81% to overall Sunday congregations in 2009 (67% for adults and more than doubling the number of children)
  • Attendances on Easter Eve and Easter Sunday were 49,600 in 2009, just 600 more than in 2008, and representing only a modest rise of 2% since 2001
  • Attendances on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were 118,500 in 2009, a slight drop against 2008 but 4% more than at the start of the millennium 
  • Services during the four weeks of Advent attracted 729,600 worshippers in 2009, a slight fall from the 2008 peak 
  • In addition to daily worship, cathedrals offered 3,040 special services in 2009 (attended by nearly 1,000,000 people) and 5,450 public or civic events (attended by 1,620,000) 
  • The number of children attending educational events in 2009 was 304,650, compared with 257,880 in 2000, with a further 11,120 children being educated at cathedral schools 
  • The number of cathedral visitors has reduced by 1,700,000 since 2001, to reach 9,700,000, but, allowing for Westminster Abbey and other Royal Peculiars, total visitors are estimated at 12,000,000
  • The number of regular cathedral volunteers was 15,000 in 2009 (360 for every cathedral), slightly fewer than in 2000, but a recovery from the decline in 2001-06

Mission statistics for Anglican parish churches in 2009 are still being collected and collated by the Research and Statistics Department of the Archbishops’ Council

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Spring Harvest

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Ever since its foundation in 1979, Spring Harvest has been one of the highlights of the British evangelical calendar. Its ‘Main Event’ is an interdenominational and all-age residential gathering of Bible teaching, (modern) worship, workshops, relaxation and equipping the Church for action.

This event takes place annually over Easter and is now held at the Butlins resorts in Minehead and Skegness. This year there are three weeks at the former place (3-18 April) and two at the latter (6-16 April). Delegates would ordinarily attend for one week.

The first Spring Harvest, at Prestatyn, attracted 2,700 evangelical Christians. Peak attendance appears to have been 80,000 in 1991, since when numbers have dropped, although they are still not far short of 50,000 each year.

Spring Harvest is affiliated to the Evangelical Alliance, which will be working with Christian Research in 2010 on a faith survey among people attending the principal Christian festivals in the UK, including Spring Harvest.

Meanwhile, some insight into those who attend Spring Harvest can be gleaned from an online survey undertaken by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC) in March 2009 among past and present attenders of Spring Harvest. There were 2,859 respondents.

Unsurprisingly, those who attend Spring Harvest are religiously committed. 81% have been Christians for more than ten years, against 11% who reply between three and ten years and 2% less than three years. 67% of Spring Harvesters are currently in some kind of church leadership role, mostly (60%) unpaid.

65% of those who frequent Spring Harvest are women and 35% men, similar to the gender imbalance among churchgoers as a whole. Only 7% of delegates are aged 18-25, despite the fact that Spring Harvest was started primarily as an umbrella body for young evangelicals. 10% are aged 26-35, 27% 36-45, 33% 46-55, 18% 56-65 and 5% over 65. The number of over-65s is very low in relation to their proportion in most churches.

44% of Spring Harvesters are in full-time paid employment and 29% work part-time. 7% are students and 12% retired. Denominationally, Anglicans (42%), Baptists (21%), Methodists (8%) and Free Evangelicals (8%) form the biggest contingents.

Besides demographics, most of the questions asked by LICC related to perspectives on and experiences of discipleship within the context of the Apprentice ‘09 event theme. Especially probed were the challenges to discipleship which occur in everyday life, notably at work and in the home, and the extent to which people feel equipped by their churches to deal with these challenges.

The questionnaire and results (including some breaks by gender, age, denomination, length of Christian allegiance and church leadership role) for this 2009 survey will be found at:

http://www.licc.org.uk/imagine/research/apprentice-09/

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Historical Statistics of Welsh Religion

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Clive D. Field

British Religion in Numbers covers historical as well as contemporary data, so from time to time our news section will feature sources which are mainly of historical interest.

One such is Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics, 1700-1974: Religion, which has been abstracted from the two-volume Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics compiled by John Williams and published by the Welsh Office in 1985.

These historical data on Welsh religion, collated from a wide variety of primary publications and principally relating to places of worship, clergy, membership, Sunday scholars and rites of passage, are freely available online from two sources.

First, Excel versions of the 13 original tables may be downloaded from:

http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/publications/dwhs1700-1974/?lang=en

Second, a computer file of the tables has been created by the Statistical Directorate of the National Assembly for Wales, the History Data Service (University of Essex) and the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis at Queen’s University Belfast.

This has been deposited at the UK Data Archive as SN 4105 and, together with study documentation in English and Welsh, may be accessed via the following link:

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=4105

Regrettably, religious data were not included in the parallel printed publications for Britain, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (1962), Second Abstract of British Historical Statistics (1971) and British Historical Statistics (1988).

However, many religious statistics were collated by Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley for their Churches and Churchgoers (1977), and British Religion in Numbers has obtained permission to reproduce their tables (to 1970) on our website. They will be made available here in due course.

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