Thoughts on Trends in Church Attendance

by Peter Brierley.

The recent debate over whether church attendance has reached a plateau, hosted at the Church Mouse blogThe Guardian and here at BRIN, has been of great interest. As a religious statistician and consultant, and editor of the seven editions of Religious Trends, I’m taking the opportunity to offer additional interpretation of the data.

It is not clear that “Catholic mass attendance has flattened out at 920,000”, as the officially published Roman Catholic mass attendance figures from 2000 to 2007 show a drop of over 8%, down from 1,000,820 in 2000 to 915,556 in 2007. However, it has risen to 918,000 in 2008.

The Church of England official figures for adult Average Weekly Attendance (AWA) fall by 2%, from 941,000 in 2002 to 919,000 in 2008, and their children’s figures drop from 229,000 to 225,000, also a drop of 2%. The Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) adult figures fall from 838,000 in 2002 to 812,000 in 2008, a drop of 3%, and from 167,000 to 148,000 for children (a decline of 11% in 6 years). The Usual Sunday Attendance figures – which would be comparable to Roman Catholic and Baptist measurements – go from 768,000 in 2002 to 718,000 in 2008 for adults (a drop of 7%), and from 151,000 to 127,000 in 2008 for children (a drop of 16%).

What appears to be happening is that Sunday attendance is dropping, especially for children and young people, but that midweek attendance is increasing: up from 103,000 in 2002 for adults to 107,000 in 2008, and for young people (up from 62,000 in 2002 to 77,000 in 2008).

By putting midweek and Sunday attendance together, the drop in Sunday attendance is obscured. The “flattening out” therefore is a mix of Sunday decline and midweek increase.

The question is then whether those dropping out of Sunday attendance are simply switching to mid-week, or whether the ‘mid-weekers’ are new attenders. Christian Research ran a survey in 2004 which showed that the mid-weekers were often new people, but a more recent survey in 2009 run by Brierley Consulting showed that more mid-weekers were formerly Sunday attenders. In reality, the growing number of mid-week attenders is likely to be made up of a mixture of switchers and new people. While the new attenders are obviously welcome, their numbers do not as yet compensate for those dropping out.

Looking at the other denominations cited as exhibiting a plateau – the Catholics and Baptists – neither measure mid-week mass or service attendance separately, and so we cannot say what is happening here. The analysis presented thus far relates more to the Church of England, and assumes that Baptist attendance follows Baptist membership trends – which is not necessarily the case.

While of course it is important to note trends in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, it is also important to look at what is happening in the other denominations also. The Presbyterians, Methodists and United Reformed Church are all declining very rapidly; the less rapid decline in the Church of England and the Catholic Church does not offset the general pattern. The only denomination, loosely defined, which can truly be said to exhibit growth is Pentecostalism, courtesy the many black churches.

The 1998 English Church Census showed a further drastic drop in numbers attending church, compared with the earlier 1989 census. The 2005 Census showed a continuing decline, but at a reduced rate. The most recent figures for Anglicans and Catholics (important because these are the biggest denominations) show that while decline continues overall, the rate of decline is lessening. It is important to know why and where that is happening. The analysis presented thus far by Christian Research does not allow this to emerge, but it would be interesting to know – if more data is available than was published.

Peter Brierley is former Director of Christian Research. He compiled and edited the seven issues of Religious Trends, from 1997 to 2008, as well as running the English Church Censuses of 1979, 1989, 1998 and 2005, and the Scottish Church Census of 2002, 1994 and 1984. He now directs Brierley Consulting, which publishes the bimonthly bulletin FutureFirst. Contact: peter @ brierleyres . com.

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UK Defence Statistics, 2010

We reported earlier in the year (http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=151) on the statistics of religious affiliation in the armed forces collected by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) section of the Ministry of Defence and annually published online in UK Defence Statistics.

