More Scottish Census Data and Other News

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Clive D. Field

More Scottish census data

Release 3A of the 2011 census results for Scotland was made available on 27 February 2014. It comprised the first of a series of rolling releases of cross-tabulations, providing (in this case) detailed characteristics on ethnicity, identity, language, and religion, from the national to the local levels. The Scottish Census Data Explorer tool is the entry-point for a range of configurable standard outputs and can be found at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ods-web/standard-outputs.html

Three standard outputs are relevant to BRIN from release 3A: Table DC2107SC (religion by sex by five-year age bands; Table DC2201SC (religion by ethnic group); and Table DC2204SC (religion by national identity). The national identity data are obviously rather topical in view of the referendum on Scottish independence later this year, especially so since the extensive referendum polling has largely (if not entirely) ignored any possible religious influences on prospective voting. A simplified version of Table DC2204SC is therefore given below (the other category subsumes: Scottish and any other identity; English identity; any other combination of UK identities; other identity with or without a UK identity):

%

Scottish

British

Scottish and British

Other
Total

62.4

8.4

18.3

10.9
Church of Scotland

65.8

6.8

24.8

2.7
Roman Catholic

65.6

5.3

13.9

15.2
Other Christian

32.5

17.2

14.3

36.0
Buddhist

26.6

16.6

7.4

49.3
Hindu

8.6

16.6

3.8

71.0
Jew

36.8

18.2

19.4

25.6
Muslim

24.3

29.2

9.9

36.6
Sikh

30.5

29.4

9.0

31.2
Other religion

51.2

12.8

11.9

24.2
No religion

65.9

8.4

15.7

10.0
Religion not stated

58.3

10.0

18.0

13.8

This analysis demonstrates that Scottishness is disproportionately concentrated among adherents of the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church and among those professing no faith at all, with two-thirds in each of these three groups describing themselves as Scottish only. The Scottish versus British debate seems much less relevant to other Protestants and non-Christians in Scotland, the majority (other Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus) or plurality of whom (Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and other religion) decline to choose between these two competing identities or select another identity combination.

From Table DC2107SC we can calculate the religious profile of Scotland in 2011 separately for children and adolescents and for adults aged 16 and over, as follows:

%

0-15

16+

All
Church of Scotland

21.3

34.8

32.4
Roman Catholic

15.3

16.0

15.9
Other Christian

4.2

5.8

5.5
Buddhist

0.1

0.3

0.2
Hindu

0.3

0.3

0.3
Jew

0.1

0.1

0.1
Muslim

2.5

1.2

1.4
Sikh

0.2

0.2

0.2
Any other

0.1

0.3

0.3
No religion

47.9

34.3

36.7
Not stated

8.1

6.7

7.0

Of particular interest is that the majority (56%) of Scottish under-16s were returned as without a faith or religion not stated. It is hard to know whether respondents completing the census schedules were admitting that children in their households were being brought up without a religion or implicitly stating that this was a matter for them to make up their own minds about when old enough to do so. This phenomenon particularly impacts the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church having a similar proportion of adherents among children as among adults. Also notable is the much stronger showing of Muslims among children than adults, laying the foundation for future growth of Islam in Scotland (albeit from a small base, relative to England).

The combination of Table DC2107SC and the previously available DC2107EW now enables us to present final figures for the religious profile of the adult population (aged 16 and over) of Great Britain in 2011, as follows:

 

England

and Wales

Scotland

Great

Britain
Whole population

45,496,780

4,379,072

49,875,852
Christian

27,926,262

2,477,436

30,403,698
Buddhist

218,935

11,685

230,620
Hindu

665,429

13,701

679,130
Jew

210,426

5,294

215,720
Muslim

1,810,929

54,193

1,865,122
Sikh

336,352

7,005

343,357
Any other

220,291

14,155

234,446
No religion

10,909,996

1,501,972

12,411,968
Not stated

3,198,160

293,631

3,491,791

Anglican ordinands

A Church of England press release on 25 February 2014 celebrated the fact that in 2013 young people (under 30) comprised almost one-quarter of those accepted for training in the Church’s ministry. The absolute number of young ordinands was, at 113, the same in 2013 as in 2012 and about 30 higher than the average throughout the noughties, albeit the figure had been 112 in 1998. There were slight increases between the two years in ordinands in their thirties and forties with those in their fifties flat. Ordinands who were 60 years and over reduced from 45 in 2012 to 19 in 2013. The percentage below the age of 30 during the past two decades (calculated from various editions of Church Statistics) is as follows:

1994 25.5 2004 12.6
1995 22.6 2005 14.9
1996 19.6 2006 15.2
1997 21.5 2007 14.8
1998 22.9 2008 16.7
1999 18.1 2009 15.1
2000 19.7 2010 21.0
2001 15.0 2011 16.6
2002 14.9 2012 22.2
2003 15.4 2013 22.6

Spotlight on Seventh-Day Adventists

This week’s jailing of two self-styled Seventh-Day Adventists for the manslaughter of their five-month-old son, who died of rickets in 2012, has brought some unwelcome media publicity for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The couple had refused medical treatment for their son on religious grounds, apparently regarding the death as ‘God’s will’. The Church has just issued a press release distancing itself from the couple’s ‘misguided understanding in their belief system’, and pointing out that they had drifted away from the Church since 2009.

The sectarian movement which became the Seventh-Day Adventist Church originated in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century but what is now its British Union Conference has always been relatively small. Its membership was first reported in 1903, at 1,160, rising steadily for the next 60 years, when it reached five figures (10,084 in 1963). It has more than trebled in the past half-century, standing at 34,048 in December 2012 (when last reported), almost certainly on the back of immigration. British membership flows for 2006-12, summarized below, are tabulated in full on the Church’s website at:

http://adventist.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/11574/BUC-Quarterly-Membership-Reports-2006-to-2012.pdf 

 

January

Gains

Losses

December
2006

25,520

2,432

1,057

26,895
2007

26,895

1,992

777

28,110
2008

28,110

1,541

601

29,050
2009

29,050

2,244

760

30,534
2010

30,534

1,647

519

31,662
2011

31,662

1,813

460

33,015
2012

33,015

1,548

515

34,048

Schools and creationism

Fearful that some faith-based academies and free schools, released from the strictures of the national curriculum, may seek to replace the teaching of evolution with creationism, the Government has clarified that all state-funded schools must teach evolution and not present creationism as a scientifically valid theory.

However, new research from the University of York’s Institute for Effective Education, among more than 200 14- to 16-year-olds in four English secondaries, demonstrated that student views on the origins of human life, and willingness to engage with the inter-relationship of science and religion, vary considerably according to their religious beliefs (Christian, Muslim, or none). Therefore, the researchers warn, the insensitive teaching of evolution in schools, devoid of any religious reference, could risk alienating pupils with a strong faith and turning them off science.

The full research can be found in the pay-per-view/subscription-based article by Pam Hanley, Judith Bennett, and Mary Ratcliffe, ‘The Inter-Relationship of Science and Religion: A Typology of Engagement’, which was recently published in the online edition of International Journal of Science Education. A freely available summary appeared on 12 February 2014 in the higher education e-journal The Conversation, which, in turn, formed the basis of news coverage in the Times Educational Supplement for 21 February 2014 and The Times for 22 February 2014. See:

http://theconversation.com/can-schools-find-way-through-creationism-meets-science-minefield-in-the-classroom-22807

A sixtieth anniversary

Sixty years ago today (on 1 March 1954) Billy Graham commenced his Greater London crusade in the Harringay Arena. By the time the crusade had finished, at Wembley Stadium on 22 May, he had reached an audience of over two million. Graham was already no stranger to Britain, having visited it for evangelistic purposes several times since 1946, as part of a wider (but uncoordinated) movement of revivalism in the years immediately after the Second World War, and in which all the major Protestant Churches, and even the Catholic Church, participated. After his 1954 crusade, Graham came back to run more crusades: in Glasgow and London in 1955; Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast in 1961; London in 1966 and 1967; Oxford and Cambridge in 1980; Blackpool in 1982; Bristol, Sunderland, Norwich, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Ipswich in 1984; Sheffield in 1985; London in 1989; and Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow in 1991.

How was Graham regarded by the British at the time of the 1954 crusade? According to two Gallup polls, he was certainly well known in the country, 83% of Britons having heard of him in March and 88% in May. A minority perceived him as a good and religious man doing very good work, 18% and 34% respectively, a big increase over the two months, reflecting the huge media coverage of the crusade. A further 15% and 13% suggested he was not likely to do much good in Britain, and another 12% and 11% said he was more needed in America. In March 13% and in May 7% thought he was just a curiosity or performer, while 17% and 22% had no interest in him.

