Religion survey, 1926
The survey thus sheds light only on the relations of a specific slice of the British population to “certain broad schools of belief.” On the other hand, the results help to explain the prevalence of religious activity outside of those schools—“the prevalence,” as the magazine puts it, “of the undoctrinal mysticism, varied as it is in type and shade and intensity, which is so marked a feature of the present age.” 2
The statistics are suggestive. Fifty-one percent of the readers of The Nation describe themselves as Christian, 40 percent recognize a personal God, 28 percent of them profess belief in the divine authorship of the Bible, and six percent believe Genesis I to be historically true. For readers of The Daily News, the numbers are 75 percent, 71 percent, 64 percent, and 38 percent.
Surprisingly, The Nation sees these as favorable numbers for faith. That readers are more willing to declare Christianity than to accept the traditional tenets of the faith is a contradiction that The Nation reads as the survival of religious sentiment after the traditional structures of religion have eroded: “It seems as though there would be a general willingness to accept a reconstruction of religion which should be along Christian lines, but without those features which—Transubstantiation especially (rejected by the DAILY NEWS 86 per cent, and THE NATION 93 per cent)—are felt to be contrary to the spirit and knowledge of the age.” 3
In a letter to the magazine, the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley suggests that radical changes in religious expression are at hand:
If a biologist may use a metaphor drawn from his “shop,” it seems to me that we are, in matters of religion, in the position of animals forced to adapt themselves to a new medium—fish being driven to become land vertebrates, let us say, through a change of climate. The discoveries, and indeed the whole attitude, of modern science constitute our change of climate, and are fast drying up the pools of more primitive belief in which we were wont to dwell. 4The project began after Leonard Woolf, the magazine’s literary editor, wrote a review of some books on modern religion in which he suggested that his liberal skepticism was shared by “the majority of educated moderns.” 5 Several readers criticized his chauvinism: “How does he know or why does he believe,” asked H.G. Wood, the principal of a Quaker study center, “that a majority of educated moderns are atheists or agnostics and that only in a minority of cases is religious belief based on anything else than stupidity or pecuniary interest?” 6 If the magazine planned to throw around such assertions, Wood advised, it should publish a canvass to back them up.
This suggestion proved so popular with readers that the staff of The Nation gathered a panel to organize such a canvass. The questionnaire, written in consultation with Bernard Shaw, J.M. Robertson, Augustine Birrell, and Wood himself, went out three times inside issues of The Nation. The magazine promised to keep names and individual responses confidential, although it required a signature as a guarantee of good faith. “In these days,” an accompanying article remarks, “when Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Nonconformists of various communions, and agnostics are to be found working side by side in the same political party and challenging one another on questions of religious faith, an inquiry of the kind contemplated should prove extraordinarily interesting.” 7
The magazine does not pretend that a general survey can frame questions of much nuance: “Instead of aiming at a precision which is unattainable, we have thought it better, as a rule, to adhere to familiar phrases, phrases which are so widely used, and in such well-known associations, that at least their general significance leaps to the mind at once.” The questions rely for their meaning, in other words, on the requirement that the reader reflect as much on his relation to the political present as on his private relationship with the divine. Terms like “personal immortality” and “Evolutionary Appetite” owe much of their resonance to social and political battles with which readers were familiar.
Questionnaire on Religious Belief, with responses
1) Do you believe in a personal God?
Nation: Yes 743 (40 %) No 1024 (55 %) Doubtful 82 (4 %)
Daily News: 9991 (71 %) 3686 (26 %) 366 (3 %)
2) Do you believe in an impersonal, purposive and creative power of which living beings are the vehicle, corresponding to the Life Force, the élan vital, the Evolutionary Appetite, &c.?
Nation: Yes 700 (38 %) No 892 (48 %) Doubtful 257 (14 %)
Daily News: 4714 (34 %) 6467 (46 %) 2862 (20 %)
3) Do you believe that the basis of reality is matter?
Nation: Yes 506 (27 %) No 1063 (57 %) Doubtful 280 (15 %)
Daily News: 3049 (22 %) 8338 (59 %) 2656 (19 %)
4) Do you believe in personal immortality?
Nation: Yes 807 (44 %) No 882 (48 %) Doubtful 160 (9 %)
Daily News:10161 (72 %) 3178 (23 %) 704 (5 %)
5) Do you believe that Jesus Christ was divine in a sense in which all living beings could not be said to be divine?
Nation: Yes 659 (36 %) No 1136 (61 %) Doubtful 54 (3 %)
Daily News: 9549 (68 %) 4179 (30 %) 315 (2 %)
6) Do you believe in any form of Christianity?
Nation: Yes 945 (51 %) No 796 (43 %) Doubtful 108 (6 %)
Daily News:10546 (75 %) 2879 (24 %) 618 (4 %)
7) Do you believe in the Apostles’ Creed?
Nation: Yes 393 (21 %) No 1313 (71 %) Doubtful 143 (8 %)
Daily News: 7484 (53 %) 5071 (36 %) 1488 (11 %)
8) Do you believe in the formulated tenets of any Church?
Nation: Yes 453 (24 %) No 1265 (68 %) Doubtful 131 (7 %)
Daily News: 7299 (52 %) 5296 (38 %) 1448 (10 %)
9) Are you an active member of any Church?
Nation: Yes 666 (36 %) No 1139 (62 %) Doubtful 44 (2 %)
Daily News: 8796 (63 %) 2896 (35 %) 351 (2 %)
10) Do you voluntarily attend any religious service regularly?
Nation: Yes 798 (43 %) No 1021 (55 %) Doubtful 30 (2 %)
Daily News:10025 (71 %) 3822 (27 %) 196 (1 %)
11) Do you accept the first chapter of Genesis as historical?
Nation: Yes 115 (6 %) No 1685 (91 %) Doubtful 49 (3 %)
Daily News:5333 (38 %) 7488 (53 %) 1222 (9 %)
12) Do you regard the Bible as inspired in a sense in which the literature of your own country could not be said to be inspired?
Nation: Yes 523 (28 %) No 1268 (69 %) Doubtful 58 (3 %)
Daily News:8950 (64 %) 4635 (33 %) 458 (3 %)
13) Do you believe in Transubstantiation?
Nation: Yes 76 (4 %) No 1731 (94 %) Doubtful 42 (2 %)
Daily News: 1456 (10 %) 12147 (86 %) 440 (3 %)
14) Do you believe that Nature is indifferent to our ideals?
Nation: Yes 1081 (58 %) No 435 (24 %) Doubtful 333 (18 %)
Daily News: 5713 (51 %) 4987 (35 %) 3343 (24 %)
2 Letters from readers make clear how much the questions fail to catch: “I believe in a ‘personal God’ and in ‘personal immortality,’ meaning by personal a spirit which is characterized by the attributes of personality. I do not believe in a personal God or personal immortality of a material physical nature.” Letter to the editor, The Nation and Athenaeum 39, 23 (11 September 1926): 667.
3Stanley Cook, The Nation and Athenaeum 40, 1 (9 October 1926): 79.
4 The Nation and Athenaeum 39, 23 (11 September 1926): 636.
5 The books are A. Clutton-Brock, Essays on Religion; J.M. Robertson, The Dynamics of Religion; and John Collier, The Religion of an Artist. Woolf claims sympathy with many of Robertson's views. Leonard Woolf, “Rationalism and Religion,” The Nation and Athenaeum 39, 10 (June 12, 1926): 279.
6 Letter to the editor, The Nation and Athenaeum 39, 15 (17 July 1926): 440.
7 The Nation and Athenaeum 39, 19 (14 August 1926): 547.