Gledhill: "Soul of Britain is dying"

Ruth Gledhill, the religion writer for the Times of London, says "it feels like the soul of Britain is dying." What's she talking about? A new report projecting further astonishing collapse in British Christianity. An excerpt from Gledhill's article:

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

According to Religious Trends, a comprehensive statistical analysis of religious practice in Britain, published by Christian Research, even Hindus will come close to outnumbering churchgoers within a generation. The forecast to 2050 shows churchgoing in Britain declining to 899,000 while the active Hindu population, now at nearly 400,000, will have more than doubled to 855,000. By 2050 there will be 2,660,000 active Muslims in Britain - nearly three times the number of Sunday churchgoers.

[snip]

By 2050 there will be just 3,600 churchgoing Methodists left in Britain, Christian Research predicts. Anglicans will be down to 87,800, Catholics to 101,700, Presbyterians to 4,400, Baptists to 123,000 and independents to 168,000.

[snip]

The report predicts that by 2030, when Dr Rowan Williams’s successor as Archbishop of Cantebury will be approaching retirement, there could be just 350,000 people attending just 10,000 Anglican churches, with an average of 35 worshippers each. The next Archbishop after that could find his position “totally nonviable”, the report says, with just 180,000 worshippers in 6,000 churches by 2040.

Gledhill offered this separate commentary on the Religious Trends findings:

The crisis facing Britain’s Christian churches is linked directly to the crisis of British identity now being addressed by the Government.

Oaths of allegiance and citizenship ceremonies are under consideration. But one thing lacking from so many conversations about “Britishness” is any reference to a link between religious and ethnic identity.

In contrast to the decline of Christianity in Britain, Islam and Hinduism are thriving here. One reason is that for Muslims and Hindus, wherever they come from, their religion is inextricably linked with their sense of identity.

Even though the last Prime Minister was devout and converted to Roman Catholicism soon after he left office, and the present one is a son of the manse, the Government remains strongly secular. This is an inevitable result of the liberalising trends of the last century, and one not necessarily to be lamented.

But the consequences, good and bad, need to be faced.

A viable culture without a viable cult? Good luck with that.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be flippant. I believe this is an utter catastrophe, for reasons that go far beyond caring about the fate of individual souls. The nation and the culture that gave the world so much Christian art, Christian philosophy, Christian prayer and above all, Christian witness in word and deed, is dying. People will still live in the British Isles, obviously, but they won't be the people of the Book. They will be some other people. And our children and their children's children will all be much poorer for it.