Public attitudes towards women bishops

Given important recent developments in the long-running debate on the issue of women bishops in the Church of England, this post provides a brief review of topline and group attitudes using recent data from opinion polls. Several polls on the topic of women bishops and the Church of England have been conducted by YouGov and ComRes, based on nationally-representative samples of the adult population in Britain (on their initial release, many of these surveys were covered in earlier BRIN posts).

Table 1 shows the topline findings for YouGov surveys conducted between 2010 and 2013. The general pattern is for public opinion to be very favourable towards the Church of England allowing women to become bishops. The level of support is somewhat lower for the two surveys where an additional response option has allowed respondents to declare that they have no opinion either way (which significant minorities do). Across surveys, only around a tenth of respondents are opposed to women being allowed to become bishops.

Table 1: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England

Source: YouGov surveys.

Table 2 shows topline response for three ComRes surveys conducted in 2012, which have used differently-worded response options. The overall picture is similar to that obtained from Table 1. Opinion is very firmly in favour of women bishops in each survey. Around a tenth of respondents are opposed. It is also worth noting that ComRes asked a question on this issue to its CPanel of churchgoing Christians aged 18 years and older. This survey, conducted in September 2012, found that 57% of respondents  either strongly or tended to support women bishops being allowed in the Church of England, with 38% opposed to some degree (only 5% said they did not know). Another question on this issue in the same survey found that 51% agreed that the Church of England should allow women to become bishops, compared to 34% who disagreed and 15% who did not know or could not state a view.

Table 2: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England

Source: ComRes surveys.

A more recent Opinium survey of the UK adult population, conducted in July 2014, posed separate questions about women becoming bishops in the Church of England and becoming part of the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. The distribution of responses was similar for each question. Majorities agreed with each of these propositions and very few disagreed. Interestingly, the levels of don’t know responses were comparatively high compared to those recorded in Table 1 and Table 2 (this poll was discussed  in more detail in a BRIN post at the time).

Moving on from the overall state of public opinion, what about variation in attitudes across socio-demographic and religious groups? Table 3 presents the views of different groups based on analysis of the YouGov survey from late-March 2013. Again, data are shown for indicators of religious belonging, behaving and believing.

In terms of socio-demographic groups, women are slightly more in favour of women bishops than men while support is slightly lower amongst those in the DE social grade.  In terms of religious groups, Catholics, adherents of non-Christian religions and those who attend religious services on a frequent basis are less supportive. Even so, around two-thirds of Catholics, adherents of non-Christian faiths, and frequent-attenders support women bishops. The opinions of occasional attenders are broadly similar to those who do not attend religious services. Levels of support are similar for Anglicans and other Christians. In terms of believing, support is somewhat higher amongst those who believe in a spiritual higher power (but not in God). Support is lowest amongst those who don’t know whether they believe in a God or higher spiritual higher power, but this does not translate into higher levels of opposition. Rather, around a third of this group does not have a clear view either way on this issue.

Table 3: Public opinion towards women bishops in the Church of England, by social and religious group

Source: YouGov survey, 27-28 March 2013.

Summary

This brief review of recent survey data on the views of British adults towards women bishops has shown that usually sizeable majorities have taken positions supportive of this move. There has been some variation in levels of support and opposition across population groups, even though negative sentiment has been the preserve of very small minorities of the adult population. Higher levels of opposition are evident amongst older age groups, Catholics, non-Christian faiths, as well as those attending religious services on a regular basis.