Contents

Page            Title

1                 Rationale

2                 Context

6                 Methodology

8                 Evidence

16                Evaluation

18                                       Bibliography

19                                       Diary

20                                       Appendix

Rationale

                I have chosen to do my study on the decline of religion. I have always had an interest in religion, however I am not religious. I have noticed that a lot of my friends are also not religious. However, religious beliefs and practices play a big part in society. It can cause conflict, it can bring society together, or create 'social cohesion' for example, Princess Diana's death. It can be a source of comfort, support in time of emotional need such as funeral rituals, and it promotes social values as well as many other things. Religion can therefore affect every part of a person's life. Religion can be seen as both good and bad in certain aspects. Whether it is good or bad it is a huge part of human life. Religion has existed for a very long time and now some questions are being raised; is there a decline in religion? Why is this? What affect may it have on social life?

            My aim is to investigate the religious belief and practices of a cross-section of the population of England.

            My objectives are to discover the extent of secularisation among the population, to compare the religiosity of different age groups and to investigate the causes of religious decline.

            My hypothesis is - 'Amongst people, especially in younger age groups, there has recently been a significant decline in religious beliefs and practices'

Context

                Secularisation: "The process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance" - Bryan Wilson

            There are many measures which can be used to assess whether secularisation is taking place, sometimes the evidence from using a particular measure can be interpreted differently. For example, the merging of the Pentecostal church, the congregational church and the reformed church, was viewed by those for secularisation that the churches had to merge because those churches were weak. Those against secularisation saw the united reform church as stronger because of the merge.

            Some evidence, for the most part, is clear. For example:

            Religious structure of population in Great Britain

These statistics show slight changes in the religious structure in Great Britain in ten years. It supports the idea of secularisation just as my hypothesis suggests. There are more people who are secular and less people who are Christian, however non-Trinitarian and non-Christian religions have seen a slight increase.

Other evidence would be the following social trends from 1994, however these show that some religions have had a decrease in members but some have had an increase in numbers. The decline seems to be mainly in the Christian religions.

                                                            Adult members (millions)

Trinitarian churches                               1975                            1992

Anglican                                               2.27                             1.81

Presbyterian                                         1.65                             1.24

Methodist                                             0.61                             0.46

Baptist                                                  0.27                             0.23

Other Pentecostal churches                   0.53                             0.66

                                                            1975                            1992

Roman Catholic                                    2.53                             2.04

Orthodox                                             0.20                             0.28

Total:                                                  8.06                             6.72

Non-Trinitarian Churches

Mormons                                             0.10                             0.15

Jehovah's witnesses                              0.08                             0.13                

Spiritualists                                           0.06                             0.04

Other non-Trinitarian                            0.09                             0.14

Total:                                                  0.33                             0.46

Other religions

Muslims                                                0.40                             0.52

Sikhs                                                    0.12                             0.27

Hindus                                                  0.10                             0.14

Jews                                                     0.11                             0.11

Others                                                  0.08                             0.08

Total:                                                  0.81                             1.12

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            The Christian church membership in Britain (1900 - 90) shows a dramatic fall in membership, which is strong evidence for my hypothesis. The adult church attendance in Britain (1851 - 1989) shows decreases in attendance in England, Wales and Scotland but it shows that in Scotland attendance has been decreasing less than in England & Wales.

            There are other statistics that show the decline of the Church of England. In just three years from 1966 to 1969 there was a fall of 27% in numbers confirmed. From 1956 to 1968 there was a fall of 18% in numbers baptised and between 1929 and 1973 there was a fall of 19% in numbers marrying in church. The Church of England is also having problems with clergymen, in 1861 there was 1 clergyman to 960 people, 110 years later in 1971 there was 1 clergyman to 4,000 people. These statistics show that there is definitely a significant decrease in the use of the church. The church is used on a regular basis by about 9% of the population, which has slowly decreased over the last few years. Wilson suggests that "the statistics indicate that secularisation is well advanced so that the Church of England is gradually becoming reduced to the condition of a sect". Wilson suggests that the reasons for the weakness of the church include books and TV programs, which seem to question fundamental Christian teachings, which undermines people's faith. He also suggests that new sectarian movements are attracting people away from orthodox Christian churches. Cultic and Sectarian movements have generally grown in Britain and Western Europe.

