Profile of Anglicans

British Religion in Numbers:

… The YouGov survey which Professor Linda Woodhead commissioned to inform the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, and which BRIN has been reporting after each debate, is likely to prove a very valuable dataset for subsequent secondary analysis. To illustrate the point, Professor Woodhead, with statistical support from the Revd Professor Bernard Silverman, has used the poll (conducted online among 4,437 Britons aged 18 and over on 25-30 January 2013) to undertake a segmentation analysis of contemporary Anglicans (1,261 identified themselves as such in the survey). Her findings are presented in her article ‘”Nominals” are the Church’s Hidden Strength’ in the current issue (26 April 2013, p. 16) of the Church Times. This is only available online to subscribers of the newspaper.

The analysis proper, which forms the first part of the article, distinguishes four types of Anglicans:

Godfearing Churchgoers (5% of Anglicans) – These are Anglicans who attend church, are very certain in their belief in God, and who say that God is the main source of authority in their lives. They are also likely to score highly on other indicators of religiosity (such as prayer and Bible-reading) and to hold conservative views on many issues of personal morality, particularly sexuality (setting them apart with Baptists and Muslims rather than fellow Anglicans).

Mainstream Churchgoers (12% of Anglicans) – These have more in common with Non-Churchgoing Believers than with the Godfearers. Apart from their churchgoing, they differ in being a little more religious than Non-Churchgoing Believers on a number of measures and a little more morally conservative.

Non-Churchgoing Believers (50% of Anglicans) – These share a good many of the attributes of Mainstream Churchgoers, notwithstanding that they do not attend church. They all believe in God (although some prefer the word Spirit), and significant numbers practise religious or spiritual activities regularly. ‘These “nominals” are more than Anglican in name only: they believe, practise, and identify with Anglicanism.’

Non-Churchgoing Doubters (33% of Anglicans) – These Anglicans are also more than merely nominal. Only 15% are outright atheists, most being agnostic or unsure about God, and more than one-fifth claim to practise some religious or spiritual activity in private. They are the most morally permissive of the four groups.

The second half of the article is an impassioned – some may say occasionally idealized – plea for the Church of England to take more seriously non-churchgoing Anglicans in general, and Non-Churchgoing Believers in particular, rather than representing Godfearing Churchgoers as the ‘most real Anglicans’. Woodhead contends that the Church is in danger of becoming too clerical and congregationally-based, and of abandoning its sense of being a lay institution governed by monarch and Parliament, and responsible to the people.

The whole piece is here.

 

49% of UK Anglicans Believe There is a God

Speaking of Godlessness, over at the eChurch blog:

According to a Sunday Times survey conducted by YouGov, of the 546 respondents that considered their religion to be Church of England, only 49% responded positively to the question: I believe there is a God.

The question posed was:  People have different beliefs about God, which of the following best applies to you?

49% I believe there is a God.

26% I do not believe in a God, but do believe there is some sort of spiritual higher power.

10% I do not believe in any sort of God or higher spiritual power.

16% Don’t know.

Hop over to BRIN to see a thorough breakdown of the survey findings.

Respect for Clergy at a Low Ebb in the UK

And probably elsewhere too… Stuart reports (from the UK), and asks:

How did it come to this?

According to a new survey, out of twenty-five professions, only eight ranked lower in terms of respect than Priests / Ministers.

54% of respondents had a “Great deal” or “Fair amount” of respect for clergy.

The professions held in lower regard were:

Accountants 46%

Bankers 15%

Building Contractors 43%

Business Executives 28%

Car salesmen 14%

Journalists 20%

Lawyers 53%

Politicians 15%

Clergy ranked equal with Actors / Artists.

 

Christianity: Africa’s Largest Faith

Conger:

Christianity is the largest faith in Africa, a study presented last week at El Jadida University in Morocco reports.

Christians account for 46.53 per cent, Muslims 40.46 per cent and traditional African religions 11.8 per cent of the continent’s population, participants in the conference organized by the Centre for Studies on New Religions learned.

Conference chairman Professor Massimo Introvigne noted that the Christian faith has witnessed remarkable growth in Africa over the past century.  In 1900 ten million Christians lived in Africa while in 2012 this number had grown to 500 million.  Only 2 per cent of Christians were African in 1900 but 20 per cent of Christians reside in Africa today, the conference learned.

Across Africa 31 countries have are predominantly Christian, 21 Muslim and 6 traditional African religions.  The rapid growth of the Christian faith may be one of the causes of the continent’s increased sectarian tensions, Prof. Introvigne noted.

“Some Islamic ultra-fundamentalists consider it scandalous that there are more Christians than Muslims in Africa and proceed to persecute and kill Christians in countries such as Nigeria, Mali, Somalia and Kenya. The way the ultra-fundamentalists see it, today, the battle which will determine whether the world will be Muslim or Christian is being fought in Africa. And that Islam is losing. This is why they are responding with bombs.”

