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Counting Religion in Britain, November 2017

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 26, November 2017 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 26 November 2017

OPINION POLLS

Good life

What makes for a good life in the eyes of the public? GfK set out to find the answer to this question in a global poll conducted during summer 2017, for which 23,000 adults from 17 countries were interviewed online, including 2,175 in the UK. Respondents were given a list of 15 factors which might make for ‘the good life’ (specified as the life they would like to have) and asked to choose those which were most significant for them. The UK’s selection was headed by good health (82%), financial security (75%), and leisure time (68%), with spiritual enrichment in eleventh place, on 26%, compared with the multinational mean of 39% (the national peak being in Brazil at 47%). The importance attached to spiritual enrichment did not differ between the sexes in the UK, but it was surprisingly low for the over-60s (21%) and high among under-20s (30%). GfK’s press release, including a link from which to download a free copy of the full report on the survey, is at:

http://www.gfk.com/en-gb/insights/press-release/health-financial-security-and-free-time-are-top-factors-for-the-good-life-say-uk-consumers/

Royal family

The recent announcement that Prince Harry is to marry American actress Meghan Markle in 2018 prompted The Times to commission YouGov to repeat some of its standard questions about attitudes to the royal family, in an online poll of 1,575 Britons on 27-28 November 2017. The topics covered included reactions to a member of the royal family marrying a person from various backgrounds. Just over two-thirds (68%) deemed it acceptable for a member of the royal family to wed somebody of a different religion, which was three points less than in November 2016, with 16% opposed (among them 22% of Conservatives) and a further 16% unsure. This was a similar proportion as in favour of a member of the royal family marrying someone of a different ethnicity (69%). A blog about the survey, containing a link to the full data tables, is at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/29/5-charts-british-reaction-prince-harrys-engagement/

Protection of churches

Notwithstanding low and declining church attendance, cathedrals and churches rank second only to castles in a list of ten categories of UK historic buildings which the public considers should be protected for future generations. Asked to identify the first, second, and third most important category, 69% in aggregate opted for castles, 60% for cathedrals and churches, and 49% for royal palaces. Support for cathedrals and churches varied by age, rising from 49% among under-35s to 74% for over-65s. Findings derive from a ComRes survey commissioned by the National Churches Trust, for which 2,062 adults were interviewed online on 21-22 June 2017. The data tables are at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/National-Churches-Trust-Historic-Buildings-Survey.pdf

Trust in clergy

The latest annual Ipsos MORI Veracity Index, compiled from face-to-face interviews with 998 adults on 20-26 October 2017, has revealed clergy and priests to be the tenth most trusted of the 24 professions included on the list. Two-thirds (65%) of the public trusted them to tell the truth (four points less than in 2016 and twenty points lower than in 1983, when the index began), against 30% who did not trust them and 4% who were unsure. The net veracity score of +35% for clergy and priests was way behind that of nurses (+89%), doctors (+84%), and teachers and professors (+76% each). The most negative scores were for government ministers (-59%) and politicians generally (-63%). At present, topline results only are available at:

https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-remain-least-trusted-profession-britain

Thought for the Day

Thought for the Day is a regular faith-based slot in BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, broadcast continuously (under different titles) since 1939. Its appropriateness in a news and current affairs programme is periodically challenged, and it has recently come under attack from some of Today’s own presenters. This prompted YouGov to include a question in an app-based poll reported on 1 November 2017, the British public being divided between those who wanted Thought for the Day removed from the schedules (44%) and those wishing to retain it (47%), 9% being undecided. Topline results only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/01/are-modern-women-fragile-thought-day-facebook-list/

Religious education

YouGov ran an app-based poll on the back of news that schools in Staffordshire are to offer virtual tours of mosques after some parents refused to allow their children to visit them during school religious education trips. Three-fifths of respondents thought that parents should have the right to withdraw their children from school visits to certain places of worship while a third suggested they should not be allowed to do so. Topline results were posted on 16 November 2017 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/16/information-war-between-west-and-russia-religious-/

Christmas

The vast majority of Britons (83%) still prefer to describe the period around 25 December as Christmas, according to an online poll of 3,372 adults taken by YouGov on 17 November 2017. The proportion was lowest among under-25s (76%), Scots (78%), and Scottish National Party supporters (72%). It peaked (at 95%) with UKIP voters. Another 5% of the whole sample opted for Xmas while 9% gave other answers. Results, with breaks by demographics, are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/42e1403b-cb80-11e7-bdbe-dfebc9b5b055

Gender fluidity

In recent guidance issued to its own schools, the Church of England has stated that children should be free to try out ‘the many cloaks of identity’ without being labelled or bullied. This statement was approved of by 71% of respondents to an app-based poll by YouGov reported on 14 November 2017, with 21% disapproving and 7% unsure. Topline results only are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/14/coes-statement-regarding-gender-traffic-lights-mot/

Sexual orientation and identity

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA) has released the results from the ILGA-RIWI Global Attitudes Survey on Sexual, Gender, and Sex Minorities, 2017, conducted in partnership with Viacom, Logo, and SAGE. Data were gathered, by means of opt-in online interviews, from 116,000 adults aged 18 and over in 75 countries plus Hong Kong and Taiwan. By virtue of the patented Random Domain Intercept Technology employed by RIWI, which targets web users bypassing search engines (see pp. 13-14 of the global report for a description of methodology), these do not comprise nationally representative samples. There were 6,483 respondents from the UK, although not everybody answered all the questions (partly because of the use of a combination of fixed and rotating modules).

Two statements with Likert-style answers specifically addressed religion. The first related to sexual orientation: ‘it is possible to respect my religion and be accepting of people who are romantically or sexually attracted to people of the same sex’, with which 58% in the UK agreed and 15% disagreed, 27% being neutral. The second statement concerned gender identity: ‘it is possible to respect my religion and be accepting of people who dress, act, or identify as one sex although they were born as another’, with which 59% in the UK agreed and 12% disagreed, 29% being neutral. The global report and country-specific data (in Word and Excel formats) can be downloaded from:

http://ilga.org/what-we-do/ilga-riwi-global-attitudes-survey/

Schoolchildren and the hijab

Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills in England, has recently recommended its inspectors to question Muslim primary school girls if they are found to be wearing a hijab, in order to ascertain whether they have been forced to do so. In response to a YouGov app-based poll whose results were posted on 21 November 2017, a plurality (47%) of Britons thought the school inspectors should not be interviewing hijab-wearing Muslim primary school girls in this way. Two-fifths considered they should be interviewed while 14% were uncertain. The topline findings only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/21/hijabs-schools-counter-terrorism-classes-poetry/

Islamic State

When they met in Vietnam recently, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin resolved to defeat Islamic State in Syria. However, a plurality of Britons (43%) thinks they will fail in this goal, with 42% having confidence they will succeed and 15% unsure. The poll was conducted by Yougov’s app and reported on 13 November 2017 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/11/13/trump-and-putin-vs-isis-next-conservative-leader-f/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Voting of churchgoers

Christian Research has posted a summary of its online poll of 1,512 UK practising Christians (church leaders and churchgoers) conducted, during week-commencing 29 May 2017, in the immediate run-up to the 2017 general election. Respondents were drawn from the Resonate panel, which is self-selecting, and were disproportionately male, Anglican, Baptist, and Methodist. The overwhelming majority (96%) of practising Christians said they intended to vote in the election. Just 10% stated they always voted for the same political party. With only days to go, 24% had still not decided how to cast their vote. Of those who had already made up their minds, 37% opted for the Conservatives, 32% for Labour, and 22% for the Liberal Democrats (the last figure significantly above the national average, reflecting the legacy of Free Church electoral habits). Managing the National Health Service was the most important policy factor in determining voter preference, followed by Brexit and ensuring the benefits of economic growth were felt by all. The post is available at:

http://www.christian-research.org/reports/election-2012/

Church of England cathedral statistics

The 44–page Cathedral Statistics, 2016 reports on attendance at services (Sunday, midweek, and festival), rites of passage, visitors (9,030,000 plus 1,100,000 at Westminster Abbey), educational outreach, events, volunteers, choristers, and musicians. Ten years of trend data are included. The report is available on the recently revamped Church of England website at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/2016cathedralstatistics_0.pdf

In accordance with current fashion, the new Church website is mobile-friendly and shifts the emphasis in content away from words to images and sounds. To that end, a lot of documentation on the old website appears to have been dropped. Fortunately, the Research and Statistics pages have not been too adversely affected, but it would seem logical to complete the online back-file of Church Statistics and perhaps even to add digitized editions of the forerunner Statistical Supplement to the Church of England Yearbook. The Research and Statistics pages do serve an important archival function. They can be found at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/more/policy-and-thinking/research-and-statistics

Muslim marriages

A survey commissioned in connection with Channel 4’s The Truth about Muslim Marriage programme, broadcast on 21 November 2017, has revealed that 60% of Muslim women married in Britain (and 80% of those under 25) are not in legally recognized marriages. This is because they have not had a civil marriage ceremony alongside their traditional Islamic (Nikah) religious wedding. Many (28%) of these women who were just married religiously were unaware of the fact that, as a consequence, they did not have the same rights and protections afforded to couples marrying in the eyes of the law. Of the 66% who understood their marriage had no legal standing, half had no plans to enter into a civil wedding. The situation arises in part because only one in ten mosques in England and Wales is licensed for the solemnization of marriages and just 31% of Muslim women married in the UK had done so in a mosque.

The study also explored attitudes to polygamy, finding that 89% of the women did not wish to be in a polygamous relationship and that 37% of the 11% who were in such a relationship had not agreed to it.

The interviews, with 923 Muslim women married in Britain, were conducted, face-to-face or over the telephone, by female Muslim community researchers in 14 British cities in two waves between December 2016 and July 2017. Respondents were recruited by snowballing techniques and thus do not necessarily constitute a representative sample. Channel 4’s press release is at:

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/new-channel-4-survey-reveals-the-truth-about-muslim-marriage

Additional survey documentation, including the questionnaire for the second wave and a fuller description of methodology, is available on the website of True Vision Aire, the production company which made the programme, at:

http://truevisiontv.com/films/details/295/the-truth-about-muslim-marriage

OFFICIAL AND QUASI-OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Armed forces diversity statistics

The Government has published the UK armed forces biannual diversity statistics as at 1 October 2017. In respect of religion, they reveal that 72% of the Regular Forces and 74% of the so-called Future Reserves 2020 self-identified as Christian on that date with, respectively, 25% and 24% professing no religion, together with relatively small numbers of non-Christians. The proportion of religious nones in the Regular Forces continues to be highest in the Royal Navy (31%) and lowest in the Army (22%). The report and tables are at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-biannual-diversity-statistics-2017

ACADEMIC STUDIES

European Social Survey

The first set of data from Round 8 of the European Social Survey has been released, including those for the UK, where 1,959 adults were interviewed face-to-face by NatCen Social Research between 1 September 2016 and 20 March 2017. This academically-led study, which has been conducted every two years since 2002, always includes a short module on religion, asking about religious affiliation, self-assessed religiosity (on a scale running from 0 = not at all religious to 10 = very religious), attendance at religious services other than rites of passage, and private prayer. The weighted results for Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) in 2002 and 2016 are shown in compressed form below, the biggest change being the 11-point increase in those self-identifying as non-religious. The figures have been calculated from the Centre for Comparative European Survey Data website at:

http://www.ccesd.ac.uk

%	2002	2016
Regard self as belonging to a particular religion
Yes	48.0	44.5
No	52.0	55.5
Self-assessed religiosity
Not religious (0-4)	48.0	58.8
Neutral (5)	17.8	11.4
Religious (6-10)	34.2	29.8
Attendance at religious services apart from rites of passage
Monthly or more	17.8	18.0
Less often	31.6	30.5
Never	50.7	51.5
Private prayer
Daily	18.5	17.0
Monthly	18.0	15.4
Less often	19.0	16.2
Never	44.4	51.3

Material security and religious practice

In a recent article in Journal of Religion in Europe (Vol. 10, No. 3, 2017, pp. 328-49), Ingrid Storm tests three hypotheses linking material security (as measured by household income) with attendance at religious services at least monthly. Using the British Household Panel Survey and UK Household Longitudinal Study datasets for 1991-2012, she found that increased income was weakly associated with declining religious attendance but that reductions in income did not significantly impact attendance. However, the data did suggest that religious attendance improved and maintained life satisfaction in the face of economic loss. Access options to the article, ‘Does Security Increase Secularity? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey on the Relationship between Income and Religious Service Attendance’, are outlined at:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/18748929-01003004

Church schools and religious diversity

Further findings from the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project in 2011-12 are presented by Leslie Francis, Andrew Village, Ursula McKenna, and Gemma Penny in ‘Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Religious Clothing and Symbols in School: Exploring the Impact of Church Schools in a Religiously Diverse Society’, in Religion and Civil Human Rights in Empirical Perspective, edited by Hans-Georg Ziebertz and Carl Sterkens (Cham: Springer, 2018), pp. 157-75. A sub-sample of 2,385 students aged 13-15 from schools in England, Wales, and London who identified as Christian or of no religion was used. The authors conclude that, after controlling for gender and individual differences in personality and religiosity, ‘schools with a religious character are a source neither for good nor for ill in terms of shaping student attitudes either toward freedom of religious clothing and symbols in school or toward religious diversity more generally assessed’. The chapter can be purchased from:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-59285-5_7

Muslim identity

Data from the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project also form the basis of Leslie Francis and Ursula McKenna, ‘The Religious and Social Correlates of Muslim Identity: An Empirical Enquiry into Religification among Male Adolescents in the UK’, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 43, No. 5, 2017, pp. 550-65. The authors compared the responses of 158 male students aged 13-15 who identified as Muslim with those of 1,932 male students with no religious affiliation, finding (not unexpectedly) that the former had a distinctive profile in terms of both religiosity (measured across eight themes) and social values (six themes concerning wellbeing and attitudes to cultural and religious diversity). The correlations are presented in 14 tables with commentary. Opportunities for further research into Muslim identity are identified in the form of improved sampling and an elaborated survey instrument. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03054985.2017.1352351

Muslim population

The number of Muslims in the UK is projected to grow from an estimated 4,130,000 in 2016 to between 6,560,000 and 13,480,000 in 2050, or from 6.3% to between 9.7% and 17.2% of the population. So suggests the Pew Research Center in its latest report, entitled Europe’s Growing Muslim Population. To arrive at these projections, Pew modelled three scenarios for net Muslim migration (the biggest single factor affecting the size of the Muslim community), depending upon whether it was zero, medium, or high. The UK is currently the top destination in Europe for regular (non-refugee) Muslim migrants. Natural increase was also factored into the calculations, reflecting the fact that Muslims are disproportionately young and still have a higher fertility rate than non-Muslims in the UK (one more child on average). The report is available at:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

Islamophobia

Although racial boundaries between whites, blacks, and Asians have blurred in recent years, Muslims are widely singled out for negative attention by both white people and non-Muslim ethnic minorities in Britain, including a large number who do not express hostility to other ethnic groups. This is according to Ingrid Storm, Maria Sobolewska, and Robert Ford, ‘Is Ethnic Prejudice Declining in Britain? Change in Social Distance Attitudes among Ethnic Majority and Minority Britons’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 69, No. 3, September 2017, pp. 410-34. Their evidence concerning attitudes to Muslims derives from a measure of interpersonal social distance, specifically acceptance of an in-law from Muslim versus other ethnic backgrounds, contained in the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey (for whites) and the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Survey. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12250/full

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 8280: Health Survey for England, 2015

The Health Survey for England, 2015 is the twenty-fifth in a series of annual studies designed to monitor trends in the nation’s health. It is commissioned by NHS Digital and conducted by NatCen Social Research and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. It is undertaken through a combination of face-to-face interview, self-completion questionnaire, and clinical and other measurements. A number of core health-related topics are explored each year with additional topics investigated on a more occasional basis (including several in 2015). A question ‘what is your religion or belief?’ was one of the background variables included in the self-completion booklets given to the 13,748 adults and children interviewed in 2015, with reply options of no religion, Roman Catholic, other Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and any other religion. This permits analysis of the religious correlates of particular health conditions and attitudes. For a full description of the dataset and background documentation, see the catalogue entry at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=8280&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 8290: Scottish Health Survey, 2016

The Scottish Health Survey, 2016 is the twelfth in a series initiated in 1995. It was conducted by ScotCen Social Research on behalf of the Scottish Government, 4,323 adults aged 16 and over living in private households throughout Scotland being interviewed face-to-face between January 2016 and January 2017. A belonging form of question about religious affiliation was asked of all respondents, which can be used as a variable for analysing answers to all other questions, whether health-related or not. A catalogue description of the dataset, with links to documentation, is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=8290&type=Data%20catalogue

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Official data, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Andrew Village, armed forces, attendance at religious services, BBC, British Household Panel Survey, British Journal of Sociology, British Social Attitudes Survey, cathedrals and churches, Channel 4, Christian Research, Christmas, Church of England, clergy, ComRes, ethnic minorities, Ethnic Minority British Election Survey, European Social Survey, Gemma Penny, gender fluidity, general election, GfK, good life, Health Survey for England, hijab, historic buildings, household income, Ingrid Storm, International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association, interreligious marriage, Ipsos-MORI, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Journal of Religion in Europe, Leslie Francis, Maria Sobolewska, marriage, migration, mosques, Muslims, NatCen Social Research, National Churches Trust, NHS Digital, Nikah, Ofsted, Oxford Review of Education, Pew Research Center, politics, polygamy, prayer, prejudice, primary schools, Religious Affiliation, religious broadcasting, Religious diversity, religious dress, religious education, Religious Identity, RIWI, Robert Ford, royal family, schools, ScotCen Social Research, Scotland, Scottish Health Survey, self-assessed religiosity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, Social Distance, spiritual enrichment, Syria, The Times, Thought for the Day, Today, True Vision Aire, trust, Understanding Society, University College London, Ursula McKenna, veracity, voting, YouGov, Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project | Leave a comment

Counting Religion in Britain, August 2017

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 23, August 2017 features 27 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 23 August 2017

OPINION POLLS

Personal values

Asked to select their three most important personal values from a list of twelve options, just 4% of UK citizens chose religion, bottom equal with self-fulfilment, and two points below the European Union (EU) average. The most highly favoured personal values in the UK were respect for human life (48%), peace (43%), and human rights (42%). Data derived from Wave 87.3 of Standard Eurobarometer, the UK fieldwork for which was undertaken by Kantar Public UK between 20 and 28 May 2017 through 1,365 face-to-face interviews. Questions were also posed about the values (including religion) which best represented the EU and the factors (again including religion) creating a feeling of community among EU citizens. Topline results were published in the annex at:

http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm

Religion at work

A director in the National Health Service, sacked for speaking out against adoption by same-sex parents, has claimed that political correctness is preventing Christians from holding public posts. The case prompted YouGov to ask, in an app-based survey reported on 1 August 2017, whether people who let their strong religious beliefs influence their attitudes at work should be allowed to hold high executive positions. The majority of Britons (59%) considered that they should not be permitted to do so, with 29% taking the contrary position and 12% uncertain. Topline data only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/08/01/tony-blair-and-iraq-war-executive-positions-and-re/

Religion and mental health

Religious nones are more likely to have had personal experience of mental health problems (including anxiety and depression) than people of faith, according to an online poll by Populus among 2,038 Britons on 9-10 November 2016, the results of which have recently been released by Mind, the survey sponsor. The disparity, 39% for nones against 29% for both Christians and non-Christians, is perhaps driven by the younger age profile of nones. By contrast, Christians are disproportionately numerous among the over-65s, a cohort whose declared personal experience of mental health problems falls to 18% nationally. Nones also report an above-average incidence of mental health problems among friends and family. Summary figures are shown below, and the raw data are available in table 68 of the dataset at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/OmCelebrities_Mental_Health-v2.pdf

Mental health problems (%)	All	Christians	Non-Christians	No religion
Personal experience of problems	33	29	29	39
Friends or family experience of problems	40	36	42	46
Any experience of problems	60	56	56	67

Archbishop of Canterbury and politics

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby), who is a member of the House of Lords, recently said that the chances of finalizing a Brexit deal with the European Union before the target date of March 2019 are ‘infinitesimally small’. His intervention annoyed some MPs who suggested that he should stay out of the discussions. But, in an app-based poll reported by YouGov on 2 August 2017, the British public mostly sprang to the Archbishop’s defence. Just 26% of respondents considered he should speak only about religious issues. Two-thirds defended his right to comment on politics, divided between: 49% who said the Archbishop should speak on behalf of the Anglican communion on all matters relevant to it, including Brexit; 2% who judged he should speak on a wide range of issues but excluding Brexit; and 14% who wanted him to restrict his political forays to the House of Lords. The remaining 9% were unsure. Topline data only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/08/02/ais-talking-each-other-should-archbishop-talk-abou/

Bridging the Reformation divide

Five centuries after the Reformation, the Catholic-Protestant divide in Western Europe has faded, according to a new multinational survey by the Pew Research Center. With funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, telephone interviews were conducted by GfK with nationally representative samples of 15 Western European countries between April and August 2017, including in Great Britain (where there were 1,841 respondents, 54% of whom were nominally Protestant and 17% Catholic).

The extent of the Catholic-Protestant divide was measured by a series of attitudinal and religiosity indicators, the British results of which are tabulated below. Interestingly, in something of a theological role reversal, far more British Protestants than Catholics now hold to the traditional Catholic position that both faith and good works are necessary to get into heaven. Martin Luther’s teaching on salvation by faith alone is believed by only one-quarter of the Protestants (and one-third of Catholics). Likewise, whereas the majority of Protestants assess that the two communities are more religiously similar than different, a plurality of Catholics still say the opposite, even though there is not that much to separate them in terms of claimed levels of religious observance. However, such perceived differences do not stand in the way of social integration for, almost universally, members of each community know people from the other and are willing to accept them as family members and neighbours. A detailed report and topline for all the countries surveyed is available at:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/08/31/five-centuries-after-reformation-catholic-protestant-divide-in-western-europe-has-faded/

A comparable, but more detailed, survey on Catholic-Protestant relations was also undertaken in the United States, the report on which can be found at:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/08/31/u-s-protestants-are-not-defined-by-reformation-era-controversies-500-years-later/

% (Great Britain)	Protestants	Catholics
Both good deeds and faith in God necessary to get into heaven	62	41
Faith in God only thing necessary to get into heaven	27	35
Religion very or somewhat important in personal life	52	48
Private prayer at least weekly	25	38
Churchgoing at least monthly	26	24
Know a person of the other religion	94	87
Willingness to accept persons of the other religion as family members	98	89
Willingness to accept persons of the other religion as neighbours	99	94
Catholics and Protestants religiously more similar than different	58	41
Catholics and Protestants religiously more different than similar	37	45

Pew Global Attitudes Survey

Further findings have been released from the Spring 2017 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Survey. British fieldwork was undertaken by Kantar Public UK between 6 March and 3 April 2017, 1,066 adults aged 18 and over being interviewed by telephone.