            There may be many contributing causes toward secularisation. Peter Berger suggests that people are too busy with jobs, have many choices and that people rarely think in religious terms anymore. Berger argues "the man in the street is confronted with a wide variety of reality-defying agencies which compete for his allegiance. People have greater choice as to which belief system to adopt".

            The media may be a cause as Crockfords Clerical Directory states that "one sometimes has the impression that control of the press and BBC is in the hands of men who are hostile to the Christian religion and mainly to the Church of England"

            Church reforms may be a factor, as some churches re-write teachings to attend to modern society, for example changing some words in carols so they do not appear sexist. In trying to make the church more modern and appealing, it may be responsible for its decline as people actually view them as "straying from their original path" and also becoming less holy.

            There are many different reasons suggested for secularisation, another idea could be the amount of 'scandals' within the church, e.g. appendix 3 is a newspaper article, which tells the story of a priest who was a paedophile. Eric Taylor was jailed for sexually abusing boys in his care in an orphanage. Of those boys, it states that several committed suicide, some became alcoholics and others "drifted into crime". It is an example of why people may move away from the church when things such as this occur within religious organisations, people do not want to be associated with a religion that is seen to harbour paedophiles. Other 'scandals' include the dealing of drugs through clergymen which has been recently reported.

            Another newspaper article (Appendix 4) from 7^th September 2001 is about the Archbishop of Canterbury who said, "Christian belief has been 'pushed out' of the lives of most Britons". It talks about the lack of religion in people's lives in England and Wales. It suggests that Christ is being replaced by music, new age movements, occult practices and green issues according to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, amongst other reasons for the decline in religion.

            There are many different points of view in the sociological explanations for secularisation.

            Weber said that new 'rational scientific values and ideas' would replace superstitious beliefs and traditional illogical thinking. Societies will 'outgrow the need for religious explanations' and therefore outgrow the need for religion for example Darwin's theory of evolution suggests that humans evolved as opposed to being created by some omnipotent being.

            The interpretivist Berger said that people become confused and don't know what to believe in because of the extensive range of belief systems, we then look for 'non-religious ways of explaining the world around us'.

            Talcott Parsons, a functionalist, says that the church has "lost social welfare and education functions". He says that the religious ideas the church now puts across are more generalised, less religious and is more in favour of reinforcing societies values. Parsons says the church is more concerned with using a 'watered down' moral message to support societies values. Evidence of this is the Churches new views on homosexual relationships, so to "make themselves more relevant to societies values".

            Wilson argues that society has become less religious due to the answers that science provides to questions that were answered by religion in the past. Some evidence to support Wilson's ideas are that secularisation seems to have occurred at roughly the same time of industrialisation which brought about science and technology.

            Karl Marx believed that "man makes religion, religion does not make man". He said that religion would end with the overthrow of capitalism, as the need for religion would be gone. He believed this because he thought that religion was needed to justify social inequalities, to explain the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the ruling classes.

Methodology

            I have chosen to use questionnaires to produce quantifiable data, which means that the data can be easily quantified (put into numbers). I intend to use self-completion questionnaires, which are sets of questions where the respondent is asked to fill them in. To produce quantifiable data I will use only multiple choices for the answers, e.g. do you go to a place of worship? Often, sometimes, rarely or never. This approach is objective meaning that there is less chance of researcher bias as the questions are structured. I believe this to be the best option as I will require quantifiable data to produce evidence to show that secularisation is taking place. Using a fairly large sample of data that can be easily put into charts I will then be able to show a percentage of who is religious, how many people have read the bible, what people think about abortion, etc.

            Other methods I could have chosen are structured interviews where an interviewer asks participants to answer a set of questions, which are already written. Unstructured interviews give better validity and depth but cannot produce quantifiable data as the questions would not be the same for each participant. Participant observation is where someone joins a group of people to understand them better and understand what they do by watching and interacting with them. This is not a viable method for my project as I need quantitative data and this method would not be good for my chosen topic as it is about people opinions and beliefs, not observational behaviour. It is not possible to know if someone is religious or if their parents are religious by watching them. Observation is better for studies about behaviours rather than beliefs. It would also take time and could be expensive. Case studies and life histories look in great depth at a subject but it only looks at one or a few people which is not useful in my study. It would be impossible to generalise to the greater population because it is looking closely at individuals whereas my study is based on how many people believe in God, for which I need to ask a large number of people to show how and why religion is in decline. I could also use triangulation, which is a combination of methods, which is favoured by interpretivists. Different research methods have different strengths and weaknesses. With triangulation validity and reliability is better. Validity is the truth and accuracy of the data. It would be timely and difficult to incorporate different methods into evidence to show the decline of religion. The method I have chosen is favoured by positivists.

