The Frumplingtons

As it’s Sunday, I thought we ought to have a post about religion this week. (Don’t worry. It won’t become a regular feature.) So here’s a story I spotted in this week’s online edition of the Lincolnshire Echo. By the way, I wouldn’t use any other newspaper for my cat litter tray — and I don’t even have a cat!

The story, titled More turning to the power of prayer [click the link to see a screenshot] began by saying that more people in Lincolnshire are turning to religion to get them through the tough times as the grip of the credit crunch tightens. It then went on to quote the results of an online survey, as follows:

Faithbook, an interfaith networking page of the social networking Internet site Facebook, asked 150 religious people their opinions on how the current global financial crisis has affected their lives.

Nearly 81 per cent of those asked thought the current situation provided opportunities to re-grow the economy with a “moral and social network”.

Around 28 per cent of people said they had prayed more and 72 per cent said they feared a spiritual recession as opposed to a financial one.

So, exactly how much more religious has Lincolnshire’s population really become? Well, that 28 percent who had prayed more amounts to a total of only 42 people. Here, as the Americans would say, is the math: 28% of 150 — yes, you can now use Grandpa Google as a calculator.

But wait, how many of the 150 who answered the Faithbook survey were actually from Lincolnshire? The Echo’s story says:

The poll took two weeks to complete with participation from people in 13 different countries.

The breakdown for Lincolnshire is not actually given, but if an equal number of people from each of the 13 different countries completed the survey, that would average around 11 people per country. We still have no way of knowing whether any of this means Lincolnshire people are or are not becoming more religious. Maybe the survey sample size could help. Let’s imagine, for one crazy moment, that all 150 of those who answered the survey came from Lincolnshire. How representative would that be of the total Lincolnshire population? Better find out what the population is then, hadn’t we? Ah, hang on, maybe HM Govt can help…

The total population of Lincolnshire is 646,645 [source: www.statistics.gov.uk]

So, just to put it all into perspective, if every single one of those 42 people who had prayed more came from Lincolnshire, that would amount to a mere six thousandths of one percent of this county’s population. Better hurry if you want to make sure of a seat on the pew next Sunday, though — some surveys suggest it could be standing room only.