The proportion of attenders at the crusades who ‘came forward’ as enquirers was small, around 2% in London in 1954 and Glasgow in 1955. They were disproportionately women and young people, and the majority already had a church association. A detailed assessment of the effects of mass evangelism in the 1950s, made by John Highet in his The Scottish Churches (1960), was fairly downbeat about its value. Certainly, the Graham crusades of 1954-55 coincided with the beginning of a renewed down-turn in Protestant church membership after a momentary reversal of decline (for some denominations, at least) in the aftermath of the Second World War.

 

Posted in Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion and Ethnicity, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

St Andrew’s Day and Other News

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today is St Andrew’s Day, as you might have noticed from the latest and attractive ‘Google doodle’. However, their patron saint’s day is not going to be much celebrated by Scots, according to the first of nine reports in today’s BRIN post. Religious decline is a theme running through several of the other stories.

St Andrew’s Day

St Andrew is the favourite Scottish saint (from a list of nine) of 35% of 1,225 Scots interviewed online by YouGov on 12-14 November 2013, easily beating St Mungo (9%) and St Columba (8%). Notwithstanding, no more than 20% had plans to celebrate St Andrew’s Day in any way this year, even though it falls on a Saturday, while 64% definitely had none. The highest proportions intent on celebration were to be found among the 18-24s (32%) and full-time students (37%), the lowest among 25-34s (13%) and Glaswegians (12%). The low figure for Glasgow seems to be related to the fact that St Mungo is the favourite saint for 17% of the city’s residents, perhaps because he features in Glasgow’s coat of arms. The data tables, published on 28 November, are available at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/o9p509n5op/YG-Archive-St-Andrew’s-131112.pdf

Is Christianity dying in Britain?

BRIN’s co-director, Professor David Voas of the University of Essex, published an interesting post on The Conversation blog (run on behalf of a consortium of 13 British universities) on 27 November 2013. Entitled ‘Hard Evidence: Is Christianity Dying in Britain?’ the article was prompted by the recent prognostication of George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, that the Church of England is ‘one generation away from extinction’. Voas contends that ‘the reality is less dramatic, but the story is not altogether wrong’. Using British Social Attitudes Survey data from 1983 to the present, Voas demonstrates that young adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to profess a religion, and that the Church of England has been particularly badly impacted by this trend. The same phenomenon can be seen with regard to churchgoing and ‘orthodox’ religious beliefs. Although more ‘unorthodox’ supernatural beliefs have been sustained, Voas does not think they amount to much: ‘these “beliefs” are casual in the extreme: cultivated by popular culture and its delight in magic and Gothic romanticism, held in the most tentative and experimental way, with no connection to any meaningful spirituality’. In short, ‘Lord Carey is at least half right’. The post can be read at:

https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-is-christianity-dying-in-britain-20734

Is the Church of England dying?

Another blogger to have been inspired by Carey’s remarks is John Hayward, of the University of South Wales, who has been applying mathematical models to church growth for the best part of twenty years now. He runs a fascinating (if not always easy to follow) Church Growth Modelling website, which includes a blog. In his latest post, on 20 November 2013, he writes (positively) about ‘George Carey and Church Decline’. Hayward’s preceding post, on 9 October 2013, concerned ‘The Decline of the Church of England’, informed by an analysis of Anglican attendance data for 2001-11 (which were published earlier in the year). In this article Hayward deployed the ‘general limited enthusiasm model’ (based on the theory that church growth is driven by a sub-group of church members – enthusiasts – who are instrumental in bringing about conversions) to reach the following conclusion: ‘although the church is slowly declining, the most likely scenario is that it will avoid extinction and start growing again around 2035. The enthusiasts in the church, those responsible for the growth, should start increasing around 2020. Although church attendance will stabilise, it will be well below current levels. The church has some work to do in conversion and retention if it is to see the revival-type growth needed to regain its impact on society.’ For more information, go to:

http://www.churchmodel.org.uk/LongDecline3.html#summary

Episcopal psychology

Bishops in the Church of England differ from their male clergy on three of the four aspects of psychological type, being more likely to prefer extraversion over introversion, sensing over intuition, and judging over perceiving. Although there are no differences between bishops as a whole and clergy in respect of the fourth aspect, preference for thinking over feeling, thinking was found to be privileged more among diocesan than suffragan bishops. These conclusions derive from data gathered from 168 Anglican bishops (75 of whom are currently in office, and 93 not), and reported in Leslie Francis, Michael Whinney, and Mandy Robbins, ‘Who is Called to be a Bishop? A Study in Psychological Type Profiling of Bishops in the Church of England’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2013, pp. 135-51.The findings are mostly in line with hypotheses developed from present expectations regarding the office of bishop, but the authors suggest that, in making future episcopal appointments, the Church might be served better by an alternative psychological type profile than manifested in the past and present. Access options to this article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13617672.2013.801647#.UpZUhTZFDX4

Urban and rural religion

Professing Christians are more likely to live in rural than urban areas of England and Wales, according to 2011 Census Analysis: Comparing Rural and Urban Areas of England and Wales, published by the Office for National Statistics on 22 November 2013. Whereas Christians accounted for 59.3% of the total population at the 2011 census, the proportion was 66.9% in rural locations against 57.6% in cities and towns. The rural-urban Christian differential of 9.3%, which was somewhat greater than in 2001 (8.2%), is probably largely age-related, the median age being eight years higher in rural than urban areas, but another contributing factor is that rural dwellers are more likely to have been born in the UK. By contrast, non-Christians are concentrated in urban areas, where they represent 9.9% of residents, compared with just 1.5% in rural districts; this distribution tracks the concentration there of ethnic minorities and persons born outside the UK. The disparity is especially large for Muslims, who constitute only 0.4% of people in the countryside but 5.8% in cities and towns. The number professing no religion is marginally higher in urban than rural areas (25.4% versus 24.1%) but urbanization alone can hardly be said to explain the loss of faith. Overall, 81.5% of English and Welsh reside in urban and 18.5% in rural areas. The report is at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_337939.pdf

Godless Norwich

When the 2011 census results for religion in England were published last December, Norwich stood out as being the local/unitary authority with the largest number of those professing no religion (42% against a national average of 27%), earning the city the sobriquet ‘godless’. As one might expect, the reality is a little more complex than that, and Peter Brierley has now prepared an interesting 4,000 word briefing on the religious scene in Norwich (and Norfolk more generally), which he has circulated to subscribers with the December 2013 (No. 30) issue of FutureFirst, the magazine of Brierley Consultancy. In addition to explaining the high incidence of ‘nones’ in terms of the disproportionate presence of young people (notably students) and Asians (especially Chinese) in the city, he shows that Norwich does not come at the bottom of the league table with respect to self-identifying Christians and church attenders. Indeed, estimated churchgoing in 2012 was higher in Norwich than in Norfolk, and just 0.1% short of the English mean, even if it had reduced by one-half since 1989. To obtain a copy of the paper, contact Dr Brierley at peter@brierleyres.com

London, the exceptional case?

Further to our preliminary notice, in our post of 14 June 2013, we can now report the publication of far more detailed results from, and commentary on, the Greater London church census held on 14 October 2012, undertaken by Brierley Consultancy on behalf of the London City Mission: Peter Brierley, Capital Growth: What the 2012 London Church Census Reveals (174pp., including 95 tables and figures, ADBC Publishers, ISBN 978-0-9566577-6-3, £9.99, from peter@brierleyres.com). Still more data (especially regarding individual boroughs) will become available in April 2014, in the London church census section of UK Church Statistics, 2010-2020.

In essence, London, once a byword for irreligion, is currently bucking the national trend of declining church attendance, thanks largely to immigration, changing patterns of churchmanship (52% of London churchgoers are now evangelicals), and church planting (with 17% more churches in the capital in 2012 than 2005). The headline all-age attendance figures (grossed up from data for 54% of places of worship, derived from a combination of census forms and extrapolations from previous information) are tabulated below, with comparisons from four previous church censuses:

 

1979

1989

1998

2005

2012

1979-2012

% change
Anglican

140,500

98,500

101,100

90,300

84,800

-39.6
Roman Catholic

333,700

293.000

237,200

195,400

198,300

-40.6
Methodist/Baptist/URC

101,200

83,400

86,100

76,100

68,200

-32.6
Pentecostal

57,500

82,700

93,700

152,700

229,000

+298.3
Other

63,100

92,000

99,800

108,500

141,200

+123.8
Total

696,000

649,600

617,900

623,000

721,500

+3.7
Total as % population

10.1

9.6

8.6

8.3

8.8

Thus, in absolute terms, total churchgoing was 16% more in 2012 than in 2005, and even 4% more than in 1979. Relative to population, London churchgoing is now restored to the level of the late 1990s. However, the increase was concentrated among newer manifestations of Christianity, particularly Pentecostal and New Churches, with Anglican, Catholic, and traditional Free Churches all struggling.