            If the same questionnaire is used by different researchers and they produce similar results then the data and method can be thought of as reliable. The quantitative method of a questionnaire is reliable, however not very valid.

            As I have limited time and resources due to being a student, these practical considerations may affect my study, however I do believe that my study will still have relevancy despite this. I can only base my study in a relatively small area of England and in a small time period, as the coursework has to be handed in by a set date.

            All research of any kind involves ethical considerations. In my study I do not have to deceive anyone or harm anyone physically or emotionally so my research is in line with the British Sociological Association, which are ethical guidelines concerned with research on humans. I will explain the purpose of my research to all my participants, that all their answers are anonymous and confidential and that every participant has a right to withdraw at any point in the questionnaire. I will tell them that they can choose to not answer questions and also withdraw the answers at the end of the questionnaire.

            As sampling will be difficult, I will use quota and snowball sampling techniques, as they are the easiest, cheapest and best considering the time limit I have. Quota sampling is where I find people by both their availability and by a set of specifications for whom I need to complete the questionnaires. As my aims state I intend to show differences in religiosity within different age groups, as I hypothesise that in the younger age groups there will be less belief in religion, for this quota sampling is the best technique to use. Therefore I will need to set a quota; e.g. I will set age groups and try to find an equal number of people to fit into these age groups to show that secularisation differs in age groups. I will look for people in different places for example places such as work, bus stops, public houses, friend's houses, school, high streets, etc. Also I will try to get a sample that shows a true representation of the population e.g. 51% female, 49% male and 6.5% of ethnic minorities as I also believe that there will be differences in religiosity in these groups. I am also using snowballing as well which involves me giving the questionnaires to people I know to pass onto other people, I could ask them to give them to people of a similar age group, gender or ethnic group. It is unlikely to produce a true representation of the population, as it is not random.

            I conducted a pilot questionnaire (appendix 1) based on a few questions I could think of. Three people completed these questionnaires and then I discussed the questionnaires contents with each of the pilot participants so I could find out what was difficult to understand or where their views did not fit under any of the multiple-choice options. This is where I made most of the changes. E.g. I was requested a 'not sure' option for some questions. I also re-arranged and changed my questionnaires as best possible in view of the response to the pilot. I now have a questionnaire that I am ready to carry out. The final questionnaire is appendix 2.

Evidence

There were 120 participants, 60 male and 60 female, 20 males per age group and 20 females per age group. The three age groups were 10 to 30, 31 to 50 and 50 +. Of this sample 38% were religious and 62 % were not religious.

Differences in gender

I found that there were slight gender differences. 52% of those who are religious were female, (48% male). 49% of those who are not religious were female, (51% male). This suggests that more women are religious than men are.                       

Differences in age

            This chart shows that 28% of 10 to 30 year olds who are not religious used to be religious, 28% of 31 to 50 year olds who are not religious used to be religious. This shows that a decline is occuring over time. The greatest number however of those who are not religious but used to be religious are the 51+ year olds which could mean that people in the older age groups are changing their attitudes toward religion. In the group of those who are not religious and never were religious are mostly 10 to 30 year olds (45%), 37% are 31 to 50 year olds and only 18% are 51+ which implies that although people in the past did not become religious in their life, many more people today are not adopting religious beliefs.

What type of religion?

            This pie chart shows religious people, the majority of which (91%) follow a major world religion as stated in the key. However it shows that 9% of those are religious follow a different religious from the traditional church such as paganism and also Wankantonka, which is an Indian tribe. This could show that it isn't necessarily a decline in religion altogether but rather a "shift" from the major religions to smaller religious organisations such as denominations, cults and sects. This is supported by Wilson who tells us that "new sectarian movements are attracting people away from orthodox Christian churches".

Past down through generations

The above chart shows that this may be the case, as 32% of all participants said they went to a place of worship through both their own and their parents choice. 28% went purely through their parents choice and not their own choice. Only 17% went to a place of worship through their own choosing and not through the choice of their parents.

