Like many others, Alareen Farrell’s father was recruited from Christchurch, Barbados, by London Transport in the late 1950s and moved to Fulwell in south west London to work in the large bus depot: “There were ten or twenty others recruited around the same time,” she says, “but they came to a very white area so we grew up as pretty much the only black children in the neighbourhood.”

They hoped to find friends within the church, but it wasn’t as simple as that. “My mother had been a big churchgoer at home and they went along to their local parish church here but were not made to feel welcome,” says Alareen. “No one would sit next to them, no one talked to them, so she basically gave up.”

Alareen’s mother was one of many people arriving from the Caribbean who quickly realised they would have to rethink what ‘going to church’ meant.  Another was Joel Edwards, who came to London as an eight-year-old in 1960:  “I arrived, having emerged from Jamaica where church attendance was 60-70% and even if you did not go to church you were extremely Christianised,” he says. “People back home warned us we were coming to a spiritual graveyard, but my family arrived full of hope and ready to revitalise the economy and bring spiritual revival.”

Like Alareen’s parents, Joel and his family and friends didn’t settle in the existing local churches of London at the time. In any case, their liturgy would not have fitted a Baptist or Anglican setting. “A one-hour service would have been anathema to us,” Joel says. “We’re just warming up!”

Determined to continue worshipping with the same zeal they always had at home, many set up their own churches. Even though they read the same Bible, and believed in the same God as white British Christians, interpretations of scripture were very different. Pentecostal beliefs in miracles and speaking in tongues, widely held among Caribbean Christians, were far less common in the UK in the 1960s than they are today[1.  For much of the 20th century, beliefs in miracles, speaking in tongues, prophecy and ‘signs and wonders’ were restricted to predominantly white Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God and Elim denominations. ‘Charismatic renewal’ brought these spiritual activities to more mainstream denominations in the latter part of the 20th century and they are now found in some Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and other traditional Christian churches. See
https://www.evangelical-times.org/26654/the-charismatic-movement-a-short-history-2/].

Suggested reading

Moved by the Spirit: the phenomenal rise of Pentecostalism

By Andrew Davies

Black churches started to spring up, starting with meetings in someone’s living room and, as immigration continued, quickly growing larger. Not only were they separate from the rest of the UK church, there were also distinctions between the new black churches: those of Caribbean heritage started churches together, while worshippers from African countries brought theirs with them.

Those churches grew and grew, and now have become some of the largest in the nation. Children have been raised in the church, and now almost one in five (18%) practising Christians in Britain are from an ethnic minority. In London 25% of practising Christians identify as black/ethnic minority.

Gradually, they started to find a political voice. It didn’t come easily, and some of the more traditional black Christians continued to believe their main purpose was to preach, rather than participate in public life. It took those who had been here longest – the Caribbean communities – to set the wheels in motion.

Joel Edwards tried to lead black churches to join in the public conversations after the Tottenham riots and the Swann report into education and ethnic diversity  but found that African churches, which formed as people arrived from Nigeria, Ghana and other sub-Saharan countries in the 1980s, didn’t at that time see political debate as part of their mission. “I was leading the African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance[2.  The African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance was a network of leaders of black churches which closed in 2009 and its work became part of the core mission of the Evangelical Alliance, which Joel Edwards went on to lead. https://www.eauk.org/idea/a-multiethnic-alliance.cfm] from 1988-1992 when we had significant racial tensions,” he says. “I had a tough time finding Africans who were interested in that agenda. They just wanted to bring people to Christ. They were extremely reluctant. Today’s engagement would have been absolutely unheard of in the 1980s.”

Today’s engagement is indeed significant. As they settled into British life, African churches started to become active in their communities, run peace projects and speak out on knife crime.

In the space of a generation, black churches have gone from being religious and social outsiders to becoming politically engaged. Two Prime Ministers,  David Cameron and Theresa May  have made high profile appearances at major church services.

By the same author

Is Britain losing its religion? Well, it's complicated...

By Katie Harrison

To politicians, they are both logistically convenient, bringing together thousands of people at a time, and politically appealing. Their experiences of discrimination and exclusion make them open to Labour messages of civil participation, while their socially conservative, economically aspirational culture attracts the Tories.

The Conservative Christian Fellowship, in particular, has worked hard over the last few years to include black as well as white church leaders and congregations. It is not unusual to find a black gospel choir singing at one of the prayer meetings in St Mary Undercroft chapel in the Houses of Parliament.

But the place of the black church, having moved from the margins to the religious and political mainstream, is continuing to change. British millennials who grow up in African or Caribbean families live very different lives to the ones their parents and grandparents knew. They don’t go to black universities or black workplaces. What then is the future for the black church?

Ruth Awogbade, 29, whose family came to Britain from Nigeria, says that there is a mixed picture in the UK. “In a lot of places, you find either all black churches or all white churches,” she says. “I’ve been able to assimilate because of my education. I went to private school and so in middle-class white churches I’ve found it easier. But when you’re in London all your colleagues and friends are different races and cultures.”

Increasingly, churches in multicultural areas are starting to reflect the mix in the community they serve. Alareen Farrell, whose parents felt rejected by their local parish church sixty years ago, is now actively involved in the church where I worship: a 1,200-strong Vineyard church in Feltham with more than 45 first languages represented in the congregation.

But those initial hostilities which families like Alareen’s faced have not disappeared completely. Brexit has forced some attitudes into the open which are difficult for people whose families arrived here recently.

“In America they openly talk about race, but here we pretend we don’t have a race problem,”, says Awogbade. “I’ve heard some shocking conversations since Brexit[3.  Explainer for readers outside the UK: people often say ‘since Brexit’ to refer to the time following the European Union membership referendum of 2016. In fact, the UK remains part of the EU until 2019.]. When you’re in a mixed group of people who are talking about immigration, for those of us who are black it’s so personal to be in that conversation. There are times when I’d rather be in the context of my own community where people understand who we are and where we’re from.”

It’s almost 60 years ago that Joel Edwards and his family arrived, knowing they were coming to a very different land to the one they left. Much has changed since them, but the pursuit of identity and belonging continues.

“We are all still on a journey to find out what does it mean to be a black Christian here,” he says.

And it would seem the search is not over yet.

But the millions raised by the Disasters Emergency Committee – £26 million for the Rohingya Crisis, £65 million for East Africa food shortage, £30 million for Yemen – or the £38 million raised by this year’s Sport Relief pale into insignificance compared to one of Britain’s most generous seasons. Ramadan.

British Muslims give literally millions to good causes during their time of fasting and feasting. The Muslim Charities Forum estimate that, in 2016, funds raised during the month of Ramadan came to around £100 million.

This philanthropic behaviour is called zakat or the ‘poor due’ – a tax on wealth which is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is a devout response to the instruction in the Qu’ran which outlines eight categories for giving:

“Zakat expenditures are only for the poor and for the needy and for those employed to collect it and for bringing hearts together and for freeing captives and for those in debt and for the cause of Allah and for the traveller – an obligation by Allah. And Allah is Knowing and Wise.”

It’s a longstanding tradition, but a new conversation is now emerging about where the money should go. And this says a lot about how Britain’s Muslims perceive themselves.

In areas of London with a large Muslim population, you will see bus stop ads like the one below, produced by the National Zakat Foundation, encouraging Muslims to give their zakat to local causes.

This is a big departure from tradition – the National Zakat Foundation says that 98% of British zakat is directed outside the UK. For Muslims who arrived here 50 or 60 years ago, it made sense to send money ‘home’ to people and places which were meaningful to them. The communities which were in their memories and their prayers were also in their cheque books.[1. Accustomed to paying zakat directly to the state – in Pakistan and parts of the Middle East it is collected automatically through bank accounts – first generation British Muslims continued to make sure their zakat went back to their countries of origin.]

“Many Muslims in the UK came here from poor backgrounds, like Kashmir or Bangladesh, so they will want to support relatives,” says Atallah Fitzgibbon, who leads global advocacy at Islamic Relief. “But some scholars say zakat needs to be given to a local community first, especially the money given during Ramadan.”

British millennial Muslims[2. The Muslim population of Britain is relatively young, with half of British Muslims under the age of 25. The median age of British Muslims is 25, compared to 39 for the wider British population.] are politically active, get involved in their local community, volunteer and have diverse groups of friends. Young Muslims went to Cumbria to assist people stranded by flooding, and raised the alarm on their way home from Ramadan evening feasting when they saw that Grenfell Tower was on fire. These younger Muslims are questioning the practice of sending their money abroad.

“A lot of this is to do with a sense of belonging,” says Iqbal Nasim, CEO of the National Zakat Foundation. “If you want a positive future as a community, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. This is where we belong. I’m going to be living here for the rest of my life, my children are going to be living here.”

But belonging in Britain isn’t always easy for Muslims, many of whom face animosity.

“Muslims are on the whole viewed with more hostility than all other groups, by all other groups,” Dr Serena Hussain notes in the Islamophobia report produced by London-based think tank the Runnymede Trust. “This no doubt has serious implications for an entire generation of British Muslims, who despite higher rates of participation in post-16 education, continue to face multiple barriers to employment and social mobility.”

In my own work at ComRes, focused on helping employers develop workplace cultures where people of all faiths and none can thrive, Muslims report all sorts of discrimination. Muslim women say they found they were more likely to be offered a job if they remove their headscarf before the interview; they also were used to being asked, “Are you sure you can travel for work?”, as though they are under the control of a husband or father.

Suggested reading

How much more Islamic is Europe likely to become?

By Katie Harrison

Bringing people together, through their charitable giving, is a way to address this and other concerns, says Nasim. He puts it starkly: “Here in the UK, as a community we are in need.”

British Muslims belong here. This is home. They give an immense amount, and are also in need: of acceptance, opportunity, and safety. Young Muslims, brought up here, see both that their own community is under fire and also that they are surrounded by need in wider society.

Rather than retreating under the pressure of community tensions, these millennials are determined to show that they belong here by helping people close to where they live: homeless people, those using food banks, disaffected youth. Which is fitting, says Fitzgibbon, because “the prophet said ‘those who go to bed full while their neighbour is hungry are not believers’”.

“If I have to tell people where it is, Katie, it’s not going in the paper,” a British tabloid news editor told me, when I was working in communications for an international NGO.

We were talking about Mali. 

To be fair, it was back in 2012, before the French had sent in troops, the big international hotel in capital city Bamako had been raided, or footballer Kante had signed with Chelsea.

