THE public in the UK take a more negative view of the social effects of religion than most of the rest of the world does, a study suggests.
More than half of 1,017 people surveyed in the UK believed that religion had a negative impact — and even more that it encouraged intolerance rather than tolerance, the Pew Research Center, a Washington think tank, reported.
Globally, its study, based on surveys in 36 countries, found that, broadly, people held a positive view of religion and its effect on society.
The study was drawn from surveys of 41,503 people outside, and 12,693 inside, the United States, conducted in the first quarter of 2024.
An average of 77 per cent of the respondents said that religion mostly helped society, while a median of 19 per cent said that it mostly hurt it. Views of the impact of religion were particularly positive in parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
In the UK, however, more than half — 51 per cent of the respondents — said that religion was not helpful to society. The only country where more respondents took this view was the Netherlands, at 54 per cent.
When asked whether religion promoted tolerance or intolerance, 57 per cent in the UK said that it promoted intolerance. Only Sweden was higher, at 62 per cent.
More positive views of religion were likelier in middle-income countries. The study suggested that the wealth of a country was a good indicator of whether people wanted their country’s laws rooted in religion, and also whether they wanted their leaders to hold a religious faith.
In middle-income countries, such as Kenya, Brazil, and Malaysia, people were more likely to say that the predominant text of their religion should have either a great deal of influence or a fair amount on their country’s laws.
They were also more likely to say that religious texts should have the final say, over and above the will of the people, in a country’s national laws, when there was a conflict between the two.
In the UK, Australia, France, and other high-income countries, a majority of those interviewed said that religious text should not shape their country’s laws, and that the will of the people should prevail.
The outlier was the United States. Although it is a high-income country, almost half (49 per cent) thought that the Bible should influence national laws. In all countries, the adherents of a faith were most likely to say that their text should influence laws.
When asked whether a religious text was currently influencing the existing legal system across countries in Europe, those who were atheist or agnostic were more likely than Christians to say that the Bible did influence current laws. Fifty-six per cent of religiously unaffiliated Greeks, for example, said that the Bible had a fair amount or a great deal of influence on Greek laws today, compared with 39 per cent of Christians in Greece.
People in middle-income countries were also more likely than people in high-income countries to say that they wanted their leaders to stand up for people’s religious beliefs. This was rated as more important than having a leader who shared their religious belief, or held strong but different religious beliefs.
In Bangladesh and Indonesia, seven out of ten respondents said that it was important for a leader to stand up for religious beliefs, but in high-income countries such as France and Japan, only 11 per cent and five per cent respectively said that this was important in their prime minister or president.
Again, the US and also Israel were outliers. In the US, 64 per cent said that it was important, and, in Israel, that figure rose to 68 per cent.
Across all the countries surveyed, those who followed a religion, including those who prayed daily, were more likely to say that it was important to have a leader with a strong personal faith. In the UK, 29 per cent of adults who prayed daily said this, compared with just six per cent of those who prayed less often.
The Pew study sought to show what proportion of people in each country saw the dominant religion as central to their national identity. This, along with questions about the influence of religious texts on society and the faith of a country’s prime minister or president, were then used to provide a measure for religious nationalism. Those who scored highly in all these areas were defined as religious nationalists by the researchers.
The study concluded that, although religious nationalists did not make up a majority of the respondents in any of the 35 countries surveyed, middle-income countries, including Kenya, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, had a higher proportion of religious nationalists than Europe. In Germany and Sweden, less than one per cent could be defined as religious nationalists.
In the US, only six per cent of adults could be defined overall as religious nationalists — similar to the number in Chile and Mexico — although, in some areas, the US the scored much more highly than other high-income countries.
The study also found a link between religious nationalism and the ideological Right. In Europe, those who supported right-wing populist parties were more likely to meet the definition of a religious nationalist.