Asked whether they endorsed several of US President Donald Trump’s policies, 58% of Britons disapproved of proposed tighter restrictions on those entering the US from some majority-Muslim countries, four points below the global median and two points below the European median. Approval was expressed by 35% (compared with 36% in Europe as a whole and 32% in the world), rising to 52% of Britons on the political right (against 11% on the left). Disapproval in Britain of this particular Trump policy was identical to that of US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear weapons agreement but lower than opposition to US withdrawal from major trade agreements (72%), US withdrawal from international climate change agreements (80%), and building a wall on the US-Mexico border (83%). Topline data are available at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around-world-question-trumps-leadership/

Presented with a list of eight international threats to the UK, 70% of Britons ranked Islamic State (IS) the greatest major threat, increasing to 79% among over-50s. The next major threats to the UK were seen as cyberattacks from other countries (61%) and global climate change (59%). British concerns about IS were lower than in some other Western democracies, including France (88%), Spain (88%), Italy (85%), Greece (79%), Germany (77%), and United States (74%). They were also nine points less than they had been in Britain a year earlier, although it should be noted that the 2017 fieldwork was conducted before the Islamist attacks in Manchester and London in May and June, respectively, which caused numerous fatalities. Topline data are available at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/08/01/globally-people-point-to-isis-and-climate-change-as-leading-security-threats/

Communicating with the dead

A psychic has claimed recently that she has communicated with the late Princess Diana. However, just 10% of Britons think that psychics can genuinely communicate with the dead, according to an app-based poll by YouGov on 7 August 2017, for which 3,207 adults were interviewed. The proportion was higher for women than men and for manual workers than non-manuals, but it was highest of all among UKIP voters (17%). Almost three-quarters of the whole sample disbelieved in the ability of psychics to communicate with the dead, divided between 48% who said the psychics were knowingly lying to people and 25% who felt they really believed what they were doing. The remaining 17% of respondents were undecided. Full results by demographics are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/63a21567-7b56-11e7-b38e-db9ef5dc1756

Omens

Just over one-quarter of British adults (28%) believe in omens, the highest proportions among women (37%) and UKIP voters (38%). One-half do not believe while 22% are undecided. The full results, which derive from an app-based YouGov survey on 31 August 2017 with 4,294 respondents, are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/f8f9758d-8e2d-11e7-9e62-855b7a08c6e8

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Community role of churches

The social role of churches is largely invisible to the general public, according to an online survey by OnePoll of 4,500 UK adults in February 2017 on behalf of Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, which has recently released a few results. Three-quarters of respondents could not name any of the activities which took place inside their local church other than religious services held regularly or at festivals. Residents of North-West England were amongst the least knowledgeable and rural dwellers the most. Prompted with a list of community activities offered by churches around the country, 54% were still unaware of those which their own local church provided, the proportion reaching 65% among over-55s and 83% of 18-25-year-olds. The full data have not been published, but Ecclesiastical’s press release (from which this report has been compiled, together with a few additional details in the Church of England Newspaper, 25 August 2017, p. 1), is available at:

https://www.ecclesiastical.com/general/press-office/social-role-of-churches-invisible/index.aspx

Chaplaincy (1)

Theos think tank has published two local studies of chaplaincy, based on quantitative research (via an online survey) between October 2016 and March 2017. The statistics relate to chaplaincies which could be identified and responded to the survey, so the picture in both cases is unlikely to be complete. Copies of Mapping Chaplaincy in Norfolk: A Report and Mapping Chaplaincy in Cornwall: A Report can be found at, respectively:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Mapping%20chaplaincy%20in%20Norfolk-FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Mapping%20chaplaincy%20in%20Cornwall-FINAL.pdf

Chaplaincy (2)

Meanwhile, Humanists UK (formerly the British Humanist Association) have published a third tranche of results from their online poll by YouGov on 28-29 July 2016, demonstrating (it is suggested) wide public demand for the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network which Humanists UK have just launched. Of the 4,085 adults interviewed, 69% agreed that prisons, hospitals, and universities with chaplains on the establishment should also have a dedicated non-religious pastoral support provider, including 73% of religious nones and 66% of persons of faith. In the event of being unhappy, distressed, or concerned at some point in the future, 42% said they would be likely to avail themselves of the services of a non-religious pastoral support provider, compared with 36% who would consult a chaplain. Nones (73%) were particularly unlikely to want to see a chaplain under such hypothetical circumstances, significantly above the national average of 49%, and they were also far less likely than Christians to have done so in the past. Many Christians (39%) and non-Christians (46%) would not be averse to seeing a non-religious pastoral support worker. In creating its new Network, Humanists UK have consciously decided to avoid using the term humanist chaplain since Britons overwhelmingly (83%) equate chaplaincy with Christianity. A summary of this particular section of the poll’s findings, with a link to the full data tables, is available at:

https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Humanists-UK-polling-on-pastoral-care-in-the-UK.pdf

Gender pay gap

In compliance with Government requirements for all large employers, the Church of England has published details of the gender pay gap among the 452 employees of its National Church Institutions (NCIs). Results were separately reported for the Church Commissioners investment team (where a performance-related pay scheme is in operation) and the rest (the overwhelming majority) of NCI staff. In the case of the latter, there was a 41% disparity of men over women for median salary, reflecting the concentration of women in the lowest quartile pay band (where they represented 74% of the staff, dropping to 36% in the uppermost quartile). The report is available at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/4022743/nci-gender-pay-gap-report-1-august-2017.pdf

Scottish church census, 2016

Headline findings from the 2016 Scottish church census, the fourth in a series since 1984, were featured in the April 2016 edition of Counting Religion in Britain. A book painting a fuller picture of the results has now been published: Peter Brierley, Growth Amidst Decline: What the 2016 Scottish Church Census Revealed (Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers, 2017, 215pp., ISBN: 978-0-9957646-0-6, £9.99, paperback). The ten chapters profile churchgoers in 2016 by age, gender, ethnicity, geography, churchmanship, and other characteristics; and analyse church leadership, midweek attendance, the age of churches, and replies to various sponsored questions on the census form. As befits a project commissioned and overseen by a consortium of Scottish Churches, most chapters end with a section ‘so what does all this say?’ There is also a concluding ‘making sense of all this’, aimed at individual congregations. An appendix briefly considers the methodology of the census and presents additional tables, and even more will be included in the forthcoming 2018 edition of UK Church Statistics, also by Brierley. The webpage of Growth Amidst Decline, with details on ordering a copy, is at:

http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/growth-decline

FutureFirst

The August 2017 issue of FutureFirst, the bimonthly bulletin of Brierley Consultancy, contains the usual mix of short and long articles about social and religious statistics. The longer pieces of British religious interest this time cover: a slow-down in Pentecostal church growth; an overview of recent research on parents passing on faith to their children; estimates of Scottish churchgoers by age over time; estimates of religious and secular funerals since 1995; and Christmas attendance in the Church of England. Further details are available from peter@brierleyres.com. A version of the funeral article also appeared as Brierley’s monthly column in Church of England Newspaper, 25 August 2017, p. 10.

Antisemitism Barometer

The Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA) has published results and analysis from online surveys which were conducted in 2016 and 2017 among samples of Britons and British Jews aged 18 and over. Britons were members of YouGov’s 800,000-strong panel, 1,660 being interviewed on 18-19 August 2016 and 1,614 on 2-3 August 2017. The two Jewish samples were self-selecting, recruited by CAA via Jewish seed organizations and online networks, which were then used to initiate a snowballing process. They thus constituted non-probability convenience samples, with 1,857 respondents between 17 August and 18 September 2016 and 2,025 between 19 July and 8 August 2017. Results were weighted according to the profile of the Jewish population in the 2011 census and the 2013 National Jewish Community Survey. Full details of methodology and data tables are contained in the 110-page Antisemitism Barometer, 2017, which is available at:

https://antisemitism.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Antisemitism-Barometer-2017.pdf

Britons were presented with a list of seven anti-Semitic stereotypes and asked which they considered definitely or probably true. Just over one-third (36%) agreed with one or more of the statements in 2017, down from 45% in 2015 and 39% in 2016. On this criterion, the most anti-Semitic groups in 2017 were: Roman Catholics (52%), readers of The Sun or The Star newspapers (47%), over-65s (46%), men (42%), and leave voters in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (42%). No individual stereotype was subscribed to by more than 20% of the whole sample (this being that British Jews chase money more than other British people). Just 12% of interviewees had definitely not met a Jewish person but 34% were unsure whether they had or not.

One-third of the Jews in 2017 claimed to have considered leaving the UK during the previous two years on account of anti-Semitism, 21% disagreed that Jews had a long-term future in the country, and 17% felt unwelcome here. Just over one-third (37%) avoided showing visible signs of their Judaism when outside the home. Almost two-thirds (64%) disagreed that the authorities were doing enough to address and punish anti-Semitism, with 42% having no confidence that, if they reported an anti-Semitic hate crime, it would be prosecuted if there was sufficient evidence. Overwhelmingly (83%), Jews deemed that the Labour Party was too tolerant of anti-Semitism in its midst, although Islamist anti-Semitism (ranked first by 48%) was a rather greater concern than that from the far left (ranked first by 29%).

Coverage of the Antisemitism Barometer, 2017 in the Jewish media was quite brief and muted, and various reservations about the Jewish samples and the CAA’s overall approach to researching anti-Semitism were expressed by sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris in a column in the Jewish Chronicle for 25 August 2017 (p. 8), which can be read at:

https://www.thejc.com/comment/analysis/my-questions-over-the-campaign-against-antisemitism-s-hasty-questionnaire-1.443352

A blazing row also erupted between the CAA and Simon Johnson, CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council, after the latter posted a video blog (since taken down) lambasting CAA’s survey of Jews as tantamount to scaremongering. The controversy was covered in the online edition of the Jewish News at:

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/simon-johnson-gideon-falter/

OFFICIAL AND QUASI-OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Religion of prisoners

‘Catholic Inmates Outnumber Anglicans for the First Time’, proclaimed the headline in The Times for 14 August 2017 (p. 22), calling into question, the newspaper’s correspondent argued, the privileged role of the Church of England in the prison service, including its monopoly in holding the post of chaplain-general of the service. Underlying this news report was the latest collation of quarterly Offender Management Statistics, one of whose documents tabulated the religious affiliation of the prison population (85,863 persons) as at 30 June 2017. Headline results (excluding the small number of religion unrecorded) are shown below, but the full spreadsheet, with data disaggregated by gender (albeit not age), can be found via the link at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2017

	Number	% June 2017	% change since June 2016
None	26,443	30.8	+1.1
Roman Catholic	14,961	17.4	-1.0
Anglican	14,691	17.1	-3.7
Muslim	13,185	15.4	+4.4
Other Christian	11,557	13.5	+2.8
Other non-Christian	4,859	5.7	+4.7

Visitor attractions

The 62 places of worship included in VisitEngland’s 2016 survey of major visitor attractions did not have an especially good year. Visitor numbers at them were down by 8% on 2015 levels and by 12% for those charging for admission (perhaps in reaction to an average 18% hike in their ticket prices). This compared with an annual increase of 2% for all visitor attractions in England. The fall was driven by some of the larger places of worship, especially in London, notably Westminster Abbey (-28%), where a 2012 Olympic Games boost had worn off. Outside the capital, sharp reductions in visitors were reported by Leicester Cathedral (-29%), after a spike caused by the reinterment there of the remains of King Richard III, and Guildford Cathedral (-30%). Gross revenue at the places of worship likewise fell by 1% against a rise of 7% for all attractions. Visitor Attraction Trends in England, 2016: Full Report, prepared by BDRC Continental on behalf of VisitEngland, is available at:

https://www.visitbritain.org/sites/default/files/vb-corporate/Documents-Library/documents/England-documents/annual_attractions_trend_report_2016.pdf

Scottish marriages, 2016

Scotland’s Population: The Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends, 2016 includes the number of marriages conducted in Scotland in 2016 by manner of solemnization. Of 29,229 marriages in all, 15,066 (51.5%) were civil ceremonies, 5,260 (18.0%) humanist, 3,675 (12.6%) Church of Scotland, and 1,346 (4.6%) Roman Catholic. For the full list, plus trend data, see Tables 7.05-7.07 at:

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/general-publications/vital-events-reference-tables/2016/section-7-marriages

Religious Studies GCE A Levels

There were 26,086 entries for GCE A Level Religious Studies (RS) in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the June 2017 examinations, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). This represented a decrease of 3.5% on the 2016 total compared with a decrease of 1.0% for all subjects and of 1.7% in the 18-year-old population. The number of RS entries had previously risen steadily since the Millennium, there being only 9,532 in 2001. More than seven in ten candidates for RS in 2017 were female, 16 points more than the mean for all subjects. The proportion of RS examinees securing a pass at A* to C grade was 80.8%, against 77.4% for all subjects, although there were fewer than average RS successes at A*. Additionally, there were 19,027 entries for GCE AS Level RS, 50.6% less than in 2016, AS Levels generally rapidly losing ground in consequence of ongoing reform of the examination system. Full provisional tables for both A and AS Level, showing breaks by gender and grade within home nation, are available, together with an important note and press release outlining changes affecting comparability of results year-on-year, at:

https://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels/2017

Religious Studies GCSE O Levels

The results for GCSE O Level RS were released by the JCQ the week after the A Level data were published. There were 282,193 entries for the full course GCSE in RS in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in June 2017, a decrease of 4.7% on 2016 (and the first fall in a decade) compared with an increase of 3.9% in entries for all subjects. A much smaller proportion of candidates for GCSE O Level RS was female (54.1%) than for GCE A Level RS. The cumulative number obtaining a pass between A* and C for the full course GCSE O Level RS was 71.3%, five points more than the average across all subjects. The short course in GCSE O Level RS (equivalent to half a GCSE) continued its steep decline, with 23.5% fewer candidates in June 2017 than in June 2016, in line with the progressive disappearance of short courses generally. Full tables, again with an important note and press release outlining changes in the examination system affecting year-on-year comparability, are available at:

https://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/gcses/2017

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Religion and voting

The latest blog by Ben Clements on the BRIN website concerns religious affiliation and party choice at the 2017 British general election. It is based on a cross-sectional analysis of the post-election wave (number 13) of the British Election Study (BES) Internet Panel, 2014-18, online fieldwork for which was conducted by YouGov between 9 and 23 June 2017. There was a wide variation in support for the two main political parties among the principal religious groups. For example, the Conservative Party secured the votes of 63% of Jews, 58% of Anglicans, 40% of Catholics, and just 11% of Muslims. The blog, which also includes trend data from previous BES surveys, is at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2017/religious-affiliation-and-party-choice-at-the-2017-general-election/

In a separate exercise, on behalf of Clive Field (who is preparing a lecture and article on the electoral behaviour of British Methodists between 1832 and 2017), Clements has tabulated the self-reported voting of professing Methodists at the last four general elections, again using the BES Internet Panel. These statistics are shown below:

% down	2005	2010	2015	2017
Conservative	35	40	39	47
Labour	39	31	33	36
Liberal Democrat	19	21	13	10
Other	7	8	15	8

By way of footnote to this item, we should flag James Tilley’s ‘We Don’t Do God? Religion and Vote Choice in Britain’ in More Sex, Lies & the Ballot Box: Another 50 Things You Need to Know about Elections, edited by Philip Cowley and Robert Ford (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-78590-090-7), pp. 25-9. Using British Social Attitudes Survey data for 1983-2014, Tilley contends that religion is still a good predictor of vote choices, even after controlling for demographic factors and value scales. The denominational patterns which he has detected (Anglicans predisposed to the Conservatives, Catholics to Labour, and so forth) mirror those found in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, electoral preferences being transmitted from one generation to the next. This brief chapter is distilled from a longer article by Tilley in the British Journal of Political Science in 2015, which has already been covered by BRIN.

Human rights and equality laws

In Politics, Religion, and Ideology, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2017, pp. 73-88, Kingsley Purdam, Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, Nazila Ghanea, and Paul Weller continue their reporting of research into religious discrimination based on the replies of 499 religious organizations to a postal and online questionnaire in 2010-11: ‘Religious Organizations and the Impact of Human Rights and Equality Laws in England and Wales’. The core of the article comprises five tables which quantify responses from the larger faith traditions regarding: the perceived helpfulness of equality legislation and policies in reducing unfair treatment of religious people, facilitating the working of religious organizations, and advancing participation of religious people in British society; and support for exemptions from such legislation for religious organizations in relation to religion or belief. The authors found that ‘equality is variously understood and many religious organizations give only limited recognition to certain legally protected characteristics including gender, sexual orientation and also the identities of other religious organizations’. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21567689.2017.1297235

Religious education and community cohesion

After controlling for contextual, psychological, and religious factors, researchers have found a small but statistically significant association between taking religious education as an examination subject and higher scores on the scale of attitudes towards religious diversity. Fieldwork was conducted in 2011-12 as part of the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project among 3,052 Year 9 and 10 students from state-maintained schools in England, Wales, and London who self-identified as either Christians or religious nones. A full report appears in Leslie Francis, Tania ap Siôn, Ursula McKenna, and Gemma Penny, ‘Does Religious Education as an Examination Subject Work to Promote Community Cohesion? An Empirical Enquiry among 14- to 15-Year-Old Adolescents in England and Wales’, British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2017, pp. 303-16. Access options to this article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2015.1128392

Discrimination in Scotland

One-third of black and minority ethnic residents of Scotland feel they have experienced discrimination in the last two years, and 44% of this sub-group think that it was on the grounds of their religion. The full sample of 508 respondents, interviewed over the telephone by Survation between 12 June and 17 July 2017 on behalf of Nasar Meer of the University of Edinburgh, was asked a series of questions about their experience of and attitudes to discrimination in Scotland. Results were disaggregated by a range of variables including religious affiliation, although it should be noted that, Muslims apart (n = 257), cell sizes for individual faiths were small. Full data tables are available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Final-Scotland-BME-University-of-Edinburgh-Tables-5l0p8-1.pdf

Yearbook of International Religious Demography

The 2017 edition (Vol. 4) of the Yearbook of International Religious Demography has been published by Brill, edited by Brian Grim, Todd Johnson, Vegard Skirbekk, and Gina Zurlo (xxiv + 257pp., ISBN: 978-90-04-34627-7, €85, paperback). Its contents follow the usual format: global and continental religious data in part I (chapters 1-2); case studies and methodology in part II (chapters 3-9); and data sources in part III (chapter 10). Figures for world religions by country are given in an appendix (pp. 221-49). Although none of the case studies focuses on Britain alone, two relate to Europe more generally: Antonius Liedhegener and Anastas Odermatt on religious affiliation and religious plurality, which introduces the SMRE project, the ‘Swiss Metadatabase of Religious Affiliation in Europe’ (chapter 6); and Michaela Potančoková, Marcin Stonawski, and Anna Krysińska on the effect of increased numbers of asylum seekers on Muslim populations in 2010-15 (chapter 7). The book’s webpage is at:

http://www.brill.com/products/reference-work/yearbook-international-religious-demography-2017#TOC_1

More information about the SMRE project may be found at:

http://www.smre-data.ch/

Victorian statistical rhetoric

Miriam Elizabeth Burstein offers an interesting case study of Victorian attitudes to religious statistics in her ‘“In Ten Years there is an Increase of 450 Priests of Antichrist”: Quantification, Anti-Catholicism, and The Bulwark’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3, July 2017, pp. 580-604. The Bulwark, published continuously by the Scottish Reformation Society since 1851, was arguably the most influential anti-Catholic periodical of the second half of the nineteenth century, a reputation built on its self-proclaimed devotion to ‘facts’ in demonstrating, through its ‘weaponized statistical discourses’, the religious and social threat which Roman Catholicism posed to the nation. Protestants alone, and only Protestants of the proper theological orientation, were deemed by The Bulwark to speak authoritatively in matters of numbers. Some contextual information about more general ecclesiastical views on quantification is also provided by Burstein, including in connection with the 1851 religious census. Access options to the article are outlined at:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/in-ten-years-there-is-an-increase-of-450-priests-of-antichrist-quantification-anticatholicism-and-the-bulwark/5CFA25892D084FCAB3F6F7993E9BCCB0

Qualifying secularization

Without denying ‘the steep decline in religious practice, belief, and commitment’, Daniel Loss argues for ‘The Institutional Afterlife of Christian England’ and the absence of a secular society during the second half of the twentieth century. He finds this persistent Christianity reflected in enduring links between the mainstream Churches and the government and public bodies on the one hand (especially over education and broadcasting) and in ‘popular interest in Christianity as a cultural resource’ on the other (Grace Davie’s model of ‘vicarious religion’ is invoked). Particular importance is attached to the role of the Church of England, which is characterized as tolerant, progressive, and inclusive, its image one of ‘bland inoffensiveness’ and ‘harmlessness’. As with much scholarly writing on secularization, whether from pessimistic or optimistic schools, the author tends to claim too much for the primary evidence (which, in this instance, peters out in the 1970s). He also fails to deploy sample surveys to demonstrate precisely how, ‘stripped of its denominational distinctiveness, English Christianity increasingly became a matter of cultural identity rather than orthodox belief or practice’. Access options to the article, published in Journal of Modern History (Vol. 89, No. 2, June 2017, pp. 282-313), are outlined at:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jmh/2017/89/2

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

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Religious Affiliation and Party Choice at the 2017 General Election

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Ben Clements

This post looks at how religious groups voted in the June 2017 general election. As with previous BRIN posts on this topic, it uses data from the British Election Study. Specifically, it uses the 2017 post-election wave (number 13) of the British Election Study Internet Panel 2014-18. The fieldwork was conducted by YouGov between 9-23 June 2017. The survey has a sample size of 31,196. Theset data and accompanying documentation were obtained from the BES website. The data were weighted and analysed on a cross-sectional basis.

Figure 1 presents the breakdown of the vote at the June general election based on religious affiliation. It shows the proportions voting Conservative, Labour, or for other parties combined. The traditional support of Anglicans for the Conservative Party is reaffirmed (58% voted for the Tories compared to 28% for Labour). The distribution of the vote amongst Catholics further highlights the declining support they have given to Labour at recent general elections, given their historical tendency to vote for that party. In 2017, 42% of the Catholic vote went to Labour, just ahead of the 40% that went to the Conservative Party.

Amongst Methodists, Baptists and those who identified as Church of Scotland, pluralities supported the Conservative Party. Amongst other Christians, support for Labour eclipsed that for the Conservatives (42% versus 38%).

Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Labour, with 85% having preferred for Jeremy Corbyn’s party, and 11% supported the Conservatives. Majorities, albeit somewhat reduced, voted Labour at the 2005-2015 general elections. Amongst Jews, a strong majority expressed support for the Conservative Party (63%), with around a quarter (26%) saying they voted for Labour. This builds on the plurality support for the Conservative Party shown by Jewish voters at the 2005-2015 general elections. Labour also received a plurality of the vote amongst those belonging to other religions (48%) and those with no religious affiliation (47%). Amongst these two groups, the Conservative vote share was, respectively, 33% and 32%.

Figure 1 Voting at the 2017 general election by religious affiliation

Source: Author’s analysis of British Election Study Internet Panel 2014-2018, wave 13.

Putting the recent voting behaviour of Anglicans and Catholics in long-term perspective, Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the party vote shares amongst, respectively, Anglicans and Catholics between 1959 and 2017 (based on data from BES studies). Figure 2 shows the tendency of Anglicans to have expressed greater support for the Conservative Party at most post-war general elections.

Figure 2 Voting at general elections by Anglicans, 1959-2017Source: Author’s analysis of BES surveys.

Figure 3 shows the traditionally strong party-denominational links between the Catholic community and Labour. The higher levels of support amongst Catholics for Labour compared to the Conservatives (the exception is the 1979 election) are apparent, but support amongst has declined at recent elections. Support for the Conservatives has correspondingly increased at those elections.

Figure 3 Voting at general elections by Catholics, 1959-2017

Source: Author’s analysis of BES surveys.

Based on data from the BES and – where available – Scottish General Election Studies, Figure 4 shows that support for Labour has traditionally been considerably higher amongst Catholics in Scotland compared to those in England. However, in 2015, a ‘sea change’ general election in Scotland, there was a substantial drop in support for Labour amongst Catholics in Scotland. For the first time, in 2015, support for Labour amongst Catholics in England was slightly higher than that recorded in Scotland, and this was also the case in the 2017 general election (43% in England and 35% in Scotland). Though support for Labour was declining amongst Catholics in Scotland in the years prior to the 2015 election.

Figure 4 Vote share for Labour amongst Catholics in England and Scotland, 1970-2017

Source: Author’s analysis of BES and SGES surveys.

