Steve Clifford, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK, has now published a report about the state of UK evangelicalism. Aside from general observations — it’s like the USA but it’s not like the USA, it’s more cohesive than the USA, etc — the study will undoubtedly be a watershed for understanding what’s going on in the UK when it comes to evangelicalism.
My overall assessment: I’m very encouraged about UK evangelicalism and I’m thankful to Jason Clark for alerting me to this report. You can access, print, or buy the report at the link above.
Here are some characteristics of “typically evangelical”:
91% think Jesus is the only way to God; 96% attend a church once a week; 77% are in small groups; 83% read/listen to the Bible a few times a week; 96% pray a few times a day; 96% have given money to their church this year; 88% strongly agree that their faith is the most important thing in their life; 94% believe in creation care; 85% voted in the General Election; 83% believe in miraculous gifts today; 94% agree that Christians should be united in truth; 93% think Christians should have a voice in the media.
More incisive issues:
83% agree the Bible has “supreme authority” in beliefs, views, and behaviour. 71% believe it is a Christian’s duty to be involved in evangelism (58% talk about their faith to someone once a month); 62% think sex before marriage is wrong.
But there’s variation:On inerrancy, 54% believe it; 32% are for it or unsure.
Abortion: 37% think it’s wrong; 46% are straddling (unsure/disagree a little); 17% disagree.
Hell: 37% strongly agree that hell is a place where the condemned will suffer eternal conscious pain; 13% agree a little with this; 31% are unsure; 8% disagree a little; 11% disagree a lot.
Women in leadership: 51% are strongly in favor; 20% disagree only a little; [71% are in favor]; 9% are unsure; 10% disagree a little; 10% strongly disagree.
Homosexuality: 59% agree a lot that homosexual sexual acts are wrong; 14% agree a little; 11% are unsure; 8% disagree a little; and 8% disagree a lot. [That is, about 16% of UK evangelicals are more or less in favor of homosexuality as acceptably Christian.]
I was just posting on this report too Scot. A few of the stats struck me. 71% pro ‘egalitarian’ versus 20% against. Over 2 to 1 ratio of those able to accept evolution compared to those who can’t. And the figure of 83% strongly agreeing that spiritual gifts & miracles shows a real marginalisation of cessationism.
I suspect that the figures on these issues would not be replicated in the States? [I don't think they would be where I live in Ireland]. And that all raises the interesting question of how much the ‘flavour’ of evangelicalism differs according to geography.
Patrick,
The presence of a more charismatic evangelicalism struck me; I don’t know what percent is egalitarian here but my impression — no more than that — is that UK numbers are higher than USA. And, too, there appears to me to be more openness to evolution.
I wish I had numbers of such things in my head for the USA but I don’t. Others may know… and I hope they speak up.
Praying for you and IBI brother.
I read the whole survey, and it was interesting to compare UK Evangelicalism to my own experience and understanding of US Evangelicalism. UK Evangelicals are, on the whole, much more unified on more issues that one would expect to find in the US. More importantly, UK Evangelicals do not seem to be divided on political issues, and party affiliation does not seem to determine ones relationship to the Evangelical movement, as it does often enough here in the US. All-in-all, I was encouraged to read this survey, and look forward to what God has been doing and will continue to do in the UK through the Evangelical movement.
Patrick,
I, too, don’t have the statistics on this, but I suspect that the answer is no, these figures would not be replicated in the US. Not only because there are more people across more diverse social, ethnic and even economic locations, but because the political atmosphere is more divisive here, and tends to split Evangelicals right down the middle between conservative and liberal. I wish I had some stats to back that up.
#4 Comment by Joshua Wooden — January 22, 2011 @ 2:26 pm:
“…tends to split Evangelicals right down the middle between conservative and liberal.”
It’s not close to 50-50 – more like 75-25 in favor of Republicans. Mainline Protestants are more evenly divided.
