Institute for Jewish Policy Research

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research, originally founded in New York in 1941 but located in London since 1965, has appointed Jonathan Boyd as its executive director. Mr Boyd joined the Institute a year ago as a research fellow and has recently been its acting director.

Mr Boyd will oversee the launch this week of the first national online survey of the attitudes of British Jews towards Israel, which is being conducted for the Institute by Ipsos-MORI. The survey can be found at http://www.ipsos-mori.com/israelsurvey

Future projects from the Institute will include a community-wide survey of Jewish identity in the UK and an analysis of the Jewish results of the 2011 national census, which will include a question on religious profession, as in 2001.

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Religion in the Noughties

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Siobhan McAndrew

Nick Spencer, Director of Studies at Theos, wrote an overview of religion in the 2000s for The Guardian’s Comment is Free: Belief forum on 30 December:

Religion did not roll over and die, as many expected. Rather it migrated from being a fundamentally socio-economic phenomenon, which would simply dissolve when humanity finally arrived at perfect socio-economic conditions, to being a biological one, as hardwired into us as sex or aggression. Almost irrespective of whether religious beliefs are true or false, religious identity, behaviour, and communities are here to stay…

It’s largely concerned with accommodation of religious diversity, including atheism. Not so much on the numbers, but it’s a very interesting read.

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Welcome!

Posted on January 4, 2010 by itswebinfra

 

Welcome to the blog section of BRIN – newly integrated into the main site.

This section of the site reports on new releases of religious data. It will also flag up interesting new publications, policy reports or news stories using religious data.

In December the following were released.

Church of England Finance and Ministry Statistics

… which among other things reports that the total income of parishes rose well above inflation in 2007, while 574 new clergy were ordained in 2008. The Church of England reported that clergy numbers were generally ‘buoyant’. See more on the Church of England website here.

An interesting survey was conducted on awareness of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, with results publicised last month. The survey was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, which was founded by the York chocolatier and philanthropist Joseph Rowntree. It’s unusual in being a comparatively large survey  into attitudes towards one of the smaller denominations. An article and more detailed presentation are available here in the weekly Quaker magazine The Friend: ‘Seeing ourselves as others see us’.

A third interesting release was the Pew Forum’s measures of government religious restrictions, and of social hostilities with religious aspects, for 198 countries. The Government Restrictions Index was based on 20 separate measures and the Social Hostilities Index on 13. To find out how the UK scored, and how the measures were created, have a look at the Pew Forum website.

More to come!

Posted in Measuring religion, News from religious organisations, Other, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment