An incitement to get cross

Coverage of the results of the 2021 ONS Census of England and Wales features more dog whistles than a chaotic day at Crufts.

Previously: Hard cheese
A single Times news story about shoplifting illustrates how 'straight' reporting can betray ideology, even if the writer thinks otherwise

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A rule with Daily Mail and MailOnline headlines is that the bits in all caps are the ones you’re meant to be most terrified about. Keep that in mind as we look at the Mail’s response to the results of last year’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) Census of England and Wales:

A snapshot of modern Britain: Census shows fewer people in England and Wales describe themselves as white and under HALF are Christian for the first time EVER, while two-thirds of Londoners are from an ethnic minority: so how does YOUR area compare?

That headline contains a blatant (and, I suspect, deliberate) misreading of the figures. The percentage of people in England and Wales who describe themselves as white has gone down — from 86% in 2011 to 81.7% in 2022 — but the total number has gone up — from 48.2 million in 2011 to 48.7 million in 2022 — by 500,000.

The Independent played the same game, tweeting out:

BREAKING: England’s white population declined in past decade census data reveals.

The actual story it linked to was written by its race correspondent, Nadine White, and carried an accurate and less incendiary headline:

UK ‘increasingly multi-cultural’ as one in 10 homes contain people of two or more ethnicities

If you want to be a pedant — and I definitely do — you can argue that the “first time EVER” claim in the Mail headline only works if you ignore a lot of history. That means discounting pre-Roman Britain and the fact that Christianity arrived on these islands in a grab bag of eastern cults that included worshipping the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Roman god Mithras, who was born out of a rock.

In his book, Religion In Roman Britain (1984), the archaeologist and Anglican priest, Martin Henig, describes Britain at the time as a place “where churches containing images of Christ and the Virgin were in a tiny minority against the many temples of gods and goddesses.” Christianity had a lot of false starts in Britain and required many marketing campaigns (or missionary work, if you want to put it like that) and a lot of strong-arming to become the dominant religion.

Now, you could say, “Ah, but that was a long time ago.” To which I’d counter — with apologies to the late Bill Hicks — so was the crucifixion. The concept of Britain as a “Christian nation” is ultimately pretty recent in the grand sweep of history and the result of hundreds of years of forced conformity. Even now, Christians are the largest religious group in Britain; they outnumber Muslims by more than seven to one and all other religions combined by more than four to one.

But there’s a reason the headlines focus on the decline of Christianity rather than the growth in people expressing no religion: It sounds more shocking to a certain sort of reader or viewer. Newspapers love the drama.

England and Wales now minority Christian countries, census reveals
Data shows Leicester and Birmingham have become UK’s first ‘minority majority’ cities in new age of ‘super-diversity’ (The Guardian)

While the copy of The Guardian’s story on the census results is not particularly loaded, the headline and lede absolutely are. Compare them to The Times’ head and intro:

Less than half the population are Christian, census reveals
Number of people with ‘no religion’ trebles in 20 years (The Times)

While The Times’ framing focuses on the growth in respondents indicating “no religion” — itself a complicated answer to unpick — The Guardian’s combination of the phrase “minority Christian countries” and a reference to “‘minority majority’ cities” implies something other than an increasingly secular country.

The Guardian headline was seized upon by Spectator and Sun columnist Douglas Murray — Ernst Röhm with access to botox — who tweeted:

As predicted five years ago in The Strange Death of Europe, which The Guardian denounced at the time as ‘xenophobic’. I suppose facts eventually catch up with everyone. Even The Guardian.

The premise of Murray’s pseudo-intellectual screed was that immigration — and particularly Muslim immigration — is and will be the cause of Europe’s “death”. But the census shows that Christianity has declined because a lot of white British people no longer identify with that or any religion.

The survival of many Catholic churches in England and Wales is down to the support of communities of Eastern European and African heritage. The Census shows that areas with higher immigrant populations are more religious in general and the places with the highest levels of people reporting “no religion” are the most white. While 6.5% of people identify as Muslim (up from 4.8% in 2011), the percentage of those who say they’re not religious has gone from 25% to 37.5% in the same period.

Murray’s book is built on a white supremacist rhetorical construction of Europe, one that has little to do with historical reality. He writes, “Europe was never a continent of Islam” because he desperately wants it to be true, casting aside the history of Spain, parts of Southern Italy and Sicily that were Muslim long before they were Catholic.

