Kate Forbes coverage shows we need to stop attacking those of faith

The Herald Scotland

17 hours ago

Research by The Bible Society has found that church attendance (defined as attending church at least once a month, excluding weddings, baptisms, christenings, and funerals) has grown from 8% to 12% in England and Wales since 2018. Among 18-24-year-olds, church attendance has grown from 4% to 16%, and among 25-34-year-olds it has grown from 4% to 13%. Eighteen to 34-year-olds are now more likely to attend church than any age group except those over 65, upending what was a clear relationship between age and church attendance in 2018.
Read More:
Added to that, a YouGov poll conducted at the start of the year found that, for the first time since they began asking this question in 2019, the share of Britons that believe in a god or gods is now greater than the share that explicitly do not believe in any gods or higher spiritual power – 35% to 32%. Since 2019, the share who believe in a god or gods has increased by nine points, and the share who do not has decreased by 10 points.
Again, this shift is markedly greater among young adults. 45% of 18-24-year-olds believe in a god or gods, compared to 34% who do not. That's a swing of 16 points since 2019. And the same patterns can be seen in their Scottish sample, though those who do not believe in a god or gods continue to outnumber those who do.
It's important not to overstate the case. The UK, particularly Scotland, is becoming an increasingly secular society. According to the census, between 2011 and 2021, the share of people in England and Wales who identify as Christian declined from 59% to 43% and the share who identified with no religion increased from 25% to 37%. The Scottish census has found an even greater shift, with the share of Scots who identify with any religion declining from 56% to 43% since 2011, and the share identifying with no religion increasing from 38% to 51%.
Scotland is now a majority irreligious nation, and this is the case in 24 of our 32 local authority areas. Those areas where those who identify with a religion outnumber those who don't tend to be those with historically relatively large Catholic communities, in the West Central Belt, thanks to Catholic identity's relative 'stickiness'. The exception is Na h-Eileanan Siar, where historically much higher identification with a Protestant denomination means that, despite a sharp decline, most of the population identify with one or another Protestant denomination.
The long-term trend of secularisation is butting up against a generation coming of age in a different set of circumstances from those that most of us grew up in. They are the austerity generation, and the generation most shaped by the consequences of successive crises from 2008 through the pandemic.
We know that religious faith and observance are strongly associated with greater happiness, a sense of community, and shared purpose. Young adults belong to a generation that broadly feels let down by their elders and left behind by society, whether thanks to the spectre of uncontrolled climate change, spiralling cost of living, or impossible housing costs, and whose communal spaces and opportunities to form communities of shared purpose were decimated by the impact of austerity on social infrastructure. It makes sense that a significant number of them, though still a minority, turned to religion to fill those gaps.
This isn't inherently a bad thing, of course, and I don't want to imply that it is. Some aspects of what the Bible Society has called the Quiet Revival are rather disturbing, most significantly the role played by 'manosphere' influencers, up to and including individuals like Adam Tate, in encouraging young men to embrace 'traditional' (code for misogynistic) values and lifestyles that include Christian observance. But it would be deeply unfair to paint this entire phenomenon with that brush or understand it through that lens.
What secular society should be asking is what we can learn about providing community and shared purpose for young people, and how we can accommodate this growing religious minority in the wider social and political life of an increasingly secular nation?
The answer to the first question is obvious, but not necessarily easy: invest in social infrastructure. I've written several times in this paper about social isolation and the essential benefits, both social and economic, of social infrastructure. The trend of some young people turning to religion to fill that gap in secular life reinforces the need for such investment.
The second is harder, as the case of Kate Forbes demonstrates. The answer to the question of whether a religious person can lead this irreligious country is yes – both Humza Yousaf and John Swinney are observant adherents to their respective faiths. The question is how to accommodate religious worldviews alongside secular ones in public debate. That is not to say that faith-based politics should not be challenged – far from it. They should be as open to contestation as politics rooted in liberalism or secular conservatism.
The issue for those of faith is to be open to such challenges, should they choose to go into politics and form their politics based on their faith. For the rest of us, the issue is to find ways of challenging faith-based politics without personally attacking those of faith. While many of us seem individually able to resolve these challenges, a cursory glance at the coverage of Kate Forbes' faith and politics shows that, as a body politic, we haven't. But we'll be forced to, sooner or later: faith and faith-based politics aren't going away.
Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social