The 2010 edition of UK Defence Statistics has been published by DASA today and is available in a variety of formats through its website at: http://www.dasa.mod.uk/. Table 2.13 presents the religious profession of the services at 1 April 2010, with comparisons for 2007-09.

Excluding the 1.4% of regular armed forces personnel whose religion was not recorded, the number of self-identifying Christians in 2010 is 85.9%, a reduction of almost four points on the 2007 figure of 89.8%.

However, there are still more Christians in the forces than in Great Britain as a whole, for which the figure stood at 71.4% in the 2009-10 Integrated Household Survey (IHS). The proportion is highest in the Army (88.2%), followed by the Royal Air Force (84.0%) and Royal Navy (81.6%).

Non-Christian religions account for only 1.5% of the armed services, far less than the 8.2% recorded in the IHS. This is probably mainly explained by the ethnic profile of the forces. Although the number of BMEs has been steadily increasing of late, there still appear to be relatively few Asians (see Tables 2.9 and 2.10).

In particular, the representation of Muslims in the services, at 0.3%, is well below the 4.2% found in the IHS. Their strongest showing is in the Army (0.5%). Their scarcity is unsurprising, given the hostility of many in the Muslim community to Britain’s military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those professing no religion have increased from 9.5% in 2007 to 12.6% in 2010, which is again less than the IHS figure of 20.5%. They are much more likely to be found in the Royal Navy (17.7%) and Royal Air Force (15.2%) than in the Army (9.8%).   

Thus, our service personnel remain nominally more religious than the rest of us. This probably reflects their desire to have a spiritual ‘insurance policy’ in the event of the worst happening on active service, as well as the embedding of religion through a strong chaplaincy network.

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Counting Catholics

Andrew Brown of the Guardian has just written a very interesting article on the problems of calculating the size of the Catholic community. The church defines this as those who have been baptised living within England and Wales (or in Scotland; these are separate church jurisdictions). A sociology colleague has mentioned however that church administrators do refer to “unbaptised Catholics” – theologically heterodox, but perhaps wise to the need to plan for school places and similar.

The main sources are the Catholic Church itself; the Government (specifically the Scottish and Northern Irish censuses, and data on marriages); and opinion polls and social surveys. The Church data for the most part depends on parishes estimating their community size, predominantly from mass attendance through an annual count, together with estimation of the size of the community which does not attend. This might be gauged from counting rites of passage (baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages and funerals), which are also enumerated for parish returns and sent to diocesan offices for compilation and annual report, in diocesan directories and the Catholic Directory for England and Wales.

Tony Spencer, Director of the Pastoral Research Centre, has published an assessment of data quality of various Catholic sources – diocesan directories, the Catholic Directory for England and Wales, and the Vatican-compiled Annuario Pontificio, which is difficult to access. This is discussed in some detail in A. E. C. W. Spencer (ed.), Digest of Statistics of the Catholic Community of England & Wales, 1958-2005: Volume I. A common problem is lack of clarity over how missing returns are treated.

Regarding the Catholic Directory, which is the most commonly-cited source, Spencer suggests that one issue is that data are often not supplied by some dioceses before the publication deadline. This means that the newest data are provisional but often not labelled as such, nor revised between editions. Spencer also suggests that operational definitions may vary between dioceses.

We provide here the best set of data at our disposal for England and Wales over the past decades up to 2005. The sources used have been Peter Brierley (ed.) Religious Trends 2 and Religious Trends 7 (1999, 2008); R. Currie et al. Churches and Churchgoers (Oxford, 1977); and Spencer’s Digest (2008). We also include a graph from the merged set of British Social Attitudes surveys, from 1983 to 2008. (Predicted figures for 2010 are available in Religious Trends 7, and reported data on attendance, baptisms and so on are available after 2005 from recent editions of the Catholic Directory; the latter will be added here in due course.)

For now here is a set of charts: click on the images for a high-quality version.