Attendance to a place of worship

Of those people who are religious 9% of them never go to church which implies that they may not be very religious, as they do not practice their faith in a place of worship. 20% rarely go, which again implies the similar conclusions as those who never go to a place of worship. The majority, 38% answered 'sometimes' which could mean once every few weeks or only a few times a year but this again could be a measure of religiosity as you would expect religious people to practice their religion often. Only 33% of the religious people studied often attend a place of worship.

It is important to know the reasons for which people stopped going to their place of worship before a judgement can be made about their religiosity, it could be that they are busy with work and cant go but still would want to go if it was possible. Out of the participants, only 21% still go to church. 17% never went to a place of worship. 1% gave no answer to this question. 1% said it was because they left their catholic school that they stopped going to a place of worship which implies that they were forced into going to a place of worship by their school and their parents as they put them in that school. 15% said that they stopped going to church because they do not have the time to go. 20% attribute 'loss of faith' as their reason they stopped going to a place of worship, which is supportive of my hypothesis. 18% simply cant be bothered to go to a place of worship which implies that they are religious but their religion isn't strong enough for them to have the attitude of "cant be bothered" with relation to worship and religious practice. 7% gave a combination of two or more reasons, all including loss of faith.

Belief

This chart shows that 4 out of 5 religious people are likely to believe in life after death, whereas it is quite equal amongst those who are not religious, 48.5% believe in life after death and 47.5% do not, 4% are unsure. This suggests that an appeal of religion is the "assurance" that you are eternal and that there is something after death where you will go and where all their friends and family will go. It could be one of the reasons people believe, so they feel safe in the knowledge that if they live by their religion they will go onto a paradise after they die.

            Non-religious people believe less in the idea of heaven and hell than they believe in a form of life after death. Slightly more religious people believe in heaven and hell, that they may be judged before their God and go onto heaven to spend eternity with God.

Prayer

Of those people who are religious 7% of them never pray to their god, again suggesting that they have very low religiosity because they do not attempt to communicate with their god, meaning that they may not truly believe. This can be again seen in the 22% who rarely pray and the 34% who sometimes pray. 22% pray often, but only 15% of those who are religious pray everyday.

Religious values?

Of all the participants 8% said that abortion was always right, 84% suggested that it was sometimes right, it could be justified in the case of rape, etc. 7% believed it is never right and 1% gave no answer. This shows that the majority think abortion is right in some circumstances.

            Most religions and religious scripture suggest that abortion is wrong ('Thou shall not kill'). Yet, the chart above of religious people's beliefs about abortion seems to be similar to that of all the participants. 7% suggest that abortion is always right and as almost 91% of the religious people in this study were of the Christian religion, it would seem that they are going against their religion with this belief. 84% believe it is sometimes right, and only 9% believe that abortion is never right, which means that only 9% of people have taken their values from their faith.

Most religions describe that God created the earth and its life, including Christianity (genesis). Of those who were not religious, 62% said they believed in a scientific explanation for creation of earth and its life such as Darwin's evolution theory and the big bang theory, 7% didn't believe in it and 31% were unsure. Of those who are religious however, 30.5% said they believed in a scientific explanation for creation, equally 30.5% do not believe in a scientific explanation and 31% were not sure. The results here would suggest that many Christians believe in the scientific theory as opposed to the Christian "truth" about how the world was created. This suggests that people are now more in favour of rational thinking and evidence, brought about with science and technology, as opposed to mysticism and religious ways of explaining things. This suggests that people are becoming less religious as they no longer think in religious terms, which is supported by Wilson and Weber.

Religious teachings in holy books

In comparison of the non-religious people 14% have read the bible, 68% have read some of it and only 18% have not read it. This would suggest that people are aware of its message and have knowledge of the Christian faith but still not believe because in today's modern society there are many other things that compete for our allegiance. These people have read at least some of the bible but still choose not to follow it because they do now believe it.

Why read the bible?

For non-religious people there are different reasons for reading the bible, only 3% say that it is for guidance, 79% said it was for knowledge or educational purposes, 7% said that it was just something to read and 4% said that they would or have read it 'for a laugh'. There are also various combinations of reasons, show above.

Evaluation

            As expected there were certain research problems I encountered throughout my study. Due to the sensitivity of the subject of secularisation some people refused to fill in the questionnaires. Those people's religious views could be different to those people who were willing to fill in the questionnaire and so the sample was not representative of those who refused. However nothing can be done about this problem as they could not be forced to take part.

