Church attendance in England dropping gradually but inexorably

January 14, 2016 • 2:00 pm

According to the British Humanists, who give the sources for their statistics on their new post, weekly attendance at the 16,000 Church of England’s parishes has dropped to less than 1,000,000 for the first time in at least sixty years. First, here’s a graph from the Church’s own document showing the heartening decline of attendance over the last 54 years, showing that people go to church more often on religious holidays than for regular Sunday service.  The “population” on the Y-axis is the total population within all dioceses. Only 1.8% of Brits went to an Anglican Sunday service each week in October of 2014.

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Here’s the decline over the last decade, visible even for Christmas attendance!:

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The sick part of all this is that “church attendance” in Anglican schools, which are supported by the British government, now exceeds voluntary worship, as kids going to Anglican schools are forced to go to services. (I assume that there’s an opt-out provision, but I’m not sure.) And if you go to the Church’s report linked to above, you’ll see that, faced with these declining stats, Anglicans are weighing lumping children’s school attendance together with “regular” churchgoers to hide the decline in noncompulsory attendance.

Graph showing the fall in weekly church attendance as compared to the rise
in pupils enrolled at Church of England schools

pupilcountgraph

I’m still appalled that children in a country as secular as England—far more secular than the U.S.—can go to government-funded faith schools. Can’t you Brits stop that? And because these faith schools exist, parents must pretend to be Anglicans to get their kids into good local schools. As the British Humanists note:

The figures [on church attendance] also call into question the appropriateness of a system in which so many schools are able to prioritise children on the basis of church attendance in their admission arrangements. 16% of all school places in England are subject to religious admission criteria, and both Church of England research andindependent polling have revealed that a huge number of parents are forced to attend church simply to get their children into their local school – a practice variously known as ‘pew-jumping’, ‘prayers for places’, and ‘on your knees or pay the fees’. Indeed, in 2014, various research published as part of the Church of England’s Church Growth Research Programme found that church growth is strongest in areas that have an oversubscribed, religiously selective school, and even suggested that proximity to an oversubscribed school was something that churches should seek to ‘engineer’.

BHA Campaigns Manager, Richy Thompson, commented, ‘Setting aside what these latest attendance figures say about the claim that England is still a “Christian country”, it’s incredibly alarming that the church has been able to increase its grip on the education system despite representing fewer and fewer people year on year. It’s well-known that a great many parents are forced to attend church each week in order to enjoy the simple right of having their children educated at a local school, and more than anything, these statistics demonstrate that this problem will only get worse.

As Britain becomes less and less religious, the rationale for having church schools becomes shakier and shakier. And of course there’s no good rationale to have the government supporting any such schools. The good news in all this is that the secularization of the UK, at least with respect to Christians, is increasing, probably irreversibly.

85 thoughts on “Church attendance in England dropping gradually but inexorably”

  1. … kids going to Anglican schools are forced to go to services. (I assume that there’s an opt-out provision, but I’m not sure.)

    The kids cannot opt out, though their parents can opt them out.

    By law, this compulsory worship applies to nearly *all* state schools, not just CofE ones, though in practice many of the non-“faith” schools ignore the law.

  2. Frankly if church associated schools in the US would drop attendance and religiosity to UK levels I’d take that as a good deal.

    I’m not sure what “forced to go to services” really means in this context. When I was a kid (60’s-70’s) there was a ten minute assembly most mornings with some vaguely religious content and a couple of annual treks to the local church. I and all the people that I knew simply went to the local state schools, some of which happened to be associated with a specific church (the curriculum is not determined by the church). Back then somewhere between 2.7 and 3.5% of the population were church going, the subsequent drop suggests that we didn’t suffer too much.

  3. I don’t find any joy in this. What some think as progress is essentially a reflection of collapsing indigenous European populations.

    And those Europeans are being replaced by populations far more adamantly opposed to science and liberalism than the European populations.

    1. Data, or it didn’t happen.

      Say, Sweden has ~ 10 % immigrants and of them ~ 10 % are refugees. I don’t see any “collapsing indigenous populations”, except our oldest swedish same population that collapsed long since.

