Updated Friday
Everyone Counts is a diversity audit. A congregational survey was carried out in autumn 2014 in a sample of Church of England parishes with a particular focus on ethnicity, disability and locality. Background information is available here.
Key findings have now been published. Here are a few that I have picked at random.
If congregations in England were 100 people:
59 would be female
11 would be children aged 11 or younger
19 would be aged 76 or older
7 would be minority ethnic Anglicans
37 would have at least one health issue or disability (including 8 with mobility impairments and 3 with mental health conditions).
There are 6 adults in church to every 1 child or young person.
35% of churches are in rural hamlets and isolated areas, but only 1% of the population lives there.
There is a difference of about 18 years between the median age of minority ethnic and white British Anglicans (44 and 62 years).
Update
The Church of England issued the following statement this evening (Friday 24 July):
Statement on ‘Everyone Counts’ survey
24 July 2015In response to questions in correspondence and on social media over the choice of questions included in the “Everybody Counts” survey, Dr. Bev Botting, Head of Research and Statistics at the Archbishops Council said:
“The ‘Everybody Counts’ statistical exercise was carried out to build upon the Diversity Audit carried out in 2007. By carrying out further work in this area it was hoped to establish trends over time rather than one off snapshots of particular data.
The Diversity Audit originated from formal requests from members of CMEAC (The Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns) for a statistical picture of dioceses on ethnic diversity. In designing the latest survey our starting point was to replicate the 2007 data which did not include a question on sexual orientation. The national disability adviser for the Church had recognised that we did not have any information on people with disabilities which was why that added question appeared.
I am sorry for the hurt and disappointment raised by members of our congregations who feel that the lack of a question on sexual orientation meant that they are not a valued part of our church. I promise this was never the intention. I am entirely open to including additional questions in any further work.”
More information about Everyone Counts can be found at:
https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/everyone-counts-2014.aspx
And how many of the 100 are gay? Presumably the question wasn’t asked; so much for diversity,let alone one of the more significant questions of our time where church memebership is concerned.Personally,I’m feeling airbrushed out.
“Celebrating Diversity”… I wish.
Everyone Counts? It would almost be funny if it weren’t so tragically deluded. How can anyone in 2015 carry out a diversity audit that omits, and thereby excludes, the “difficult” cadre of people. Give me strength.
“What have we missed? What else, and who else, do we need to ask?” So says the chirpy speech bubble on the final page.
Who else indeed? Perhaps the LGBTI people who have been so carefully airbrushed from the entire ‘diversity’ process might be a start.
While it is always good to comment here perhaps it might be even more effective to write to those who researched and published the survey. I think this link is the one needed: jacqui.philips@churchofengland.org
The intent of monitoring ethnic diversity is decent and honest in itself. However, the term ‘diversity’ can’t really be colonised to exclude inconvenient or politically problematic groups. “What should we ask ourselves?” Well for a start, what groups need protection and support, welcome and celebration, if the Church is to be truly diverse? “Who is missing from our church?” I have met so many people who exclude themselves from an organisation they consider institutionally homophobic. And that is not just lesbian and gay people. “What can our church do to welcome people and make sure we are accessible?” Give acknowledgement,… Read more »
Completely meaningless – and useless, without any reference to racial diversity or LGBT presence.
“Diversity should be an indivisible principle, which is why the celebration of female bishops this week cannot be seen as an ending, and why the Church cannot yet afford to be self-congratulatory.” Couldn’t agree more, Susannah, which is why, when (not if, when) the church stops discriminating on the basis of sexuality, there’ll be no grounds for complacency. Justice for all demands eternal vigilance. To take just one example, I’ve seen Christians who affirm women and LGBT people without reservation attack Christians who are nourished by liberal theology. My respect for Jeffrey John nosedived when he, of all people, had… Read more »
I asked my diocese why sexuality was not included and received the following reply from Sarah Barter-Godfrey, project officer for Everyone Matters at Church House, Westminster (published here with her permission). Note that this is her reply, not a formal response from Archbishops’ Council. “Yes, sexuality was omitted in this survey. There are several cumulative issues: 1. The original aim and remit of the “diversity audit” programme was to monitor ethnicity, as a long term response to reports coming out of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, institutional racism and cultural inclusion. It has expanded a little to include age and gender,… Read more »
OK James Byron, in this thread I find myself agreeing with you wholeheartedly! (ps thanks for your comments – and everyone else’s – whether I agree with them or not!)
