Lords Spiritual

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Clive D. Field

‘Six out of ten Brits think bishops should be booted out of the House of Lords after defeating plans to cap benefits at £26,000 a year.’ So declared The Sun on 25 January 2012, following the poll it commissioned from YouGov on the public’s reactions to the Welfare Reform Bill.

The survey was undertaken online on 24 January 2012, among a sample of 749 adults aged 18 and over, and in the wake of the amendment to the Bill passed by the House of Lords the previous night, which had the effect of excluding child benefit from the £26,000 cap being proposed by the Government. Data tables have been posted at:

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/pbzn4ckvyb/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-BishopsHouseLords-260112.pdf

Five of the 26 senior bishops of the Church of England who are entitled to sit in the House of Lords had voted in favour of the amendment, and one of them (Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds) had actually proposed it. Three-fifths of YouGov’s interviewees opposed the amendment, and 74% supported the Government’s original cap.

Against this somewhat charged backdrop, YouGov asked whether bishops should still be allowed to sit and vote in the Upper Chamber. Only 26% of respondents said that they should, with 60% wanting them excluded, and 14% uncertain.

Removal of bishops from the House of Lords particularly appealed to Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters, 67% and 68% respectively. This was unsurprising, given that these are the two parties which form the Coalition Government, which had been on the receiving end of episcopal votes against the welfare cap.

Men were also more inclined than women to want the bishops unseated (64% versus 56%), while – less predictably – the anti-bishop lobby built by age, rising from 45% among the 18-24s to 70% with the over-60s. This partly reflected the large number of don’t knows (29%) in the 18-24 cohort.

The sample size for this poll was fairly small, and the context may have influenced the results. However, in an ICM survey for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in March 2010, just 33% believed it important for Anglican bishops to have a role in the House of Lords and 74% said that it was wrong for some of them to have automatic seats there. See BRIN’s coverage at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2010/religion-in-public-life-another-poll/

 

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Costing the Anglican Episcopate

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Clive D. Field

The office and working costs of the 113 diocesan and suffragan bishops in the Church of England amounted to almost £15,600,000 during the year ending 31 December 2010, 4% more than in 2009, according to a 24-page report released by the Church Commissioners on 27 October 2011. Three-fifths of the expenditure was on office and support staff and 17% on the working costs of bishops. Details are given for each individual bishop, as they have been annually since 2000. Prior to that, only the aggregate cost of bishops was published. The report is available at:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1351515/bishops%20office%20and%20working%20costs%202010.pdf

However, the document does not tell the whole story. In particular, the Commissioners’ own administrative costs (£800,000) are excluded from the above total, as is the £5,100,000 they spent on the stipends, employer’s national insurance and pension contributions of bishops, and the £5,400,000 on maintaining the houses, office premises and gardens of the archbishops and diocesan bishops (the housing costs of suffragan bishops are met by the dioceses). Attempts by the Commissioners to save money by moving diocesan bishops out of their historic homes have caused much controversy, notably (of late) over Rose Castle, home to the Bishops of Carlisle since the thirteenth century.

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More Church of England Statistics

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England issued two statistics-related press releases on 28 October.

The first concerned parochial finance for 2008 and licensed ministers for 2009, complementing the parochial affiliation and attendance data which were made available in February. 

The financial statistics contained some good news. Despite the recession, which has hit the wider charity sector hard, both tax-efficient planned giving and legacy giving in the Church of England continued to increase, reaching record levels. Overall parochial income was £925 million and expenditure £874 million.

As for ministry, 491 candidates were accepted to train in 2009, making a total of 1,338 in training (five-sixths over 30 years of age). 564 new clergy were ordained, 309 entering full-time paid ministry. Taking retirements and other losses into account, there was a net decrease of 128 full-time paid clergy. At the end of 2009, there were some 28,000 licensed and authorized ministers, ordained and lay, active in the Church of England.

The press release can be read at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9710.html

The data appear as part of the online edition of Church Statistics, 2008/9 (with previous years back to 2001) at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2008/statisticsfront2008.html

The second press release reported the office and working costs of the Church’s 113 bishops (44 diocesan and 69 suffragan and full-time assistant bishops) for the year-ending 31 December 2009. The total bill came to £14,952,000.

