Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 September 2006 08:40:41
Even the briefest of glances around the religious (& some of the secular) press this week would make you aware that Dr. Peter Brierley & his staff at Christian Research have published the results of the 2005 English Church Census this week, which is apparently sub-titled "Pulling Out of the Nosedive".
The Church Times helpfully has a table showing the main findings, which are also commented on in The Baptist Times , Methodist Recorder and The Tablet (article only available on-line to subscribers). The religious correspondent from the Telegraph also chips into the debate with this contribution .
However, if you can't be bothered to trawl through the main finding is the rate at which people are leaving the church appears to be slowing (0.5 million from 1998 - 2005 compared to 1 million between 1988 - 1997). This information is based upon attendance on 8th May 2005, when roughly 50% of the churches in the country sent in their attendance figures to help with the research. Largest losses amongst Catholic congregations, largest gains amongst Pentecostals.
Opinion seems to be split on whether the slow down is something to celebrate or not, basically between those who are relieved the flow out of churches appears to be stopping and those saying that's still 0.5 million people who have left the church. I am sure that these differences of opinion will also be played out Sociologically in yet another spate of articles in the secularisation debate (I can almost hear Steve Bruce at the word processor as I write).
I am going to give my personal analysis here. (If you're not interested in the secularisation debate you may wish to stop reading at this point).
1. These "headline figures" are all well and good but on their own do not give us an idea of the true picture. We don't know what proportion of that 0.5 million have left the church in a coffin & what percentage have walked out. I believe participants should have also been asked for approximate figures on how many of their members have died over the last 8 years.
2. The statistics do not allow for the fact that well over 0.5 million people may have left the church, but a certain proportion may also have joined (remember that this period does include both the "Alpha Course generation" and "The Churchless Faith generation").
3. The growth in pentecostals has been largely attributed to growth amongst the Afro-Carribean community. Therefore, it may be worth looking at the data in relation to immigration statistics to see if part of the growth has come from those coming in to the UK from abroad.
4. The figures do not enable us to take into account the growing number of church hoppers who move from one denomination to another. It may be that x% of people have not actually left the church when they have left a denomination, rather they have moved into another denomination. In this situation certain denominations may feel they are doing ok at retaining members but what they are actually being good at is attracting members who have become disillusioned with other denominations.
5. This figure is just a snapshot and as with all quantitative data is only truly useful if used with other sources.
6. Increasingly I think we will also need to include the figures for para-church organisations which do not regard themselves as church in the traditional sense.
Also we don't know if there has been a change in the age profile atall. If the figures are indicating that there are a higher percentage of or even a fairly stable amount of young adults and middle aged people in the church Steve Bruce's much quoted comment regarding the death of most main-line denominations by 2030 would appear to be on its way to being disproven. If however the percentage of people aged from 30 - 60 is significantly lower than the figures for those aged 20 -50 eight years ago we still have a very major problem, which the figures may have disguised.
My personal opinion on the basis of the data available is that (allowing for the death of an aging church) these figures are quite encouraging, and mean that rumours of the death of the church in England have been exaggerated. However, there is still a flow of individuals from the churches which needs to be addressed. A certain amount of secularisation is still occuring at a level which is quite scary if one looks at these figures in terms of roughly 1 in every 110 people in the country has left church over the last 8 years. Yes this far better than the 1 in 55 of the English population for the 9 years previously but then there were less people left sitting in the pews to leave anyway.