Religion in the UK

[andrewducker]

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Comments

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Hmm; I think asking about specifically Sundays skews the question. I had about a year where I went to church twice a week nearly every week, but only for weekday masses.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Yet in the last census (2001) only 15% of people claimed to belong to no religion. A massive 72% said they were Christian. That's quite a discrepancy.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is probably in the question, the census question is more general than "do you belong to". For instance I suspect many people think of themselves as Anglican without "belonging to Anglicanism".

The established church is in decline (in terms of attendance at least), I wonder what the figures are for the other Christian denominations? My anecdotal evidence is that evangelical churches are constantly expanding (and have been for the last 10 years) I know firsthand of many churches that have become to full, had to get bigger buildings, planted new churches, etc.

[matgb]

Easily answered. And I've discussed this with MPs who agree and are hoping to change it, for the next if not this.

Ask a lot of people what religion they are, unless they have a strong anti feeling, they'll say what they were brought up. Ask them if they believe, different story completely.

The census question was, deliberately, worded to inflate the %age religious observance, this stat was then used to justify the expansion of faith schools.

I used to have a folder full of bookmarks to cite for this point, it got lost, but there's a lot of research on religious identiy rather than religious belief, even Dawkins says he's a cultural Christian. Saw it myself in an old job, had to completely redesign a part of an application form as I needed actual churchgoers, not just people brought up CofE.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

I'm teaching a course called Religion in America this semester, and this is one of the things I've brought up with the class: How do you define religious adherence? Is someone who claims to be Christian but doesn't go to church still a Christian? Similarly, if someone regularly celebrates a major Christian holiday (e.g., buys a tree and observes December 25th), should that person be counted in the Christian column? And, in both cases, if not, why not?

I consider self-definition the most important criterion for inclusion (which is why I talk about Mormons in my What is Christianity? class even though a lot of the Christians taking the class are adamant that they don't count), but I realize this isn't always useful for accurate demographics.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

In the 2001 census when asked the question "What is your religion?" 72% (37.4 million) answered Christianity, 15% (7.7 million) answered 'no religion', and 7.7% (4 million) did not answer the question.

The huge difference in figures between this census organisation and the national census (for the same year) has to be explained somehow. It seems to me that we can't say that the national census is a less reliable source of information, as it's the biggest and most accurate source of data on this question (it being a legal requirement that everyone fills it in). So why the difference?

The difference seems to be in the question that is being asked (along probably with other factors in the questionaire that might skew the results) - the question asked in the census is a different one, what is your religion and to which religion do you belong. Many many people will think of themselves as Anglican but do not "belong to" Anglicanism (for example). That is to say, they would self identify as Christian but do not see themselves as being part of the established church proper.

This also explains the massive difference in the figures given for 'no religion' in the first graph and the national census. Here it's 41% with "no religion" in 2001, but only 15% in the census (with a maximum of 21% if everyone who didn't answer the question would have said no religion, which is unlikely), the reason is that the question on this poll is not asking whether people are religious, but whether they belong to a particular religion. The national census is asking that sort of question which is why the figure is much lower.

I've seen people (not saying Andy is) roll out the NCfSR statistics to try to show that most people are not religious (implication: most people want what the National Secular Society or British Humanists want), but this is incredibly misleading, as "No religion" on the NCfSR poll is not equal to atheist. The best source of information on this is the national census where we find about 15% have "no religion" (and in that group many will be agnostics, not atheists).

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Excellent points!

Part of the way the post-Enlightenment world wrangles with religion means that there's a huge space left for multiplicities of thought and identification. Just speaking for myself, I'd balk at calling myself a Christian outside of my department, where I'll pony up to it as a way of identifying where I come from; I'll gladly say I'm a Methodist even though I'm no longer an active member of the denomination; and I'm fervently variable in my understanding of the Divine, with not enough uncertainty to be full-on agnostic but not enough certainty to qualify for much of anything else. But they don't put a box for that on the census.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

:)

Yes :)

Have you come across the Faraday institute? It's an academic institution in Cambridge that looks at science and religion. I go along to some of their seminars, and listen to others online. They had a great talk a while ago by a sociologist asking these sorts of questions (but to scientists) and she talked a lot about how you get very very different answers depending on the questions that get asked. The poll quoted in this post is a classic example of that.

There's clearly a decrease in interest in the established church (and probably 'organised religion') in the UK (often meaning people have religious beliefs but don't belong to a religious organisation), and an increase (although I expect it's quite minor) in classic atheism, but I don't think there's a big change in terms of the theist / agnostic / atheist categories.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

As an apatheistic agnostic would I count as an agnostic or an atheist?

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Not just 'to which religion do you belong', but actually 'Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion? If yes: Which?' - I wonder if explicitly including the negative possibility in the question might have as much to do with the discrepancy as the phrasing you're talking about.

It looks to me like the 15% 'no religion' is at least as misleading as 41% here; it's interesting to look at polls which explicitly ask people whether they believe in God. This survey for the Sun found 70% professing a belief in god; another for Catholic weekly The Tablet found 36% of Britons defining themselves as agnostic or atheist, with 24% saying they 'have no religion'... meanwhile secularism.org.uk cites 'Social Trends' for a claim that only 38% of Britons believe in God! Vexen quotes different surveys reporting figures of 22%, 35%, 45% and 60%! I'm not at all sure what to make of such massive discrepancies, frankly.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I spent at least a year going to church once (and often twice) on Sundays when I was officially no longer a Christian (as opposed to the few years before where I wasn't a Christian but didn't really announce it to the world). I'm sure I'm not the only one so I wonder how much this would skew results.