There was an ongoing food crisis, driven by climate change, rumbling conflict, and alarming levels of movement of people: all the indicators that competent international development practitioners recognise as warnings of imminent humanitarian crisis. I had stories I wanted to pitch, which I reckoned were useful, interesting and prescient.

But my contact made an important point.

When it comes to Africa, or other less economically developed parts of the world, western countries only tend to cover their news when we ‘know where it is’. 

Especially when it comes to a slow onset situation. Seeing what’s coming doesn’t qualify as ‘news’ in a media regime which prioritises the new and (sometimes) urgent over the important. Early warning signs are not enough: humanitarian workers have to watch more and more children die before the world pays attention[1.  Although aid charities aren’t entirely innocent when it comes to fully-fair, full-pictured coverage of many African nations and other parts of the world that find themselves in short or long-term need – see my recent piece on NGOs’ misrepresentation of our winning battle against global poverty.]. Look at South Sudan.

How do we ‘know where it is’?

My tabloid friend was right. Brits didn’t know about Mali (notwithstanding Roger Hargreaves’ children’s stories with characters based in Timbuctoo). Why would we? They speak French there, drive on the wrong side of the road, and we don’t visit for safari holidays or gap year backpacking.

Because that’s what it comes down to. If you’re like me and take the opportunity when travelling to brush up school days French by watching TV5 in the hotel room, you’ll notice that its international coverage is distinctly different to what you’d see in the UK. They cover West Africa, while British media is more likely to mention – if at all – countries in East or Southern Africa with which we have a historical connection. 

The countries which used to ‘belong’ to us remain interesting. Not necessarily from intentional colonial hangover but because our grandparents might have been posted there, our student nephews and nieces volunteer there and, if they’ve developed a tourism industry, we might have taken a second honeymoon there. We know the (official) language, our electrical plugs fit, we’ve remembered a bit about them from school history lessons. US think tank Brookings found the same phenomenon in US coverage: South Africa media reporting tends to fall into ‘before Mandela’, ‘during Mandela’ and ‘after Mandela’ because he was the statesman with whom Americans had a level of connection.  

It’s all very middle class, but there it is. We follow stories which are sufficiently different from our own lives to qualify as ‘news’ while being sufficiently familiar for us to identify with the story. So we don’t notice some of the world’s major emergencies because they’re not close enough to our worlds.

Bullet point reflections on overall foreign news coverage

Test article

By Ian Birrell

One at a time, folks…

A few years ago, I was in Central African Republic interviewing rape survivors in the middle of the messy and extremely violent conflict. We quickly had to leave a camp site of displaced people in the grounds of a church when security alert came through. Minutes later there was a drive-by shooting and some of the people we had just been interviewing were killed. 

In the following hours, as the already chaotic city went into lockdown, I rang some journalist friends. They worked on globally respected broadsheet newspapers and knew the beat far better than I did. One in particular was hugely sympathetic, asked insightful questions but ended up confessing that “I’ll have to check with my editor. We can only make room for one Africa story a day, and it’s the Pistorius trial this week.”

For the most part, ‘Africa’ is a news category in itself. As we see from the frustrations expressed by the campaign team behind #AfricaIsACountry which both pokes fun at the way we lump stories together, and offers writing and comment from emerging voices, we have created a genre of its own. In developed countries, we tend to treat the entire continent – or the sub Saharan element, at least – as a homogeneous mass, ignoring massive economic, trade, humanitarian, diplomatic, culture, crime and political differences.

It’s all part of the ‘international’ section

In my experience, it’s hard to get a comment piece about somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa into a British broadsheet when they’re already carrying an op-ed about Ukraine (yes, I know – not in Africa but ‘foreign’!). The International Broadcasting Trust analysed UK broadcast news coverage for two weeks in January 2016, and compared levels of coverage of events outside the UK with a previous study from 2009. They found that international coverage had increase BUT in those two weeks the focus was on Hollywood’s Oscars, refugees arriving in Europe from the Middle East and the closure of the port of Calais. But the number of countries covered was down from previously:

“Despite the increase in coverage since the 2009 study, driven in part by audience demand, certain areas of the world remain relatively under-represented. Excluding the bulletins of Al Jazeera English and BBC World Service, fewer countries were featured than in 2009 and most of the increase was accounted for by stories from Europe.”  

It’s out there somewhere – often online

To be fair, most of the bleating we see on social media, when enthusiastic campaigners worry ‘why is no-one covering this?’, is accompanied by a news report posted online by the BBC or Reuters. Nonetheless, the news bulletins on mainstream TV, and the print editions of newspapers (falling in number as advertising revenues shrink) are necessarily and increasingly limited for space. But online? It’s usually covered somewhere and determined Africa-watchers can find it. I’ve pasted the Twitter addresses of some insightful, trustworthy journalists in the sidebox.

This series began yesterday...

Why you can't rely on the news media to understand... science

By Tom Chivers

When I made our Believers in Trump documentary, I was struck by how much sense the white evangelical vote for Trump makes once you’re in the States, spending time with his supporters. It’s difficult to understand from outside the US, but once you’re there it’s easy to see how the unlikely relationship between a crass, philandering President and God-fearing strict social conservatives has developed.

White evangelical Trump voters don’t approve of his moral character or behaviour, but they have found a way to justify their support for him, on the basis of their core issues. How did we get to this religious appropriation of a political leader? And could it happen in the UK?

My UnHerd colleague Giles Fraser quizzed me about the people I’d met in the US, and brought in Pastor Clement Okusi of Eternity Church Croydon and UnHerd’s Flyover Editor Henry Olsen to consider where this surprising political and theological journey might take us.

https://soundcloud.com/user-970100804/believers-in-trump-podcast

Why would this group of Christian believers throw their support behind him? And why didn’t other religious groups do the same?

Our new documentary, Believers in Trump, hears from evangelicals who champion Trump’s presidency, those who abhor it, and from a handful of the uncomfortable millions who tolerate his place in the White House because he delivers on a couple of issues close to their hearts.

This note summaries the key reasons why white evangelicals supported Trump.

He‘s not Hillary

We met with Greg Smith of Pew Research Center, who told us of open questions asked in 2016 to establish the reasons for their support for Trump: “One third of all white evangelical voters that we talked to back in 2016 said that the main reason they support Donald Trump for President is that he is not Hillary Clinton.”

Their vitriol for her is intense, and very different to the impression we in Europe had gained. Her history with her husband’s Presidency, her email thing, all of that. But the two main reasons were that she made no effort to engage with them and she insisted on a pro-abortion campaign.

Michael Wear, author of Reclaiming Hope and a former Obama staffer, says she could have been the most religiously literate Democrat candidate in a generation but blew it. The “deplorables” comment (video below) was the tip of the iceberg. He says she made no attempt to engage with this statistically significant base (26% of the votes cast in the 2016 election were by white evangelicals):

“She could have gone to a Christian college and given a speech about the complexities of religious freedom in the 21st century. She could have given a speech about her lifelong passion for adoption and how that matched with the faith community and particularly with evangelicals but there was no outreach. No interviews with major Christian publications…. not bringing on a faith staffer – someone to reach out to religious communities – until late in the campaign and so it just wasn’t there. It wasn’t, when they looked at key populations when they looked at what they thought was important in running a presidential campaign, religion did not figure into that calculation.”

He promised and delivered a social conservative on the Supreme Court

Justice Scalia died in the same year as Barack Obama’s successor was to be decided and the Republican-controlled Senate made it clear that they would not let the outgoing president choose a liberal justice to replace the Supreme Court’s most conservative member. Composition of the USA’s highest court, which had been politically polarising since 1973’s Roe vs Wade ruling, became central to the presidential election.

Professor Joe Loconte, who does not support the Trump presidency said:

“Much of it boils down to the Supreme Court and the idea that now so much of the cultural debates, cultural fights we’re having are going to be decided in the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Christian conservatives have kind of bought into that narrative and so getting “the right court nominee” – a Neil Gorsuch in this case, someone who will defend the original intent of the constitution, this became a crucial bellwether moment for evangelicals because they knew they weren’t going to get a good nominee from Clinton of course and it seemed that Trump was going to be willing to appoint that nominee.”

And when evangelicals talk about the Supreme Court…

…they mean access to religious freedom, which many interpret to be the tension between holding religious beliefs about same-sex marriage or transgender expressions which are at odds with the social and even legal mainstream.

…But they mostly mean abortion.

We spoke to Tim Goeglein, Vice President at Focus on the Family and former aide to George W Bush:

“In 1973 our Supreme Court legalized and some would say imposed abortion, legal in all nine months up to and including the birth of the child in the Roe versus Wade decision. This in large numbers brought American evangelicals into the public square.”

From being a rather separatist cohort for much of the 20th century, the 1970s brought white evangelicals out of the woodwork. According to Jim Wallis of Sojourners, the black evangelicals had been in the public square ahead of them:

“Remember the black churches were at the core of the civil rights movement. Without the infrastructure of the black churches there wouldn’t have been a civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist preacher not just a civil rights leader…The most holistic expression of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in America is always been from the black churches, always. Not white evangelicals, always black churches.

But it took Roe vs Wade to get this group onto the frontline. And now, almost 40 years after Jerry Falwell founded Moral Majority, his son is a regular in the White House and commonly held to be a close adviser to the President. It only took a generation to bring this group from active disengagement to being the voting segment which holds so much power.

He protects their way of life

In his rhetoric on immigration, security and the Middle East, Trump plays not only to the white evangelical base but to the flyover community more broadly. Millions of people live in the states which many decision-makers see only from the sky as they fly from coast to coast for meetings and vacations with fellow elites. Hillary was firmly placed with those elites, as far as our interviewees were concerned.

But for the people described so beautifully in JD Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which recounts life in dysfunctional white working-class Kentucky, who worshipped two gods: Jesus Christ and the United States of America, Trump has delivered. To be fair, all the white evangelicals we spoke to were professional middle-class people. Unlike the families described in Hillbilly Elegy, they weren’t routinely posting bail for family members, using food stamps or visiting relatives in rehab. But the flyover states are bigger than just one demographic. There are plenty of God-fearing, nation-loving, hardworking, plain speaking Americans of all classes in that middle strip of the USA.

What they have in common is that they have been unheard for too long and when they chose to make themselves heard, not only did they tip the electoral balance, but they took the rest of the world by surprise – because we hadn’t been listening.

