Elements of Religious Belief and Social Values among the Laity of the Church in Wales (original) (raw)
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Journal of Empirical Theology, 2014
The involvement of the Christian Churches within a state-maintained system of schools, as in the case of England and Wales, raises interesting and important questions regarding the concept of religion employed in this context and regarding defining and measuring the influence exerted by schools with a religious character on the students who attend such schools. Since the foundation of the National Society in 1811, Anglican schools have provided a significant contribution to the state-maintained sector of education in England and Wales and by the end of the twentieth century were providing about 25% of primary school places and nearly 5% of secondary school places. From the early 1970s, Francis and his colleagues have offered a series of studies profiling the attitudes and values of students attending Anglican schools as a way of defining and measuring the influence exerted by schools with a religious character. The present study extends previous research in three ways. It offers a c...