Report says >80% of the country want separation of church and state

robindch

"We The Citizens" released their final report today. Amongst much else, it discusses the basis for democracy in this country and the erosion of trust in institutions which were formerly trusted.

Amongst the more interesting conclusions are that less than 30% of the population have confidence in religious organizations, only around 15% support the mandatory indoctrination of children in primary schools, almost half want most schools to be transferred out of religious control and most interestingly of all, more than 80% want complete separation between church and state.

The final report is available here:

http://www.wethecitizens.ie/pdfs/We-the-Citizens-2011-FINAL.pdf

CerebralCortex

In all serious, and if you're being serious. I feel like crying with happiness.

padma

I'd say 100% of citizens want seperation of bank and state too

Galvasean

Between this and Martin's recent comments I'm really starting to believe that a truly secular Ireland is in sight.

Manach

So as per thread header - this organisation is backed/funded by the Government?
From the website, it mentioned being supported by "Atlantic Philanthropies"

Duke Leonal Felmet

Manach wrote: »

So as per thread header - this organisation is backed/funded by the Government?
From the website, it mentioned being supported by "Atlantic Philanthropies"

Good question, although, does it make it more robust if it is backed by the government? Or less?

Do you implicitly trust our government?

robindch

Manach wrote: »

So as per thread header - this organisation is backed/funded by the Government? From the website, it mentioned being supported by "Atlantic Philanthropies"

That's Chuck Feeney's organization -- what I believe is the largest private donor to Irish charitable causes. In the reports I'd seen before posting, I'd read that Eamon Gilmore was at the presentation of the final report, had supported it while it was being researched, and had welcomed the report on presentation. From those, I'd carelessly assumed that it had been commissioned by the government too. Oops, my mistake. The thread title has been changed.

gawker

Great stuff. Now we need the Government to grow a political pair and do something, here's hoping...

The Mad Hatter

gawker wrote: »

Great stuff. Now we need the Government to grow a political pair and do something, here's hoping...

Here's wishing.

Dades

I suspect the Iona Institute has different figures.

Who to believe? :pac:

marienbad

Dades wrote: »

I suspect the Iona Institute has different figures.

Who to believe? :pac:

I suppose neither really Dades, but there just positive indicators. Twenty years ago there would have been a bout of fake indication at even daring to ask some of these questions.

The census is the one we really need and surveys such as this may encourage the powers that be to properly phrase the questions in future and the roof won't fall in.

Knasher

marienbad wrote: »

The census is the one we really need and surveys such as this may encourage the powers that be to properly phrase the questions in future and the roof won't fall in.

I really wish the census had asked a question on secularism. It would have been very interesting to see a breakdown of support for secularism by faith and area.

Liamario

It should be quite easy to make the transfer as well, when you consider the amount of money the catholic church owes this country due to recent child abuse revelations. Transfer all church run places of education for free to cover their debt!

Dades

marienbad wrote: »

I suppose neither really Dades, but there just positive indicators. Twenty years ago there would have been a bout of fake indication at even daring to ask some of these questions.

The census is the one we really need and surveys such as this may encourage the powers that be to properly phrase the questions in future and the roof won't fall in.

I was being facetious.

I wouldn't trust the Iona Institute to admit the sun rises in the east, if they thought it might somehow negatively affect their agenda. On the other hand, this "We The Citizens" crowd seem to be somewhat objective.

robindch

Liamario wrote: »

Transfer all church run places of education for free to cover their debt!

The residential deal done years ago under Bertie suggested transferring a few places to help cover their 8% share of the costs, but despite ten years passing almost none have been transferred to state ownership.

darjeeling

Dades wrote: »

I was being facetious.

I wouldn't trust the Iona Institute to admit the sun rises in the east, if they thought it might somehow negatively affect their agenda. On the other hand, this "We The Citizens" crowd seem to be somewhat objective.

Having gone through the report, I agree.

For 'We the Citizens', over 1,200 people were polled by Ipsos MRBI and asked to respond to a number of statements and questions.

Statement: 'The church and state should be totally separate'. Around 80% said they agreed, of whom the great majority (65% of all respondents) strongly agreed, while under 10% disagreed.

Statement: 'Religious education should be focused on teaching students about different religions rather than promoting one set of religious beliefs'. Over two thirds of those polled agreed, whilst under 20% were opposed.

Confidence in religious groups, while low at 29%, was around the same as that for trade unions and the Dáil.

The survey results look to me to be clear and accurately described.

In contrast, on occasions when I've looked at Iona Institute reports in the past, some of the claims made have seemed to me to put a heavy and quite unjustifiable pro-religious spin on the actual survey results.

Liamario

robindch wrote: »

The residential deal done years ago under Bertie suggested transferring a few places to help cover their 8% share of the costs, but despite ten years passing almost none have been transferred to state ownership.

Why are you trying to ruin christmas for me?!

Peregrinus

I wouldn’t rush to hail the bright new dawn just yet.

The statement “the church and state should be totally separate” was one of a rag-bag of 22 largely unrelated statement put to people for agreement or disagreement. (It was tucked in between “what young people need most of all is strict discipline by their parents” and “the state should pay the salaries of all teachers regardless of the type of school”). There was no context or background, and we have no idea what respondents thought separation of church and state actually meant. We only have to look at, say, France, the US and China to see three radically different models of the separation of church and state. Respondents could have had any of these in mind, or something quite different. For all we know, there was a subset of respondents who thought that we already have separation of church and state, and wanted the status quo to continue.

