Journal Entry #8

So during last class we discussed our research projects in a very frank, pragmatic way that got me thinking about what I'll be doing on the ground each day while I'm in London. Essentially, my question is a rather simple one:

What do Britons think about the decreasing religiosity in their society?

The answer is key, because as far as I have been able to observe through my research, the nation is very polarized, and the heavier end of the spectrum is shifting more and more to the nonreligious. On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that religious practice provides many different benefits to society, from physical health to strong marriages. Powerful figures like Prime Minister David Cameron have made arguments for a more assertive confirmation of religious convictions, and especially Christian values, in society (see the post below for Cameron's comments). It will be incredibly interesting to discover how the British people, and the various minority groups that can be found in London especially, feel about these changes in the country, and what they feel are the major impacts on their society.

However, then comes the question of how exactly I'm going to do it. It would be possible to ride the tube back and forth between stations, and talk to individuals about how they feel about this issue. What I might do is hand out a simple survey to people seated on the subways (like 2-3 questions) and ask them how they feel. I can visit schools, churches, cathedrals, and political buildings. I could interview families in their homes. I'm not going to have a camera though, and all in order to get direct quotes I'll have to have some sort of recording device, and disclaimers, and signatures...

Otherwise, I"ll have to use a pre made survey to evaluate each short conversation, or collect printed surveys from people.

That's going to be a lot of printing costs.

David Cameron's Speech on the Bible

Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech at a large religious event on December 16, 2011 celebrating the 400-year anniversary of the translation of the King James Bible. His comments on the role of Christianity in the country as a backbone of the nation's moral code is very interesting, and, by United States standards at least, extremely bold. The rest of his comments can be read here.

"The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country. Indeed, as Margaret Thatcher once said, 'we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible.' Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities these are the values we treasure. Yes, they are Christian values. And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that."
But they are also values that speak to us all – to people of every faith and none. And I believe we should all stand up and defend them. 
  
Those who oppose this usually make the case for secular neutrality. They argue that by saying we are a Christian country and standing up for Christian values we are somehow doing down other faiths. And that the only way not to offend people is not to pass judgement on their behaviour. 
  
I think these arguments are profoundly wrong. And being clear on this is absolutely fundamental to who we are as a people what we stand for and the kind of society we want to build. First, those who say being a Christian country is doing down other faiths simply don’t understand that it is easier for people to believe and practise other faiths when Britain has confidence in its Christian identity.
Many people tell me it is much easier to be Jewish or Muslim here in Britain than it is in a secular country like France.
Why? 
  
Because the tolerance that Christianity demands of our society provides greater space for other religious faiths too. And because many of the values of a Christian country are shared by people of all faiths and indeed by people of no faith at all.
Second, those who advocate secular neutrality in order to avoid passing judgement on the behaviour of others fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code. Let’s be clear. Faith is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for morality. There are Christians who don’t live by a moral code. And there are atheists and agnostics who do. But for people who do have a faith, their faith can be a helpful prod in the right direction.
And whether inspired by faith or not – that direction, that moral code, matters. Whether you look at the riots last summer, the financial crash and the expenses scandal or the on-going terrorist threat from Islamist extremists around the world one thing is clear: moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality has actually helped to cause some of the social problems that lie at the heart of the lawlessness we saw with the riots. The absence of any real accountability, or moral code allowed some bankers and politicians to behave with scant regard for the rest of society. 
  
And when it comes to fighting violent extremism, the almost fearful passive tolerance of religious extremism that has allowed segregated communities to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values… has not contained that extremism but allowed it to grow and prosper…in the process blackening the good name of the great religions that these extremists abuse for their own purposes. Put simply, for too long we have been unwilling to distinguish right from wrong. “Live and let live” has too often become “do what you please”. Bad choices have too often been defended as just different lifestyles. To be confident in saying something is wrong…is not a sign of weakness, it’s a strength. But we can’t fight something with nothing. 
As I’ve said if we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything. 
One of the biggest lessons of the riots last Summer is that we’ve got stand up for our values if we are to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations. The same is true of religious extremism. 
  
