Homely's UK Maps Thread

[afleitch]

Interesting. I thought Croydon (London) would be more Muslim. Nonetheless very very interesting! can we have one with people with no religious belief as well?

Ah, requests! I'd be happy to fill that one.

Might be worth extending it to Scotland and Wales as they have exceptionally high rates of non-belief.

[afleitch]

The religion questions were not the same, unfortunately.  In Scotland the question was "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?"  In England and Wales it was "What is your religion?"

Yet you still get a stark result in Wales even with that.

[afleitch]

Though some patterns are still interesting: if you look at that map, note that the very low rates are almost all minority-heavy (to a given definition of minority: Catholics very much included). Places with large student populations tend too have high rates. New Towns often have slightly higher rates than surrounding areas. And once you drill down to ward level in some places other things of interest can some up.

I've been looking at the low level Datazone counts for Scotland and linking levels of religiousity to the Index of Multiple Deprivation. I've still to pull things together but the results get interesting. Church of Scotland affiliation increases each step the less deprived one gets, as does 'Other Christian' (which is broadly Episcopalian but not easy to manipulate this data), and it does the same for Jewish. With Muslims (where it's closely linked to age) it also increases marginally the less income deprived an area is. For Roman Catholics of course it's the complete opposite with equal levels with Church of Scotland in the most deprived areas. It's worth noting though that while it declines as you get less deprived it does have an uptick at around 8 (if we take 1 as most deprived and 10 as least) before diving down which is the Catholic middle class (I'll need to drill down to Glasgow suburbia to get a more localised view) Indeed all religions seem to take a dive at 10). For those with non belief it's higher with those who are most deprived before dipping in the middle and then rising again with a large uptick at 10.

[afleitch]

Unfortunately in this instance there are very good reasons to suspect geographically significant differences in interpretation. It's a known fact, for instance, that white people are more likely to list their religion as 'Christian' if they live in or right next to a large concentration of minorities.

In London, perhaps (complicated by African/Carribean community presence). Though there is a striking difference in South London and again in the more 'trendy' parts of North London that are cheek by jowl next to non-Christian religious areas

I think there is a regional pattern here. Wales isn't shown (but was asked the same question) and there's a high wall of Nones at the border. Urban West Midlands is more 'pink' than urban West Yorkshire. Indeed outside the Severn/Wash line the map is almost topographic with deeper red hues in upland areas.