In Search of a Better World22h ago

Today in news which will not shock you:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwjxx5eyn1o

Survey which claimed evangelical Christianity was on the rise in UK found to have been fraudulently manipulated by Evangelical Christians.

I know. My surprise was unconstrained.
😑

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses

The original report claimed a rise in young people attending church in England and Wales.

Show threadJohn19h ago
@CrypticMirror Where does this article say it was fraudulently manipulated by evangelical Christians? YouGov carried out the research, they're a reputable secular polling company. People paid by YouGov to fill in the survey misrepresented themselves. Unless you've got evidence those people were somehow selected or manipulated by evangelicals, you should correct your claim.
Show threadNeil Hopkins19h ago
@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror the evangelical Christians were happy to go along with the idea that attendances were dramatically up even though they must have known that they were actually declining. That sounds pretty deceptive.
Show threadNeil Hopkins
@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror it looks like the survey was flawed by people completing it for money by just ticking random answers rather then deliberately pretending to be attending church
Mar 26 at 8:47pmWeb
Show threadJohn18h ago
@satsuma @CrypticMirror The Christians questioned the results because they thought they looked unlikely, YouGov repeatedly insisted they were accurate. Understandably, the Christians got quite excited about that. Very awkward and deflating for them to find out they were misled.
Show threadjz.tusk10h ago

@jdonoghue @satsuma @CrypticMirror

I assume they're used to it

Show threadNeil Hopkins4h ago
@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror you’d think that they would have a pretty good idea of how many people were turning up for services on an average Sunday in their own churches though. Don’t they take attendance or count the weekly collection? Did they all just think that every other church was busy and theirs was the quiet one?
Show threadJohn4h ago
@satsuma @CrypticMirror They're not a church? And you'd assume one is a representative sample, rather than a (they were informed) actual representative sample by a respected polling company?
Show threadNeil Hopkins4h ago
@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror a better metric would be the number of people who donate regularly, no matter the amount, as that would show they were committed to the church.
Show threadJohn3h ago
@satsuma @CrypticMirror Perhaps. Hard to get the number though. "Should have done a different survey" is a very different criticism to "You falsified that survey"
Show threadNeil Hopkins2h ago
@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror the churches (especially the Church of England) should already have that information available at a national level without relying on a third party survey though. Claiming that there are huge numbers of young people attending church when they should know that the true picture is different is the dodgy part of this. Were they hoping it would be a self fulfilling prophecy and make youngsters think that the church was the place to be?
Show threadNeil Hopkins1h ago

@jdonoghue @CrypticMirror according to this report there were just over 400,000 regular givers in 2021 down by 30% over the previous decade. This is published and publicly available data, so why were they so eager to think the opposite was happening?

https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/cofe-giving-falls-by-a-third-in-a-decade

CofE giving falls by a third in a decade

Church giving falls by a third in a decadeThe number of people regularly giving to the Church of England (CofE) has fallen by almost a third (30 per cent) in the last decade, according to the latest

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