In his travel bans and his rhetoric about Muslims, Trump plays to the fear held by many white evangelicals that their religious hold on the nation is at risk. They fear not only for their physical security – survivalists prepare for terror attacks now, as well as the earthquakes and tornadoes for which they’ve always had drills – but for their spiritual safety. ‘What if we’re over-run by people trying to turn us away from the Lord?’ The anti-immigration narrative holds an additional layer of fear for many.

Make no mistake, not every white evangelical who voted Trump admires his record. Politically, of course, he doesn’t have a record, which is part of the attraction for an electorate bored and disillusioned by years of the same old campaign trail promises, rarely delivered. But he does have a clear and consistent track record of behaviour, and it’s not attractive to many people, especially socially conservative Christians who value faithful marriage and abhor vulgar talk.

There’s a very uncomfortable resignation among many of these voters; people are holding their nose and tolerating an aggressive, insensitive President for four or even eight years in the hope and even expectation of lifelong appointments to the Supreme Court. Even when it means, as it did for some of the parents we heard from, that they struggle to justify to their daughters why they voted for a man they wouldn’t want as a role model for their sons.

It’s a very UnHerd story. Here are a bunch of people – far more than you’d think – who hold some beliefs very deeply, and feel very strongly that their elected leaders don’t understand them. Between them, they were able to buck what they believed to be the liberal secular trend, and turn a nation in a different direction.

How far that will take them, and where they’ll get to, is another story. But the tale of how and why they decided to take the path is worth studying.

All articles in this series are being tagged by “Believers in Trump”.

Coincidentally, he’s recently been on our television screens, reminding us of his history with Britain in the Netflix drama, The Crown. He made an appearance in the second series as pastoral adviser to Queen Elizabeth II, while she ponders the meaning of forgiveness. Her Majesty is depicted meeting him a couple of times, inviting him for a one-to-one shortly after she has was told of her uncle’s former affiliation with Nazis.

That Graham engaged in such a way, with such a public figure, was unusual. At a time when conservative evangelicals, especially those in ‘low’ churches, were averse to taking a role in public life, Graham not only met the British Queen, but also had a ‘bittersweet’ relationship with Nixon – and one which he later came to regret. His links to Nixon were messy and complicated – and very public. It deterred many people of faith from engaging in politics.

It was a while before white US evangelicals would leave their separatist lifestyles to engage again with public policy, and even then it was only through organisations such as Moral Majority[2. Moral Majority was founded by Jerry Falwell whose son, Jerry Falwell Jr, is now a regular in the White House and has the ear of President Trump] which concentrated on a small number of polarising issues.

Graham’s son Franklin has, however, been very vocal in his support for elements of the Trump presidency. While this will have gone down well with many of his humanitarian organisation’s supporters[3. Franklin founded the NGO Samaritan’s Purse, best known for its controversial Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes filled with donated supplies, along with proselytising tracts promoting Christianity], it hasn’t made him popular among more progressive Christians. He has been publicly criticised for his political positions by Jerushah Armfield, his niece and Graham’s granddaughter, who suggested he stick to his charity work.

Graham, though, would certainly not want to be remembered for his political engagement. Quite the opposite. He was widely praised for his humility and would frequently argue that his mission was to point people’s attention to Jesus, and not to himself. He wished fervently that his revival meetings could have been advertised without using his name: “I despise all this attention on myself…I’m not trying to bring people to myself, nor am I trying to interest people in me.”

His dedication to a simple faith, clearly expressed in an invitation to receive the forgiveness available because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, touched the hearts of many. He spoke to millions of everyday folk: people brought their friends, neighbours and colleagues to his tent revivals, city crusades and outdoor arena services.

“In the 2016 election, fully one quarter of all voters, 26% of everyone who cast a ballot, was a white born-again or evangelical Christian and that’s very much on par with what we’ve seen in recent elections…they are a very large, very consequential, very politically powerful constituency in the United States.”

Billy Graham had a huge amount of influence on this, now politically significant, group of people. But the only thing he wanted to do was to point them towards his understanding of the Gospel. Politics didn’t work out for him, and he never saw it as his game.

Graham had a simple unsophisticated message throughout his life, and a few years ago his grandson passed on to the world his grandfather’s simple understanding of the life that is to come:

“Some day you will read or hear that I have died. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will have just changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”

If you’re an avid watcher of French crime drama Spiral, you’ll know that detective Laure Berthaud had an unexpected pregnancy and found that, at 15 weeks, she wasn’t permitted under French law to have an abortion. Before deciding to go ahead with the pregnancy, she considered travelling to another country in Europe for a termination, because the rules are different in each place.

That’s part of the problem, when it comes to trying to establish what people really think about abortion. The variance in term limits from country to country[1.  It’s important to remember there is a rich/poor divide here, and the developing world comes off worst. The World Health Organisation estimate that 25 million unsafe abortions are carried out each year, 97% of which are in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.] means that is difficult to decide what is meant when the legality of abortion is discussed. It effectively means different things in different places – and without a level playing field it’s impossible to compare levels of public support. The debate is further complicated by people voting with their feet: expressing their disapproval of a strict legislative regime by travelling elsewhere.

At a federal level, the Roe vs Wade ruling – 45 years ago this week – was intended to put an end to the debate by making abortion legal throughout the United States.

It didn’t work. Availability of abortion in the US – along with requirements for counselling and ultrasound, and access to public funding – varies from state to state, creating at national level the situation Europeans find themselves in across the continent.

And while the American public is marginally more supportive than not of abortion’s legality, with 57 % in favour, 40 % still think it should be illegal. Data gathered by Pew Research Center shows that many religious groups still feel strongly that it should be mostly illegal. The more evangelical groups, many of whose members voted Trump into office, are more likely to say that abortion should not be legally available.

But members of the Episcopal Church and United Church of Christ would support it, as would 83 % of American Jews, according to the Religious Landscape study of 2014. There may be official doctrines held by religious groups, but that doesn’t mean all believers will subscribe to them. And this disparity was writ large when it came to the 2016 Presidential election: a vacancy on the Supreme Court focused much of the electoral campaigns onto the issue, and it became a deal-breaker for many people.

Millions of people in the UK say they pray, according to new ComRes research for Tearfund which found that half of the people surveyed said they “ever” pray (51%) and one in five (20%) say they pray at least once a month. One of the biggest reasons for praying is thankfulness: 42% of people who said they prayed use their prayers for thanking God.

Gratitude is a common theme in most religions, and sacred texts frequently urge worshippers to give thanks. The Koran, the Bible, and the Hebrew Scriptures, among others, routinely invoke gratitude.

The rationale, though, is often complex. It’s usual for religious people to be encouraged to be grateful as a straightforward recognition of God’s power, as in the New Testament used by Christians. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of the heavenly lights” is stated in James 1:17 (NIV translation).

And the Hebrew Scriptures, shared by Jews and Christians, bring together gratitude and lament in books like the Psalms to demonstrate the presence of both simultaneously. Psalmists often describe their torment, loneliness and persecution and turn towards declarations of gratitude as an act of will, choosing to give praise during the suffering, attributing to God any comfort found during their ordeal. Psalm 30, verse 11, for example:

“You turn my wailing into dancing; you remove my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you for ever.”

But there is also an incentivisation in many religious traditions: directing gratitude towards God will bring greater blessing.

The Muslim writings say “if you are grateful, I will give you more” (Sura 14:7) and the Bible promises (2 Corinthians 9:11) that ‘you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in greater gratitude to God.”

It’s a teaching which can be used to encourage worshippers to give money, out of gratitude. Just last week, US Presidential adviser and TV preacher Paula White, who prayed at Trump’s inauguration, encouraged people to send her their January salary as a ‘firstfruits’ offering, suggesting that good things would come their way this year if they did so.

But the desire to give thanks is not confined to religious people. As our opening quote above demonstrates – it’s a comment by US psychologist Robert Emmons in a piece in The Atlantic about gratitude – it’s possible to express thankfulness without reference to a deity or to an immaterial world.

Psychologists insist that an attitude of gratitude contributes to emotional health in seven “proven” ways and well-being and, in the West at least, where more people are identifying as No Religion than ever before, thankfulness appears to be considered a universal value as much as a religious act of devotion. But it still appears high up lists like the one in Tearfund’s survey. Not everyone has lost the desire to thank an immaterial ‘other’.

Who is doing the praying?

• More women than men: Tearfund’s survey found that women in the UK are more likely to say they ever pray than men (56% versus 46% respectively). This is consistent with global research conducted by Pew Research Center  who found, when comparing rates of daily prayer, that Israel was the only country where men were more likely to say they prayed daily than women were.
• Non-religious people are joining in: According to the ComRes survey commissioned by Tearfund, among people in the UK who have no religious affiliation but say that they have ever prayed, the most common reason for doing so is personal crisis or tragedy (55%). While we don’t know what those people mean by praying, or who they would consider themselves to be praying to, this suggests that there is something which people are doing, perhaps in the middle of the night when everything feels intolerable, to ‘give away’ their pain and grief to someone or something.

In one of 2017’s best efforts to mark the anniversary of the Reformation, Neil MacGregor’s BBC Radio 4 series Living With the Gods, the episode Living With No God  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gg8t7 explored some of these authoritarian approaches to religion.

Throughout the series, MacGregor examines historical moments through the story behind artefacts, and in this short broadcast looks first at a clock in the British Museum which shows the reorganisation of time developed by the French Republic, referencing the beginning of the calendar with Year One while the rest of the world was using 1792. The new regime had rejected Catholicism completely, including its dominance of the way people marked time.

The new world order was about reason and logic. There was no room for the fairytales of faith. As MacGregor notes, the compulsory secularism of the regime was short-lived:

It turned out that, while people had disliked the wealth and power of the church, they had not been unduly concerned by any irrational aspects of its teaching and, above all, they had cherished its role as the place where the community gathered and as the organiser of festivals and rituals which reaffirmed, not so much an abstract idea as the community itself and its continuity across time. It was the practice rather than the beliefs of the church which had shaped society and, without a church, who was going to bury the dead?

Old habits die hard, and our desire to mark special moments has been a common tension when people try to transition away from religious tradition.

My Lithuanian friend Alina, 42, grew up under Communism. Now working in a supermarket and living in a suburb near London’s Heathrow Airport with her husband and three children, she remembers times in her own childhood in Vilnius when she noticed her parents’ generation struggling to embrace a secular approach when marking major life events:

My uncle was a member of the Communist Party, in a pretty high position, and when my grandma passed away many people from the Party attended the funeral. My aunt was not happy because at the beginning of the procession a wooden cross was carried. She was panicking and crying, worried about what the Party officials would think of them. 