As President Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope: '…in reaction to religious overreach we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our politics with larger meaning.'
Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism. A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. We need to stand up for these values. To have the confidence to say to people – this is what defines us as a society…and that to belong here is to believe in these things. I believe the church – and indeed all our religious leaders and their communities in Britain – have a vital role to play in helping to achieve this.
I have never really understood the argument some people make about the church not getting involved in politics. To me, Christianity, faith, religion, the Church and the Bible are all inherently involved in politics because so many political questions are moral questions. So I don’t think we should be shy or frightened of this. I certainly don’t object to the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his views on politics. Religion has a moral basis and if he doesn’t agree with something he’s right to say so. But just as it is legitimate for religious leaders to make political comments, he shouldn’t be surprised when I respond. Also it’s legitimate for political leaders to say something about religious institutions as they see them affecting our society, not least in the vital areas of equality and tolerance. I believe the Church of England has a unique opportunity to help shape the future of our communities. But to do so it must keep on the agenda that speaks to the whole country. The future of our country is at a pivotal moment. The values we draw from the Bible go to the heart of what it means to belong in this country and you, as the Church of England, can help ensure that it stays that way."

Journal Entry #7

So, yesterday for a project for my Political Science 200 class, they asked us to access the database called JSTOR.

Well, it's absolutely gigantic, to say the least. It contains links to journal databases for a huge number of topics, from psychology to archeology. Just for Political Science, it has hundreds of JOURNALS, not just hundreds of articles, and each journal has a particular emphasis within the area of study. I found a journal that deals with religious ethics, and after spending a bit of time going through some of the titles over the past couple of years, I decided it didn't have much to do with my area of study.

It appears that many individuals studying "religion" care a lot about reactions to homosexual behavior, ecofeminism, and unethical decisions made by Augustine a thousand years ago. I can't say that I do. However, for just Religion there are seventy different journals to look through, and there's plenty of places here to rove around. We'll see if there aren't any about religious schools.

Looking around here, it's remarkable how many resources that the Harold B. Lee Library puts at your fingertips. Countless articles that ask you to "verify" or pay to access can simply be accessed by clicking the "Get at BYU!" button. Incredible. There was a summary of doctoral dissertations in the Harvard Theological Review published at the end of 2010. Through BYU I was able to access the full text, and one of these dissertations analyzes the work of a particular multi-faith organization that worked in Massachussetts that helped in the development of the progressive health care program that was created there, and that has gotten a lot of news recently because it was presided over by then Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney, and later became a key model for the creation of Obama's national health care program. Interestingly, the dissertation summary states that "when religious practice engages CBCO democratic practice, it can produce pluralism without reducing difference." I'm assuming that means that this faith based organization was able to organizationally unite people of different faiths without reducing their theological differences. This part is the clincher though: "This case study demonstrates that congregations engaged in civic activity have religious resources to mediate conflict that might be intractable in the political sphere." In other words, faith based organizations can unite communities in ways that politics cannot.

So what if religiosity continues to decrease in a society? Does it weaken the social "glue", so to speak, that holds people and communities together? And how can I possibly measure how "glued together" a society is as a research student in London, England?

