Some interesting stats over on BRIN on the religious dimension to the London Mayoral Elections.
These include perceptions on Boris Johnson banning Transport for London running the “Not gay! Ex Gay, Post-gay and proud. Get over it.” ads:
51% of Londoners thought that Johnson had been right to ban the advert, rising to 58% of his own supporters, 12% more than among the backers of Labour’s Mayoral candidate (Ken Livingstone), who one might have expected to have taken an even tougher pro-equality stance.
Women were more likely to endorse Johnson’s actions in the affair than men, the 18-24s more than older age cohorts, non-manual workers than manuals, and whites than non-whites. 26% opposed Johnson’s intervention, with 24% undecided.
The following video does contain some swearing, a little blasphemy, and some gruesomeness; however, with the popularity of video games in this age, I thought this a fascinating look at the portrayal of religion within the gaming world:
Demos have released a new study entitled: Faithful Citizens, which you can download here in PDF format.
This is a whopping beast of a report at over 100 pages, but the key findings appear to be:
People of faith are likely to be a vital base of support for any future election-winning progressive coalition. Our research suggests that religious citizens in the UK are more likely to be civically engaged and politically active than their non-religious counterparts.
They are also more likely to hold progressive political values on a number of important political and economic questions at the heart of twenty-first-century policy. Despite the trend of decreasing religiosity in the UK, religion remains important to a broad range of active and engaged citizens – and so it must to politicians.
Usually, after scanning the document, I would attempt to extract the pertinent points for our consumption, but not this time.
Michael Merrick – Outside In – has provided us with a comprehensive critical analysis of this report, and so I’m going to hand over to him at this point:
Very occasionally one comes across people who are so absorbed into their own worldview that they have long proven incapable of acknowledging much that would challenge it. They are usually found arguing that black is white, the better to uphold the truth not of reality but of their own worldview. Whenever a charge crops up that does not fit into this worldview, they can refute it by simply ignoring the context and substance of the original charge. Take the BBC, for example. People have long called it a lefty organisation. What they have nearly always meant by this, a la Andrew Marr, is that the BBC is an overwhelmingly liberal organisation, something which (much to the chagrin of some of us) has become synonymous with the term lefty. As such, when the BBC comes up with anything even mildly supportive of the government position on the budget deficit, for example, characters like James Macintyre will pop their heads up, roll their eyes and with raised eyebrows mutter knowingly (as if they have penetrated the heart of a mass fraud): ‘…and they say the BBC is left-wing, do they?’ Cue mass retweets and digital-rage as legions of Twitter fans queue up to completely miss the point. Which is that the BBC, quite simply, is drenched in a metropolitan liberalism that unthinkingly sneers at and censors mainstream small c conservative positions as if they are extreme. That is the substance of the charge; that is the thorn in the flesh of those who despair of BBC ‘bias’; that is where the debate must be held if we are to make anything like a useful contribution on the issue.
Ed West today has an article in the Telegraph in which he notes the current plight of Iraqi Christians and suggests Britain should take action in this regard, even to the point of offering sanctuary here in the UK.
I used to posit the same, but now my views have shifted.
Rather than remove this ancient Christian presence from the region, they should be given their own territory and homeland.
Sound impossible? It has been achieved in the past; just think Israel.
How would this be achieved; where would this territory be located? No idea, but I still think it’s a solution worth floating even though it’s not realistic.
Short of assimilating Christian minority groups from Islamic lands into Western nations, what is to be done?
From a purely pragmatic perspective, imagine the strategic benefits of a small Christian nation allied to the West and located in the Middle East!
I like the sound of it, even if it is only the land of my imaginings…..
There’s been a slew of rather disheartening stats released relating to Easter.
The Daily Star has picked up on a poll conducted by the hotel chain Travelodge:
A QUARTER of children reckon Easter is about celebrating the Easter Bunny’s birthday.
53% do not know what Easter is, instead seeing it as just a chance to scoff chocolate.
The BBC note that ++Williams is expected to warn against downgrading religious education in schools in his Easter message. Frankly, if the above stats are to be accepted, it would seem that religious education in schools is already failing.
Spending time with family and friends is the most important part of Easter for 43% of Britons, followed by having a break from work (18%) and only thirdly the festival’s religious meaning (17%), with the exchanging of Easter eggs trailing at 2%.
79% of respondents had no plans to go to church over the Easter period, 16% thought they might (three-quarters of them on Easter Sunday), with 5% uncertain. It is likely that the good intentions of many of the 16% may well not translate into reality.
A new study looking at religious journalism has been produced by the Knight Program in Media and Religion at USC and the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Obvioulsy, as this is US based we can’t extrapolate for the UK, but I’ll highlight some interesting findings from the report summary:
One-quarter of the public is very interested in religion coverage.
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One-sixth of reporters say religion coverage is central to their job and one-fifth say it comes up frequently in their work.
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The impact of religion is a central feature in the coverage of religion, and at root, the American public and reporters have different perspectives on the topic. The public is sharply polarized on this issue: one-half (52.6%) says religion is on balance a force for good in the world, and about two-fifths (43.6%) say that religion is on balance a source of conflict in the world.
