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10 September 2010

Christian Research study finds church attendance “no longer in decline”

It's been a widely-held belief for a number of years in the UK that church attendance is descending so rapidly that churchgoers will make up a tiny minority of the population in the not-so-distant future. Could the doomsayers have been wrong?

This week, Christian Research, who publish the widely-respected Religious Trends survey, announced that church attendance in the UK is no longer in decline. This is according to their most recent findings in updating the Religious Trends survey and is a change from the previous findings which went up to 2005 and showed numbers of church attendance decreasing.

The survey found that Church of England attendance has held steady for the past decade (not including Fresh Expressions), the Catholic Church has held steady for the past five years, and Baptist Union attendance has actually been growing.

Benita Hewitt, Director of Christian Research, said, "This news should help to reposition church within the minds of Christians, churches and the rest of society - it's no longer a dying institution but a living movement."

To read more about the findings visit the Church Mouse Blog.

Latest comments :
(The views below are the authors', and not necessarily those of the Evangelical Alliance.)

Written by Kim Walker. EA Information and Research Officer on 13 September 2010 at 14.35
Figures for Pentecostal churches and more specifically black churches are avaialble in Religious Trends 7 2007/8. Until the more detailed statistics mentioned above are released byChristian research the 2007/8 figures are the most up to date figures that I am aware of. Please email me at info@eauk.org and I can give you more detailed information.
Written by Stuart Gregory on 10 September 2010 at 19.50
Hi

Have you got figures for the pentecostls, black churchess and the charismatics?

Stuart
Written by Benita Hewitt on 10 September 2010 at 19.20
Christian Research is in the process of contacting the many hundreds of denominations/'streams' (including Vineyard, New Frontiers etc.) to collect attendance statistics. We do this regularly to update our Religious Trends. As we collect the data we will be updating our news and statistics.

It was in response to an article by the National Secular Society (citing our previous statistics on church decline) that we felt the need to release news in advance of getting the comprehensive picture. The data we have to date represents the bulk of churchgoers in this country, and, together with other data showing increases in various factors related to church life, Christian Research felt confident in declaring the end of church decline.

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