Friday, February 22, 2013

Even Sherlock Holmes couldn't do it.

"It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.” Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking - A Theological ABC

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Sources for church statistics

I recently compiled a short list of the best statistics on religion in the UK for a visiting scholar who was at our church. I put it here so I don't lose it.


1. British religion in numbers

 www.brin.ac.org
This site, run by academics at the University of Manchester, seeks to gather, analyse and publish statistics on religion from a large variety of sources.


2. Office for National Statistics is the government data office. They are still publishing fresh data from the 2011 Census. But here is some of what they have:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html

This blog is a summary of some of the religious data:

http://blog.echurchwebsites.org.uk/2011/09/18/uk-religion-final-tables-2011-census/


3. Peter Brierley is a highly respected church researcher, now in semi-retirement, but his website is full of interest.

http://brierleyconsultancy.com/index.html


4. Global statistics. There are many sources for these. One of the most recent, and most respected, and easiest accessed can be found at America’s Pew Research Centre:

http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-worlds-christian-population.aspx


Sources for church statistics