Brierley comments on the overall growth between 2005 and 2012 (p. 53): ‘That is a considerable increase, almost offsetting the national decline in churchgoing outside London in the same period. So, because of London’s increase, national church attendance in England remained virtually static (instead of declining) between 2010 and 2012! This remarkable impact is because London’s church attendance in 2012 is about a quarter (24%) of that of the whole country.’ However, he cautions that: ‘the increase seen between 2005 and 2012 in London is not expected to continue. The number of people attending church in Greater London is likely to fall slightly in the immediate future, dropping to perhaps 704,000 by 2020.’ The principal reason for this forecast lies in the large number of small churches whose attendance is collectively declining.

Paul Flowers

Reverend Paul Flowers, ex-chairman of the Co-op Bank, who has suffered a fall from grace through perceived failings in both his professional and private life, has the dubious honour of being the first Methodist minister ever to feature in a British opinion poll. Several questions about him were included in YouGov’s weekly omnibus for the Sunday Times on 21-22 November 2013 for which 1,867 adult Britons were interviewed online. Asked to apportion blame for his appointment as chairman, 45% laid the responsibility at the door of the Co-op board, while 19% pointed the finger at the former Financial Services Authority for inadequate regulation and 16% at politicians in the co-operative movement for supporting Flowers. Two-thirds (67%) backed Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to set up an independent enquiry into how Flowers was appointed chairman (17% dissenting), and 72% wanted Flowers prosecuted for his alleged use of hard drugs (and 13% not). The full data appear on p. 6 of the tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/q0ir85hkfv/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-221113.pdf

Religious education

The National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) published its fifth survey on the impact of the English Baccalaureate on religious education (RE) in secondary schools on 29 November 2013. Data were gathered in May-June 2013 by means of an online questionnaire completed by a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 580 schools. The survey revealed that at Key Stage 4 26% of all state schools are failing to meet their legal or contractual obligations to teach RE to all under-16s (rising to one-third of community schools and academies without a religious character), with 12% failing at Key Stage 3. The number of RE subject specialist staff was set to decline in 2013-14 in one-fifth of schools, with one in five RE lessons currently being delivered by non-specialists in 31% of schools. The timetable for RE had been reduced in a minority of schools, especially at Key Stage 4, and in 2013-14 29% of schools will be attempting to deliver the full GCSE course in Religious Studies in less than the recommended number of learning hours. The survey is available at:

http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/NATRE_EBacc_Survey_2013_final.pdf

 

Posted in church attendance, Historical studies, News from religious organisations, Official data, People news, Religion in public debate, Religion in the Press, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Things Unseen and Other News

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The latest report from Theos heads the list of seven religious statistical news stories today, comprising a further attempt by the think-tank to explore the spiritual hinterland which lays beyond institutional religion and to counter the picture of unrelenting secularization of British society.

Things unseen

‘For all that formalised religious belief and institutionalised religious belonging has declined over recent decades, the British have not become a nation of atheists or materialists. On the contrary, a spiritual current runs as, if not more, powerfully through the nation than it once did.’ So begins the latest report from the Theos think-tank, The Spirit of Things Unseen: Belief in Post-Religious Britain, published on 17 September 2013 alongside the data tables from the ComRes poll which underpins it (2,036 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 4 and 5 September 2013). The research, which was sponsored by CTVC as background for a new podcast venture, develops arguments originally advanced by Theos in its 2012 report The Faith of the Faithless (which covered England alone).

The Spirit of Things Unseen (28pp.) can be viewed at:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/Spirit%20of%20Things%20-%20Digital%20(update).pdf

and the data tables (34pp., including breaks by gender, age, social grade, employment sector, region, religious affiliation, and educational attainment) at:

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

Headline findings are:

  • 77% agree that there are things in life that cannot be explained through science or other means
  • 34% believe that people’s thoughts can be influenced by spiritual forces, 27% events in the human world can be so influenced, and 23% events in the natural world
  • 59% believe in one or more of the following spiritual beings: God as a universal life force (30%), spirits (30%), angels (25%), the devil (14%), God as a personal being (13%), a higher spiritual being that cannot be called God (12%), demons (10%), or Jinns (3%) – 30% are sceptics
  • 76% believe in one or more of the following: the soul (39%), life after death (32%), heaven (26%), reincarnation (16%), hell (13%), or the power of deceased ancestors (13%)
  • 39% have undergone one or more of the following: tarot card reading (23%), star signs reading (17%), reflexology session (12%), Reiki session (8%), aura reading (6%), healing with crystals (5%), or Ayurveda session (1%)
  • 11% have visited a spiritual or faith healer or a religious leader who specializes in praying for the sick
  • 38% believe that prayer can heal people (but 50% do not)
  • 17% consider prayer to be effectual in bringing about change, 51% in creating a sense of peace, while 17% feel that prayer does not work in any way
  • 55% pray sometimes (21% at least weekly, 34% occasionally), and the rest not at all
  • 17% perceive miracles as the result of divine intervention in nature and 42% as unusual events that cannot be explained by science, while 30% say they do not exist and are simply examples of coincidence or luck
  • 16% have either personally experienced, or know somebody who has experienced, a miracle

Analysis by religion mostly shows that, while the religious often give the most spiritual responses, smaller but still significant numbers of the avowedly non-religious do so, also. This is particularly so in the case of ‘alternative’ practices, where there is no real difference between the religious and non-religious. On the other hand, there is a wide gap between the two groups when it comes to ‘traditional’ practices, such as prayer. Neither is it the elderly who consistently and disproportionately opt for spiritual answers. Women tend to be more spiritual in their replies than men.

The spiritual beings and beliefs questions do not seem wholly satisfactory, being too compressed. More generally, it could be argued that Theos might have been better served by replicating at least a few questions from earlier surveys, which would have had the advantage of facilitating comparisons over time. As it is, the hint (dropped several times in the report) that what is essentially a single survey snapshot might suggest that Britain is actually becoming more spiritual is evidentially unproven and thus unconvincing. As such, the debate about the current and future religious state of the nation seems set to run and run.

Storm in a bed and breakfast cup

The long-running legal case of husband and wife Peter and Hazelmary Bull versus Martin Hall and Steve Preddy moved to the Supreme Court on 9 and 10 October 2013, more than five years after the incident which gave rise to it. The Bulls are devout Christians and owners of a B&B in Cornwall, who had refused a double room to Hall and Preddy (a homosexual couple in a civil partnership), on grounds of religious conscience. A County Court in 2011 had originally found the Bulls in breach of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 and awarded damages to Hall and Preddy. A subsequent appeal by the Bulls to the Court of Appeal was dismissed last year. No date has yet been fixed for a hand-down of judgment by the Supreme Court.

To coincide with the Supreme Court phase of the case, Lancaster University issued a press release on 9 October 2013 reporting the findings of two questions about the case which had been added to the second of the YouGov surveys commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates, 4,018 Britons having been interviewed online on 5-13 June 2013. The ‘bad news’ in this poll for the Bulls is that a majority of adults (57%) do not believe that B&B owners should be allowed to discriminate against guests on the basis of the latters’ sexual orientation, and this includes a majority or plurality of all major religious groups (for example, 52% of Anglicans and 51% of Catholics). Even the most certain believers in God are anti-discrimination (49%), although 53% of weekly churchgoers are pro-discrimination. The better news for the Bulls is that a plurality (49% against 40%) think it wrong that they were ordered to pay damages. Lancaster’s press release, which has been covered by the Church Times (11 October 2013, p. 6) and The Tablet (12 October 2013, p. 28) is at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/uploads/docs/2013_10/1381315862_Christian_B&B_poll_Press_Release.pdf

Contemporary British Jewry

‘British Jews place a premium on communal belonging, albeit without an excess of piety or religiosity. They hold conservative political loyalties balanced by some liberal social views.’ So conclude sociologists Professor Linda Woodhead and Professor Steven Cohen in their analysis of the 318 self-identifying British Jews interviewed for the two YouGov polls which Woodhead commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, with online fieldwork on 25-30 January and 5-13 June 2013. Their article, ‘Who do we think we are? Here are the facts’, contains comparisons with other religious groups in Britain and with American Jews. It was published in the print edition (p. 2) of the Jewish Chronicle for 11 October 2013 and in the online edition at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/112220/new-surveys-shed-light-who-we-are

