1. Quantifying British Secularization: A Case Study of the Bible
Presentation to Bible Society, 4 February 2015
By Clive D. Field
Universities of Birmingham and Manchester

2. Overview CONTEXT About me – 3 British Religion in Numbers – 4
Sources of Religious Statistics – 5
Sample surveys – 6
Measures of secularization – 7
Religious authority – 8
THE BIBLE
Scope – 9
Ownership – 10
Readership – 11
Knowledge – 12
Literalism – 13
Beliefs – 14
Attitudes – 15
Demographics – 16
Conclusions – 17

3. Context – About Me
Historian by background but working at interface between humanities and social sciences
Research and publishing for 40 years in social history and sociology of religion in Britain from 1689 to the present
Particular focus on statistical sources and measurement of religious change
Full list of research outputs at
Contributed book section on non-recurrent Christian data to Reviews of UK Statistical Sources: Religion (Pergamon Press for ESRC/RSS, 1987)
Next major output Britain’s Last Religious Revival? (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2015) investigating religious change during ‘long 1950s’
Co-director (with David Voas, University of Essex) since 2008 of British Religion in Numbers (BRIN)

4. Context – British Religion in Numbers
Core funded by AHRC/ESRC, as part of Religion and Society Programme, since also British Academy Research Project
Hosted at Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester, although project team now virtual and voluntary
Serves academics, faith communities, policy makers, media, and general public
Microblogging news sub-site – over 700 posts since 2010, 51 by me in 2014 alone, featuring 307 individual stories
Fully searchable and annually updated catalogue of sources of British religious statistics since 1603, with 2,400 entries at present
Charts, maps, and tables (subject to copyright), including tables in Churches and Churchgoers (Clarendon Press, 1977) and compendium of Gallup data, plus sundry other features
Around 700,000 page views since 2010 by 250,000 unique users, principally UK and US

5. Context – Sources of Religious Statistics
Faith communities
Denominational
Ecumenical
State
Censuses
Solemnization of marriage
Sample surveys
Academic/social research agencies
Opinion polls
Academic-led surveys

6. Context – Sample Surveys
First systematically explored by me in 1980s through a British Academy small grant and research for Reviews of UK Statistical Sources: Religion
Surveys have the potential cost-effectively to fill in gaps in our knowledge and develop a more balanced portfolio of measures of secularization
But surveys of religion present a range of methodological and interpretative challenges, including:
Tendency to over-claim on most measures of believing and belonging
Relatively high proportion of ‘don’t knows’
Difficulty in getting representative samples of religious minorities
Difficulty in asking ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ questions
Tendency to be influenced/driven by events

7. Context – Measures of Secularization
Saliency of religion
Religious affiliation
Church membership
Church attendance
Participation in rites of passage
Other religious practices
Religious beliefs (orthodox and heterodox)
Religious prejudice
Respect for religious authority
Institutional measures

8. Context – Religious Authority
Mark Chaves in Social Forces 72:3 (1994): ‘secularization is best understood not as the decline of religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority’
Hitherto approach mainly pursued through studies of public perceptions of religious institutions in US
My study of changing public attitudes to Churches and clergy in Britain since 1960s in Contemporary British History 28:2 (2014)
My study of changing public attitudes to Bible in Britain since Second World War in Journal of Contemporary Religion 29:3 (2014)

9. The Bible - Scope
Meta-analytical attempt to quantify ‘Bible-centricism’ using a basket of believing and behaving measures
123 national sample surveys and 35 national and local sample surveys of adult religious populations (research also available on children/young)
Covers , with most data from last 30 years of the period
Gallup apart, relatively few genuine time series, raising issues of comparability
Includes Bible Society research where findings had been made public or otherwise shared with the author, but does not discuss Bible versions
Analysis at topline and by gender, age, social class, religious denomination, and churchgoing
Article constrained by journal’s tight rules on length

10. The Bible - Ownership HEADLINE
Household ownership of the Bible has slumped, while individual ownership has been largely passive (the product of handed-down copies or presents), despite the advent of modern translations
COMMENTS
Household ownership has fallen from around 90% after Second World War to 50% today
Individual ownership has been at a lower level than household ownership, has also fallen, but figures are more erratic

11. The Bible - Readership HEADLINE
Readership of the Bible has declined, with only around one in ten reading it at least weekly and three-quarters less than once a year or never
COMMENTS
Statistics cannot be independently validated and are probably subject to over-claiming, arising from ‘prestige effect
Many different frequencies of reading have been used

12. The Bible - Knowledge HEADLINE
Knowledge of the content of the Bible is immensely variable (some parts being better recalled than others), but, overall, it is decreasing
COMMENT
61% could name the four gospels in 1949, 48% in 1999, while the number knowing none increased from 25% to 43% respectively

13. The Bible - Literalism HEADLINE
Only a small and dwindling minority believes the Bible to be true, word for word, the rest arguing that it needs to be ‘interpreted’ or dismissed as a collection of fables and legends
COMMENTS
Proportion believing Old Testament mostly a collection of stories and fables rose from 22% in 1960 to 45% in 1993
Proportion believing New Testament mostly a collection of stories and fables rose from 13% in 1960 to 40% in 1993

14. The Bible - Beliefs HEADLINE
Key storylines in the Bible – Creation, Virgin Birth, gospel miracles, Resurrection – have been progressively rejected as historically inaccurate and/or understood in a figurative sense or disbelieved entirely
COMMENT
Evolutionary beliefs have especially gained ground in past 20 years, but many see no contradiction in believing in both scientific and religious explanations for the origin of life on earth

15. The Bible - Attitudes HEADLINES
The Bible has been viewed as increasingly less significant in personal lives and less relevant to the needs of modern society
People do not necessarily view the diminished status of the Bible as incompatible with, or undermining, Christian faith – the latter is consciously or sub-consciously redefined so that it becomes less dependent upon an ‘orthodox’ use and reading of the Bible

16. The Bible - Demographics
HEADLINES
Women are somewhat more Bible-centric than men, the over-65s than the under-25s, and the DE than the AB social group
Christians are marginally more likely than average to be Bible-centric and much more so than those professing no religion
Protestants generally and Free Church affiliates particularly are more Bible- centric than Catholics (apart from some indicators of literalism)
Regular churchgoers are significantly more Bible-centric than adults as a whole and still more so than non-churchgoers, with evangelical churchgoers perhaps most Bible-centric
Notwithstanding, churchgoers have not been immune from declining Bible- centricism, and, overall, they are a diminishing sub-population

17. The Bible – Conclusions
There has been declining allegiance to the Bible on various fronts, even among regular churchgoers
This decline is mostly in line with falls in other religious performance indicators, so is in part a consequence/symptom of secularization
However, the upward slope of Bible-centricism from one cohort to the next suggests a predominantly generational effect which may not be reversible
This effect reflects the waning influence of the three traditional agencies of religious socialization – church/Sunday school, state school, parents
A debating point is whether Christianity is becoming decoupled in everyday life from the holy book on which it is founded, and whether that matters for the future of Christianity

18. Contact Details BRITISH RELIGION IN NUMBERS
Website -
Twitter -
CLIVE FIELD
- or
Website -