Religion and Brexit: populism and the Church of England

Drawing on our own recent surveys on beliefs and values in Great Britain (Woodhead) and evangelical Christians in the UK (Smith) this article explores the links between religion, views and votes on leaving or remaining in the EU in the UK's 2016 referendum. Poll data gathered shortly after the...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Authors: Smith, Greg (Author) ; Woodhead, Linda 1964- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Routledge [2018]
In: Religion, state & society
Year: 2018, Volume: 46, Issue: 3, Pages: 206-223
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Great Britain / Electoral college / Church of England / Brexit / Evangelical movement
Further subjects:B Nones
B Voting
B Europe
B Brexit
B Religion
B Populism
B Anglican
B Evangelicals
B no religion
B Church of England
B EU referendum
B Identity
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:Drawing on our own recent surveys on beliefs and values in Great Britain (Woodhead) and evangelical Christians in the UK (Smith) this article explores the links between religion, views and votes on leaving or remaining in the EU in the UK's 2016 referendum. Poll data gathered shortly after the 2016 referendum (n = 3,243) allows us to test associations between religious identity and behaviour and attitudes to voting Leave, while controlling for other demographic variables. The main finding is that identifying as Church of England (Anglican) is an important independent predictor of voting Leave even when other relevant factors like age and region are corrected for. By contrast, self-defined English evangelicals (from an opportunity sample of 1,198, collected and analysed by Smith) appear to be more pro-EU and generally internationalist in outlook. Previous surveys by Woodhead on religion and values in the UK provide some explanation for these findings, and for the striking difference of UK and US evangelicals, 81% of whom supported Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. The article ends with reflections on whether the term ‘populist' can be usefully applied to the evangelical pro-Trump vote in the US or the Church of England pro-Brexit vote in the UK.
ISSN:1465-3974
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2018.1483861