According to poll results and media reports, Britain has a significant and growing number of creationists. However, little scholarly research has been carried out to explore this phenomenon. We present results from a national survey of 6020 individuals to give a comprehensive picture of contemporary public attitudes to evolution in Britain. Furthermore, we explore the effects of religion and education on attitudes to evolution. Unique to this study, we analyse the effects of attending a religiously affiliated school ('faith school') on acceptance of evolutionary theory. We examine these effects in the general population, and additionally, across different Christian, Muslim and Non-Religious subpopulations. Results give strong evidence that the number of creationists has been overstated previously. We find the effect of education is complex and varies between different religious groups, but that faith school attendance is associated with more acceptance of evolution for people belonging to groups that tend to reject it.

In this chapter examining discourses on science and Islam, I first briefly highlight a dominant contemporary discourse among non-Muslims, which tends to cast Islam as a particularly backward and unintellectual religion requiring scientific enlightenment. I point out historical precedents for this viewpoint, before turning to examine a specific discourse on science and Islam among Muslims, in which the Qur’an is deemed to be scientifically miraculous, a view that has its roots in the Salafi reformist movement. Drawing on data from focus groups conducted with British Muslims of South Asian heritage actively engaged with institutions influenced by Salafi reformism, I argue that these popular scientific interpretations of the Qur’an may hold particular appeal for Muslims in Britain who are, as members of a religious minority viewed with suspicion, frequently required to “explain themselves” and defend their religious beliefs and practices. I also discuss survey data examining views of science among Muslims, making suggestions for how such work could be refined and extended in the future.

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The role of science popularization remains relatively under-explored in research on contemporary public acceptance of evolution. In this study, we analyse national survey data to interrogate the role Britain’s best-known celebrity scientists David Attenborough, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking may have played in changing public views of evolution, as well as the role of two creationists: Ken Ham and Harun Yahya. We investigate how well known these public figures are, what their views of religion are perceived to be and, drawing on social identity theory, whether they exert different effects on attitudinal change to evolution among different religious and non-religious publics. Binary logistic regression analysis shows that among Muslim and Pentecostal Christian publics, those familiar with Dawkins as both a scientist and as someone who holds negative views of religion are more likely to have become less accepting of evolution. Conversely, among non-religious publics, Dawkins was the only celebrity scientist associated with higher odds of becoming more accepting of evolution. We suggest that engaging certain religious audiences with the science of evolutionary biology may be more effective when their religious identities are not threatened.

A number of evangelical Christian denominations and networks uphold a specific doctrine of Scripture, stating that the Bible is the 'inerrant' word of God. Those who adhere to biblical inerrancy tend to reject literary interpretations of the creation accounts in the Bible and therefore to reject evolutionary theory. Indeed, evolution rejection frequently functions as a key boundary for biblical inerrantists that must be strictly maintained. In this comparative study, we analyse interview data and other materials to uncover the mechanisms by which evolution rejection as a boundary is strengthened, maintained or weakened within two evangelical church congregations that adhere to biblical inerrancy: one in London, UK, the other in Texas, US. We find significant differences in boundary work between the two congregations and consider how the interplay of three factors-1) orientation of the congregation (internal or external), 2) religious context (minority or majority), 3) boundary salience-may lead to boundary strengthening or weakening.