Nonreligion

Posted on by katieaston News, Publications

British Social Attitudes Survey Reveals 50% of Britons have “No Religion”

The National Centre for Social Research has published its British Social Attitudes Survey 2011-2012. You can see the full report, authored by Lucy Lee, on the website of the “National Centre for Social Research”, which conducted the survey.

Table 12.1 Religious Affiliation Taken from the BSA survey 2011_12

The report demonstrates that the proportion of those who claim to be Christian [Church of England] is much lower at 20%, than suggested by the 2001 Census, which claimed 71.7% of people in England and Wales were identified as Christian. The second overwhelming finding was that 50% of the population claimed no religion, in comparison to the 14.5% stating no-religion in the 2001 Census. The other statistics remain fairly consistent, suggesting perhaps that many of the “nones” have migrated from the category of “Christian” or “Church of England” self-identification to having none. However, more data is needed before such hypothesis can be upheld so we eagerly await the Census Data 2011, but perhaps this show early signs of the success of the BHA Census 2011 campaign and others like it, which have bought identification as an issue to the fore.

The Census 2001 Key Statistics, Local Authorities in England and Wales can be found on the Office for National Statistics website.

Posted on by Chris News, Publications

NSRN Launch New Website!

The Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN) are proud to announce the launch of their new website – nsrn.net!

The NSRN website has been going from strength to strength since its relaunch in November 2009 at the co.uk site – but wide-interest in and growing membership of the NSRN means we’ve needed to expand our services. After weeks and months of development with the new online editorial team, the next generation NSRN website is here!

Visit http://www.nsrn.net to take  a look.

*Although the old . co.uk address will still be around for a while, we’d be extremely grateful for anyone linking to the site to amend their records, citations, links and so forth. The NSRN is truly international, in membership and audiences, and we felt it was important to reflect this in the web address – and we appreciate your help in implementing this change*

A preview of some of the new things we provide on the site:

We’ve also updated and expanded our existing services and resources. The new site boasts,

And we now have a range of new Thoroughly Modern features, including:

  • full integration with the NSRN’s new Twitter feed
  • full integration with the NSRN’s new Facebook page

… and which will enable users to keep up to date with NSRN news and resources in whatever way suits you:

New features and older material are now fully archived and easily searchable.

We hope you like it. As ever, comments and suggestions are always encouraged.

We would greatly appreciate it if you could circulate this information around any individuals or groups that you think might be interested. As a research network, we rely upon the input of our members and friends in the collation and dissemination of information. If you notice any errors or omissions, or are aware of any events, resources, articles etc that we should be promoting, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

With kind regards from,

The NSRN Online Team

Posted on by Chris News, Publications

New Events Report: Atheism and Anthropology

To coincide with the launching of our new website, the NSRN are proud to announce the publication of a new Events Report by Lorna Mumford, on the recent ‘Atheism and Anthropology’ Workshop in London.

Please see the details and link to the document below:

Atheism and Anthropology: Researching Atheism and Self-Searching Belief and Experience Workshop

University College, London, 21 September 2011
Report by Lorna Mumford, University College London
Published by the NSRN, 14 December 2011

Posted on by katieaston Publications

New Statesman Guest Edited by Dawkins out this week

New Statesman Guest Edited by Richard Dawkins 19th Dec 2011

 

Richard Dawkins has taken the role of guest Editor for the 19 December 2011 to 1 January 2012 issue of the New Statesman. The issue gives space to the “four horseman” of New Atheism and includes a contribution from Sam Harris on the neuroscience of freewill, Daniel Dennett contributes a Christmas essay “The Social Cell” addressing the social ties that bind us and the remaining two “horseman” come together in a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Other notable inclusions include authors Phillip Pullman and Kate Atkinson, Microsoft giant Bill Gates, planetary scientist Carolyn Porco and commenter and human rights activist Maryam Mamazie.

The edition gives an interesting overview of the current issues dominating the British nonreligous/secular/religious public debate. Dawkins opens with a letter to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in which he declares his “cultural Anglicanism” and urges Cameron to acknowledge the British Social Attitudes survey. The survey found 50% of the population declare themselves to be of no faith and the number declaring themselves to be Church of England, Christian, at 20% which for Dawkins undermines  the privileging of religion over non religion, especially the particular privilege he sees accorded to the Anglican state church. He urges Cameron to consider the need for neutrality “in all matters pertaining to religion”.

The New Statesman site quotes Dawkins on his venture:

“To guest-edit a great magazine with the status of a national treasure is the literary equivalent of being invited to imagine your ideal dinner party – Christmas dinner, in this case – and then of actually being allowed to send out real invitations to your dream companions. Every acceptance is like a present off the Christmas tree, gratefully unwrapped and treasured.

At the same time, I couldn’t help being daunted by the New Statesman’s historic reputation for serious, well-written radical commentary, and by the need in my literary Christmas dinner to temper merriment with gravitas.

We have no reindeer, but four horsemen; no single star of wonder and no astrologers bearing gifts, but a gifted star of astronomy who knows wonder when she sees it; no kings from the east, but the modern equivalent of a king from the west; and wise men – and women – all around the table. Please join us at the feast.”

Details of his editorial and how to access the magazine can be found on the New Statesman website

Posted on by Chris News, Teaching

Teaching Atheism and Nonreligion

The British Higher Education Authority have just published an article on teaching atheism and nonreligion in its online journal Discourse. Our very own Stephen Bullivant discusses the module he has developed on the subject, as well as detailing some resources available for teachers and students. The article is open access and available here…

http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/view.html/PrsDiscourseArticles/221

 The NSRN is developing a new web resource dealing with teaching and funding resources, and will point students in the direction of Bullivant’s module at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, a module that has been developed at Aberdeen University and and the Secularism major at Pitzer College. If anyone knows of other teaching resources or dedicated funding calls that they think it would be helpful for researchers to be aware of, please email Lois at ll317@cam.ac.uk.

 

Posted on by Chris Calls for Papers, News

NSRN Journal Launch

In partnership with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC), Trinity College, CT, the NSRN as launched a new academic journal for the field, Secularism and Nonreligion.

We are are now accepting submissions of scholarly articles in the diverse areas of secularism, secularity, nonreligion and atheism research. The journal is social scientific and submissions will be accepted from all social science subjects; we also welcome relevant contributions from other subject areas, including history, philosophy, cognitive science and so on. Full details for how to submit and author guidelines are available here.