Transcript Rethinking Modern British Studies, 3 July 2015 SECULARISING SELFHOOD What can polling data on the personal saliency of religion tell us about the.

Rethinking Modern British Studies, 3 July 2015
SECULARISING SELFHOOD
What can polling data on the personal saliency of religion tell us
about the scale and chronology of secularisation in modern Britain?
Clive D. Field
University of Birmingham and University of Manchester
[email protected], http://clivedfield.wordpress.com/
Introduction
• Presentation addresses ‘Cultures of democracy – changing nature of selfhood’ in Modern British
Studies Working Paper No. 1
• Continuing debate about scale and chronology of secularisation in modern Britain, including
‘gradualist’ versus ‘revolutionary’ interpretations
• Debate so far mostly evidentially underpinned by broadly ‘objective’ sources, notably church
membership and attendance data
• Also possible to deploy ‘subjective’ sources, reflecting claimed patterns of belonging, behaving,
and believing, including census and sample surveys
• Sample surveys present variety of methodological and interpretative challenges, some generic,
some specific to religion
• Here use national (Great Britain) sample survey data on personal saliency of religion to provide
additional lens on secularisation from 1960s to present
• Six self-rating measures derived from non-recurrent and serial surveys, identified via BRIN, latter
including BHPS/US, EB, ESS, EVS, ISSP, and Pew, and for over 160 data points
• Presentation summarises principal findings but does not seek to reproduce full data
2
Research questions
(1) What are methodological advantages and disadvantages of using
saliency as performance indicator of religious decline in modern
Britain?
(2) How far have people regarded themselves as religious (or not) or
viewed religion (or God) as important in or impacting their day-to-day
existence and to what extent have their perceptions changed over
time?
(3) How does evidence from saliency of religion modify our
understanding of scale and chronology of secularisation in modern
Britain?
3
Religiosity (binary questions)
•
•
•
•
Binary: religious versus non-religious on 2- or 4-point scale
Data available from 1960s to present, including EB and EVS
Very religious always few, invariably under 10%
Pre-1990 professedly religious outnumber non-religious, from 1990s
position reversed, with marked rise in non-religious during 2010s
• In EVS religious decline from 57% in 1981 to 43% in 2009-10, with nonreligious/atheists increasing from 40% to 53%
• Largest-scale survey (YouGov, 2011) reveals 35% religious (41% in London),
63% non-religious
• Latest international survey (WIN/Gallup, 2014) ranks Britain 59 of 65
countries in terms of number of religious (30% against global mean of 63%)
4
Religiosity (non-binary questions)
• Non-binary: religious, non-religious, neither religious nor nonreligious
• Data available from 1990s to present, including EB, ESS (scale-based),
and ISSP
• What does ‘neither’ imply? Avoiding extremes, rejection of religion
but not supernatural, not anti-religious, ‘prestige’ effect, etc.?
• Neither position sometimes taken up by one-fifth or more
• Non-religious often (but not always) continue to outnumber religious
• Latest survey (OPI, 2014) shows 27% religious, 52% non-religious, and
22% neither
5
Spirituality versus religiosity
• Religious versus spiritual versus secular dichotomy explored from 1980s, with
‘spiritual but not religious’ (SBNRs) extensively studied in USA
• Concept of ‘spiritual revolution’ proposed in UK in 2005 book by Heelas and
Woodhead, based on research in Kendal
• Use of spirituality as performance measure problematical, hard to define and
even harder to operationalise in surveys
• Data available from late 1990s to present, but sources non-recurrent, so no
genuine time series, with consequent difficulty in discerning trends
• Some people do seem more comfortable in choosing spiritual rather than
religious, given a choice, but others regard categories as overlapping
• Latest spiritual versus religious data (YouGov, 2013) reveal 9% religious, 13%
spiritual, 10% both, 49% neither
• Latest spiritual only data (YouGov, 2015) reveal 41% spiritual and 54% not
6
Importance of religion in personal life
• Data available from 1970s to present, including EB, EVS, and Pew
• Relative to other aspects of personal life and values, fewer than 10% have
deemed religion important since Millennium
• Viewed in isolation, religion scores are higher, but there has still been
downward trend in importance attached to religion
• In first non-recurrent survey (NOP, 1972) 63% said religion important, in
most recent (YouGov, 2015) 68% said religion not important
• From 1990s on majority in all surveys admitted religion not important to
them, with steep decline in those seeing it as very important
• By late 2000s religion important for two-fifths and unimportant for threefifths
7
Importance of God in personal life
• Scale-based measure, devised by Gallup for EVS, from 1 (not at all
important) to 10 (very important)
• Data available from 1980s to present, including EB and EVS
• Importance attached to God has diminished over time
• In EVS 14% described God as not at all important in 1981, 30% in
2009-10; He was very important for 19% in 1981 and 13% in 2009-10
8
Difference made by religion to everyday life
• Data available from 1960s to present, including BHPS/US
• Proportion reporting great deal/quite a lot of difference no more than
plurality even in 1968 and has declined over time
• In BHPS great/some difference claimed by 38% in 1991-92 and 31% in
2008-09 (little/no difference by 62% and 69%)
• Most recent US data (NatCen, 2012-14) reveal for 15% religion makes
great difference, 17% some, 19% a little, and 48% none
9
Assessment – research question 1
ADVANTAGES
• Broaden out evidence base and help produce more balanced portfolio of secularisation
• Direct source of information about what religion means to people, not mediated through proxies
• Relatively plentiful, with fair number of time series, reasonable degree of standardisation of
questions, and generally good availability of datasets for secondary analysis
DISADVANTAGES
• Subjective source and not amenable to independent verification – tendency to exaggerate
religiosity and/or to reply with no prior thought: ‘talk is cheap’ (Bruce)
• Reduction of abstract and complex constructs to simple questions may result in confusion,
misunderstanding, or multiple imputed meanings, with spirituality very difficult to operationalise
• Different formulations of questions produce varying results, eg on 8 measures in one 1987 survey
religious position ranges from 40% to 58% and non-religious position from 31% to 51%
10
Assessment – research question 2
• Very religious have never numbered more than 10%
• No catastrophic collapse in religiosity during 1960s, notwithstanding
supposed ‘religious crisis’
• Tipping-point for majority (binary questions) or plurality (non-binary
questions) of Britons self-identifying as non-religious came in 1990s
• Pace of religious decline quickened after Millennium
• By early 2010s 55%-75% viewed themselves as non-religious
• These are much higher figures than the third who profess no religion in
census/IHS or who doubt or deny existence of God in surveys
• Non-religiosity greater in Britain than almost any other Western country
11
Assessment – research question 3
• Saliency of religion indicators present one of bleaker pictures of extent of
secularisation, even before allowing for exaggeration
• Despite some volatility, direction of travel and milestones are clear
• Saliency is driven by much the same demographic variables, notably generational
replacement and gender, as other religion indicators
• Little to suggest that low religious saliency scores can simply be dismissed as
negative reaction to religion as ‘toxic brand’ (Woodhead)
• In particular, spirituality option has failed to increase overall scores but has simply
split ‘religious vote’
• Saliency data consistent with, and confirm, other evidence suggesting Britain is in
midst of progressive (and ongoing) secularisation
• On MBS agenda, selfhood is being transformed in a less religious direction
12