Too woke or not woke enough? Racial awareness in the Church of England

Village, A. and Francis, L.J. (2025) Too woke or not woke enough? Racial awareness in the Church of England. Journal of Anglican Studies. ISSN 1740-3553 (In Press)

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Abstract

The Church of England has recently engaged again with issues of racism by setting up the Anti-Racism Taskforce in 2020 followed by the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice in 2021. Both groups stressed the lack of progress in tackling racism in the Church and the need to raise awareness of racial injustice at all levels. This paper reports on the measurement of racial awareness among 3,167 clergy and lay people who took part in the Church 2024 survey. Eight items in the survey were used to create the Racial Awareness Scale (RAS). Results suggested a mixed picture with majority awareness that racial inequality is an important issue that needs to be addressed, majority rejection of the idea that there may be local or institutionally embedded racism, and enthusiasm for diversifying leadership but not for taking specific actions relating to historic slavery. Multiple regression analysis showed racial awareness was shaped by a complex mixture of individual, contextual and religious factors.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an author accepted manuscript of a paper accepted on 6th August 2025 by Cambridge University Press for publication in the Journal of Anglican Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
Keywords:	Church of England conservatism liberalism psychological type racism Racial Awareness Scale
Depositing User:	Ursula Mckenna
Date Deposited:	14 Oct 2025 07:05
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2025 07:05
URI:	https://lbro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/1273

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