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. Read more
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Thursday, 8 May 2008
The Times: Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour
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1 comment:
(Chelmsford)
Fortunately this report is nonsense. I can’t speak for other denominations, but Church of England attendance has been stable over the last decade at a level twenty times higher than the predicted 2050 figure. And that stability is because the decline of some churches as older people die off is being balanced well by good growth, often among younger people, in a relatively small number of thriving churches. If the C of E can keep its house in order, and the thriving churches don’t allow themselves to be milked dry to support unviable dying churches, then there is no reason to predict decline in the future.
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