[vinnomot] Faith no more

[A statistical map of British Faith/Religion, very important and interesting to read]

Faith no more

The government continues to praise religion to the skies - and yet studies show that half of us don't even believe in God

By Terry Sanderson

The Office for National Statistics issues an annual collection of statistics about life in this country called Social Trends. This year's edition (pdf) has just been published.

The section on religion begins, like most government documents do, with a paean to the benefits of faith. Apropos of nothing, the report says: "Belonging to a religion can provide a spiritual and a moral framework to a person's life, as well as involving contact with other individuals and participation in the local community. According to the British social attitudes survey, more than one-half (54%) of the population in Great Britain claimed to belong to a religion in 2006, a fall of three percentage points since 1996."

But doesn't that mean that just under half don't belong to a religion? Surely this is by far the most significant statistic here, and yet it is immediately disregarded as the report goes on to an analysis of which denomination those who do have a religion belong to. Interestingly, although 22% claim to belong to the Church of England, the news that this represents a dizzying drop of 7% in ten years remains unremarked in the report.

Then we are told that according to a Eurobarometer poll "nearly four in five (79%) citizens of the EU-25 held religious or spiritual beliefs. More than one-half (52%) believed in God ... "

But a glance at the accompanying graph shows that in the UK (which is what this report is supposed to be about) only 38% of people said they believed in God.

Then comes the new report (pdf) from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which looks at what the people of Britain think of as the modern social evils.

Although religion comes a long way after family breakdown, the fragmentation of society, drugs, alcohol and disaffected youth, it still registers in many people's minds as a social evil.

Although (this being Britain) people are happy with personal faith and think it a good thing for individuals to have a clear moral code to guide them, the opposite is true of organised religion. Religious institutions and their leaders are seen as promoting intolerance, bigotry, division and violence. Most people think that faith schools are a very bad idea and are damaging community cohesion and encouraging separation.

All this is bad news for the churches, but it adds to my own confusion as to why the government sets such store by religious bodies and "faith leaders", when most of the rest of the country thinks they are irrational, regressive and even threatening to our safety.

The government is still operating on the idea that the "faith communities" are extremely important and have to be pandered to, consulted and given the kinds of privileges that cause disadvantage to other people (opt-outs from equality legislation, automatic seats in parliament, huge tax advantages, a third of the education system etc). Or, as communities minister Baroness Kay Andrews put it, referring to a government response to a report on religious offences in the House of Lords:

"We particularly welcome the report's reflections and conclusions about the role religion plays in people's lives in the UK today. We entirely endorse its view that changes to society in recent years have not resulted in the ebbing of religious values and the consequent emergence of the United Kingdom as a 'secular state'. Religious values do indeed still play a significant part in shaping social values, perhaps increasingly so."

The figures in the social trends report, and in repeated opinion polls, show that religion is playing less and less part in people's lives. This is indeed a secular society, if not constitutionally then certainly psychologically.

The government must surely see that the "faith communities" are an unrepresentative and dwindling minority, and yet repeatedly they big them up, as in the social trends report.

Although Hazel Blears announced recently that the number of Muslims in Britain is thought to have increased to two million (from 1.6 million in the 2001 census), we must remember that not all Muslims are members of the "faith community". Indeed, Christian Research estimates that only about half of Muslims are religiously active. Yet still "the Muslim community" is addressed almost entirely through religious leaders and other theocratic organisations, like the Muslim Council of Britain, which often seem more interested in promoting religion than the general welfare of the people they are supposed to represent.

The time has surely come for the secular majority to make its voice heard, and its growing resentment about the favouring of religion clear. The problem is that secular people - not necessarily all atheists, but people with no interest in organised religion of any denomination - are so disparate that it is almost impossible to organise them. Only a small percentage join groups like the National Secular Society which seeks a society in which religion does not dominate or have disproportionate influence.

The answer must be that "faith communities" are often concentrated in areas that are politically significant and politicians see them as important because they imagine "faith leaders" can corral believers into some kind of unified voting bloc. The Catholic church often blackmails politicians with this kind of threat. See here for the most recent example.

These latest figures show that this is unlikely to be the case. The government should now feel more confident in facing down bullying bishops who demand input into legislation. And Ed Balls should disabuse himself of the idea that challenging the disgracefully discriminatory entry requirements of "faith schools" will be "political suicide" - an opinion held by his predecessor, Alan Johnson.

"Faith leaders" have held the government in a stranglehold for too long. Now that New Labour's evangelist-in-chief has moved on to found his own Faith Foundation, the grip should be loosened, and the secularists should feel safe to come out of the woodwork.