Great Britain is a Christian country and our government should govern based on Christian principles especially when it comes to defending godly marriage. That pretty much sums up a story that appeared on the Christian Institute’s website last week. Many of you will agree with that sentiment but let me invite you to consider what the Institute premise their assertion of Britain’s religious attachment upon.

Majority is Christian
They laud the results of the ‘Integrated Household Survey’ (2010-11) – an extensive survey carried out by the government’s official statisticians and used by policy-makers in their deliberations. In this survey 68.5% of the respondents said that their religion was ‘Christian’. For the CI this figure is proof positive that Britain is still a Christian country and that government policy should most certainly reflect this fact.

But are they practising?
The survey’s results on this issue do need to be put into some kind of broader context, however. First, the question asked of respondents is very interesting. They were asked, ‘What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?’ There’s no mention of that second phrase in the CI’s statement and yet it puts the 68.5% figure in a very different light. Some relevant questions to be asked of this figure would be how many of them consider themselves to be practising believers; how many of them subscribe to Christian values; and crucially, how many agree with the Institute’s views on the subjects it campaigns upon? They may well identify with the Christian faith but who can tell at what level or even whether it is for many of them merely a cultural expression.

Other surveys
Second, this survey does not align with the results of another key survey on British values and beliefs – the ‘British Social Attitudes Survey’, published every year since 1983 (as reported on by BRIN). In the 2009 report the number of people who identified themselves as having no religion was higher than those who said they had (51% - 49%). The difference between the two surveys is very significant – a full 20% fewer people said they identified with a religion in the BSA survey.

What accounts for this difference? The author of the BRIN report believes that the figures change depending on how the question is asked (a usual occurrence in opinion polls). This means that 20% of people will give a different answer, from ‘I am a Christian’ to ‘I am not a Christian’, depending on how a question is put to them. Hardly evidence of a strong Christian nation.

Spin?
What the CI has done is to use the survey that suits them in their campaign for Christian value-based laws in the UK even when other surveys exist that undermine their case. But if a political party were to do this (and I’m sure they do it all the time) we would call it spin and be quite suspicious of their methods and motives. Should we apply the same critique to the Christian Institute?


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