Thank you Mark Hart.
In that case, though, the survey should not have been called “Everyone Counts”, but “Survey on race, gender and a little bit of half baked disability thrown in” survey.
“2. … the administrators cannot simply add in questions, it needs to come from the top-down. …”
So there you have it. Hell will freeze over first.
Sarah Barter-Godfrey’s answer makes a lot of sense – especially regarding her point 3.
The whole issue of sexuality is such a hot potato that I don’t think the compilers could realistically put in a ‘What is your sexuality?’ question without a lot of fall-out from all sides – and it may well jeopardise the worthy aims of the rest of the project.
What person why opens her or his eyes upon awakening, does NOT think of gay people when the question of diversity in church life comes up? Even if that weren’t the case, the attempt at an “explanation” given by Sarah Barter-Godfrey is pure rubbish. Considering the volume and density of the verbage in her reply, I’d hazard that even she knows it.
I thought Sarah B-G’s response was extremely frank and even courageous. Nobody should shoot the messenger. Obviously a diversity audit should contain sexual orientation, cross classified with marital and relationship status, and the other demographic variables. But Sarah explains the difficulties. We know that church central is rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. Good leadership and management would insist on quantifying diversity among staff of various grades to check against unwitting discrimination. The civil service do this, but then each civil servant records their own diversity information on a confidential part of their personal employment website. However, since the church consciously and… Read more »
The concerns about outing as reported by Mark Hart are an admission that LGBT folk are not generally safe in the church. A fact we all know in many instances and have experienced. Clearly there is no pressure from above to address this
Did I read that response right? It would be hard to survey diversity in sexuality in part because the church is too homophobic for people to risk being honest about it? Well that’s pretty awful in itself.
There has been an official statement this evening about the lack of a question on sexual orientation in the survey. I have copied it into my article.
“In context of the threats of ‘outing’, there are concerns that reporting even aggregate sexuality questions could lead to people/churches being targeted or pressured into disclosing their sexuality.”
This is a very interesting sentence!
At first I thought, hang on, can a church be ‘outed’? Does a church even have sexuality?
But then I realized, that’s exactly the point.
I’m sure that under its present leadership, the Church of England would very much rather not disclose the (diverse) sexuality of its members.
“The whole issue of sexuality is such a hot potato that I don’t think the compilers could realistically put in a ‘What is your sexuality?’ question without a lot of fall-out from all sides – “ May I suggest the courageous and fully Christian leadership is there precisely in order to face up to hot potatoes and to fall-out. True, some LGBT’s might not want to answer the question, but equally many of us would. A true count is probably impossible, owing to justified fear, but *some* attempt at a count is only just. Otherwise it is “AlmostEveryone Counts,” which… Read more »
We should never let it slip from our minds that our top leaders are truly dreadful. How shameful it is.
Well, that didn’t take long. Credit to Bev Botting for holding her hand up.
However (you knew that was coming), she is a statistician, and was only doing her statistical job. What the C of E does not have working alongside its statistitians is someone whose job is Head of Equality and Diversity for the Church of England, and who can advise on ways of collecting statistics and information that can help with the development of policy in ways that are truly inclusive. But then, if the church did that, the cat would be out of the bag.
For as long as the Church of England teaches that homosexuality is a sin, equality and diversity inclusive of sexuality is a dead letter, since it presupposes that the diversity in question is positive. In the church’s eyes (categorically not mine), asking “How many LGBT people are there amongst us?” is equivalent to asking, “How many potential thieves are there amongst us?” Yes, the comparison is, of course, grossly offensive and unjust, but so too is the teaching behind it. So far as the church is concerned, “same-sex attraction” is nothing but a propensity to sin, and acting on it… Read more »
“some LGBT’s might not want to answer the question, but equally many of us would. A true count is probably impossible” Nathaniel, I think you’ve hit a key problem. Bev Botting is a statistician, and from that point of view the statistics the survey would produce would be so inaccurate to be meaningless. And you’ve just included the LGBT people – there are plenty of straight people, I’m sure, who would say ‘none of your ….business’. I certainly would. there’s no perfect method, but I think you’d have to use different methods than this mass survey if you wanted more… Read more »
Although this survey misses a fair number of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010 – a pretty dismal attempt, in short – the other thing that it misses is the opportunity to discuss embracing diversity of opinion. That is one thing which appears to me to be becoming rarer in the Church of England. Jeremy P. sums it up well that there needs to be the will to develop truly inclusive policy. The notion of ‘Dignity at Work’ could usefully be resurrected in dioceses.