Clergy stress

Stress among the clergy has been the subject of serious sociological and psychological study for over a quarter of a century, one of the earliest empirical surveys being Ben Fletcher’s Clergy under Stress (1990). In preparation for its Building Resilience symposium (in London on 15 October and York on 17 October 2013), St Luke’s Healthcare for the Clergy commissioned Christian Research to poll 492 ordained UK clergy in August 2013, some results being published in a press release on 23 September 2013. It is assumed (but not explicitly stated) that respondents were members of Christian’s Research’s online panel, Resonate. Asked how they felt in themselves, 37% of clergy replied ‘positive and energized’, 50% said they had more good days than bad, but 12% admitted to struggling or barely coping. Although 58% had rarely or never considered giving up their role in the Church, 33% had done so occasionally, and 8% often or very frequently. Over half (53%) had never received training to understand or manage stress, with all but 23% willing to take up one or more resources to help in this regard. For further details, follow the ‘Building Resilience symposium press release’ link at:

http://www.stlukeshealthcare.org.uk/publications

Bishops’ office and working costs

On 7 October 2013 the Church Commissioners published a 13-page report on the office and working costs of the Church of England’s 113 diocesan and suffragan bishops for the year ending 31 December 2012. They amounted to £18.1 million, representing an increase of 6% over the 2011 figure. Staff were the biggest single expenditure (50%), albeit their costs grew by less than average (4%). Costs are itemized for each individual bishop, as they have been for the past 12 years, 28 of them (among them the two archbishops) actually returning a lower figure in 2012 than for 2011. On the other hand, expenditure by the Bishops of Leicester and Southwark was up in cash terms by over £50,000. Additional to these office and working costs, stipends and employer’s national insurance and pension contributions for bishops came to £5.5 million, with a further £4.7 million spent on maintaining the houses, office premises, and gardens of the archbishops and diocesan bishops (including Lambeth Palace). The grand total of central expenditure on Church of England bishops in 2012 was, therefore, £28.3 million, but this still excludes the housing costs of suffragan bishops, which are met by dioceses. The report is available at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1862748/bishops%20office%20and%20working%20costs%202012.pdf

Scottish Methodist lay preachers

Right from its origins in the eighteenth century, Methodism has been dependent upon the voluntary efforts of local (lay) preachers to conduct many of its worship services, and this remains the case today. Indeed, in Scotland the proportion of services at which they officiated rose from 31% in 1996 to 39% in 2010, partly in reflection of a 31% reduction in ordained ministers in Scotland over the same period. These Scottish local preachers (both ‘fully accredited’ and ‘on trial’) are increasingly women, 39% in 1996 and 47% in 2010. They are also a progressively elderly group, with mean ages of 55 in 1996 and 64 in 2011, and with a corresponding fall in the number in full-time paid employment. In line with society, formal education levels of local preachers continue to improve, those with first or higher degrees growing from 47% in 1996 to 58% in 2011. In addition to taking preaching appointments, local preachers hold other offices in Methodism (especially church council member), while their principal leisure pursuits are reading, sport, walking, music, and gardening. These details are taken from John Sawkins, ‘Methodist Local Preachers in Scotland: Characteristics and Deployment, 1996 and 2011’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 59, No. 3, October 2013, pp. 89-101.

Quaker membership statistics

Finally, an ‘overdue’ item. The 2013 Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain took place on 24-27 May, and one of the sequence of ‘documents in advance’ was a 12-page ‘tabular statement’ of membership for the year ending 31 December 2012. In total there were 478 local meetings with 13,906 members, of whom 37.4% were men, 62.3% women, and 0.3% children under 16. Member incomings during the year numbered 535, of which 66.5% were by application and 33.5% by certificate (i.e. transfer from Britain or another Yearly Meeting). Outgoings amounted to 726 (191 more than incomings), of which 33.1% were through termination of membership, 44.6% by death, and 22.3% by certificate. The Quaker death rate for the year was 23 per 1,000, well above the national average, and thus suggesting an ageing membership. Besides members, there were 8,681 attenders and 2,004 children recognized as connected with Quaker meetings but not in membership. On p. 11 will be found a record of Britain Yearly Meeting membership, disaggregated by sex, quinquennially from 1935 to 1970 and annually thereafter. Membership has not fallen so severely as for other historic Free Churches, only by 28.0% over these 77 years. The tabular statement is at:

http://www.quaker.org.uk/files/Tabular-statement-2013-web.pdf

 

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Discrimination, Identity, and Other News

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Clive D. Field

The eight stories in today’s post feature a range of topics, but religious discrimination and religious identity especially stand out. It should be noted that the latest statistical bulletin for the Government’s Integrated Household Survey, covering the calendar year 2012 and published on 3 October 2013, did not report on the religious identity question.

Religious discrimination (1)

Perceived discrimination against Muslims has increased during the past three years, but they are still not the group most discriminated against in British society; that unenviable position is thought to be occupied by people with mental health problems, followed by gypsies, transsexuals, and immigrants. This is according to a YouGov poll published on 2 October 2013 and undertaken online on 29-30 September among a sample of 1,717 adult Britons. Interviewees were shown a list of groups and asked how much discrimination they thought each suffered in Britain today, the percentages replying ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ being combined in the table below, with comparisons for January 2011 (where available). Twelve of the 15 groups covered in both surveys were believed to have suffered more discrimination over the three years, only Christians and white persons experiencing a reduction, with no change for atheists (who were the group considered to be least discriminated against). Perceived discrimination against Muslims is now 32% more than against Christians, compared with a gap of 22% in 2011. Discrimination against Jews is believed to be up by one-third.

 

01/2011

09/2013
Asians

44

47
Atheists

10

10
Blacks

41

48
Christians

28

25
Disabled

NA

57
Elderly

45

50
Gays/lesbians

43

50
Ginger haired

25

26
Gypsies/travellers

60

62
Immigrants

54

58
Jews

26

34
Mentally ill

NA

67
Muslims

50

57
Transsexuals

53

60
Whites

32

30
Women

29

34
Working class

31

32

The data table for the survey can be found at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/jzh49t1gqk/YG-Archive-discrimination-results-300913.pdf

Religious discrimination (2)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has recently published Identity, Expression, and Self-Respect, Briefing Paper No. 9 in its Measurement Framework series, with some accompanying data in Excel format. The paper considers five indicators in detail, the first of which is freedom to practice one’s religion or belief, which is quantified from the 2010 Citizenship Survey (CS) for England and Wales and from HM Inspectorate of Prisons statistics. In the CS 93% of adults overall felt able to practice their religion freely, but somewhat fewer among the under-45s, several ethnic minorities, and Muslims and Sikhs (for detail, see pp. 17-18 and the table accompanying measure El1.1). Breaks by religion are also sometimes shown in connection with the secondary analysis of data for the other four indicators. The briefing paper and tables are at:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/our-measurement-framework/-briefing-papers-and-data/identity-expression-and-self-respect/

Under a veil

The recent public and media debate about whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear the full face-veil or niqab started in connection with specific cases involving courtrooms and colleges. In canvassing popular opinion on the matter, ComRes therefore decided to take the prohibition of the veil in courts, schools, and colleges as ‘a given’, and to ask respondents whether female Muslims should otherwise be free to wear the veil. One-half (including 61% of over-65s and Conservatives, and 79% of UKIP supporters) thought the veil should not be worn even outside courts, schools, and colleges, and just 32% that it should be. The poll was undertaken by telephone for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on 18 and 19 September 2013, among 2,003 Britons aged 18 and over, and the data can be found on pp. 113-16 of the tables posted at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/SM_IoS_Political_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Religious identity (1)

Details of the religious self-identification of the UK’s regular armed forces personnel as at 1 April 2013 were published by the Ministry of Defence on 26 September 2013 in Table 2.01.09 of the 2013 edition of Statistical Series 2 – Personnel Bulletin 2.01. Although the proportion professing no religion has risen steadily, from 9.5% in 2007 to 16.4% today, the overwhelming majority of our service personnel continue to subscribe to some faith, and invariably (81.7% in 2013) to Christianity. Profession of no religion is highest in the Navy (22.3%) and lowest in the Army (13.5%), with 18.7% in the Royal Air Force. Non-Christians are under-represented in relation to society as a whole, which is probably mainly a reflection of the ethnic profile of the armed services. The full table is at:

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/publications/personnel/military/tri-service-personnel-bulletin/2013/2013.pdf

Religious identity (2)

In our coverage of the 2011 Scottish religion census on 28 September 2013, reference was made to potential comparisons with national sample surveys of religious self-identification in Scotland. By way of example, we show below a ten-year percentage comparison from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which employs a larger than average sample. The 2012 data are extracted from p. 13 of the 2012 edition of Scotland’s People (published on 28 August 2013), those for 2001-02 from the dataset accessible via the UK Data Service (applying the random adult sample weights). Although the question asked is identical to that in the census (‘what religion, religious denomination, or body do you belong to?’), these statistics refer to adults only and are thus not directly comparable to the initial census results (which are for all ages). The SHS figures also omit non-responses (because the dataset for 2012 is not yet available). The general direction of travel, of course, is similar to the changes seen in the census between 2001 and 2011, with a big increase in the number of Scots professing no religion and a large decrease in support for the Church of Scotland.

