SPIRITUAL AWAKENING AMONG ANGLICAN CLERGY DURING THE PANDEMIC: EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF PERSONAL FACTORS, PERSONALITY, CHURCH ORIENTATION, AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

The experience under consideration in this study is rooted in the Covid-19 pandemic as crystalised in the events in England and Wales between late March 2020 and July 2020, when the Government imposed a national lockdown and when the Church of England imposed a national lock-up on its churches. The religious tradition under consideration is the Christian theological response to human disease and suffering. For considerable periods during the Covid-19 pandemic, England and Wales were in lockdown and churches were closed. Church services were live-streamed or pre-recorded for internet-savvy members to access online at home. For some clergy the pandemic may have been a challenge to faith, while for others the experience of the pandemic may have been an opportunity to re-kindle faith. A sample of 1,050 Anglican clergy serving in England completed an online survey including the newly developed Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA) alongside a range of other measures. The Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA) was found to have good psychometric properties. The data demonstrated that considerably more Anglican clergy experienced a sense of spiritual awakening during the pandemic than experienced a spiritual decline. The data also demonstrated that higher levels of spiritual awakening among Anglican clergy were associated with two factors, one psychological and one ecclesial. Clergy who report higher scores of spiritual awakening are more emotionally stable, associated with one of the two wings of the Anglican Church (Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic) rather than with the middle way insights from earlier research, the study identified four categories of predictors that may have been relevant to individual differences in levels of spiritual awakening, discussed as: personal factors, psychological factors, church orientation, and religious practice. Four conclusions emerged from the data in response to this second research question.

The experience under consideration in this study is rooted in the Covid-19 pandemic as crystalised in the events in England and Wales between late March 2020 and July 2020, when the Government imposed a national lockdown and when the Church of England imposed a national lock-up on its churches. The religious tradition under consideration is the Christian theological response to human disease and suffering. For considerable periods during the Covid-19 pandemic, England and Wales were in lockdown and churches were closed. Church services were livestreamed or pre-recorded for internet-savvy members to access online at home. For some clergy the pandemic may have been a challenge to faith, while for others the experience of the pandemic may have been an opportunity to re-kindle faith. A sample of 1,050 Anglican clergy serving in England completed an online survey including the newly developed Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA) alongside a range of other measures. The Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA) was found to have good psychometric properties. The data demonstrated that considerably more Anglican clergy experienced a sense of spiritual awakening during the pandemic than experienced a spiritual decline. The data also demonstrated that higher levels of spiritual awakening among Anglican clergy were associated with two factors, one psychological and one ecclesial. Clergy who report higher scores of spiritual awakening are more emotionally stable, associated with one of the two wings of the Anglican Church (Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic) rather than with the middle way of Broad Church, and influenced by the Charismatic Movement.

