May 8, 2008
Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of
regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a
generation, research published today suggests.
The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once
a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other
denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the
collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including
church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church
closures as ageing congregations die.
In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have
increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.
According to Religious Trends, a comprehensive statistical analysis of
religious practice in Britain, published by Christian Research, even
Hindus will come close to outnumbering churchgoers within a generation.
The forecast to 2050 shows churchgoing in Britain declining to 899,000
while the active Hindu population, now at nearly 400,000, will have more
than doubled to 855,000. By 2050 there will be 2,660,000 active Muslims
in Britain - nearly three times the number of Sunday churchgoers.
The research is based on analysis of membership and attendance of all
the religious bodies in Britain, including a church census in 2005.
Coming just months after the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that the
introduction of aspects of sharia into British law was unavoidable, the
report is likely to fuel calls for the disestablishment of the Church of
England.
Martin Salter, the Labour MP for Reading West and a member of Reading
inter-faith group, said: “I think all faiths could be treated equally
under our constitution. These figures demonstrate the absurdity of
favouring one brand of Christianity over other parts of the Christian
faith and the many other religions that grace our shores.”
Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary with responsibility for
community cohesion, said: “We will look at these findings very closely.
Britain is a secular democracy with a strong Christian tradition but
many faiths have a home in Britain.”
The report makes it clear that Christianity is becoming a minority
religion. It also reflects the changing nature of religious practice
worldwide and will further aid the stated aim of the Prince of Wales
who, on his Coronation, hopes to become Defender of Faith rather than
Defender of the Faith.
Only in the large, evangelical churches of the Baptist and independent
denominations is there resistance to the trend, but many of these
churches also show some decline. One small area of growth is in Northern
Ireland, where the enthusiasm of Pentecostals and other independents has
led to a slight increase in numbers of churches - a trend expected to
continue to 2050. The three growing denominations are the Orthodox,
Pentecostals and smaller denominations, all dependent to a degree on
immigration.
The crisis is particularly acute for Methodists and Presbyterians, as
many worshippers are aged over 65. The report predicts that these
churches might well have merged with others by 2030. “The primary cause
of the decrease in attendance is that people are simply dying off,” the
report says.
By 2050 there will be just 3,600 churchgoing Methodists left in Britain,
Christian Research predicts. Anglicans will be down to 87,800, Catholics
to 101,700, Presbyterians to 4,400, Baptists to 123,000 and independents
to 168,000.
The national breakdown shows similar declines across England, Wales and
Scotland. Churchgoing across all denominations in England will fall from
about 3 million today to about 700,000 in 2050. In Wales it will tumble
from 200,000 to 42,000 and in Scotland, from 550,000 to 140,000. The
figures take into account the recent boost to Catholicism from the
number of Polish immigrants to Britain, particularly in Scotland.
The report predicts that by 2030, when Dr Rowan Williams’s successor as
Archbishop of Cantebury will be approaching retirement, there could be
just 350,000 people attending just 10,000 Anglican churches, with an
average of 35 worshippers each. The next Archbishop after that could
find his position “totally nonviable”, the report says, with just
180,000 worshippers in 6,000 churches by 2040.
David Voas, a professor of population studies at the Institute for
Social Change at the University of Manchester, said: “The difficulty is
in retaining the children who have churchgoing parents. So long as
churchgoing is something that gets you laughed at, so long as there is a
social stigma attached to being a churchgoing young person, it will be
difficult to reverse the trend.” He said that young Muslims operated in
a different environment. “Being religious is a way that you show you are
different, that you are proud of your heritage. One of the ways young
Muslims assert their identity is by being more observant than their
parents.”
The Church of England disputed the forecasts last night. Lynda Barley,
its head of research, said: “These statistics represent a partial
picture of religious trends today. In recent years church life has
significantly diversified so these traditional statistics are less and
less meaningful in isolation.
“There are more than 1.7 million people worshipping in a Church of
England church or cathedral each month, a figure that is 30 per cent
higher [than the Sunday attendance figure used by Christian Research]
and has remained stable since 2000. We have no reason to believe that
this will drop significantly.”
— Hundreds of churches are protesting at soaring water bills, with some
parishes facing increases of up to 1,300 per cent. Senior churchmen from
the Church of England, Methodist and other churches are meeting
officials from Ofwat, the industry regulator, to argue their case
against the charges today.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3890080.ece
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
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