Survey: Protestants Are No Longer Majority in United States

CNN:

Following a string of recent developments that suggest waning Protestant power – like the first Supreme Court with no Protestant justices, and a Protestant-free Republican presidential ticket –a new Pew survey finds that Protestants are no longer the majority in the United States.

The Protestant population has declined from 53% of the U.S. population in 2007 to 48% this year, according to the survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, released Tuesday.

The results mark the first time since Pew has been tracking the country’s religious demographics that the share of Protestant Christians in the United States has dipped significantly below 50%.

The largest decline among Protestant subgroups tracked by Pew was among white mainline Protestants, whose proportion of the population dropped 3 percentage points, from 18% to 15%.

At the release of the Pew survey, John Green, a senior adviser at Pew, quoted historian Robert Wuthnow in characterizing the changes as part of a wider “restructuring of American religion.”

“The core of this phenomenon is many of the older distinctions that characterize American religion …  are being replaced with a new kind of religion,” Green said.

The study also found that the fastest growing “religious group” in the country is people who are not affiliated with any religion.

The decline of Protestant hegemony has been on display in recent developments in politics and government.

John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2010, was the last Protestant to serve on the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama replaced him with Elena Kagan, who is Jewish. The court is now made up entirely of Jews and Catholics.

Among the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, only Barack Obama is a Protestant.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon, while running mate Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden are both Catholic.

The Republican ticket is the first Protestant-free presidential ticket in decades.

William Galston, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, told CNN that the GOP ticket “really symbolizes the passing of an era.”

“All the groups that make up the new American population, as opposed to the population of 50 years ago, are now participating on equal” terms, in politics and American society in general, Galston said.

The Pew findings echo those of other surveys that track religious trends. The General Social Survey, conducted by the University of Chicago, has also shown a downward trend in American Protestantism.

According to Pew, Protestants are still the largest religious group in the United States, followed by Catholics, who make up 22% of the country, and the unaffiliated, who account for almost 20%.

“There are vast implications for this change for American society,” Green said. “The trends that we have been observing are likely to continue for at least several decades, if not longer than that.”

The Pew report is based on a telephone survey from June 28-July 9, 2012, that included a national sample of 2,973 adults. The margin of error ranges between two and four percentage points.

 

Survey: Half of Anglicans Want Reunion with Rome

Dozens of pastors and hundreds of believers are returning to the Catholic Church because of its acceptance of female bishops and gay clergymen

LaSampa reports:

It is now more like erosion than an exodus. Dozens of pastors and hundreds of believers are leaving the Anglican Church every month and with the introduction of the female episcopate in July, it seems likely that more and more will escape. The phenomenon of Anglican clergymen and believers returning to Rome is noting a continuous increase as a result of an agreement reached with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which allows the clergy to be re-ordained as Catholic priests. This unstoppable trend is one of the reasons that induced Archbishop Rowan Williams to resign.

According to some surveys, practically half of the flock of the Church of England is favourable to a reunion with their “separated Catholic siblings”. And the “contagion” is extending from the Anglicans to the Lutherans. Several North American and Scandinavian groups have asked the Holy See to be received into the Catholic Church. This has led to the establishment of an appropriate Ordinariate for them based upon the “Our Lady of Walsingham” model designed for former Anglicans. This is a path of return towards the Catholic Church that involves a growing number of clerics and laypeople from all over the world. The Anglican Communion has not been able to identify effective ways of stopping a trend that has weakened the leadership of the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who, twenty days ago, announced he will step down from his post at the end of the year; a decision he took after ten years of service and after accepting the position of Master of Magdalene College in Cambridge. The Primate is the “primus inter pares” of the world-wide Anglican Communion and he presides over the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Assembly of Primates.

Meanwhile, conversions to Catholicism keep increasing, favoured by the institution of the personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 15 January. Several dozen groups scattered all over Great Britain are entering the Catholic Church. After a preparatory path for official entry to the Catholic Church, the converted are accepted through the sacrament of Confirmation. The apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus”, published in November 2009, made the entrance to the Catholic Church for Anglican communities possible, through the institution of personal ordinariates with characteristics similar to those of a non-territorial parish (a new canonical structure). Thus it is possible for them to recognize the supremacy of the Pope while maintaining elements of their liturgical and spiritual tradition. Up to now the change from the Anglican Church to the appropriate Ordinariate of the Catholic Church instituted by Benedict XVI has involved bishops, priests and believers who wish to return to the ancient liturgy of the Latin Mass.