Jeremy Pemberton: “Head of Equality and Diversity for the Church of England” needed.
That is exactly what the Church of England needs.
For a start, because of sheer pastoral responsibility.
Handing control of surveys over to statisticians is a risky exercise when the establishment wants to manipulate the findings. That’s why Pilling and the Facilitated Conversations involved a carefully selected number of participants with the results mediated and moderated by its authors. A full blown diversity audit might prove too much for the executive to handle.
Along the lines of developing the will to be inclusive….
There seems to be a Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns.
That’s a horrendous, othering name — both “minority” and “ethnic” — might as well call it a Committee for Anglicans Not Like Us.
That aside, how about a Committee for LGBTQI Concerns?
‘Bev Botting is a statistician, and from that point of view the statistics the survey would produce would be so inaccurate to be meaningless.’ … though the attempt to collect them would be highly meaningful. However, I think this statement is not true. It smells rather strongly of making excuses. Yes, in the social sciences, collection of data on sexual orientation is notoriously problematic and prone to inaccuracy : however that hasn’t stopped many people- including the ONS (via the Integrated Household Survey) and others doing it. It seems to be a case of where there’s a will, there’s a… Read more »
I’d be interested to know how they counted ‘membership’, which is a concept I personally have no problem with, but I know a lot of people on TA do. Also, as far as the percentage of churches in rural or urban areas is concerned, another interesting statistic would be ‘percentage of members who travel more than x number of miles to get to church in (a) rural and (b) urban. ‘X’ would be bigger here in western Canada as distances are so much greater. Theological diversity would also be interesting. How many of the 100 would self-identify as evangelical, Anglo-Catholic,… Read more »
I think the Church of england hierarchy would be better occupied in listening to the eirenic sermon of +Paul, Bishop of Liverpool, to a congregation of the Outcast at St. Hilda’s Church, recently.
His sermon on hospitality reflects the need of the Church to include all who aspire to the experience of God’s Love, in a world of indifference. All of us in the Church are meant to extend the extravagant hospitality of Jesus to ALL people.
I would count this a victory for Thinking Anglicanism.
The CofE’s staff are being sensitized to the issues that the Archbishops would rather ignore.
This is good.
Hm. It seems unconscionable to omit LGBTQ people. If the concern is about “outing” people, the question could ask about openly gay people who are members. Sadly, it seems like a passive aggressive ploy to further marginalize and exclude gay Anglicans in the CoE. Clearly, everyone does not count. I also have questions about the category of “minority ethnic Anglicans.” It is likely my lack of knowledge about diversity issues in England. I just know that in the U.S., especially in TEC, that would be far too broad and likely insulting. We would break up the category into Blacks, Latinos/Latinas,… Read more »
On minority ethnic issues, first of all here is a recent report on the national picture
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/a%20portrait%20of%20modern%20britain.pdf
Second here is the background paper on CofE figures for the recent presentation on this topic at General Synod
https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2256537/gs%20misc%201108%20-%20cmeac%20presentation.pdf
The “Everybody Counts” question on ethnicity was the same as that used in the 2011 census, which you can find on page 8 of this questionnaire:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/the-2011-census/2011-census-questionnaire-content/2011-census-questionnaire-for-england.pdf
There are 18 categories to choose from.
The findings available so far are only an outline, and more detailed results will be published later.
Thank you for the info! It’s very telling. One extreme difference between the US and UK is that we have a “new” category, voluntary minorities vs. involuntary minorities. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem as if the UK has involuntary minorities. Ours would be our African-Americans and Native Americans. The outcomes of the involuntary minorities are vastly different, for a wide range of tragic reasons. I note that the UK’s Black Caribbeans seem to struggle more than the other minority groups, and they didn’t travel to the Caribbean voluntarily… I pray that someday soon, everyone actually will “count”… Read more »
The census survey uses the word “ethnic.” It does not use the word “minority.”
Further up the questionnaire is the question about same-sex or civil partners.
Perhaps the CofE could take several pages from the census book.