Here is one:
Sir, It is the statisticians who produced Religious Trends who should be on their knees (“Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour”, May 8). The methodology of the publication is so flawed that it is dangerously misleading to draw any predictions from it.
A few examples highlight the problems. Christian Research does not compare like with like. It takes the number of Muslims at the 2001 Census and assumes that half are active worshippers. Using the same assumption would give 20 million active Christians, yet it limits, for example, active Church of England membership to only average Sunday congregations. That ignores actual head counts showing the average million Sunday congregation is only part of the 1.7 million individual worshippers in any given month, recorded year on year since 2001.
It ignores the rapid growth in Back to Church Sunday initiatives that brought more than 20,000 people back to church last year. Being based purely on numbers in church buildings on Sundays, it ignores the thousands joining the Church through more than 5,000 fresh expressions initiatives meeting in other places, on other days.
The Right Rev Nick Baines
Bishop of CroydonThe Rev Lynda Barley
Head of Research and Statistics, Archbishops’ Council
Is he actually disagreeing with the statistics presented about year on year decline of the CofE (on any measure you care to name)?
Doubtless one can highlight outlying data points where growth is occurring – and of course its Bishop Baines (who is a good and very clever man) job to focus on them – and pray that they mark a change of trend rather than simply an outlying data point.
I must say that the original report just did not ring true from my, admittedly limited experience. I am glad the CofE have taken up the issue.
When I was a youngster many of the churchgoers seemed to be predominently the elderly. I find in 2008 that this is still the case. How is it that the old ladies and gentlemen did not die off and the churches close? Can it be that as we mature more of us are drawn to or back to church? Is this why there seems to be a stable elderly population? Are congregations recruited from the mature?
Of course there are churches like those where I worship where the young and middle aged are present as well, if not in the majority.
Well, I’m certainly glad for some feedback and input from a Brit like Pageantmaster. I claim no expertise on the state of the C of E. But I do recommend a recent well-researched book by Philip Jenkins, entitled “God’s Continent.” The continent being Europe, of course.
Among other things, Jenkins points out that it’s not just Muslims who are flooding into England and other European countries and changing the religious mix in unprecedented ways. It’s often overlooked, especially by liberal media types, that conservative Christians from places like Africa are also immigrating in signficant numbers into England and other EU nations. As usual, the picture is complex and easily distorted by oversimplifications.
But if we change the question from “Is Christianity dying?” to the similar but actually quite different question, “Is Christendom dying?,” I think we can answer that one with a definite “YES.” That is, the old marriage between Church and State, wherein they were regarded as essentially coterminous and inseparable, where Christianity was publicly favored and deeply imbedded in western culture as a whole, that old marriage between Christianity and culture has certainly broken down and is daily withering away.
And that presents us with a great and glorious opportunity, as well as the obvious dangers. We now live in a highly pluralistic and syncretistic social environment where committed Christians are very much a small, beleagured minority. But that post-Constantinian situation can remind us that the pre-Constantinian Church faced a very similar challenge, and succeeded marvelously, against all odds, eventually winning over the mighty Roman Empire.
By God’s grace and power, we can do the same. It’s happening in the Global South. It can happen in the Global North or West.
David Handy+
“It is the statisticians who produced Religious Trends who should be on their knees”
Nice line.
hjmmmmm ok maybe the statistics were stretched but WAKE UP!!! Things are in decline and that DOES NEED ADDRESSING!!
The C of E still tires to justify the infrastructure set up to cater for the 19th Centruy when most people went to church. Rather than adapt it tries to pretend all is well as the Bishop’s response indicates.
We simply have FAR FAR to many buildings – each with a stupid number inside. Here in my own we have no less that NINE compared to ONE for the Romans. So their maintanance bill is vastly less than ours. Yes a cull would hurt- we may even lose the few who worship bricks not God but amputation is preferable to terminal rot.