In July the Anglican Church in England will authorize the ordination of female bishops, whilst also approving some measures to please the traditionalist wing which was contrary to such change. In 1994, when it approved the sacerdotal ordination of women, the Anglican Church lost approximately five-hundred members of the clergy who changed over to the Catholic Church. In July 2010, the Anglican Synod of York approved the ordination of female bishops; a decision that is prevailing little by little in all the Anglican Communion contrary to the opinion of the traditionalist communities.

The Anglican Communion is composed of thirty-eight independentprovinces, one of which is England. Several provinces already have female bishops. Eventually, because of the Episcopal consecration of women, the haemorrhage could worsen. The Catholic Church is opposed to the process that will introduce the legislation leading to the ordination of women to the episcopate next July. The position of the Catholic Church in this regard has remained unchanged since the times of Paul VI. The approval of the female episcopate is considered by the Holy See as a split from the apostolic tradition maintained by all the Churches of the first millennium, and it is therefore an ulterior obstacle for the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England. So, the opening of the episcopate to the other half of the sky will have negative consequences for the dialogue with the Vatican. And it will cause an ulterior departure of clerics and laypeople towards Rome.

There is a clear trend being followed: next July will see the ordination of female bishops, then the ordination of openly gay clergymen. It is the path the Anglican world has decided to follow, regardless of the numerous communities that, because of this “liberal” turn, choose the Diaspora and the return to the Catholic “mother Church”. The Holy See has warned on numerous occasions that the decision to consecrate female bishops would compromise the ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church. All Churches of the first millennium, Catholic, Oriental and Orthodox, assert that only men can be ordained. These Churches see the ordination of women as an illegitimate abandonment of the authentic tradition. With the acceptance of female bishops, the Anglican Communion would abandon that which Rome considers the essential tradition of the Church since its origins. Two issues are at the centre of the tensions within the Anglican Communion and with the Catholic Church: the ordination of women and homosexuality.

The Vatican blames the Anglicans for the impossibility of offering one common testimony of human sexuality and marriage. Moreover, the ordination of women to the episcopate would substantially and definitively block a possible acknowledgment of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church. The “female episcopate” is a big obstacle on the road towards the common participation to the Table of Christ. And so the “escape” of Anglicans towards Rome intensifies.

HT

 

Census Shows Ireland is Still Overwhelmingly Catholic

Despite being rocked by the sex abuse scandal, a huge percentage in the country still self-identify as Catholic.  Details, from the Irish Times:

Ireland remains the overwhelmingly Catholic country of the English-speaking world, according to results of the April 2011 census, published yesterday. Over 84 per cent of people in the Republic, or 3.86 million, described themselves as Roman Catholic in that census.

It may represent a drop from the 86.8 per cent of the population who did so in the 2006 census but, in actual terms, the 2011 figure is an increase of 179,889, or 4.9 per cent, on the 2006 figure.

This anomaly, of an increase in numbers and percentage but a drop overall, is because the general population of the Republic increased by 348,404, to 4.58 million, since 2006.

The nearest in numbers to Catholics are those who declared themselves as having “no religion” last April. They now number 269,800, an increase of 44.8 per cent on the 2006 figure. A further 72,914 did not state their religion, compared to the 70,322 “not stated” figure for 2006.

Among those who did declare themselves last year the next largest grouping to those with “no religion” are members of the Church of Ireland who now number 129,039, an increase of 6.4 per cent on their 121,229 figure in 2006. Presbyterian numbers are up by 4.5 per cent to 24,600 as are Jehovah’s Witnesses, by 19.4 per cent to 6,149.

Far and away the most significant non-Christian religion in Ireland today is Islam. Members of Ireland’s Muslim community now number 49,204, an increase of 51.2 per cent on the 32,539 figure in 2006.

Continue reading.

Source:  The Deacon’s Bench

 

Internet vs Sleep

The internet reaches into so many areas of our lives that one in four people now spend longer online than they do asleep, a survey has revealed…

Give it a read here.

Has the Ordinariate Inflicted ‘Ecumenical Damage’?

The poll: Has the Ordinariate inflicted “ecumenical damage”? is running online in the Church Times.

Take part here. I just did.

Things seem pretty even at the moment…

HT:    The Ordinariate Portal

Britain: 100 Conversions to Islam Each Week

Some 5,200 Britons convert to Islam each year, and 62% are women, according to a survey commissioned by Faith Matters.

The typical British convert became a Muslim at age 27 and, according to the survey, was not motivated to convert by marriage. 55% of converts, however, were married to a born Muslim, and 12% were married to another convert.

The study found that the vast majority of women converts adopted the hijab (headscarf) upon conversion. Books were cited as the primary influence upon converts, followed by Muslim friends and the Internet.

Read the full survey here.

HT:   Kresta in the Afternoon