Linda Woodhead is professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University and Director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society research programme. She is also one of the most acute observers of contemporary religion and religious identity. She has been conducting a series of surveys with YouGov on social and personal morality for the Westminster Faith Debates, of which she is the organiser. Linda is writing an essay for Pandaemonium on the changing character of religious identity, which I will publish that next week. In the meantime, here is a sneak preview of some of the data from her polling. (The survey was conducted by YouGov in Britain in June, with a sample size of 4018.)

What is striking is the divergence between the picture of religious belief that has been painted in recent political debates and media discussions and that depicted by the YouGov data. Recent debates on social morality – for instance over questions of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and assisted dying – have suggested a dramatic division between believers and non-believers. With certain notable exceptions, that is not what the data reveals. Certainly, believers are more conservative than non-believers on these issues. But they are also far more liberal than politicians, journalists or religious leaders are willing to acknowledge.

Take for instance the question of abortion. Respondents were asked whether the time limit on abortions (currently set at 24 weeks) should be changed. Forty per cent wanted to keep the time limit as it is, 6% wanted to increase it, 29% to lower it and 6% to ban abortion altogether. Non-believers are slightly more liberal, believers slightly less so. But the differences are not huge: (the survey broke the figures down into many more denominational categories; I have selected just a few. I have also contracted the wording of the choices to make it easier to fit into a table on a blog; the actual choices presented to respondents were ‘Increasing the time limit to above 24 weeks’, ‘Keeping the time limit at 24 weeks’, ‘Reducing the time limit to below 24 weeks’ and ‘Banning abortions altogether’):

All respondents No religion Anglican Catholic Jewish Hindu Raise time limit 6 8 5 5 7 9 Keep it at 24 weeks 40 46 39 32 48 35 Reduce it to below 24 weeks 29 26 33 31 23 15 Ban abortions altogether 6 3 6 16 3 9 Don’t know 18 17 17 16 18 33

The Catholic response is particularly striking. Sure, 16 per cent of Catholics want to ban abortions altogether. But two-thirds defy Vatican teaching by accepting abortion of some kind, a third want to keep the time limit unchanged, while an astonishing one in 20 Catholics wants a more liberal abortion law than exists now.

Equally striking are the figures for Muslims, a group that diverges from the norm:

All respondents Muslim Increase time limit 6 12 Keep it at 24 weeks 40 18 Reduce it below 24 weeks 29 17 Ban abortions altogether 6 20 Don’t know 18 33

Twenty per cent of Muslims want to ban abortion altogether, a much higher figure than the general population, and higher than any other religious group. At the same time, 12 per cent of Muslims want to increase the time limit, twice the figure in the general population, and higher than in any other religious group. Muslims, in other words, are highly polarised on this issue, which is perhaps why nearly third polled ‘don’t know’. So much for the idea of a homogenous Muslim community with a single set of beliefs.

On the question of assisted suicide, too, the differences between believers and non-believers are not as great as some might think. People were asked:

Euthanasia is the termination of a person’s life, in order to end suffering. Do you think British law should be kept as it is, or should it be changed so that people with incurable diseases have the right to ask close friends or relatives to help them commit suicide, without those friends or relatives risking prosecution?

Their response (Again, I have contracted the wording of the choices; the actual choices presented to the respondents were ‘The law should be kept as it is’ and ‘The law should be changed to allow assisted suicide in these circumstances’):

All respondents No religion Anglican Catholic Jewish Hindu Muslim Keep law as it is 14 7 14 26 17 22 48 Change law to allow assisted suicide 76 85 77 63 71 53 30 Don’t know 11 8 10 12 12 25 21

Muslims are again significantly more conservative. But believers in most faiths, like the population as a whole, want a change in the law.

Similarly, on the question of same-sex marriage, believers are far more liberal than the current debate might have suggested. People were asked ‘Do you think that same sex marriage is right or wrong?’

All respondents No religion Anglican Catholic Jewish Hindu Muslim Right 46 62 38 35 53 30 15 Wrong 37 21 47 47 33 40 67 Don’t know 17 17 15 18 13 30 18

Believers are considerably less liberal on this issue than non-believers, and (with the notable exception of Jews) less liberal than the general population, too, but in most cases not to an alarming degree. Most faiths are divided on the issue, just like Britain as a whole, not what you might have gathered from the recent public debate. Again, the one group that is strikingly more conservative are Muslims, but again not nearly so conservative as Free Presbyterians, not one of whom thought that same sex marriage was acceptable.

What the data reveal is the growing divergence between the beliefs of most believers and the beliefs of those who are taken to represent their views. It also reveals the changing character of religious belief.

Believers who are most conservative on issues of social morality are, unsurprisingly, also those who possess the greatest certainty in the existence of God and who make moral decisions primarily on the basis of explicit religious sources. ‘This “moral minority” of strict believers’, Woodhead suggests, ‘amounts to almost 4% of the population, and is spread across religious traditions, with a greater concentration among Baptists and Muslims.’ Only a minority of believers, however, look to scripture or to religious institutions for moral guidance. The poll asked people about the source on which they most relied for moral guidance. Here is how they answered (the respondents were given more choices in the survey, but I have eliminated some of the less relevant categories):

All respondents No religion Anglican Catholic Jewish Hindu Muslim Own reason & judgment 35 41 34 29 40 17 12 Own intuition or feelings 21 21 23 21 17 13 11 Family 18 18 21 20 14 25 8 Trusted friends 4 4 4 4 5 0 1 God or ‘higher power’ 4 0 4 8 3 13 22 Tradition & teachings of my religion 3 0 3 8 8 4 12 Science 3 5 2 0 2 7 1 Scripture or Holy book 2 0 1 1 0 1 17 Religious group to which I belong 1 0 1 2 1 2 0 Religious leaders, local & national 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 Don’t know 3 2 3 3 7 7 10

Some of these categories may seem confusing. For instance, the categories ‘God or “higher power”’, ‘Tradition and teachings of my religion’ and ‘Scripture or holy book’ would seem to overlap to a large degree. Nevertheless, the patterns revealed in the data are clear. Most people, religious or non-religious, look to themselves and, to a lesser degree, to their family and friends for moral guidance. Few believers these days seem to find moral authority in religion itself.

Even among Muslims, who from this survey are the most rule-bound or book-bound of believers, the impact of these changes are visible. A quarter of Muslims looked to their ‘own reason or intuition’ as the means of making moral decisions, and barely half the sample looked to religion in whatever form, whether the Qur’an, the imam or tradition. Virtually no one, of any faith, according to this survey at least, look today to religious leaders when making up their moral minds.

We can read these shifts in different ways. They reveal, on the one hand, a greater willingness to think for oneself, and to use reason as a means of moral decision making; on the other, they reveal also, perhaps, a more individualized society, and the erosion of collective mechanisms for coming to moral decisions. However we read the figures, the data point to a significant change in the way that believers think about religious belief and a growing convergence between believers and non-believers in forms of moral decision-making. They suggest, too, that we need to rethink ideas of religious identity, of the relationship between believers and religious institutions, and of whom we take to be representative of religious views on moral issues. These questions, I suspect, will be at the heart of Linda’s upcoming essay on this issue.