The shrinking Church of England?
The story of the decline
This story was chosen because the data was available and shows the tail end of the steep decline many churches in the UK suffered in the 60's, so there is no implication in using this data that the Church of England (CofE) is somehow much worse than the other UK Churches. The data was not collected on a uniform basis, so while it may lack some accuracy it is thought to be a good indication of long term trends. The question is how many peeople go to Church today? Over the 36 year period from 1971 to 2007 the Church of England has declined by 43% while the population of the UK grew by 9.37%. Put these statistics together and the share of the population going to the Sunday service in the CofE fell by 52% between 1971 and 2007.
Church of England attendance(1968-2007)
Source: Church Society www.churchsociety.org
More evidence of the decline
This picture is of another activity, the rate of infant baptisms. Once again it was chosen because the data was available and because it goes back to 1902. Not perfect data because there were two changes in the way it was collected that needed adjustments to be made:
- To plot a chart the period between readings was equalised because chart plotting software will give a non-linear X-axis if the data is not equally spaced and the resulting chart can be very misleading. These adjustments were made by leaving out some data and moving others by straight line interpolation to arrive at a 10 year spacing.
- In the statistics from 1902 - 1976 the figures are infant baptisms and for those of riper years. In the statistics from 1992 infant is taken to mean aged under 1, a second figure is given for ages 1 to 12 and this was used to correct the infant figure to make them comparable to the 1902 - 1976 statistics. This probably inflates the figure for more recent baptisms but does give a fairer comparison.
Church of England Baptisms(1900-2010)
Source: Church Society www.churchsociety.org
As an activity baptisms would seem to be a good indicator of the UK population's churchgoing and although the data may not be accurate it does depict the trend we are interested in. As the data is baptisms per 1000 births, it is not affected by changes in the birth rate such as the post war baby boom or growth in the population. What the chart shows is a dip during the Second World War then a post war resurgence followed by a steep and steady rate of decline. At the peak in 1950 about 67% of infants were baptised, but today it is less than 20% and falling. For those that hopes that the decline of the church is abating the bad news is that the rate of fall in recent years shows no sign of diminishing.
How should we react to this data?
With grim figures like these there is understandably a desire on the part of the leaders of the church to either ignore them or put the best face on them. Yet if the leadership will not react, who will? The average churchgoer has no power on their own to do anything about it, nor do they possess the facts that would motivate them to action. Plotting a course to safety is a leadership function and when we follow God's lead we should see blessings.
In 2006 the attendance was down just -1% on 2005, but when you understand the average annual drop on the attendance trend chart is only 1.2% a year it does not seem so significant. Yet in a report in the Times online 23rd December 2007 it quoted a CofE spokesman who said 'attendance figures for Anglicans had generally stabilised since 2000.' In practice the decline in usual attendance between 1999 (there is no data for 2000) and 2005 was on average 1.85% per year which is above the 1.2% average for the period 1968-2005, which leaves you wondering what the CofE spokesperson means by 'generally stabilised' Most people would take it to mean there was no more decline.
Should we move the goal posts?
The argument from the CofE is for a wider measure of attendance that includes activities outside Sunday attendance. They argue that this would be more accurate because it reflects changes in our culture, but in doing so we will inflate the attendance figures by including people who do not show the same level of commitment as those who attend on Sunday. Many of these weekday activities are not new, so why include them now?
CofE Weekly verses Sunday attendance
Source: Church Of England website
The chart ashowsboth weekly and Sunday attendance figures from the CofE website. If we were looking for a more honest measure of Church attendance then using the adult figures would seem a more representative figure. Children who attend may have little or no say in their attendance and should not be counted as believers. While the trend for the percentage of children attending on Sunday is shows a ddeclineof 2.3%, the trend for the Weekly children's attendance is positive and masking the extent of the decline in weekly adult attendance.
Challenges that lie ahead
To say that the decline is over would seem premature. With the average age of churchgoers over 50 and rising steeply, the future of the Church looks far from certain. The influence of the new atheism, as championed by Richard Dawkins, is strong in our increasingly secular (materialistic and therefore pagan ) society and at the same time Islam is growing fast. The Archbishop of Canterbury's recent speech on the inevitability of Sharia Law in Britain has caused a self inflicted wound that had some people` calling for his resignation and the end of the CofE role as the established Church. Even the Queen expressed her concern at the damage to the CofE.
Yet the CofE has its own internal problems caused by the ordination of gay Bishops, and the proposal to introduce women Bishops in England. Neither of these are small problems, if you judge by the amount of news they generate. The CofE often seems to be on the verge of schism over deep differences in points of view. The Church Society puts the increase in the rate of decline in attendance that started in 1993 down to the ordination of women priests. While those in favour of women's ordination had anticipated an increase in attendance the graph shows a steeper rate of decline. Furthermore an article in the Telegraph on 6th of February 2004 revealed that the number of priests that left the CofE due to the ordination of women was at least 430 and the cost of compensation was £26M.
Good news for the feminists came in the recent statistics for ordination. Thanks largely to a steep (42%) decline in the number of male stipendiary ordinands over the period from 2000 to 2006, the percentage of female priests ordained exceeded 50 for the first time in 2006.
CofE Ordinands by gender & type
Source: Church Of England website
Key:
- Stipendiary = ordinand that receive a stipend
- Non Stipend = ordinand that do not receive a stipend (part time)
- OLM = Ordained Local Ministry. A ministry that is focused upon a particular community in a Diocese(part time)
In 2006 the percentage of priests who were female was 17.5% and it is expected to exceed 25% by 2010 and match them by 2025. It would seem that, by the steep decline of male ordinations, the rate of increase in the proportion of women priests will speed up and make the introduction of women bishops inevitable. Yet on 2nd April 2008 the Church of Wales rejected the bill for the introduction of women Bishops, because to do so would have sanctioned what they regarded as institutionalised schism. An article in the Daily Mail on the 1st July 2008 reported that more than 1,300 clergy have written to the Archbishop of Canterbury saying they will defect from the Church of England if women are consecrated as bishops. On 7th of July 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury argued in the Synod for a hard line, with no concessions for the Anglo-Catholics, on a vote for women bishops and that is the way the vote went.
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