 

2001-02

2012
No religion

27.8

43.1
Church of Scotland

47.4

29.7
Roman Catholic

15.1

16.0
Other Christian

7.7

7.9
Non-Christian

2.1

3.4

Scottish marriages

Section 7 of Vital Events Reference Tables, 2012 [for Scotland], published by the General Register Office for Scotland on 27 August 2013, contains three tables dealing with Scottish marriages which will be of interest to BRIN readers:

  • Table 7.5 lists the number of marriages solemnized by celebrants from 50 different religious and belief traditions for each year between 2002 and 2012. The key stories are the steep fall in marriages conducted by the Church of Scotland (down by 50% over this period) and the Methodist Church (down by 70%) and the rapid growth in ceremonies conducted by the Humanist Society Scotland since they were legalized in 2005; by 2012 they had overtaken Roman Catholic marriages and were closing fast on the Church of Scotland.
  • Table 7.6 lists the number of civil and religious marriages (the latter disaggregated by Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, and other religions) for each year between 1961 and 2012 and each quinquennium between 1946-50 and 2006-10. Whereas civil marriages represented only 17% of the total in 1946-50, by 2006-10 the figure stood at 52%.
  • Table 7.7 lists marriages by ‘denomination’ for 2012, when 51% were civil, 18% Church of Scotland, 10% Humanist Society Scotland, and 6% Roman Catholic.

The tables can be found at:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/ref-tables/2012/section-7-marriages-and-civil-partnerships.html

Time use

Since the earliest days of sample surveys, it has been evident that interviewees have a tendency to overstate their recalled religious activities. This is no more so than in the case of churchgoing where claimed attendance can exceed by a factor of two the totals arrived at by actual censuses of public worship. Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning of the University of Aberdeen have sought to illustrate the point by repurposing diary data from English respondents (aged 16 and over) to the UK Time Use Survey, 2000-01, which was conducted by the Office for National Statistics. Participants, who were drawn from a random sample of households, were required to record their main and secondary activities for each 10-minute period on the day in question, which included Sundays (3,317 individuals appear to have completed Sunday diaries). Bruce and Glendinning’s methodology and findings are contained in a four-page report on The Extent of Religious Activity in England, which is being disseminated by Brierley Consultancy, an abridged version of which appears in the October 2013 issue of FutureFirst (contact peter@brierleyres.com to obtain copies of either or both versions). The authors conclude as follows:

‘There is little religion of any form practised, public or private. Less than 11% of adults in England engage in any religious activity whatsoever (including personal prayers and meditation and consuming mass media religious programming) of any duration at any point during a typical week. Only 8.25% of adults engage in any episodes of communal practice in the company of others. Less than 7% attend church on a Sunday. Read the other way round – 7% going to church on Sunday, 8% doing some communal religion and 11% doing any religion at all – these data offer little support for the claim that the decline of conventional churchgoing has been offset by an increase in alternative religious activities.’ Of course, it must be remembered that the survey embodied a snapshot of religious activity on the day the diary was completed, and that those who do not engage in such activity on one Sunday may do so on another.

Fossil free churches

This item is not a politically incorrect reference to the age or traditionalism of churchgoers but to a new campaign by Operation Noah (an ecumenical Christian climate change charity) to encourage churches (particularly the Church of England) to disinvest in companies seeking expansion in fossil fuel reserves. The campaign, and its accompanying report (Bright Now: Towards Fossil Free Churches), was launched on 20 September 2013 and underpinned by data from Christian Research’s Resonate panel, 1,520 churchgoers replying to its August 2013 omnibus. Although more than nine out of ten churchgoers agree that churches should invest their money ethically, the majority does not see climate change as a key issue relative to other priorities (such as women bishops). In the case of Anglicans, 63% want the Church of England to take the lead in addressing man-made climate change, yet only one-quarter supports the Church disinvesting in companies extracting fossil fuels. As with most Resonate polls, full data are not in the public domain, but Operation Noah’s press release can be read at:

http://www.operationnoah.org/node/569

 

 

 

 

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Scottish Religious Census, 2011

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Release 2A from the 2011 census of Scotland was made on 26 September 2013. It included the first results from the voluntary question on religion, which was: ‘What religion, religious denomination, or body do you belong to?’ This wording was different from that used in England and Wales (‘what is your religion?’) The Scottish religion results are available in varying levels of detail and formats.

A skeletal national overview is included in the news release at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/en/news/articles/release2a.html

Analysis and commentary are included in a statistical bulletin at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/censusresults/release2a/StatsBulletin2A.pdf

Detailed tables for Scotland, council areas, and health board areas are available as follows – Table KS209SCa (using UK harmonized categories for the religion question) and Table KS209SCb (using Scottish categories, disaggregating Christians into three groups) at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/en/censusresults/downloadablefilesr2.html

A national level summary table with all the write-in replies for specific denominations and faiths not itemized on the Scottish census household form is at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/censusresults/release2a/rel2A_Religion_detailed_Scotland.pdf

Interactive mapping is at:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/en/censusresults/visualisations/rel2areligionmap.html

In examining the results, there will naturally be much interest in how the religious situation in Scotland has changed since the 2001 census. This is not a completely straightforward exercise. As explained in the statistical bulletin, there has been some retrospective adjustment of the 2001 data for ‘other religion’ and ‘no religion’ to correspond with the approach adopted in 2011. This has had the effect of: reducing the ‘other religion’ category for 2001 from the 27,000 reported at the time to 8,000 now; and of increasing the number professing ‘no religion’ in 2001 from the 1,394,000 originally published to 1,409,000. There have also been slight adjustments (which are not explained, so far as BRIN can see) to the 2001 figure for other Christians (besides Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic) – this was formerly 345,000 but has now become 347,000; and to the 2001 figure for ‘religion not stated’ (formerly 278,000 but now 279,000).

Given these complications, it is probably simplest and more expeditious at this stage to use the comparison table published on p. 32 of the statistical bulletin, which incorporates these various adjustments, albeit the consequence is that we are dealing with rounded data. An abridged version of the table is reproduced below.

 

2001

2011

% change
Church of Scotland

2,146,000

1,718,000

-19.9
Roman Catholic

804,000

841,000

+4.6
Other Christian

347,000

291,000

-16.1
Buddhist

7,000

13,000

+85.7
Hindu

6,000

16,000

+166.7
Jewish

6,000

6,000

0.0
Muslim

43,000

77,000

+79.1
Sikh

7,000

9,000

+28.6
Other religion

8,000

15,000

+87.5
No religion

1,409,000

1,941,000

+37.8
Not stated

279,000

368,000

+31.9
TOTAL

5,062,000

5,295,000

+4.6

Between 2001 and 2011 the population of Scotland grew by 5%, but the number professing any religion declined by 11% while those affiliating to no religion rose by 38%. Protestantism suffered a heavy fall, the Church of Scotland by 20%, other Protestants by 16%. Indeed, ‘no religion’ has now overtaken the Church of Scotland (the national, albeit not established, Church) as the leading ‘religious’ group in the country, with a market share of 37% (against the Kirk’s 32%). In some council areas the proportion with ‘no religion’ is approaching one-half: 48% in Aberdeen City, 46% in Fife, and 45% in Edinburgh City, Midlothian, and the Shetland Islands. The Roman Catholic Church has held its own, with a 16% share in 2001 and 2011 (peaking at 37% in Inverclyde), notwithstanding its many trials and tribulations over recent years. Judaism apart, non-Christian faiths also expanded between 2001 and 2011, although collectively they still constitute just 2% of the population.

