Hypothesis I am going to try and find out whether as our society s becoming more multi cultural, the Christian following of religion is dying. I predict that as time has gone on less and less people have found Christian ways of life easy to follow and the teachings of some other influential religion have become more dominant to the people of Britain because of ethnic immigration into Britain. I want to do this topic, as I myself am interested in becoming a teacher of religion. And secularisation is very interesting to me. (92 words Context and concepts I am going to use for my information the population of ethnic minorities statistics and figures published in Britain. I want to gain information from to census to obtain knowledge of the populations of ethnicity groups within Britain so I can see if larger ethnic populated cites have a lower Christian following.
English: Church attendance stamps.
English: Church attendance stamps.
BRITAIN ST.I also would like to use official records of church attendance in and around British urban areas. I could use the records to find out in which areas attendance is highest and in which areas it is lower according to the proportion of population.
Secularisation is defined by Bryan Wilson (a prominent pro-secularisation theorist) as "the process whereby religious thinking, practises and institutions lose social significance", Religion in a Secular Society, (1966). His main concern is over the way that religion has ceased to have any significance for the working of the social system. But this raises problems - how do you measure 'significance'? How, influential was religion in the past? Precisely what does he mean by "religious thinking, practises and institutions".
I am going to define the concept of Christianity. Many others and myself many define Christians as people who follow the teachings of Jesus and go to church to worship and pray. However in some cases a Christian may not go to church so that presents a problem to my research. Christianity can be seen as a religion but also as a way of life so following cannot be monitored just be church attendance. I am going to use this concept do define my subjects of question when I carry out my questionnaire.
The second concept I am going to define is multi cultural; it is seen as the major immigration of foreigners in to Britain within the last 50 years and these new cultured societies mixing with each other hence multi cultural.
The third concept I am going to define is multi faiths, because as a culture may be differently cultured they may have the same faith, for example a mix of blacks and whites who are both Christian but have different ways of life. So this is where multi faiths come in because a multi faith society is when in a community has many faiths and active religions, which are expressed through worship and ways of life within the society or community. (388 Words) Main research methods and reasons My main research methods would be looking at statistics from the national census 2001,. I would look at statistics of the national census of Britain to find out in what main areas Christian following was highest and lowest then I would look at where in the country there are large areas of multi cultural society and see if there is any correlation in these figures.
I would find census results on the Internet www.ons.gov.uk and record them to try and prove the correlation. I would also want to find out church attendance or all Trinitarian churches in the same year 2001. The reason I would use statistics from the census is because as everyone had to fill it in it will be quite reliable. And the quantitive data will be good evidence for my research.
This would be my main method of research and I would probably look at the 2 largest cities in Britain.
Another method of research for me would be looking at Bryan Wilson's views on secularisation. Who backs the idea that religion as a whole is decreasing in Britain. looks at Church attendance figures, Church baptisms and marriages, number of new clergy coming forward etc.for example baptisms within the Church of England have dropped (55.4% of infants, i.e. children up to 12 months of age - in 1960, 36.5% in 1983. Wilson notes that Church attendance figures are down - in 1960, 6.2% of the population attended Communion, in 1983, the figure was 4.3%.
My other method of research would be a structured interviewas my hometown in very multicultural. I would use a sample size of 50 in my local borough of Walsall. I would ask age 20+ because I feel many youngsters don't take religion as seriously as older people do. I would ask both male and female and would try to obtain results from different ethnicities.
The reason I would do a questionnaire is because I would like to see if any other people though there to be correlation between multicultural society and the following of Christian religion.(344 words) Potential problems With my investigation I would have potential problems.
The first big problem being obtaining data because census results in the form I want are quite difficult to find. I want results set out by region. Another problem would be the data collected might not be true or accurate for one reason or another. Also Response rate is estimated to reach 98% of households so we can't guarantee fulltistics of Britain. Another problem is the religion question is not compulsory so many people may have chosen not to answer it. Also, many people say the are church of England but don't follow the religion or attend church so real religion followers are mixed in with those who write C of E for the sake of it.
Another problem would be the structured interview my questions are ones about religion and race so some may find them difficult or sensitive to answer.
Also producing and finding 50 interviews will be a task in itself because safely finding 50 people is hard.
Also the cost of producing 50 interview sheets will be about 5 pounds because with ink and paper and resources it adds up.
Another problem will be lack of qualitative data also lack of reliable data because as I said people don't always tell the truth on forms or questionnaires. (219 words) 1043 words
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Ch...