Surveying the Survey: Anglicans and Same-Sex Marriage
By Andrew Goddard, Fulcrum:
Despite all our Shared Conversations, it remains largely a mystery as to what people in the Church of England really believe about same-sex marriage. Jayne Ozanne has just published a survey which claims to shed new light on this by identifying Anglicans in England and finding more of them believe same-sex marriage is right than believe it is wrong.
What can such a survey do?
It is of course important that any such findings are simply descriptive not prescriptive. Christians do not believe the voice of the people, even church people, is the voice of God. Scripture is full of examples where God was at work through his apostles and prophets and indeed his Messiah to correct the majority viewpoint among his people. But good description is also immensely valuable in Christian discernment.
The primary challenge here is identifying “Anglicans in England” and the survey offers two answers – a larger one and a subset of that. There are major questions about each group.
Finding English Anglicans – I: Who is included?
In relation to the larger group on which almost all the published data focuses, there are questions about inclusion and exclusion. Although we are not told the exact question asked, past You Gov polling suggests it was something like – “Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion, and if so, to which of these do you belong?”. In answering this people either distance themselves totally – “No, I do not regard myself as belonging to any particular religion” – or (unless they “prefer not to say”) need to align with one in a list (or opt for “other”). The group whose views Jayne Ozanne’s survey reports amount to 29.2% of English adults saying “Yes, I regard myself as religious and as belonging to CofE/Anglican/Episcopal”. Given that less than 2% attend a CofE church most weeks and just over 4% at Christmas this is a very high figure. It is worth thinking how big a fringe would need to be included in your local parish church for it to encompass nearly 30% of the parish population.
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