How Christian is Britain?
Since the religion question was added to the census in 2001 this has become a recurring debate on blogs - I was reminded of it when I saw Cramner’s blog talking about Iain Dale’s little survey of his readership where Cramner wrote “The 45% who profess belief in a deity is massively beneath the national average. In the 2001 census, just over 70% professed the Christian faith”.
Iain’s poll was just of a self-selected group of his readers, so isn’t of interest to anyone other than Iain anyway, but on the wider question of how Christian Britain is these days the two questions aren’t comparable. One is belief in a god, the other what religion people identify with. There are obviously some differences anyway, one can believe in a god or gods and be a member of a religion other than Christianity, but leaving that aside a the polling evidence normally suggests that there is probably a substantial chunk of people who said on the census form that they were Christian, but who don’t actually believe in a god.
A MORI poll for the Telegraph in December 1999 found 71% believed in a God, an ORB poll in April 2000 found 62% of people believed in God, MORI poll for the BBC’s Heavan and Earth show in 2003 found 60% believed in a God, a YouGov poll for the Telegraph in Dec 2004 found 44% believed in God, a poll by Populus for the Sun in June 2005 found 70% believed in “God or some form of higher power”, Communicate Research poll for Premier Christian Radio and the Evangelical Alliance in Jan 06 found 45% of people believed in “God or a higher spiritual force”.
A couple come close, but generally speaking polls show a smaller percentage of people believe in God than the 72% who described themselves as Christian on census forms (and that’s ignoring the 5% or so of people who are adherents of other religions). In some cases there is a very large discrepancy. The difference between the highest and lowest figures is probably largely down to methodology - the Populus poll lumped in people who believed in some vague higher power, the YouGov and Communicate Research polls that showed the lowest levels of belief in God were both carried out online, suggesting that however secular Britain might seem, there is still societal pressure to say one believes in god when talking to a human interviewer (in the USA Harris interactive tested this in parallel online and telephone polls and found an 8% difference in the number of people who were prepared to admit they didn’t know if they believed in God or not when they didn’t have to say it to another human being).
So, we can’t tell for sure how big the group is, but we can be fairly confident that at least some of that 72% of Christians don’t actually believe in God. The reasons is presumably people who don’t have particularly strong feeling about religion at all still consider themselves culturally Christian. The concept of a Jewish atheist is more established, Jews who don’t believe in a god at all but are culturally Jewish, have bar mitzvahs and so on. One can only assume that the census is picking up similar in terms of Christianity, people who don’t believe or don’t give a fig about a god, but who are clearly culturally Christian, celebrate Christmas (even Richard Dawkins reluctantly celebrates Christmas, though suspect he didn’t put Christian on his census form), give eggs at Easter, may well get married or buried in a church and so on.
YouGov did a poll for John Humphreys earlier this year that gave a more detailed and nuanced list of options for people to chose from, rather than a straight yes or no: only 22% of people said they believed in a personal God who hears prayers, another 6% believe in a personal God who created the world but doesn’t intervene in it. 26% of people do believe in ’something’, some sort of higher power but aren’t quite sure what. Beyond that people are largely irreligious - only 16% of people describe themselves as atheists, but between that 28% of people who believe in a personal god, 26% of people who believe in ’something’ and 16% of athiests there is a block of 30% of people who are agnostic, or who would like to believe but can’t, or most often aren’t really sure what they believe and don’t really think about it.
Take away the agnostics and atheists and I suspect you have your 70% of Christians: made up as they are of around a third or so people who definitely believe in a personal Christian God who hears their prayers, a third of so who believe in something but aren’t quite sure of the details and a third or so who really don’t know, but who are culturally Christian and, when push comes to shove, identify themselves as Christian.
Filed under: Religion
The problem with these polls is that they often fail to distinguish between those who as you put it are ‘culturally Christian’ or Christian in default mode, those who go to Midnight Mass at Christmas, and those who are actually religious, those who turn up every week.
Britain remains a Christian nation for the most part, although, relatively, few Britons are actually practising (i.e. those who attend church no less than once per week).
As the saying goes - there are no atheists in a foxhole. We are more than culturally Christian - it might not be relevant in large cities swamped by immigrants with conflicting social and religious mores - but the Church is strong at the village level which is the real Britain.
There is a difference between calling onself a Christian and believing in God - or any god or gods for that matter.
As well as being a belief system, Christianity is a way of life that involves certain definite spiritual and moral values. It is certainly possible to believe in the spiritual and moral life that Christ proclaimed to the world, without having to believe in all the religious and supernatural trappings that went with it.
You can perfectly well believe in his message of peace and love and live your life according to it, without having to accept god heaven and hell and miracles and angels and all the other superstitious nonsense that have traditionally accompanied it.
