Building on the extensive research into virtues in civic life undertaken by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues in collaboration with the Good Faith Partnership, this report pioneered research on the role of virtues in the life of the UK’s religious communities. Surveying over 3,000 members of various UK’s faith communities and those who are non-religious, the findings illuminate areas of significant commonality and difference throughout the diversity of religion and belief in the UK.
The survey results reveal some interesting patterns and trends in how different religious groups prioritise and rank virtues. A few of the key findings include:
- The common virtue across all the six belief strands is Honesty. Showing commonality between religious and non-religious people.
- All the religious participants cited Devotion (this is in line with the recent Bloom Review, Does Government ‘do God?’).
- Justice, and then Charity, closely follows Devotion in ranking.
- No single virtue was selected by over half of all respondents, in fact a large number score around the 30% mark.
Following on from the survey, the Good Faith Partnership and the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues are keen to develop this research, potentially looking into the differences and similarities between gender, locality and age and identifying the different overlaps that may occur.