It was a big commotion: ‘Who did that? What will happen to us?’ I was only 11 so I don’t know what happened but there was talk of my uncle being demoted because there was no room for God in the regime.

These days, of course, when people – particularly in developed countries where social pressure to conform to a religious tradition may not be so strong – voluntarily decide to reject religious belief, there are lots of ways weddings, funerals and the arrival of new babies can be marked (https://humanism.org.uk/ceremonies/). It’s certainly completely possible to mark life events without a religious tradition. But when secularism is imposed by a totalitarian regime, we seem to be reluctant to embrace it fully, however terrifying the consequences.

As MacGregor finds when looking at the Russian Communist attempts to wrest outer space from the myths of the sages, some of us resist pressure to relinquish faith.

Lithuanian Alina remembers the way belief was mocked:

Believing in God was a joke, like the time when Yuri Gagarin went into space and then the Soviets said ‘he flew around the earth and found there is no God’.

Looking at this moment in more detail, MacGregor finds that even when we are confronted by empirical evidence through scientific study, we seem to hedge our bets and hold out for something immaterial.

He discusses with the philosopher AC Grayling the effect of educational progress on our need for religion. Grayling suggests:

The less that people understand about science – the bigger the gap between our disciplined empirical investigation of the world and our incomprehension of it – the easier it is for people to reach for the sort of faith based explanation. This is because human beings like narrative. They want a beginning, a middle and an end. They want an explanation. They want closure.

But, even having considered Grayling’s argument, MacGregor concludes, based on the historical experiences of France and Russia:

It became clear in both instances that the key question was not the truth or otherwise of the propositions that the churches taught but the social engagement with the practices around them and, in both cases, the replacement festivals and celebrations failed to meet the deeper emotional needs of the community.

I’d go further. I think MacGregor’s notion of a “social, not an intellectual, inheritance” describes in sociological terms the importance of religion but doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the spiritual significance.

Our human need to mark moments and milestones is universal but, for millions of people, faith is more than that. For many, there is a pull towards belief in the supernatural, and to mystical experiences which do not seem to be explicable in scientific terms.

We’ve recently seen a story of just this, elsewhere on the BBC. At the end of November, the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu was interviewed for BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show. Years previously, he had dramatically cut up his clerical collar during the programme as a protest at Mugabe’s leadership of Zimbabwe.

Speaking about his recent intercession for Zimbabwe’s future, Sentamu told Marr that he had lit a candle because, during a sleepless night of prayer, he “almost heard a little voice saying ‘light a candle’ “. He did so, twice.

For many people, there’s something more going on than a need to mark moments or a desire to retain social customs. We know that it’s perfectly possible to find non-religious ways to manage social relationships, family life and celebrations, when secularism is not imposed under duress. It isn’t just about that.

And to reduce our understanding of religious belief to intellectual or social histories, important though these are, denies the depth of connection between millions of people and something immaterial.

Despite the best efforts of some, progress in economic and scientific terms does not appear to lead to secularism as an inevitability. Many people continue to need to reach for something beyond themselves.

Perhaps that’s why we find it so difficult to get rid of God.

Two-thirds of churchgoing white evangelicals have approved of his performance and many of their heavyweight leaders supported him. During 2017, we’ve seen some of those leaders back off despite the existence of his evangelical advisory board which claims to have his ear – a board which endures while other endorsement and advisory bodies disband.

But there is a price to pay.

Early on, Russell Moore questioned Trump’s approach. The Southern Baptist Convention, where he has a leading role, lost members and financial support as a consequence. Author and speaker Jen Hatmaker received death threats from what she calls the ‘Christian machine’, when she declared herself as Never Trump and spoke in favour of refugees, gun control, and same-sex relationships.

That may not be why one of the most widely respected conservative pastors and authors, Tim Keller (pictured above), waited until now to comment, as he did this week in the New Yorker but his timing is interesting.

First, the article itself. It serves as an explainer to help people understand the e-word. The etymology has changed rapidly within his own lifetime and he notes some important distinctions. But his explanation is passionate, and acknowledges criticism from the wider public of this increasingly influential group:

“Evangelical” used to denote people who claimed the moral high ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with “hypocrite”. When I used the word to describe myself in the nineteen-seventies, it meant I was not a fundamentalist. If I use the name today, however, it means to hearers that I am.”

And he pulls no punches:

“People who once called themselves the “Moral Majority” are now seemingly willing to vote for anyone, however immoral, who supports their political positions.”

As Keller notes, the development of the term in public usage is reflected in voter analysis. Exit polls in the US ask voters whether they are ‘a born again or evangelical Christian’. I work for ComRes, which is one of the UK’s leading polling and research agencies, and I can’t imagine the response pollsters would get if they asked that question in Britain…

His article is both a politely feisty take-down of the effect Trump’s regime has had on the reputation of evangelicalism in the US, and an attempt to redeem it by pointing to ‘successful’ evangelical churches which are meeting social needs, and bringing together people from diverse communities. He concludes by suggesting that the word ‘evangelical’ may not be particularly useful in common parlance any more.

But why say this now? He isn’t one to rush into public debate or to engage in highly politicised conversation, preferring to reflect for a while and write a book: Generous Justice outlines his theology of political engagement and social action.

In fact, just a week ago, he was challenged by Christian thought leaders including Rachel Held Evans for tweeting that ‘Jesus didn’t come primarily to solve the economic, political and social problems of our world. He came to forgive our sins.’

People who know him well tell me that it takes a lot for him to write this kind of piece. He is nearly 70 years old, and can look back on a full and fruitful life: establishing and leading large well respected churches, writing books which are read by millions, carving out a space for accessible thoughtful wisdom in an important sector of the church. Surely his legacy is not to be a Never Trump guy, but to pass to future generations the many words and actions of the last seven decades. He is undoubtedly the kind of person who has learnt to pick his battles.

Perhaps that’s the point, though. While Keller, and others like him, might prefer not to be dragged into the polarising debate about Trump, it may be that we’ve reached the point that saying nothing is considered implicit endorsement. It seems that, even in religious communities which don’t always like taking sides, to avoid criticising Trump is perceived to be championing him. And that’s just not tenable any more.

It’s been a while coming, understandably given the scale of the task and the complexity of the audiences with an interest in religion coverage. I know the BBC have taken this very seriously, putting a manager in from a separate department to co-ordinate the review, and making sure that they listened carefully and respectfully to all sorts of people. They also worked hard on their desk research. Well, I would say that: they commissioned ComRes Faith Research Centre, which I lead, to supply a summary of publicly available data about religious identity, belief and practice which, along with other inputs, helped inform their review. But regardless of who supplied the data, they’ve written their report carefully, using evidence wherever possible to support their findings.

There will be plenty of people who baulk at some of the recommendations. Increasing the size and seniority of the Religious Affairs team will present difficult decisions about resourcing. Which teams will lose out so that religion can have a bigger budget? Because they will certainly need one. Making promises to increase capacity inevitably requires a financial commitment: to headcount, travel and technology. If they are to promote Martin Bashir from Religious Affairs Correspondent to Editor (which is the widely held assumption), he will have a seat at the editorial table and an important voice in strategic decisions about content and reporting. But he will also need resources to deliver an ambitious brief.

And the BBC’s commitment to ‘raise their game’ will worry people who look at some of the worship output as being old-fashioned and aimed at an elderly audience. But their own research (which my team weren’t involved with) indicated that younger and non-white audiences are keen to see religion and belief represented in BBC content and that they would be interested in learning more.

This very much confirms quantitative survey work ComRes led earlier this year which found that younger adults are more likely than older ones to say that understanding religion is important to understanding the world.

And with global projections suggesting that more people around the world are likely to identify with a religion in future, meeting this need for awareness of the religious context beyond our shores, as well as its impact here, is surely an important element of the BBC’s public service remit.

In the review document, the BBC takes the opportunity to celebrate some of its recent achievements and points to highly popular programming including The Boy With The Topknot and A World Without Downs Syndrome. Choosing these as their flagship case-studies indicates an interesting direction. Rather than producing content which is instructive or assumes involvement in a religious tradition, these programmes hardly mentioned religion at all but presented some of the big themes of life and showed how a family navigated them. Religious practice was in the background, but not the star of the show. Beliefs informed people’s behaviour quietly, through habits and relationships established over many years.

It’s a helpful recognition that this is in fact the way many of us live. We find ways to make sense of the world and life’s grand themes – love, death, fear, grief, belonging, joy, compassion – which draw on beliefs and personal rituals which may or may not be explicitly recognised, and which often don’t always make much sense outside of our own family.

If the BBC can find ways to show the normality of millions of people’s daily lives and the ways we navigate those important moments, recognising but not tub-thumping about the beliefs and traditions which many of us hold dear, they will fulfil a crucial role in helping us understand a messy and complicated world.

Mark Friend, the BBC manager who has led the process, is a good listener. I’m one of the people he listened to, and I know he successfully drew parts of the BBC into the conversation who hadn’t previously given much thought to the beliefs of the British public. His – and the collegiate team he led to oversee the process – findings will be announced today, and there are plenty of people with skin in the game who are waiting to hear whether their ask has been delivered.

Friend’s work has been received by the BBC Director-General Lord Hall, who is expected to make announcements today about staffing, range of religious voices represented (religion is by no means the only issue disproportionately represented by middle aged white men, but the BBC and other media outlets really need to widen their range of religious contacts for comment), and placement of religion content across programming.

Thought for the Day has already taken a beating this morning on the Today programme and will undoubtedly come in for more scrutiny. It’s a hardy perennial of the media world. Masquerading as a discussion about the place of religion in public life, it’s as much a gripe about editorial control. It must be very frustrating to produce the nation’s flagship news programme and have to give away a prime time slot to a production team in a completely different department, based in a city three hours away from the programme studio.

More will follow during the day, as the detail is announced, but don’t let’s forget that – despite the many justifiable criticisms of the BBC’s approach to religion and belief – the BBC is the most comprehensive source of religion news in the UK and has been for many years. I’ve produced a number of national conferences about religion and media, and have always found that most of the mainstream journalists covering faith and belief are based in or commissioned by the BBC. It’s an event producer’s nightmare; the lineup is always too BBC-heavy because, not only are the religion journalists all working for the BBC, their public service ethos means they’re willing and available to leave the studio and come to talk to a room full of people interested in learning from them and in challenging them to raise their game.