Reference
Fieldhouse, E., J. Green., G. Evans., H. Schmitt, C. van der Eijk, J. Mellon and C. Prosser (2017) British Election Study Internet Panel Wave 13. DOI: 10.15127/1.293723.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Religion in public debate, Survey news | Tagged British Election Study, British Election Study Internet Panel, general election, General Election 2017, general elections, Party Choice, Religious affilation, religious belonging, voting, Voting Behaviour | 6 Comments

Counting Religion in Britain, June 2017

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 21, June 2017 features 23 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 21 June 2017

OPINION POLLS

Religion and the general election

The actual political alignment of the principal religious groups at the general election held on 8 June 2017 was recorded by Lord Ashcroft in a poll of 14,384 electors who had voted by post or in person. Fieldwork was conducted in Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) on 6-9 June through a combination of telephone and online interviews. As the table below indicates, Christians were disproportionately likely to support the Conservatives, largely a function of the older age profile of Christians, while non-Christians and religious nones were inclined to favour Labour. The pro-Labour stance of non-Christians, which was far greater than in 2015, tracked the traditional pro-Labour allegiance of black and minority ethnic communities, albeit it was ten points less than the 2017 BME figure (as a consequence of the strongly pro-Conservative leanings of Jews). The pro-Labour stance of nones reflected their relative youth and Labour’s success in 2017 in reaching out to young people generally. The distribution of all votes is naturally affected by the collapse in UKIP support since 2015. A substantial minority of all the faith groups indicated that they had made up their minds about how to vote within a week of polling day: 33% of Christians, 38% of non-Christians, and 34% of nones. Data tables are available at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GE-post-vote-poll-Full-tables.pdf

% down	All voters	Christians	Non-Christians	Religious Nones
2017 general election
Conservative	41.3	51.5	27.7	29.4
Labour	39.1	31.2	56.8	47.6
Liberal Democrat	9.2	8.5	8.6	10.2
UKIP	2.9	3.1	1.2	2.9
Another party	7.4	5.7	5.6	9.9
2015 general election(recalled vote)
Conservative	37.0	44.9	30.2	26.8
Labour	30.6	26.3	42.6	35.0
Liberal Democrat	9.8	8.4	10.0	11.6
UKIP	12.3	13.8	7.6	11.0
Another party	10.4	6.7	9.7	15.6

Meanwhile, two pre-election polls by Opinium Research had investigated the voting intentions and attitudes to political issues of members of the UK’s black and ethnic minorities. Online fieldwork was conducted between 2 and 7 May and between 30 May and 1 June with, respectively, 511 and 607 respondents. The answers to all questions were disaggregated by religious affiliation, with the sub-samples of Christians (29% averaged across the two surveys), Muslims (28%), and religious nones (28%) being sufficiently large to be statistically robust. Full data tables can be accessed via the links in the blog post at:

http://opinium.co.uk/political-polling-ethnic-minorities-30th-may-2017/

Personal religious beliefs of politicians

One casualty of the 2017 general election was Tim Farron. Although re-elected to Parliament, he stood down as leader of the Liberal Democrats immediately afterwards, citing the difficulty of reconciling his Christian beliefs with serving as a political leader, his views on whether or not homosexuality is a sin having become a focus of the initial stages of the election campaign. Asked more generically, in an online poll by YouGov on 15 June 2017, about politicians who found their party’s ideology at odds with their personal religious views, 46% of the 5,526 Britons questioned felt that politicians should stay true to their religious convictions compared with 20% wanting them to privilege the party ideology (the remaining 34% were undecided). Conservatives (59%) and over-65s (62%) particularly wanted politicians to put their religion first, whereas 18-24s (26%) and Liberal Democrats (27%) placed above-average emphasis on fidelity to party ideology. Results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/38a3a410-51ad-11e7-81f3-2ab0a50a8b9c

Forces for good

Lord Ashcroft’s poll covered a range of other political issues, the results for which were disaggregated by the three principal religious groups. The following table shows the proportion of each ranking, on a scale running from 0 to 10, certain trends as a force for ill (0-4), a mixed blessing (5), or a force for good (6-10). The higher the mean score, the more positive the group was towards the trend concerned. Reflecting their relatively elderly profile, Christians emerged as the community with the least progressive views, their conservatism exemplified in their disproportionate enthusiasm for capitalism. The internet was seen as the most positive development by all groups, albeit nones were also especially attracted to the green movement.

Mean scores	All voters	Christians	Non-Christians	Religious Nones
Multiculturalism	5.42	4.92	6.51	5.93
Social liberalism	5.66	5.16	6.29	6.27
Feminism	6.37	6.01	6.39	6.87
Green movement	6.40	5.90	6.87	7.00
Globalization	5.46	5.41	5.82	5.47
Internet	7.03	6.92	7.22	7.17
Capitalism	5.35	5.61	5.21	5.02
Immigration	4.97	4.51	5.88	5.45

Religious affiliation

The most recent data on religious affiliation derive from an aggregate of five online Populus polls during May 2017 and the online component of Lord Ashcroft’s post-vote general election survey (noted above). The question was: ‘to which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member?’ Results are tabulated below.

	%
Christian	52.3
Muslim	2.1
Hindu	0.6
Jew	0.7
Sikh	0.2
Buddhist	0.6
Other non-Christian	1.6
No religion	40.2
Prefer not to say	1.7
N =	23,477

Humanism

Marking its relaunch as Humanists UK, the British Humanist Association (BHA) has recently released the second tranche of findings from a survey it commissioned last year, for which 4,085 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed online by YouGov on 28-29 July 2016. They revealed that 44% professed to belong to no religion, one-half being cradle nones and one-third raised as Anglicans. One-third of the whole sample met the BHA’s definition of being a humanist, as reflected in their selection of the humanist answer to three statement options (these answers were: ‘science and evidence provide the best way to understand the universe’; ‘what is right and wrong depends on the effects on people and the consequences for society and the world’; and ‘our empathy and compassion give an understanding of what is right and wrong’). The proportion meeting the definition varied significantly by age, from 46% of under-25s falling to 23% of over-55s. Of those fulfilling the criteria, 72% self-identified as humanists, 8% did not, with 19% uncertain. Interestingly, one-third of the sub-sample holding humanist beliefs actually claimed to belong to some religion, leading the BHA to conclude that 22% of the population are real humanists in (a) being non-religious and (b) subscribing to humanist beliefs. Full data tables can be accessed via the link in the press release at:

https://humanism.org.uk/2017/06/15/new-poll-shows-one-in-five-are-humanists-and-a-third-hold-humanist-beliefs/

God

One-half of adults either believe in God (17%) or some form of god or spirit (33%), according to an app-based survey by YouGov published on 15 June 2017. The plurality (45%) believes there is no kind of god or spirit, only the material world, while 5% venture other replies. Topline results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/15/who-should-be-included-brexit-talks-god-vs-materia/

The same proportion of the population as believe in God or a spirit, 50% of 5,526 Britons interviewed online by YouGov on 15 June 2017, still consider it appropriate that the national anthem includes references to God, just 22% saying it is wrong (with 28% uncertain). The greatest level of support for the divine appearance in the national anthem is recorded among UKIP voters (67%), Conservatives (68%), and over-65s (69%), while Labour voters (33%), Scots (36%), and Scottish Nationalists (46%) are most inclined to think it wrong for God to be invoked in the national anthem. Results, disaggregated by standard demographics, are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/38a3a410-51ad-11e7-81f3-2ab0a50a8b9c

Faith-based schools

Government plans to abolish the present cap preventing new faith-based schools from recruiting more than half their pupils on religious grounds find little favour with the electorate, according to a Populus poll on behalf of the Accord Coalition, for which 2,033 Britons were interviewed online on 5-7 May 2017. Forced to choose, four-fifths of respondents supported the status quo, including majorities of adherents of the two denominations (Church of England and Roman Catholic Church) which have the most faith schools. Just 20% in both Britain and England agreed that new state-funded faith schools should be allowed to select up to 100% of their pupils on the basis of faith, albeit this option appealed to 33% of Catholics and even higher proportions of the rather small numbers of Muslims and Jews in the sample. Full data tables are available at:

http://accordcoalition.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Religious-Schools-Survey.pdf

Inter-faith relations

A majority (53%) of young people aged 18-24 sense that religious intolerance in Britain has increased during the past five years, according to an online poll of 1,002 of them undertaken by ICM Unlimited on behalf of Hope Not Hate and the National Union of Teachers between 30 May and 1 June 2017. Just 18% thought religious intolerance was decreasing, with 13% detecting no change and 16% undecided. Asked about relations between particular faith communities, 30% assessed that Christians and Muslims do not get along with each other, compared with 33% saying the same about people of no faith and Muslims, and 19% about people with no faith and people with faith. Data tables are available at:

https://www.icmunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017_hopenothate_18-24s_poll.pdf

Attitudes to Islam

In an eight-nation study for Handelsblatt, undertaken online by YouGov between 21 May and 6 June 2017, a plurality (47%) of the 1,974 Britons interviewed detected a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of their society. This was much the same proportion as in the United States (45%) and France (48%), albeit it fell short of the majorities recorded in Germany (53%), Sweden (56%), Denmark (59%), Norway (59%), and Finland (60%). Just under one-quarter (23%) of Britons perceived Islam as generally compatible with British values, while 15% agreed with neither option and 16% did not know what to think. Topline results are available on p. 23 of the data tables at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/1eqs14w9mx/HandelsblattResults_Topline_May2017_tracked_W.pdf

Simultaneously, in YouGov’s app-based survey published on 21 June 2017, a majority of Britons acknowledged that British society was very (5%) or somewhat (54%) Islamophobic. A minority considered that it was not really (31%) or not at all (8%) Islamophobic. Topline results only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/21/islamophobia-uk-brexit-talks-divorce-bill-and-futu/

Islamist terrorism

In the wake of the deadly Islamist attacks in Manchester on 22 May and London on 3 June 2017, 52% of Britons thought most British Muslim leaders could be doing a lot more to stop British Muslims being radicalized and to combat terrorism. The proportion was especially high among over-65s and Conservatives (66% each) and UKIP voters (76%). Just under one-third (29%) of the 2,130 adults interviewed online by YouGov for The Times on 5-7 June 2017 believed the Muslim leadership was doing all it reasonably could while 19% were unable to express an opinion. In a supplementary question, 7% of respondents claimed to have had difficult or embarrassing conversations with Muslim friends or colleagues in recent years on the subject of extremism or terrorism, and this was especially likely to have been the case in London (12%). Full data tables are available at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/d8zsb99eyd/TimesResults_FINAL%20CALL_GB_June2017_W.pdf

In a separate app-based poll by YouGov published on 6 June 2017, 75% of adults agreed that, in the light of recent terror attacks, Britain should be less tolerant of the rights of radical Islamists to express themselves. The topline result only is available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/06/terrorism-and-general-election/

In the early hours of 19 June 2017, a van deliberately ploughed into worshippers who had just attended Ramadan prayers outside the Finsbury Park mosque in London, killing one person and injuring nine others. Eyewitness reports suggested that the van’s driver had vowed to kill Muslims. The authorities at the mosque criticized the media for initially failing to report the incident as terror-related. Quizzed online later the same day, 59% of 4,305 respondents to a YouGov app-based poll agreed that the attack outside the mosque could properly be described as an act of terrorism, with 23% dissenting and 18% uncertain. Results, with breaks by demographics, are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/75c6bfe0-54db-11e7-862a-1eb0da735179

Jewish opinions

In the May 2017 issue of Counting Religion in Britain, we reported on the initial results from a telephone poll of 515 self-identifying British Jews undertaken by Survation for the Jewish Chronicle on 21-26 May 2017. In its edition of 9 June 2017 (pp. 1-2), the newspaper headlined the findings from two additional questions. The first concerned the extent to which respondents were optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Jews in the UK; a plurality (47%) felt very or quite optimistic while 23% were pessimistic and 26% neutral on the subject. In the second question, the sample was asked whether they sensed that Israel was heading in the right or wrong direction under the leadership of its Prime Minister, Benjamin (‘Bibi’) Netanyahu; another plurality (41%) perceived the direction to be right against 33% saying it was wrong and 26% undecided. No data tables are in the public domain, as yet, but the newspaper’s coverage can be read at:

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-jewish-chronicle/20170609/281500751225361

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Methodist statistics for mission

Methodist membership in Britain has declined by 3.5% year-on-year during the decade to 31 October 2016, now standing at 188,398, according to the Methodist Church’s latest triennial Statistics for Mission report. Net losses over the triennium were split between recruitment losses (55%) and retention losses (45%). Average weekly (Sunday and weekday) attendances at services are 202,100, only 14% of whom are by young people, with an estimated 500,000 individuals present at non-service activities. The 22-page report is available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/media/2625881/conf-2017-42-Statistics-for-Mission.pdf

Christians against Poverty

Christians against Poverty (CAP)’s Client Report for 2016 draws upon the charity’s client databases and 1,217 responses to its annual debt help survey, undertaken by post and online between September and November 2016. Low income is the most frequently-cited cause of debt, followed by relationship breakdown and mental ill-health. The mean annual household income of CAP’s new clients in 2016 was £14,700, a real-terms decrease on the 2015 figure, compared with the national average of £26,300. The overwhelming majority (89%) of clients had income below the national average and 63% were living below the poverty line. By the time they had sought CAP’s help, they had amassed outstanding debt balances equivalent to 97% of their annual income. The report can be downloaded from:

https://capuk.org/fileserver/downloads/policy_and_government/client_report.pdf

OFFICIAL AND QUASI-OFFICIAL STATISTICS

Armed forces diversity statistics

The proportion of UK service personnel professing no religion is continuing to grow steadily and, as at 1 April 2017, the proportion stood at just under one-quarter for both the regular forces and the reserves. In the case of regular forces, the figure was highest for the Royal Navy (30%) and lowest for the Army (21%). Further information is available in the Ministry of Defence’s latest biannual diversity statistics report at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-biannual-diversity-statistics-2017

Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland

The number of charges relating to religious prejudice brought in Scotland in 2016-17 under the two relevant statutes was 719, representing an increase of 12% on the 642 in 2015-16. Roman Catholicism was the religion most often the subject of reported abuse, with 384 charges in 2016-17, 28% more than the year before, albeit not as high as in previous years. Charges related to Protestantism amounted to 165, to Islam 113, and to Judaism 23. Glasgow had the biggest concentration of charges (30%). The majority (91%) of all charges involved male accused. Full details are contained in the 24-page report by Rebecca Foster and Katherine Myant, Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2016-17, which can be downloaded from:

https://beta.gov.scot/publications/religiously-aggravated-offending-scotland-2016-2017/

ACADEMIC STUDIES

British Social Attitudes Survey

NatCen Social Research has published the report on British Social Attitudes Survey, 34, which took place between July and November 2016. Interviews were achieved with 2,942 adults aged 18 and over, with some questions put to the full sample and others to part (one-third or two-thirds) samples. The standard questions on religious affiliation and attendance at religious services were included, the former revealing that 53% of respondents professed to belong to no religion, with 15% being Anglicans, 9% Roman Catholics, 17% other Christians, and 6% non-Christians. Other questions on religion do not appear to have been asked. Media coverage of the report has focused disproportionately on the chapter by Kirby Swales and Eleanor Attar Taylor (pp. 85-126) dealing with moral issues, notably on the continued growth in social liberalism with regard to pre-marital sex, same-sex relationships, abortion, and pornography (attitudes to euthanasia remain largely unchanged). This greater liberalism has been increasingly embraced by Christians, notably in terms of same-sex relationships, although across all the topics examined people with a religion were still less likely to hold liberal views than those with no religion (to a significant extent, this probably tracks the social conservatism of older people, who are disproportionately religious). These differences would doubtless be accentuated if only practising religious were considered; however, as the dataset from the survey has not yet been made available, this level of analysis cannot be undertaken at present. The remaining chapters concern tax and benefit manipulation, the role of government, civil liberties, Brexit, and immigration but have no religious content. The published report can be found at:

http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39196/bsa34_full-report_fin.pdf

European Social Survey

Since its inauguration in 2002, the European Social Survey (ESS) has proved a useful source of data on a limited range of religious topics across the twenty or so countries (including the United Kingdom) covered in each wave. Some of its potential in this regard is illustrated in three of the sixteen chapters in Values and Identities in Europe: Evidence from the European Social Survey, edited by Michael Breen (London: Routledge, 2017, xxv + 314 pp., ISBN: 978-1-138-22666-1, hardback, £110). One, by Ryan Cragun (pp. 17-35), is a case study of secularization in Ireland while the other two chapters focus on analyses at aggregate level of Round 6 of ESS (2012): Anna Kulkova, ‘Religiosity and Political Participation across Europe’ (pp. 36-57) and Caillin Reynolds, ‘Religion and Values in the ESS: Individual and Societal Effects’ (pp. 58-73). Few UK-specific statistics are cited. The book’s webpage is at:

https://www.routledge.com/Values-and-Identities-in-Europe-Evidence-from-the-European-Social-Survey/Breen/p/book/9781138226661

Anglican church growth

In ‘Intentionality, Numerical Growth, and the Rural Church’ (Rural Theology, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2017, pp. 2-11), David Voas revisits a survey he conducted in 2013 as part of the Church of England’s Church Growth Research Programme. This found no strong connection between numerical growth and worship style or theological tradition, the crucial factor being that congregations engage in reflection and make intentional choices about their future direction. The quantitative and qualitative evidence for that conclusion is summarized in this article and implications explored for rural churches, which are often conservative in character. To the extent that congregations are inward-looking, follow inherited practice, and resist change, Voas contends, it may be difficult for them to avoid stagnation or decline. Thus, the revitalization of tradition is a challenge for rural clergy and parishioners. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14704994.2017.1298265

Jewish vote

In two recent posts on his blog, University of Leicester academic Daniel Allington applies regression analysis to the results of the 2017 general election for the twenty British constituencies with the highest Jewish population at the 2011 census. He concludes that:

Many Jewish voters very probably turned away from the Labour Party between 2015 and 2017 (in the light of perceived anti-Semitism within the Party)
There is no indication that these lost voters switched to the Conservative Party in 2017
These voters seem rather more likely to have voted for the Liberal Democrats

The posts can be found at:

http://www.danielallington.net/2017/06/electoral-cost-left-wing-antisemitism/

http://www.danielallington.net/2017/06/jewish-voters-labour-conservative-liberal-democrat/

Roman Catholicism in the 1970s and 1980s

In a letter to The Tablet (10 June 2017, p. 17), sociologist of religion Mike Hornsby-Smith expressed concern about the long-term future of the archive of his quantitative and qualitative research into English Roman Catholicism in the 1970s and 1980s. This had led to countless published outputs, including two substantial books: Roman Catholics in England: Studies in Social Structure since the Second World War (1987) and Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and Transformations of Religious Authority (1991). The archive had been deposited in the library of Heythrop College, part of the University of London. However, arising from financial challenges and following the failure of partnership discussions with, successively, St Mary’s University Twickenham and the University of Roehampton, the Jesuits in Britain have decided to close the College at the end of the 2017/18 academic year and have already sold the College buildings to a property developer. None of the College’s academic departments is relocating to another higher education institution and no firm plans are yet in place to secure the future of the College’s extensive and important library and archive, other than, in the short term, to pack it up and move it offsite somewhere. Hornsby-Smith has also deposited his own personal diaries, of a Catholic layman from the 1950s to the present, at the library.

Living by Numbers

The vital contribution which ideas of number, magnitude, and frequency make in shaping our everyday lives is rehearsed in Steven Connor, Living by Numbers: In Defence of Quantity (London: Reaktion Books, 2016, 296 pp., ISBN: 9781780236469, £15, hardback). The book’s webpage is at:

http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780236469&nat=false&stem=true&sf1=keyword&st1=Living%2Bby%2Bnumbers&m=2&dc=13

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 8165: Active People Survey, 2015-2016

The Active People Survey, inaugurated in 2005-06, is commissioned by Sport England to gauge participation in sport and active recreation. Wave 10, conducted by TNS BMRB between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016, achieved 164,458 telephone interviews with adults aged 14 and over throughout England. The demographic questions asked of a random 50% of respondents included two on religion: ‘what is you religion, even if you are not currently practising?’ and ‘do you consider that you are actively practising your religion?’ A catalogue description of the dataset is at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=8165&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 8188: Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2015

The 2015 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey was undertaken by ScotCen Social Research, on behalf of the Scottish Government and other public sector funders, between July 2015 and January 2016. Face-to-face interviews and self-completion questionnaires were achieved with 1,288 adults aged 18 and over in Scotland. The survey instrument included a special module on discrimination and positive action, which had last been run in 2010, and which explored, among other things, opinions of religious groups in respect of long-term relationships, employment, and religious dress. Particular attention was paid to attitudes towards Muslims. Additionally, there were the standard background variables on religious affiliation and religion of upbringing and, for those with a religion, frequency of attendance at religious services or meetings other than for the rites of passage. A catalogue description of the dataset is at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=8188&type=Data%20catalogue

A report on the discrimination module – Scottish Social Attitudes, 2015: Attitudes to Discrimination and Positive Action – was published by the Scottish Government in September 2016. This is separately available at:

http://www.ssa.natcen.ac.uk/media/38903/attitudes-to-discrimination-and-positive-action-2015.pdf

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

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Counting Religion in Britain, May 2017

Posted on June 2, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 20, May 2017 features 27 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 20 May 2017

OPINION POLLS

Global Trends, 2017

Results from the second wave of the Ipsos MORI Global Trends Survey (the first wave being in 2013) have recently been published, based on online interviews with 18,180 adults aged 16-64 across 23 countries between 12 September and 11 October 2016, including 1,000 in Great Britain. Abbreviated topline results for the three specifically religious questions are tabulated below, for Great Britain, the United States, and the all-country mean. They confirm the international relative irreligiosity of Britons. Britain ranked eighteenth on interest in having a more spiritual dimension in life and nineteenth on the importance attached to religion. Full topline data can be found at:

https://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com/data/

% down	Great Britain	United States	All countries
Religious affiliation
No religion	48	18	26
Spiritual but not religious	5	11	8
Christian	41	62	47
Non-Christian	5	9	19
Interest in having more spiritual dimension in daily life
Agree	40	67	58
Disagree	53	28	35
Neither/don’t know	7	5	7
Religion/faith very important
Agree	30	68	53
Disagree	65	28	41
Neither/don’t know	5	4	6

Supernatural beliefs

The incidence of various supernatural beliefs has been gauged by BMG Research in an online poll of 1,630 Britons on 13-16 May 2017. Topline results are tabulated below, revealing a span of belief from 16% in astrology to 51% in karma. Disbelievers outnumbered believers with regard to astrology, ghosts/spirits, and life after death. Women were far more likely to believe than men, apart from in life on other planets, when the positions were reversed. In terms of age, and somewhat curiously, the greatest level of belief in life after death was actually among under-35s (39%), falling away through successive cohorts to reach 21% for the over-75s. A similar pattern obtained for belief in life on other planets, held by 55% of under-35s. Breaks were also given for social grade and past voting (in the general election and European Union Referendum). Data tables are at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/british-public-reveal-beliefs-new-survey/

% across	Believe	Disbelieve	Unsure
Karma	51	30	19
Life on other planets	49	22	29
Fate/destiny	47	34	19
Ghosts/spirits	36	41	23
Life after death	34	36	30
Astrology/horoscopes	16	66	17

Trust in the Church

The Church ranked seventeenth in nfpSynergy’s latest survey of public trust in 24 institutions. Of the 1,000 Britons aged 16 and over interviewed online in February 2017, 33% said they trusted the Church a great deal (9%) or quite a lot (24%) while 58% trusted it not much (28%) or very little (30%). The most trusted institutions were the National Health Service (71%) and the armed forces (70%), the least trusted multinational companies (18%) and political parties (12%). A report on the survey can be downloaded from:

https://nfpsynergy.net/free-report/trust-charities-and-other-public-institutions-may-2017

Churches and communities

Despite their scepticism about the Church as a national institution, one-half of UK adults claim they would consider the closure of their nearest church a significant loss to their local community and one-third would campaign against its closure (the same proportion who said they would provide financial support if their local church experienced financial difficulties). This is according to research commissioned by Ecclesiastical Insurance from OnePoll, for which 4,500 UK adults were interviewed online in February 2017. Local churches were regarded as part of the history of their community by 51% of respondents and as part of the fabric of their community by 36%. Data tables are not available but Ecclesiastical’s press release will be found at:

https://www.ecclesiastical.com/images/churches%20a%20significant%20to%20local%20communities.pdf

Funerals

Kate Woodthorpe’s Keeping the Faith surveys the role of religious beliefs in contemporary UK funerals. It was prepared for Royal London, which is the country’s largest mutual life, pensions, and investment company. Although the report is essentially qualitative, there are occasional glimpses into quantitative online research commissioned by Royal London from YouGov among three separate samples (cumulating to 3,240 individuals) who had been responsible for organizing a funeral in recent years. The report can be found at:

https://www.royallondon.com/Documents/PDFs/2017/Royal%20London%20-%20Keeping%20the%20Faith.pdf