By breathlessly relaying a minor demographic change and a trend that was obvious from the last census, The Guardian gives Murray fodder. It only adds to that with its focus on Leicester and Birmingham as “‘minority majority’ cities”, a phrasing that allows the implication that British Asians are somehow less British, despite the Census showing 9 in 10 people across England and Wales identify with UK national identity.

MailOnline’s report contains the statistic I quote above — in a section with the subhead Less white, but no less British, while The Guardian’s story doesn’t. Of course, the Mail’s scaremongering headline combined with a selection of interactive maps for readers to determine how terrified they should be does mean that tiny bit of credit is immediately spent. Stare at the phrase “how does YOUR area compare?” in the Mail headline with the magic They Live glasses and you’ll discern the word FEAR in red flashing neon.

Unsurprisingly, The Sun gets in on the deceptive headline act too:

LOSING FAITH Christians a minority in England and Wales for 1st time and number speaking English as first language shrinks

The Census results show Christians aren’t a minority among religious people. All religious people are a minority compared to non-religious people in England and Wales but The Sun isn’t going to run with the line “England and Wales finally revealed as secular countries”. That doesn’t guarantee enough anger.

The “Christians a minority” line is combined with “number speaking English as first language shrinks” because the reader is meant to come away from the story enraged that “foreigners” are destroying “Christian Britain”/creating “godless Britain” as the Mail put it in a screaming subhead. What the Sun headline neglects to mention and a reader won’t find unless they make it well into the story is that the number of England and Wales residents speaking English as a first language has dropped from 92.3% in 2011 to… 92.1% in 2022; a 0.2% decrease.

The specific language used in these stories matters. Look at The Sun’s opening lines:

CHRISTIANS have become a minority in England and Wales for the first time in history, according to new census data released today.

The number of Christians dramatically shrunk from 59.3 per cent in 2011 to 46.2 per cent in 2021.

or how The Guardian compares the number of Christians and Muslims before it addresses the rise in those of “no religion”:

The census revealed a 5.5 million (17%) fall in the number of people who describe themselves as Christian and a 1.2 million (43%) rise in the number of people who say they follow Islam, bringing the Muslim population to 3.9 million. In percentage-point terms, the number of Christians has dropped by 13.1, and the number of Muslims has risen by 1.7.

The subliminal narrative is one of a war between religions and specifically a threat from Islam rather than of a growing secularisation of British society. Broadcast reports by BBC News also emphasised this; CR Short highlighted an example on Twitter:

BBC 6Music news reports the rise of people who are non-religious as a percentage) (12% I think but the rise in Muslims as a raw number (1.2 million). Why the difference? Because it sounds scarier to racists than the very small percentage rise that it is? BBC News, any other explanation?

This approach is not much different from the rhetoric pushed by far-right rhetoric spewers like Hovis delivery boy cosplayer Darren Grimes, who tweeted:

Sad news: for the first time ever Christians are a minority in Britain…

Dive into the sludge of the MailOnline comments and you’ll find that the desired response is happening. Here’s the best-rated comment at the time of writing:

nannyjanjan, London, United Kingdom, 9 hours ago

Just thankful that I was born at a time to enjoy the best days of our country; when patriotism wasn't a dirty word, Britain was still great and, we felt, safe, secure and, hopeful for a future we were prepared to work hard to achieve!! Sadly long gone and never to be repeated!!

Meanwhile, the most recommended comment on The Times coverage…

I think in large part because we’re growing out of fairy tales.

… is unlikely to be reflected in the comment pieces to come.

Just as with the last edition of this newsletter about the framing of shoplifting statistics, I’m sure the writers of the news stories on the Census results would assure me that they have simply presented the statistics but that’s asking me (and you) to ignore the evidence of our own eyes.

The presentation of this minor demographic change is as a horror story, a shift to be feared and an invasion of the other. If it were not, the headlines would focus on the gulf between public belief and the religious nature of our state (no other legislature besides Iran has so many clerics in its midst) rather than the decline in the numbers of Christians as if that is unquestionably a bad thing.

The newsroom requirement for drama mixed with a common fear of “the other” and an institutionalised Islamophobia leads to the same story being told across the so-called diverse free press of Britain. From The Guardian to The Daily Mail, the song remains the same and the default is white and Christian, whatever the statistics say.

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Thanks to Friar Bentos, No Genius, Panicked Future and John Hill for help with reading the draft.