Fewer and fewer teenagers are attending church, the most recent statistics from the Church of England reveal. Although overall attendance numbers have remained largely steady since the millennium, provisional figures for 2007 show that the overall drop in attendance by under-16s has increased by four per cent over the previous year.
The statistics found that among children and young people around 9,000 less were attending Church of England churches on a weekly basis. Records show that in 2006, approximately 228,000 children and young people attended whereas in 2007 the figure was down to 219,000. The numbers are more alarming if compared to 2005 which recorded 232,000 children and young people as attending church. Meanwhile the same figures for monthly attendance fell even more with just 424,000 attending in 2007 compared to 442,000 and 444,000 in 2006 and 2005 respectively.
Do you think this has anything to do with extra-curricular activities regularily being scheduled on Sundays similar to what has happened in the US?