The release is at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr9510.html

The data, with those for each year since 2000 (when the costs of individual bishops were published for the first time), will be found at:

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/bishopsofficeandworkingcosts.html

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Gender and the Anglican Episcopate

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England has hit the media headlines again during the past week or so over its continuing internal divisions about the issues of women’s ministry and homosexual clergy. The general public’s reactions to all this have been explored by YouGov in an online survey of 2,227 adult Britons aged 18 and over on 11-12 July. Details can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Bishops-120710.pdf

The big debates at the recent General Synod (the Church’s governing body), meeting in York, have been around how to move towards appointing women bishops without alienating traditionalists who do not recognize the authority of a female episcopate. Eventually, Synod did resolve to adopt draft legislation which (subject to further consideration by Synod in 2012 and to Parliamentary approval) would pave the way for women to become bishops on an equal footing with men by 2014.

Were it to be left to the public, 63% would allow the appointment of women bishops and only 10% would not. The remaining 27% express no opinion. Support for female bishops is more prevalent among women than men (67% versus 59%) and among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters (70% and 73% respectively) than Conservatives (58%). Opposition is greatest from Conservatives (15%) and those aged 60 and over (17%).

Another row has been about the leak (said to emanate from within the Crown Nominations Commission) that Jeffrey John, the openly gay but celibate Dean of St Albans, had been considered but subsequently rejected as a candidate for the vacant see of Southwark. This amounts to a second rebuttal for John since, in 2003, he was forced to withdraw his acceptance as Bishop of Reading, following a bitter feud over his appointment and homosexuality.

Asked whether the Church of England should permit gay bishops, public opinion is more divided than on the issue of women bishops, with 39% in favour, 27% opposed and 34% undecided. Among Conservatives and the 60+ age cohort there is actually a net opposition of 5% and 15% respectively. Only among adults aged 25-39 is an absolute majority (52%) supportive.

These reservations about gay bishops may seem surprising, given that British Social Attitudes Survey data point to much greater tolerance of homosexuality in general during the past three decades. In 2008 only 34% thought that homosexual sex was always or almost always wrong, ranging from 19% for the unreligious to 50% for the most religious.

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Future Role of Bishops in the Church of England

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The Church of England Evangelical Council, founded by John Stott in 1960 to provide a collective evangelical voice in the Church of England, has recently published a report on The Future Role of Bishops in the Church of England, which it commissioned from Brierley Consultancy.

The report is based upon a 23% response to a Likert-style questionnaire which was emailed early in 2010 to over 1,000 members of the Council. Respondents were disproportionately male (86%), clergy (69%) and aged 50 and over (74%), which may or may not reflect a skew in the actual membership of the Council as a whole.

The questions were arranged around five topics, comprising a couple of dozen statements in all: the role of the diocesan bishop; the appointment of bishops; the work of suffragan bishops; the bishop and his national role; and the bishop and national issues. There were also two ranking questions. The full results will be found at:

http://www.ceec.info/library/positional/CEECReport%20on%20Bishops%200510.pdf

Asked to rank five dominant issues facing a bishop today, 84% of respondents placed mission in first position, followed by declining church attendance (19%). Still further behind were financing ministry (5%), church unity (4%) and homosexuality (4%). Even when second, third, fourth and fifth preferences were factored in, mission remained the clear front-runner.

The primacy of mission was reinforced by the answers to another ranking question on the priorities of a bishop. To teach and defend the historic faith (55%) and to lead the Church in mission and ministry (51%) were the two issues of first rank, easily surpassing to be the voice of the Church in the public square (9%), to offer pastoral care for the whole Church (6%), and to manage Church resources most effectively (3%).    

The Likert-style questions asked about specific issues in isolation. 88% of Anglican evangelicals surveyed considered that a bishop should resign if he supported clergy in active homosexual relationships, and 75% were clear that the consecration of women bishops would divide the Church.

In respect of Church and state, 80% wanted bishops to continue to sit in the House of Lords, but only 27% supported their appointment by the Prime Minister and Queen (the remaining 73% disagreeing). Three-fifths favoured bishops being elected by their diocesan clergy and their appointment for a fixed term of 10 years.

One-third of respondents felt that bishops were out of touch with ordinary Church life, and one-fifth wanted them to be judged on their performance and to be paid accordingly. 62% did not consider it appropriate that they live in palaces or especially large houses.