In any case, this JSTOR is great place to start studying these questions....even if some of these papers are a little obscure :)

Journal Entry #6

My brother Jason sent me a couple of emails with links to and article about religious freedom that was published on the LDS church website, as well as a link to another article reporting about a Christian couple in Derby, England that was denied the opportunity to become foster parents because they would teach the children that homosexual relationships were not appropriate. They are two very thought-provoking articles, so I'll take them one at a time:

The idea that freedom of religion includes freedoms for private worship is well known. I would say that most people see the basic right of "religious freedom" to mean that they can have whatever private religious beliefs that they please and can be expected to be treated like everyone else and suffer no discrimination. They are also free to worship in whatever place and with whatever group that they choose. However, groups that seek to diminish the role of religion in the public square are quick to acknowledge these rights as the only rights guaranteed. Groups like the previously mentioned humanism.com emphasize the idea of "freedom from religion", where individuals have a right to complain against all publicly displayed religious symbols, etc, that they are forced to see that, they claim, is disrespectful of their choice not to believe. On the other hand, this article goes further to assert that "freedom of religion" includes the freedom for individuals to be publicly religious, and to allow their religious beliefs to be grounds for their public actions. Indeed, it would be impossible to insist that private religious belief is a freely granted liberty while barring all religious grounds for decision making in public positions. After all, if religion does have an affect on people, it will affect both their private and public lives.

Looking at the second article, the decision of both the local City Council and the High Court on the issue of the foster parents with traditional views was a clear denial of the "freedom of religion" as it is described above. The couple, basing their attitudes on their religious beliefs, were barred from becoming foster parents specifically for their views on homosexuality that stemmed from their private beliefs. Interestingly, this was not just a restriction made on the public display of belief; it was legal reprimand for private moral code founded upon religious principles that the couple would teach the foster children. The judgement sets a precedent for a moral test for civic privileges. The judge makes the point that it is not the "religion" that disqualified the couple from becoming respite carers, it was their moral beliefs about homosexuality that did so. Therefore, according to this seat of judges, it is alright to be religious as long as long as the the religion's traditional moral code does not contradict popular social values.

So, are all city councils and High Court's in England like that? Would many support this kind of ruling, or was this just an exception? That would be good to know.

Journal Entry #5

So I've been reading this article written by Patrick Fagan in 1996 about the positive impacts of religion on society. Something that stood out to me among the various findings and recommendations given by the author was one directed at concerning religious, or religiously affiliated schools: "Congress should: . . . Fund federal experiments with school choice that include religiously affiliated schools".

It is striking how much this recommendation contrasts this statement made in the "Campaigns" page of humanism.com:

"We can produce the arguments against 'faith' and sectarian schools and in favour of inclusive schools where children from families of all religions and none are educated together and learn about each other’s beliefs, but Local Authorities only consult and listen to the views of local people when making decisions about a new school in their area. So if you share our views, we hope you will get involved – our success depends on you!"

The main page of humanism.com also has a banner with this image:



****

So there's a big discrepancy in opinion here. On one side of it is Patrick Fagan, who defends the role of religion in society with specific, thorough evidence. He doesn't just show how religion helps people be happier; he goes down almost every indicator of a good life and shows how religious belief and participation is correlated with them, from strong marriages, fewer divorces, less suicide and drug abuse, better mental health, better physical health, and quicker recovery from alcoholism. On the other side of the argument, we have organizations led by intellectuals and individuals who truly believe that society is better without any religious influence at all. Can it be proven that students at religious schools enjoy the same social and personal improvements as those that were stated above by Fagan?

This strays from the topic I have chosen a tiny bit, but I'm interested in what the people who go to these religious schools have to say about this. I think I'll look up some religious schools in London and visit them while I'm there. It would be interesting to ask the teachers, students, and parents-of-students who attend there what they think about these institutions, and also to see if these positive social indicators are correlated with religious schools.

Statement of Intent

Many studies have documented the current trend of decreasing religiosity in Britain. As a visitor in London, England this summer ('12), I plan to study the trend of decreasing religiosity in the country. According to studies completed in the last year, this decrease in religiosity is being felt almost exclusively in the Church of England, whose membership has halved in the last three decades. Membership in other religions have stayed the same, and non-christian membership has increased as a result of immigration. I am interested to know what motives or attitudes may have caused this disaffection from the Church of England, and why these attitudes have not had a similar effect on other religions in the country. It can be inferred from the data from recent surveys that those who have left the Church of England have not joined other Christian religions, but have dropped out of religious life entirely. I am interested in discovering why no religion is preferred over other christian religions. Lastly, I am interested in discovering how Britons themselves feel about these changes. How many see increasing secularism as a positive change? How many believe it is a negative change? If increasing secularism is a negative change, what harmful effects to society are expected by these changes, and how many of these harmful effects can be observed?