The truth is, when you geet 80% of people agreeing with a statement, it’s probably a bit of a “motherhood and apple pie” statement, devoid of any real content. To find out what people actually want you need to put clearer concepts to them, or follow up with more detailed questions.

And, in fact, there are a couple of more specific questions elsewhere in the survey, the answers to which cast some light on the diversity of views buried within the 80%. For example, 36% of people do not want to see a majority of schools taken out of church control. This means that at least 16% of the survey population say they want complete separation of church and state, but also want a majority of schools to be church-controlled. 63% of the population want the state to pay the salaries of all teachers, regardless of school type - therefore at least 43% of the survey population said they wanted separation of church and state, but that they wanted the state to pay the salaries of teachers in (presumably) church schools. That’s a majority of those who want separation of church and state!

This begins to look like a very Irish separation of church and state.

Interestingly, participants were asked which religion they belonged to, and the range of answers offered included “no religion” and “not stated”. They were also asked about frequency of attendance at religious services. Sadly, the report to which robindch links doesn’t give figures for the responses to these questions. It would be interesting to compare them to the census figures, when published.

expectationlost

because sepearation of church and state in the "motherhood and apple pie" choice?

Peregrinus

expectationlost wrote: »

because sepearation of church and state in the "motherhood and apple pie" choice?

Exactly. Everybody favours separation of church and state, just like everybody favours democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality and a chicken in every pot. But if you actually get people to engage with what these concepts mean, you find that (a) lots of people have a pretty hazy notion of what they mean, and (b) people who have clearer notions have a diverse range of often inconsistent notions.

I think that's what we are seeing here. More than half of the people who agree that church and state should be separate also seem to agree that the state should pay the full salaries of teachers in church schools. My guess is that some of the minority would object that that's not separation of church and state at all; that most people who say they want separationo of church and state actually don't want it.

darjeeling

Peregrinus wrote: »

More than half of the people who agree that church and state should be separate also seem to agree that the state should pay the full salaries of teachers in church schools.

I wouldn't see it that way. 46% agree the majority of schools should be in state ownership, with a further 18% or so undecided, and 80% of people agree with separation of church and state. You've stated that:

Peregrinus wrote: »

at least 43% of the survey population said they wanted separation of church and state, but that they wanted the state to pay the salaries of teachers in (presumably) church schools. That’s a majority of those who want separation of church and state!

...but I don't think that these people were necessarily envisaging continued church ownership of the majority of state schools (only 36% were actively in favour of this), so the presumption is not sound

The numbers do at least, though, mean that a substantial proportion of people don't seem to think that separation of church and state precludes state-funded religious schools. It would be interesting to know what they do think it means - maybe just a removal of reference to religion from the constitution, who knows?

Incidentally, the numbers also seem to show there are people who don't trust the church, but still want it running the schools. People are strange.

Peregrinus

darjeeling wrote: »

I wouldn't see it that way. 46% agree the majority of schools should be in state ownership, with a further 18% or so undecided, and 80% of people agree with separation of church and state. You've stated that:

...but I don't think that these people were necessarily envisaging continued church ownership of the majority of state schools (only 36% were actively in favour of this), so the presumption is not sound.

They weren’t envisaging a majority of schools being church-owned, but I think it highly likely that they were considering that there would be church-owned schools, and (therefore) that they felt the state should fund them.

The fact is that 63% of the survey population want the state to pay the salaries of all teachers, regardless of school type. It’s possible that buried in there is a small cohort who thinks that church schools should be banned, so that the state would not be paying the salaries of teachers in church schools. But nothing in the survey even canvasses the possibility of all church schools being banned, and in the Irish (and indeed European) context it’s a wildly unrealistic scenario. I seriously doubt that many people considering that question were answering it on the basis of a scenario in which Ireland had no church schools.

But the truth is, we are probably trying to read more into this report than it can bear. When “We the Citizens” commissioned this survey, as far as I can see they weren’t actually interested in the substantive issues that people were asked about. They merely wanted to established baseline of public opinion over a wide variety of issues, against which to measure how much opinions moved, changed or developed after people had been engaged in a consultative deliberative process. Hence the extraordinarily wide variety of topics about which opinion is sought in the survey, and the rather vague and disconnected nature of an awful lot of the questions.

I think we can legitimately conclude from this survey that the great bulk of the Irish people favour, in principle, the separation of church and state. But the survey tells us nothing about what they think that means, and contains a number of pointers, to put it no higher, to the possibility that it doesn’t necessarily mean what you, or I, or anyone else, might like it to mean, or think it ought to mean.

There’s a certain irony in Dade’s suggestion that the Iona Institute allows its ideology and agenda to, um, colour its interpretation of the data. There’s a few responses in this thread which suggest that Iona may not be alone in making that mistake.

darjeeling wrote: »

Incidentally, the numbers also seem to show there are people who don't trust the church, but still want it running the schools. People are strange.

They may trust the state even less!

But, more seriously, that just highlights my point. Cross-matching the responses to different questions in this survey produces some bizarre results, which highlights that the opinions expressed are mostly not clear, and can’t be assumed to be strongly-held or well-thought-out.

expectationlost

Peregrinus wrote: »

Exactly. Everybody favours separation of church and state.

I wouldn't say think that at all. which was the point of the OP surprise.