These latter findings were among the aspects of the survey to be featured in the summary published on the front page of the Church of England Newspaper for 7 May 2010. This also quoted the Bishop of Willesden (a member of the Council) apparently casting some doubt on the representativeness of the survey.

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Religion in Public Life – Another Poll

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Clive D. Field

You can really tell that a general election is in the offing, and possibly even that Britain is emerging from recession. Certainly, there seems a greater willingness these days for lobbyists to afford the expense of testing public opinion on a range of topics, and religion is one of the beneficiaries. We have already noted a couple of new politico-religion polls, on integrity and religion of MPs (see our post of 12 February) and religion and politics (21 February). Now comes a new survey on Parliament and public life.

This latest poll was conducted by ICM Research among a representative sample of 1,007 Britons aged 18 and over, contacted by telephone on 10-11 March 2010. It was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in support of the Power2010 initiative, designed to give everybody a say in how democracy works.

The poll findings were published by Ekklesia, the religion and society think tank which is one of the partners in Power2010, on 15 March. See its three news postings at:

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11512

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11513

http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11514

The full data tabulations will be found at:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/survey_on_bishops_icm.pdf

The poll picks up some of the issues noted in the British Religion in Numbers news post of 15 March on reform of the House of Lords. Only 33% of ICM’s respondents believed it important for Church of England bishops to have a role in the Lords, against 48% who thought it unimportant. The highest proportion in favour of the episcopal presence was among those aged 65 and over (40%) and the lowest (20%) in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland rather than the Church of England is the established religion.

In a separate question, 74% of Britons said that it was wrong for some Church of England bishops to be given an automatic seat in the House of Lords, with 21% thinking it right (and no more than 25% in any demographic sub-group). Asked more generally about the role which religion should play in public life, 43% of respondents said that it was important and 41% that it was unimportant, with no major differences by demographics.  

The poll results were disaggregated by religious affiliation. Unfortunately, in a sample of this size, only the breaks by Christian and those of no religion can be considered significant (for example, only 24 Muslims were interviewed). Not unexpectedly, those with no religion were less sympathetic to the bishops and to the role of organized religion in public life than were professing Christians.

The poll supplements an online personalized letter-writing campaign launched by Power2010 on 11 March, encouraging people to contact one of the 26 bishops sitting in the current House of Lords, and seeking their support for a fundamental reform of the upper chamber. This has had a huge response, necessitating Power2010 to revise its target of letters upwards on several occasions. 31,000 email letters had been sent to the bishops by 12 March, 51,000 by 14 March and 59,655 as of the morning of 17 March.

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Reform of the House of Lords – Whither the Bishops?

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Clive D. Field

According to media reports, the Government is once again contemplating radical reform of the House of Lords, bringing in a fully-elected chamber. Such a move would inevitably spell the end to the presence there of the 26 Church of England bishops sitting as the lords spiritual.

Would such a move be welcomed in the court of public opinion? The most recent survey of a representative sample of British adults on the subject was conducted by ComRes for the BBC’s ‘Heaven and earth’ programme in July 2007.

Views were then fairly evenly divided on the continued presence of the bishops in the House of Lords, 48% agreeing and 43% disagreeing. In the event that the episcopal presence was to be maintained, 65% thought that the entitlement to sit in the upper chamber should also be extended to non-Anglican religious leaders.

But what of Parliamentarians? Would they support any legislative measure to unseat the bishops? Unfortunately, no recent survey of the attitudes of MPs appears to have been carried out. However, there have been two ComRes peers’ panel surveys.

The first, in November-December 2008, revealed 45% of peers in favour of the status quo for the lords spiritual and 44% desiring change. Tory peers were overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the current arrangements, Labour and Liberal Democrat ones most enthusiastic for reform. 22% of peers argued that there should be absolutely no representation in the House of Lords on the basis of faith, Christian or otherwise, the proportion rising to one in two among Labour and Liberal Democrat peers.

The second peers’ panel, in June-July 2009, found 54% agreeing that religious representation in the House of Lords should reflect the faith composition of the country as a whole, with 33% disagreeing. There were no major differences in response by political allegiance. The number wanting to see religious representation phased out had risen to 28% and was again especially high among Labour and Liberal Democrat peers.

As for the Church of England itself, according to a questionnaire completed by readers of the Church Times in March-April 2001, 82% of the churchgoing laity and 76% of the clergy support the continued presence of Anglican bishops in the House of Lords.

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