Thanks Scot. Joshua, good point about politics. England especially is one of the most secular countries in Europe. Committed Christians of any sort are a small minority. Being on the margins precludes the option (and temptation) of thinking that getting ‘your people’ into positions of political power is a route to spiritual renewal.
A few brief observations from a British evangelical (who has recently read this report):
1. The ‘charismaticisation of evangelicalism’ in the UK was identified a long time ago. In my memory, the first person to comment on that explicitly was Dave Tomlinson in his 1995 book The Post-Evangelical (a book that more or less launched a British version of emerging church).
2. If my memory serves me right, the figures on sexual ethics have moved since the last time the EA surveyed on them. The stance against homosexual practice was over 90% in the last survey I remember.
3. Yes, we are more accepting of evolution. When the topic does get debated here, creationism is sometimes described as an ‘American’ problem. That’s erroneous, but it says something about the perception.
4. It is decades since British evangelicalism could have been identified with one political approach (it used to be strongly Conservative). Even in 1990 when Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister, some wealthy evangelical-charismatic churches grieved that God’s anointed had been removed from power, while their poorer brothers and sisters in post-industrial wastelands blighted by unemployment rejoiced as if it were the fall of Babylon. There may be something to say about varying social contexts.
PS: See the post by Eddie Arthur, UK director of Wycliffe Bible Translators, The Elephant not in the Room about the absence from the report of discussion about world mission, previously a major evangelical emphasis.
Scott,
One very striking trend you did not point out is that younger evangelicals (16-24yrs) are LESS likely to agree with the women in leadership question than the average across all ages (38% vs 51%).
This is remarkable.
This shows that there is a more conservative up-and-coming group of younger evangelicals who are complementarian unlike their parents.
Being from the UK myself, I would put this down largely to the influence of NewFrontiers churches as well as the online Piper and Driscoll influence.
henrybish, thanks. Yes I observed it but didn’t really want to get into that discussion … and you may well be right… and I suspect that influence over here is even stronger on that one.
In addition to my comment above, the true proportion of younger evangelicals who agree with the women in leadership question is likely even lower for the following 2 reasons:
1) If you look even closer at the results for the younger evangelicals it is apparent that there are probably 2 distinct groups within in it (conservative and liberal) since younger evangelicals are on average slightly LESS likely to agree that the Bible is their supreme authority in guiding their beliefs. So the proportion of the more conservative complementarians must be high enough to offset this morel liberal group by enough such that the whole group is on the whole more complementarian than the older generations.
2) From what I know, the list of festivals the surveys were taken at did NOT include the festivals likely to have more complementarian presence (NewWord Alive and the NFI conferences), thus one would expect the true complementarian presence to be even higher. The list of festivals can be seen in the complete data report:
http://www.eauk.org/snapshot/upload/21st-Century-Evangelicals-Data-Report.pdf
How does one explain this counter-cultural trend, in the UK of all places!
Grupetti,
Thanks for the clarification. I honestly don’t know what the exact numbers are, as I mentioned. In an case, my point was to highlight the importance of political agendas in determining Evangelical conservatism vs. Evangelical liberalism, even if there is a clear majority in favor of Republicanism.
To my mind, the most important thing about this report was what it didn’t mention: http://www.kouya.net/?p=3720
Rob Warner with his PhD surveyed and analysed developments in UK evangelicalism, 1961 to start of this century (see Reinventing English Evangelicalism).
He maps out three distinct groups as having emerged and developed in the UK amongst evangelicals. 1) a traditional evangelical ecumenicalism moving towards a minimal biblical orthodoxy, 2) an anti liberal evangelical exclusivism moving into more and more elaborate forms of conservatism 3) a post conservative evangelical openness ready to throw out most of any previous evangelical consensus who are provoking the neo-conservatives (p223).
Warner claims it’s issues of biblical inspiration and atonement, that have have been the ‘storm-centre’ in this three domains of evangelical differentiation in the UK.
I’d like to see Warner compare and correlate who was surveyed with his mapping of UK evangelicals.