There will be plenty of BBC-bashing today. But they are the best in the business. Other media outlets could learn a lot from them.

I wrote last year about the traumas many of them had already experienced before they arrived. Now, new research from US-based Pew Research Center looks ahead to the implications of this sudden mass migration.   What will the religious landscape of European countries look like in thirty years’ time, when the newly arrived people have settled and their children and grandchildren are part of our communities?

First, the caveats:

Pew are very clear that their research offers projections, and not predictions. Demographic forecasting is an art as well as a science, but it’s important to note that Pew had already published religious demography projections and then felt the need to change them after the mass migration of 2015. The refugee crisis changed the picture significantly.

The data they published this week drew from population statistics from September 2016, and extrapolated using assumptions about age and family size. Their analysis also makes some important points about the asylum process, and Pew have assumed that nearly a million Muslims who arrived in Europe in the last couple of years will not have their application for asylum approved, on the basis of past approval rates.

There will be more Muslims

Pew found that Muslims currently living in Europe are generally slightly younger than the average host populations – by 13 years, on average – and that they usually have one more child per family. We know that religious identity is transmitted primarily from parent to child which, along with other factors, means that it is reasonable to assume that there will be higher proportions of Muslims in most European countries by 2050. This is particularly likely in countries with younger Muslim populations and the largest families, including Italy, France and Belgium.

Pew have calculated three scenarios, based on high, medium and zero migration from this point. Even if there were no more migration into Europe at all, the Muslim population would rise from 4.9% (as it is now) to 7.4% by 2050, according to Pew. Under the ‘medium’ scenario, which assumes all refugee arrivals would stop but that immigration based on other reasons would continue, Pew suggest that Muslims could form 11.2% of the European population by 2050. And in the ‘high’ scenario, which allows for increased refugee arrivals, we might see 14% of Europe’s population identifying as Muslim by 2050.

Will there be more Christians?

It’s important to note that almost half (47%) of the people who arrived recently in Europe are not Muslims, and that Christians are the next largest religious group. Usually, religious people who arrive in a Western country from elsewhere are more highly observant than the communities in which they settle. Ten years ago,  Catholic churches in Britain were noticing an increase in Polish worshippers. It’s possible that this may be reflected in our religious landscape over the next generation.

Settling in

In Western countries, while first and second generation diaspora are often highly religious, it’s not unusual to find that by the third and fourth generation, people have settled in to their host community so much that they become less highly observant. Britain’s population currently identifies more as No Religion (53%) than all other religious affiliations combined, and the implications of assimilation are commonly discussed by faith leaders across many traditions – Nigerian church leaders, Pakistani imams, etc. If Pew’s ‘zero migration’ scenario holds true, then it’s possible that we will eventually settle back to a broadly secular culture, with some religious practice among significant minorities.

Rubbing along together

In the meantime, there are clear challenges for European countries. In our work with employers who commission us for research and consultancy on faith in the workplace, we regularly hear stories of Muslims struggling to be accepted in the workforce. Muslim women tell of taking their headscarf off before interview, in case the recruiter is put off, or of being asked questions which assume they aren’t free to make their own decisions: “are you SURE you’re able to travel?”And Muslim men who work as drivers – delivering take-aways, or driving a bus – are often subject to verbal abuse, and worse. One global retailer recently called me for advice about a situation in Belgium, where the narrative about radicalisation is strong, and some people travel onwards to Syria. They had found that if they put someone on the checkout who looked as though they were Muslim, customers would yell at them or refuse to be served by them.

There are labour market challenges to face, among others, whichever of Pew’s scenarios come to pass, or even if none of them do. Muslims are here, and they are here to stay.

Or are we?

A ComRes poll commissioned by the UK’s Chief Rabbi for ShabbatUK found that 52% of Brits say they sit down with family for a meal every day. A further 24% eat with loved ones at least once a week. Those meals, though, aren’t always the peaceful moments we imagine. Most of us (61%) have the television turned on or will answer the phone if it rings mid-meal.

And yet quality time is something we worry about. In the US, 56% of working mothers and 50% of working dads say they find it difficult to find the right balance. The UK Chief Rabbi’s research found that nearly three in five people wish they could spend more time with loved ones without being interrupted by technology.

Most religions, of course, have long traditions of reflection and rest; rhythms that benefit those around us as much as ourselves. There’s a Hadith – a teaching in the Muslim tradition – that talks about slowing down as a tool in anger management: If anyone of you becomes angry and is standing, let him sit down so his anger will go away; if it does not go away, let him lie down.

Taking a break can be an opportunity to put daily routines into an eternal perspective.

“Our daily prayers are part of pausing,” says Farah Elahi, whose Runnymede Trust report on Islamophobia was published last week. “We wash our hands before praying and think about what our hands have been doing that day; we wash our mouths and think about the words we have spoken. It helps us to go into prayer being mindful of the moment we are in and the way we have been treating people.”

It’s an account of religious practice that isn’t often heard. From the outside, rituals of prayer and holy days can appear restrictive and oppressive. “If England has not been invaded since 1066, it is because foreigners dread having to spend a Sunday there,” or so a French novel from the 1950s tells it.

But times change. In the US, Sunday is by far the most likely day for people to spend in religious activities; people are even more likely to spend the time with pets or grooming themselves. In Britain, a long and painful process of introducing Sunday trading laws– shops in England and Wales had been flouting the prohibition for years, while Scotland had no restrictions – resulted in limited opening hours on the Sabbath.  And online, Sunday is the busiest fashion shopping day.

Practising a holy day of rest seems to work best for people who customise tradition to express their deeply held values. “We do the Friday dinner every week,” says Olivia Marks-Woldman, who runs the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. “We make the challah bread ourselves, which is fun. Blessing our children, saying Shabbat Shalom, it’s an important moment for us. My children feel blessed by me every week.”

“It’s about not getting swept up in life,” says Runnymede’s Elahi. It’s about turning down the television, and it’s about letting the phone ring instead of answering it. “Let’s not make this life more important than the next one.”

A recent ComRes poll, commissioned by journalist Ruth Gledhill, of adults in Britain investigating how they make difficult decisions found that people were far more likely to say they would consult with family and friends (77%) than any other source. Prayer and social media returned relatively low responses (6% and 4% respectively). But their order was reversed among respondents aged under 35. Younger adults were twice as likely to say that they would use social media (8%) than to pray (4%) when facing a difficult decision.

It’s tempting to interpret the data to mean that younger generations are replacing religious practice with social media, but that understanding assumes the two activities are in competition. “There is a lot of information on social media in terms of ‘guidance’ which might be more accessible than an imam’, says Coventry University sociologist Dr Serena Hussain, arguing that social media can be a mode of accessing religious teaching. “There are some trusted scholars online who are very mainstream, and that makes it easy to get guidance without having to disclose that you’re having a particular problem.”

Catholic Home Mission Officer Teresa Carvalho confirms the privacy point:

“Online, you can choose what people see and know about you, but if you’re praying, whoever you’re praying to, there’s probably a sense that they know more about you than you’re telling them.”

Social media isn’t a direct replacement for devotions but, for people who’ve been around online technology all of their lives, it’s a new way to do old things – connect with like-minded people, seek guidance – with the added bonus of being able to control what people know about you.

And religious organisations have been quick to harness the power of having an online presence. Apps can now help you read the Bible in a year, find a women-friendly mosque, or date a Jew. Back in 2008, Durham Cathedral would ask people to leave if they were fiddling with their phones during services. Now, their nearby university is a world-leading research centre in digital theology.

But young adults who are pursuing a formal religion – whether online or in their local community – are in the minority. The most recent British Social Attitudes data shows that 71% of 18-24 year olds identify as practicing No Religion, which Humanists UK interpret as a compelling indication of religion’s lack of appeal.

Millennials seem to be far less likely to be nominally religious than previous generations, opting not to tick a box on a survey to affiliate with a religious identity out of habit or heritage in the same way people might previously have identified as Church of England or Church of Scotland. It’s common for ComRes qualitative research participants to say something like: I don’t know what I am really. I was brought up Catholic but don’t really bother with it now. Put me down as None. They appear to be reluctant to identify with a religion out of a sense of duty.

But perhaps this suggests that, these days, people who do identify with a religion often have a reason for doing so. Perhaps this will lead to a smaller but more devout religious population in years to come.

Religion, that is.

There’s been huge excitement about Bieber’s involvement with the Australian-founded charismatic Hillsong Church – the church even had to issue a denial to clarify that they hadn’t pressured him to cancel recent tour dates. The Sun reports:

“Justin Bieber takes his girlfriends there to get the Pastor’s approval – including Paola Paulin. His ex-girlfriend’s Selena Gomez and Hailey Baldin have also attended services, while stars such High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens, Hailee Steinfeld, Nick Jonas.”

At the same time that the Canadian pop star has been recommitting himself to the faith of his upbringing there’s been a significant lawyering up from the Scientologists after Leah Remini (of the US comedy series, King of Queens) didn’t just exit the church after 30 years of membership but put together audience-rousing documentaries explaining why she had departed. The Church has even set up a series of websites to undermine the credentials of other former Scientologists featured in Remini’s “Scientology and the Aftermath”.

It’s no secret that a celebrity endorsement helps promote a brand and religious groups can be as excitable about the stardust as anyone else. And quite understandably. Taking just one possible measure of their ability to spread religious (or other) messages, look at Twitter. Justin Bieber has 102 million followers. That’s 62 million more than Donald Trump and 88 million more than the Pope! Quite useful if you believe that your mission is to “go everywhere in the world and tell the Good News to everyone”.

Almost no-one is in the same social media league as the 23 year-old singer and songwriter but as someone who worked in corporate communications for Christian charities for nine years, I well remember the reaction every time someone off the telly outed themselves as a Christian. In one corner a colleague would call for urgency “before the charity down the road snaps them up”. Wiser sages would urge caution – in case, for example, anything came to light about the public figure’s background that might complicate the reputation of any charity willing to be associated with them. And – at an extreme – a cause (fairly or unfairly) risks the “Remini treatment” if celebrities feel used in any way. Even if the charity-celebrity relationship is healthy, the spotlight generated by an association is not a comfortable place for some religious leaders. Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, for example, asks difficult questions about Justin Bieber’s pastor at Hillsong and his approach to confidentiality, to gay people and to celebration of ‘hot wives’.