Introduction
Within the context of empirical research, the notion of spirituality is both fruitful and problematic. It is fruitful in the sense that it generates a diverse and wide-ranging field of study. It is problematic in the sense of a serious lack of consensus regarding the meaning and boundaries of the concept. On the one hand, the term spirituality is used in opposition to religion to denote a depth of experience or a style of practice within religious traditions. On the other hand, the term spirituality is used in opposition to religion to denote a worldview alternative to religious traditions (see Heelas & Woodward, 2005). The complexity of the term spirituality within empirical research has been well documented by Francis, Laycock, and Penny (2016).
The notion of 'spiritual awakening' shares both the potential fruitfulness and the potentional problems associated with the parent term spirituality. In the present study, the term 'spiritual awakening' is firmly nested within a family of religious traditions, as rooted in Christianity and as expressed by the Anglican Church within England and Wales. The thesis of the study is that spiritual awakening occurs as a function of changing human experience, interpreted through the lenses of lived religious tradition. The experience under consideration in this study is rooted in the Covid-19 pandemic as crystalised in the events in England and Wales between late March 2020 and July 2020, when the Government imposed a national lockdown and when the Church of England imposed a national lock-up on its churches. The religious tradition under consideration is the Christian theological response to human disease and suffering.
The Great British lockdown and churches The Covid-19 pandemic took the world by surprise and travelled the globe quickly. Decisive action was needed and decisive action was effected. In England the Government imposed a lockdown on the nation on 23 March 2020. The following day the Church of England imposed a lock-up on all its churches. The official statement on the website read The archbishops and bishops of the Church of England have written collectively to clergy through their dioceses, urging them now to close all church buildingsother than when they are needed to keep a food bank running, but even then under strict limits. There will be no church weddings until further notice, funerals will not take place inside church buildings and the only baptisms will be emergency baptisms in a hospital or home. (Church of England, 2020) The official statement was clear that churches would be closed for all private prayer, including by priests. Clergy were instructed to live-stream worship from their own homes. Reflecting on this situation in Journal of Anglican Studies, McGowan (2020) suggested that this edict was likely to cause problems both for clergy and for lay people. He suggested that: Many worshippers, not just clergy, wanted to be connected with the spaces and places that meant much to them. Members of the Church were now being offered alternative forms of prayer and worship, via technologies not always familiar or welcome, centred on clergy whose faces had become personal avatars of worship. (McGowan, 2020, p. 3) Recognising that the ecclesial landscape was changing rapidly before our very eyes, we designed the Coronavirus, Church & You Survey in order to assess the impact of this policy on clergy and lay people.  Village, 2018a). A second version of the survey was designed for the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and was distributed through links with The Tablet. The survey was constructed to address a range of discrete but interrelated issues arising from the pandemic, from the national lockdown, and from the Church's response with the national lock-up of churches. Initial analyses of these data examined the experiences of rural Church of England clergy and laity during the pandemic , tested the impact of the pandemic on the fragile churches thesis through the eyes of clergy and laity (Francis, Village, & Lawson, 2020, 2021, gave close attention to the experiences of retired clergy , gave close attention to the experience of churchgoers aged seventy and over , explore the effect of psychological type on shaping responses to the pandemic (Francis & Village, 2021c), compared the experience of male and female churchgoers (Francis & Village, 2021d), assessed the impact of feeling supported on the wellbeing of clergy through the pandemic , introduced The Index of Balanced Affect Change (TIBACh; Francis & Village, 2021e), explored affect balance of positive and negative wellbeing on Church of England clergy and laity during the pandemic , explored attitude toward church buildings during the lockdown (Village & Francis, in press), examined the diverging responses of clergy shaped in the Anglo-Catholic tradition and of clergy shaped in the Evangelical tradition (Francis & Village, in press a), and examined the experience of clergy and laity to online communion service (Francis & Village, in press b).

Christian tradition and human suffering
The Christian conceptualisation of the nature of God is sophisticated and complex. In Christian tradition the mystery of God is conceptualised as three coeternal and consubstantial persons, revealed as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct, yet are one substance (homoousios), essence, or nature (see further, Astley, 2010). How individual Christians respond to human suffering may vary according to the way in which they understand, evaluate and internalise this core doctrine of the faith. A reading that focuses primarily on the teaching that God the Father is all powerful and all loving may struggle to reconcile such a theological emphasis with the human experience of the pandemic. How could such a beneficent creator God allow the creation of such a devastating and destructive virus in the first place? How could such an omnipotent creator God not step in to overturn such destructive obstruction of the divine purposes for the human race? Such a reading may lead to the experience of the pandemic questioning faith and to a withdrawal of personal commitment to such a God.
Another reading, however, focuses primarily on the teaching that God the Son (Jesus Christ) has revealed solidarity with the vulnerable human condition by accepting birth in a stable, identifying with an oppressed people within occupied territory, and by accepting humiliating death through crucifixion, alongside two common criminals. The theological emphasis prioritised by the second reading may be much easier to reconcile with the human experience of the pandemic. Here God the Son is suffering with humanity through the pandemic and working within humanity to harvest the salvific purposes revealed in the Easter Resurrection. Such a reading may lead the experience of the pandemic to strengthening faith, to enhancing personal commitment to such a God, and to spiritual awakening.