1. Baptisms as a percentage of live births.

The Religious Trends data originates from the Catholic Directory and may include ‘late’ baptisms. If so, it’s not really appropriate to divide this by number of live births per year. Spencer’s Pastoral Research Centre data (the red series) is restricted to infant baptisms (under 12 months) which is more acceptable.

2. Entries to Catholicism by type: infant baptisms, late baptisms, adult conversions.

This illustrates that a growing proportion of baptisms are undertaken when the child is older – partly because of falling neonatal mortality rates, and partly because families may opt for their children to be baptised at once, rather than individually soon after birth.

3. Catholics as percentage of England and Wales population.

This chart combines the Currie et al. (or CGH) estimates published in 1977, the estimates published in Religious Trends, and Spencer’s PRC estimates. The total population data are from the censuses (linearly interpolated until 1981, with ONS mid-year population estimates from 1981).

4. Percentage of five-yearly birth cohort identifying as Catholic, British Social Attitudes surveys 1983-2008.

Here we have combined all the 1983-2008 surveys and looked at the percentage reporting they are Catholic by period of birth (1900-1904, 1905-1909, etc., up to 1985-1989). Note however that the rate for each age group will be affected by differential mortality (and fertility) rates as well as tendency to retain religiosity or lapse.

The spreadsheet including the data used to create these charts will be posted here later today. There are data gaps which need filling in (by consulting Catholic Directories from the 1970s, allowing for the estimates being flawed) but this is as far as we have reached at present.

Update (9.30pm)
The spreadsheet is now available here.

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Methodist Statistics for Mission Report

The Methodist Church of Great Britain has always been one of the most numerate of the Christian denominations in this country. It began the regular collection and publication of statistics as far back as 1766. In recent decades, while collection has continued to be annual, publication has been triennial. The current triennium covers 2008-10, with a summative report on Methodist numbers to be made to the Methodist Conference meeting in Southport in June-July 2011.

Methodists are presently gearing up for the October 2010 count, the data for which are now gathered online. By way of a warm-up to that exercise, the Research Department of the Connexional Team published on 23 September a comprehensive quantitative profile of the Methodist Church in 2009-10, prepared by Nigel Williams on the basis of the 2009 count. In addition to the main 306-page resource pack (which includes data at connexional, district and circuit levels), church-level statistics and an atlas of Methodist locations are also available in separate files. All this information can be accessed at:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/StatisticsForMission

A few headlines from this wealth of data may be noted here, with comparisons with the final year of the 2005-07 triennium.

MEMBERS

There were 241,000 church members in 2009, a fall of 20% since 2007. Even without taking deaths and other losses into account, the number of confirmations in 2009 (2,565) was less than members ceasing to meet (3,435). The bulk of the membership is to be found in suburban (35%), small town (29%) or village/rural (19%) neighbourhoods, with just 16% from inner cities or council estates.

ATTENDERS

The adult average all week attendance in 2009 was 193,000, 10% less than in 2007. For teenagers and the under-13s the decreases were 12% and 34% respectively. At 228,000, total attendances had dropped by 13% in two years. Most adults continued to worship on Sundays, midweek services contributing only an extra 11% on top of Sunday congregations, whereas for children and teenagers midweek services added 67% and 53% to the Sunday totals. These data are relevant to the recent debate about whether the decline in churchgoing has ended. See http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=551

FRESH EXPRESSIONS

Fresh Expressions of church are often said to offset declines in the more traditional indicators of Methodist religious practice. 893 Fresh Expressions are identified in this latest report, mostly in the Café Church, Messy Church, Third Place or Cell Group categories. However, there is no reason to believe that those associated with these initiatives are excluded from the attendance figures. There is a separate presentation about Fresh Expressions in Methodism at:  

http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/stats-Fresh-Expressions-Analysis-0910.ppt

COMMUNITY ROLL

The number of those linked to the Methodist Church but not members in 2009 was 315,000, 17% down on 2007. The overall community roll, including members, stood at 556,000, 14% fewer than in 2007.