In a public statement the Church of Scotland tried to put a brave face on the census results, while accepting that they make for ‘stark reading’. See:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_events/news/2013/church_responds_to_census_figures

The Free Church of Scotland issued a more upbeat statement at:

http://www.freechurch.org/index.php/scotland/news_events_item/free_church_welcomes_census_results/

The Scottish Episcopal Church acknowledged that the census presents ‘a significant challenge’ in its public comment at:

http://scotland.anglican.org/index.php/news/entry/response_to_publication_of_2011_census_returns/

Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic spokespersons were also quoted in the report in The [Glasgow] Herald at:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/census-reveals-huge-rise-in-number-of-non-religious-scots.22270874

In its press release, the Humanist Society Scotland, far from rejoicing in the ‘gains’ made for ‘no religion’, chose to renew its challenge to the census question on religion for exaggerating the numbers of the religious. See:

http://www.humanism-scotland.org.uk/news/in_the_news/hss-challenges-census-result-on-religious-belief-/

Publication of the Scottish data now enables us to complete the religious profile of Britain at the 2011 census, as follows:

 

Eng&Wales

Scotland

Britain

%
Christian

33,243,175

2,850,199

36,093,374

58.8
Buddhist

247,743

12,795

260,538

0.4
Hindu

816,633

16,379

833,012

1.4
Jewish

263,346

5,887

269,233

0.4
Muslim

2,706,066

76,737

2,782,803

4.5
Sikh

423,158

9,055

432,213

0.7
Other religion

240,530

15,196

255,726

0.4
No religion

14,097,229

1,941,116

16,038,345

26.1
Not stated

4,038,032

368,039

4,406,071

7.2
TOTAL

56,075,912

5,295,403

61,371,315

99.9

In considering the above statistics, BRIN readers should be mindful of the differences in question-wording between England and Wales on the one hand and Scotland on the other, to which we have already referred. In particular, the Scottish census question incorporates the notion of religious ‘belonging’, a concept which is known from other methodological research to minimize the number of religious. This helps explain why the proportion professing ‘no religion’ in Scotland (37%) is much higher than in England and Wales (25%). It would be misleading to claim that Scotland is less religious than England and Wales on the basis of census data alone.

It is not possible as yet accurately to compare religious self-identity in Scotland as recorded by the census with evidence from national sample surveys of Scotland. The latter are restricted to adults whereas the census covers all ages, and, at present, we do not have cross-tabulations of religion by age for Scotland. In the England and Wales 2011 census it was found that children were six points more likely than adults to be returned as without a religion and one point more likely to be entered as religion not stated.

 

Posted in Official data, Religious Census, visualisation | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Devil in the Detail

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Eight religious statistical news stories feature in our latest miscellany, starting with a survey on belief in the Devil and ending with a public consultation on the future of the decennial population census in Britain, to which some BRIN readers may wish to respond. Our next post will concentrate on the results of the religion question in the last (2011) census of Scotland.

Devil

Belief in the existence of the Devil is three times as great in the United States (57%) as it is in Britain (18%), according to YouGov data published on 27 September 2013, 1,919 Britons having been interviewed online on 24-25 September and 1,000 Americans on 12-13 September. The current British figure is 16 points lower than when Gallup first posed a similar question in February 1957. Disbelievers now number 65% (compared with 42% a half-century earlier), with 17% undecided. Belief in the Devil does not vary hugely by most demographic variables, but it does by religion, being 7% for the non-religious, 25% for Christians, and 41% for non-Christians.

The national results are identical for belief that some people can be possessed by the Devil or another evil spirit: 18% yes (against 51% in the United States), 65% no, and 17% don’t know. This belief again peaks among non-Christians (37%) and is lowest for the non-religious (10%). Of these British believers in possession, 6% think that it occurs frequently, 12% occasionally, 33% rarely, and 6% never (the rest being uncertain). Among these believers in possession, 35% believe in the power of exorcism, with no major demographic fluctuations (even by religion), 18% do not, and 47% cannot make up their minds. YouGov’s blog post about the study, with links to full data tables, is at:

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/09/27/18-brits-believe-possession-devil-and-half-america/

Religious discrimination and the young

Interviewed online by ComRes for BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat programme, 72% of 1,001 adults aged 18-24 considered that young people today are more tolerant than their parents of different ethnic groups, religions, and sexual orientations. They also identified religious discrimination as the second most widespread form of discrimination in Britain (39%), after racism (58%) and just ahead of homophobia (36%). No more than 5% denied that Islamophobia exists in the UK, and 60% accepted that Muslims have a negative image among the British public (compared with 11% to 17% for the five other world faith communities).

At the same time, significant numbers of these young adults themselves exhibited negativity towards either Islam or Muslims. The Islamic faith was described as traditional by 88%, set in its ways by 81%, disrespectful of women by 67%, unequal by 63%, separate by 61%, intolerant by 52%, and violent by 37%. The Muslim community was often not thought to share the same values as other people (44%), nor to be doing enough to combat extremism (39%). More than one-third (37%) had no regular interactions with Muslims in any context, 27% distrusted them (against 12% to 16% for members of the other faiths), and 28% thought the country would be better off with fewer Muslims (13% to 17% for the other faiths).

Fieldwork took place between 7 and 17 June 2013, but the extensive data tables (481 pages) were only released on 25 September. They may be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Radio_1_Newsbeat_Discrimination_Poll_September_2013.pdf

Christians and wills

The Church Times for 20 September 2013 (p. 6) carried a brief report about a new study by Christian Research among its online panel (Resonate). Respondents numbered 1,917 churchgoers aged 45 and above and church leaders. Of those who had made a will, 45% said that they had left money to a charity, a much higher proportion than the norm. According to Remember a Charity, only 7% of all wills in the UK contain a charitable bequest. BRIN has so far failed to discover any more details about this survey. It is certainly not publicized on the current Christian Research website, which is sparse and, it is claimed, ‘soon’ to be replaced.

Anglican mindsets

To the same issue of the Church Times (20 September 2013, p. 16), Professor Linda Woodhead contributed an important article ‘A Gap is Growing within the Church’. This continues the analysis of two YouGov polls she commissioned for this year’s Westminster Faith Debates, on ethics and personal life (25-30 January, n = 4,437) and ethics and public life (5-13 June, n = 4,018). Her main thesis, underpinned by the survey data, is that, in both contexts, majority Anglican opinion is a ‘mirror image’ of the official teaching and policy of the Church of England. On personal morality most Anglicans espouse liberalism (in the sense that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how to lead their lives) and fairness, whereas the Church inclines to authoritarian-paternalism, and the maintenance of difference, altogether occupying the ‘conservative’ ground. In matters of public life, however, the roles are reversed, majority Anglican views veering towards the free market and ‘Little England’ ends of the spectrum, while the Church is more social welfarist-paternalist and cosmopolitan in outlook. ‘In  short’, Woodhead writes, ‘Anglicans have a good deal in common with the Government. They are in line with The Guardian on personal issues, but the Telegraph or even the Mail on wider social and economic matters.’ She also notes a values gap between Church and society, which widens as the age range is descended, perceived discrimination against women and gay people being significant factors in the disaffection of the young from the Church of England.

Religion and depression

The claim is often made, especially on the basis of research undertaken in the United States, that religion promotes psychological well-being, but the contrary appears to be the case in a multinational study reported in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 43, No. 10, October 2013, pp. 2109-20: ‘Spiritual and Religious Beliefs as Risk Factors for the Onset of Major Depression: An International Cohort Study’. Written by a team of ten academics (with Michael King of University College London as corresponding author), the data derive from 8,318 adults aged 18-75 attending general practices in seven countries (including 1,331 in the UK, 66% of whom were women) and followed up at six- and twelve-month intervals in 2003-04. The overall conclusion is that ‘holding a religious or spiritual life view, in contrast to a secular outlook, predisposed people to the onset of major depression and that such beliefs and practice did not act as a buffer to adverse life events’. This was particularly so in the UK, where the 27% of the sample claiming a spiritual understanding of life (without practising a religion) were almost three times as likely to experience an episode of depression than the secular group (32% of respondents). The odds ratios (adjusted and unadjusted) for the onset of major depression were also higher than the seculars for the 41% in the religious group, albeit the difference was not as marked as for the spiritual group. The explanation advanced is that ‘people predisposed to depression increase their search for existential meaning in religion and spirituality’. For access options to the article, go to:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8988733&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0033291712003066

Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s blockbuster thriller novel (2003) and film (2006), which has been frequently denounced as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, was the most-read of nineteen works of modern fiction in a survey conducted by Opinium Research in which 2,001 UK adults were interviewed online between 19 and 22 July 2013. More than one-third (36%) of all adults claimed to have read it, including 42% of the over-55s. Data tables were released on 25 September 2013 and are at:

http://news.opinium.co.uk/sites/news.opinium.co.uk/files/op3710_opinium_pr_adult_literacy_tables.pdf

Scotland’s Jews

The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has published the final report on Being Jewish in Scotland, written by Fiona Frank, Ephraim Borowski, and Leah Granat. It derives from a mixed methods research project, which commenced in November 2011 with funding from the Community Safety Unit of the Scottish Government. It ultimately involved more than 300 Scottish Jews (about 5% of the total, albeit possibly not representative) who either attended 30 focus groups or (n = 155) participated in one-to-one interviews or completed a survey form. The report is essentially a qualitative document but drawing upon pre-existing statistical evidence. Although the experience of living in Scotland was largely found to be positive, some anti-Semitism was revealed, leading to a sense of insecurity. Four-fifths of respondents were also concerned about ‘increasingly acrimonious attacks on Israel’. Being Jewish in Scotland can be read at:

http://www.scojec.org/news/2013/13viii_bjis_report/report.pdf

Beyond 2011

The Office for National Statistics issued a public consultation document on 23 September 2013 on The Census and Future Provision of Population Statistics in England and Wales. Two principal options for taking the census forward have been identified: a) a census once a decade, as in 2011, but primarily completed online; and b) a census repurposing existing government data with new compulsory annual surveys completed by a sample of households (cumulatively covering about half the population over a decade). Further details about these options, a SWOT analysis of them, the consultation questions, and how to respond (by 13 December 2013), together with links to two supplementary reports (one of which, Summary of the Uses of Census Information, contains sundry references to religion), can be found at:

http://ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/get-involved/consultations/consultations/beyond-2011-consultation/index.html

 

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Faith Schools and Other News

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Seven religious statistical stories feature in today’s post, including five newly-released YouGov polls, four touching on aspects of religious prejudice, and leading with a major study of attitudes to faith schools.