      1. The most troubling aspect of the creeping Islamization of Europe isn’t in the sheer number of Muslims who have already entered Europe (though the numbers are certainly disconcerting, and growing), but lies in what large parts of these Muslim populations stand for…

        https://twitter.com/michaelshermer/status/675708499171500032

        As df rightly points out, “these populations far more adamantly opposed to science and liberalism than the European populations.”

      1. Perhaps initially, but there are many indicators that attitudes of the majority of immigrant populations move closer to the host countries’, especially in subsequent generations.

        /@

        2. PS Theo van Gogh was murdered by a second-generation Moroccan immigrant. And IIRC the Charlie Hebdo attackers were second generation immigrants as well.

          2. Well, we haven’t seen any Anglicans waging jihad against those who dared insult Jesus for quite a while, have we?

            It looks like you have less faith in Muslims after all…

        3. When we were discussing whether the USA should accept Syrian refugees, some said that Muslim terrorism in the West is domestic and done mainly by 2nd generation immigrants, so there is nothing wrong with accepting new refugees/immigrants now; if problems appear, it will be in a generation. To me, this is curious argumentation because, if we were discussing any other problem, e.g. deforestation, nobody would recommend a policy that has already proven harmful with the argument that it will produce more unwanted effects only in 20 years.

  4. The sick part of all this is that “church attendance” in Anglican schools, which are supported by the British government

    Well if those pesky kids won’t take their state-sanctioned-O-so-convenient opiate, then you’ve got to find some other way of getting them to lay down in the mud and accept the boot in the face.

  5. I’m still appalled that children in a country as secular as England—far more secular than the U.S.—can go to government-funded faith schools. Can’t you Brits stop that?

    I have a theory — which is mine — that it is precisely because we are a rather secular country, and thus that “Christianity” is more about historical and cultural affinity than about actual belief, that not enough people care enough to get it changed.

    1. I would concur. CofE is about as wooly sheep christian as it is possible to get, very inoffensive folks. My loss of tolerance for religion came from living in the US, not from my childhood in the UK. I think the phrase “cultural christian” – atheist christian just sounds wrong but this is effectively analogous to my perception of PCC(E)’s relationship to judaism – usefully sums up where I see myself.

      1. …inoffensive folks the parishioners may be, but the hierarchs are busy firing the Episcopal Church of America for [blanch] gay priests/bishops/marriage…

    2. It’s the politicians who keep pushing the religious schools on a largely unwilling/uninterested populace

      1. However, I also have secular friends, emigrants to UK and France, who deliberately send their children to Catholic schools because (they say) the quality of education is better there. The family in UK actually knows a good public school nearby, but because of their particular street address, they are obliged (?!) to send their kids to another school with poor reputation. So they use the fact that one of them is from a traditionally Catholic community and enroll the children in a Catholic school. Moreover, to keep their cover, they occasionally go to church, though they hate it.

  6. “The good news in all this is that the secularization of the UK, at least with respect to Christians, is increasing, probably irreversibly.”

    A similar situation can be observed in France, however there’s a disturbing concurrent trend, which spoils the picture of Europe’s secularization. As Europe becomes more and more de-Christianized it’s becoming increasingly Islamified. There’s an idea being currently contemplated in France to ‘Turn France’s empty churches into mosques.’

    http://www.thelocal.fr/20150615/empty-french-churches-should-be-turned-into-mosques

    Some data on Muslim population in Europe can be found here:

    https://twitter.com/tgradous/status/682202797828263938

    1. Gradous’s chart is an exercise in “lying with statistics”, he should compare German muslims with total German populations et cetera.

      So ~ 5 % of the european population?

      1. No lying with statistics here. These are official data from Pew Research Center.

        The tweet further points out that the numbers of Muslims in France and Germany are already higher than the entire populations of Norway and Sweden.

          5. BTW, as I’ve now been able to establish the data are from 2010, so they don’t include all the Muslims who entered Europe during the most recent migration crisis.

          1. I don’t think that these statistics on Europe’s Muslim populations are being misrepresented in any way here. Though the numbers will certainly need updating soon, due to dynamically evolving situation in the region.

