Do we know what Anglicans think about same-sex marriage?
Peter Ould writes: My son is an Arsenal fan.
At present, when I say "Armory fan", I need to explain a few things. Starting time, he's never actually been to see Arsenal play, either home or away. Indeed, he's never actually been to a professional football game in his entire life. I doubt he could name you more than one member of the team and if you asked him where they were in the Premiership at the moment he wouldn't have a clue.
If y'all wanted to find out what Arsenal fans idea of the club at the moment, you wouldn't be looking for my son to give you lot an insightful view of what the average supporter in the terraces thinks. The only reason my son is an Armory fan is because at school his friendship circle includes some much more avid football fanatics, so he decided he'd say he'd make Armory his squad to fit in. If he *had* to pick a team he'd option Arsenal, but really there'south no reason why he didn't pick Manchester City or Liverpool instead.
Of course, he didn't pick Manchester United because no-1 picks Manchester United these days.
The Ozanne Foundation publicised a repeat survey by YouGov looking at the opinions of a sample of v,000 people on aforementioned-sexual activity marriage. Equally office of the survey (a normal YouGov internet panel) the participants were asked what religion they acquaintance with, and unsurprisingly effectually a fifth stated that they were "Church building of England", "Anglican" or "Episcopalian". That final reply indicates that the survey included some people in Scotland where the local Anglican denomination is the "Scottish Episcopal Church building". The 1,100 or so people who said they were "Anglican" could therefore be assessed for their response to the "do you call up aforementioned-sex marriage is a good affair" question and a headline therefrom created.
And a headline was created. "Anglicans now in favour of aforementioned-sex marriage" crowed the Ozanne Foundation and this story was picked up past mainstream media and religious news sites, despite the fact that once again (considering this is the tertiary poll of its kind), the truth is really slightly more complex. There are in fact a number of issues with the poll and the way information technology has been reported, issues which have been identified and raised before, but which seem to have been ignored yet again past the revisionist lobby keen to use the results as a political lever for change in the Church building of England.
The offset result is whether these "Anglicans" are in whatsoever way representative of the men and women (and children) who worship in the pews calendar week subsequently week. With ane in 5 of the sample of five,000 saying they were Anglican, if these were people who were actually active in their local CofE churches it would indicate effectually 10 one thousand thousand people worshipping every week. Revival!!!
Of grade the truth is different. When people tick the "Anglican" box in this survey they are simply expressing a cultural connection. These are not religiously or spiritually active Christians, rather the likelihood is that the overwhelming majority are nominal Christians at best, people who grace our parish churches with their presence at funerals, weddings , baptisms and the occasional Sundays, only who are not on the Electoral Roll, aren't financially supporting the mission of the Church and in all probability don't believe the faith "handed down".
Now there are some very easy way to find out the views of the people in the pews. The showtime is to ask a second question of everyone, namely something similar "How oftentimes do you nourish a identify of worship for a service?" In this fashion you could run into the departure in support for same-sex activity marriage betwixt those who attend every calendar week, every month and those who are hardly ever seen on a Lord's day. Information technology would be very like shooting fish in a barrel to inquire this second question, but despite the fact this has been twice pointed out to Jayne Ozanne, she refused to exercise so this time.
I wonder why?
The second fashion to find out the views of the people who actually make upwards the active membership of the Church of England is to utilise a specialist religious panel like that delivered by Savanta ComRes. Unlike the general panel that YouGov uses, a specialist religious panel is made up of people who take been qualified for active religious participation. The employ of such panels is more expensive (by their nature, trying to notice a subset of people with a high level of religious activeness takes more try and is more than expensive) merely it is a much more constructive way of finding out the stance of the people who really matter.
So on the first issue – representing the people that the press release claims are represented – the poll fails. The official press release uses linguistic communication like "Church of England supporters" (no effort is made in the poll to see if the "Anglicans" support the Church of England) and "Church of England members" (the official record of agile membership of the Church building of England is the Electoral Scroll, yet the poll does non ask if "Anglicans" are on it and even if y'all stretched membership to hateful baptised in the Church of England, again "Anglicans" in the poll are not asked if they were baptised in a Church building of England parish) simply these are deliberately misleading terms.
On a 2d issue, statistical claims, the poll does not back up the confident statements in the press release. The press release talks most a "marked increment" in Anglicans supporting same-sexual practice marriage, but the reality is there is no statistical difference between the 2022 and 2022 figures for supporting same-sex marriage. The difference between 45% (2016) and 48% (2020) is well inside the margin of error for the pocket-size sub-sample (1171) significant the increment of iii% might just be random variation based on the particular sample used. This is a basic statistical fault and demonstrates that the authors of the press release practise non understand how to handle the data that YouGov has generated for them. In fact, a dispassionate observer might notation how surprising it is that overall views don't appear to take shifted by any statistically significant amount.