Faith schools

In our post of 2 September 2013, we referred to new research into faith schools commissioned by Professor Linda Woodhead in connection with the Westminster Faith Debates. It was undertaken on her behalf by YouGov, 4,018 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online between 5 and 13 June 2013. That research was published on 19 September, in the form of a press release on the Religion and Society website and the data tables on the YouGov website. Some fascinating results emerged, which, as the press release indicated, will offer ‘little comfort for either those who defend or those who oppose faith schools’. Findings include the following:

  • Only 32% believe the Government should fund faith schools generally, 18-24s being most supportive (43%), with 45% opposed, peaking at 57% in Scotland (where the existence of Catholic schools has often been a matter of controversy), and 23% undecided
  • Government funding of any type of faith school fails to find majority support, but opposition is notably lowest for Anglican schools (38%) and greatest for Islamic schools (60%) – hostility to Hindu and Jewish schools (59% and 55% respectively) is also high, but falls to 43% for Christian schools other than Anglican
  • Only 24% would choose a faith school for their own child, the proportion not exceeding 30% in any demographic sub-group, with 59% being unlikely to do so (peaking at 77% in Scotland)
  • Academic standards (77%), location (58%), and discipline record (41%) are the major factors in choice of school – just 5% attach importance to grounding of a pupil in a faith tradition and 3% to transmission of belief about God, and no more than 23% cite ethical values
  • A plurality (49%) finds it acceptable that faith schools should have admission policies which give preference to children and families who profess or practice the religion with which the school is associated (with 38% deeming it unacceptable, ranging from 31% of women to 51% of Scots)
  • Just 23% (never exceeding 28% in any demographic sub-group) agree that all faith schools should have to admit a proportion of pupils from a different religion or none at all, while 11% think it better for faith schools to admit pupils only of the same faith and 30% that schools should determine their own admissions policies

Analysing the factors which determine favourability to faith schools, Woodhead found strength of belief in God to be the most significant. When it came to attitudes to non-Christian faith schools, an insular (as opposed to a cosmopolitan) outlook was a key influence. In general, while there was some age effect, gender, social grade, and voting intentions appeared to make little difference to opinion.

The press release can be found at:

http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/new_poll_reveals_what_people_really_think_about_faith_schools

and the data tables (with breaks confined to gender, age, social grade, region and voting intention) at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4n6d3tnayp/YG-Archive-University-of-Lancaster-Faith-Matters-Debate-results-180613-faith-schools.pdf

Y-word in football

Yid is slang for a Jew, deriving from Yiddish. On 9 September 2013 the Football Association (FA), which is ‘cracking down’ on undesirable behaviour in football, issued a governance statement about what it described as the ‘y-word’, concluding that ‘the use of the term “Yid” is likely to be considered offensive by the reasonable observer’ and encouraging football fans ‘to avoid using it in any situation’. The statement was clearly directed at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (the ‘Spurs’) which historically had many Jewish supporters. In consequence, its fans often still describe themselves as ‘Yids’ or as belonging to ‘the Yid Army’, and the team’s opponents, in turn, call Spurs supporters ‘Yids’. The FA’s statement has led to controversy and debate, in which even the Prime Minister has become involved.

To test public opinion on the topic, YouGov questioned 1,878 British adults aged 18 and over online on 18 and 19 September 2013. Although three-fifths of those interested in football felt that it was acceptable for Tottenham fans to use the y-word in describing themselves, fewer (46%) of the sample as a whole agreed (with 26% disagreeing and 28% undecided). One-quarter contended that such self-description encouraged anti-Jewish abuse, albeit one-fifth argued the contrary, suggesting that anti-Jewish abuse was actually discouraged by reclaiming the y-word as a positive. A plurality (41%) deemed it unacceptable for Spurs’ opponents to call Tottenham fans ‘Yids’, but people interested in football were more inclined to tolerate use of the word in this context (47%) than Britons overall (34%). Roughly half of both the public and those interested in football seemed to approve of the FA’s intervention in the matter, but 34% thought there were other (implicitly more important) issues for the FA to focus on, UKIP voters (56%) particularly subscribing to this view. Data tables were published on 20 September at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ms6ofjga9s/YG-Archive-‘Yid-Army’-results-190913.pdf

By way of footnote, some BRIN readers may be interested to know that a forthcoming exhibition tells the story of Jews and football in Britain. Entitled Four Four Jew: Football, Fans, and Faith, it runs at the Jewish Museum in London from 10 October 2013 to 23 February 2014.

Banning the burka (1)

Recent high-profile cases, involving courts and a college, have reignited the controversy surrounding Islamic women’s dress, the debate having now spilled over into other arenas such as hospitals. The specific point at issue has been the desirability of permitting the wearing of the full face veil or niqab in public, but The Sun commissioned YouGov to run a poll about the burka (a whole-body garment) more generally, 1,792 Britons aged 18 and over being interviewed online on 16 and 17 September 2013. Three-fifths (61%) supported a total ban on the burka in Britain, 5% less than in April 2011, while 32% were opposed to such a prohibition and 8% undecided. The strongest backing for a ban came from UKIP voters (93%), the over-60s (76%), and Conservatives (71%), with the 18-24s (55%), Liberal Democrats (46%), and Scots (42%) most hostile. Opposition to a ban effectively increased when the question was asked in a more roundabout way, 38% agreeing with the proposition that people should be allowed to wear whatever clothing they want in public, including the burka, 54% being in disagreement. At the same time, many respondents wanted officials and employers to have discretion to ban the burka in specific locations: 86% at security checkpoints, 83% in courtrooms (for defendants), 79% in courtrooms (for witnesses), 68% in schools and colleges, and 63% in universities and the workplace. Full data tables were published on 18 September 2013 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/7kfoc0tfiq/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-170913-the-Burhka.pdf

Banning the burka (2)

YouGov’s polling for The Sunday Times, conducted online on 19-20 September 2013 and published on 22 September, was more nuanced, differentiating between the burka, the niqab, and the hijab (a headscarf which does not cover the face). Whereas two-thirds of the 1,956 respondents supported a ban in Britain on both the burka and the niqab, with fewer than one-quarter disagreeing, only 25% opposed the wearing of the hijab (with 65% against its prohibition). Rather more (76%) wanted schools to be allowed to ban their students from wearing burkas or niqabs, and 81% wanted hospitals to be permitted to ban their staff from wearing the garments. Referring to the recent court case involving a female defendant with a veil, just 6% thought she should be allowed to wear it throughout the entire trial; 54% favoured removal of the veil in court at all times and a further 35% while the woman was giving evidence. The usual demographic variations can be seen in the answers to all these questions, with UKIP and Conservative voters and the over-60s least sympathetic to Islamic dress, and the under-40s (especially), Londoners, and Scots disproportionately more tolerant. The data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4ua4utkfr8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-200913.pdf

Churchgoers and evolution

A non-random and disproportionately northern ‘convenience sample’ of 1,100 attenders at 132 Protestant churches, who completed questionnaires in 2009, is used by Andrew Village and Sylvia Baker to examine ‘Rejection of Darwinian Evolution among Churchgoers in England: The Effects of Psychological Type’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 2013, pp. 557-72. The principal conclusions are set out in the abstract: ‘The main predictors of rejecting evolution were denominational affiliation and attendance. Individuals from Pentecostal or evangelical denominations were twice as likely to reject evolution compared with those from Anglican or Methodist churches. In all denominations, higher attendance was associated with greater rejection of evolution. Education in general, and theological education in particular, had some effect on reducing rejection, but this was not dependent on having specifically scientific or biological educational qualifications. Psychological type preferences for sensing over intuition and for thinking over feeling also predicted greater rejection, after allowing for the association of type preferences and general religiosity.’ For options to access the article, go to:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12049/abstract