Research objectives
Against this background, the first research objective of the present study is to develop a measure to assess the extent to which the lived experience of the pandemic among clergy shaped within the Anglican stream of the Christian tradition in England and Wales led to spiritual awakening or distracted from it. In operational terms this research objective involves assessing the perceived changes within spirituality experienced during the pandemic.
The second research objective of the present study, rooted in the traditions of empirical theology and of the empirical psychology of individual differences, is to explore the relevant factors that may help to shape individual variations in the experience of spiritual awakening among clergy shaped within the Anglican tradition. Building on previous research, the present study employs four categories of predictor variables that we characterise as personal factors, psychological factors, church orientation, and religious practice. Each of these categories of predictor variables will be introduced briefly.

Personal factors
Two key personal factors are routinely taken into account in exploring individual differences in spirituality or religiosity: sex and age. In his pioneering assessment of empirical findings within the field of the psychology of religion, Argyle (1958) identified the most secure finding as that of sex differences. Across a range of religious variables women emerged as more religious than men. This finding was re-affirmed by Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975), Beit-Hallahami and Argyle (1997), and Francis (1997). Francis and Penny (2014) continued to affirm the same outcome, but with the caveat that the supporting evidence is rooted in Christian or post-Christian societies. The connection between religiosity and age is more complex, although the evidence generally supports greater religious commitment among older people (see .

Psychological factors
The connection between spirituality or religiosity and personality has been explored from a range of perspectives. Within the individual differences tradition four distinctive perspectives have employed the sixteen factor model of personality proposed by Cattell (Cattell, Cattell, & Cattell, 1993), the three dimensional model proposed by Eysenck and Eysenck (1975), the Big Five Factor model proposed by Costa and McCrea (1985), and the model of psychological type theory proposed by Jung (1971) and developed by instruments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers & McCaulley, 1985) and the Francis Psychological Type Scales (Francis, 2005; Francis, Laycock, & Brewster, 2017). Consistent patterns have emerged from studies using all four models. The present study is rooted in the tradition employing psychological type theory, as evidenced by recent collections of studies edited by Village (2011) and by Lewis (2012Lewis ( , 2015Lewis ( , 2021aLewis ( , 2021b. At its heart psychological type theory distinguishes between two core mental processes: the perceiving process is concerned with gathering information; the judging process is concerned with evaluating information. In psychological type theory the perceiving process distinguishes between two functions (sensing and intuition) and the judging process also distinguishes between two functions (thinking and feeling). Religious experiences within the Christian tradition tends to prioritise feeling over thinking, and to prioritise intuition over sensing (see Francis, 2005).
By concentrating exclusively on core mental processes, unlike the models of personality proposed by the sixteen factor model, the major three dimensions model, and the Big Five Factor model, psychological type theory does not include a dimension concerned with affect. It is for this reason that the Francis Psychological Type Scales have been extended to include a measure of emotional temperament (see Village & Francis, under review). The connection between religious experience and emotionality remains contested within the psychology of religion, as historically explored by Francis and Jackson (2003).

