London (ENI). When a reader wrote to Britain's daily Guardian newspaper complaining there were too many religious stories in a journal, she believed had a secular tradition, the readers' editor decided to make an electronic check.
"Yet another religious article today," the reader wrote on 5 December. "Please could you tell me why there is now so much religion in the Guardian? What prompted this move to go from being a secular paper to the most religious of all the papers?"
On checking readers' editor Ian Mayes found that the word "Christian" was used 770 times and "Muslim" 408 times in news articles in 1985. This compared with 2341 uses of Christian and 2114 of Muslim in 2005 in the newspaper that tends to carry left of centre editorials.
As for the newspaper's staff a recent social audit found that 56 per cent said they had no religion, 36 per cent declared themselves to be Christian and eight per cent named other faiths. The figure for those describing themselves as Christian was lower than the 72 per cent given in the United Kingdom 2001 census and the 67 per cent in a more recent survey conducted by broadcaster the BBC and pollster ICM.
The Guardian went on to ask its journalists if they thought religion was given too much space, but found few agreed this was the case in view of the role of religion in world affairs. A number pointed out that the paper had its roots in non-comformist Christianity and that its founder John Edward Taylor had a Quaker/Unitarian background as did C.P. Scott, who many regard as it is most influential editor.
The Guardian, which claims 12 million readers monthly for its Web site, gathers it religious stories together on www.guardian.co.uk/religion as does the BBC on www.bbc.uk/religion.
Separately The Publishers Association told Ecumenical News International that more people have been reading books on religious subjects in Britain than in the past and that annual sales within the United Kingdom rose to five million copies in 2003 from four million the previous year. This figures appears to have fallen back slightly since. Continuum, a leading British religious publisher carrying 530 titles, last year for the first time sold as many copies in general as specialist religious bookshops.
And when the (Anglican) Church of England House of Bishops published a recent report on countering terrorism it noted: "Religion is now a major player on the public stage of the world in a way that few foresaw a few decades ago."
While readership trends appear to endorse this view and church attendance for most denominations is declining, interest in the subject of religion seems to be increasing.
