If you're not religious, tell the census so

Here's the response of Andrew Copson (Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association) to The Guardian's question of the week in its "Comment is Free: Belief" online section: "What should we tell the census about our religious affiliation?" There will be other responses later in the week.

If you're not religious, tell the census so

The leading question on the 2001 census led to policies being made on the basis of an over-counting of religious Britons

When the results of the 2001 census were published, we were asked to believe that 72% of people in England and Wales were Christians. But in the same year, the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey measured only 51.2% of the population as Christian: a difference of a fifth of the population. Subsequent surveys agree with the BSA, and its 2009 survey indicated that more than 50% of the population are now in fact non-religious.

Those who take the time to investigate the census results see clearly that they are ridiculous. If we believed them, we would believe that there are more Jedis in England and Wales than Jews, Buddhists or Sikhs. We would believe – contrary to government research that showed 65% of 12 to 18-year olds were not religious – that in fact 62% of them (along with 58% of under-4-year-olds) were Christian.

The reasons why the data from the 2001 census was so aberrant are simple and well known. They mostly have to do with the fact that the question is a closed and leading one: "What is your religion?" This question is demonstrated to produce a much higher number of "religious" responses than non-presumptuous questions such as: "Do you have a religion?" and much higher than questions that ask about belief or practice. Faced with the closed and leading census question, people who do not believe in God, and who, if asked: "Are you religious?" would say "No", nonetheless tick "Christian" or "Sikh" or whatever.

Perhaps this would be tolerable if the census data on religion was accepted as measuring nothing more than a weak form of cultural affiliation rather than as a proxy for strong religious belief, and only used with this in mind. But the results from the forthcoming census will not just give us an interesting overview of the demographic of England and Wales for academics to critique when the results are released and for our descendants to pick over in future centuries. They will constitute a basis for policymaking over the coming years. Over the past decade the census data has been repeatedly misused. Its figures have been cited in parliament as evidence that faith is on the increase; that greater public resources should be granted to religious organisations; that the state should fund yet more faith schools. Major public policy developments have occurred and resources allocated on the back of these erroneous numbers.

The British Humanist Association worked with the Office for National Statistics for more than two years trying to secure a question in the 2011 census that would give more meaningful data. The ONS refused to change the question (though it did pledge to give guidance after the census on the ways in which data should and should not be used) and so we shifted the focus of our activity.

Now, our census campaign is using local leafleting, advertising and online activity to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the census and encourage people who have thought about the issues and who are not religious to declare that fact. Whether we like it or not, whether we approve of the question or not, how we answer the religion question in this year's census will have profound consequences for our future and we should all answer it with great thought and care.

Read this article on The Guardian's website, along with reader comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/28/census-religion-question

Find out more about the British Humanist Association:
http://www.humanism.org.uk/

A NATION OF FUZZY DOUBTERS

Ahead of the visit to the UK of Pope Benedict next week, today's Guardian contains an interesting article about how religious adherence is measured.

A nation of fuzzy doubters 

"People cling to the idea of religion as a source of morality," says Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "There is general apathy: people don't want to make a fuss."


Many Britons have at best a shallow belief in God: the most recent British Social Attitudes survey found that just a third of the population held firm religious beliefs, with another third deeply sceptical and the final third uncertain.


[...]


"People prefer to talk about spirituality rather than religion, which can mean anything you want it to," says Sanderson.


[...]


According to demographer David Voas at Manchester University: "The part of the population that is properly religious is a minority, but so is that part which is overtly secular. In the middle is an informal group of fuzzy people who don't really care."


Britain is not, as some think, the most secular nation in Europe; it is less so than Scandinavia and parts of the former Soviet bloc.


Migrant communities are the most committed - even long-standing ones, such as the Irish Catholics who dominate what Voas calls "the British bible belt running from Merseyside to Wigan pier."


Most other people are less engaged, although measuring belief is difficult and the data conflicting.


Much depends on how questions are asked and whether they refer to broad social identity or practical belief.


The census, which records the highest level of religious belief, assumes people are adherents of one religion or another and actively asks them to choose from a list.


In 2001, more than two-thirds selected Christian and well under a fifth no religion. that, says Voas, overstates the reality of British religious belief. Asked to choose Christian rather than Muslim or Hindu, people see it as an ethnic identity. Voas argues that the British Social Attitudes survey, which found over half the population holding no strong religious views, is a better measure.


Other polls go further. In a 2006 Guardian/ICM poll only 33% described themselves as religious, against 69% who said they were not - including a majority who described themselves as culturally Christian.


Women and older people were more likely than average to believe in a god, but overall only 13% said they went to a place of worship at least once a week. More people saw religion as a force for harm than for good.


That suggests a country where religion is on the retreat. "There is a huge change - the trend is toward secularism," says Sanderson.


Others, pointing to the impact of migration, from Catholic Poland as well as the Indian subcontinent, are less sure.


The country's religious makeup is fragmenting as the Church of England declines. "It is not the case that Britain is getting more religious," says Voas.

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/