Reporters are also fairly evenly divided between those who see religion more as a source of good (24.6%) or a source of conflict (19.3%). But more than one-half (56.1%) of reporters have a mixed view of the impact of religion, compared to less than one-twentieth of the public who say that religion is a mix of good and conflict (3.8%). In sum, the public has a starker perspective on the impact of religion, and reporters a more nuanced perspective.
[.....]
The public and reporters also have different perceptions about what makes for good religion coverage. More than two-thirds (69.7%) of the public says that they prefer coverage that emphasizes religious experiences, spirituality, practices, and beliefs. In contrast, more than three-fifths (62.9%) of reporters say that the audiences they serve prefer religion coverage that emphasizes religious institutions, activities, events, and personalities.
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The public and reporters also have different views on the quality of religion coverage. For example, two-thirds (66.5%) of the public agrees that there is too much sensationalism in religion coverage—a view held by less than one-third of reporters (29.8%). The differences are less stark on other questions: one-quarter (27.2%) of the public says that religion coverage is “accurate and fair” compared to two-fifths of reporters (40.0%), and almost two-fifths (37.1%) of the public agrees that the “news media is hostile to religion and religious people,” while just one-quarter (24.6%) of reporters agree.
[....]
However, there are points of agreement between the public and reporters. A majority of both groups agree that “the news media does a poor job of explaining religion in society (57.1% and 51.8%, respectively). Similarly, less than one-third (30.3%) of the public agrees that “overall, media covers religion well,” a view held by about as many reporters (27.7%). And very few consumers (14.3%) or reporters (6.7%) agree that “there is far too much coverage of religion by the news media.”
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Interestingly, the public rates online news websites/blogs less favorably than reporters (31.4% to 42.0% “good” ratings), with reporters giving the highest quality ratings to online media—with the exception of their own organizations (58.3% “good” quality rating).
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One-half (50.2%) of all reporters say a major challenge to covering religion is a lack of knowledge of religion. Two-fifths say that a lack of time for reporting religion stories and inadequate space for such stories are major challenges (40.9% and 40.2%, respectively). About one-third (35.2%) say that a lack of interest in religion is a major challenge to coverage, and about as many reporters (31.3%) say that a major challenge is they “Don’t know the sources” for covering religion.
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In keeping with the lack of knowledge as a challenge to covering religion, about one-fifth (18.9%) of reporters say they are as “very knowledgeable” about religion and one–third (31.5%) say they are “knowledgeable.” Another 39.8% said they were “somewhat knowledgeable” and 9.8% said they are not knowledgeable about religion.
When asked the major sources of their knowledge of religion, three-fifths mention their own religious practice and self-study of religion (59.8% and 59.4%, respectively). In addition, one-half (52.7%) list their family background as a child and two-fifths (43.4%) their current religious denomination or congregation. About one-half (46.3%) of reporters mention their experience covering religion. Formal education ranked last as a source of knowledge about religion, including higher education (40.4%) and primary/secondary education (34.7%).
I’ll stop there as the much of the rest of the report goes on to analyse ‘consumers’ of religious coverage, which you can read from page 15 onwards.
Civitas have just published a new report by Professor David Conway on faith schools. The report can be found on this link in PDF format.
The introduction begins with an outline of the history of faith schools and I thought this particularly pertinent:
Increasingly since then, however, in response to the country’s growing diversity, plus ever diminishing regular religious observance in an increasing number of its households, the kind of religious education provided by these schools has tended to become of the non-committed variety that secular humanists are alone prepared to condone, but which was roundly condemned by William Temple. Likewise, their religious assemblies have tended to dispense with collective acts of worship. Instead, children attend the assemblies of community schools, as these schools are now known, are likely to be informed in them about current festivals of the faiths practised by the families of various of their pupils who may be invited to enact and talk about their associated rituals and ceremonies. Even some denominational schools, or faith schools as this variety of schools has since become called, have begun to follow community schools in offering neutral non-committed forms of religious education and non-worshipful assemblies. They have begun to do so, as increasing numbers of their pupils have started to come from families in which some other faith is practised other than that for whose nurturance these schools were established.
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Despite all these concessions to diversity and to secular modernity, secular humanists remain dissatisfied by the place religion still occupies in the country’s state-funded schools. They consider many still far too accommodating of it. Their chief grievances have been three. First, they claim, publicly-funded faith schools are socially divisive and subvert community cohesion. They do so, these critics say, by segregating schoolchildren along lines of religion, and, since religion so often correlates with ethnicity, on those of ethnicity too. Second, they urge, faith schools give rise to a further no less pernicious form of segregation among schoolchildren, one that they claim is especially prejudicial to those who come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and attend community schools. This is the segregation of schoolchildren on lines of social class. Faith schools are said to generate such social segmentation between schools by their selective admissions policies which allow them, when over-subscribed, to accord priority to applicants whose parents can give them evidence of adhering to the faith of their sponsoring bodies. These admissions policies have been found to result in faith schools admitting a much higher proportion of children of middle-class background than do community schools.