          2. The statistics are being misrepresented by adding things like, “More Muslims in Germany than there’s Norwegians in Norway”, which is just Trump like

            There are more moons in the night sky, than dogs in my house. That doesn’t mean there are too many moons, it means there aren’t any dogs. Likewise the population of Norway (5.084m), isn’t very large in comparison to Germany (80.62m).

            A true representation would be to say that Germany has more Muslims than any other European country, (excluding Turkey), yet the total number is less than 6% of its population (according to 2010 data)

          3. The juxtaposition of the Muslim population of Germany with the total population of Norway was actually quite informative, and it wasn’t misrepresenting anything.

            It’s true that the population of Germany is big at the moment (though it’s expected to drop to 66m by 2060!), and it’s precisely for this reason the person above provided the additional comparison with Norway and Sweden, as by looking at the percentage figure alone one may not appreciate fully the actual number of Muslims who migrated there.

          4. “actually quite informative”

            No, not really. Well, I hadn’t realised that Norway’s population was quite so small compared to German’s, but I doubt that that was your point.

            /@

            >

          5. As you’ve seen the Muslim population of Germany is already larger than the entire population of Norway.

            And when you combine the Muslim populations of Germany and France you already match the population of Sweden.

      2. A while ago I read that some BBC survey had found that 95% of Muslims in Britain feel some loyalty to the country, and that 93% think that they should obey our laws.

        Turning that around, and using that figure of 2.96m, that means that there are almost 150,000 Muslims in Britain who feel NO loyalty to the country which offered them (or their parents or grandparents) a home, and more than 200,000 (probably a big overlap with the first group) who don’t think they have to obey our laws.

        It’s easy to see where the jihadists come from.

      3. I don’t think 5% is very reassuring, keeping in mind that it advanced very fast from <1% and nobody knows exactly how and why. Even at 5%, this presence caused phenomena most Europeans do not like.
        With 5% Muslims, Denmark had the 2006 cartoon crisis and now tries to dissuade refugees from settling there. France has about 10% Muslims and had two major terror acts in the last year.
        Brittain may have even less than 5% and it had the subway and bus bombings and Rotherham. The influence of devout fundamentalist Muslims on a host population of secular post-Christian Europeans is quite disproportional to their numbers, absolute and relative.

          2. I’d assume the fertility rates of both indigenous Europeans and Muslims to be basic input information in a forecast like this.

          4. By restricting education of the female half of the species, they’re trying to combat that. Which of course also will be an ultimate cause of economic failure (compared to groups who don’t throw away half their resources).

          1. In the USA, many Muslim immigrants even at a very low numbers have succeeded in creating parallel societies with their own schools. See how they force headscarves on female family members (the different dress code is very indicative and very important). The “religious freedom” so easily gets perverted into the freedom of a fundamentalist dad to force an unwilling daughter to cover herself.
            I think that a factor standing in the way of assimilation of Muslim immigrants in the USA is that the majority of Americans seem to dislike atheists as much as they dislike Muslims, so an atheist of Muslim origin will gain nothing if he outs himself. In Europe, the highway of Muslim integration is secularism.
            So I think that Americans must be very cautious with Muslim immigration, because, contrary to what they think, they may be even less prepared to endure it than Europeans.

          2. (the different dress code is very indicative and very important

            Well, it’s important only because it is indicative. I’m trying to think how that could be turned into a way to describe intentions and behaviours without being flat-out discriminatory, but I’m failing. It would take a legal mind to square that circle, which I’m glad I don’t possess.

            the majority of Americans seem to dislike atheists as much as they dislike Muslims,

            Only knowing a handful of Americans (as opposed to working with them), I’ll have to leave the truth of that claim to someone else to assess. But again it seems very peculiar. After all, unless I’m much mistaken, the god of Muslims is the god of Jews and the god of Christians, the only serious dispute amongst them being over who was the last (or most-recent) prophet. Sorry, I left out the Mormons too ; same religion, when viewed from the outside.
            Pass a quarter pound of tinned psychologist, but possibly by pushing on that point – that Xtians, Muslims and Jews (and Mormons) all worship the same god, while others don’t worship that god – one could actually enhance the seepage path from “Islam” into those other religions (which already have soak-aways into secularism well established).
            That begs a question which really is of academic interest only – which religion is more likely to convert into which? I know that Judaisim <> Christianity has been known and moaned about for a long time ; probably the Moors in Al-andalus (Spain) had some comments on Judaisim <> Islam. But the Marketing Division at Salt Lake City will probably take tricks from Scientology on keeping conversions out of their sept quiet.