Talking Jesus

Insights into the religiosity of 2,000 English young people aged 11-18 are provided by a newly-released online ComRes survey undertaken between 7 and 19 December 2016 on behalf of HOPE and the Church of England. A majority (51%) was not religious in the sense of being disbelievers or uncertain believers in God, the remainder comprising 20% Anglicans, 11% Roman Catholics, 10% other Christians, and 8% non-Christians. Irreligiosity increased with age, being 48% among 11-13-year-olds, 51% for 14-16-year-olds, and 57% for 17-18-year-olds. A majority (54%) also doubted that Jesus Christ was a real person who had actually lived while 63% disbelieved in, or were unsure about, His Resurrection. Of the 825 Christians, 51% described themselves as an active follower of Jesus, with 47% claiming to read the Bible at least monthly, 65% to pray with the same frequency, 51% to attend church once a month or more, 40% to participate in church-related youth activities, and 41% to have talked about Jesus with a non-Christian within the past month. Full data tables, extending to 208 pages, are available at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hope-Church-of-England-Perceptions-of-Jesus-Survey-Data-Tables.pdf

Papal power

United States President Donald Trump and Pope Francis recently held their first face-to-face meeting at the Vatican. Asked on 26 May 2017 which of these two world leaders has the more power, 49% of 7,134 YouGov British panellists replied the United States President and 16% the Pope, with 15% regarding them both as equally powerful and 20% undecided. Only in Scotland (22%) and among Scottish National Party voters (29%), both sub-samples with (in all likelihood) an above-average number of Catholics, did the Pope fare a little better. Data are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/88c1aff0-41f4-11e7-94a8-2ab0a50a8b9c

Jewish vote

The overwhelming majority (77%) of Jews intend to vote for the Conservatives in the forthcoming general election (8 June 2017), 13% for Labour, 7% for the Liberal Democrats, and 2% for another political party. This is according to a telephone poll of 515 self-identifying British Jews undertaken by Survation on behalf of the Jewish Chronicle on 21-26 May 2017, once electors who were unlikely to vote or undecided or refused to say had been excluded from the calculation. There appeared to be two main reasons for the Jewish disinclination to support Labour. One was Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, with 44% of respondents agreeing they would be much or a little more likely to vote for the party were he not its leader. The other was the perceived level of anti-Semitism among Labour Party members and elected representatives, 39% rating it at the highest point on a five-point scale. Full data tables are available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Final-JC-VI-Poll-5c1d5h.pdf

Ramadan

Asked by BMG Research which religious group is served by Ramadan, 27% of 1,374 Britons interviewed online on 19-22 May 2017 were unable to say (15%) or gave an incorrect answer (12%). People of no religion (70%) were less inclined to know than Christians (76%) that Ramadan is associated with Islam and Muslims. The full data table is available via the link at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/one-quarter-british-adults-dont-know-ramadan-muslim-celebration/

Islam and intolerance

Two-fifths (41%) of Britons agreed with the statement ‘Islam is an intolerant religion’ in an app-based survey by YouGov reported on 11 May 2017 at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/11/girl-jobs-vs-boy-jobs-home-ai-help-make-decisions-/

Islam and extremism

Four-fifths of Britons are either very (43%) or somewhat (36%) concerned about extremism in the name of Islam, according to the Spring 2017 Pew Global Attitudes survey, for which 1,066 adults aged 18 and over were interviewed by Kantar Public UK by telephone between 6 March and 3 April. The combined figure of 79% was three points less than when the question was last asked in Britain in 2015 and also below the level of concern found in Italy (89%), Germany (82%), Spain (82%), and Hungary (80%), being identical to the median for 10 European Union countries. British results varied by age (from 61% of under-30s to 87% of over-50s) and by political alignment (from 61% of left-leaners to 86% of right-leaners). Remaining Britons were either not too concerned (15%) about extremism in the name of Islam or not at all concerned (5%). Pew’s press release can be found at:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/24/majorities-in-europe-north-america-worried-about-islamic-extremism/

On his recent visit to the Middle East, United States President Donald Trump described the world’s fight against Islamic State and Islamist extremism as a battle between ‘good and evil’. One-half of 7,420 Britons interviewed online by YouGov on 22 May 2017 agreed with this description, the proportion being especially high among Conservatives (63%), over-65s (67%), and UKIP voters (71%). The other half of the sample divided between those who rejected the terminology of good versus evil (24%) and don’t knows (26%). Full data are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/775c5c60-3ed4-11e7-bbfa-4e47a0d22bac

Manchester bomb

On 22 May 2017, an Islamist suicide bomber detonated an explosive device outside the Manchester Arena, killing 22 people. It was the worst terrorist incident on British soil since the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 and was hailed by Islamic State (IS). In the following days, YouGov ran several online surveys which touched on the event and its implications.

On 24-25 May, on behalf of The Times, 2,052 Britons were asked about the advisability of implementing specific new measures to combat terrorism in Britain. Among the options was encouraging imams in mosques in Britain to preach solely in English. Only 37% deemed this ‘the right thing to do’, including a majority of over-65s (55%) and UKIP voters (70%). A plurality (41%) was opposed, considering it would be an over-reaction, peaking at 60% of Liberal Democrats and 63% of under-25s. The remaining 22% were unsure. Thinking about how the rest of the world deals with the threat posed by IS, a plurality (46%) judged it likely to be solved by military force whereas 18% advocated dialogue with 37% uncertain. Two-thirds of interviewees viewed the threat of IS as arising wholly or partially from social, religious, and political issues in the Middle East. Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/dcfgflapq2/TimesResults_170525_VI_Trackers_Terrorism_W.pdf

On 25 May, YouGov asked respondents to an app-based survey whether they thought religion-motivated terrorism could ever be stopped. The majority (68%) doubted that it could be while 23% thought it could be halted and 9% were unsure. Anger (71%), concern (57%), and shock (56%) were the commonest reactions to the Manchester outrage, although 71% said their personal confidence had been unaffected by it. Topline results are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/25/religion-motivated-terrorism-personal-confidence-r/

On 25-26 May, on behalf of the Sunday Times, YouGov asked 2,003 Britons whether they approved of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy of early identification of people in danger of being radicalized, including a requirement for schools and social projects to report extremist sympathies to the authorities. The overwhelming majority (73%) approved of this approach, but there was a minority of 10% who deemed it inappropriate, on the grounds that it intruded too much into the lives of those who had not committed any crime and risked alienating law-abiding British Muslims. The proportion rose to 14% for under-25s, 15% for Liberal Democrats, and 17% for Labour voters. The remaining 17% of the entire sample was undecided. For further details, see p. 11 of the data tables at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/fpwbs2u7v8/SundayTimesResults_170526_VI_W.pdf

On 26 May, YouGov asked respondents to an app-based survey whether terrorist attacks by IS should be considered as a criminal act or an act of war. The majority (58%) opted for the former description, 34% for the latter, with 8% undecided. Topline results are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/26/terrorism-uk-who-has-more-power-pope-or-us-preside/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Faith in Research

The Church of England’s annual Faith in Research Conference was held in Birmingham on 17 May 2017 and attended by 95 delegates. As usual, there was a mix of plenary sessions and parallel streams showcasing the most recent qualitative and quantitative research into faith matters, not exclusively Anglican-related. Highlights of the 17 presentations included first results from wave 1 of the longitudinal panel survey into ‘Living Ministry’ and from the ‘Talking Jesus’ study among 11-18-year-olds in England fielded by ComRes (noted above). Slides from the majority of the presentations are already available at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences/faith-in-research-2017.aspx

Belonging to church

The Faith in Research Conference was chaired by David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, whose recent book is an example of the genre of empirical theology: God’s Belongers; How People Engage with God Today and How the Church Can Help (Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2017, 158 pp., ISBN: 978-0-85746-467-5, £7.99, paperback). In it, Walker proposes a fourfold model of belonging to church, through relationship, place, events, and activities, replacing the traditional dichotomy between church members and non-members. His particular concern is with Anglican occasional churchgoers, investigated through his surveys of attenders at harvest festival services in the Diocese of Worcester in 2007 and at cathedral carol services at Worcester in 2009 and Lichfield in 2010. The detailed findings from these studies have been reported in a series of academic papers, listed in the bibliography on pp. 156-7, but, selectively and relatively unobtrusively, they are drawn upon to help sustain the argument in this book, whose purpose is essentially missional. The volume’s webpage can be found at:

https://www.brfonline.org.uk/9780857464675/

Godparents

In advance of special services to celebrate Godparents’ Sunday on 30 April 2017, the Church of England released a calculation that at least six million people have been godparents at a Church of England christening since the start of the new Millennium. This reflected that there were more than two million baptisms of infants and children between 2000 and 2015, with a minimum requirement of three godparents for each person baptised. The Church of England’s press release is at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2017/04/church-services-to-celebrate-role-of-godparents.aspx

Church Commissioners

The Church Commissioners, who manage investable assets amounting to £7.9 billion and who contribute some 15% of the Church of England’s income, have presented to Parliament their annual report for 2016. The total return on investments for that year was 17.1%, compared with 8.2% for 2015, and well ahead of the target of inflation plus 5%. Indeed, the Commissioners notched up their strongest performance for more than three decades, with notable successes in global equities, timber, and indirect property. The report can be found at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/3983111/cc-annualreport-2016.pdf

Ethnic churchgoers

In his latest monthly column for the Church of England Newspaper (12 May 2017, p. 9), reprinted in No. 51 (June 2017, p. 2) of his bimonthly magazine FutureFirst, Peter Brierley usefully collates the statistical evidence from church censuses about the proportion of BME churchgoers since 1998. Although the picture is mixed, Brierley contends that there has been especially rapid growth of Black Christians, both within White congregations and in Black churches. In England in 2017, Brierley estimates, 30% of all church attenders are BMEs (and 40% of evangelicals) while in London the majority (51%) are.

Youth culture

A parallel piece of research to the ‘Talking Jesus’ study, mentioned above, is Youth for Christ’s Gen Z: Rethinking Culture, based on a survey completed by 1,001 Britons aged 11-18 in November-December 2016. The questionnaire, covering four core areas (culture, influences, priorities, and religion and faith), was scripted, hosted, and managed by DJS Research while using the Youth for Christ online platform. Almost half (46%) of respondents professed no religion, 43% were Christian, and 7% non-Christian. With regard to beliefs, 32% said they believed in a God, 22% in ghosts and spirits, and 47% in neither. Among believers in God 59% considered themselves a follower of Jesus and the Christian faith but just 41% prayed (four-fifths of them at least once a week). The 44-page report can be downloaded from:

https://yfc.uk/gen-z-rethinking-culture-report-released/

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Religious nones

In Catholic Research Forum Reports, 3, published by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary’s University Twickenham, Stephen Bullivant analyses The ‘No Religion’ Population of Britain: Recent Data from the British Social Attitudes Survey (2015) and the European Social Survey (2014). The British Social Attitudes Survey revealed that 49% of adults identified as belonging to no religion. They were predominantly white (95%) and male (55%), although among under-35s men and women were equally likely to be religious nones. Three-fifths had been brought up with a religious identity whereas fewer than one in ten of those reared nonreligiously currently subscribed to a religion. For every one person brought up with no religion who had become a Christian, 26 people brought up as Christians professed no religion at the time of interview. On the other hand, according to European Social Survey statistics, 15% of nones still rated themselves as religious and/or prayed monthly or more. The report is available at:

https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/research/centres/benedict-xvi/docs/2017-may-no-religion-report.pdf

Religious affiliation and party political liking

In a blog on LSE’s Religion and the Public Sphere website, Siobhan McAndrew utilizes data from wave 10 of the 2015 British Election Study Internet Panel (with fieldwork conducted by YouGov between 24 November and 12 December 2016) to investigate the liking of adults for the main political parties. Scores, on a scale running from 0 to 10, were generally below 5, with the exception of a score of 5.6 by Anglicans towards the Conservative Party. The lowest score was 2.3, by non-Christians towards UKIP. Non-Christians and Catholics showed a stronger liking for Labour while there was little variation between religious groups when it came to the Liberal Democrats. Factoring in other demographic variables, identities, and values tended to attenuate these associations. The post can be found at:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionpublicsphere/2017/05/religion-and-party-liking-how-members-of-different-faith-communities-feel-about-different-political-parties/

Religious affiliation and Brexit

In his latest blog on the British Religion in Numbers website, Ben Clements offers an analysis of the voting of religious groups in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU), based upon data from wave 9 of the 2015 British Election Study Internet Panel (with fieldwork conducted by YouGov between 24 June and 6 July 2016). The most pronounced findings were the predisposition of Anglicans to leave and of non-Christians and no religionists to remain in the EU. The post can be found at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2017/how-religious-groups-voted-at-the-2016-referendum-on-britains-eu-membership/

Catholic vote

In another blog for the LSE’s British Politics and Policy website, Ben Clements examines the party political preferences of Roman Catholics, mainly based on trend data from British Election Studies and British Social Attitudes Surveys. He shows that, historically, Catholics have disproportionately favoured the Labour Party, especially in Scotland, but that the link has become weaker in recent years, as expressed both in voting behaviour at general elections and overall party allegiance. Scotland apart, older and female Catholics have been most drawn to the Conservative Party. The post can be found at:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/catholic-voters-in-britain-what-are-their-political-preferences/

Muslim women

Muslim women’s civic and political involvement in Britain and France, with particular reference to Birmingham and Paris, is investigated by Danièle Joly and Khursheed Wadia in Muslim Women and Power: Political and Civic Engagement in West European Societies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xviii + 322 pp., ISBN: 978-1-137-48061-3, hardback, £86). Harnessing Joly’s expertise as a sociologist and Wadia’s as a political scientist, it distils their and others’ secondary literature and reports on fresh empirical research, notably participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and a questionnaire completed by 119 Muslim women in Britain and 107 in France (the results from which are described as ‘reliable rather than statistically valid’). The demographic context is derived from census and other sources. The authors argue that Muslim women’s interest in and knowledge of politics and their participation in both institutional and informal politics is higher than expected. The book’s webpage is at:

http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137480613

Ministerial deployment

Despite their frequent assertions of a priority for the poor, religious groups distribute their active stipendiary ministers inversely to socio-economic deprivation (measured at household and neighbourhood levels) and (implicitly) to pastoral care needs, and it seems unlikely that this relationship has occurred by chance. So claims Michael Hirst in his analysis of data, aggregated to local authority areas, from the 2011 census of population in ‘Clergy in Place in England: Bias to the Poor or Inverse Care Law?’ which is published in the ‘early view’ edition of the journal Population, Space, and Place. Parallels are drawn by the author with the concept of inverse medical care law proposed by Julian Hart. By its very nature, the primary source deployed cannot differentiate between ministers who live in less deprived areas but who work in more deprived ones. It also necessarily excludes retired, self-supporting, and non-stipendiary ministers. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2068/full

Comparative historical secularization

The seemingly greater religiosity of the United States over Western Europe has been a central element of investigation and debate in the scholarly literature of secularization. A comparative religious history of these two areas, noting both parallels and divergences, is now attempted in Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World, edited by David Hempton and Hugh McLeod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, xiv + 407 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-879807-1, £75, hardback). It comprises an introduction by McLeod followed by nine pairs of chapters, eight pairs exploring particular themes (such as evangelicalism, gender, and popular culture) and the last offering a separate conclusion by each editor which, notwithstanding their different approaches and emphases, provides a degree of coherence to what might otherwise be quite a disparate volume of insightful case studies. Of the 17 individual contributors, the solitary sociologist of religion is Grace Davie; the rest are essentially religious historians. Although chronological coverage starts with the eighteenth century, there is a special focus on the second half of the twentieth century. Likewise, consideration of Western Europe is disproportionately about Britain. Descriptive statistics are referenced throughout the work but there are no tables, while several opportunities are missed for systematic comparative quantitative analysis, notably for the past half-century, which might simultaneously have provided some common criteria for measuring secularization. The volume’s webpage can be found at:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/secularization-and-religious-innovation-in-the-north-atlantic-world-9780198798071?cc=gb&lang=en&

David Martin on secularization

David Martin is a notable absentee from the line-up of Hempton and McLeod’s book, notwithstanding he has written extensively about secularization, including about the comparative experience of Europe and America. In his Secularisation, Pentecostalism, and Violence: Receptions, Rediscoveries, and Rebuttals in the Sociology of Religion (London: Routledge, 2017, xi + 194 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-78859-5, £115, hardback), Martin, who is now in his late 80s, offers an autobiographical cum bibliographical retrospect of the three core themes of his scholarship during the past half-century. The 10 chapters include one (pp. 57-85) which recapitulates the sociology of religion in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s and briefly considers the contribution of religious statistics, of which Martin was evidently initially quite sceptical, and specifically references British Religion in Numbers. The book’s webpage can be found at:

https://www.routledge.com/Secularisation-Pentecostalism-and-Violence-Receptions-Rediscoveries/Martin/p/book/9780415788595

NEW DATASET AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 8168: Scottish Household Survey, 2015

The Scottish Household Survey, initiated in 1999, is undertaken on behalf of the Scottish Government by a polling consortium led by Ipsos MORI. Information is collected about the composition, characteristics, attitudes, and behaviour of private households and individuals in Scotland; and about the physical condition of their homes. For the 2015 survey (January 2015-March 2016) data were gathered on 10,330 households and 9,410 adults. The specifically religious content of the questionnaire covered: religion belonged to; experience of discrimination or harassment on religious grounds; and incidence of volunteering for religious and other groups. A catalogue description for the dataset is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=8168&type=Data%20catalogue

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

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Counting Religion in Britain, April 2017

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 19, April 2017 features 27 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 19 April 2017

OPINION POLLS

Lenten abstinence and Easter activities

Just under one-fifth (18%) of a sample of 1,552 Britons claimed to have given something up for Lent this year, when questioned online by BMG Research between 31 March and 4 April 2017. The proportion was greatest for professing Christians (24%) and people who regarded religion as important to them (36%) but it was also curiously high among non-Christians (23%); it was lowest for religious nones (10%). Of those who abstained, the most common forfeits were chocolate (17%), alcohol (12%), and takeaways (10%).

One-third of respondents did not celebrate Easter at all, including 38% of religious nones and 55% of non-Christians. Of the remainder, its religious aspect was only the third most significant part of the festival (12%), way behind spending time with friends and family (58%) and also surpassed by being off work (13%). Even for Christians, the religious dimension was no more than 22% and for those considering religion important 34%. One in ten (11%) observers of Easter anticipated attending church on the day, disproportionately women (13%), over-65s (15%), Christians (22%), and persons for whom religion was of importance (34%). Full data tables are available at:

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/eat-easter-eggs-attend-church-weekend/

Easter associations

A majority (55%) of 2,670 adult Britons interviewed by YouGov via mobile phone app on 13 April 2017 associated Jesus Christ with Easter, rising to two-thirds among over-50s and Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters. Nevertheless, rather more respondents identified Easter with chocolate eggs (76%), a bank holiday (67%), and hot cross buns (62%). Least associated with Easter was Simnel cake (14%), the festival’s traditional speciality, although it still held fond memories for 26% of over-65s. Full data tables can be accessed via the link in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/13/only-55-brits-associate-jesus-christ-easter/

Eastertide beliefs

One-half the whole population and two-thirds of under-25s do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, according to a poll commissioned by BBC local radio and released on Palm Sunday, for which 2,010 Britons were interviewed by telephone on 2-12 February 2017. These disbelievers included 23% of professing Christians and 5% of active (regular churchgoing) Christians. Believers numbered 44%, among them 9% of religious nones, and peaking at 59% of over-65s; the majority of them did not subscribe to the literal Biblical account of the Resurrection.

Belief in life after death stood at 46% and has been remarkably stable since Gallup first enquired into the subject in 1939; it was highest for Christians (61%), non-Christians (69%), and active Christians (85%). Asked about the nature of the afterlife, 65% selected another life where your soul lives on (such as heaven or hell) and 32% reincarnation. Disbelief in life after death also stood at 46% overall, reaching 73% with religious nones.

Other topics covered were religious affiliation (51% Christian, 9% non-Christian, and 37% none) and claimed attendance at religious services other than for rites of passage (20% weekly, 11% monthly, 31% less often, and 37% never). Full data tables are available at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BBC-Religion-and-Ethics-Survey-Data-Tables-1.pdf

There is a BBC press release at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121

Eastertide traditions

Almost one-third of Britons do not know the origins of Easter, including 10% who think it commemorates the birth (rather than the death and resurrection) of Jesus Christ, according to a poll of 2,000 adults commissioned by the cleaning brand Oven Pride. Just 12% claim to attend church over the festival while 23% believe its date is set by the government and 9% by the European Union. One-third cannot explain the significance of Ash Wednesday, although 21% say they have given up alcohol during Lent and 6% social media. Easter continues to be valued as a secular break, with 66% planning to spend the bank holiday weekend with family, friends, and good food. A traditional roast dinner on Easter Sunday is enjoyed by 70%, even if Simnel cake will only be consumed by 3%. Oven Pride has failed to respond to enquiries about the poll, so the principal public domain report of the survey is a somewhat garbled article in the Daily Mail at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4410656/EU-sets-date-Easter-say-one-ten-Britons.html

Easter eggs

Prime Minister Theresa May, a practising Anglican and member of the National Trust, waded into the public row about the omission of the word Easter from advertising for an Easter egg hunt sponsored by chocolate manufacturer Cadbury and held on National Trust properties. She criticized the decision as ‘absolutely ridiculous’. The event had previously been branded as an Easter egg trail. A plurality (43%) of 2,866 Britons interviewed online by YouGov on 5 April 2017 considered it appropriate for May to have commented on this sort of issue, peaking at 59% of over-60s and 69% of UKIP supporters. But 39% disagreed with her intervention, including majorities of Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Scottish National Party voters. The remaining 18% had no clear view on the matter. Full results are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/9db0fe70-19ef-11e7-b82a-4e47a0d22bac

Religion and identity

Ethnic minorities remain more likely than white Britons to select religion as the principal component of their identity, according to an Opinium Research report on Multicultural Britain in the 21st Century: What People Think, Feel, and Do, written by James Crouch and Priya Minhas, and based upon online fieldwork undertaken since the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). However, even for the 616 ethnic minority persons in the sample, religion was a lesser aspect of their identity (19%) than ethnicity (36%) or nationality (30%), and it was accorded a still lower priority (16%) by the second and subsequent generations born in the UK. This is partially explained by the fact that 29% of ethnic minorities declared they had no religion. For the 1,762 white Britons interviewed, religion was the main element of identity for just 7%, compared with 59% choosing nationality, 15% local community, and 7% ethnicity. Other topics in the survey included attitudes to toleration and integration in the UK, with the replies from ethnic minorities disaggregated by religious group. Muslims were especially likely (59%) to feel Britain had become less tolerant since the EU referendum. Data tables have not been released, but the report can be found at:

http://opinium.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Multicultural-Britain-2017-v6.pdf

Brexit and identity

Trevor Phillips had an interesting article (‘To Understand Leavers, Look to Anglicans’) in the Daily Telegraph for 14 April 2017 (p. 20). It reported an analysis he had conducted with Richard Webber of a new opinion poll by YouGov among 6,000 voters living in England and focusing on their attitudes to the European Union (EU). In terms of voting at the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, the sample divided between Leavers on 53% and Remainers on 47%, reflecting the actual outcome of the referendum. But there were some notable differences according to religious affiliation. The two extremes were religious nones, who opted to remain by 52% to 48%, and Anglicans, who overwhelmingly wanted to leave (62% versus 38%). Further investigation revealed that the Anglican predisposition to leave the EU could only be partially explained by the fact that many of them were also Conservatives, three-fifths of the latter being Leavers. Another key variable appeared to be Englishness, with Anglicans identifying as English rather than British by a margin of 28% (compared with, for example, only 9% for Catholics). In their voting at the referendum, therefore, Anglicans seemingly exemplified the desire for a reassertion of English national identity. As Phillips concluded, ‘Attitudes to the EU are driven at least as much by identity – including religious affiliation – as by economics.’ There is no public domain version of the article, but it can be accessed via a paywall at:

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph/20170414/282050506932951

Religious affiliation

The latest large-scale political poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft, and conducted online among 10,153 electors on 21-28 March 2017, included the standard background question about religion: ‘which of the following religious groups do you consider yourself to be a member of?’ It revealed that the religious profile of Britain is currently 50% Christian, 6% non-Christian, 41% no religion, and 2% prefer not to say. The proportion of professing Christians was greatest among over-55s (68%). It has fallen to just 27% of under-25s, 57% of whom are religious nones and 12% non-Christians (more than half of them Muslims). Differences by social grade and region were much less marked than for age but there was some correlation between religion and voting in the 2015 general election and the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, albeit these effects were also at least partly the function of age. Conservative and UKIP voters in 2015 and ‘leavers’ in the referendum were most likely to be Christian, with the majority of Scottish National Party and Green voters claiming no religion. More details can be found in table 100 at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/New-Landscape-Full-data-tables-March-2017.pdf

Religious freedom

The Pew Research Center’s latest annual report about global restrictions on religion revealed that, across the 198 countries surveyed, government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years, including particularly in Europe. The report is available at:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/11/global-restrictions-on-religion-rise-modestly-in-2015-reversing-downward-trend/

Pew’s research prompted YouGov to ask 2,670 adult Britons via mobile phone app on 13 April 2017 whether, in the UK context, they would prefer to see fewer or greater government restrictions on religion in terms of laws, policies, and other actions. One-third of the sample was unable to answer, but there was more support (28%) for greater restrictions than for fewer restrictions (16%), with 23% wishing to see no change. Men (34%) and UKIP voters (38%) were the groups most endorsing greater restrictions while 18-24s (27%) were most inclined to favour fewer. Full data tables are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/dd6357c0-202a-11e7-b833-9af33598e109

Another YouGov poll on the same subject, reported on 13 April 2017, used slightly different question-wording, which had the effect of polarizing opinion more sharply. In this survey, 38% opted for ‘more control over religions’ in the UK and 12% for ‘more religious freedom’, with 39% wanting no change and 11% undecided. These topline results, which seem to add credence to Linda Woodhead’s claim that religion is becoming a toxic concept, are at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/13/religious-freedom-uk-boris-johnson-and-uk-foreign-/

General election issues (1): Tim Farron on homosexuality

The unexpected 2017 UK general election campaign had hardly begun before religion reared its head, in the guise of the initial refusal of Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron (a practising Evangelical Christian) to say whether he believed that homosexuality is a sin.