Moreover, I hope this field study will be beneficial because it gives me a chance to apply skills of research and writing that I am developing as a college student in the International Relations program in the actual execution of a research project. My topic deals directly with religion, something I have grown used to asking people about during two years as a missionary in Brazil. In contrast to active proselytizing, this project allows me to approach the topic from a scholastic perspective. I care about how people think about God, and believe the moral basis of religion is an essential part of a successful society. Speaking of of the whole United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron stated, "We are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so." By researching (and hopefully presenting) information about how attitudes about religion are changing in England, I hope people are motivated to think more deeply about the positive a role a belief in God plays in their lives. I recognize that I have a specific point of view about religion due to my upbringing and personal experiences. Still, I hope that seeing the results of religion or the lack thereof will help people to make better decisions about their own lives, and I expect that studying the role of religion in society will further strengthen my core beliefs and values as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Journal Entry #4

When I took AP Comparative Politics my Junior year of high school, Tony Blair was Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. It was 2007, and as we watched "Prime Minister's Questions" each week, I was extremely impressed by the clear and nimble way that Mr. Blair defended his positions and those of his party. He is a charismatic man, and I liked him because he was quick on his feet, and his reasoning was, well, reasonable. I remember wishing that we had "The President's Questions" in the United States, where Presidents would have to defend their policies in front of the onslaught of members of Congress. (However, Bush was president at the time, and that, of course, would not have gone over well)

Moving back to the study of England that year, I remember watching the "Shadow Government" led by David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, argue with the policies of Tony Blair's government. Biased by my liking of Tony Blair, I didn't like Cameron. He may have been more to the political right than Blair's government, but somehow he came off as a sort of intellectual brat, with quipped words and angry, calculated arguments that made him seem like the angry mother hummingbird that used to live in my backyard, furiously driving away any bluejay or robin that came to rest anywhere on the tree where the hummingbird lived. Cameron had no right to be so critical of a government that was obviously doing such a good job running the country, I thought to myself.

Well, four years pass, and I discover that Blair's successor Brown had been quite the failure, and David Cameron was now in charge of a Conservative coalition in Parliament. I wasn't impressed. When I heard of a wiretapping scandal, and then rumors that people higher in government knew about it, I blamed it all on PM Cameron. I imagined that if he wasn't bad enough as an irritating shadow prime minister, it's only right that he would be corrupt too. Oh, if only they would call another election so Labour could win back it's majority, everything would be so much better!

Well...that was a long story that should have been shorter, but to sum up, I seriously misjudged David Cameron. Recently I've had the opportunity to get to know his positions better, and I've been very pleasantly surprised by a couple of the speeches I've read by him lately. I like British politics because it's so different from American politics. It's more hats off, hands on, versatile, and smaller scale. They're ruling an island closer to California in population (a bit more actually) with actually a lot less land and even more diversity. With the way Parliament is run, and especially with "Question Time" every week, it feels government leaders are more directly responsible to the people. Washington, D.C. is a long ways away when you live in Utah. But in England your PM just lives over in London, and every week he has to stand up and defend his positions to the people. That's a cool way to run the country.

