Religion

Abstract

Extreme caution should be observed in making use of church membership statistics, as no entirely reliable sources exist giving information about membership or attendance. The last reasonably authoritative figures of religious affiliations in Britain were taken from the 1851 census, though even then there was no compulsion to answer the questions on religion. Since then no census has included questions on religious affiliation. Strictly comparable figures are impossible to obtain for church membership and church attendance between 1900 and 1966. The definition of membership varies greatly from one denomination to another, as does the minimum age for reception into the church. At one extreme, the Roman Catholic Church officially records the Roman Catholic population of all ages, regardless of church attendance. Nonconformist churches with adult baptism, and in the case of the Methodists a probationary period before baptism, are the most exclusive. These statistics give no indication how frequently ‘members’ of the churches attended services. Moreover even within the denominations different figures are quoted at different times and in different sources. E.g. Church of England membership can be variously defined by figures for baptised membership, those for Easter communicants, and the Electoral Roll. In a report prepared by Gallup Poll for A.B.C. Television (University of London Press, 1964), TV and religion, it was stated that in the three television areas of London, Midlands, and the North only 1 in 17 of those aged 16 and over, i.e., 6% say that they have no religious affiliation, yet the total of all the religious statistics available do not add up to anything like 94% of the population.