The controversy prompted YouGov to ask 3,800 adult Britons via mobile phone app on 19 April 2017 whether they preferred politicians to be open about their religious views or to keep them private. The public was divided on the subject, 36% wanting politicians to be transparent about their religious opinions and 44% to keep them to themselves. The remaining fifth of voters was undecided. There were few major differences by demographic groups apart from 53% of Liberal Democrat and Scottish National Party supporters and 52% of over-65s preferring politicians to keep their religious views private. Full data tables are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results#/survey/52964620-24da-11e7-b0e0-d2249ae0b02d

YouGov returned to the topic on 25-26 April 2017, when it interviewed online a more conventional sample of 1,590 adults on behalf of The Times. By this stage, after several further evasions, Farron had clarified that he did not regard gay sex as sinful. A plurality of Britons (41%) thought he had the right to keep his personal religious views private, the proportion reaching 51% among professing Christians and 65% of Liberal Democrat voters. One-third (34%) replied that Farron ought to have answered the question about gay sex sooner, since his religious views were relevant to his political opinions; religious nones (43%) were especially of this mind. The remaining one-quarter of adults was uncertain what to think. More generally, just 12% of respondents believed that gay sex is sinful, and no more than 16% even of Christians; 74% of all Britons were emphatic it is not a sin, among them 87% of religious nones. For this second YouGov poll, see page 12 of the data tables which can be accessed via the link in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/26/voting-intention-conservatives-45-labour-29-25-26-/

The Christian Institute entered the fray from a different perspective, arguing that Farron had been bullied in public for holding traditional views about homosexuality. The Institute commissioned ComRes to undertake a telephone poll of 1,001 Britons between 20 and 24 April 2017, asking whether a politician who believes gay sex to be a sin should be free to express such an opinion. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents upheld that freedom, peaking at 71% of skilled manual workers and 73% of men, with 32% denying a politician the liberty to proclaim the sinfulness of gay sex. A similar proportion (67%) agreed that a politician believing gay sex to be sinful but keeping that view private should still be allowed to hold office, 25% dissenting and 8% uncertain. Full data tables are available at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tab_short_pr.pdf

General election issues (2): UKIP and the burka

Early on in the general election campaign, Paul Nuttall, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), indicated he would be pushing for a ban on the burka and Sharia courts, while denying he was trying to reinvent UKIP as an anti-Islam party.

On behalf of The Observer, Opinium Research asked an online sample of 2,007 UK adults on 25-28 April 2017 whether they had heard of a policy proposal to ban the burka in public places and, if so, with which party they associated that plan. Three-fifths of interviewees were aware of the policy (and not many more, 65%, among UKIP voters), of whom four in five correctly identified it as a UKIP proposal. The remaining 40% either had definitely not heard of the mooted burka ban (18%) or were unsure whether they had done so (22%). The full data can be accessed via the link in the blog at:

http://opinium.co.uk/political-polling-25th-april-2017/

The matter was also addressed in YouGov’s second poll on the Farron affair, noted above, which fielded on 25-26 April 2017. YouGov, however, was more interested in knowing what the public actually thought about a legal ban on the wearing of burkas and niquabs (in other words, a full body and face veil). Almost half the electorate (48%) favoured such a ban, the number being particularly high for Christians (56%), manual workers (58%), Conservatives (63%), over-65s (68%), Leave voters in the 2016 EU referendum (70%), and UKIP followers (85%). Slightly fewer, 42%, held that people should be free to decide for themselves what to wear, including a majority of Londoners (54%), under-25s (60%), Labourites (61%), Remain voters in the EU Referendum (62%), and Liberal Democrats (67%). YouGov’s blog on the issue, containing a link to the full data, is at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/about-half-brits-support-burqa-ban/

The same YouGov survey likewise tested general election voting intentions, which showed that the Conservative Party had a strong lead over Labour among Christians at that point, 55% versus 20%, while religious nones divided 36% to 34%, respectively.

Academic research

ComRes have completed a major study for Research Councils UK and the Natural Environment Research Council, interviewing online and by telephone (between 20 and 31 January 2017) a sample of 3,000 adult Britons on their engagement with publicly-funded research into science and other academic subjects. The data tables, which run to 604 pages, include breaks for every question by a range of background variables, one of which concerned active membership of a religious group (‘active’ being defined as ‘regularly’ reading/listening to a religious text, praying, or attending religious services other than for rites of passage). According to this definition, 50% of the population self-classified as active members (42% Christian and 8% non-Christian) and 49% as not (comprising 39% with no religion and 10% who considered themselves religious but not active members of a religious group). In general, active membership of a religious group (or not) only had a marginal impact on the answers to the mainstream questions about academic research. For instance, active members were 4% more supportive of publicly-funded research than inactive members and religious nones and 5% more likely to have engaged with four or more research areas during the month prior to interview. At the same time, active members of a religious group were 7% less comfortable with the pace of change in the world and they were 6% less civically engaged although they were 12% more likely to have donated money to charity within the past half-year. The data tables are at:

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RCUK-NERC-Public-Insight-Survey-Data-Tables.pdf

Syrian refugees

The UK Government has been accused, by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, of being institutionally biased against Christian refugees from Syria, who are underrepresented among those being moved to the UK under a flagship resettlement scheme. However, a majority (54%) of Britons surveyed by YouGov, in an app-based poll reported on 18 April 2017, thought religion should not be a criterion for the UK accepting refugees. One-third favoured taking a greater number of Christian refugees or only Christian refugees, while a hardline 11% opposed accepting any refugees at all. Topline results only are available at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/christian-refugees-syria-comparing-crimes-nazi-cri/

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Scottish church census, 2016

The number of Scots attending church on an average weekend has slumped from 853,700 in 1984 to 389,500 in 2016, falling – relative to population – from 16.6% to 7.2% over the same period. This is the headline finding from the initial report on the fourth (2016) Scottish church census which appears as a special eight-page edition (No. 50, April 2017) of FutureFirst, the bimonthly magazine of Brierley Consultancy. The census was undertaken by Peter Brierley, at the behest of a consortium of Scottish Churches and Christian organizations, by means of postal and online returns of attendance on 7-8 May 2016. Of Scotland’s 3,689 congregations, 40% responded, missing data being estimated, taking account of variations by denomination, churchmanship, and area. Decline was experienced across most denominations, the Pentecostals alone significantly bucking the trend, albeit many immigrant churches and so-called Messy Churches had also been started. Three-fifths of worshippers were women and 42% were aged 65 and over (double the national average), peaking at 56% in the Church of Scotland. East Lothian had the lowest churchgoing rate (4%) and the Western Isles the highest (45%). Aberdeenshire was the only area to register absolute growth between 2002 (when the third church census was held) and 2016, largely attributed to the establishment of 25 new Roman Catholic congregations for Poles working in the oil industry. Despite claims of greater irregularity in attendance, as many as 80% of weekend churchgoers were recorded as attending weekly, 9% going fortnightly, 7% monthly, and 4% less often. Mid-week activities attracted an additional 234,500 people, 58% of whom did not frequent church at the weekend, giving a total reach by the Churches of 10% of the Scottish population at some stage during the week. A full report on the census, provisionally entitled Growth Amidst Decline, will be released by ADBC Publishers towards the middle of 2017; meanwhile, various outputs from the census (including the special edition of FutureFirst) are being assembled at:

http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/scottish-church-census/

Brierley also wrote a full-page article about the census, entitled ‘Church Life in Scotland’, for the Church of England Newspaper (21 April 2017, p. 8).

The Church of Scotland has issued a press release about the census results at:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_events/news/recent/green_shoots_of_growth_as_390,000_christians_regularly_attend_church

Family faith

Newly published by the two Christian charities Hope and Care for the Family is Faith in Our Families: How Do Parents Nurture Their Children’s Faith at Home? What Does the Church Do to Support and Equip Them in This? A Research Report. It is based upon an online qualitative and quantitative study undertaken with the help of 9dot-research, the statistical component comprising a UK-wide survey of 983 parents (all practising Christians with at least one child aged 3-11 and committed to nurturing faith in the home), 175 church leaders, and 479 church children’s workers recruited via the Care for the Family database or Facebook. As the report itself acknowledges, the methodology adopted inevitably resulted in a skewed sample, ‘a snapshot of the more motivated and engaged parents and churches’, with, for instance, 84% of respondents being women and just 3% Roman Catholics. However, even among these active religious parents, 95% of whom conceded it was largely their responsibility to teach their children about Christianity, 92% admitted they should be doing more, with only 37% always or often looking for opportunities to nurture their child’s faith. The degree of parental confidence about passing on their faith had a significant effect on what they currently did at home to do so. Lack of time was seen as the principal barrier to the transmission of faith in the family, followed by lack of knowledge. Just 12% of leaders felt their church put a lot of effort into supporting parents to nurture faith in the home, very much less than for six other church activities, and 94% agreed they should be helping more in this regard. The 32-page report is available at:

https://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Faith-in-our-Families-Research-booklet.pdf

Church of England attendance

Mark Hart wrote about ‘The C of E’s Unsung Success Story’ in the Church Times for 31 March 2017 (p. 13). Revisiting the Church’s attendance statistics on the basis of various (potentially contestable) assumptions, he tentatively identified a significant, but hidden, area of growth – among the over-65s, notwithstanding rising Anglican death rates and absolute and relative decline in churchgoing levels. His article can be read at:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/31-march/comment/opinion/the-c-of-e-s-unsung-success-story

Hart’s article drew a response from BRIN’s co-director, David Voas, in the next issue of Church Times (7 April 2017, p. 18). In a letter to its editor, Voas pointed out that the missing factor in Hart’s calculations was almost certainly immigration, with a net annual inflow of a quarter of a million people for more than a decade, the majority from Christian countries, from which the Church of England has presumably benefited to some extent. There is no public domain version of this letter.

Faith in Research

The Church of England’s next annual Faith in Research conference takes place at the Novotel, Broad Street, Birmingham on Wednesday, 17 May 2017 and will be chaired by the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker. The plenary speakers include Clive Field from BRIN, who will give a brief presentation on ‘Has the Church of England Lost the English People? Some Quantitative Tests’, based on his recent article in Theology. Programme and registration details can be found at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/faith-in-research-conferences/faith-in-research-2017.aspx

Methodist Statistics for Mission

At its latest quarterly meeting, on 1-3 April 2017, the Methodist Council received an update on the compilation of the full Statistics for Mission Report, 2017, which will be presented to the Methodist Conference in the summer. Methodist membership in Britain on 31 October 2016 was returned as 188,400 (excluding ministers), representing a decline of 3.3% on 2015, 9.7% on 2013, an annual average of 3.6% over the triennium 2013-16, and an annual average of 3.5% over the preceding decade (2006-16). Methodist membership now stands at just 22% of its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century. The mean number of weekly attendances at worship services was 202,100 in October 2016, an average decrease of 3.4% annually both over the triennium and the decade. In addition, an estimated 500,000 attendances are registered weekly at non-worship activities and events, attracting a wide spread of ages, in marked contrast to the heavy skew towards an older demographic which characterizes both members and worshippers. The paper, which also moots several changes in statistics gathering and reporting, is available at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/media/2547829/counc-MC17-51-Statistics%20for%20Mission-april-2017.pdf

The Methodist Recorder found the update to Methodist Council so salutary yet so depressing that it ran a full-column comment, entitled ‘Confronting the Realities of Decline’, in its edition of 21 April 2017 (p. 6). The editorial warned that there was a real prospect of the Methodist Church in Great Britain ‘ceasing to meet’ (to borrow the Methodist parlance), at least in its present form, and urged its leadership to contemplate, and develop a strategy to manage, such a possibility.

Jewish students

The National Union of Students (NUS) has published a 50-page internal research report on The Experience of Jewish Students in 2016-17, as revealed by an online survey of 485 self-defining Jewish students (out of a total universe of 8,500 Jewish students in higher education in the country) between 28 November 2016 and 10 February 2017. The vast majority of respondents were in full-time education, aged 17-24, studying at undergraduate level, and UK citizens. Significant numbers expressed disquiet about the provision of specific facilities and services by their institutions (such as affordable kosher food and timetabling of classes and events in relation to the Sabbath); about the attitudes of academics and other students to issues relating to Jews, Judaism, and Israel/Palestine; and about their confidence in engaging with the NUS and individual student unions, and their faith in the ability of the national and local unions to represent the interests of Jewish students. Their experience or fear of being victims of harassment, abuse, and hatred was also recorded. Sundry recommendations were made to address these concerns, principally directed to the NUS itself but some to the wider higher education sector and campus student unions. The report is available at:

http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/The-experience-of-Jewish-students-in-2016-17

ACADEMIC STUDIES

God and Mammon

Individuals are less likely to attend religious services regularly if their income rises, according to a paper delivered by Ingrid Storm at the recent British Sociological Association (BSA) annual conference in Manchester. Analysing longitudinal data from the British and UK Household Panel Surveys for 1991-2012, she found that a rise in income of about £10,000 a year reduced by 6% the likelihood of attending religious services monthly. However, a fall in income had no effect on worship patterns. Storm hypothesized that adults turned away from religious services when their income increased because they had less need for the social support found in religious communities. ‘Religious participation is most appealing to people who have available time, but less available financial resources … when their income rose, the extra money could increase access to other forms of social activities and entertainment, and these take up time and attention that could otherwise have been spent on religious practice.’ BSA’s press release is at:

https://www.britsoc.co.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2017/april/people-are-less-likely-to-attend-religious-services-regularly-if-their-income-rises-research-shows/

Changing religious landscape

There were 450,000 fewer births than deaths among the UK Christian population between 2010 and 2015, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest projections of the global religious landscape. By contrast, the natural increase in the UK Muslim population over the same period was 340,000 and among the religiously unaffiliated it was 880,000, reflecting (in both cases) their younger age profiles (and thus greater fertility) than Christians. A similar pattern was found across Europe as a whole. Globally, Muslim births are predicted to outnumber Christian ones by 2035. Estimates were derived from a range of census and sample survey data. The full report is available at:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/

Secularization in Scotland

Principally drawing upon the series of Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) Surveys for 1999-2014, augmented by the Scottish Election Surveys of 1992 and 1997, Ben Clements has investigated ‘Religious Change and Secularisation in Scotland: An Analysis of Affiliation and Attendance’, Scottish Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 2, May 2017, pp. 133-62. Over-time decline was charted on both these religious indicators, with the Church of Scotland suffering heavy losses in terms of adherence. Approximately half the Scottish population now profess no religion and three-fifths never attend religious services. Comparisons with British Social Attitudes Surveys revealed a converging pattern of secularity in both Scotland and England. In-depth examination of the socio-demographic correlates of religious affiliation and attendance in the 2014 SSA highlighted the importance of gender and, most notably, age differences and substantiated Steve Bruce’s characterization of older women as one of the primary carriers of religion in Scotland. The article is currently available on an open access basis at:

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/scot.2017.0175

Clements has also written a blog summarizing the article at:

https://euppublishingblog.com/2017/04/25/secularisation-scotland/

As is customary with sample surveys, there is a significant mismatch between claimed attendance at religious services in SSA and actual attendance on an average Saturday/Sunday as recorded by the 2016 Scottish church census (reported above).

Sectarian disadvantage in Scotland (1)

The extent to which sectarian disadvantage persists in Scotland has been a hotly contested topic over the years, and the public and academic debate may well be reignited by a large-scale longitudinal study reported in the May 2017 ‘in progress’ volume of Health & Place: David Wright, Michael Rosato, Gillian Raab, Chris Dibben, Paul Boyle, and Dermot O’Reilly, ‘Does Equality Legislation Reduce Intergroup Differences? Religious Affiliation, Socio-Economic Status, and Mortality in Scotland and Northern Ireland: A Cohort Study of 400,000 People’. The authors conclude that Catholics in Scotland remained at greater socio-economic disadvantage relative to Protestants than in Northern Ireland and were also at a mortality disadvantage (which Northern Irish Catholics were not). It is suggested that this differential may be due to the lack in Scotland of the raft of explicit equality legislation which has diminished religion-based inequality in Northern Ireland during recent decades. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829216303501

Sectarian disadvantage in Scotland (2)

Coincidental with the appearance of the preceding item, and similarly drawing upon a very large dataset, Steve Bruce and Tony Glendinning offer a far more optimistic assessment of sectarian disadvantage in Scotland: ‘Sectarianism in the Scottish Labour Market: What the 2011 Census Shows’, Scottish Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 2, May 2017, pp. 163-75. Analysing census data on religion, social class, education, gender, and region for persons who were born in Scotland, and estimating the likelihood of Scots of different backgrounds attaining middle class occupations given their educational qualifications, the authors found no sectarian association between religion and social class among people at the peak age (35-54 years) of their labour market involvement. Indeed, the class profile for Roman Catholics was pretty much the same as for other Christians, thereby implying a lack of sectarian discrimination against Catholics, for which Bruce and Glendinning suggest possible explanations. The two clear outliers in the study were both from the ‘other religions’ group, ill-educated other religion men doing better than expected in reaching a middle class occupation and well-educated other religion women achieving less well. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/scot.2017.0176

Catholic schools

The relative inclusivity of Catholic schools in England and Wales is often questioned on the basis of statistics of pupil eligibility for free school meals (FSM). In The Take-Up of Free School Meals in Catholic Schools in England and Wales (Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, St Mary’s University Twickenham, 2017, 17pp.), Francesca Montemaggi, Stephen Bullivant, and Maureen Glackin challenge over-dependence on FSM data as an indicator of socio-economic deprivation. They make four substantive points: there is a widespread tendency to conflate receipt of FSM with eligibility, thereby ignoring eligible families who may not take up their entitlement; other Government measures suggest Catholic schools disproportionately recruit from the lowest socio-economic brackets and ethnic minorities; FSM uptake is affected by cultural and demographic factors, with the ethnic profile of Catholic schools resulting in low FSM uptake; and FSM ineligibility does not imply that families are affluent. These conclusions, informed by a literature review and fresh empirical research (in the form of small-scale surveys, interviews, and focus groups), will naturally prove convenient for Catholic interests but a Department for Education spokesperson (quoted in The Tablet for 8 April 2017, p. 29) defended its use of FSM figures, stating that being eligible for and claiming FSM is a suitable proxy for deprivation. The Benedict XVI Centre’s report is at:

https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/research/centres/benedict-xvi/docs/free-school-meal-report.pdf

Young British Muslims

The statistical content of Young British Muslims: Between Rhetoric and Realities, edited by Sadek Hamid (London: Routledge, 2017, ix + 180pp., ISBN: 978-1-4724-7555-8, £95, hardback) is minimal and mainly contextual. The volume comprises nine theoretically-informed and qualitative case studies which cumulatively challenge the dominant negative external representation of British Muslim youth by focusing on their everyday lived experiences. This is an important alternative perspective, enriching our knowledge of contemporary Muslims. The editorial introduction (p. 3) estimates that approximately four-fifths of these young people are, in reality, ‘cultural Muslims’, practising their faith in a limited way. This is a point which would have been worth addressing more systematically and comparatively (in relation, say, to ‘cultural Christians’ or ‘ethnic Jews’), as well as underpinning by some quantitative evidence. The book’s webpage is at:

https://www.routledge.com/Young-British-Muslims-Between-Rhetoric-and-Realities/Hamid/p/book/9781472475558

Social correlates of non-religion

An online YouGov poll from February 2015 has been used by Ben Clements for the purposes of ‘Examining Non-Religious Groups in Britain: Theistic Belief and Social Correlates’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 32, No. 2, May 2017, pp. 315-24. Three non-religious groups were separately investigated (atheists, agnostics, and other non-religion) in comparison with those professing a religious affiliation. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that age and ethnicity were the strongest differentiators between religion and non-religion, but gender had less than the expected impact (except in relation to atheism) while educational attainment, social grade, and region had negligible significance as variables. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2017.1298910

Please note: Counting Religion in Britain is © Clive D. Field, 2017

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Counting Religion in Britain, June 2016

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 9, June 2016 features 24 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 9 June 2016

OPINION POLLS – BREXIT

The referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union (EU), held on 23 June, was unquestionably the single most important event of the month, and its outcome (a vote to leave the EU) is likely to have far-reaching consequences. Although religion barely surfaced in the heated public and political debates which preceded the referendum, religious elements were occasionally featured in some of the pre- and post-referendum opinion polling.

Pre-referendum: voting intentions of religious groups

ORB International’s online poll for The Independent, conducted among 2,052 British electors on 8-9 June 2016, seems to have been the last pre-referendum survey to have recorded the prospective referendum voting intentions of the principal religious groups. In line with previous polls, it demonstrated the wish of a majority of Christians to leave the EU, as tabulated below. The statistics have been calculated from the full data available at:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/orbindependent-friday-10th-june-final-data-tables.pdf

% across	Remain	Leave
All	47	53
Christians	43	57
Non-Christians	52	48
No religion	51	49

Pre-referendum: voting intentions of practising Christians

In contrast with the views of professing Christians, noted above, 54% of 1,200 practising (churchgoing) Christians (laity and church leaders) in membership of Christian Research’s online Resonate panel indicated an intention to vote to remain in the EU at the referendum, in a survey launched on 9 June 2016. This was four points up on the figure from a similar Resonate poll in March. Just over one-quarter (28%) were planning to vote to leave. Awareness of the recent open letter on the referendum by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, which argued that leaving the EU would threaten peace in Europe, was limited, nearly half the respondents not having heard about it at all. Other topics covered in the June Resonate omnibus were attitudes to the National Health Service and the Investigatory Powers Bill. A press release about the survey is at:

http://www.christian-research.org/reports/privacy-nhs-and-the-referendum/

Pre-referendum: voting intentions and science

Assaad Razzouk, the Lebanese-British energy entrepreneur, commissioned ComRes to undertake, between 29 May and 5 June 2016, a telephone poll of two sub-samples of 809 adults intending to vote to remain in or leave the EU, exploring their attitudes to science. One of the statements to which respondents were invited to react was ‘people who question the theory of evolution have a point’. Answers are tabulated below, revealing that Britons who were more sceptical about the EU also found it more difficult to accept the theory of evolution. Data tables can be found at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/assaad-razzouk-eu-referendum-and-science-poll/

% across	Agree	Disagree
Remainers	36	59
Leavers	46	47

Pre-referendum: intervention of religious figures

During the course of the referendum campaign, several prominent religious leaders and groups made their views known on whether the UK should remain in or leave the EU, including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The majority of these religious opinion formers argued in favour of remaining. However, the British public was not inclined to attach much weight to their counsel, according to a YouGov poll for the Today programme on BBC Radio, undertaken on 13-14 June 2016 among an online sample of 1,656 adults. Asked which of 13 types of people they trusted for their statements on remaining or leaving, senior religious figures ranked eighth, albeit only 15% trusted what they said about the EU and no more than 24% in any demographic sub-group (those intending to vote remain). Three-fifths distrusted senior religious figures on the EU, peaking at 71% among men. The only consolation for religious leaders was that electors exhibited net distrust in all the types of people on the list, save academics, who notched up a net trust score of 6%. A topline summary is shown below.