Church orientation
The main break in the Western Christian tradition occurred with the Reformation (Marshall, 2009). The break between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformed Churches was political, ecclesial, and theological. Within this broader international context, the Anglican Church emerged offering a distinctive position, embracing characteristics rooted both in the Catholic tradition and in the Reformed tradition. During the early nineteenth century the distinctiveness of these two roots were emphasised, and to some extent polarised, by the emergence of the Tractarian Movement rooted in the Catholic tradition (Hylson-Smith, 1993; Nockles, 1994, Pererio, 2017) and the Evangelical Movement rooted in the Reformed tradition (Atherstone, 2017;Hylson-Smith, 1989;Manwaring, 1985). The distinctive influence of these two movements were still clearly evident toward the end of the twentieth century when Saward (1987) reviewed the growing strength of the Evangelical stream, and Penhale (1986) reviewed the waning influence of the Catholic stream. At the same time Walker (1988) drew attention to the Middle Way of central Anglicanism, often also described as Broad Church. Randall (2005) charted the continuing significance of these movements into the twentieth century. Village (2018a) documented the predictive power of church orientation (distinguishing among Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Broad Church) across a range of areas relevant to the ways in which Anglican clergy expressed and experienced their ministry. Generally, it is the distinctive Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Anglican Church that generate a stronger sense of commitment to distinctive beliefs, practices, and spiritual emphases.
The diversity within the Anglican Church displayed by the three streams represented by Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Broad Church, was further enriched by the influence of the Charismatic Movement. According to Gunstone (1982) the influence of the Charismatic Movement emerged within the Anglican Church during the 1960s mainly in the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, where in 1964 the Fountain Trust was established. During the 1970s, however, the movement made significant inroads among Anglo-Catholics as well.
In 1973, the first Anglican Catholic Charismatic Convention was held in Walsingham and by 1979 had outgrown the shrine and was transferred to the larger conference centre at High Leigh. Gunstone hazards the guess, unsubstantiated by evidence, that by the early 1980s, 'about ten percent of Anglican communicants are baptised in the Spirit, and perhaps a slightly higher proportion of the parochial clergy' (Gunstone, 1984, p. 85).
More recent studies concerning the impact of the Charismatic Movement on laity and clergy within the Church of England have been reported by Francis, Lankshear, and Jones (2000), Steven (2002), Francis and Turton (2002), Francis and Littler (2011), and Francis, Village, and Voas (in press). These studies confirm that the influence of the Charismatic Movement has persisted.
In the mid-1980s, following the debates in the General Synod on the Charismatic Movement in the Church of England, Bax (1986) was asked by the Board for Mission and Unity to map the wider field of spiritual renewal. She began by talking to a group of people who had either a national or a diocesan viewpoint. She then checked the emerging picture by visiting parishes and communities and by talking to individuals at the grassroots. In her analysis, Bax identifies the following characteristics of churches influenced by the Charismatic Movement: awareness of the Holy Spirit at work, small group structures, increased lay participation, deeper spiritual life, new forms of corporate worship and liturgy, emphasis on the experimental, extra-parochial communities, and commitment to community.
In a somewhat similar analysis, Goldingay (1996) draws attention to the following six characteristics. There is a clear beginning of the Christian life which commonly takes the form of a tumultuous experience of being 'filled with the Spirit'. The ongoing Christian life is aware of the sense of the presence and power of God, a joy in God, and an enthusiasm about God. God is seen as involved with the world in an interventionalist sense, changing and healing. The Christian community is open to God who acts, guides, and speaks to the church.
These early analyses suggest that spiritual awakening may be more prevalent among clergy influenced by the Charismatic Movement, irrespective of their location within the tripartite distinctions within church orientation among Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Broad Church.

Religious practice
The prohibition of public gatherings and the lock-up of churches as part of the national lockdown presented church leaders with the challenge and with the opportunity for offering the online provision of services for members of their churches who had access to the internet. Alongside the provision of pre-recorded or live-streamed services on Sunday, some clergy also decided to live-stream the daily offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. Within the polity of the Anglican Church saying the daily offices is an obligation placed on the clergy. For some (a minority) this is done in their church as an act of public worship in which they may be joined by some lay people. The lockdown gave clergy the opportunity to make their daily offices public in another way. The present survey provides an opportunity to test whether the online commitment to daily public prayer may have functioned as a spiritual resource for the clergy themselves, with higher occurrence of spiritual awakening.