Anyway, so Mr. Cameron gave a speech about the King James' Bible, and I thought it was brilliant. Actually, I accidentally read a speech of his about families thinking, at first, that it was his Christian values speech. It was equally brilliant and very pragmatic. Both articles made me very interested in the man, so I read more than half of the wikipedia page on him. He seems to me to be a solid individual - young (the youngest PM since the Earl of Liverpool, 200 years ago), and very passionate. But he's also a man of decent character. I may be wrong about that when some scandal happens, but the fact is that his speeches are very convincing of this fact, and his words calling for a "responsibility revolution" in England are very stirring to me. In his speech on the King James Bible, he states multiple times that the UK is a nation formed on Christian values, and that there should be no shame in making that clear. His reasoning for the great value of religious principles to the country, including charity, kindness, respect, and virtue, are convincing, and it seems he really did his homework, even quoting his favorite passages of the Bible. His arguments are completely contrary to what the men over at www.thehumanist.org are doing, a site that I found to be very falsely professional. They're anti-religion so they might as well just come out and say it. They want God and all mention of HIm out of their lives and out of the country.

My project in England is going to be more to inform than to evaluate. But I am exercising my reflexivity by noting that I have a very big point of view about religion. I wish the UK was more religious because I believe the people would be happier if they were. I believe religious beliefs inform moral decisions and support the structure of strong families. I see increasing secularism in the country as a negative change, although I don't believe everyone who is involved in it is an evil person. On the contrary, I believe England is made up of mostly very decent people, and that is why losing religion is so harmful. Even very decent people are highly influenced by their circumstances, and the world today teaches little more than immorality and self service, two principles which only serve to break down society further.

So that's my bias, and I thought I would get it out there. Still, after reading David Cameron's comments on the matter, it's nice to know there are influential leaders in the country that don't feel much differently about religiosity than I do.

Journal Entry #3

I've been thinking about my research question a bit more, and there are a few more thoughts that I put down about what I'm going to be studying that I want to post here. These aren't very organized thoughts, but they are my raw thoughts and questions:

So, many studies have documented the current trend of decreasing religiosity in Britain. I'm interested in knowing people's opinions about what the people themselves consider are the reasons for this increasing secularization. Is it because of the moral restrictions religions teach? Is it because of a history of church corruption and manipulation? Is it because of the poor examples of religious leaders and recent scandals? Do they believe the arguments of secular societies that a secular viewpoint is superior and more fulfilling than religious beliefs?

Are there differences in the reasons identified for this change depending on age, sex, education, religion, and income?

What are the principal reasons for the resilience of the Catholic religion, which has higher rates of attendence among its members? (65% attend at least annually as opposed to 43% of those who consider themselves Anglican. 45% at least monthly - Catholics. Only 18% attend at least monthly of those that consider themselves Anglican) The Catholic church also shows a steady percentage (about 10%) of the population over the past three decades.

Other Christian churches also show higher levels of attendance (43% attend at least monthly), and they have maintained about 15% of the population of the country over the past three decades. What are they doing that the leaders of the Church of England aren't?

My Research Question

Many studies have documented the current trend of decreasing religiosity in Britain.

What do Britons believe to be the principle reason behind the decreasing religiosity in their society? How many Britons believe this is a positive change, and how many see it as a negative change? For those who believe the change has a negative effect on society, what are the most important negative impacts? For those who believe the change has a positive effect, what do they consider to be the major benefits to society?

Journal Entry #2 - Thoughts on religion in England

So I've been doing a lot of preliminary research for my project and I haven't written any of my thoughts down about them yet. So here are a few of them.

I started my research by simply Googling "Religion in England". That brought me to the Wikipedia page that bears the same name. More interesting and informative was the "Religion in the United Kingdom", and I don't know why there are two different articles, but there you are. The first three sections of the latter article are fascinating, and have numerous interesting statistics about religiosity, attendance, and belief in the country. It is interesting to me that:

1) The EU-funded European Social Survey published in April 2009 found that only 12% of British people belong to a church.

2) In the UK overall, a Guardian/ICM poll in 2006 found that 33% describe themselves as "a religious person" while 82% see religion as a cause of division and tension between people.

