What are the myths of church decline?
1 Increased prosperity
In the period since the war personal prosperity has increased steadily and we have seen a corresponding steady decline in churchgoing. With an ever growing choice of things to do on Sunday the Church struggles to compete, and there is an argument that this is simply cause and effect. Yet if you examine what happened in the USA, you see a different story; their personal prosperity has risen but they have not seen such a dramatic fall in churchgoing.
Prosperity and belief
Source: various
The comparison of average earnings probably flatters the UK, where the cost of many things such as houses or cars is much higher than in the USA. While there has been a fall in churchgoing in the USA, it is still three times higher than in the UK. It's not that prosperity does not play a part in the decline churchgoing, but it is clearly not the only or even main cause.
2 Men are not spiritual
Its not that men are not interested in spiritual things. There is no gender gap in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism or Hinduism, nor is it a feature of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The data in Tearfund report Appendix 1, shows the percentage of men and women attending various religions.
Church attendance by gender
Source: Tearfund Report on Churchgoing April App. Fig 2
Note that less men (11%) than women (19%) attend Church but more men (7%) than women (6%) attend places of worship in other religions. So while the ratio between men and women in the Church is 35% to 65%, and the ratio for other religions is 54% to 46%. Thus other religions show men are more spiritual than women.
3 All denominations are the same
The chart shows the relative rates of growth or decline in Church membership from 1980 to 2020 for several UK denominations. The trend lines for all the Churches start at 0% in 1980. All the rates of change are from that common starting point and the size of the Church has no effect on the comparison. Two of these denominations, the Orthodox and the Pentecostal show strong growth over the whole 40-year period.
UK Church membership by denomination
Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Tables 12.4,12.7
These are not the only denominations to grow, the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) also shows growth. The evidence is clear that churches in the UK can grow their attendance. Whatever the cause of the decline in churchgoing if some Churches can thrive so why not others?
4 An ageing Church is due to an aging population
The two shaded areas compare the age profile of the UK adult population with that of the church; blue for the UK population and red for regular Church attenders. From the age of 16 to about 50 the proportion of people in Church is substantially below that of the general population, then after the cross over the proportion of people attending Church stays substantially above that for the UK population.
Chart of UK Church attendance by age
Source: Tearfund Report on Churchgoing April App. Fig 4
This clearly shows that the Church does attract more old people than young by a significant margin. We can safely conclude that elderly congregations in Church have nothing to do with the fact that people are living longer, because we can see the age profile for Church attendance is significantly different to that of general population.
5 Belief in the bible is unpopular
While the gospel has never been popular, after all they killed Jesus for what he said, the bible has always been a best seller. It was one of the first books to be printed and it is so popular today that it is no longer included in the bestselling book lists. In the USA the conservative denominations of all sizes are growing, unlike those of a more liberal point of view. In the UK the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches(FIEC) have a similar conservative view of the bible, and have also shown consistent growth for some time.
Growth in USA denominations
Source: Various
Although the growth of the Southern Baptists Convention is quite small in percentage terms, it is worth noting that it is the largest protestant denomination in the USA. This fact highlights one of the main differences between the protestant Churches in UK and the USA; the low percentage with of UK denominations with an orthodox view of the bible. The effects of this in the USA can be seen outside the Church where the Christian point of view can still exert itself in politics on issues such as the family.
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