Famous believers

Religion and fame is often a strange combination in the West, and we don’t always know what to do with a disclosure of belief, especially when a celebrity converts. A fundamental lack of religious literacy means many journalists write about religious groups as though they’re some sort of sideshow. Facing such reporting, Madonna used a Harper’s Bazaar interview to counter some of the claims made about her practice of Kabbalah – claiming that her efforts to become a better person “made people nervous”.

Some of the most thoughtful analysis about a high profile person’s belief often comes from commentators who aren’t afraid to write themselves and their own religious background into the story, and who spend some time getting to know people involved in the faith community. Check out the poignant account of Hillsong by Jewish NYC mum Taffy Brodessa-Akner and atheist Michael Marsden’s experience of the Alpha course, following Sam Fox and Geri Halliwell’s participation in what is an introduction to the Christian faith that occurs during ten weekly sessions.

Raising the issues

Because celebrities have access to platforms that the rest of us don’t have, they can be formidable educators about religion. British comic and actor Stephen Fry, for example, provoked public debate about blasphemy laws when he criticised the notion of a loving God. Sadly, despite this being the 21st century with greater levels of education than ever before, we need to be reassured by Sir Mo Farah and others that not all Muslims are out to kill us. And Sir Mo spoke out against the US President’s executive order on immigration earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Mayim Bialik (of Blossom and Big Bang Theory) describes herself as “socially conservative” and uses her YouTube channel to discuss modesty and women’s empowerment:

Without saying a word, she demonstrated the normality of her driving a car to the leader of a country where women were banned from driving. She just got on and did it.

Vox described it as a ‘hazing’  and HuffPost called her a ‘badass’. We Brits don’t tend to think of the Queen in quite those terms, but we’re bursting with pride at her quiet demonstration of the contrast between the way we do things and the way that Saudi’s rulers do.

Saudi Arabia’s driving ban had been attributed to the teachings of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi form of Islam but a couple of weeks ago the ban was lifted.

Women are now allowed to drive, although they remain highly restricted, both in travel and other freedoms.

The jury’s out as to whether this change is more religious, political or cultural, and of course the three factors often affect each other. The Dalai Lama once told the New York Times: “I’ve gained an awareness of the sensitivity of women’s issues; even in the 1960s and 1970s, I didn’t have much knowledge of this problem.”  Religious leaders are products of their time.

It might all feel like tiny progress to those who would like to see much more parity of opportunity for women and men around the world – not least because Saudi women drivers will still be heavily restricted and require permission from a male guardian. But this step sends a signal: to Western audiences and also to Pakistan and other areas where Saudi-influenced Wahhabism has a presence. Communities in Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh look to Saudi Arabia for their moral guidance as well as their funding, and this decision will be noted there.

Women and religion

Data often suggests that women are more religious than men and more likely to pray often, although the indicators used to identify religiosity necessarily vary between religions, based on their traditions. Christian women are more likely to attend church than men are, but Muslim women are more likely to pray at home than publicly because attendance at mosque is more usually required of men than women.

Feminism and religion

There’s far more to say on women’s opportunities, freedoms and religious roles than there is room for here, but Kristin Aune’s helpful summary of the relationship between secular feminism and religion notes a three-stage journey from feminism versus religion with adversarial debates about power structures and the role of the state, through feminists turn to spirituality where female-centred spiritualities gained support, to religious feminists and the increasing voice of gender debates in some formal religions. Linda Woodhead notes that the changing role of women in the workforce occurs simultaneously with female disaffiliation from some formal religions.

Further reading

Manual al-Sharif was arrested and jailed for driving in Saudi Arabia.

Karen Armstrong explores Wahhabism, fundamentalism and the terrorism of so-called IS.

The news about the current crisis of violence and displacement seemed to come out of nowhere, when it burst onto our TV screens in August. But if you follow international – and particularly humanitarian – news, you had been hearing about it for weeks before, when the Myamnar regime threatened to refuse entry to UN investigators probing Rohingya abuses.  Last year, we saw similar violence and as many as 8,000 Rohingya were believed to be stranded at sea during 2015.

The religious and ethnic tensions go back a long way, and Burma (or Myanmar, as it’s often called by humanitarian organisations) has long been a difficult place for Muslims to live. The Rohingya people are famously homeless, being acknowledged neither by Burma or Bangladesh, and the Buddhist nation refuses to acknowledge their ethnicity in official tallies.  Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had headed the Rakhine Advisory Commission, which published a 63-page report noting that the Rohingya make up the world’s largest single stateless community.

We’re now seeing widespread criticism of Aung San Suu Kiu’s leadership, despite her having previously been lauded as a human rights champion, and even the former peace campaigner has been said to be disparaging about Muslims, allegedly grumbling last year that the BBC chose to send Mishal Husain to interview her about ethnic and religious tensions: ‘No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim’.

This explainer from the New Yorker’s Hannah Beech outlines the rocky road of Aung San Suu Kyi’s rise to, and fall from, public acclaim.

To spot emerging humanitarian stories, sign up to news bulletins like DAWNS Digest, subscribe to Reuters World emails, and take note of news coming from NGOs like Human Rights Watch or UN agencies like UNHCR.

And follow writers like UnHerd’s Ben Rogers for religious freedom news from Asia, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller for some of the best coverage of security issues (I recommend his 2015 analysis of Boko Haram , exploring the notion of a global grand caliphate), Ruth Maclean for Africa updates, especially relating to religion, AFP’s Jerome Taylor for pics and stories from South East Asia, and the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville for excellent Middle East commentary.

Trump and the (white) evangelicals

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Christians around the world, and in the US itself, about the strong links between Trump and some conservative evangelical leaders. In voting for him, they prioritised the pro-life issue over respect for women and arguably inspired Trump to issue executive orders on immigration which were perceived by many to be anti-Muslim. The link has become so entrenched that when Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy wing, criticised Trump for having ‘a track record that is unbelievably out of step with what gospel Christians believe’ his comments brought threatened withdrawal of SBC funding from 100 member churches.

Counterintuitive though this support may seem to those us outside the US, there’s a story spanning four or more decades behind it. Still within living memory are the times that US evangelicals interpreted Bible verses relating to being  ‘set apart’ to mean living in a much more separatist way than they do now, and engaging with politics was seen as ‘worldly’. It wasn’t until 1979 that Jerry Falwell founded Moral Majority, to mobilise evangelicals to campaign against the social and lifestyle changes which threatened their way of life, and it’s his son Jerry Falwell Jr who is often seen at Trump’s side. Within those two generations of the Falwell family, evangelical churches have moved from the shadows to being described as ‘the new super PACs’.

And there’s an emerging theology which validates this President, moving away from endorsing him on specific issues (with the exception of the travel ban and the Charlottesville violence,  which produced slight wobbles but also even louder support from Jerry Falwell Jr) towards an overall lauding of Trump as divinely appointed. The notion that he could be ‘used by God’ despite his well-known moral failings draws on Biblical parallels from the book of Daniel, where the enemy King Nebuchadnezzar inadvertently brings about God’s purposes and is described by God as ‘my servant’(Jeremiah 25:9, if you want to look it up). The new Christian Nationalism school of thought goes on to declare that God will protect the USA because Trump is President.

Read more about this narrative in a Twitter thread by Jack Jenkins.

It was, of course, the Reformation.

Presenting a fundamental challenge to the core doctrines of the Church, Luther, Zwingli and others developed a theology which did not require ‘good works’ in order to receive salvation, but relied solely on faith in God. This turned out to be more than soteriological geekery, because it called into question many of the practices which had become common in religious life and which were seen as corrupt: paying for indulgences (fees paid to a priest in return for penance), for example.

And it ended up shifting political power bases. In England, Henry VIII saw an opportunity to use this religious and cultural shift to his advantage, adopting the new Protestant regime as the established church so that he could divorce and remarry. Quite a lot, as it turns out.

That’s the 90-second version, anyway. But of course the implications were far-reaching, and wars of religion between the Catholics (as the previously established church became known) and the newly formed Protestants ensued, followed by centuries of religious schism.

But is that over now?

The Pew Research Center recently surveyed people in Western Europe and the USA and found that the historical gap in theological position and social acceptance has narrowed dramatically. Not only are our beliefs becoming more similar these days – 46% of US Protestants say that faith in God and good works are needed to get into heaven, which has historically been the Catholic position – but our friendships and families are more accepting now. In Germany, where much of this all began, 98% of Protestants say they would accept Catholics as members of their family, 97% of Catholics say the same about Protestants.

So, if we see our religious landscape shifting over time, what might happen in the future?

‘None of the above’

The rise of the number of people in many developed nations ticking the No Religion category might suggest, as some argue, that religion will hold no value in the future of public life. Or, while it might indicate that people are not finding (or perhaps even looking for) a home in a formal religion, it could mean that people are choosing other ways to find spiritual comfort. We discussed this and other lessons from recent religion polling on this week’s Beyond Belief on BBC Radio 4. But it’s also worth noting that Pew Research projects that the ‘No Religion’ affiliations will decline as a share of the world’s population.

Family ties

While, in developed countries like Britain, the pull away from religious affiliation is stronger than the pull towards it, childhood is consistently found to be the optimum time for faith formation. Our recent ComRes research for the Church of England and HOPE Together found that people who identified as Christian in adulthood consistently attributed ‘becoming a Christian’ to early childhood. The habits of parents and carers today will directly influence the religious landscape of the next generation.

Immigration

Research in developed nations fairly consistently finds that many people who arrive legally from other countries bring religious observance with them. Studies in the US find that Christian immigrants are more Catholic, more Orthodox, and less Protestant than American Christians, and that those immigrants who are Protestant are more likely to be evangelical. In Britain, we can see from British Social Attitudes data that 81% of Hindus and 96% of Sikhs identify as being of Indian origin. Without immigration, the religious landscape in each of these countries might be more homogenous.

More Muslims

Global projections indicate that, broadly, by 2050 there will be around the same number of Muslims and Christians in the world (there are currently more Christians), which might be related to family size although there are competing arguments on this (see Hans Rosling’s TED talk below).

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FURTHER READING

Measuring religious affiliation

For more on the fallout of the Reformation in England see Dr Clive Field, who specialises in studying the religious history of Britain. In this paper about religious affiliation and record-keeping he notes that ‘Uniformity legislation was introduced to enforce adherence to the Church of England, including compulsory attendance at parish churches, a provision which – amazingly – was on the statute books for almost the entire period 1552–1969.’

