The Church of England is presenting its preliminary attendance figures for 2023, announced on Monday, as a growth story nevertheless it omits to say the 160,000 worshippers it has lost since 2019.
“Weekly Church attendance up five per cent in third 12 months of consecutive growth,” the official press release proclaims in its headline.
The statement says: “Overall, all-age weekly attendance at Church of England churches rose to 685,000 last 12 months, from 654,000 in 2022, a rise of 4.7 per cent. The number of kids attending weekly increased from 87,000 in 2022 to 92,000 (up 5.7 per cent).
“The full Statistics for Mission report is on account of be published within the autumn as usual but these preliminary figures, published for the primary time, aim to supply a snapshot of the general picture.”
The all-age average weekly attendance figure across the C of E’s 11,000 churches includes the Sunday attendance and likewise people turning as much as mid-week church services corresponding to Holy Communions and events for kids corresponding to Messy Church.
The statement admits that “total attendance continues to be below 2019 levels, the last 12 months before the Covid-19 lockdowns”, but claims “the evaluation suggests in-person attendance is drawing closer to the pre-pandemic trend”.
The harsh reality is that the C of E has lost 160,000 attendees across a median week including Sundays since 2019 when 845,000 people attended its churches. Since 2003, the all-age average weekly attendance has declined from 1,126,000. If we return further in time, the image is even worse – around 40 per cent of the population were attending in 1984.
With the population of England now around 67 million, 685,000 worshippers in 2023 means barely 1 per cent of the people living within the nation are turning as much as C of E churches.
The C of E is an establishment with enormous benefits over other Christian denominations and non secular groups within the UK. It is the Church by law established in England with 26 of its bishops entitled to sit down within the House of Lords. Its Church Commissioners manage an endowment fund value £10.1 billion. It has 16,000 buildings across England and 4,630 schools teaching about 1 million children.
Commenting on the annual increase because the pandemic within the preliminary attendance figures for 2023, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said: “This could be very welcome news and I hope it encourages churches across the country.”
“I’m especially heartened to listen to that more children are coming along to church and I’m grateful to everyone involved in that ministry,” he added.
But again the cruel reality is that the variety of young people attending C of E churches in a median week has plummeted by greater than half since 2003. At that point, 218,000 under 16 12 months olds attended C of E churches in a median week, compared with 92,000 in 2023. In 2019, there have been 120,000 children attending C of E churches in a median week.
Also commenting on the 2023 figures, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said: “This is excellent news. For the primary time in an extended time we’ve seen noticeable growth.
“Of course we do not yet know whether this growth is a trend but I take it as an ideal encouragement that our deal with reaching more individuals with the excellent news of Jesus, establishing latest Christian communities, wherever they’re, revitalising our parishes, and in search of to develop into a younger and more diverse church, making everyone feel welcome, is starting to make a difference.”
Arguably, the attempt by the C of E’s higher-ups to spin the story of denominational melt-down as a vindication of the Archbishops’ growth strategy is even sadder than the figures themselves. Did they seriously think that journalists would fail to see the 160,000 disappearing worshippers since 2019 and the 441,000 since 2003?
The C of E now faces an uphill task in justifying its 26 bishops within the second chamber of the UK legislature. Labour back in 2022 announced that its election manifesto would come with a commitment to reform the House of Lords.
The bishops within the Lords may possibly have shown themselves to be reliably left-wing particularly in opposing the Conservative government’s plan to fly illegal migrants to Rwanda but that doesn’t mean that they may escape a cull within the likely event that Labour wins the 2024 General Election.
If a Labour government’s reform of the House of Lords involved allocating a proportion of places within the second chamber to representatives of non secular groups with those seats awarded based on the variety of energetic members, the C of E could well lose out to the Muslim Council of Great Britain, the Roman Catholic Church within the UK, and the Elim Pentecostal movement.
No amount of episcopal spinning can disguise the exceptional growth of Islam within the UK. A statistical query to the Church House, Westminster, press office in 2050, potentially yielding a news story, would surely be: what number of former C of E buildings have been converted into mosques over the past 25 years?
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
