Bishop warns that Britain’s churches face extinction
-05/09/05
Britain’s churches must face the fact that without concerted action they may be on the way out, says the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, commenting on the latest findings of the UK-based Christian Research organization.
According to the latest issue of Christian Researchís journal Religious Trends, the churches may be heading for extinction by 2040 ñ with just two per cent of the population attending Sunday services and the average age of congregations rising to 64.
The organization forecasts that in 35 years there will be twice as many Muslims in mosques on Fridays as Christians worshipping on Sundays.
The special report, ëThe Future of the Churchí, says total membership of all the denominations will fall from 9.4 per cent of the population to under five per cent by 2040, and 18,000 more churches will close.
Commenting on figures which suggest that church attendance will plummet by two-thirds over the next three decades, Bishop McCulloch, speaking yesterday on BBC Radio 4ís ëSunday Programmeí, said that all denominations needed to reassess their core priorities.
The challenge, he declared, was not simply for those who are ordained, but for ìthe whole of the baptized. We have to face the facts, and we are not always good at that.î
Continued the Bishop: ì[We need to be] leading people to an experience of God through having a ministry which is quite clearly about praying, teaching and caring in the name of Christ, instead of some of the more bureaucratic issues which the church seems to be more interested in.î
Bishop McCulloch is not the first senior church leader to use the word ëextinctí in talking about the scale of the problem facing Christianity in Britain.
In September 2001 the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy OíConnor, told a conference of priests in Leeds that traditional Christian faith could be vanquished unless they took their vocation seriously.
Meanwhile Ekklesia associate and theologian Theo Hobson suggested in July 2005 that institutional church needed to be replaced by something much more spontaneous and dynamic.
Other recent evidence shows that while there are signs of vitality among non-traditional and evangelical/Pentecostal sectors of the church in Britain, the historic denominations have been facing continuous decline for some years.
The Baptist Union of Great Britain, which has talked of transitioning to ëmissional churchí is the one historic formation which has bucked the trend in some respects.
Bishop McCulloch stressed that although the situation was serious, it was possible for the churches to take effective action.
In his own Diocese of Manchester, he said, the 2004 ëBack to church Sundayí initiative (about to be repeated) had added another 900 attendees. It had been University-monitored, and 91 percent who responded said they were glad to have returned.
Bishop McCulloch also said that 5% of clergy in his area were assigned to ìnon-traditional rolesî, particularly communicating with young people using new technology.
Dr Peter Brierley of Christian Research called his organizationís report ìa wake up callî. He said that the Church of Englandís ëFresh Expressions of Churchí initiative was an example of how the challenge could be addressed, but much more needed to be done.
In August 2005 a University of Manchester study funded by the Institute for Social and Economic Research found that religious belief was declining faster than attendance at services in the UK.
Dr David Voas and a research team looked at data collected annually since 1991 from 10,500 households in Britain. Their study suggests that fewer people now have robust faith than passively “belong” to a religion.
It concluded that the catchphrase “believing without belonging” (originating from research by Dr Grace Davie of the University of Exeter) is wrong in its usual interpretation ñ which is that there is a reservoir of responsive belief for the churches to draw upon.
Institutional religion now has a “half-life” of one generation, the Manchester study suggests. One factor that might slow down the decline is that parents with religious convictions have more children than others, and two religious parents have roughly a 50-50 chance of passing on their beliefs.
Dr Voas declared: “How children are brought up has an enormous impact on whether they will identify with a religion.î
At the time the Church of England accused the study of being ìconfusedî, citing the fact that 72 per cent of the population said they were Christian in the latest Census, and more than 77 per cent claimed a religious affiliation.
However critics suggest that the Census figures characterize beliefs precisely of the ìsoftî kind highlighted by the Manchester survey. And according to Christian Research the figure will in any case fall to about 35 per cent in 2040.
Bishop warns that Britain’s churches face extinction
-05/09/05
Britain’s churches must face the fact that without concerted action they may be on the way out, says the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, commenting on the latest findings of the UK-based Christian Research organization.
According to the latest issue of Christian Research’s journal Religious Trends, the churches may be heading for extinction by 2040 – with just two per cent of the population attending Sunday services and the average age of congregations rising to 64.
The organization forecasts that in 35 years there will be twice as many Muslims in mosques on Fridays as Christians worshipping on Sundays.
The special report, ëThe Future of the Church’, says total membership of all the denominations will fall from 9.4 per cent of the population to under five per cent by 2040, and 18,000 more churches will close.
Commenting on figures which suggest that church attendance will plummet by two-thirds over the next three decades, Bishop McCulloch, speaking yesterday on BBC Radio 4’s ëSunday Programme’, said that all denominations needed to reassess their core priorities.
The challenge, he declared, was not simply for those who are ordained, but for ‘the whole of the baptized. We have to face the facts, and we are not always good at that.’
Continued the Bishop: ‘[We need to be] leading people to an experience of God through having a ministry which is quite clearly about praying, teaching and caring in the name of Christ, instead of some of the more bureaucratic issues which the church seems to be more interested in.’
Bishop McCulloch is not the first senior church leader to use the word ëextinct’ in talking about the scale of the problem facing Christianity in Britain.
In September 2001 the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, told a conference of priests in Leeds that traditional Christian faith could be vanquished unless they took their vocation seriously.
Meanwhile Ekklesia associate and theologian Theo Hobson suggested in July 2005 that institutional church needed to be replaced by something much more spontaneous and dynamic.
Other recent evidence shows that while there are signs of vitality among non-traditional and evangelical/Pentecostal sectors of the church in Britain, the historic denominations have been facing continuous decline for some years.
The Baptist Union of Great Britain, which has talked of transitioning to ëmissional church’ is the one historic formation which has bucked the trend in some respects.
Bishop McCulloch stressed that although the situation was serious, it was possible for the churches to take effective action.
In his own Diocese of Manchester, he said, the 2004 ëBack to church Sunday’ initiative (about to be repeated) had added another 900 attendees. It had been University-monitored, and 91 percent who responded said they were glad to have returned.
Bishop McCulloch also said that 5% of clergy in his area were assigned to ‘non-traditional roles’, particularly communicating with young people using new technology.
Dr Peter Brierley of Christian Research called his organization’s report ‘a wake up call’. He said that the Church of England’s ëFresh Expressions of Church’ initiative was an example of how the challenge could be addressed, but much more needed to be done.
In August 2005 a University of Manchester study funded by the Institute for Social and Economic Research found that religious belief was declining faster than attendance at services in the UK.
Dr David Voas and a research team looked at data collected annually since 1991 from 10,500 households in Britain. Their study suggests that fewer people now have robust faith than passively “belong” to a religion.
It concluded that the catchphrase “believing without belonging” (originating from research by Dr Grace Davie of the University of Exeter) is wrong in its usual interpretation – which is that there is a reservoir of responsive belief for the churches to draw upon.
Institutional religion now has a “half-life” of one generation, the Manchester study suggests. One factor that might slow down the decline is that parents with religious convictions have more children than others, and two religious parents have roughly a 50-50 chance of passing on their beliefs.
Dr Voas declared: “How children are brought up has an enormous impact on whether they will identify with a religion.’
At the time the Church of England accused the study of being ‘confused’, citing the fact that 72 per cent of the population said they were Christian in the latest Census, and more than 77 per cent claimed a religious affiliation.
However critics suggest that the Census figures characterize beliefs precisely of the ‘soft’ kind highlighted by the Manchester survey. And according to Christian Research the figure will in any case fall to about 35 per cent in 2040.