Hans Rosling on birth rates

In a spectacular take-down of the prevailing wisdom that religion is a primary determinant of family size, data guru Rosling correlates birth rate data with income levels and religious affiliation from 1960 to 2010 and draws some striking conclusions about education, poverty and fecundity.

Notable exception: Northern Ireland

The legacy of sectarian conflict lives on in Northern Ireland in a way which is arguably unique in Western Europe. While immense progress has been made, peace remains fragile and memories are long. Much has been written on this, and a good starting point is the work of academics Professor John Brewer and Dr Gladys Ganiel, both of Queens University Belfast.

Or, in Barrett’s case, stymie her progress before she had even reached public office. Earlier this month, Senator Feinstein expressed concern in a hearing that federal appellate-court nominee Barrett may not be able to uphold Supreme Court precedent relating to Roe vs Wade because ‘the dogma lives loudly within you’.

Certainly, Farron directly attributed his resignation as leader of the UK’s Liberal Democrats to feeling as though he was ‘the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in’. Critics of his explanation have, however, suggested his failure to capture more of the 48% of voters who supported  ‘Remain’ in the EU referendum and therefore delivered a smaller increase in Lib Dem MPs at the 2017 General Election than some of his colleagues had hoped, were also a factor.

It was no secret that Farron was a Christian. While he longer wore an Ichthus (fish) symbol in his lapel – a sign of belief popular with evangelicals, in particular – as he did during his early years in parliament, he spoke passionately at various events about the ways his faith informed his values and politics. But when it came to answering questions about some of his personal beliefs, he struggled. Under sustained questioning, with the same questions being repeated by the same interviewer in a single encounter but also by multiple journalists, it became clear that backing his party’s liberal policy positions on abortion and gay rights was not enough. Interviewers wanted to know his private views, too. ‘Did he, in particular, think homosexuality was a sin?’ The question he was originally asked about his policy on certain issues quickly turned to his religious belief and became a freedom of conscience issue.

Fringe events at this week’s Lib Dem conference will reference the dilemma Farron expressed in his resignation – ‘we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society’. I’m speaking at one of them, which will consider whether there is room for faith in liberalism. Given the current level of Lib Dem representation in the House of Commons, perhaps it’s more salient to consider how voters respond to politicians’ views on these issues.

What do voters think?

To test public response to some of the underlying questions of freedom of expression, we asked 1,001 adults in Britain which of these statements came closest to their own view:

Despite including the word ‘sin’ – not often used in everyday language, with its punitive implications of condemnation – two thirds of the public supported the freedom of politicians to express their views. Even on an issue which has shifted as far in public acceptance as same-sex relationships and despite 59% of people from religions other than Christianity considering such relationships to be wrong[1.  59% of adults in Britain who identify with religions other than Christianity say they consider same-sex relationships to be always, mostly or sometimes wrong].

Thought police

We then went on to test a hypothesis which had emerged during the Farron saga: that if you believe something privately, you’re keeping a dirty secret, and only with full disclosure of all thoughts and feelings can you be considered transparent enough to hold office.

Again, we chose the same issue, to test public opinion, and asked the same respondents which of these statements came closest to their own view:

The reason – apart from Farron’s reluctance to answer the question – that this point is important is because Farron’s voting record demonstrates that he consistently voted for the rights and freedoms of people to do things which he personally did not believe were morally virtuous.

Voters appear to be OK with it. Perhaps it really is the voting records of politicians which are most important, after all.

Interesting takes…

Keep an eye on these commentators’ writing and social media content, as helpful context to some of these debates:

Michael Wear @MichaelRWear

Former faith adviser in the Obama White House, Wear comments knowledgeably and graciously on the tensions between US liberalism and some religious doctrines.

Stonewall @stonewalluk

Having made a huge contribution to workplace inclusion for LGBT people and been at the forefront of major social developments in the UK, Stonewall know more than most about some of these challenges. Director Ruth Hunt is always quick to point out the areas of connection between religion and LGBT equality, calling out commentators who suggest they are completely incompatible.

Theos @theosthinktank

The team at public theology thinktank Theos, and particularly directors Elizabeth Oldfield and Nick Spencer, think about this stuff all the time. Here is Nick’s analysis of Farron’s modus vivendi liberalism, for example

But it might be a blip.

It’s the first time the figure has been this high, although we’ve seen broadly half and half for the last few years. In 2009, the figure hit 51% but then from 2010 to 2015 we saw the figure settle between 46% and 50%, leading NatCen’s own analysis only a year ago to suggest that religious decline had halted.

Here are the No Religion figures for the last six years:

2010 – 50.3%
2011 – 46.1%
2012 – 47.7%
2013 – 50.6%
2014 – 49.2%
2015 – 48.6%

The plateau now appears to be over, but it’s too early to tell if it’s the start of a clear trend or a one-off.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of existing trends this data appears to confirm.

We describe ourselves differently now

In our qualitative work at ComRes, we often find that people today don’t default to a religious identity as they might have done a few years ago. It used to be that people in England, for example, would identify as Church of England without much deliberation. North of the border it would be Church of Scotland and that would be as much (and possibly more?) from national identity as religious conviction.

Now, however, Brits appear less likely to identify with religion as a cultural or inherited norm. It’s not unusual for people to say something like ‘Well I was born Catholic, but I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. Put me down as…’ and then they might choose Christian or No Religion.

Generation gap – 72% of adults aged 18-24 do not identify with a religion

Also last week, UnHerd published ComRes data showing that, while 74% of those aged over 65 thought there should be MORE Christianity in the nation, 61% of 18-24s thought there should be LESS. Consistent with other surveys, this poll showed that attitudes to political and social issues, including religion, are polarised by age groups.

Similarly, when launching ComRes’ Faith Research Centre, our polling found that 31% of 18-24s in Britain think that this is a Christian country compared to 74% of those aged 65+.

Further reading – what are people saying about it?

• In an article for The Daily Telegraph – “Traditional religion may be on the wane, but spirituality remains part of the human condition” – Rabbi Lord Sacks argued that our new ways of defining ourselves do not necessarily represent a completely secular approach, noting that many young adults pursue their own versions of spirituality. And we recently found that 21% of adults in Britain who do not identify with a religion do still believe in life after death. Just as, according to my Jewish friends, “where you find two Jews, there will be at least three opinions”, there is not one uniform way to pursue a life away from formal religion either. On the other hand, when Andrew Copson of Humanists UK and I discussed the findings on Sky News this week, Andrew was very clear that this represents a definite and intentional shift away from religious identity and that this should be reflected in how the nation publicly funds services like schools, and in our national governance. His points about faith schools are made here.
• Danny Finkelstein suggested in The Times that religion no longer holds us together as a nation and wondered what might fill the vacuum. Would, he speculated, our collective moral code and motivations for political engagement instead be driven by other ideologies: “Extreme nationalism, for instance, might provide an alternative sense of belonging for many. It has been persuasively argued that fascism emerged as an alternative religion. And Bolshevism certainly had similarities.”
• The Rev’d Giles Fraser in The Guardian outlines some of the implications of disestablishment. Never one to follow a party line if he doesn’t want to, this Anglican priest at first seems to be biting the hand that feeds him, until his argument develops into a radical call for loosening ties between church and state in order to free Christians to express unapologetically their worship of Jesus and their revolutionary message of justice.

Pope Francis has certainly made his mark in the almost five years since his election. From kissing disfigured people and issuing (fairly) radical edicts about climate change, poverty and judgmentalism to being sent a dubia[1. From The Tablet of June this year: “The four “dubia” cardinals have stepped up the pressure on the Pope by publicising a letter they sent to Francis requesting a private audience to discuss their concerns about moves to allow divorced and remarried couples to receive communion contained in his apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia.””.]  – a list of questions of clarification relating to his papal teachings – by four cardinals, he’s pushed some boundaries in the Catholic church. Widely acclaimed as (by which I mean lots and lots of my Catholic friends say) the most authoritative and compelling biography of his life, Paul Vallely describes the mood music and the internal politics which define this Pope’s achievements and controversies to date. This review notes the author’s concern about the Pope’s apparent slowness to tackle the horrific child abuse crisis. Given Vallely’s own diligence in reporting carefully the ramifications of the global abuse scandal and his continued calls for the Pope to face this challenge, it’s hardly surprising that this biography doesn’t let the Pope off the hook. It scrutinises as much as celebrates, and names some uncomfortable truths in the Catholic church.

Der Spiegel on the Middle East’s humanitarian crisis

Perhaps because there has been a Yazidi community in Germany since the 1990s, when conflict and religious persecution caused mass displacement from Iraq and the surrounding region, Der Spiegel has consistently provided high-quality coverage since the summer of 2014 about the effect of Da’esh on religious communities.

In this piece on the recent order by the Iraqi Prime Minister to invade IS hometown Tal Afar, we learn about the demise of the IS ‘caliphate’ and the downfall of its leadership –  between 80% and 90% of whom are now dead. I went to northern Iraq in August 2014 to interview people as they fled Mosul and Mt Sinjar, and very much recognise these stories of vandalised places of worship, forced conversion and brutal attacks.  A priest, who returns to Qaraqosh to find Viagra and underwear in his former bedroom and concludes that women were raped there, asks

“Should the city be burned down before it is rebuilt, to get rid of the pain? Or would it be better to turn it into a museum?”

My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947

From the BBC – With Episodes One and Two available on the iPlayer for UK residents who pay a licence fee.

Fascinating and deeply moving account of four British people who retrace their grandparents’ steps by visiting the sites in India where their families had experienced the consequences of violence during Partition in 1947. Religion is very present – it’s the cultural identifier of three of the four – with places of worship, forms of greeting and the administering of blessings very naturally incorporated into the conversations. I was struck by how many surprises people uncovered. These are all people who are closely connected with their families, and yet important parts of their history had not been shared with them by their grandparents. One man retraces his grandfather’s long and difficult train journey towards refuge and learns that his grandfather’s sister died on a station platform. Awoman meets a childhood friend of her grandfather and learns of their painful secret journey through the night to find freedom. When one woman finds out about the attack on her grandfather’s community by people bearing axes during which women (probably including her grandfather’s wife) were abducted and raped, she is distraught and asks the elderly man who has told her the news for a blessing. His embrace and prayer over her is a powerful moment of grief. The decisions of the grandparents to leave some memories behind while passing on others have shaped the religious and cultural heritage of their descendants.