On a 3rd outcome, qualification of terms, the poll question and the press release fail. The question asked is "Practice you recollect same-sex matrimony is right or wrong", but nowhere is an explanation of what "right" or "incorrect" might hateful. Correct politically? Right morally? Right socially? Is it right because it confers legal guarantees to those who seek them but still morally wrong (but in a liberal society as individuals we accept that some people appoint in activities nosotros believe are morally incorrect)?
The press release jumps from "English" to "British" without a consideration of the difference in the terms. Indeed, the claim that the poll is about "Church of England supporters" is questionable since the inclusion of "Episcopalian", a term not used in the Church building of England but actively used in Scotland, shows that the "Anglicans" in question may actually have affiliations outside of the Church of England. Neither does the poll attempt to qualify those who may attend a Church of England church but have a different religious affiliation.
The press release includes a quote that "To pretend that this is an issue on which many have not yet formed a view is to misunderstand the reality of what is happening in our pews". Again, this is a misrepresentation of who the poll has been conducted on equally no-one in the sample has been qualified as to whether they sit in the pews in Church building of England churches or elsewhere. Furthermore, when the level of "don't knows" is examined, the per centum for Anglicans (xviii%, MoE 2.8 on sample of 1259) is statistically significantly dissimilar to that for those of no organized religion (13%, MoE 1.9 on sample of 2667) leading us to be confident in the statement that the "Anglicans" in this survey are more uncertain nearly what they think compared to those who merits no religious affiliation.
I could become on, merely the point is articulate – the poll does not correspond what the press release claims it does. It is not a reflection of Church building of England members in the pews, it does non show any modify in support for same-sex marriage in the past four years and it uses terms with little or no qualification in a style that misleads the reader every bit to the meaning of the poll. That most of these issues have been pointed out on a previous occasion but have been ignored by the authors demonstrates a deliberate option to perpetuate these errors for the sake of a political cause.
I close with a claiming to Jayne Ozanne and her self-referential Foundation. Equally described above, one very easy way to correct these errors would be to inquire at least ane actress question around church omnipresence. If Jayne Ozanne were to repeat the exercise, I volition happily fund the asking of this extra question, the diction of which would be determined by a neutral third party to the agreement of both parties. My hypothesis is that by looking at church attendance statistics you would come across that (a) the bulk of these "Anglicans" are not active church members at all and (b) the agile church members would hold statistically significantly unlike views on the discipline to the not-church-attending respondents. In fact, this kind of work has been washed before, past Marking Regnerus in united states. What he found was that nominal, non-church-attending respondents were indistinguishable from the general population, not only on this consequence just on sexual morality more broadly, whilst it was active, church building-attending members who held views on all these bug quite out of step with the wider civilization. Were the Ozanne Foundation poll to make this kind of enquiry, and find something similar, and so it would exist pregnant—simply rather awkward.
Proper academic inquiry, including in the area of quantitative report, is open to further information and to clarification and stratification in this manner. It adds to the torso of human noesis, information technology helps to deepen our understanding of sociological issues. There is no practiced reason why the Ozanne Foundation should pass up such an offering unless they were afraid that the results such an extra question would generate would undermine their position, but in the area of academic research that is non a good enough reason non to explore a subject area in greater particular.
The challenge is conspicuously there – the issues with the poll accept been on numerous occasions and now a cost free selection exists to correct them.
My son is an Armory fan, but there are Arsenal fans and there are Arsenal fans. I wouldn't get to my son to detect out what the fans in the seats of the Emirates remember about Alexandre Lacazette's goal scoring abilities and I wouldn't wait to this Ozanne Foundation poll to tell me what the people in the pews of your local parish think well-nigh aforementioned-sex wedlock.
The original version of this piece stated that the sub-sample of Anglicans represented not merely those geographically located in England but across the whole of the UK. We now understand this to be incorrect as the Ozanne Foundation have finally released a table that shows the filtering on those resident in England and claiming affiliation to an Anglican denomination. It is of course best practice to release all the data tables of a poll at one time to avoid these kinds of misunderstandings.
Revd Peter Ould is a Church of England priest based in Canterbury. He works in the field of statistical inquiry and application and writes and broadcasts on issues around the Church, sexual practice and statistics.
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