Method Procedure
During April 2020, an online survey was developed using the Qualtrics platform. The survey was intended primarily for Anglicans and was distributed through the Church Times and dioceses. The survey was launched on 8 May and closed on 23 July 2020, by which time there were 6,612 responses from people living in England or Wales, of which 5,647 were from Anglicans. For the present analyses we drew on the responses of the clergy who were either in active stipendiary service, or serving as self-supporting ministers.
Dependent measure Spiritual awakening was assessed by the newly constructed four-item Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA). In the survey these items were merged within a pool of 20 items designed to assess the perceived impact of the pandemic on the participants. These 20 items were introduced by the following rubric: 'How would you rate the effect of the lockdown on you so far? (Please click one button EACH row to indicate positive (+) or negative (-) effect. The middle button indicates no effect of the lockdown)'. The four items relating to spiritual awakening concerned: prayerfulness, closeness to God, closeness to the church, and personal faith (table 1). Factor analysis (principal components extraction and varimax rotation) identified a single factor, suggesting there was a unidimensional underlying construct of spiritual change. Internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach's alpha was .79, a level that is generally thought to indicate adequate reliability. The scores were used to create the Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA), with a high score indicating someone who had seen improvements in prayerfulness, faith, closeness to God and closeness to the church during the lockdown.   Village, 2021). This is a 40-item instrument comprising four sets of ten forced-choice items related to each of the four components of psychological type: orientation (extraversion or introversion), perceiving process (sensing or intuition), judging process (thinking or feeling), and attitude toward the outer world (judging or perceiving). Previous studies have demonstrated that this instrument functions well in a range of church-related contexts (Francis, Edwards, & ap Sion, 2020; Francis, Robbins, & Craig, 2011; Village, 2016). In this sample the alpha reliabilities were .83 for the EI Scale, .75 for the SN Scale, .73 for the TF Scale, and .71 for the JP Scale. Scores rather than binary preferences were used as predictor variables. The scores in each component are complementary, so it is necessary to use only one: in this case scores for E, S, T, and J. In addition to these scales, there was also a 10-item scale measuring emotionality (Village & Francis, under review), with a high score indicating a tendency to emotional instability.
Church orientation: Distinction among the three streams of Anglo-Catholic, Broad Church, and Evangelical was measured by a 7-point semantic grid (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957), anchored by 'Anglo-Catholic' at one pole and by 'Evangelical' at the other pole. This measure has been hown to predict a range of individual differences in belief and practice among Anglican clergy (Randall, 2005;Village, 2018a). This grid was used to identify Anglo-Catholic (scoring 1-2), Broad Church (scoring 3-5), and Evangelical (6-7) clergy. In the regression analyses Anglo-Catholic clergy and Evangelical clergy were used as dummy variables, with Broad Church as the reference point. Charismatic expression was measured on a second 7-point semantic grid anchored by 'not charismatic' at one pole and 'charismatic' at the other pole. Experience suggests this measure is best used as a continuous variable indicating the degree of 'Charismaticism'.
Religious practice: The survey explored whether clergy and their team had been able to offer Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer online. Each form of service was followed by three response options: No (1), Some days (2) and Everyday (3).

Participants
Of the 1,050 clergy employed in the analyses, 95% were from England and 5% from Wales. Details of age and sex profiles are shown in Table 2 frequencies of other variables used in the analyses. These data demonstrate that there were roughly the same numbers of clergymen (50%) and clergywomen (50%). In terms of age 11% were under the age of forty, 21% were in their forties, 34% in their fifties, 31% in their sixties, and 3% were aged seventy or over. The psychological type profile of the participants was weighted strongly toward introversion (63%), and judging (78%), with a slight preference for intuition (53%), and feeling (56%

Analysis
The first stage of analysis was to use bivariate correlation to indicate which predictor variables were correlated among themselves and how they correlated individually with the Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA). The second stage was to use hierarchical linear regression to test the effects of predictors after allowing for others in the model. The rationale behind the nested models was to enter variables related to personal factors and psychological factors in the first three models (sex and age, followed by psychological type scores and then emotionality), then those related to church orientation (Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic), and finally those related to religious practice (livestreaming Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer). The aim was to identify how far spiritual change could be predicted from personal factors or psychological factors before taking into account church orientation or religious practice.