In other words you can be a Christian and an atheist at the same time. Surveys such as these seldom ask about spiritual values versus religious faith, and the two are nearly always equated with each other. I would suggest they need to distinguish between leading a Christian way of life and actual belief in a supernatural being.
Ralph - these questions don’t, but the polls normally do. If you follow the links quite a few had questions on church attendance (and on top of that there is also Dr Peter Brierley’s exhaustive work on tracking church attendences at Christian Research)…it does open a whole other kettle of fish though so I haven’t mentioned it above!
One problem the polls and the census can not catch in the complexity of people’s personal beliefs.
At the time of the census I spoke to lots of people about their beliefs and how they would respond, every individual had their own unique response.
Personally, I objected to the idea of the government asking (I’m an atheist, but why does the government need to know that) and wrote Jedi on my form, incidentally more did that than wrote Jewish. Another atheist friend said she thought it was important because she thinks that religion is over-rated by government so she’d write atheist.
Someone else said he doesn’t care one way about religion, doesn’t believe in anything (so Agnostic would be correct) but wrote Christian because that’s how he was raised to be . . . Anthony’s opening point. Another said she wrote Christian, would like to believe in God but doesn’t actually. Another wrote Christian because he is one and does believe in God. So on and so forth, as many different types of responses as there were people.
Life is far more complex than ticking boxes at the best of times, when it comes to religion it is certainly so. Definitely far more complex than simplistically saying “this is a Christian nation”.
Incidentally, if one were to be simplistic I’d say that I think Britain is an agnostic nation. I think most people don’t particularly care deeply either way and don’t think too deep about it. I also suspect that many people are so agnostic, that they don’t even know what the word agnostic means, so couldn’t describe themselves as that.
As I understand it under 2 million go to church regularly on Sundays and over 7 million identified themselves atheists in the 2001 census. I would view active churchgoing as being a good sign of being religious so 1 in 30 are Christian and about 4 times more are atheist (I’m not sure how to prove active atheism other than identification).
Interestingly the massive fall in churchgoing has been lessened markedly due to the amount of Poles in the country; that could cause some fun poll
A) Should we have less immigration?
b) Should we become a more Christian country?
c) What is your view of religious Polish immigration?
d) Now explain your yes / no views…
Jack
An with regard to Phillip Thompson; I suspect you are right. I think agnosticism is far more deadly to religion than atheism. Why? Atheists care about religion and agnostics don’t…
Jack
On a facetious note . . . perhaps we should have a poll of Poles ? (Sorry - couldn’t resist that one !)
Another problem with the census, which doesn’t seem to get picked up on, is that generally only one person fills it in for the whole household. For matters such as people’s ages and the number of toilets and other questions of obvious fact this is not really a problem, but for matters of opinion such as religious belief it almost certainly is.
Although there is probably a close correlation between parental beliefs and those of their childern, it is not a 100% match. It is also quite possible that any variation in belief could be a source of some friction in a household so that a child is unlikely to push too hard for any variations in their belief to appear on the form.
If younger people are less religious than their parents the result of this would be an overestimate of the real level of belief in the country (and, of course, visa versa) - an not unlikley possibility, especially in Christian communities.
It should also be remembered that the question was - uniquely - a voluntary question. Unlike other census questions, the respondent did not have to answer. As it is possible that believers be mroe likley to want actively to profess their belief than non-believers, again a degree of overestimate is possible.
Next - what proportion of this 70% were, Jedi, I wonder? Or others who put down unlikley belief systems just so as to put two fingers up to government?
And finally… the 2001 census was not exactly the most outstanding example of the art, as several authorities who suddenly found they had “lost” thousends of citizens can presumably attest.
In short, you should take the findings of government opinion polls with just as much of a pinch of salt as everyone else’s.
Most people in this country are neither obsessive Christians nor atheists. They’re someone in between. The problem is if you ask people a binary question they have to choose one or the other. In the census, most people chose to identify themselves as Christians rather than no religion.
Church of England statistics:
Average weekly attendance - 1,169,000
Average monthly attendance - 1,694,000
So 2% of the population attend Church of England weekly and 3% attend monthly.
NB. Monthly includes weekly so 2% attend weekly and another 1% attend monhly but not weekly.
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr0707.html
An effect of Polish immigration has been hitherto quiet Catholic churches in big cities suddenly having very large attendances-as a Catholic myself (albeit very lapsed),I am obviously happy about this!
I was in a panel for a poll that YouGov don’t appear to have published back in April, made me really happy to do it at the time, made a distinction between background and actual belief—I mimiced it on my journal[1] and, for fairly obvious reasons, got a more pronounced result, but a lot of people if asked the census question will say “Christian” but that’s a background question, not a belief.
For awhile at the old work I used to ask clients their religion, virtually always got CofE. Changed the question to ‘are you practicing’ and the numbers fell of drastically.
I believe we’re an agnostic country, with the number of atheists growing—I’d like the next census toa ctually ask the question sensibly, but I’m not holding out much hope.