  7. parents must pretend to be Anglicans to get their kids into good local schools.

    Never having spent a moment of my life (thinks … no, not one moment) discussing schooling policy with anyone outside my own family, I’m not in the best of positions to comment on this matter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the pervasive cynicism that this generates is ultimately corrosive to the indoctrination in the faith.
    There are enough comments that I’ve seen in various autobiographies of people who have had to spend their childhoods sitting through meaningless (to them) religious services all for the sake of “it’s school rules” (sorry, “roolz” for here) ; I’ve never heard of anyone who has sat through this shit and actually had their religious faith strengthened.

      1. I don’t, for one second, think that people of other lifestyles might think differently.
        The issue is not so much what people think, as whether or not those people think at all. The issue is whether people have comfort about thinking differently to the rest of their society.
        I found it easy – disagreeing with my parents was easy – but for others disagreeing with the authority figure is bad news.
        In general, the Right Wing think that they have The Answer, and other-think is a problem to be suppressed. And the Left Wing search for an answer, and OtherThink is to be encouraged.
        Religion is a conformist, Right Wing, way of thinking. All religions. (Except Pastafarianism – we welcome different-believers to sup at the Beer volcano, chill out, and enjoy their non-existent afterlife.)

    2. My school (not a state school) had compulsory (*) church attendance where we all had to go to a nearby church several mornings a week, before lessons began. I think that by age about fourteen I was sitting there thinking “This is all a lot of nonsense” – so it certainly did not strengthen my faith!

      (*) But I think it became optional by the six form, after which I no longer went.

      1. Ah .. the power of compulsion. Not.
        my contributions (by sweat and effort) to the nature reserves around Oundle School were after Dawkins’ time ; but the seeds we planted (and rides we cut, and butterflies we encouraged, and bluebell carpets that came incidentally) will play back in future Oundle graduates. (And other graduates, from Glapthorn, Southwick (pity them the fleas) and all the villages of the area.
        Working – managing – nature reserves, was an education to my teenage braincell.

    3. Absolutely agree with you there, Aidan.

      I had to take Religious Instruction at school (an English state ‘grammar school’). Also, I seem to recall, after we moved to NZ.

      IIRC, the teachers were as bored as we were. Since the subject was not examined on, there was no need to learn anything. It did more to confirm to me the Bible was nonsense than anything else. (An opinion I’d already formed from being sent to Sunday School for a brief period before I persuaded my parents out of it. Best way to *really* persuade a kid religion is crap – make them spend a couple of hours of their precious weekend time listening to silly stories about people with stupid names).

      cr

      1. Oh our RE teacher was reasonably keen – aparrently a lay NMethodist preacher of some sort himself, but he was reasonably even handed since the course we took was essentially one of comparative religion. In-school exams though, so the whole subject was dropped as (literally) a waste of time once we started O-levels. Which the atheists (me, with occasional appearences from others), Hindus (2 or 3), Muslims (another 2 or 3), JWs (3) would turn into a battleground. It was relatively fun, but I don’t think it enhanced one pupil’s level of belief by one iota.

  8. The system has (in my area at least) changed in the last 2 years. This meant that the C of E school my eldest started 16 months ago could only use church attendance as a means of selection in the event that they had spaces left after allocating spaces on other criteria. In practice this new system meant that church attendance had zero bearing on entrance to schools in my town. Perhaps this is a trend which will continue elsewhere and it is a very different scenario to how it was (here at least) just 3 years ago.
    More disappointingly, the school my son goes to (he is 6) is very heavy on Christian teaching. I am fairly confident that this style of attempted indoctrination is partly responsible for the loss of religion in the UK through natural rebellion against authority and have little doubt that my son will end up making an informed decision on such matters in the fullness of time. He seems intelligent enough that he is likely to be an atheist.

