A new report said to be the largest known study of attitudes towards diversity in England and Wales has found that religious diversity is less accepted than ethnic and national diversity.
The study, conducted by Cambridge University’s Woolf Institute, discovered that of 11,701 adults surveyed, only 41 per cent agreed that religious diversity was good for British society, with 22 per cent actively disagreeing.
Explaining the findings, principal investigator Dr Edward Kessler MBE described religion as the “final frontier for prejudice.”
The survey, conducted by Survation, found that as a society we are comfortable with the idea of a close relative marrying someone of a different ethnic or national background. However, we are less comfortable with them marrying someone from a different religion, with less than half being comfortable with a relative marrying a Muslim person.
A majority of those of another religion, including 61 per cent of Jews, were uncomfortable with the idea. Muslims were also “the group most likely to have negative attitudes towards other faith groups.”
The report suggested religion in marriage was a “red line” for many, with an adherence to religious norms capable of “co-existing alongside patterns of prejudice and discrimination.” Muslims were “singled out” by Christian and Jewish respondents, who on the whole felt comfortable about intermarriage with Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.
The report also found that 40 per cent of Asian respondents were uncomfortable with a relative marrying a Jew, compared to around a third of black respondents and one in five white respondents.
A female rabbi from London interviewed as part of the study suggested that there may be “an element of Islamophobia” driving the responses, but that Jews and other minority faith groups “are small, relative to the general population, and are all seeking to preserve their own ethno-religious identity.”
In society at large, older individuals were more likely to feel negative about religious diversity, whereas those from ethnic minorities and other religions felt more positively about it. Fifty seven per cent agreed that religious diversity was good for their local community.
Eighty seven per cent of religious respondents had friendships with people from other faiths, but the report claimed that religion had no role in determining the likelihood of religiously diverse friendships.
More than four fifths of religious workers worked in settings that were religiously diverse, though Dr Kessler remarked that the coronavirus pandemic and home working would have had an impact on religious integration. The study found “little evidence” supporting the stereotype that Jews and Muslims only mix with their own.