The report goes on to look at:
Faith Schools, Religious Segregation and Community Cohesion – Pages 6-11
Faith Schools, Social Segregation and Social Mobility – Pages 11 – 15
Faith Schools, Indoctrination and Autonomy Pages 15 – 18
Here’s some snippets from the conclusion:
First, religious beliefs have been found to have a markedly beneficial effect on the academic performance of children in whom they have nurtured, especially if growing up in urban environments where the distractions from study can otherwise be liable to prove as alluring as they are damaging.
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The provisions contained in the 1988 Education Reform Act for religious education were designed to make it possible for schools to provide such forms of it, even when their pupil rolls had become so diverse as to preclude any single form any longer being suitable for all of them. Only a hostile teacher-training profession, plus a colluding civil-service, conspired to place on these provisions such a tendentious interpretation as has led to their being taken to authorise, if not mandate, the neutral non-committed form of religious education that has replaced the committed variety in so many of the country’s schools.
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Insofar as this country’s unique willingness to stand up to brutal dictatorship in 1939 and since has been due, not least in part, to the spirit that has been infused into the majority of its inhabitants by their common Christian faith, which I would unhesitatingly assert to be the case, then the broadly Christian type of committed religious education for whose instatement in all the country’s state-funded schools William Temple had been calling in his 1942 address is one from which all its inhabitants would benefit, as indeed would the rest of the world. They all would, provided schools there made due allowance for alternative committed forms of religious education classes and assemblies and even separate faith schools, for children of minority faiths for all which alternative varieties of committed religious education the 1988 Education Reform Act made ample provision.
All would stand to benefit from such committed forms of religious education in the country’s state-funded schools, not simply because it would be likely to improve the educational performance, behaviour and well-being of the nation’s schoolchildren. They would also all benefit because, I believe, only by continuing to provide it can this country be assured of remaining the independent and united liberal polity that it has for so long been and from whose continuing to be such all its diverse inhabitants would derive benefit, even those who do not share that faith or any other.
I was rather intrigued to note last week a new Pew Forum report indicating that 38% of Americans feel there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders.
I wondered at the time what the UK figure would be, especially given the fact that our politicians rarely ‘do God’.
Anyway, following David Cameron’s ‘Easter Message‘ the Guardian is running a poll based on this question:
Is it OK for prime ministers to ‘do God’ in public?
Following are some extracts I’ve plucked out from the transcript that are noteworthy:
Referring to blasphemy Mark Thompson says:
I think one of the issues is that not all but almost all people who have religious beliefs are realist about the belief. In other words, that they believe that their faith refers to things which have an objective reality. And so, for example, they regard blasphemy as causing objective harm. So it’s not just that a blasphemous statement or act would hurt their feelings or anger them because it went against their opinions; it would do actual objective harm. That offending of an act of sacrilege against the god head or religious figure, actually creates harm in the world as it were and might be as heinous or more heinous than harm to a human being.
[.....]
The point is that for a Muslim, a depiction – particularly a comical or demeaning depiction of the Prophet Muhammad – might have the force, the emotional force, of a piece of a grotesque child pornography.
I was quite disturbed to read of the abuse meted out by Christians in response to Jerry Springer: The Opera
I received some phone calls from a chap called Stephen Green who ran Christian Voice. I had a number of not to say completely civilised conversations. Roly Keating got a slightly more alarming set of messages including a threat to, you know, to burn him and his wife and his children in their house. So there was some intimidation.
I wouldn’t for a moment argue that the majority of people who were upset about the idea of broadcasting it were people who were threatening violence, but it was little bit of that and a little bit of menace; in the end it was, you know, we had a security guy outside the door for a bit.
Next comes the now infamous AK47 quote, which was given against the backdrop of a reference to Salman Rushdie:
Well clearly it’s a very notable move in the game, I mean without question. “I complain in the strongest possible terms” is different from “I complain in the strongest possible terms and I’m loading my AK47 as I write.” This definitely raises the stakes. But I think there’s two or three things going on, so manifestly a threat to murder, which by the way is quite rightly a crime, massively raises the stakes.
And here is the quote that gave rise to the headlines of Christianity being treated less sensitively than other religions:
But I also want to say, though, a thing about religion. I think it is very different to talk about Christianity in the United Kingdom: a very broadly, literally established, but also metaphorically established, part of our kind of cultural built landscape. A religion which is actually for all sorts of reasons, in many ways a lot of our thinking about human rights comes out of the Christian tradition; I would argue, a broad-shouldered religion, compared to religions which in the UK have a very close identity with ethnic minorities, where, you know, it’s not as if as it were Islam is randomly spread across the UK population. It’s almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against, and where they may well regard an attack on their religion as racism by other means.
Thompson appears to be arguing that as religions other than Christianity are closely tied with ethnic minority groups, they deserve kid-glove treatment.
So, Christianity deserves harsher treatment because race trumps religion!
Thompson’s position seems less credible given his comments on secularism:
….it may be that the UK, which is a remarkably secular society – the underlying host culture is remarkably secular, one of the most secular cultures probably anywhere in the world….