Results and discussion
The first step in data analysis concerned an examination of the responses recorded on the measure of spiritual awakening. Table 1 presented core information about the psychometric properties of the Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA) in terms of the alpha coefficient (α = .79) and in terms of the correlations between each of the four items and the sum of the other three items (ranging from .23 to .61). Table 1 also presents the item endorsements for each of the four items. Overall, these item endorsements indicate that more clergy experienced an improved sense of spiritual awareness during lockdown (a sense of spiritual awakening) than experienced a deteriorating sense of spirituality. Thus, 60% reported enhanced personal faith, compared with 4% who reported deterioration in personal faith; 50% reported enhanced prayerfulness, compared with 14% who reported less prayerfulness; and 42% reported feeling closer to God, compared with 7% who reported feeling more distant from God. Perhaps as an inevitable consequence of being locked out of their churches, just 21% reported feeling closer to the church, compared with 34% who reported feeling more distant from the church. The second step in data analysis concerned a close examination of the interconnections between the predictor variables. The bivariate correlations displayed in Table 3 showed trends that were predicted from the social and religious structure of the sample. For example, clergy tended to have lower Thinking (and higher Feeling) scores, a trend observed in the general population (Kendall, 1998). Older clergy recorded lower scores of emotionality and were less likely to offer online services of Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer. Anglo-Catholic clergy were more likely than Broad Church clergy to be male, less likely to be Charismatic, and more likely to be introverts. Evangelical clergy were more likely than Broad Church clergy to be male, more likely to be Charismatic, and more likely to be extraverts. These correlations suggested a multiple regression analysis was necessary to isolate the independent effects of predictor variables on spiritual awakening.
The third step in data analysis employed a sequence of regression models that introduced the predictor variables in five steps in the following order: personal factors, psychological type, emotionality, church orientation, and finally religious practices in online services. The data presented in Table 4 demonstrate that many of the bivariate correlations between spiritual awakening scores and the predictor variables failed to persist when controlling for other variables.

Personal factors
These data reported no significant association between sex and spiritual awakening scores, either in terms of bivariate correlation or multiple regression. While the bivariate correlation reported a slight significant association between age and spiritual awakening scores, this association was not sustained in the regression model. Clearly personal factors were not significant predictors of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Psychological type
The bivariate correlations suggested small significant associations between psychological type and spiritual awakening scores. Higher scores of spiritual awakening seemed to be associated with extraversion, feeling, and perceiving. However, none of these significant associations was retained in the regression model. Clearly psychological type was not a significant predictor of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Emotionality
The bivariate correlation suggested a significant association between low emotionality and higher spiritual awakening scores. This association was retained in the regression model. Clearly emotional stability is a significant predictor of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Church orientation
The bivariate correlations suggested a small significant association between church orientation and spiritual awakening scores. Evangelical clergy were likely to record higher spiritual awakening scores. The regression model suggested that both Evangelical clergy and Anglo-Catholic clergy recorded higher spiritual awakening scores than Broad Church clergy. Clearly church orientation is a significant predictor of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Charismaticism
The bivariate correlations suggested a small significant association between church orientation and spiritual awakening scores. This association was retained in the regression model. Clearly charismaticism is a significant predictor of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Religious practice
The bivariate correlations suggested a small significant association between offering Morning Prayer and offering Evening Prayer and higher spiritual awakening scores. However, these significant associations were not retained in the regression model. Clearly maintaining these particular religious practices was not a significant predictor of individual differences in spiritual awakening.

