Is religious belief declining in Britain?

The understanding and interpretation of the presumed "secularization" of Britain and other European nations is clouded by a lack of adequate information regarding the substance and timing of religious change. This paper represents the first systematic effort to collect and analyze existing survey data on religious belief in Britain from the late 1930s to the present. Overall, the results show an increase in general scepticism about the existence of God, the related erosion of dominant, traditional Christian beliefs, and the persistence of nontraditional beliefs. A theoretical perspective is needed that recognizes the often corrosive effects of modern life on the transmission of religious beliefs and the continued popularity of worldviews which presume a transcendent referent, however broadly defined

Reading the Bible in America: The moral and political attitude effect

The Bible is an important text in American history, but research analyzing the social consequences of reading the Bible is very limited. Research focusing on religious practices or religiosity with Bible reading as part of a scale shows a tendency towards conservatism and traditionalism, as do more literalist views of the Bible. In the present study, biblical literalism is treated as a powerful context guiding one’s reading. The focus here is a quantitative view of Bible reading, deploying two ‘conservative’ and two ‘liberal’ moral/political scales and two competing views for how Bible reading may function. Results indicate that Bible reading is positively related to both of the liberal scales as well as the conservative scales for non-literalists, but not for those with literalist Bible views. The findings begin to show the importance of independent Bible reading, how it may function differently for literalists and non-literalists, and highlights the degree to which literalism and Bible reading are different constructs