the future's bright, the future's evangelical

Date: 02 April 2012 23:10:37

Forty blogs of Lent

36

Hot and bothered

The rise of evangelicalism is shaking up the established church

Thewords above were the title of an article in The Economist last month. According to them the proportion of people attending evangelicals churches within the Church of England is increasing. It gives figures, and because I like to have fun with maths there will be some sums later in the blog. I'll indent them so that those who find maths boring can scroll past. I am assuming their figures are correct. Here's what they say:

in Britain 40% of Anglicans attend evangelical parishes these days, (they don't say it is the 2010 figures) up from 26% in 1989.

the number of regular worshippers in the Church of England will have fallen to 680,000 by 2020, down from about 800,000 now and just under 1m a decade ago.

Hmm ... the percentage from of evangelicals 22 years ago but the congregation size from 10 years ago. Not good for making comparisons. So assuming the same level of declime gives us an estimation of 1.25 million attendees in 1989.

Here are the sums:

26% of 1,250,000 is 325,000

40% of 800,000 is 320,000

Because the first figure is an estimation the two figures are too close to be significant.

At this rate Evangelicals will be in the majority in the CofE by 2025 simply by maintaining their numbers.