% across	Trust	Distrust
Academics	43	37
Economists	38	39
People from well-known businesses	37	43
People from well-known charities	37	40
People from the Bank of England	36	45
People from international organizations	32	46
Think tanks	28	44
Senior religious figures	15	61
Political leaders of other countries	14	67
Politicians from Britain	13	72
Well-known actors and entertainers	12	61
Well-known sports people	10	64
Newspaper journalists	10	74

Data tables can be found at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/x4iynd1mn7/TodayResults_160614_EUReferendum_W.pdf

Post-referendum: actual voting of religious groups

Lord Ashcroft polled 12,369 electors after they had voted in the referendum, 11,369 of them interviewed online and 1,000 by telephone. The reported voting of the major religious groups is tabulated below, from which it will be seen that, in line with voting intentions in pre-referendum surveys, Christians inclined to be leavers and non-Christians and religious nones to be remainers. Age probably largely accounts for this pattern since in general older people were most likely to have voted to leave the EU and younger people to remain; Christians have a disproportionately elderly profile and non-Christians (particularly Muslims) and nones a disproportionately younger profile. Details of voting by religion can be found on p. 10 and of the demographics of religious belonging (including when respondents made their minds up about how to vote in the referendum) on pp. 56-9 of the full computer tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How-the-UK-voted-Full-tables-1.pdf

% across	Remain	Leave
All	48	52
Christians	42	58
Muslims	70	30
Other non-Christians	53	47
No religion	55	45

Post-referendum: actual voting of Jews

Almost twice as many Jews voted to remain in the EU as elected to leave, 59% versus 31%, according to a telephone poll of 1,002 members of a pre-recruited panel of self-identified British Jews interviewed by Survation for the Jewish Chronicle on 27-29 June 2016. A further 9% did not vote or refused to say how they had voted. Jews aged 55 and over (38%) or who supported the Conservative Party (39%) were among those most inclined to leave, and respondents aged 35-54 (67%) were among those most disposed to stay. Unsurprisingly, given this voting pattern, only 28% of Jews expressed satisfaction with the result of the referendum, 60% being unhappy, while 39% claimed to feel less safe in the light of the outcome and 57% to being pessimistic about the future. Asked who should be the next Prime Minister, following David Cameron’s resignation, a plurality (39%) of Jews plumped for Theresa May. The Jewish Chronicle’s coverage of the poll, with a link to the full data tables, can be found at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/159839/brexit-vote-triggers-fears-over-security

OPINION POLLS – OTHER TOPICS

Charitable giving

Religious causes received 13% of charitable donations in 2015, the same as children and young people’s causes, but three points behind medical research. However, religious causes notched up the highest average donation (£49) of all types of charity, as well as the highest median donation (£16). Over-65s were almost three times as likely to report donating to religious causes as 16-24s (17 per cent versus 6%). Data derive from the Charities Aid Foundation report UK Giving, 2015: An Overview of Charitable Giving in the UK during 2015, which is based upon face-to-face interviews conducted by GfK NOP with 4,160 UK adults aged 16 and over in February, May, August, and November 2015. It can be found at:

https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/personal-giving/caf_ukgiving2015_1891a_web_230516.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Religious education and faith schools

YouGov has recently (and very belatedly) posted on its website the data tables for an online poll it conducted among 2,198 UK adults on 14-15 September 2015. It was commissioned by Ideate Research in discussion with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in advance of a major debate on faith and education staged as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on 21 October 2015. Some headline findings were included in a press release from AHRC on that date, which attracted very little media coverage, but this is apparently the first time that detailed results have entered the public domain. The survey found that 77% of the population considered that religious education (RE) should be a compulsory (45%) or optional (32%) part of the national curriculum, with only 17% dissenting; paradoxically, notwithstanding their relatively low religiosity, 18-24s were keenest (53%) on compulsory RE. As the table below indicates, views about faith schools were decidedly more mixed, especially in the case of Islamic schools, which almost half the sample wished to see prohibited. When it came to changes affecting UK society over the next half-century, very few (8%) thought religious leaders would be best able to lead such changes, with just 7% suggesting they would be best equipped to help the general public understand the changes.

Attitudes to … (% down)	Christian schools	Islamic schools	Jewish schools
Should be allowed and receive state funding	44	12	16
Should be allowed but not receive state funding	32	34	43
Should not be allowed in UK	16	44	28

Data tables are at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/v50s4c7q5d/YG-Archive-10616-IdeateResearch.pdf

Freedom of speech

A newly-published ComRes poll commissioned by the Conservative Woman, for which 2,050 adults were interviewed online on 7-9 May 2016, revealed Britons to be somewhat ambivalent about legislative limitations on freedom of speech designed to protect people’s rights not to be offended by what others say. Two of the eight statements the sample was invited to respond to had a religious dimension. One asked whether it was right to have laws against ‘hate speech’ even if it might mean, for example, that Christian preachers could be arrested for repeating something in the Bible. In reply, almost twice as many contended that it was not right to have such laws as agreed that it was, 47% versus 26%, with a majority of men, over-55s, and residents of Northern England and the West Midlands opposed to such restrictions and no more than 31% in any demographic sub-group in favour of them. In similar vein, three-fifths (61%) of interviewees disagreed with the suggestion that persons who criticize Islam should be punished by hate speech laws, the proportion rising to seven in ten among men and over-55s; just 15% agreed with the proposition, and no more than 28% in any sub-group. Full data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ComRes_Freedom-of-Speech-Poll_tables.pdf

Trust in religious leaders

Young people generally do not trust religious leaders or other authority figures, according to an online poll of 1,351 Britons aged 18-30 conducted by YouGov for Hope not Hate on 6-13 May 2016. Three-fifths of respondents said that they did not trust religious leaders very much (29%) or at all (31%), with just 22% registering a great deal (3%) or a fair amount (19%) of trust, the positive rating standing highest among non-whites (30%), part-time workers (30%), and Scots (31%). The only two of the eight groups asked about which were trusted by a majority were teachers or academics and other young persons. Summary findings are tabulated below, and full data tables can be found at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ej63u31ku2/HopeNotHateResults_YoungPeople_160513_website.pdf

% across	Trust	Distrust
A teacher/academic	72	13
A young person like yourself	50	31
A trade union leader/official	31	45
A religious leader	22	60
A TV or sports star	16	66
A leader of multinational company	16	65
The media	13	73
A politician	10	76

Islamic State

Islamic State is the top of eight international concerns in Britain, with 79 per cent of the public regarding it as a major threat to our country and a further 16 per cent as a minor threat. This is according to the latest report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, for which 1,460 Britons aged 18 and over were interviewed by TNS BMRB by telephone between 4 April and 1 May 2016. The full ranking of concerns, with comparisons for France and Germany (where, alongside Italy and Spain, Islamic State was seen as an even greater threat than in Britain), is tabulated below, while Pew’s report on the survey can be found at:

http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/13/europeans-face-the-world-divided/

% regarding as a major threat	Britain	France	Germany
Islamic State	79	91	85
Global climate change	58	73	65
Cyberattacks from other countries	55	68	66
Large number of refugees	52	45	31
Global economic instability	48	73	39
China’s emergence as a world power	31	43	28
Tensions with Russia	28	34	31
United States power and influence	24	28	25

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Faith-based charities

New Philanthropy Capital’s ongoing programme of research into faith-based charities has resulted in a further brief report: David Bull, Lucy de Las Casas, and Rachel Wharton, Faith Matters: Understanding the Size, Income, and Focus of Faith-Based Charities. The 43,352 faith-based charities in England and Wales represent 27% of all charities and receive 23% (£16.3 billion) of the charity sector’s income. However, four-fifths of the income of faith-based charities is concentrated in just 1,719 organizations. Despite the inroads of secularization, proportionately more faith-based than non-faith-based charities have been registered with the Charity Commission during the past 10 years, 34% versus 25%. Relative to their non-faith-based counterparts, faith-based charities are especially active in the fields of overseas aid, human rights, and anti-poverty. The report can be found at:

http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/faith-matters/

Church of England ministry statistics

The Church of England has published Ministry Statistics, 2012 to 2015, showing national trends in numbers of stipendiary and self-supporting clergy, and their age, gender, and ethnic profiles. Detailed diocesan-level tables are also available in a separate Excel file. The data primarily derive from a new clergy payroll system, introduced in 2012, supplemented by Crockford’s Clerical Directory. This means that there is not strict methodological comparability with earlier statistics. Although overall totals of ordained ministers have remained stable since 2012, at just over 20,000, there has been a decline of 4% in stipendiary clergy over the four-year period, with the steady increase in female ministers not offsetting the steady decline in their male counterparts. As at 31 December 2015, 26% of stipendiary clergy were women, including 7 diocesan or suffragan bishops, 26 archdeacons, and 6 cathedral deans. One-quarter of stipendiary parochial clergy were aged 60 and over, ranging by diocese from 9% to 41%. Full details can be found at:

https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/ministry-statistics.aspx

Leadership of large Anglican churches

At the end of 2015, of the 112 Church of England churches with a Usual Sunday Attendance of at least 350, only three were led by women. In a recent paper, Liz Graveling explores why, more than two decades after women were admitted to the priesthood, so few are reaching these positions. Her research has involved statistical analysis of the current leadership of large churches and semi-structured interviews with 22 ordained ministers, mainly Evangelicals. Factors contributing to the gender imbalance are found to be: career progression time-lag; discrimination; social processes; incompatible social roles and working conditions; and organizational structures and dynamics. Graveling’s 25-page paper on ‘Vocational Pathways: Clergy Leading Large Churches’ is available at:

http://www.ministrydevelopment.org.uk/UserFiles/File/TRIG/Vocational_pathways_large_churches.pdf

Baptist statistics

The Baptist Union of Great Britain has recently launched a church statistics page on its website. It is currently limited to returns of membership and attendance for 2015, but the intention is to add information for past years in due course. In 2015 there were 126,144 members of the 2,028 churches in England and Wales belonging either to the Union or another Baptist Association, with 2,724 baptisms (equivalent to 2% of membership). Average attendance at the main weekly service, scaled up for missing data, numbered 159,360, sub-divided between 14% children, 7% young people, 8% young adults, 40% other adults, and 30% seniors. Full details, including geographical breakdowns, can be found at:

http://www.baptist.org.uk/Articles/471032/Church_Statistics.aspx

Quaker statistics

The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain has published an annual Tabular Statement of membership since 1862, based on information provided by area meetings and collated by the Recording Clerk. Membership at the end of December 2015 stood at 13,401, just 126 less than in 2014, and representing the smallest decrease for two decades. This contrasted with sharper 12-month declines in attenders (minus 5%) and of children not in membership (down 14%). For the first time in 2015, the gender breakdown of adults included the option to identify as other than a man or woman; 1 member and 44 attenders (36 of them in Scotland) were recorded as such. Also new for 2015 was the production of statistics at local meeting level, available as supplementary online tables. The Tabular Statement, which contains a significant amount of historical data (in some cases going back to 1935), can be accessed via the link at:

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/ym/documents-1

Islamophobia (1)

The European Network against Racism (ENAR) has published Forgotten Women: The Impact of Islamophobia on Muslim Women in the United Kingdom, researched between December 2014 and January 2016 by Bharath Ganesh and Iman Abou Atta (both of Faith Matters), with support from the European Union, the Open Society Foundations, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. The 75-page report mostly draws upon pre-existing official statistics, polling data, legislation, case law, and secondary literature to illustrate the inequalities and discrimination which affect Muslim women in the UK, especially as regards employment opportunities and experience of hate crimes. There is a particular dependence upon Faith Matters’ own Tell MAMA database of Islamophobic incidents, which is not yet universally recognized as an authoritative source. On the whole, the analysis seems to add little to previous overviews covering similar ground, although it perhaps has some value in a comparative context, since it forms one of a series of seven simultaneous national reports (the others examining Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Sweden). The document, with a four-page fact sheet on the UK, which serves as an extended executive summary, can be downloaded from:

http://www.enar-eu.org/Forgotten-Women-the-impact-of-Islamophobia-on-Muslim-women

Islamophobia (2)

Meanwhile, Tell MAMA has published its 60-page annual report for 2015, entitled The Geography of Anti-Muslim Hatred. A record number (437) ‘offline’ or in person anti-Muslim incidents were recorded by the organization during the year, 50% involving abusive behaviour and 17% assault. Three-fifths of the victims were women and three-quarters of the perpetrators were men (predominantly white). Tell MAMA received fewer (364) notifications of online incidents than in previous years, which it attributes to better policing by social media platforms of hate speech, abuse, and trolling. The report is available at:

http://tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/tell_mama_2015_annual_report.pdf

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Religion and well-being

A meta-analysis of 139 English-language academic studies exploring links between religion and well-being is offered by Nick Spencer, Gillian Madden, Clare Purtill, and Joseph Ewing, Religion and Well-Being: Assessing the Evidence (London: Theos, 2016, 91pp., ISBN 978-0-9931969-4-2). The overwhelming majority of these studies are international, and disproportionately American, reflecting the relatively late beginning of measurement of well-being in the UK, especially in the form of official statistics. Using five conceptions of religion and four of well-being, the authors detect a variable but mostly positive correlation between the two. The book can be freely downloaded from:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/Religion%20and%20well-being%207%20combined.pdf

Spencer has also written a blog about the report for the LSE’s newly-launched Religion and the Public Sphere website. This can be read at:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionpublicsphere/2016/06/28/is-religion-good-for-you-analysing-three-decades-worth-of-academic-research-on-the-relationship-between-religion-and-well-being/

British Social Attitudes, 2015

The book-length report on the 33rd British Social Attitudes Survey, based on interviews with a random probability sample of 4,328 Britons aged 18 and over by NatCen between August and November 2015, was published this month. The dataset has not yet been released nor has the questionnaire. Although none of the chapters in the report focuses on religion, the technical appendix (p. 123) does reveal the weighted results of the question on religious belonging, with 48% self-identifying as religious nones, 17% as Anglicans, 9% as Roman Catholics, 17% as other Christians, and 8% as non-Christians. The report is available at:

http://bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-33/introduction.aspx

Psychological profiles of Anglican congregants

The subject of psychological type and temperament profiles of Anglican congregations in England has been re-examined by Leslie Francis, Howard Wright, and Mandy Robbins through a study of 196 attenders at three services at one particular church, situated against the normative profile generated by 3,302 worshippers at 140 churches reported in International Journal of Practical Theology in 2011. The authors conclude that individual churches are able to offer diverse provisions which result in congregations with distinctively different psychological profiles. ‘Temperament Theory and Congregation Studies: Different Types for Different Services?’ is published in Practical Theology, Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2016, pp. 29-45, and access options are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1756073X.2016.1149679

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7975: National Survey of Bereaved People, 2012 – SN 7977: National Survey of Bereaved People, 2013 – SN 7978: National Survey of Bereaved People, 2014 – SN 7979: National Survey of Bereaved People, 2015

The National Survey of Bereaved People, alternatively known as VOICES: Views of Informal Carers, Evaluation of Services, is an annual survey (begun in 2011) designed to measure the quality of end-of-life care, especially during the last three months of life. It is undertaken in England by the Office for National Statistics on behalf of the Department of Health by means of a postal questionnaire completed by the persons who registered a random sample of deaths. There were 22,635 respondents in 2012, 22,661 in 2013, 21,403 in 2014, and 21,320 in 2015, each of whom provided an assessment of the care received by the deceased (including spiritual support during the final two days), together with background details about the deceased (including religious allegiance). Catalogue descriptions and documentation can be found at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7975&type=Data%20catalogue

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7977&type=Data%20catalogue

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7978&type=Data%20catalogue

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7979&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7995: Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2014

The report on this dataset was considered in Counting Religion in Britain, No. 8, May 2016. The dataset itself has now been deposited with the UK Data Service, and a catalogue description and documentation can be found at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7995&type=Data%20catalogue

PEOPLE NEWS

Bill Pickering (1922-2016)

William Stuart Frederick Pickering, pioneer British sociologist of religion and Anglican clergyman, died on 23 May 2016, aged 94. He taught successively at King’s College London (1955-56); St John’s College, University of Manitoba (1956-66); and the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1966-87), from where he retired to Cambridge. He is perhaps best known nowadays for his writings on Émile Durkheim and for establishing the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies at the University of Oxford, as well as the journal Durkheimian Studies and the Durkheim Press. However, some of his earliest work was in the empirical sociology of religion. His 1958 doctoral thesis, ‘The Place of Religion in the Social Structure of Two English Industrial Towns (Rawmarsh, Yorkshire and Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire)’, remains a ground-breaking study of the British religious landscape in the 1950s, employing a range of archival, census, and life history approaches. Sadly, little from this was ever published, mainly as essays in Vocation de la sociologie religieuse (1958) and Archives de Sociologie des Religions (1961). He also analysed the statistical background to the Anglican-Methodist Conversations (1961), patterns of post-war churchgoing (1972), and the endurance of rites of passage (1974). An important monograph, Theological Colleges: A Sociological Appraisal, written in the 1970s and based on a survey of British colleges in 1968-69, never made it into print.

Posted in church attendance, Ministry studies, News from religious organisations, Organisational data, People news, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religion in public debate, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged Arts and Humanities Research Council, Assaad Razzouk, Baptist Union, BBC, Bharath Ganesh, Bill Pickering, Brexit, British Social Attitudes Survey, charitable giving, Charities Aid Foundation, Christian Research, church attendance, church membership, Church of England, Clare Purtill, clergy, ComRes, Conservative Woman, David Bull, Department of Health, end-of-life care, European Network against Racism, European Union, Faith schools, faith-based charities, freedom of speech, GfK NOP, Gillian Madden, hate speech, Hope Not Hate, Howard Wright, Ideate Research, Iman Abou Atta, Islam, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle, Jews, Joseph Ewing, large churches, Leslie Francis, Liz Graveling, Lord Ashcroft, Lucy de Las Casas, Mandy Robbins, ministry, Muslims, NatCen, National Survey of Bereaved People, New Philanthropy Capital, Nick Spencer, Office for National Statistics, ORB International, Pew Global Attitudes Project, politics, Practical Theology, practising Christians, psychological type, Quakers, Rachel Wharton, referendum, Religion and the Public Sphere, Religious Affiliation, religious education, religious leaders, Religious Society of Friends, Resonate, science, Scottish Surveys Core Questions, senior religious figures, Survation, Tell MAMA, The Independent, theory of evolution, Theos, threat, TNS-BMRB, trust, voting, well-being, women, YouGov | 2 Comments

Counting Religion in Britain, May 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Clive D. Field

Counting Religion in Britain, No. 8, May 2016 features 31 new sources. It can be read in full below. Alternatively, you can download the PDF version: No 8 May 2016

OPINION POLLS

Anti-Semitism (1): Attitudes of Jews toward the Labour Party

The recent row about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party seems to have further damaged its standing with the Jewish electorate. A majority (63%) of British Jews regard the Labour Party as anti-Semitic, and 66% assess its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as doing a bad job in addressing the issue. Whereas 15% of Jews voted Labour at the 2015 general election, and 32% of those who did not have considered voting Labour at some time in the past 10 years, only 7% would vote Labour now. The Jewish community remains overwhelmingly (67%) Conservative in its political allegiance, although it has only really been so since the Second World War. In part, this perhaps reflects the very low perception of anti-Semitism in that party (6%), a similar perception applying to the Liberal Democrats but not to UKIP (which 46% of Jews view as anti-Semitic). Notwithstanding the current publicity being given to anti-Semitism, 82% of Jews say they feel very or quite safe in Britain. Data derive from a survey of 1,008 members of Survation’s pre-recruited panel of self-identifying Jews in Britain, interviewed mainly by telephone on 3-4 May 2016.

The poll was commissioned by the Jewish Chronicle which published its own analysis of the results in its edition for 6 May 2016 at:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/157746/labour-support-among-british-jews-collapses-85-cent

Full data tables, including breaks by demographics, are available at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Full-Tables-JC-Poll-030516SPCH-1c0d0h8.pdf

Results for a question on the voting intentions of Jews in the forthcoming referendum on European Union membership were separately reported in the Jewish Chronicle for 13 May 2016, 49% being in the ‘remain’ camp, 34% in the ‘leave’ camp, and 17% undecided. These data tables are at:

http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Full-Tables-JC-EU-Poll-030516SPCH-1c0d0h8.pdf

Anti-Semitism (2): Attitudes of Labour Party members

A bare majority (52%) of 1,031 Labour Party members interviewed online by YouGov for The Times on 9-11 May 2016 acknowledged that the Party has a problem with anti-Semitism, 38% being in denial. Moreover, 47% thought it no worse a problem in the Labour Party than in any other political party, while 35% blamed the press and opponents of Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for exploiting the issue in order to attack him (a further 49% accused them of manufacturing the problem for the same reason). Likewise, although 59% approved of the suspension from the Party of Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, only one-quarter judged the remarks leading to his suspension to be anti-Semitic and wanted him to be expelled from the Party. Data tables can be accessed via the link in the blog at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/labour-members-increasingly-bullish-on-corbyn/

Anti-Semitism (3): Attitudes of the electorate

Asked about the extent of prejudice against Jews in the UK, 29% of 1,694 Britons replied that there is a great deal or a fair amount in an online poll by YouGov for Tim Bale on 2-3 May 2016. This was five points more than in a previous survey in December 2014. Not very much prejudice was reported by 43%, none at all by 5%, with the remaining 23% unable to say. Some anti-Semitism on the part of respondents themselves was in evidence, 7% agreeing with the long-standing trope that ‘Jews have too much influence in this country’, rising to 14 per cent among UKIP supporters and 10% for men and Scottish residents. A similar overall proportion (6%) acknowledged that they would be less likely to vote for a political party led by a Jew and also disagreed with the proposition that ‘a British Jew would make an equally acceptable Prime Minister as a member of any other faith’; the number was again double among UKIP voters. Almost one-third of the sample claimed to have Jewish friends, acquaintances, or work colleagues, which is a surprisingly high ratio, given that there are relatively few Jews in the country and that they are spatially concentrated.

