July 19, 2024

Britain’s attitudes to faith in public life – July 2024

The Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life (IIFL) commissioned a ground-breaking, nationally-representative survey into the British public’s attitudes to the role that faith plays in different aspects of life. Respondents were polled on topics including personal faith, faith in public life, faith in education, faith literacy, faith in the media and how Britain’s relationship with faith has changed.

This survey was carried out by Whitestone Insight. They interviewed 2,075 UK adults on-line between 26th and 27th June 2024. Data were weighted to be representative of all UK adults. Whitestone Insight is a member of the British Polling Council (BPC) and abides by its rules.

Read our commentary here.

Download dataset

Read the full analysis here.

Key points

Youth voting: When asked if respondents felt that their faith would shape the way they would vote in the general election, the 18-24 year old group was nearly three times as likely to say yes compared to respondents over 55, with 44% of 18-24 year olds agreeing with the statement compared to 16% of 55-64 year olds and 17% of over 65s.
Openness to faith in politics: Britain shows a remarkable openness to people of different faiths being Prime Minister, with 64% of all respondents agreeing that someone of any faith should be able to be Prime Minister. Amongst respondents of faith, both exclusivist and non-exclusivist Muslims were the most likely to agree with the statement, at 79% and 73% respectively.
Faith and cultural heritage: Exclusivist and non-exclusivist Hindus were most likely to report their faith to be tied to their cultural heritage and Christians of both groups the least. 79% of exclusivist Hindus and 77% of non-exclusivist Hindus agreed with the statement, compared to 68% of exclusivist and 60% of non-exclusivist Muslims, and significantly higher than both exclusivist (59%) and non-exclusivist (44%) Christians.
Tolerance of faith in political life: The public is relatively split on whether British politicians talking about their faith publicly is a good thing, with 38% saying it is, 34% saying it is not and 28% saying that they don’t know. Of all age groups, 18-24 year olds are most likely to say it is, with 49% agreeing with the statement – with 25-34 year olds the next highest at 40% and 45-54 year olds the lowest at 32%.

Faith and public life

In the last four weeks, 11% of Christian respondents prefer not to tell people about their faith compared with 22% of Muslim respondents, 29% of Hindus and 49% of Jews.
33% of Christians oppose talking about faith in the workplace, compared with 30% Muslim respondents, 43% of Hindu respondents and 35% of Jewish respondents.
50% of Christian respondents agree that politicians talking publicly about faith is a positive thing, compared to 65% of Muslims, 54% of Hindus and 63% of Jews.
When asked if they agree of disagree that British politicians should listen to what faith leaders have to say on social and political issues, 52% of Christians agree, compared to 70% of Muslims, 50% of Hindus and 63% of Jews.

About the author

Dr Jake Scott

Dr Jake Scott is the secretary at the IIFL. An English Christian academic, his PhD thesis was written on populism, popular identity and political theory. He is particularly interested in the social impact of religion and faith.