The Church in England and Wales is changing shape - not declining
 

Is this narrative of decline actually true? Bible Society has found it isn't, for when we ask wider questions, we begin to see things rather differently, explains Mark Woods 

As usual I enjoyed the latest edition of Baptists Together magazine, which had some inspiring stories in it.

I did feel, however, that there was an underlying tone of gloom in the magazine, and a  dogged determination to look on the bright side that was not entirely convincing. Celebrating flourishing oases of growth might provide a temporary boost to morale, but when the wider narrative is one of increasing spiritual desertification, over the longer term this is the one that prevails. Not only Baptists are declining, but the Church is declining; the Census shows us that the country is steadily becoming less Christian; step by step, church closure by church closure, we are losing the spiritual battle, and all we can do is try to be faithful and trust that the climate will one day change again, and perhaps we might even live to see it.

This isn’t an attractive proposition, particularly given the sheer hard work it takes to keep the average church show on the road – particularly, as the recent Theos report indicates, during this cost-of-living crisis.  But is this narrative of decline actually true?

Bible Society has found that it isn’t.

First, the numbers. There are two ways of calculating church attendance. One is by counting people; the other is by asking them.

Back in 2018 Bible Society carried out a massive piece of research – using what we think is the largest ever sample size for this kind of poll – into the attitudes of people in England and Wales toward Christianity and the Bible, along with other questions around their behaviours and spiritual practices. We’ve repeated that survey at intervals since.

One of the questions was, ‘How often do you go to church?’ We found that around seven per cent of the population attend weekly, with one in ten attending at least monthly.

When we asked the same question last year, the answers were the same. In other words, while church attendance has (obviously) declined as a proportion of the population over the last few decades, it is not still declining.

How do we square that with the fall in membership and attendance figures to which Lynn Green alludes in her leading article, and which could be echoed by the leader of any of the historic denominations? ‘It’s pretty bleak,’ she says. Well, yes. But when we ask wider questions, we begin to see things rather differently.

It’s these historic denominations – the CofE, Methodists, URC etc – which are by and large declining. They are also the ones that are very good at collecting statistics – ie counting people. But because they’re declining, they are skewing the whole picture, which is far less gloomy.

There are parts of the Church that are growing, but they tend to be its newer expressions and – particularly – churches in minority ethnic communities, neither of which find their way into ‘official’ figures. For instance, our research shows that the number of Chinese Christians in England and Wales has increased by 25,000 in just the last two years; and a significant Durham University study, New Churches in the North East, paints a picture of dynamism and growth in congregations outside the historic denominations, with major input from BME communities.

In terms of overall numbers, the Church in England and Wales is not declining. But it is changing shape, and increasingly less white. However, when historic denominations extrapolate a narrative of inevitable decline from their own difficulties, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – who wants to take a cruise on a sinking ship? A more fruitful approach would be to learn from the (many) expressions of the Church where there’s growth, and seek humble partnerships with the newer kids on the block.

Second, that Census. Church attendance is one thing, but what about the underlying cultural currents, which seem to be set against Christian faith? Bible Society reflected on the Census here. For the first time, fewer than half the population claimed to be Christian, and this provoked a fair amount of doom and gloom.

But again, that’s very far from the whole story. For one thing, declining to identify as Christian is not the same as identifying as atheist, or as hostile to Christianity. Among other things it might mean that people are more aware of what being a Christian is and are no longer thoughtlessly ticking the 'Christian' box by default. As our head of research, Dr Rhiannon McAleer, remarks, ‘It may be that people are less willing to wear a label that doesn’t accurately describe them. It’s not necessarily that they have lost a genuine and heart-felt faith.

'There’s also far more permission for people to admit that they don’t identify as Christians; they don’t have to claim a faith they don’t actively hold in order to win social approval.’

As Baptists whose whole way of being church is based on actively opting in to faith, we should be delighted about this.

But also, to return to our huge survey: we found that as well as the 13 per cent who are committed to Christianity to some degree, just under a quarter of respondents belonged to a group that was curious about faith and open to finding out more about Christianity and the Bible. This is not by any means a negligible proportion of the population – and in fact, it rather neatly reflects the proportion of ‘good soil’ into which the sower sowed his seed in Jesus’ parable (Matthew 13.1–9). And the proportion of those actively hostile to faith is clustered towards the far end of a very broad spectrum; most people are more indifferent to faith than dismissive of it.

Now, admittedly this is all big-picture stuff, which may not seem immediately relevant to the small church with a large and leaky building in the wrong place that can’t afford ministry, or whose minister is struggling under the load of too many problems. The problems faced by the Baptist denomination and its churches – and others – are real. But there are grounds not only for theological hope, but for real-world confidence.

The Bible is relevant; the gospel is true; church can be attractive and life-giving; growth is not just possible, it is happening.

More about Bible Society’s research can be found on our lumino.bible pages.


Image | Bible Society's Lumino Project
 

Mark Woods is a Baptist minister and head of communications at Bible Society

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