The Church of England is in a state of “panic and fear”, of “deep anxiety”, and should stop being obsessed with numbers and face the reality of decline. So says one of its bishops, Guli Francis-Dehqani, of Chelmsford. It’s not hard to see why. Two years ago, as weekly worshippers re-emerged after Covid, church statisticians were desperate to see if they would return at least to their 2019 numbers, when about 854,000 people turned out to church. In 2023, that figure was just 685,000.
Put another way, 169,000 weekly worshippers have vanished over a four-year period. Fewer people now go to their parish church than attend a local mosque or a Catholic mass. It is all very well for bishops to urge the church to stop worrying over “targets” and “growth” – to leave the planning to God and stick to praying. But the decline in attendance is relentless. At the turn of the century, 1 million people went to church each year; in 1980, the number was 1.3 million. Since cathedral worship is rising, something is clearly going wrong with parish churches, even under the present evangelical archbishop, Justin Welby. It cannot simply be that ever fewer Britons are professing the Christian faith, as is the case across Europe.