Conclusion
The present study was designed to explore the connection between spiritual awakening and the initial experience of the Covid-19 pandemic among Anglican clergy serving in England and Wales. Data were drawn from the Coronavirus, Church & You Survey that was available online between 8 May 2020 and 23 July 2020 when the experience of the first national lockdown imposed by the Government on 23 March 2020 was having its impact. Responses were analysed from 1,050 Anglican clergy who had identified as serving in England or Wales. These data were employed to address two distinct, but interrelated, research questions.
The first research question was designed to test the thesis that the Christian theological account of the nature of God as Trinity would nuance the experience of the pandemic as a time for spiritual awakening (strengthening faith in God) rather than a time for questioning and abandoning faith. This articulation of the Christian theological account was grounded in the Second Person of the Trinity, in God the Son (Jesus Christ) who fully shares the suffering of humanity and who brings salvation as healing through suffering. In order to explore this first research question it was necessary to conceptualise and to develop a measure of spiritual awakening. Two conclusions emerged from the data in response to this first research question.
First, the study has developed and tested the Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA). This four-item measure demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (α = .79) and acceptable face validity. High scores on this index identify individuals who report over a specific period of time: increased prayerfulness, feeling closer to God, feeling closer to the church, and strengthened personal faith. Here is a new instrument that is fit for purpose in the present study and that can be commended for future use.
Second, using the Lewis Index of Spiritual Awakening (LISA), the data demonstrated that a higher proportion of the participants reported that the experience of the pandemic exerted a positive influence on their faith rather than a negative influence. For example, 60% reported enhanced personal faith, compared with 4% who reported deterioration in personal faith; 50% reported enhanced prayerfulness, compared with 14% who reported less prayerfulness; and 42% reported feeling closer to God, compared with 7% who reported feeling more distance from God. On the other hand, as an inevitable consequence of being locked out of their churches, just 21% reported feeling closer to the church, compared with 34% who reported feeling more distant from the church. Here is evidence that Christian theology is able to resource trust in God during times of adversity, and is able to stimulate spiritual awakening to sustain hope and confidence in the traditions of faith at such times.
The second research question was designed to test the extent to which individual differences in levels of spiritual awakening experienced by Anglican clergy during the pandemic could be predicted by a range of factors. Based on insights from earlier research, the study identified four categories of predictors that may have been relevant to individual differences in levels of spiritual awakening, discussed as: personal factors, psychological factors, church orientation, and religious practice. Four conclusions emerged from the data in response to this second research question.
First, in terms of personal factors, the data demonstrated that neither sex nor age was a significant predictor. Clergywomen and clergymen recorded similar scores of spiritual awakening. Older clergy did not record scores of spiritual awakening significantly different from younger clergy.
Second, in terms of psychological factors, the data demonstrated that psychological type was not a significant predictor. On the other hand, higher scores of spiritual awakening were associated with great emotional stability. This is consistent with the general finding that emotional stability is associated with positive affect, while emotional instability is associated with negative affect (see Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998).
Third, in terms of church orientation, the data demonstrated that Anglo-Catholic clergy and Evangelical clergy recorded higher scores of spiritual awakening compared with Broad Church clergy. This is consistent with the view that the two wings of the Church of England may be in touch with spiritual traditions that give them a clear sense of direction and consequently of achievement than that in evidence in the middle way of Broad Church. Higher scores of spiritual awakening were also associated with influences by the Charismatic Movement.
Fourth, in terms of religious practice, the data demonstrate that commitment to delivering online Morning Prayer and online Evening Prayer was associated with neither higher nor lower scores of spiritual awakening.
In summary, there are two significant predictors of individual differences in spiritual awakening scores among Anglican clergy in England and Wales, one psychological and one ecclesial. The clergy likely to report higher scores of spiritual awakening are more emotionally stable, and associated with one of the two wings of the Anglican Church (Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic) rather than with the middle way of Broad Church, and influenced by the Charismatic Movement.
The present study was established to explore the impact of the pandemic on clergy at the beginning of the national lockdown in England and Wales on 23 March 2020. There are three clear limitations within this study that restrict the generalisability of the findings. The research was conducted over a limited period (less than three months) during the initial phase of the pandemic. The population studied was limited to Anglican clergy in England and Wales. The survey was conducted online and the analyses restricted to clergy who had been willing to take part in an online survey. The findings from the study are, however, sufficiently interesting to deserve proper replication and extension, before the meaning of the initial lockdown fades from people's minds and now that this experience can be placed within a longer trajectory.