If you kept the same number of priests but shut a thrid of the buildings- you might start to focus attention in the right place and act as a missionary church in a secular land rather than try to pretend to be the church of the nation.
Too many churches expend MASSIVE energy maintianing a building which grows almost impossible becuase the load is spread on just a few shouldrs. So why not gather four such congregations together- then when someone enters the doors -they are not presented with a tiny depressed bunch sitting in acrumbling edifice but a thriving group in a well maintained and loved church.
End of rant….
#5: I imagine it’s because you have the special interest heritage lobby in the UK that keeps the CofE maintaining thousands of buildings that only a handful use for worship in a week. I have seen, in visits to English cities, ‘parishes’ of 35 average Sunday attendance right next to cathedrals, and country parishes of five or more places of worship – a ridiculous burden on the poor priest on perpetual circuit. Can you imagine if every village school, country hospital and post office was kept open on ‘heritage’ grounds?
Dean Jensen of Sydney certainly lacks gentility (well, he is an Australian!), but I have heard him (via mp3) call for ‘crummy buildings’ that last for 40 years that you can slap up and tear down as needs require, so we don’t get locked into maintenance mode. No buildings-sacramentalism here, I grant …
Is the CofE whistling in the dark? (Echoes of Monty Python & the Holy Grail: ‘I’m not dead yet …’) Probably. It still has a soft-liberal leadership, with a wan voice that cannot inspire – not nearly as bad as Tec, but hardly rallying. Their best thinkers understand this, but the impact of liberalism (and WO) has enervated the message. The most trenchant preachers and teachers are to be found in the conservative evangelical-charismatic or catholic ‘wings’, but they are excluded from national leadership. Look how church planter Richard Coekin was treated in London – his bishop tried to sack him. So mega-churches like HTB and All Souls will probably continue to flourish (even as they becoem less recognizably Anglican), while the tradition-minded spread themselves out every more thinly.
Already the majority of the English population have no Christian memory in their own families (i.e. at least oen grandparent who was an active Christian). Why should this change in the next ten years?
I read how the churches in other parts of the world are struggling to obtain land, build churches and endow them with the funds to maintain them. We have 19,000 parishes or so with a fantastic stock of churches, halls and accomodation; we sit on £5 billion+ of income yielding investments. How wonderfully God has blessed us. This is not year zero and this is not a standing start. It is really up to us to make something of the call of God and this includes preparing ourselves for mission.
Arguing from the general to the specific, I attend booming evangelical-end churches but in the locality I have attended a traditional church which has just taken on an evangelical rector with a record of building congregations and another wealthy but flatlining church which has invested in making its building more fit for purpose. Both are beginning to see an increase in numbers attending; as much for the change in attitude as configuration as far as I can see [btw one of them is at the more high church end]. One sees success [#5 RPP’s church sounds like one that has got it together notwithstanding his rant]. So while I acknowledge the truth of much that Gordian says merely to engage in slash and burn belies the wonderful gifts God has bestowed and which can be used for His mission.
All ready and waiting.
Also responding to the “rant” by rugbyplayingpriest (#5),
If there were simply, easy solutions to the long decline of the C of E or TEC for that matter, then we’d have found them by now. For instance, simply slapping together two or three small, struggling congregations almost always results in a great deal of loss taking place. That is, contrary to the usual math, when you combine three weak little churches, 2 + 2 + 2 doesn’t usually = 6, but often just 3 or maybe 4. It’s far better to match up a small, struggling church with a big, healthy one.
As an American, I admit that I probably have little feel for the importance of preserving historic buildings such as the C or E has in such abundance. But I agree that we Anglicans tend to have what I like to call “an edifice complex.” Interestingly, here in the U.S., while there was no deliberate attempt to build cheap, ugly buildings (as ++Peter Jensen could be taken to mean), the fact is that many, many church buildings turned out to be relatively short-lived because they were so often made of wood, and church fires were a very common occurance up until the 20th century. You have a lot more stone buildings in England.
DAvid Handy+