RITES OF PASSAGE

Excluding local ecumenical partnerships, the Methodist Church conducted 35 of every 1,000 funerals, 12 of every 1,000 marriages and blessings, and 11 of every 1,000 baptisms and thanksgivings in 2008-09.

LAY OFFICE-HOLDERS

There were 56,000 Methodist lay office-holders in 2009, equivalent to 23% of the membership or 10% of the community roll. Methodism, therefore, really works its supporters hard! Only 1.4% of these office-holders were under 24 years of age.

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Harvest Festivals

Some form of public thanksgiving, secular or religious, for the successful bringing-in of the harvest can be traced back to pagan times in Britain. However, harvest festival services, in the sense with which most of us will be familiar from church or school, really caught on in the mid-nineteenth century.

Now the harvest tradition is probably slowly dying out. That, at least, is the conclusion being drawn by some commentators from a recent YouGov poll conducted online among 2,200 adults on behalf of the campaign group Eat Seasonably, which is funded by Defra, and aims to promote Britain’s seasonal produce of fruit and vegetables. It is hoping to reignite the fashion for harvest festivals.

Four-fifths of those interviewed by YouGov said that they no longer celebrated harvest festivals. Moreover, of the one-fifth doing so, less than one-third (29%) took solely fresh fruit or vegetables to church or school. One-half brought in only tinned or dried food, with 54% listing tinned baked beans as a staple offering.

A national survey early in 2009, commissioned to mark the launch of the TV channel Blighty, found similar results, with less than one-quarter of adults reporting that they attended harvest festivals.

In polls conducted for the Church of England attendance at harvest festival services during the past year was claimed by 20% of Britons in 2003, 24% in 2005 and 20% in 2007. As with all recalled religious practice, it is likely that these figures are somewhat inflated.

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Integrated Household Survey – First Release of Data

New estimates of the religious profile of Great Britain were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 23 September, in the form of the first release of data from the Integrated Household Survey (IHS) for April 2009 to March 2010.

The IHS is a composite household survey combining the answers from six ONS household surveys to produce an experimental (ie still to be assessed by the UK Statistics Authority) dataset of core variables. It is the largest social survey ever attempted by ONS and represents the biggest pool of UK social data after the decennial population census.

The aim of the IHS is to produce high-level estimates for particular themes to a greater precision and lower geographic area than current ONS household surveys. Religion is one of the themes covered in Britain (but not in Northern Ireland), and in 2009-10 data on it are available for 442,266 respondents.

The question posed was: ‘What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?’ This differs somewhat from the various questions asked about religious affiliation in the separate home nations at the 2001 census.

In response, and with missing values apparently excluded from the baseline, 20.5% of British people claimed to have no religion, 19.6% in England, 28.0% in Wales and 24.7% in Scotland.

At unitary authority or county level, Slough had the highest level of religious affiliation in England (93%), while Brighton and Hove had the lowest (58%). In Scotland there was a high of 92% in Inverclyde and a low of 62% in Midlothian. In Wales the range was from 81% in Flintshire down to 67% in Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Swansea.

71.4% of all Britons stated that they were Christians, ranging from 69.0% in Wales to 72.3% in Scotland. The 2001 census figure for Britain was 70.6%, taking the current religion data for Scotland. However, this is calculated against a baseline which includes those who did not answer the religious question (which was voluntary in 2001).

The next largest religious group in the IHS was the Muslim community, at 4.2% of the British population (4.7% in England and 1.2% in Wales and Scotland). This equates to 2,520,000 individuals (against the mid-2009 population estimate, the latest available), lower by 350,000 than the calculation just released by Pew which was the subject of our post at http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=598.

Other faith communities recorded in the IHS were Buddhists (0.4%), Hindus (1.4%), Jews (0.5%), Sikhs (0.6%) and other religions (1.1%).