3) Ten per cent attend church weekly and two-thirds had not gone to church in the past year.

So, the UK is becoming an increasingly secular place to live, along with the rest of Europe, which has "experienced a decline in church membership and church attendance." But what's interesting to me is why the country is becoming more secular, and I think the statistic listed on number 2 is particularly important. A large majority of people in the UK see religion as a cause of division. That seems to indicate that they have a generally negative view toward religion. If a lot of people have a bad attitude it, there's little wonder the younger generation is increasingly secular. (page 182 on that last link has a generation graph of religiosity).

This is all very interesting, and through it all I'm trying to find an angle that would be accessible to a young college student doing research among Londoners for 90 days. Perhaps I can dig a little deeper into what reasons people have for the generally negative view towards religion. Is it because it's restrictive? Is it because of poor leadership and/or scandal among church leaders? Is there a negative feeling about the church's history? Or is it because non-church related activities have become more popular, drawing people away from religious activities because there are more interesting distractions? Is it due to the way that religious history is taught in school?

I would sure like to know.

Twenty-Five Questions

1. Religion – how much does it play into the lives of ordinary English people?
2. London as a global leader in finance – how has it been affected by the European crisis and by the recession in the US?
3. Which of the two crises (the first in the US, the second in Europe) have had a larger effect on Great Britain?
4. What is the tallest building in London?
5. What do you say in London when you say goodbye, other than just “goodbye”? (in the US we say “Take care” “Good luck” “good seeing you” “Have a good one.” “See you later”, etc)
6. What are gas prices like in London?
7. How does becoming a mother or a father affect church attendance?
8. Why is there an increase in religiosity between the ages 18-24 and 25-34?
9. Why does it drop again between 35-44?
10. What kind of volunteer opportunities would an LDS college student living abroad be able to find for religions that exist in London? (would anybody let a young, Mormon college student ask questions to pastors and priests about their congregations?)
11. What portion of society in London is the most religious?
12. What benefits the most actively religious people reap because of their religiosity?
13. What common characteristics or backgrounds do young people entering church service have today? (where do new recruits to church service come from?)
14. Why does the Church of England retain fewer of its members than the Catholic Church and other Christian churches?
15. What are the leaders of the Church of England doing to encourage more active membership in the religion?
16. How effective have their strategies been?
17. For the actively religious, what is the single most important factor in their continued activity in their church? What motivates them to keep coming?
18. What differences in motivations can be observed between active members of different faiths?
19. What similarities?
20. Why do non christian churches experience higher retention of members during their lifetime than christian churches?
21. What social factors can be tied to the decrease in religiosity among the younger generation in London/UK?
22. Is there a correlation between social statistics such as premarital sex, abortion, criminal activity, probability of divorce, etc, between the religiously active and the non religious?
23. What is that correlation?
24. What factors cause the more educated in the United Kingdom to be, proportionally more active in their religions than those who are less educated?
25. How many people in London/UK base their personal moral criteria and moral judgements on their religious beliefs?

Journal Entry #1 - My Intentions

I have the unique opportunity to travel to London, England this summer ('12) for a field study through Brigham Young University, and spend 90 days in a country that I have wanted to visit since I was very young. Even before I had laid my hand on a book of Redwall, which was the first series of youth fiction novels with British roots that I read growing up, my favorite Disney Movie was Robin Hood, and my favorite toy was a plastic broadsword. Since then, stories ranging from the more youth fiction novels of the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Alex Rider, and Artemis Fowl, as well as the stories by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and J.R.R. Tolkein, have filled my shelves and my imagination.

This visit to London, however, will be more than living in a daydream. My plan is to do research focusing on religion in Britain, and how it affects attitudes and behavior. Frankly, I'm not quite sure yet exactly what the project will involve, and that's part of why I'm creating this blog. While I may not read many youth fantasy novels like I used to, I hope these writings prove that neither my creativity nor my imagination have waned since the jolly old days