profile of the non-religious

To Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate this evening, for a talk sponsored and hosted by Leicester Secular Society: "Profile of the Non-Religious" by Prof David Voas (photo above). Prof. Voas is Simon Professor of Population Studies at the Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester.

His theme this evening is "Who are the 'non-religious' in Britain and where do they come from?" His presentation is based on statistics obtained from the 2001 Census and from the British Social Attitudes survey. Consequently, he takes into account how factors such as age, education, ethnicity, gender, marital status, political affiliation, social attitude affect or reflect whether (and to what extent) individuals, families and groups are or are not "religious". Several of these aspects of personal and social identity seem to have unexpected and intriguing implications on this topic. He also looks at geographical breakdown of religious and non-religious respondents to these questionnaires. Apparently, Aberdeen has the biggest percentage of its population who declare themselves to be "non-religious" (but the census question in Scotland was slightly different from the in England and Wales and allowed one to identify oneself as "non-religious" more easily).

The presentations contains some interesting definitions of what it means to be "religious" and "non-religious", which will be of interest here. We're asked to consider whether religious identity comprises on dimension or many and depends on the nature of the question being asked. A question such as "Would you say that you think of yourself as a religious person?" is different from a tick-box exercise. Definitions and typologies are justified by utility, although the real goal of this kind of investigation is to understand the world. It may not matter a jot in the end where we locate someone (or where they locate themselves) on such a scale. We learn about "strong" and "weak" forms of being religious and non-religious:

• attendance at services or prayers
• participation in religious rites of passage
• belief in God (with varying degrees of certitude or doubt)
• identifying with, or accepting affiliation, to a particular religion
• attitudes to religion range from hostility to indifference to support.

We also discuss distinctions between "secularity" (which is a descriptive term related to the absence of religious motivation or content) and "Secularism" (with a capital "S", being a particular ideology actively opposed to religious privilege).

From a personal point of view, I become more aware of  the difference between how the definitions of "religious" and "non-religious" are treated in England and in Scotland. For example, those who ticked "other religion" in the 2001 Census and wrote in "Jedi Knight" in England were put into the category of "no religion", while those who did the same in Scotland were classified as "another religion" alongside more recognised minority faith communities.

Dr Voas's conclusion this evening? That Britons are becoming secular without quite knowing it or knowing quite what it means.

Find out more about Prof. David Voas and his work:

http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/voas.html

Find out more about Leicester Secular Society (the oldest secular society in the world - formed 1851):

http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/