Bale had an article about the survey in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph for 5 May 2016, which can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/labour-voters-dont-have-a-problem-with-jewish-people-but-london/

The full data tables are at:

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/prmzmd3z1w/TimBaleResults_160503_Anti-Semitism_W.pdf

Perceptions of Islam

A significant degree of negativity toward both Islam and Muslims has again surfaced in a poll conducted by ComRes for Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (UK) among a sample of 2,012 adult Britons interviewed online on 22-24 April 2016. Topline findings are tabulated below, in the order in which questions were asked, except for the omission of questions about understandings of the Caliphate (a central preoccupation of the sponsor), which are too complex to summarize here. It will be seen that a majority of respondents denied that Islam is compatible with British values, while a plurality disagreed it promoted peace in the UK and believed it is a negative force in the country. Only a minority acknowledged having a good grasp of Islamic traditions and beliefs, but there was little appetite to learn more or to see Islam taught more in schools. At the same time, there was acceptance that British Muslims are seriously and unfairly disadvantaged by misconceptions of Islam. The public’s long-standing desire for a separation of religion and politics was reaffirmed. Detailed computer tables, giving breaks by a range of demographics (including religious affiliation and possession of Muslim family, friends, or acquaintances), are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ahmadi-Muslims_Perceptions-of-the-Caliphate.pdf

% across	Agree	Disagree	Don’t know
Islam promotes peace in UK	32	46	22
Possess good understanding of Islamic traditions/beliefs	32	57	10
Possess Muslim family/friends/acquaintances	41	54	5
Get most of knowledge about Islam from media	55	37	8
Islam is compatible with British values	28	56	17
Islam promotes acts of violence in UK	33	51	16
Islam is a violent religion	28	57	14
Most people in UK have negative view of Islam	72	15	13
Islam is a negative force in UK	43	40	17
Would like to know more about Islamic traditions	36	49	15
More should be taught about Islam in UK schools	38	47	15
Misconceptions of Islam negatively impact quality of life of British Muslims	67	18	15
Misconceptions of Islam negatively impact quality of life of all Britons	60	24	16
Extremist views/actions conducted in Islam’s name by Muslim minority unfairly impact perceptions of Muslims	78	12	11
No place in UK politics for religious influence of any kind	62	23	15
UK Muslims do not have unifying figurehead	45	17	38

Admiration for global religious figures

Of the three international religious leaders included in YouGov’s latest 30-nation ranking of most admired living figures, the Dalai Lama took a larger share of the vote than the Pope in 19 countries, including the United Kingdom, the Dalai Lama performing especially strongly in Australia, France, Germany, and Norway. The Pope out-performed the Dalai Lama in nine countries, most impressively in the Philippines, while in Argentina and New Zealand the two leaders were tied. Internationally, the Pope has fallen seven places since last year’s rankings, suggesting his influence may be on the wane. The veteran evangelist Billy Graham, mostly out of the limelight these days, predictably trailed the other two religious leaders, except in Egypt (where he came first of the three) and in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States (where he came second). In the United Kingdom, which Graham has missioned on several occasions, his percentage share of admiration was below the global mean, whereas for Pope Francis it was slightly above. Of course, in virtually all countries the lists were dominated by secular names. Statistics for religious figures alone are tabulated below. Topline results for all figures for all participating nations, together with an explanation of methodology, can be found at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/wma-2016/

% share of admiration	Pope Francis	Dalai Lama	Billy Graham
Global mean	3.0	4.3	1.6
Argentina	7.0	7.0	1.0
Australia	4.8	11.4	2.1
Brazil	1.9	8.4	2.0
Canada	7.8	5.8	2.4
China	0.4	NA	0.2
Denmark	1.7	9.9	0.4
Egypt	0.7	0.6	0.9
Finland	2.3	7.0	0.8
France	7.7	10.0	0.1
Germany	1.3	10.0	0.3
Hong Kong	4.2	2.6	0.7
India	2.2	2.9	0.9
Indonesia	1.8	2.8	0.8
Malaysia	1.4	2.0	0.8
Mexico	3.7	9.1	0.8
Morocco	0.2	0.7	0.2
New Zealand	5.6	5.6	2.7
Norway	7.7	10.0	0.1
Pakistan	0.1	0.4	0.0
Philippines	20.7	2.8	1.7
Russia	1.1	2.8	0.1
Saudi Arabia	0.6	0.5	0.3
Singapore	3.4	2.5	1.7
South Africa	2.0	5.4	3.2
Spain	2.2	7.4	0.4
Sweden	2.0	8.7	0.3
Thailand	1.8	4.5	0.2
United Arab Emirates	4.1	2.0	0.9
United Kingdom	3.5	4.1	1.1
United States	8.2	3.7	5.2

Trust in religious leaders

In a separate YouGov study for YouGov@Cambridge, three-fifths of 1,742 Britons interviewed on 13-14 March 2016 said they had limited (32%) or no trust (28%) in religious leaders in general to tell the truth, peaking at 73% among those judging the current political system to be broken. Just 30% expressed a great deal or fair amount of trust in religious leaders, with marked contrasts between 18-24s (20%) and over-65s (43%) and between those thinking the political system works well (43%) and that it is broken (22%). Comparisons with a somewhat eclectic list of other groups are shown in the table, below.

% degree of trust to tell truth	Great deal/fair amount	Not much	Not at all
Friends	89	7	0
Family members	89	6	1
Academics	64	22	5
People you meet in general	50	36	6
UK military leaders	40	32	17
Religious leaders	30	32	28
Trade union leaders	24	37	27
Journalists	18	45	32
People who run large companies	17	47	27
UK government ministers	15	38	38
Senior European Union officials	13	36	40
Senior US government officials	12	38	38

The same survey explored several other matters of religious interest. Asked about the role of a ‘higher force’ (such as God, fate, or destiny) in their own lives, 5% assessed that everything which happened to them was caused by this force, 8% that most of what happened was so caused, and 22% that some of what happened was so caused. That made 35% according some role to a higher force against 38% denying it had any influence at all, the remaining 27% being undecided between the options on offer. Men (45%) and 18-24s (48%) were most likely to refute the intervention of a higher force in their lives. Membership of church or religious organizations during the past five years was reported by 8% of respondents overall, rising to 13% of over-65s and 14% of Scots. Given a list of possible conspiracy theories, the suggestion that official accounts of the Holocaust are a lie, with the number of Jews killed being exaggerated, was strenuously refuted – merely 2% agreed with the proposition (albeit 5% of UKIP voters).

Data tables for the poll can be accessed via the link at:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/27/conspiracies/

Dying

Britons claim to feel far more comfortable about discussing religion with their family and friends (80%) than they do sex (50%), according to the latest poll by ComRes for the Dying Matters Coalition, for which 2,085 adults were interviewed online on 15-17 April 2016. There is also greater willingness to discuss religion than either dying (64%) or money (78%), albeit slightly more reticence than about politics (82%) or immigration (85%). Just 17% say they would feel uncomfortable talking about religion, and no more than 19% among any demographic sub-group (the Welsh being most reluctant). However, when it comes to factors potentially ensuring a ‘good death’, ‘having your religious/spiritual needs met’ is rated as the least important of the six options, with a mean score of 5.29 on a six-point scale, the list topped by ‘being pain free’ on 2.44. Addressing religious and spiritual needs is judged the single most important factor by only 5% of respondents overall, and no more than 6% in any sub-group. Data tables are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NCPC_Public-polling-2016_Data-tables.pdf

Places of worship and community

Places of worship are accorded a very low priority by the public in shaping a local community, according to a recent survey commissioned by TSB Bank, for which OnePoll surveyed 4,000 UK adults online between 20 January and 18 March 2016. Indeed, asked which of 22 facilities and services were most essential, a place of worship came in penultimate position, attracting just 12% support, marginally ahead of a youth club on 10%. The list was headed by a post office (74%) and a bank (73%). Even fewer, 9% of men and 8% of women, said that the existence of easily accessible places of worship was a factor they liked about their current home. Full data tables from the poll are not in the public domain, but headline findings appear in a report from TSB at:

http://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/tsb-home-reports.pdf

Brexit

This will be the last edition of Counting Religion in Britain before United Kingdom voters decide on 23 June 2016 whether they wish the country to remain a member of the European Union (EU) or not. So, it seems appropriate to review the latest evidence about referendum voting intentions by religion. It comes from Lord Ashcroft’s online survey of 5,009 adult Britons interviewed between 13 and 18 May 2016. Respondents were not asked how they proposed to answer the actual question on the referendum ballot paper but about their inclination to vote, on a feeling thermometer running from 0 to 100, where 0-49 denoted a leaning towards remaining in the EU, 51-100 a leaning towards leaving, and 50 represented undecided. As the table below indicates, a majority of voters (52%) inclined towards the leave position, 14 points more than opted to remain. However, among Christians the gap in favour of leaving widened to 22%. A plurality of both non-Christians (49%) and religious nones (48%) was also in favour of leaving, albeit the margin over the remainers was very small (3% and 6%, respectively). See, further, page 92 of the data tables at:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Euro_Poll_May16.pdf

% across	Remain	Undecided	Leave
All voters	38	10	52
Christian	34	9	56
Non-Christian	46	5	49
No religion	42	11	48

Voting intentions of Jews in the referendum, according to a different survey, are mentioned in the final paragraph of the first item in this edition, ‘Anti-Semitism (1)’, above. For Sikh views on the EU, see ‘British Sikh Report’, below.

FAITH ORGANIZATION STUDIES

English church census, 2016

Plans for another ecumenical census of church attendance in England, the first since 2005, have been abandoned, according to news reports in the Church Times and on the Churches Together in England website. The census was to have taken place in October, with a pilot scheduled for June. The plans had been devised by a steering group which has been meeting since autumn 2015 under the chairpersonship of the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker. But they had to be aborted after several major denominations, including most recently the Church of England itself, indicated their unwillingness to sign up to the administrative resource implications. News stories about the cancellation of the census can be found at:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/13-may/news/uk/church-census-2016-cancelled-after-c-of-e-drops-out

http://www.cte.org.uk/Articles/468006/Home/News/Latest_news_articles/Proposed_Church_Census.aspx

http://www.cte.org.uk/Groups/273292/Home/Resources/Proposed_2016_Church/Proposed_2016_Church.aspx

Sermons

The overwhelming majority (88%) of 1,800 UK churchgoers and church leaders interviewed online by Christian Research in early May disagreed with the suggestion that preaching a sermon in church is outdated. However, sermons in excess of half an hour in length appealed to only 10% of the sample, more so to men (14%) than women (6%) and to those aged 25-34 (19%) than over-65s (9%). In reality, 15% of sermons were reported as exceeding 30 minutes, the most common length (44%) being from 10 to 20 minutes. Regarding priorities for content, most emphasis (44%) was placed on biblical exposition, by men (49%) more than women (39%). Practical application was second in significance (40%), albeit preferred by more women (44%) than men (36%). Neither sex attached much importance to humour or anecdote in sermons. Four-fifths of worshippers did not mind whether the preacher was male or female, but one-fifth favoured a man in the pulpit. The research was commissioned by the Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) in the run-up to CRE International at the ExCeL Centre in London on 17-20 May, which featured a Sermon of the Year competition. As with virtually all Christian Research polling via its Resonate panel, few data have entered the public domain, but CRE has a press release at:

https://www.creonline.co.uk/news/preachers-told-give-us-content-over-comedy-please/

Church Commissioners annual report

The Church Commissioners, who support the mission and ministry of the Church of England from the proceeds of a diverse investment of £7 billion, have published their annual report and financial statements for 2015, entitled Investing in the Church’s Growth. The overall return on this investment last year was in excess of 8%, not far short of the annual average of almost 10% over the past 30 years, and well ahead of inflation. The Commissioners’ total expenditure in 2015 was £218.5 million, amounting to 15% of all spending across the Church, with their biggest single outlay (56%) being on clergy pensions (for service prior to 1998). Media coverage has focused disproportionately on the fact that Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, is shown among the Commissioners’ 20 most valuable equity assets, despite frequent accusations against Google that it fails to pay its fair share of UK tax. The report is available for download at:

https://churchofengland.org/media/2492846/churchcommissionersar2015.pdf

Fresh Expressions of church in the Diocese of Sheffield

An analysis of 56 Fresh Expressions of church (fxC) started in the Diocese of Sheffield between 1992 and 2014 has been prepared by George Lings and published by the Church Army’s Research Unit. Nearly all (47) of these fxCs are still in existence, adding 13% to the average weekly attendance in the diocese’s parish churches. Of the 2,450 fxC attenders, 35% are existing Christians, 27% dechurched, and 39% non-churched. The report is available at:

http://www.sheffield.anglican.org/UserFiles/File///CARU_Research_report_19_Sheffield_Diocese.pdf

Church of Scotland statistics

Church of Scotland statistics for the year-ending 31 December 2015, which were reported to the General Assembly meeting in Edinburgh this month, revealed a continuing decline. There were 14,788 fewer members in 2015 than 2014, a decrease of 4%, this being the net figure of 6,330 admissions and 21,118 removals from the rolls. Half the removals were as a result of deaths, which were nine times as numerous as new members received on profession of faith. The Church conducted 21,235 funerals during the course of the year, equivalent to 37% of all deaths in Scotland. There were only 3,591 baptisms, a far cry from the peak of 51,767 in 1962. Indeed, media coverage of the General Assembly highlighted the intention to give serious consideration to online baptisms (for example, via Skype or over the phone), which are already popular in America, to stem the fall. The headline statistics can be found in Appendix X of the General Assembly’s Order of Proceedings at:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/32879/Order_of_Proceedings.pdf

Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has released a summary report on its 2014-15 ‘data survey’, which was initially prepared for consideration by its Leaders’ Conference in November 2015. The FIEC was founded in 1922 as an umbrella organization for non-denominational and unattached churches and missions. It currently represents 559 ‘church gatherings’ in Great Britain and is continuing to grow. The ‘data survey’ revealed that 39,000 individuals (31,000 adults and 8,000 young people under 18) attend FIEC churches on a typical Sunday morning, an increase of 10% since a similar survey in 2003. The number worshipping at least monthly (and thus considered to be regular attenders) is, at 46,000, almost one-fifth more. Church membership stood at 27,000 in 2014-15, equivalent to 59% of regular adult attenders compared with 64% in 2003. Most (54%) of FIEC churches have fewer than 35 members, the smaller the church, the more likely it is to be in numerical decline. The proportion of Sunday attendances in the morning has risen from 58% in 1989 to 70% today, while the number of churches holding evening services has fallen over the same period, from 93% to 77%. The ratio of young people in FIEC congregations has reduced from 32% to 20% since 1989, with 13% of churches having no young people in the pews and 53% reporting no baptisms in the past year. One in seven attenders is aged 75 or over. A further data survey is planned towards the end of 2016. The summary report for 2014-15 can be found at:

https://fiec.org.uk/docs/FIEC_How_are_we_looking.pdf

British Sikh Report

British Sikh Report, 2016 is the fourth annual edition of a survey overseen by a group of Sikh professionals, and conducted (mainly online) in late 2015 and early 2016 among a self-selecting (and thus potentially unrepresentative) sample of 1,416 adult Sikhs in the United Kingdom. Britain’s place in the world was a special theme of this year’s study. On membership of the European Union (EU), 57% of British Sikhs were in favour of remaining (mostly subject to reform of the EU, the survey being conducted before the British government’s agreement with the EU in February 2016), 12% wanted to leave the EU, with 31% undecided. However, 54% disagreed with allowing an unlimited number of EU migrants into the country, and 67% wanted their access to benefits to be limited. On immigration generally, although 59% agreed that migrants made a positive contribution to society, 67% feared that public services could not cope with the current level of net influx, and 53% that diversity and cohesion would be adversely affected by it. Only 32% supported Britain taking in more refugees (with 39% opposed), albeit 51% approved of greater help being given to refugees already in Europe. Other topics covered were ethno-religious self-identity, relevance of caste, observance of the Panj Kakkars, charitable giving and volunteering, attitudes to British military involvement in Syria and the retention of a nuclear deterrent, and demographics (including employment status and highest educational attainment). Gurbachan Singh Jandu contributes an article on ‘Britain’s Sikhs in 2016: A Community with Society in Mind’ (pp. 5-12). British Sikh Report, 2016 is available to download at:

http://www.britishsikhreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/British-Sikh-Report-2016.pdf

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

2021 census

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed that it intends to include a question on religious affiliation in the 2021 population census of England and Wales, using the same wording as in 2011, to ensure continuity in reporting with both 2001 and 2011 results. A primary driver for so doing is to enable organizations to meet their duties under the Equality Act 2010, which defines religion as a protected characteristic. Following public consultation, ONS is declining to extend the question, noting: ‘While data users proposed that additional information about philosophical belief should also be collected, testing ahead of the 2011 Census demonstrated that including philosophical beliefs within the question changed how respondents thought about religion. This led to them providing answers on religious belief rather than affiliation. It is therefore not intended to expand the scope of the religion question to include this aspect of the protected characteristic.’ The statement appears in section 3.9 of The 2021 Census: Assessment of Initial User Requirements on Content for England and Wales – Response to Consultation, which is available (in English and Welsh) at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/consultations/the2021censusinitialviewoncontentforenglandandwales

Scottish Surveys Core Questions, 2014

Scottish Surveys Core Questions combines into a single dataset the answers to identical questions asked of an aggregate 21,000 respondents in the annual Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, the Scottish Health Survey, and the Scottish Household Survey. The report and tables for 2014, the third year of the series, have just been published by the Scottish Government, with religion as one of the 19 core questions. Overall, 44% of the Scottish population had no religion, 52% was Christian (29% Church of Scotland, 15% Roman Catholic, 8% other denominations), and 3% non-Christian. Religious affiliation was used as a variable for analysing the incidence of general health, long-term limiting health conditions, smoking, mental wellbeing, unpaid care, local crime rates, and confidence in the police. The apparent statistical significance of some religious correlates was weakened when results were standardized by age, reflecting the disproportionately elderly profile of Church of Scotland affiliates and the younger profile of nones and Muslims. However, even after age standardization was applied, the greatest prevalence of smoking was still found among Catholics and nones. More details at:

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/05/7615/downloads

ACADEMIC STUDIES

Protestant and Catholic differences

‘Protestant and Catholic Distinctions in Secularization’ are examined by Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, with particular reference to the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, in Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2016, pp. 165-80. The underlying data derive from cross-sectional national surveys for the period 1985-2012, including 86,000 respondents to British Social Attitudes Surveys. In all three countries, there has been a steep decline in Protestant affiliation over time, but the remaining Protestants have generally seen heightened rates of religious practice (measured by attendance at religious services and prayer) when compared with remaining Catholics. With regard to orthodox religious beliefs, both remaining Protestants and remaining Catholics exhibit increasing levels of believing. For the incidence of religious behaviour and believing, Protestants now surpass Catholics in the United States and Canada and are said to be on track to do so in Britain. The societal implications of the ‘religious core’, at once diminished yet strengthened, are briefly assessed. Access options to the article, and to supplementary tables available online, are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2016.1152660

Catholic disaffiliation

British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys, in this case for 1991-2011 (and especially 2007-11), have also been mined by Stephen Bullivant in his study of ‘Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2016, pp. 181-97. Disaffiliates are defined as those who were brought up as Catholics but no longer identify as such, either because they regard themselves as belonging to some other religion (switchers) or to none at all (leavers). A much smaller proportion of Catholics (38%) was found to have disaffiliated than was the case with other mainstream denominations, some of the lowest retention rates being among Baptists and Methodists, only 36% and 34% of whom (respectively) stayed loyal to their faith of upbringing. Nevertheless, Catholic disaffiliations increased over time, from 25% for pre-1945 cohorts to 40% for post-1945 cohorts (a possible Vatican II effect, Bullivant suggests), and dwarfed, in the ratio of ten to one, converts to Catholicism. Men raised as Catholics were one and a half times more likely than women to disaffiliate. Moreover, a large contingent of the overall 62% of Catholics retaining their cradle identity rarely or never practised their religion, while a significant minority were even atheists or agnostics. Access options to the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2016.1152664

A somewhat broader and more up-to-date account of results from this research, focusing on England and Wales and drawing upon BSA surveys for 2012-14, can be found in Bullivant’s Contemporary Catholicism in England and Wales: A Statistical Report Based on Recent British Social Attitudes Survey Data (Catholic Research Forum Reports, No. 1, London: Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, St Mary’s University Twickenham, 2016, 18pp.). Its four chapters explore: religion in England and Wales; the Catholic population; retention and conversion; and church attendance. Catholic data are disaggregated by gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Extrapolating from BSA, Bullivant suggests that the Catholic community of England and Wales numbers (professedly) 3,800,000 against 6,200,000 brought up as Catholics. This report is freely available to download at:

http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/contemporary-catholicism.htm

Catholics and faith schools

‘Attitudes Towards Faith-Based Schooling amongst Roman Catholics in Britain’ are explored by Ben Clements in an online first article in British Journal of Religious Education. The underlying data derive from a survey of 1,062 adult Catholics in Britain by YouGov for the Westminster Faith Debates in 2013. Some support is found for the ‘solidarity of the religious’ thesis, with the more orthodox Catholics (in terms of their religious practice and beliefs) showing a greater propensity to endorse publicly-funded faith school provision for Christians and non-Christians alike. The effects of moral attitudes and socio-demographic variables (except for ethnicity) were weaker and less consistent. Access options to the article are explained at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2015.1128393

Urban and rural Anglican dioceses

Owen Edwards has proposed a new model for defining rural, mixed, and urban Anglican dioceses in England and Wales, based upon 10 statistical factors, in comparison with an earlier (2001) model devised by David Lankshear. ‘Classifying “Rural” and “Urban” Dioceses of the Church of England and the Church in Wales: Introducing the Ten-Factor Model’ is published in Rural Theology, Vol. 14, No. 1, May 2016, pp. 53-65, and access options to the article are explained at:

http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14704994.2016.1154729

Polarized Jews

Jews are likely to hold more divergent and stronger views than non-Jews across a wide variety of social issues. This is according to a comparison of a 1995 study of British Jewish opinion, undertaken by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys for 1993-94, both of which permitted respondents to choose between moderate or more extreme positions in answer to 14 identically-worded questions. No subsequent survey of the British Jewish community appears to have deliberately replicated BSA questions in this way. In all but one of the 14 cases, the Jewish sample exhibited a wider spread of attitudes than BSA interviewees, which was statistically significant in 11 instances. Competing non-religious (socio-demographic and language norm) explanations for the variance are considered and dismissed. This greater polarization of Jewish opinion conforms to Jewish folklore, religious narratives, and tropes of Jewish humour. An open access version of Stephen Miller, ‘Are Jews More Polarised in Their Social Attitudes than Non-Jews? Empirical Evidence from the 1995 JPR Study’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57, Nos 1 and 2, 2015, pp. 70-6 is available at:

http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/12694/1/2%20Miller.pdf

Digital methodologies

Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion are explored in a new book edited by Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and Suha Shakkour (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, xxvi + 227pp., ISBN 978-1-4725-7115-1, £21.99, paperback). It comprises 15 fairly short chapters by 25 contributors (10 of them from the United Kingdom) which tease out the methodological lessons to be learned from online research which they have conducted, identifying key tips for future practitioners. There is also a useful bibliography of relevant primary and secondary literature (pp. 197-223). The empirical findings of the research are only incidentally reported. Digital methodologies employed, besides the fairly obvious use of online surveys, include Facebook, YouTube, videoconferencing, apps, crowdsourcing, and gaming. They can be helpful in targeting minority and otherwise hard-to-reach populations, particularly in non-Christian communities, which are the subject of several of these essays (for example, Jasjit Singh’s contribution on the religious engagement of young Sikhs). However, in statistical terms, digital research, although relatively inexpensive, often struggles to achieve representative samples and thus to generate scientifically robust data. This even applies to online surveys, which frequently rely upon self-selecting respondents. The book’s webpage can be found at:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-methodologies-in-the-sociology-of-religion-9781472571151/

Implicit religion and adolescents

Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny have examined the late Edward Bailey’s notion of the persistence of implicit religion among a sample of 8,619 adolescents aged 13-15 in England and Wales who participated in the Teenage Religion and Values Survey and who had no formal religious affiliation (nones) nor practice (never attended religious services). Implicit religion was operationalized as attachment to traditional Christian rites of passage (religious baptism, marriage, and funeral). Marriage in church was sought by 43%, a church funeral by 42%, and baptism of children by 21%. It was found that young people who remained attached to these rites displayed higher levels of psychological wellbeing than those who were not attached, suggesting, the authors contend, that implicit religion serves similar psychological functions as explicit religion. ‘Implicit Religion and Psychological Wellbeing: A Study among Adolescents without Formal Religious Affiliation or Practice’ is published in Implicit Religion, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016, pp. 61-78, and access options are explained at:

https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IR/article/view/30009

Journalists and religion

The United Kingdom’s 64,000 professional journalists are not an especially religious lot, even less so than the population as a whole. This is according to a new report from the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Neil Thurman, Alessio Cornia, and Jessica Kunert, Journalists in the UK. A random sample of journalists drawn from the Gorkana Media Database was invited to complete an online survey in December 2015, of whom 715 responded. The majority (61%) said that they had no religion, 74% that religious belief was of little (22%) or no importance (52%) to them, and 76% that religious considerations had little (28%) or no influence (48%) on their work. Moreover, as many as 45% expressed little (27%) or no trust (18%) in religious leaders, only 11% having a great deal or complete trust in them. The relatively low religiosity of journalists may be at least partially explained by the fact that they are disproportionately white and university-educated. The report is available at:

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Journalists%20in%20the%20UK.pdf

George Whitefield’s voice

Christian history is full of examples of evangelists who have preached to large crowds in the open air without any amplification of their voice. Historians have often doubted whether these crowds were quite as large as estimated at the time and, in any case, whether the preacher would actually have been audible. Now matters have been put to the test in respect of George Whitefield, the great transatlantic preacher of the eighteenth century, who is said to have attracted as many as 80,000 people on a single occasion. Braxton Boren, a graduate in both physics and music technology, has used contemporary experimental and topographical data combined with modern simulation techniques to calculate the maximum intelligible range of Whitefield’s field preaching in Philadelphia and London. He concludes that, based on Whitefield’s vocal level, he could have reached a crowd of 50,000 under ideal acoustic conditions and still half as many even when noise levels were higher or crowd density lower. Braxton’s ‘Whitefield’s Voice’ is published in George Whitefield: Life, Context, and Legacy, edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 167-89.