Australia: same-sex marriage vs religious freedom?

The debate about marriage legislation in Australia is pitched by some people as an argument about religious freedom. Commentators and campaigners draw on precedents set by countries which have already legalised same-sex marriage, and this piece argues that it will be difficult to arbitrate on conflicting freedoms without a bill of rights which names freedom of religion and belief, in line with international agreements. This argument takes the notion of precedent in a different direction, arguing that if bakers were allowed to refuse to bake for a wedding between two people of the same sex, then potentially businesses could also refuse to supply goods and services for weddings between people who have been divorced or interfaith marriages.

Data cited here shows unmistakeable increase in support between 2005 and 2015 for same-sex couples to have the same rights as different-sex couples, and notes that 77% of ‘not religious’ people support equal rights for same-sex couples while only 47% of religious people do. It’s not clear from the article what ‘not religious’ means: in some surveys this might refer to people who do not identify as belonging to any religion while in others it might indicate levels of practice – attendance at religious services, for example. Either way, if almost half of religious people support equal rights for same-sex couples (which is not, of course, the exact question that a proposed plebiscite about same-sex marriage would be asking) this does not demonstrate universal opposition from people of faith.

[UnHerd columnist Ian Birrell recently wrote that – while battles are still being fought – global progress on gay rights continues to accelerate with some developing nations more ‘progressive’ in their legislative records than many ‘advanced’ nations, such as Australia].

Greenleaf

What’s not to love about this TV drama? Glamour, intrigue, betrayal and forbidden love: all the usual ingredients for a binge-watch. But this one is produced by Oprah Winfrey and, of all the settings she could have chosen to demonstrate dysfunctional families and local tensions, she chose to place it in a church. A big black megachurch in Memphis, at that. The dialogue – of which there is a great deal – is full of convincing references to faith. A little too many, according to this review, which criticises ‘exposition by forklift’.

The production team claim that it’s ‘neither a soap nor a sermon’ but that it takes faith seriously. It’s certainly very true to the detail of many services in such churches, down to the forms of words used to introduce the Bible reading or to call people forward for prayer. And episode 1 includes a heated dinner-table debate about religious identity and belief, which is a sociological study in itself, as well as a handy device to introduce the budding hostility between two of the lead characters.

If you subscribe to Netflix, the link is here.

Churches… are… closing. Or, where they are determined not to close but can’t sustain a sizeable congregation, they are grouped together with others and served by one clergy member across three or four churches – especially in rural areas where beautiful 12th century church buildings are sometimes used primarily for weddings with perhaps a monthly service to keep things ticking over.

That’s the story we often hear. But there are other stories too. The recently retired Bishop of London Richard Chartres was in post for more than 20 years (1995 until earlier this year) and not only refused to close a church in his patch, but introduced a programme of ‘church planting’: starting new churches in areas where church attendance is low.

According to the British Social Attitudes survey, 22% of adults in Britain say they attend a religious service at least monthly – as do 39% of adults in Northern Ireland (please see tables at the bottom of this article). There is not a comprehensive list or credible statistic to calculate the total number of places of worship, not least because of their immense variety. Many new groups of worshippers begin by meeting in someone’s home or by renting a hall in a school and may not have a dedicated building for many years. According to the new Jewish Policy Research report on Synagogues in Britain, this is how Jewish worshipping communities have originated, as have many charismatic churches. Mosques are not always clearly visible from the street, if they are using a former disused building. At least not until Fridays when the line of people walking towards the place of worship indicates its purpose.

A communal gathering place remains part of millions of people’s religious practice, and draws in people from the local community and beyond in various ways:

Help in times of crisis: My UnHerd colleague Jonathan Aitken described the ways people from synagogues, mosques and churches leapt into action to help people evacuated from the dreadful fire at Grenfell Tower. Whether it’s churches sheltering terrified people fleeing rape and violence in Central African Republic, or mosques housing widows and children who fear attacks in Kashmir, some of the world’s most vulnerable people have found refuge in places of worship.

Solving local problems: According to the 2016 Cinnamon Network Faith Action Audit which collected evidence from 3,007 faith groups in the UK, each of those groups provided on average eight social action projects, managed 66 volunteers and had 1,696 interactions with people who needed help. Debt advice centres, parenting classes, lunch clubs for elderly people, youthwork, jobfinding schemes, and business start-up opportunities are offered in thousands of religious buildings around the UK. Cinnamon Network say their data suggests that this could equate to £3 billion worth of support for some of this country’s vulnerable people.

Our history and heritage: Our ComRes research for National Churches Trust earlier this year found that 83% of adults in Britain agree that the UK’s churches, chapels and meeting houses are an important part of our heritage and history. And, while Visit England’s latest statistics demonstrate a drop in tourist visits to some cathedrals which some people attribute to increased entry fees, it is still the case the millions of people each year visit or worship in a historic church building. There are some interesting surprises in our religious history. To find out what Charles Dickens had to say about the Mormons (yes, they were around in his time), call in to the Latter Day Saints visitor centre in London.

Awe and wonder: Styles of worship across all religions vary, and each has its denominations based on doctrine, worship and sometimes demographic[1.  Denominations are present in all major religions and most minority religions. For example, chapter 2 of the recent Jewish Policy Research report into synagogue attendance in the UK carries a helpful list and analysis of the Jewish denominations in this country]. According to a new website to help people find a local Choral Evensong service, we’re flocking back to liturgical church services to hear choral music. Our research into use of six local case-study Church of England cathedrals for think tank Theos found that 92% of respondents said that their cathedral was a place where people can get in touch with the spiritual or the sacred.

LOOK AT THIS!

• Some of the world’s most beautiful places of worship – my favourite is the Taktsang Palphug Monastery in Bhutan
• The Guardian asked readers to send in photographs of empty places of worship
• Some of these before-and-after pictures of devastation in Syria include historically significant mosques

FURTHER BACKGROUND

…ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE

We downloaded data from the British Social Attitudes survey which showed responses to question about attendance at religious services;

Data supplied to us by the Life and Times survey in Northern Ireland;

They don’t miss much.

Children pick up all sorts of social, cultural and emotional cues from the family home. That’s as true of their religious beliefs – or lack of them – as of everything else. The motto used by Jesuits – ‘give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man’ – remains widely used by faith leaders but it is in the home where a child’s outlook is largely shaped.

The work of Professor David Voas, one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion, finds that the most significant influence on our personal religious affiliation is our parents. Where parents are highly observant, children are more likely to identify with a religion in adulthood than those brought up in non-religious homes[1. Crockett A & Voas D (2006) Generations of decline: Religious change in twentieth-century Britain. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion].

91% of children brought up by two parents who are non-religious grow up to identify in adulthood as ‘no religion’. In Britain, the data suggests that the pull away from identifying with a religion is stronger than the pull towards it[2. In his 2016 analysis of recent British Social Attitudes data, Professor Bullivant of St Mary’s University Twickenham notes that:  For every one Catholic convert there are 10 cradle Catholics who no longer regard themselves to be Catholic. For every one Anglican convert there are 12 cradle Anglicans who no longer regard themselves to be Anglican.] but if you grow up in a religious family you might stick with it. Old childhood habits die hard, and many people who have been brought up with religious observance – storytelling, festivals, ritual, prayers, or attendance at worship – retain some of this heritage into adulthood.

Voas and his colleagues found that where both parents follow the same faith together, 46% of children will grow up following it too. The same percentage will go on to describe themselves as having no religion. On average, one in twelve follow a religion or denomination different to their parents.

The dataset Voas uses doesn’t seem to indicate a difference in families where two parents follow different religions to each other. He suggests that there may be two balancing forces at work: on the one hand spouses who maintain separate religious identities probably tend to be more religious than others, but on the other hand transmission to children is more difficult if the parents don’t share a religion.

In Britain, given our history and our religious landscape, it is much easier to gather data relating to people’s experiences of Christianity than of other religions, as some of the following examples show.

Out of the mouths…(with a nod to Psalm 8:2): When we ask young people about their own experience, they tend to agree. A recent study of 11-18 year olds in Britain which we at ComRes carried out for HOPE and the Church of England found that, of the young people who identified as Christians, 45% said growing up in a Christian family was a primary reason for their affiliation[3. 45% of young people identifying as Christian attributed their religious identity to growing up in a Christian family, as did 40% of young people identifying as Christian and also attending church at least monthly and praying and reading/listening to the Bible at least weekly – see Q32 in this survey in whicb ComRes interviewed 2,000 people aged 11-18 online between 7th-19th December 2016. Data were weighted to be representative of this audience by age, gender and region.]. This was streets ahead of other reasons given – such as attending a religious school or Sunday school (coming in at 17% and 15% respectively).

Celebrating together: Shared meals, traditions and rituals, particularly at times of celebration, form major moments in a family’s life and in an adult’s memory of significant times. Attendance at worship services, whether it’s the annual visit by some Jewish families to the synagogue for Yom Kippur, the celebrations of Eid following Ramadan fasting by Muslims, or the Christmas carol or Christingle services[4. The Church of England report that while one million people are in an Anglican church each Sunday, at Christmas 7.5 million people attend a Christmas or Advent service organised by an Anglican church.], mark the rhythm of the year.

Childhood bereavement: For many of us, the first time we’re introduced to personalised stories of the immaterial is when someone close to us dies. In religious families, the traditions and stories of legacy, memory and afterlife come into their own. Even in families where religious tradition is not devoutly observed, children might be told a story to reassure them that the presence of the deceased person somehow lives on – a star in the sky, an angel close by, or someone watching over us. This is why organisations like Humanists UK point families towards children’s books which describe bereavement without reference to religion.

SOME FURTHER READING

• The Most Holy Object In The House: Mireille Jachau remembers her grandmother’s experience of persecution as a German Jew, and her inherited ritual of breadmaking, and compares it with her own experience of growing up in a Sydney suburb.
• Religion Runs In The Family: Professor Vern Bengtson tells Christianity Today about his research among American families and how – perhaps surprisingly – the influence of parents is as as influential in the passing down of beliefs as in 1970.
• Muslim Childhood: The first study of Muslim children in Britain under the age of 12 to focus on religious nurture – carried out at Cardiff University.
• The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood: this set of essays analyse some of the ways in which children are involved in religious life, and the institutions which affect their faith formation.

FURTHER READING