    2. That’s because muslim parents aren’t very imaginative. 😛 Almost everyone is named Mohammed.

      1. It might also have something to do with the fact that the median age of European Christians is 42 (yep, Europe is getting old), whereas the that of Muslims is 32.

  10. I went to an Episcopal School (5-8) and can say that daily worship meant daily nap. It was not abuse, so much as a waste of time except for trying to spy up the girls skirts and the girls laughing at the sleep drool wrapped on my face.

  11. Here is a nice article from the New Humanist interviewing Eric Kaufmann, a demographer who has spent time looking at population changes in Israel:

    https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/2267/battle-of-the-babies

    Secularism correlates to low fertility, increasing religiosity to higher fertility. Seculars in developed countries not only have below-replacement fertility but are lower than more religious groups that share below-replacement fertility. E.g. demographically it is shrinking in absolute and relative terms.

    If you considered a disease process that rendered females of the species incapable of producing offspring at replacement fertility, if 10% were immune, but 90% were infected, you might think the disease was highly successful. In fact, over time, the immunity to the disease will increase in relative and absolute numbers. (And rationally, would you chose to expose your children to a disease that reduced their evolutionary fitness?)

    Now it is unclear how much of religiosity is driven by genetics, but to the extent that it is genetic, I would expect in a world of legal contraception, abortion, and acceptance of LGBT lifestyles, the relative share of the “religiosity genes” to increase in relative and absolute terms, once the “secular epidemic” peaks, and the fastest for the most extreme forms of religiosity.

    (Which is exactly what is happening in the demographics of Israel, will begin to turn around in Western Europe, and take off once America becomes “peak secular”. But it won’t be CofE, it will be mostly fundamentalists and ultra-fundamentalists of different stripes.)

    This is why I think evolution is true.

    The real question for secular countries, given the likely future of secularism, is which form of religious fundamentalism should predominate? Would you rather have the Crescent or the Cross?

    1. I strongly disagree that there are genetic differences responsible for the dynamics of beliefs and secularism in societies. Such a “theory” cannot explain how hundreds of millions became secular in the first place.
      Moreover, Muslim immigrants to the West typically remain devout but start family planning and have few children per family, like the natives. The proportion of Muslims in the West grows because of continuous Muslim immigration rather than to retained high birth rate of Muslims already there.
      Nevertheless, I agree that it is very likely for Europe to fall prey to Islam and suffer new Dark Ages, as happened with Christianity in late Antiquity.

      1. I didn’t say religiosity was driven by genetics, I said to the extent that it was driven by genetics.

        Of course, to say it has no genetic cause I think locks you into group selection on the basis of culture (a view which many here oppose) and ultimately a hylomorphic ontology, and something more like Thomism than modern “naturalism” (a view which many here oppose). But notwithstanding, there is some evidence that genes may play a factor, as well as evidence that religiosity may influence gene expression (inhibiting sensation seeking and disinhibition genes).

        As far as making the “little people” Christian again (not my choice of words), I think it is happening already, the problem is it is ultrafundamentalist Christians that are doubling their populations every 20 years(with retention rates in the high 90’s), not CofE types, e.g. the most intolerant, anti-science strata in the population that is growing. The question is whether you can have an open-minded, pro-science intellect melded with what amounts to a pro-group survival ethos (relative to other groups). Even if we concede overpopulation is a planetary problem, population is also the basis of political power, and a unilateral disarmament by the best and brightest is unlikely to find reciprocation.

        There is much discussion of population in Africa, but if you are an African leader, if you overpopulate your nation, you can always send your surplus population to Europe and America, and get cash remittances back, or shake down Western governments (like Gadaffi did) to prevent migrant flows.

        Perhaps all good things must come to end, but certainly there are some obvious differences between Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists in their political manifestation. Better to be gay in Mississippi than gay in Saudi Arabia.

      2. I live in Spain and cant agree with you. Muslims have a much higher child rate than Spaniards and they are growing both by sons and by continuous immigration. And they have economic difficulties. When they have less problems they will have even more childs. They remain faithful, they believe a Muslim woman cant reach heaven but married, they earn “points” to go to paradise if their child are educated and follow their religion… As KD stats, the doubt is if fanatics like OPUS DEI, Heralds of the Gospel, Kikos or Legionarios will get from their families more sons than Muslims will get.

