An online centre for British data on religion

在过去的四百年里，英国的宗教格局发生了巨大的变化。变化的速度也没有放缓：近几十年来，世俗化以及非基督教和另类宗教的发展共同改变了公共文化。到目前为止，对于英国在多大程度上仍是一个宗教社会，宗教信仰或世俗化在多大程度上影响着社会政治行为，目前还没有达成共识。研究这些变化(及其对公共政策的影响)需要历史学家和社会科学家的综合技能。它还需要关于宗教参与的确凿证据基础，无论是过去还是现在。我们建议为英国宗教数据建立一个在线中心，为历史学家和社会学家、政策制定者、宗教领袖、记者和公众提供丰富的统计记录和最新评论。英国拥有丰富的宗教数据，包括几个世纪前教会关于出生、婚姻和死亡的记录，但也有从1603年教会人口普查到2001年人口普查和2005年英国教会人口普查的临时调查。近几十年来，从民意调查、地方和国家调查以及宗教组织的记录中产生了大量新的统计材料。这些数据集中的大多数都没有得到充分利用，很少有学者知道。它们也经常被归档得很差，数据丢失严重。我们不会进行原始调查：相反，我们将向普通研究人员和研究用户提供英国过去四个世纪的大量宗教统计数据。该项目有三个核心目标。我们将：1)识别和编目英国关于宗教的全面统计数据。我们将描述每个来源的性质和局限性，并明确说明在哪里可以找到数据。2)建立一套较为全面的统计时间序列。这些数字/来自信仰、官方和独立来源/将立即向所有研究人员提供。3)编写关于宗教习俗、身份和信仰变化的专题评论，并用表格、图表和地图加以说明。这些分析摘要将对普通研究用户开放。第一个目标将主要通过更新和重新安排现有的统计审查来实现。对于该国所有主要宗教和替代信仰体系，该目录将涵盖个人一级的身份、成员资格、信仰、习俗、通过仪式和意见的数据以及组织一级的建筑物和人员的详细情况。报道将从17世纪(最早的教会人口普查的时间)一直持续到现在。第二个目标是建立时间序列数据，将集中于十九世纪和二十世纪。在这一时期的大部分时间里，我们可以提供会员、成人仪式、礼拜场所和事工的统计数据。我们会尽可能提供按年龄、性别和地理区域划分的数字。第三个目标是编写专题评论，计划时考虑到两类用户。对于对宗教和宗教变革感兴趣，但分析数据的能力或倾向有限的人，这些简短的概述将描述趋势，并总结学者们如何解释这些趋势。想要做进一步研究的用户可以找到指向当前争议和不确定领域的指针，以及辅助参考。对于这类需要复杂交叉引用的材料，网上发布是理想的选择。此外，使用现代技术制作的高质量地图和地图以及全彩色图表和图表的硬拷贝出版成本太高，但可以很容易地在网站上展示。

The British religious landscape has changed dramatically in the past four hundred years. Nor is the pace of change slowing: during recent decades, a combination of secularisation and growth of non-Christian and alternative religions has transformed public culture. As yet there is no consensus over how far Britain remains a religious society, and how far religiosity or secularity conditions socio-political behaviours. Studying these changes (and their implications for public policy) calls on the combined skills of historians and social scientists. It also requires a firm evidence base about religious involvement, past and present. We propose to create an online centre for British data on religion to make a rich store of statistical records and up-to-date commentaries available to historians and sociologists, policy-makers, religious leaders, journalists and the public. Britain has a wealth of religious data, including church records on births, marriages and deaths going back centuries but also ad hoc surveys from the 1603 ecclesiastical census to the 2001 population census and the 2005 English Church Census. An enormous amount of new statistical material has been produced during recent decades from opinion polls, local and national surveys, and record-keeping by religious organisations. Most of these datasets are underused, being known to very few scholars. They have also often been poorly archived, with significant data loss. We will not be conducting original surveys: rather, we will make the enormous body of religious statistics in Britain from the last four centuries accessible to ordinary researchers and research users. The project has three central objectives. We will: 1) identify and catalogue the full range of British statistics on religion. We will describe the nature and limitations of each source, with clear directions about where to find the data. 2) assemble a reasonably comprehensive set of statistical time series. These figures / drawn from faith, official and independent sources / will be immediately available to all researchers. 3) produce thematic commentaries on changing religious practice, identity and belief, illustrated with tables, charts and maps. These analytical summaries will be accessible to ordinary research users. The first objective will largely be realised by updating and rearranging an existing statistical review. For all principal religions and alternative belief systems in the country, the catalogue will cover data on identification, membership, belief, practice, rites of passage, and opinion at the level of individuals and details of buildings and personnel at the level of organisations. Coverage will be from the seventeenth century (the time of the earliest ecclesiastical censuses) to the present. The second objective, construction of time-series data, will concentrate on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For much of this period we can offer statistics on membership, rites of passage, places of worship and ministry. We will provide figures by age, gender and geographical area whenever possible. The third objective, preparation of thematic commentaries, is planned with two kinds of users in mind. For people interested in religion and religious change but with limited ability or inclination to analyse the data, these short overviews will describe trends and summarise how scholars have interpreted them. Users who want to do further research will find pointers to current controversies and areas of uncertainty, with supporting references. Publication on the web is ideal for material of this kind that requires complex cross-referencing. Moreover, the high-quality maps and cartograms, and full-colour charts and graphs, produced using contemporary technology, would be too expensive to publish in hard copy but can easily be displayed on a website.