Moral attitudes vary starkly between Christians across the world, survey reveals

The United States was the only country surveyed where people were more likely to rate the morality of their compatriots as bad rather than good. Rising numbers of both Republicans and Democrats say people in the other party are immoral.

Only a small minority of Europeans agree with Catholic teachings on abortion, contraception, and divorce, which are much more widely accepted in other parts of the world, according to research published by US-based polling centre Pew Research.

In the UK, 27 per cent of Christians surveyed said that abortion was morally unacceptable, compared with 11 per cent of the religiously unaffiliated and 20 per cent of the overall population.

It should be noted, however, that the survey only asked respondents to categorise the issue as acceptable, unacceptable, or as not a moral issue, so people’s views may be significantly more nuanced than this survey could capture.

For example, a survey carried out by opinion polling consultancy Savanta ComRes showed that 70 per cent of women in the UK support reducing the current 24-week gestational time limit for abortion.

Pew Research found that in France, 13 per cent of Christians and 6 per cent of those without a religion considered abortion to be morally unacceptable. In Sweden, it was only 7 per cent of Christians and 2 per cent of the unaffiliated.

Attitudes to abortion are significantly less permissive on the other side of the Atlantic: in the US, 47 per cent of the overall population and 59 per cent of Christians said abortion is wrong, compared with 23 per cent of non-religious Americans.

All of these countries have become at least slightly more tolerant of abortion since Pew Research last conducted a similar survey in 2013, when 49 per cent of Americans, 25 per cent of Brits, and 14 per cent of French people surveyed objected to it.

Pew Research also did not distinguish between cultural Christians and practising ones, among whom it could be expected that attitudes would be more in line with the Church’s teaching.  

In all the European countries surveyed by Pew Research, fewer than 14 per cent of Christians said that they believed contraception was morally unacceptable.

In France, only 3 per cent of Christians objected to contraception, compared with 2 per cent of the religiously unaffiliated.

In the UK, it was 4 per cent of Christians compared with 2 per cent religiously unaffiliated. This finding is similar to a 2010 survey of British Catholics, which found that only 4 per cent of them believed contraception should not be used.

The gap was biggest in Poland, where 13 per cent of Christians objected and only 1 per cent of the non-religious did.

Spain had 6 per cent of Christians and 1 per cent of the non-religious objecting, and in Italy, it was 5 per cent of Christians and 3 per cent of the religiously unaffiliated.

8 per cent of US Christians said that contraception was morally wrong, compared with 5 per cent of religiously unaffiliated Americans; this was the same in Canada, except that only 2 per cent of non-religious Canadians objected.

Christians in the Global South were much more likely to find contraception morally unacceptable: for example, 20 per cent of Brazilian Christians and 41 per cent of Nigerian Christians.

20 per cent of Polish people said that getting a divorce is morally unacceptable, compared with 1 per cent of the religiously unaffiliated.

In the UK, it was 15 per cent of Christians compared with 2 per cent of the unaffiliated; and in France, 10 to 3 per cent.

Even on marital infidelity, Christians’ attitudes were broadly in line with those of the country’s general population.

In France, only 55 per cent of Christians and 53 per cent of the overall population believed it to be morally unacceptable, compared with 84 per cent of Christians and 81 per cent of the overall population in the UK and 92 per cent of Christians and 90 per cent of the overall population in the US.

The research also found that within each country, Protestants and Catholics tend to hold similar views on moral issues. In Canada, for instance, 15 per cent of Catholics and 16 per cent of Protestants say that getting a divorce is morally unacceptable.

However, Protestants are typically more likely than Catholics in the same country to say that homosexuality is wrong.

In the US, 59 per cent of Protestants say homosexuality is morally wrong, while 34 per cent of Catholics say the same. Argentine Protestants are at least twice as likely as Argentine Catholics to say homosexuality is wrong.

Men are also more likely than women to say homosexuality is morally unacceptable. In many of the countries where there is a difference, men are about 10 points more likely than women to say homosexuality is wrong. For instance, in the United Kingdom, 20 per cent of men said this, compared with 11 per cent of women.

On the other hand, in nearly all the countries surveyed, women are more likely than men to say that viewing pornography is wrong. Some of the widest gender differences are in South Korea and Spain, where women are 22 points more likely than men to say that viewing pornography is morally unacceptable.

In both countries, a majority of women expressed this opinion, compared with a minority of men. In the US, 58 per cent of women said viewing pornography is wrong, while 47 per cent of men said the same.

The US was the only country surveyed where people were more likely to rate the morality of their fellow countrymen as bad (53 per cent) rather than good (47 per cent).

Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to rate fellow Americans as morally and ethically bad (60 per cent vs 46 per cent), and previous research has shown that rising numbers of both Republicans and Democrats say people in the other party are immoral.

Canada and Indonesia were the countries with the highest approval of their compatriots’ morality, with 92 per cent rating it as good, and the UK wasn’t far behind, at 82 per cent.

France, however, only had a slightly higher opinion of its countrymen’s morality than the US, at 55 per cent.

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