New poll from BHA - over 50% are Christian, but only half of them believe in a resurrected Christ

Surprisingly interesting stuff from the British Humanist Association, provided you strip away the nonsense from the press release.

The BHA commissioned a YouGov poll asking just four questions, with the aim of showing that people aren't religious, even if they say they are in the census.  The first question is the same as the census question on religion, so we can expect the census results to be similar to this poll, in which 53% described themselves as Christian and 7% from other religions.  39% said they have no religion.

The next question was, "Are you religious".  Mouse will ignore this question, as it is laughably loaded.  Whenever Mouse posts on this topic, the comments fill up with people saying that they are committed Christians, but would not want to call themselves "religious".  Some often wonder whether Jesus would have called himself "religious", with the implication that he probably wouldn't.  Still, you'll see if you click the link that 65% said they are not religious, 29% said they are and the rest don't know.

The third question was most interesting for Mouse.  It asked those who said they are Christians, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ was a real person who  died and came back to life, and was the son of God?".  In response 48% said they do believe this, 25% don't know and 27% do not believe it.

The final question was about attendance at a place of worship. The full results were:

Within the last week	9%
Within the last month	6%
Within the last 6 months	10%
Within the last year	6%
Over a year ago	43%
Never	20%
Don't know	6%

So what do we learn?

Well firstly, Mouse would point out this is a very limited set of questions to draw any conclusions.  The early view on the question used in the census gives us a heads up on the likely result, which if this is accurate will show a significant dip on those describing themselves as Christian, from 71% in 2001.

It is interesting that the BHA have acknowledged Mouse's criticism of their past discussion on this, and accepted that we need to look at religious belief, practice and identity to get an understanding of religion in Britain, however, asking one question for each is a rather low budget attempt at assessing them.

Mouse does find the fact that half of Christians don't seem to accept the resurrection of Christ as interesting.  Since this is rather a foundational concept for Christianity, we need to unpack this more.  Mouse suspects the BHA went for this issue rather than, "Do you believe in a God" or even "Do you believe Jesus was the son of God", as they guessed it would get a lower result, as it is a more complex and challenging topic.

In terms of religious practice, attending a place of worship is a rather limited view of that.  It would have been more helpful to ask about prayer and Bible reading as well, which we know from other surveys have much higher levels of participation.  Church has a lot of baggage for many people, and we don't learn much from the BHA sponsored survey by asking about religious attendance.

However, we do learn something.  Church attendance statistics just count the people, and don't tell us whether it is the same people attending each week, or whether it is four times the number of people attending once per month.  This breakdown, which actually mirrors closely previous surveys, does show us that there are a lot of people who attend church infrequently.  Mouse reckons this is a positive sign, as it shows that higher numbers of people engage with Church in some way than the weekly or monthly attendance statistics show.

So half a cheer for the BHA?  Well, I don't for a moment believe that this "new" evidence shows the census question is flawed, as the BHA maintain, but at least it provides something interesting and up-to-date to discuss.