        1. I am sorry to hear this, Francisco. When Zapatero came to power and rewarded Islamist terrorists with increased Muslim immigration quota, I wanted to cry! For a country I’ve never seen.

          1. As a card carrying member of the Humanitarian-Industrial-Complex, Mayamarkov, I find your Islamophobia appalling. Who says little girls aren’t fit for marriage by nine years old?

          2. Thank you for the nice sarcasm! These days, in the discussions how the politically correct Western elites threw under the bus the white Christian-heritage women and girls, we largely forgot that they threw under the bus also the non-white, Muslim women and girls. “Your problems are best solved within the community,” as the late Hitchens wrote.

        1. Call it naive if you like, but I see Saudi Arabia as an excellent model of the Dark Ages, and I also see the world slowly evolving into becoming more and more like Saudi Arabia.

    2. Besides, let’s say for the sake of the discussion that we atheists here accept the Little People argument and think it would be very good if the plebs of our countries became devoutely Christian again, as in the ages of heretics’ and witches’ stakes. Now, how can people be turned into devout Christians, when (by all testimonials) in the present-day situation, every indoctrination attempt has exactly the opposite effect?

      1. Pure speculation, but I would not be surprised if there is something like a predator/prey cycle with religiosity. Religiosity (at least of the be-fruitful-and-multiply variety) is essential to long-term replacement fertility for your cultural group.

        At the same time, traditional religious sexual morality is very difficult for many individuals to follow faithfully. I suspect belief in a God staring over your shoulder intent on casting you into hell may help preserve the moral prescriptions.

        So you have religion-driven fertility booms, followed by periods of skepticism and radical individualism, causing population collapse in the main secularizing population, followed by a new cycle of faith-driven fertility. In which case, I suspect we are at or near the zenith of peak Secular.

        But pure speculation.

  12. With these numbers out, can accomodationists please stop using the UK as an example of an “enlightened” Christian country where science and faith peacefully coexist?

  13. “Can’t you Brits stop that?”

    This is why apathy isn’t quite as good as anti-theism.

    2. Not all of us are apathetic about this. Both the British Humanist Association (BHA; Jerry’s “British Humanists”) and the National Secular Society (NSS) are campaigning against faith schools.

      /@

      1. I agree, but it was after the last census that the RDF commissioned an independent poll carried out by Ipsos-Mori as to the reasons why those who had declared themselves to be Christian did so, that the brown stuff hit the spinning object with a vengeance. The reaction in the Government, many of whom are very religious, and the C of E could only be described as panic, with Cameron et al and leading the charge to develop what could only be described as an explosion in the encouragement of faith schools funded by and large by tax payers money:

        https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2921/Religious-and-Social-Attitudes-of-UK-Christians-in-2011.aspx

        Of course there is also a lot of money coming from religious sources as well; however, there is, at long last, the stirrings of doubt concerning the impact of ‘alien’ philosophies on our children.

  14. I come from a London working class background, from a large family holding no real belief, who think it proper by default to use the church for christenings, weddings and funerals as the right thing. It’s ritual and habit only. Meanwhile they are agnostics and sceptics, and superstitious too.

  15. The whole sorry business is bound up with history and ownership.

    Most “long standing” schools were started (and owned) by the church (CofE and RC) – accounting for about 30% of all schools, 100% in many rural areas.

    Although the running costs are met – in the main – by the taxpayer, the actual land and buildings are owned by the church. I guess the Govt. – even if they had the will – would balk at the cost and legal ramifications of upsetting the status quo.

    Meanwhile, the “pew jumpers” continue with their hypocrisy by ignoring the religious bits after they’ve got little Tarquin into a “good school”.

    I attended a CofE primary (it was the only school available) and my Dad used to “undoctrinate” me on a regular basis, so all hope is not lost.

    1. I see nothing Hypocritical about attending church to gain access to a service that your taxes have paid for. The vice here is in not allowing all taxpayers equal access to a taxpayer funded service.

      CofE schools are usually popular because the system is rigged to keep all the unpleasant and disruptive little oiks out. No one gives a crap about the religious part of the schooling as it is fairly minor and acts like a vaccination against faith of all kinds.

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