British Religion in Numbers

The annual update of the British Religion in Numbers (BRIN) source database has just taken place (it was deliberately delayed to allow the BRIN website to be migrated to a new platform, and, as part of that, for the database itself to be moved from MySQL to WordPress software). New entries have been created for 158 British religious statistical sources (disproportionately sample surveys), of which 121 date from 2015, 27 from 2014, and 10 from previous years. This brings the total of sources described in the database to 2,552. The 2015 sources include many important surveys, a very large number relating to Muslims, Islam, or Islamism (notably Islamic State), with a smaller cluster of polls exploring Jewish opinion and the attitudes of Britons toward Jews and anti-Semitism. Sources can be browsed at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/source-list/

An advanced search facility is available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/search/

NEW DATASETS AT UK DATA SERVICE

SN 7894: What about YOUth? Survey, 2014

The ‘What about YOUth?’ survey was commissioned by the Health and Social Care Information Centre and conducted by Ipsos MORI through a combination of self-completion postal and online questionnaires between 23 September 2014 and 9 January 2015. It investigated the health and wellbeing of a random sample of 15-year-olds in England, which can be analysed by a raft of background variables, one of which was religious affiliation. The substantial size of the dataset (120,115 interviews, representing a response rate of 40%) makes it of particular interest. A catalogue description, with links to technical and other information, is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7894&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7963: Scottish Household Survey, 2013 and SN 7964: Scottish Household Survey, 2014

The Scottish Household Survey, initiated in 1999, is undertaken on behalf of the Scottish Government by a polling consortium led by Ipsos MORI. Information is collected about the composition, characteristics, attitudes, and behaviour of private households and individuals in Scotland; and about the physical condition of their homes. For the 2013 survey (January 2013-February 2014) data were gathered on 10,650 households and 9,920 adults; for 2014 (January 2014-March 2015) on, respectively, 10,630 and 9,800. The specifically religious content of the questionnaire for both years covered: religion belonged to; experience of discrimination or harassment on religious, sectarian, or other grounds; and incidence of volunteering for religious and other groups. Catalogue descriptions for the datasets are available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7963&type=Data%20catalogue

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7964&type=Data%20catalogue

SN 7972: British Election Study, 2015 – Face-to-Face Post-Election Survey

The series of British Election Studies originated in 1963, and the post-election survey for 2015 (there was also an internet panel) was based on face-to-face interviews with a probability sample of 2,987 British electors, 1,567 of whom also filled out a self-completion module. Fieldwork was conducted by GfK NOP between 8 May and 13 September 2015, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council allocated to a research team at the Universities of Manchester, Oxford, and Nottingham. Respondents were asked whether they regarded themselves as belonging to any religion and, if so, how often they attended religious services other than for rites of passage. These are important background variables for analysing the answers to the recurrent and non-recurrent questions on political and related topics. A catalogue description for the dataset is available at:

https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7972&type=Data%20catalogue

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Mid-Summer Miscellany

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Christian voters: post-election

A ComRes poll for Tearfund published on 17 June 2015, and conducted online between 14 and 17 May, revealed details of how 1,507 practising (churchgoing) UK Christians had engaged with the 2015 general election on 7 May. Excluding those who either did not vote or declined to reveal how they had voted, the distribution of party support is tabulated below, alongside data for the electorate as a whole (taken from a YouGov survey of 92,945 voters between 6 and 18 May 2015). It will be seen that practising Christians were less likely than voters overall to back the Conservative, Labour, and UKIP parties, and they were above-average supporters of the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Liberal Democrats were especially popular with members of the historic Free Churches, reflecting a legacy of Nonconformist endorsement of Liberalism. The small number of Catholics interviewed (41 unweighted) is a matter of concern and may have negatively impacted the Labour vote.

% down	Practising Christians	All voters
Conservative	32	38
Labour	27	31
Liberal Democrat	17	8
UKIP	9	13
Green	10	4
Other	5	7

Asked which factors had been most important in helping them decide which party to vote for, 18% of practising Christians mentioned the economy, 13% their affinity for the party, 12% the qualities of the prospective MP, and 11% the promotion of equality/social justice. More generally, the main issues facing Britain today were assessed as inequality/social justice (27%), spiritual/religious decline (18%), immigration/asylum (14%), poverty (12%), NHS (11%), and lack of morality (10%). Issues perceived as facing the world over the next ten years differed somewhat, with environment/climate change topping the list at 28% and the threat posed by Islam/Islamization in fourth place with 15%. Detailed computer tabulations for the poll, including breaks by standard demographics, churchmanship, and denomination, are at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tearfund_-Post-Election-Polling.pdf

BME voters: pre-election

Not published until well after the general election (on 15 June), but with online fieldwork conducted beforehand (between 16 February and 5 March 2015), was a survey by Survation for Bright Blue among 1,231 black and minority ethnic (BME) Britons. It was specifically designed to capture BME attitudes to immigration and the Conservative Party, including breaks by religious affiliation, but several more general religion-related questions were also posed, which are our focus here. In line with other research, BMEs exhibited relatively high levels of religiosity. Only 14% claimed to have no religion, Christians (38%) and Muslims (30%) being most numerous. Of those professing a faith, just one-fifth said that it was not very or not at all important to them, 42% deeming it extremely and 38% quite important. However, fewer (36% of the whole sample) reported being an active member of a local religious group, with peaks of 43% among the under-35s and 50% for Muslims. On immigration matters, 78% denied that, for being truly British, one had to be a Christian, even a majority of Christians agreeing, while 79% (including the same proportion of Muslims) felt it right that a woman from a strongly Muslim country threatened with execution because of her Christian beliefs should be given asylum in the UK. Full data tables can be found at:

http://survation.com/archive/2015-2/

Social capital (1)

Based on data from the last two waves (1999, 2008) of the European Values Study and the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Survey, Ingrid Storm considers ‘Civic Engagement in Britain: The Role of Religion and Inclusive Values’, European Sociological Review, Vol. 31, No. 1, February 2015, pp. 14-29. By means of logistic regression, she tests four hypotheses by identifying the religious and other correlates of membership of and volunteering for a range of organizations, within a theoretical framework of bonding versus bridging social capital (as proposed by Robert Putnam). A principal conclusion is that religion increases volunteering primarily through bonding rather than bridging social networks. However, there are many subtleties to the arguments and findings which it would be impossible to do justice to in the limited space which can be devoted here. Fortunately, the article is available on an open access basis, for anybody to read, at:

http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/1/14.full.pdf+html

Social capital (2)

Further analysis of the findings of the 2012 and 2014 National Church and Social Action Surveys, undertaken by Jubilee+ and last featured by BRIN in our post of 15 March 2015, has suggested that church-based social action initiatives are perceived to have a positive impact on church growth, in terms of people being added to local congregations, as well as being a social good. However, the extent of the impact is not uniform and varies according to factors such as the type and duration of social action and church size and location. More information is contained in the executive summary of Geoff Knott, Social Action and Church Growth, which can be found at:

http://www.jubilee-plus.org/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=153728

European Values Study

Better late than never, we should report publication of an important collection of 17 essays on the results of Wave 4 (2008) of the European Values Study (EVS, the fieldwork for which was actually conducted in Britain between August 2009 and March 2010): Value Contrasts and Consensus in Present-Day Europe: Painting Europe’s Moral Landscapes, edited by Wil Arts and Loek Halman (Leiden: Brill, 2014, ISBN 9789004254619, hardback). The volume, which is ‘attuned to both the descriptive and the theory-testing traditions of the EVS’, is arranged thematically rather than geographically, and operates mainly at the European level, so there is relatively little country-specific content. Nevertheless, the two chapters on religion contain some interesting insights:

Nienke Moor, ‘Religious Vitality and Church Attendance in Europe’ (pp. 213-30)
David Voas and Stefanie Doebler, ‘Secularization in Europe: An Analysis of Inter-Generational Religious Change’ (pp. 231-50)

Freedom of worship

Asked which of six freedoms or rights they thought most important, freedom to worship whatever god or religion people wanted was ranked fifth by 1,000 children aged 8-14 interviewed online about Magna Carta by OnePoll in May 2015, securing 16% of the vote. The top freedom was that nobody should be enslaved (45%). The information is derived from a graphic published in The Sunday Times, 14 June 2015, main section, p. 14. At the time of writing, no public domain online report of the survey has been traced.

Church of Scotland statistics

Church of Scotland congregational statistical returns to the recent General Assembly, for the year ending 31 December 2014, revealed a continuing sharp decline in the Kirk. A ten-year comparison of key performance indicators, expressed as absolute and relative figures, is tabulated below, with the full returns appended to the report of the Legal Questions Committee, on pp. 6.10-6.14 of the General Assembly ‘blue book’ at:

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/27119/2015_Vol_I_Blue_Book.pdf

Absolute figures	2004	2014	% change
Congregations	1,541	1,379	-10.5
Elders	41,621	31,146	-25.2
Communicants: all	535,834	380,163	-29.1
Communicants: admissions	9,136	4,643	-49.2
Baptisms	7,745	4,045	-47.8
Relative figures	2003	2013	% change
Communicants as % of adult population	13.7	9.0	-34.0
Admissions as % all communicants	1.7	1.4	-19.6
Baptisms as % of births	15.6	8.2	-47.5

Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland

Neil Davidson’s report on Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland in 2014-15 was published by the Scottish Government on 12 June 2015. The number of charges with a religious aggravation under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 was 569, 4% less than in 2013-14, 17% less than in 2012-13, and 37% less than in 2011-12 (when there were 897 charges). The decrease is only partly attributable to the use, during the past three years, of separate charges under Section 1 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, for this accounted for only 48 additional religious charges in 2014-15, making a total for the year of 617. The report is at:

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00479075.pdf

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has also released headline findings from a poll of Scottish public opinion about the 2012 Act as it affects offensive behaviour at football matches. The survey was conducted by YouGov in early June 2015 among an online sample of 1,044 Scottish residents. There was overwhelming (80%) support for the legislation, with 82% finding offensive sectarian singing and chanting at football matches and 78% disagreeing that they constituted an important part of football culture. Summary data appear in a set of PowerPoint slides at:

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00478775.pptx

Islamic Relief polling

On 15 June 2015, on the eve of Ramadan, Islamic Relief issued a press release publicizing a YouGov poll it had commissioned among a sample of 6,641 UK adults on 5-9 June. Relatively few data were actually cited, but two conclusions were drawn by Islamic Relief: a) a sharp decline in support for refugees, the number of people saying they should not be welcomed to Britain increasing by almost one-third compared to another YouGov survey a year before; and b) what were described as ‘hugely negative’ views of Muslims. The latter claim seemingly derived from the answers to an open question in which respondents were asked to mention three words or phrases which they associated with the term ‘Muslim’, ‘terrorism’ topping the list with a score of 12% and ‘extremist’ cited by 5%. The press release is at:

http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/news/poll-on-eve-of-ramadan-shows-hugely-negative-view-of-muslims-and-sharp-decline-in-support-for-refugees/

Intrigued to know more, BRIN asked for a copy of the detailed data tables from this poll, which Islamic Relief generously (and expeditiously) provided. These contain breaks for all questions by most key demographics, including religious affiliation but excluding voting intention. Two additional points are worth highlighting. First, a majority of the population has had personal experience of Muslims living in the UK, principally as work colleagues (32%), as fellow school pupils (either themselves or their children, 29%), or as close relatives or friends (16%). Just 39% denied ever having any close contacts with Muslims during their educational, leisure, or professional lives, peaking at 53% of over-55s, 57% of retired persons, 62% of Presbyterians, and 74% of residents in Northern Ireland. Second, there was an exceptionally high (94%) awareness that Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims, albeit 21% considered that it should not be celebrated openly in the UK, a plurality of 49% disagreeing with that proposition, with 29% neutral or undecided. An abridged version of the data tables, missing some of the breaks by demographics, was posted by YouGov on its website on 18 June at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3kri630dkh/Results-for-Islamic-Relief-Islam-in-the-UK-150618.pdf

Islamophobia

On 18 June 2015 the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist, and Post-Fascist Studies at Teesside University published the third of its annual reports on Islamophobic incidents, based on data recorded by the Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) initiative: Mark Littler and Matthew Feldman, Tell MAMA Reporting, 2014/2015: Annual Monitoring, Cumulative Extremism, and Policy Implications. During the period in question (1 March 2014-28 February 2015) there were 548 anti-Muslim incidents, a significant reduction on the 734 cases for 2013-14, when there was a pronounced spike following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of London at the hands of Islamists. Of these 548 incidents, 73% occurred online, fewer than half of which were notified to the police, and mostly involving anti-Muslim abuse or anti-Muslim literature, rather than actual threats. As might be expected, specific Islamist outrages were responsible for short-term increases in incidents, notably following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris on 7 January 2015. The report is available at:

http://www.tees.ac.uk/docs/DocRepo/Research/Tell_Mama3.pdf

Posted in church attendance, News from religious organisations, Religion and Ethnicity, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religious prejudice, Survey news | Tagged BMEs, Bright Blue, church attendance, church growth, Church of Scotland, Civic Engagement, ComRes, David Voas, Ethnic Minority British Election Survey, European Sociological Review, European Values Study, football matches, general election, Geoff Knott, Immigration, Ingrid Storm, Islamic Relief, Islamophobia, Jubilee Plus, Loek Halman, Mark Littler, Matthew Feldman, Muslims, National Church and Social Action Surveys, Neil Davidson, Nienke Moor, OnePoll, practising Christians, Ramadan, religious freedom, religious prejudice, religiously aggravated offending, Scotland, sectarianism, secularization, Social Capital, Stefanie Doebler, Sunday Times, Survation, Tearfund, Teesside University, Tell MAMA, voting, Wil Arts, YouGov | Leave a comment

A Fortnight in Religious Statistics

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Clive D. Field

Here are ten religious statistical news stories which have come to BRIN’s attention during the past fortnight.

Religious affiliation: population census (1)

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just launched a public consultation around its initial view of the content of the 2021 population census for England and Wales. Responses, which can be either from organizations or individuals, need to be submitted by 27 August 2015. They may cover the full range of consultation topics or just the one(s) of particular concern. With regard to religious affiliation, the intention of ONS is to include a question on a voluntary basis, as in 2001 and 2011. In the interests of comparability, it is reluctant to change the actual wording. The consultation document asks respondents how they currently use the census religion data and what the impact on their work would be if such data were no longer collected. It is hoped that BRIN users would wish to support, by responding to ONS, the continued inclusion of a religion question in the census. More details are available by clicking the ‘complete the survey’ link on the consultation website at:

https://consultations.ons.gov.uk/census/2021-census-topics-consultation

Religious affiliation: population census (2)

Higher education has often been assumed to have a secularizing effect, and the hypothesis is reasserted by James Lewis, ‘Education, Irreligion, and Non-Religion: Evidence from Select Anglophone Census Data’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2015, pp. 265-72. Utilizing religious affiliation data from the censuses of Australia in 2006, Canada in 2011, and England and Wales in 2011, he shows that college graduates have an above-average representation among people professing no religion and particularly among atheists, humanists, or agnostics. In England and Wales, for example, 18% of all adults were found to have a bachelor’s or higher degree, but the proportion was 24% for religious ‘nones’, rising to 40% for agnostics, 43% for humanists, and 44% for atheists (the last three categories being write-in replies). For Christians the figure was only 15%. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2015.1025556#.VXnlYOlRHX4

Religious affiliation: British Social Attitudes

As reported by Dr Ben Clements in his BRIN research note of 3 June 2015, NatCen Social Research has recently updated its religious affiliation trend data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys. Statistics are now available for every year between 1983, when BSA commenced, and 2014, except for 1988 and 1992. NatCen concludes that the Church of England’s market share has declined throughout this period and appears to have accelerated during the past decade, both relatively and absolutely. It now claims the allegiance of only 17% of British adults compared with 40% in 1983. Whereas there were 16.5 million adult Anglicans in 1983, there were just 8.6 million in 2014. Roman Catholic allegiance has been much steadier, at around one in ten of the population (or 4 million adults), while the number of non-Christians has quintupled. Those professing no religion have risen from one-third to one-half as a proportion, and, in figures, from 12.8 million in 1983 to 24.7 million in 2014. NatCen’s press release is at:

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2015/may/british-social-attitudes-church-of-england-decline-has-accelerated-in-past-decade/

Church growth

Towards a Theology of Church Growth, edited by David Goodhew (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, ISBN 9781472414007, £19.99, paperback) comprises 12 chapters together with a foreword (by the Archbishop of Canterbury) and a conclusion (by the editor). Although numerical growth of the Church (especially of local congregations) is a constant presence in the book, and continues to be regarded as important, the volume is less concerned with statistics (which are remarkably thin on the ground) than with exploring a theology of church growth from the perspectives of the Bible, Christian doctrine, and church history. The historical section contains five essays, ranging from the early Church to Britain from 1750 to 1970, the author of the last (Dominic Erdozain) conceding the reality of church decline while simultaneously proposing ‘a more optimistic account of the Christian ecology of modern Britain’. Further information can be found at:

https://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&title_id=19791&edition_id=1209349895&calcTitle=1

Religion and physician-assisted suicide

Thanks are due to Dr Ben Clements for drawing BRIN’s attention to some new research into religion and physician-assisted suicide: Andriy Danyliv and Ciaran O’Neill, ‘Attitudes towards Legalising Physician Provided Euthanasia in Britain: The Role of Religion over Time’, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 128, March 2015, pp. 52-6. Utilizing evidence from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Surveys for six data-points between 1983 and 2012, the authors demonstrate statistically significant increased support for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide (for patients suffering a painful and incurable disease) running parallel with growth in indicators of secularization. Multivariate analysis showed that religious affiliation and, more especially, frequency of attendance at religious services were the principal predictors of attitudes to physician-assisted suicide, with support for legalization being greatest among those with least religious commitment. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614008387

Attitudes to religious groups

A plurality of Britons (40%) has a negative impression of Muslims, almost double the number regarding them positively (22%), with 37% neutral. This is according to a YouGov/Eurotrack seven-nation survey conducted between 20 and 27 May 2015, for which 1,667 Britons were interviewed online. The number viewing Muslims negatively was higher in Britain than in Germany, Norway, and Sweden, the same as in France, but lower than in Denmark and Finland (45%).

Jews, by contrast, were regarded much more favourably, with 41% in Britain having a positive impression (a figure bettered only in Sweden), 50% being neutral and just 7% negative (the smallest number of any of the nations, Sweden excepted). In fact, Christians in Britain had a greater negative rating (11%) than Jews, albeit their positive score was also higher (45%), with 42% neutral to Christians. Danes (47%) held the most positive attitudes to Christians and Norwegians (38%) the least.

A summary of the British data is tabulated below. Results for all seven nations, also covering opinions of five other groups (gypsies, gay people, black people, young people, and the elderly) can be found at:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/g96awulgzv/Eurotrack_Minorities_W.pdf

Attitudes to … (% down)	Muslims	Jews	Christians
Very positive	6	15	17
Fairly positive	16	26	28
Positive	22	41	45
Neither positive nor negative	37	50	42
Fairly negative	24	6	9
Very negative	16	1	2
Negative	40	7	11
Don’t know	2	2	2

Religious diversity

Somewhat contrary to authorial expectations, practising (churchgoing) Christians are more interested in and more tolerant of other religious groups than nominal Christians or the religiously unaffiliated, according to new analysis of data from the ‘Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity’ project at Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit: Leslie Francis, Alice Pyke, and Gemma Penny, ‘Christian Affiliation, Christian Practice, and Attitudes to Religious Diversity: A Quantitative Analysis among 13- to 15-Year-Old Female Students in the UK’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2015, pp. 249-63. The authors interpret their findings to mean that Church teaching and Christian practice are nurturing the development of the UK as a multi-cultural and multi-faith society. Access options to the article are outlined at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2015.1026116#.VXntlulRHX4

Evangelicals and poverty

Good News for the Poor? is the latest report from the Evangelical Alliance’s 21st Century Evangelicals series, which commenced in 2011. It is based upon replies by 1,607 self-identifying evangelical Christians to an online survey in November 2014. They were either members of the Alliance’s self-selecting research panel or recruited via open invitation on the Alliance’s website or social media networks; thus, they may not be representative of all evangelicals in the UK. The overwhelming majority of respondents (93%) was found to be in a financially comfortable position themselves (being either wealthy, having no financial worries, or getting by) and, relative to the general public, they tended to have higher than average expectations about ownership of material possessions (except when it came to television). Through their attitudes and actions (charitable giving and volunteering) they mostly recognized the importance of tackling poverty issues and expressed concern about the fall-out from Government welfare reforms. Nevertheless, 71% agreed that spiritual poverty is a bigger problem than material poverty, with 77% saying that, compared with some overseas countries, the UK is spiritually destitute and 66% that Churches in the UK are not very good at evangelizing and discipling the poorest sections of society. The report can be downloaded from:

http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/snapshot/upload/Good-news-for-the-poor-report-pdf.pdf

Sikhs and the general election

In our post of 25 May 2015, we reported on the results of the Survation/British Future poll of the voting of ethnic minorities at the 2015 general election, including breaks by religious groups. The reliability of this survey has subsequently been questioned in various quarters, not least by the Sikh Federation (UK) which has argued that Sikhs were seriously underrepresented in the sample and that the figures given by Survation for Sikh voting (49% Conservative, 41% Labour) were misleading. In an attempt to convey the ‘correct’ picture, the Federation has published the findings of its own post-election survey of the voting of 1,000 Sikh electors in 190 constituencies. This revealed that 50% voted Labour, 36% Conservative (up from 15% in 2010), and 15% for other parties. The Federation’s two press releases on the subject can be found at:

http://dailysikhupdates.com/british-future-survey-challenged-on-how-sikhs-voted-in-uk-elections/

British National Bibliography religion and theology data

Thanks are due to Dr Peter Webster for alerting BRIN to the recent release, by The British Library, of a subset of metadata from the British National Bibliography (BNB) for religion and theology (Dewey Decimal Classification 200-299). The dataset, covering 119,000 monographs and 4,200 serials published in Britain from 1950 to the present, is available for download and reuse on a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication basis. It will permit analysis of trends in religious publishing since the Second World War and can be downloaded from:

http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html

Posted in Historical studies, Official data, Religion and Politics, Religion and Social Capital, Religious Census, Survey news | Tagged Alice Pyke, Andriy Danyliv, Anti-Semitism, British Library, British National Bibliography, British Social Attitudes Survey, census of population, Christianophobia, Christians, church growth, Ciaran O'Neill, David Goodhew, Eurotrack, euthanasia, Evangelical Alliance, evangelicals, Gemma Penny, general election, higher education, Irreligion, Islamophobia, James Lewis, Jews, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Leslie Francis, Muslims, NatCen Social Research, Office for National Statistics, physician-assisted suicide, poverty, Religious Affiliation, Religious diversity, Sikh Federation UK, Sikhs, Social Science and Medicine, theology, voting, YouGov | Leave a comment

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