Frank Brennan

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Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel doesn't know the views of his own flock on VAD

I've written previously about bishops demonstrating their ignorance, as in the example of Catholic Bishop Tim Harris who presumed most or all of his flock opposes voluntary assisted dying (VAD), when in fact a significant majority support it. This time it's the Anglican Sydney diocese archbishop who's loudly flaunting his biases.

Sydney Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel (pictured on the diocese website above), has launched a program calling on NSW parliamentarians to reject a bill that, with a large number of safeguards, seeks to make VAD lawful in the state. NSW is the last state in the nation that still outlaws the practice.

The problem is, the archbishop is clearly backing his own personal beliefs and interests when he calls upon Anglicans to sign and share his petition calling for the unanimous rejection of the bill. That's because most Australian Anglicans, including those in NSW, support the law reform.

In 2019, academic pollsters VoxPop obtained the attitudes of more than 155,000 NSW voters regarding VAD. The views of NSW Anglicans are shown, by electorate, in Figure 1. Electorates with an asterisk are (with some very minor boundary differences) those within the archbishop's own diocese.

nswanglicansonvad2019.gifFigure 1: Attitudes of NSW Anglicans towards VAD law reform.
Source: VoxPop 2019. * Electorates in the archbishop's own diocese.

Immediately obvious is that most NSW Anglicans, including those in the archbishop's own diocese, are in favour of VAD law reform. That is, NSW MPs would be most wise to thoughtfully consider the bill and pass it. To oppose the bill would be to invite the wrath of most voters across all electorates in the state.

The archbishop might attempt to argue that his flock would change their minds if only they "understood". But that would be a hubris-based claim that those of differing views are somehow uninformed or mentally defective because they disagree.

Indeed, as I have written in a major research series about religiosity in Australia, this profound disconnect between senior clergy and their flocks is a key reason that Australians have been deserting religion in droves. That applies especially to the Anglican church, whose membership plummeted by 28% in just the fifteen years between the 2001 and 2016 censuses. And subsequent polling suggests it has fallen further since then.

To argue the "evils" of VAD, archbishop Raffel also teamed up with well-known Catholic anti-VAD campaigners Margaret Somerville and Father Frank Brennan. More of the usual connections...


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