I do find it interesting how Catholicism has remained fairly stable with Anglican plummeting.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many of the people in the (belonging to) "no religion" category are actually atheists (as in - [edit] reject the existence of the supernatural)? I suspect not that many.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

At the last census, around 30% identified as agnostic or atheist. So I think you'd be wrong, there.

Remember that CofE used to be the default setting; but bracketed a lot of non-observant/non-believing people whose parents were Anglicans and who therefore felt a residual, hereditary affinity. What's probably happening in the past few years is that the non-observant are switching their default option from "CofE" to "none".

[robhu.livejournal.com]

No, in the last census 15% identified as "no religion" (of which many will be agnostic or atheist, but it probably also includes people who would say they're not religious but who do have supernatural beliefs).

I'm sure you're right that some people are switching from "CofE" to none, but what is happening is not as simple as identified in this census (see my reply up here).

I suspect that when the next census happens in 2011 we'll find more people answering "no religion", but I doubt the swing will be enormous, and I suspect the overwhelming majority of people will still have supernatural beliefs.

[naath.livejournal.com]

No religion includes people who ticked 'None' at the religion question plus those who wrote in Jedi Knight, Agnostic, Atheist and Heathen and those who ticked 'Other' but did not write in any religion.
(http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=954 they don't give a break down)

So, yes, I suspect that at least some of that 15% have some belief in the divine whilst not attaching themselves to any specific religious group. I think it would be interesting if the next census they released the information about how many people actually put "atheist" and how many put something that amounts to "I believe in stuff but not in a group way".

The church attendance figures suggest that of the 72% who say that they are some sort of Christian many do not attach themselves to a church. Whether these people are devout Christians who just feel that the available churches are inadequate or people who were raised Christian and still hold on to the cultural identity without any specific Christian beliefs (or indeed beliefs at all) or anywhere in between... is sort of hard to tell.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Whether these people are devout Christians who just feel that the available churches are inadequate or people who were raised Christian and still hold on to the cultural identity without any specific Christian beliefs (or indeed beliefs at all) or anywhere in between... is sort of hard to tell.
Yes I agree, it's very hard to tell. I suspect quite a lot of those who have some sort of cultural identity as Christian but don't go to church, pray to Yahweh, read the bible, etc.. probably DO have supernatural beliefs, although not very obviously Christian ones (or at least not ones a church theologian would identify as validly Christian!)

The implication that is often given by atheists posting this poll (not saying Andy is doing this) is that actually there aren't that many people who are 'religious', so why are our government supporting religious ideas? Extending that to the cultural Christian thing - if someone is a cultural Christian (excluding the Dawkins sense (of saying you're a cultural Christian but being on a mission to wipe out Christian belief) here which I think is extreme and not common) they probably do broadly support Christian ideas being supported by their government, even if they are not members of their local church.

[andrewducker]

I certainly don't support using this kind of graph (even if it was 100% accurate) to form public policy.

I don't believe that government should be supporting any one religion - but it should be taking into account the opinion of the population on actual policies. So if people support proposition X then it shouldn't matter how many do so because they are Christian and it matches their values, and how many of them support it because it matches their non-Christian values, just that they support it.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I agree (with the last sentence at least), but if you find out that say 95% of your population are Muslim and attend their local Mosque every day it's quite likely that they'll support the sorts of policies that Imams support (for example). Not exactly, but it's a handy first approximation.

As it happens I don't have a big problem with BHA / NSS people saying "Look - hardly anyone in the country is religious (according to graphs like this) so our government shouldn't support religious stuff", that makes sense to me. The issue is that they have misunderstood the data.

[naath.livejournal.com]

On the point of government doing Christian things I think that's hard because on the one side
*a lot of people are culturally Christian (regardless of their theology) and would like Christian Ideas to be Part Of Society.

But on the other side
*a lot of these people have rejected (by not attending) the structures of Organised Religion which are available. I don't think ++Rowan or the Pope can speak for all the unattached-to-a-church Christians; so when we say "lets put Christian Ideas into our Social Wossname" whose Christian Ideas do we take? Possibly just very broad waffly ones :-)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many people have rejected organised religion, and how many have just not really tried it or thought about trying it?

My anecdotal experience of people who are 'Christian' but don't go to church is mostly not that they've gone and thought about it and decided to be Christian in some sense outside of the church, it's more that they just sort of stopped going / things got in the way in their life (being too busy etc)...

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think ++Rowan or the Pope can speak for all the unattached-to-a-church Christians; so when we say "lets put Christian Ideas into our Social Wossname" whose Christian Ideas do we take? Possibly just very broad waffly ones :-)
You mean you don't think ++Rowan's ideas ARE the broadly waffly ones? ;-)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, I was raised as a Catholic; so I have first hand experience of people with Christian views who often Disagree With ++Rowan... although he is often a big sack of waffle, yes.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

It's certainly true that some 'no religion' people are actually theists - but it's also clearly true that many people who are agnostics or outright atheists write 'Church of England' for whatever reason!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wow, I wish US polls of religion looked similar.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

*wonders what happened between 1990 and 1995 to get the 5 point jump in annual/weekly/monthly attendance*

I'd be curious to see if there was a correlation between attendance and the economy / unemployment.