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Belonging and believing

How many people go to Church in the UK?

Churchgoing in the UK

In the past when life had fewer distractions people measured Church attendance on a weekly basis, but today regular Churchgoing is often measured as those that go at least once a month. A report on "Churchgoing in the UK" published by Tearfund in April 2007 shows that 15% go to Church at least once a month.

Churchgoing in the UK

 

Source: Tearfund Churchgoing April 2007 Fig 1a

Downloadable chart: "Churchgoing in the UK"

Belief in the UK

We all know that church attendance has been falling and 50 years ago over half of people in the UK would go to Church. While belief in Christianity may have declined at 58% of the population it can still claim to have a majority of the population. Atheists and Agnostics represent 33% of the population and are still in the minority.

Belief in the UK

Source: Tearfund Churchgoing April 2007 Fig 3c

Downloadable chart: "Belief in the UK"

Christian life in the UK

Aside from the regular and fringe/occasional attenders, there is also a huge number of de-churched ( people who have a personal relationship with God that have stopped going to Church.), such that the ratio of de-churched to regular attenders is about 2:1. The survey reports that, through the negative experience of Church, nearly all of these de-churched people are closed to invites to Church.

Churchgoing in the UK

Source: Tearfund Churchgoing April 2007 Fig 3c

Downloadable chart: "Churchgoing in the UK"

Decline in Churchgoing

While the method used to produce these figures shows a slightly higher attendance than those from Christian Reasearch, there is no doubt that the long term downward trend in Church attendance continues as does the increase in average age of Churchgoers. So far nothing the Church leaders have done seems to have brought about any change in the decline that started in the 50's.

Trend of UK Church attendance

Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Table 12.9.1

Downloadable chart: "Trend of UK Church attendance"

Relative rates of decline

The decline for attendance forecasts a 55% fall from the 1980 level by 2020. From 1990 the decline in Church attendance is significantly higher than membership, and that for ministers is about the same that for Churches. This tells us that even amongst the membership the Church in general struggles to attract people to services. The rate of decline in buildings is significantly less than that for membership, suggesting that congregations are on average getting much smaller with many more nearing the point when they will cease to be financially viable.

UK rates of decline in Church

Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Table 12.13

Downloadable chart: "UK rates of decline in Church"

Four trends not one

The wider picture of decline in the UK Church includes four aspects: the increasing average age, the fall in the number of men, the proportion of Christians who believe without belonging, and a tendency to be middle class. Put them all together and the picture you get of the Church in the UK is one that fails to attract four people groups:

  1. Christians
  2. men
  3. young people
  4. the poor

Put like that it is no wonder that the Church is declining. If you are a poor young male Christian the chance of you going to Church is abysmally low. Can you imagine the difficulty of finding a young carpenter or fisherman going to Church in the UK?

4th from bottom

If the Church in England was the national football team we would have sacked the manager long ago. A European social study (published in 2002) put the UK at the 4th lowest rate of Church attendance in Europe.

Churchgoing in the EU

Source: Tearfund Churchgoing April 2007 Fig 18

Downloadable chart: "Churchgoing in the EU"

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