Ecumenism in Scotland

A report on ecumenical activity at congregational level has been prepared by the Church of Scotland’s Committee on Ecumenical Relations and the Ministries Council, based on research carried out in February-March 2013. A questionnaire was sent to all the Kirk’s parishes of which 823 (over half) replied online or by post, a significant minority of which recorded the absence of any other denomination in the parish. Where there was a presence, Roman Catholic, Scottish Episcopal and Baptist churches and independent fellowships were thickest on the ground. However, in practice working relationships were closest (in terms of frequent ecumenical contacts) with the United Reformed Church, followed by the Scottish Episcopal Church, Congregational Federation, and Salvation Army. The commonest inter-denominational activities involving Church of Scotland parishes were the World Day of Prayer, Holy Week services, Christian Aid Week, and Week of Prayer for Christian Unity services. Only a minority of parishes belonged to a local Churches Together Group/Council of Churches (43%) or to an ecumenical ministers’ meeting (48%), but it could have been that none existed locally in some cases. The ‘deepest’ forms of collaboration were inevitably limited, just 6% of congregations sharing their building with another denomination, 3% being in a covenanted partnership with a congregation from another denomination, and 1% having involved an ecumenical partner in the appointment of a minister. More Church of Scotland parishes (70%) detailed hindrances to ecumenical working than identified benefits (60%). Further information about the research can be obtained from Very Rev Dr Sheilagh Kesting at SKESTING@COFSCOTLAND.ORG.UK

Ghosts and UFOs

A majority of Britons (52%) believe that some people have experienced ghosts but fewer (38%) think that some individuals have witnessed UFOs with an extra-terrestrial origin. This is according to a YouGov poll conducted online among a sample of 2,286 adult Britons aged 18 and over between 28 and 30 August 2013, on behalf of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) and published by ASSAP on 17 September 2013 (following a preview in the Sunday Telegraph for 15 September, p. 3). Disregarding inevitable variations in question-wording, belief in ghosts appears to have risen over time (see the tabulation of previous data at http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#ChangingBelief), and it is especially prevalent among women (62% in the ASSAP survey), the separated/divorced (64%), and residents of the East Midlands (66%). Belief in UFOs is highest in the North-East (50%). Disbelievers in ghosts number 34% and in UFOs 45%, peaking among full-time students at 50% and 61% respectively, with 14% and 17% of adults unsure. The data tables are at:

http://assap.ac.uk/newsite/Docs/Ghost%20UFO%20Survey%202013.pdf

 

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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/

 

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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

 

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Sunday Activities and Other News

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Clive D. Field

Today’s post highlights four recent opinion polls, touching on the use of Sundays, the religious state of Scotland, and reactions to the funeral arrangements for the late Baroness Thatcher.

Sunday activities

Sunday has largely become a day dominated by secular routines, according to an online survey conducted by OnePoll in late March 2013 (the week before Easter Sunday) on behalf of the pub chain Chef & Brewer, and kindly made available to BRIN by the Spirit Pub Company. The sample comprised 2,000 UK adults aged 18 and over. Of these, 62% said that they usually spent their Sundays catching up on domestic chores (36% stating they did the bulk of those chores on Sundays, and 41% that they would be ‘lost’ if they did not have Sunday as a catch-up day); 31% shopped (33% considering that Sunday opening of shops had made their lives easier); and 16% went to work.

The average number of ‘little jobs’ done on a Sunday was 16, with only 5% doing none and 39% performing eleven or more. The commonest chores included: washing up (42%), tidying up (41%), clothes washing (39%), hanging out washing (29%), drying up (29%), vacuuming (26%), and ironing (21%). Most time was reckoned to be taken up by tidying the house (30%) and cooking Sunday lunch (25%). Two-fifths (42%) felt annoyed that they never had chance to unwind and really relax on a Sunday, and 54% felt bogged down with the amount of jobs they had to do at the weekend.

Nevertheless, 53% described Sunday as mostly a day of rest for them (more so for men, 57%, than women, 49%), with 77% thinking that the balance of their day still inclined towards relaxation, and just 8% reckoning Sunday to be the busiest day of their week. For 60% Sunday provided an opportunity for spending quality time with friends and family, and for 42% to catch up on sleep. Some also recharged the spiritual batteries. Although, in reply to question 10, 15% claimed that they ‘usually’ went to a place of worship on Sunday, fewer (7%) admitted to worshipping ‘pretty much every Sunday’ in answer to question 4. The second figure is likely to be the more realistic; it represented 6% of men versus 9% of women, and 12% of the over-55s compared with around 5% of younger cohorts.

Scottish faith

Scotland, formerly renowned for its religiosity relative to England, continues to be in the grip of secularizing tendencies, according to the latest opinion poll, conducted by Panelbase for the Sunday Times Scotland and Real Radio Scotland. The sample comprised 1,002 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed online between 18 and 25 March 2013. Some results were published in two articles (by Jason Allardyce and Gillian Bowditch) in the Sunday Times Scotland for 31 March 2013, while the full data tables can be found at:

http://www.panelbase.com/news/Religionforpublication020413.pdf

Asked whether they ‘belonged’ to any religion, 39% of Scots said that they did not, including 54% of men aged 18-34 and even more, 60%, of women in the same cohort. Church of Scotland adherents numbered 32%, Roman Catholics 13%, other Christians 10%, and non-Christians 4%. Christians amounted to 55%, rising, for men, from 34% among the 18-34s to 70% of the over-55s, and for women from 33% to 78%. The proportion of Christians is ten points down on the 2001 population census, and the trend is expected to be confirmed when the 2011 Scottish census results are released later this year.

Less than one-third (30%) were convinced that Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life and was the Son of God, the proportion being highest among Catholics (67%) and lowest for women aged 18-34 (17%). 44% answered the question in the negative (58% of men and 54% of women aged 18-34), and 27% were uncertain what to think.

Rites of passage excepted, two-thirds of the sample never attended public worship or had not done so for more than a year, peaking at 87% of those professing no religion and 74% of women aged 18-34. 8% claimed to have attended within the last week and a further 8% within the past month. The majority (77%) said that the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the former leader of the Scottish Catholics, and his admission of sexually inappropriate behaviour would make no difference to their churchgoing, but 20% stated that they would now be less likely to attend church; there was no difference between Catholics and non-Catholics in this respect.

Unsurprisingly, 62% of all Scots wanted Pope Francis I to move the Roman Catholic Church in new directions (76% of Catholics), against 10% who desired him to maintain the Church’s traditional positions (18%), with 28% having no view (5%). Overall, 63% of Scots wanted the Church to get tougher with abusers (57% of Catholics), 61% to become more accepting of artificial contraception (55%), 55% to become more modern (54%), 54% to allow priests to marry (43%), 54% to become more open (53%), 44% to become more accepting in general (47%), 41% to become more accepting of homosexuality (27%), and 40% to become more accepting of abortion (18%).

Funeral of Mrs Thatcher

The country is as divided about the late Baroness Thatcher in the aftermath of her death as it was during her lifetime. One-half of the 1,893 British adults interviewed by YouGov online for The Sun on 8 and 9 April 2013 thought that it is right that she be given a full ceremonial funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral this coming Wednesday (17 April). Predictably, the proportion rose to 85% among Conservatives and 60% of UKIP supporters but dropped to 25% among Labour voters and 38% of Scots. Those thinking it wrong that she be given such a funeral numbered 32%, including 58% of Labourites and 45% in Scotland, with 18% expressing no view (possibly reflecting the fact that fieldwork took place in the immediate aftermath of Mrs Thatcher’s death, before people had the chance to think matters through). Full data table available on page 4 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/jx8g4k4srj/YouGov-Sun-results-Thatcher-legacy-130409.pdf

A second YouGov poll, this time for the Sunday Times on 11 and 12 April 2013 among 1,981 Britons, asked a similar question but offered clarification of what was meant by a ‘ceremonial funeral’ at St Paul’s Cathedral (in contrast to a ‘state funeral’, as would be accorded to a monarch) and included different reply options. On this occasion, 42% of respondents preferred that Baroness Thatcher receive a ceremonial but not a state funeral, including 70% of Conservatives and 52% of Liberal Democrat and UKIP voters, and 73% of those who ranked Thatcher as ‘a great Prime Minister’. A further 8% (13% of Conservatives and 21% of those admiring her as ‘a great Prime Minister’) wanted her to have a state funeral, with 43% arguing that she should have neither a state nor a ceremonial funeral (70% for Labourites alone), and 8% undecided. Full data table on pages 21-2 at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/e4m8mi50q2/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-120413.pdf

 

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