Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 August 2005 08:44:11
This morning I was checking through a few of the paper links I have on here, to see if there was anything interesting to blogg about (having decided that I would not go for the fact Third Party gets another year older today).
So having discovered that I need to remove the link to the Jewish Chronicle because you have to pay to get to headlines, and that whilst the front story at the moment in The Voice is facinating, I would get too political for a chilled summers day discussing it, I found myself browsing the Christian Herald site and discovered a gem. There was a brief story, with links, about some ESRC funded research on the effect of parents on belief that has been conducted by David Vous at Manchester Uni, which was v.interesting (if you happen to be into the sociology of religion).
Upon further surfing around the net I discovered that research has been more fully discussed in an article in the February volume of the BSA journal Sociology. And yes, I have said journal sitting on bookshelf. Now I don't know if I read it, and forgot about it or whether I was too busy focusing on Queering Religious Texts by Andrew K.T. Yip which was in the same volume, but I am now going to go back to it.
Oh and if anybody is interested in the article basically it is a critique of Grace Davies Belief without Belonging which seeks to examine and to some extent extend the pro-secularisation arguments by looking at issues such as the relationship between parental regular church attendance and the likelyhood of the child to attend. So basically, on the basis of this research, if both parents attend church regularly there is a 46% chance the child will and if only one parent does it goes down to about 23% and if neither parent does it goes down to less than 3%. Not sure what the odds are if there is only one parent about, though, as this sample appears to be based on people with 2 parents about - 34.5%?
Whilst I think that to a certain extent you have to be v.careful with this type of research, there are probably loads of other variables that come into it, I think it is interesting and is something we can learn from and be challenged by. Particularly the bit about there is a less than 3% likelyhood of attending church if both parents didn't.
I am definately not into the idea (i) you have to go to church to connect with God or (ii) we should be going out "selling religion" to people, but I do believe that the church is a valuable institution that is more than a social club for those who happen to "belong" and have grown up in it. As such I think these type of statistics show us why, if we want the institution to grow and be strengthened, we need to move on from our cozy little Christian communities where we can fill our week with Christian contact and activities and get our backsides out into the real world meeting with people and living it so that people can see that church isn't just something for those who belong anyway and want to preserve a tradition. (Yes I am talking as much to myself here as anybody else;-) ) - Somehow I think that idea of being where the ordinary people are is just an ickle biblical aswell.
In terms of how you might do it, well I have no idea but I'm guessing that you, (not me because I'm getting to the stage of being all conferenced out), may get some ideas at the Faithworks conference,(thanks to Jason for the tip).