A FLASH YouGov poll taken last week suggests that two-thirds of the public believe that Justin Welby was right to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury following the publication of the Makin report.
The independent review by Keith Makin concluded that the “prolific, brutal and horrific” abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, a Reader in the Church of England, was covered up by “powerful evangelical clergy”, and listed the Archbishop among those who failed to act sufficiently in 2013 (News, 8 November). Archbishop Welby resigned five days later (News, 15 November).
In the poll of 4541 UK adults conducted on Thursday, and published the next day, 62 per cent said that, from what they had seen and heard, the Archbishop had been right to resign. One third (34 per cent) did not know; four per cent believed that he was wrong to resign.
Except for the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley (News, 11 November), this view has been expressed by bishops only since the resignation was announced (News, 12 November). In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, said: “He did the honourable thing.”
Archbishop Welby’s son Tim Welby in an interview with the Mirror, agreed, saying that his father had been “right to resign”. His position, he said, “became untenable, simply because so many people were calling for his resignation”.
Also on Thursday, in another YouGov poll, 5856 UK adults were asked whether they had a “favourable or unfavourable opinion” of the Archbishop: 42 per cent said that they had not heard of him; 31 per cent said that they had a “very” or “somewhat” unfavourable view of him; 21 per cent were neutral; and six per cent had a very or somewhat favourable view.
A wider YouGov poll was taken a week earlier, on 6 and 7 November — the day that the Makin report was published — about the place and influence of both the Archbishop and the Church of England more generally. The results were also published on Friday.
Of the weighted sample of 2177 UK adults, 78 per cent did not know who the current Archbishop of Canterbury was. Half of the respondents said that “religious leaders such as the Archbishop of Canterbury” should “keep out of political matters”. One third (33 per cent) said that these leaders should “express their views”.
More generally, 57 per cent said that the Church of England had “not very much” or no influence on the Government, and 73 per cent said that the Church had not very much or no influence on “the way most people in Britain live their lives”.
Most were supportive of the suggestion that the Government no longer had an influence over the appointment of senior posts in the C of E: 58 per cent, compared with 11 per cent who were opposed, and 31 per cent who did not know.
Last week, MPs rejected an amendment to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill from the Conservative MP Gavin Williamson to abolish the parliamentary seats for the Lords Spiritual (News, 14 November). In the YouGov poll, 61 per cent said that bishops should no longer be given seats in the Lords.
In answer to other questions concerning the effects of disestablishment, 55 per cent said that the Church should no longer receive “state funding”; 39 per cent supported governance of C of E schools’ being passed to local councils; and 49 per cent opposed counting C of E marriages only as religious marriages (and therefore requiring a further civil marriage in order to be legally married, as is the case for the RC Church in France).