All the above data are extracted from the statistical bulletin and appended documentation to be found at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=15381

IHS data will also be made available via ESDS.

This is a preliminary news post only. In due course, BRIN would hope to undertake a fuller analysis of these and subsequent IHS data (the rolling IHS dataset will be published by ONS at quarterly intervals).

POSTSCRIPT [23 October 2010]

The dataset for the 2009-10 IHS was released by ESDS on 22 October as SN 6584. It is now available for secondary analysis. See:

http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6584

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The Sun Shines Some Light

BRIN readers might not naturally think of The Sun, perhaps Britain’s most famous weekday tabloid newspaper, as a source of religious intelligence. However, as part of its polling contract with YouGov, it did add a couple of questions on topical issues to a survey conducted online on 20 September among a representative sample of 772 British adults aged 18 and over.

The first sought to quantify what is already being described as the ‘Benedict bounce’, following the recent papal visit to Britain. Respondents were asked whether, on the basis of what they had seen and heard, their opinion of the Pope had changed as a result of the visit. 15% said that their opinion had become more positive and 9% more negative. For 61% the visit had made no difference to their views, while 16% could not say. The positive impact of the visit on perceptions of the Pope was most evidenced among Conservative voters, the under-25s, and residents of London, the Midlands/Wales and Scotland (the three regions where the main events of the visit had been staged). The data tables can be found at:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-PopesVisitReaction-results-200910.pdf

The second topic covered was that of halal meat, on the back of tabloid newspaper reports that restaurants and caterers are increasingly using halal products surreptitiously, without overtly telling their customers. 73% of Britons in The Sun poll thought that food providers should be required to label halal meat as such and 20% that they should not. The most notable demographic variation was by age, the under-25s (57%) being least insistent on labelling and the over-60s (81%) the most. This follows the general trend of questions relating to Muslim issues whereby younger people are more sympathetic than their elders. For the data tables, see:  

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-Halal_Food-results-200910.pdf

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How Many Muslims?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published on 16 September a table giving estimates of the Muslim population of each country in Western Europe in 2010. This formed part of a press release about a new Pew report on Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe. However, the estimates are actually from another and still forthcoming Pew report on the growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide, and including projections for 2020 and 2030.

Pew’s UK figure for 2010 is 2,869,000, which is equivalent to 4.6% of the population. In absolute terms, the UK has the third largest Muslim community on the continent, after Germany (4,119,000) and France (3,574,000).

In percentage terms, the UK is in ninth position, after Belgium (6.0%), France, Austria and Switzerland (5.7%), The Netherlands (5.5%), Germany (5.0%), Sweden (4.9%) and Greece (4.7%). UK Muslims account for 16.8% of all Muslims in Western Europe.

The 2010 UK statistic represents an increase of 74.2% on the 1,647,000 (2.7% of the population) which Pew quoted as recently as last October, in its report Mapping the Global Muslim Population (pp. 22, 32, 54).

That figure was primarily based on the 2001 census, which was the first reliable measure of UK Muslim numbers, earlier estimates having been ethnically derived. No explanation (nor source) for the revised estimate is given by Pew, but doubtless all will be explained in its forthcoming report.

The 2001 census was thought to have been somewhat of an underestimate of Muslim numbers at that time, despite serious efforts by the Muslim Council of Britain and other community leaders to get Muslims to register their faith on the census schedule.

The most widely-publicized figures for Muslims since the census have been estimates for Great Britain from the Government’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), which rose from 1,870,000 in 2004 to 2,422,000 in 2008.

These first emerged in The Times on 30 January 2009 and were officially published in Hansard on 7 July 2009, in reply to a parliamentary question. They generated numerous media headlines about the Muslim population of Britain rising ten times faster than the rest of society.

No new LFS-based estimates have been released since, although they could presumably be easily generated by Government or academics (LFS data are routinely deposited at ESDS).