[1]http://matgb.livejournal.com/191420.html
(link repeated in case the spam trapping strips it out)
I agree with Jamie’s comment that it is possible to practise the way of life that Christ professed, while eschewing the trappings that the different Christian churches include. Conversely, it is possible to attend a Christian church every Sunday and Holy day, express belief in God, and yet live a life that excludes the “be good to one another” tenet of Christ’s teaching! Because of the cans of worms opening up here, the purpose of polling should be less to do with defining our beliefs and way of life and more to do with examining the relevance of the Church as part of our social system. I would like to see more research on the effectiveness of the “churches” (including mosques, synagogues and temples) in their social function.
Jamie wrote: “It is certainly possible to believe in the spiritual and moral life that Christ proclaimed to the world, without having to believe in all the religious and supernatural trappings that went with it.”
I would agree to an extent Jamie, and think my ethical framework is probably pretty similar to the average C of E believer.
However I would never say that I am following the proclamations of Christ or Christianity. I live the way I do because I believe it to be right, not because its written in an old book. (and similarly if I was born in India I could have similar morals to Hindus without following the teachings of Hinduism … etc).
As for William Lack. I think you need to get out and experience the real world more. I am an atheist and I have served in the armed forces. I also live in a largish rural village (2000 pop), where there are less than 20 people (about 18 of them pensioners) in church on a Sunday morning - I know because my elderly mother is one of them!
Unfortunately, those two thirds believing in something other than the christian God are breaking one of the 10 commandments on having other Gods before me and will go straight to hell for their sin.
6 years ago Muslims flew into the twin towers. Three years ago Christians invaded Iraq on the say so of Bush who was told by God to. Good grief.
There’s some coffee, can you smell it?
It might be clearer if questions were asked about the strength of belief, etc. Should we count the non-practising as Christians? Or semi-practising? Probably one might still count as Christian if you don’t go to church (possibly not from the church’s point of view)
Interesting the difference when the interviewee doesn’t have to talk to a human. Obviously coming out as an atheist is still a struggle for some.
The comment that rural villages are the ‘real England’ is patently untrue. Most of us live in towns and cities.
And rural churchgoing is in very steep decline - if anything, its the cities with their African and Polish migrants which have the higher attendance.
Long may we remain a pluristic nation supportive of many varying beliefs as we have always been.
“Obviously coming out as an atheist is still a struggle for some.”
Aye, a brief study of history tells one why. It is a much maligned term that primarily donated the profane other, the immoral, the unclean, the one that doesn’t follow the one true way to believe. It still carries the feeling of this along with some of the newer negative symbolism such as this idea of it representing fundamentalism and other militant behaviour. Regardless of how the religionists wish to paint the current atheist, it remains little more than not holding to a belief in god. Hence even if one doesn’t identity with the label as others construct it, then anyone that doesn’t trust in a god to tell them what to do (have a believe in) is an atheist. An atheist is someone who walks through life without the guidance of a god. By all means, claim to be an agnostic because it is deemed to be more socially acceptable if it floats your boat, but please, in the mean time, be aware that it is once again someone else deciding your belief for you. I am an atheist because I am free to choose my own beliefs for better or worse.
One can be both agnostic and atheist as they cover different knowledge claims. There are many things in life about which I am unsure but I find it easier to decide with the side of most evidence until such a time something changes to question that decision.
I’m not sure how one comes out as an atheist - that’s why I used the census data of 7 million; atheists hardly need to hold meetings about the non-existence of something. Atheist groups (Secular Society etc.) are, I suspect solely for the extreme atheists. (And, as I said I think it’s the agnostics or the quiet atheists(’I'm an atheist but care so little about religion I see no reason to make a fuss’ group) who are the key issue for religious people; indifference kills religion.
For Australia see http://www.adherents.com/loc/loc_australia.html
where the 2nd largest group is atheist / agnostic etc…
Jack: From that source you link to, 1.749 million say “no religion” but only 7k say “atheist”.
Again, most people don’t believe, don’t care enough to even use the write word to say that they don’t believe. Even out of the sub-sample of “No Religion”, atheists are less than 5% - statistically insignificant. Not because there are only 7k atheist Aussies, but because they just write No Religion and leave it at that.
right* word sorry
Recently there has been discussion about the damage caused by British materialistic society. (In the U.S. it is called the American dream.)
The truth is that really only two things can be thought of to be greater than man’s selfishness. Only two things of real self-sacrafice (if you take love of his family as an evolutionary imperative.)
They are God and Nation.
Much maligned in the modern West as both have also been used to create devastating war.
Some say true happiness is simple spiritual love. Some say they would be happy with a million pounds.
The truth is probably in-between.
But today’s society focuses only on one.
And long destroyed any idea of a sovereign English identity as racist.
Hands up all the ‘White British’….
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