People may have given certain answers because of demand characteristics, a person may give what they think is the most socially desirable answer. For example a person may think that others would be happy if he/she were a Christian, the person may not be a Christian but they lied to give themselves a better 'image'. They give these answers so they are liked and do not appear deviant. This could especially occur with sensitive issues such as 'Is abortion right?'

Some people refused to answer certain questions such as the question referring to belief in UFO's, ghosts, faith healing, etc as they felt that those questions didn't have anything to do with religion.

Many people wrote on the questionnaire "not sure" or "unsure" as an answer to some questions, this was a problem because this makes it unstructured as they have wrote their own answers whilst others felt they had to choose between the options given, as it was designed to be multiple choice only. This could have been a problem with the questionnaire, as "not sure" options were not given on some questions, which in retrospect I believe I should have included the option on certain questions. However this could have then presented the problem of answers being too vague, if everyone answered "not sure" then not many assumptions could have been made from the results. I would have preferred that people had answered with the 'best fit' option, e.g. if they are not sure but do think that UFO's exist they should have replied yes. But I could not force them to chose from the options given.

I believe now that the question "would you consider yourself to be religious" is too vague. Many people ticked 'no' to that question but still ticked 'Christian' for their religion which creates conflicting answers. Some people call themselves 'Christian' but not actually be religious or even believe in the Christian faith at all, but they adopt the term 'Christian' because it is the norm, their parents religion or because it is the dominant religion in England. I would have preferred to have more direct religious questions such as "do you believe in God" and more questions about religiosity, to find out how religious people really are, not just if they believe or not.

One problem with my method was the fact that it only used a quantitative method, which is reliable however it is not very valid. I could have done triangulation which involves also using a method which was more valid and in depth such as a case study. Time did not permit this but it would be valuable to attempt to use this method in further research.

My research was done in a small area of England which means that it is again difficult to generalise as their may be many regional differences as well as differences between people living in urban or rural areas. Many of the participants were found in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire. In future research I would like to extend my area of sampling and perhaps include the factor of regional differences. I would also like to place more emphasis in cultural differences, perhaps sending the questionnaires to people in other countries via e-mail.

My sampling technique was a combination of availability, quota and snowball sampling as these were the best methods for my study however these create problems as it is not random and cannot be generalised to the greater population. Snowballing could result in a person giving questionnaires to their friends according to age group, however it is likely that they will have friends who are similar to themselves and probably have similar beliefs. If I were to do this research again I would like to eliminate the snowball sampling method, with more time I would not have to use this method as I could go out and find people in different places for myself which would be more random.

There did not appear to be any ethical issues or problems during my research. I advised each person that the questionnaire was anonymous and that they had the right to withdraw at any time.

If I was to repeat this study I would attempt to do more pilot questionnaires with different questions and questions phrased in different ways so they are more neutral and mean the same thing to everyone. I would give more or different choices of answer to create a better questionnaire before I continued with my study. I would attempt a larger sample size and also more divisions of age groups. I only had 3 age groups (10-30, 31-50 and 51+) which I do not think gave a good representation of differences in age groups.

I also noticed that quite frequently people asked what "atheist" meant. As many people do not know what it means, in future work I would use different terminology or give an explanation of the word. Some people who didn't believe in God may have been deterred from ticking 'atheist' because they didn't know what it meant and instead may have ticked 'Christian' so they did not appear stupid, they went with a word they understood. This could have affected my results.

In conclusion I believe my work was carried out fairly with the appropriate ethical considerations in mind. I believe my study clearly showed, as my aims stated, that there are many more atheists/agnostics in the younger age groups. Overall people are becoming less religious by not devoting as much time to worship, etc, their personal religiosity is fading as they continue their life in an ever-changing world full of science, technology and rational thought. People are not being 'born into' religion anymore as less people are religious, children have more freedom of choice and are likely to make up their own mind based on rational thought. People are less likely to convert to religion when there are many other things that can provide comfort and welfare now other than the church. People are giving up their religion because it is no longer the 'norm' or they do not believe religion fits into their life anymore it or may just no longer be necessary. Religion no longer has enough grasp to both regain and retain members. All these factors, illustrated in my coursework leads me to the conclusion that religion has declined.