Another Government source, the Citizenship Survey, which covers adults aged 16 and over in England and Wales, reveals that the proportion of Muslims in the population doubled between 2001 and 2008-09, from 2% to 4%. Four-fifths of Muslims at the latter date claimed to be practising their faith, compared with 37% of all adults professing a religion and 32% of Christians.

According to Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Muslims in Britain, 2010, p. 117) the significant increase in the Muslim population ‘may be attributed to recent immigration, the growing birth rate, some conversion to Islam, and perhaps also an increased willingness to self-identify as “Muslim” on account of the “war on terror”’. The demography of Islam is explored in some detail in chapters 4 and 5 of Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010).

The 2010 Pew table can be found at:

http://features.pewforum.org/muslim/number-of-muslims-in-western-europe.html

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How Many Catholics?

As part of its coverage of the papal visit, the BBC has compiled a webpage entitled ‘How many Catholics are there in Britain?’ This will be found at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11297461

It brings together disparate data from several sources, in particular:

  • Clerical vocations since 1982
  • Professing Catholics since 1983 (British Social Attitudes Surveys)
  • Mass attendance since 1990
  • Ethnic composition of Catholic population in 2008 (CAFOD/Ipsos MORI poll)

The Catholic Church has had somewhat of a chequered history in its collection of quantitative data, and, despite its relative strength, it still has no dedicated and professionally-staffed central statistical unit.

There are various shortcomings in the most frequently-cited British Catholic statistics, those appearing in the Catholic Directory for England and Wales and its equivalent in Scotland, and in the two Vatican publications, Annuario Pontificio and Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae.

Much less well-known is the work of the unofficial Pastoral Research Centre, notably Digest of Statistics of the Catholic Community of England & Wales, 1958-2005, Volume 1, edited by Tony Spencer (2007). This can be obtained from the Pastoral Research Centre, Stone House, Hele, Taunton, Somerset, TA4 1AJ.

For an overview of the development of Catholic statistics, see sections 2.7 and 2.8 and appendix 7 in Clive Field’s Religious Statistics in Great Britain: An Historical Introduction, available at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/commentary/drs/

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Sex Abuse and the Papacy

The latest opinion poll connected with the papal visit was published by CNN (for whom it was conducted by ComRes) on 17 September, Pope Benedict’s first day in England. A representative sample of 2,028 adult Britons aged 18 and over was interviewed online between 14 and 16 September. This included 194 Roman Catholics.

The first of the four questions concerned the appropriateness of the Queen inviting the Pope to come on a state visit. Opinion was split, 36% deeming it appropriate, 37% inappropriate and 26% unsure. Catholics (68%) were most in favour of the visit, while the over-55s (47%) and those without any religion (47%) were most opposed.

The other three questions focused on the child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Asked whether the Church had shown sufficient public remorse for the scandals, only 10% thought that it had, against 74% who said it had not. There was relatively little variation by demographics, apart from Catholics, for whom the figures were 37% and 47% respectively.

The next question pressed whether the Pope had done enough to punish priests found guilty of child sex abuse. A meagre 4% believed that he had, compared with 77% who said that he ought to have done more. Catholics were not that much more impressed by Pope Benedict’s efforts, 13% thinking he had done enough and 66% not.

The final question tested views on whether the Pope should resign over the scandals. 24% were convinced that he should, ranging from 14% of Catholics to 30% among non-Christians and those of no religion. 47% (including 60% of Protestants and 74% of Catholics) wanted him to stay on.

CNN’s press release on the survey can be found at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/16/uk.pope.poll/index.html

The full data tabulations are available at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/page165585353.aspx

FOOTNOTE: Two further papal visit polls, one pre- and one post-visit, were conducted by Opinion Research Business, which has kindly agreed to publication of the data tables on BRIN:

ORB papal visit 14-16 Sep 2010

ORB papal visit 22-24 Sep 2010

 

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