I know many people here don't usually trust the Daily Mail, but on the front page today, it had an intriguing article, which is also reproduced in the online version:

Church of England could be 'extinct in 20 years' as elderly congregations die

The Church of England could be virtually extinct in 20 years as elderly members die, an Anglican leader has warned.

The average age of worshippers has risen to 61 as the Church has failed to attract younger followers, its National Assembly was told.

Church leaders now face a 'time bomb' as numbers 'fall through the floor' over the next decade.

The Rev Dr Patrick Richmond, from Norwich, told members of the Church’s national assembly that they were facing a 'perfect storm' of ageing congregations and falling clergy numbers.

He said: 'The perfect storm we can see forming on the far horizon is the ageing congregations we have heard about - average age is 61 now, with many congregations above that.'

The print version contained words not found in the online version above, in which, among others, John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, told the General Synod that the CofE had failed to attract young people, and would pay a high price for that failure to be seen as relevant to a younger demographic.

Funnily enough, on those occasions when my shopping trips take me past most of the churches in my area, virtually all of the people emerging look as if they're in their 70s at the youngest.

Mind you, the CofE has an unusual ally, in the form of Richard Dawkins. Who, for pragmatic reasons, would prefer it not to die, in order to act as a buffer zone keeping out looney-tune American-style fundamentalist churches. But it looks as if the CofE isn't about to grant that wish.

They like to keep saying this.
On the other hand as people get older & lonelier they can be attracted by the companionship whether they are believers or not, I recon it will bottom out if it hasn't done already. The traditions can give a sort of purpose that other social clubs lack.

Calilasseia wrote:Mind you, the CofE has an unusual ally, in the form of Richard Dawkins. Who, for pragmatic reasons, would prefer it not to die, in order to act as a buffer zone keeping out looney-tune American-style fundamentalist churches. But it looks as if the CofE isn't about to grant that wish.

How's that supposed to work?

OlivierK wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Mind you, the CofE has an unusual ally, in the form of Richard Dawkins. Who, for pragmatic reasons, would prefer it not to die, in order to act as a buffer zone keeping out looney-tune American-style fundamentalist churches. But it looks as if the CofE isn't about to grant that wish.

How's that supposed to work?

Guns. Lots of guns.

OlivierK wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Mind you, the CofE has an unusual ally, in the form of Richard Dawkins. Who, for pragmatic reasons, would prefer it not to die, in order to act as a buffer zone keeping out looney-tune American-style fundamentalist churches. But it looks as if the CofE isn't about to grant that wish.

How's that supposed to work?

RD has a theory that one of the reasons Christian fundamentalism is so much more popular in the US than Europe is that the former lacked an established church that sucked in most of the population, and so the country became a survival of the fittest breeding ground of competing Christian denominations, which causes evangelism to rise, and the most evangelical and 'convincing' to survive, which is what we are left with today - Baptists, Pentacostalism and all that. They are 'more attractive' and so more people believe.

The CofE is very moderate in comparison to other denominations and I'd much rather see young christians go into that than one of the crazy ass ones. You don't hear much about the crazy ones here in the UK but believe me they exist. If a rejuvinated CofE started stealing congregants from that crowd, I'd be all for it.

But the CofE is placing itself as the largest provider of education in the UK, and to get into these schools parents have to attend the local parish church with their sprogs. Precisely what my sister did!

Don't forget the CofE has the HTB plague - the current archbish has been infected with it, and all that evangelism via coffee and cake - what is it called? -(Alpha) is actually hardline wlc pentecostalism.

Clive Durdle wrote:Don't forget the CofE has the HTB plague - the current archbish has been infected with it, and all that evangelism via coffee and cake - what is it called? -(Alpha) is actually hardline wlc pentecostalism.

"HTB plague" ?? "wlc pentacostalism" ??


Companionship will exist outside church groups - such non-church affiliations is likely to be well established for most under-50 yr olds.

I think an explanation for US megachurches is a bit more involved that Dawkins' - many of the first pilgrims to the US were groups fleeing religious persecution in Europe: the Reformation had resulted in more diversity in European Christianity churches and conflicts had arisen.

The role of 20th C technology such as television would be different to the changing sociology of the 18th & 19th Cs.


I'd say the situation for the English CoE is reflected in most Protestant Christian churches in 'British Commonwealth' Countries, at least; and probably most non-Catholic continental-European countries. They all have reasonably large property portfolios. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next 10-40 yrs. The Catholic church seems to now be holding its own in most places??


The English CoE has been lefts somewhat on its own by schism in the [formerly] world-wide "Anglican Communion", over homosexuality, with the formation of the breakaway [now="Global"] 'Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans' and their Gafcon conferences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_of_Confessing_Anglicans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_realignment

Clive Durdle wrote:But the CofE is placing itself as the largest provider of education in the UK, and to get into these schools parents have to attend the local parish church with their sprogs. Precisely what my sister did!

This government is going to give the C of E even more schools to run (according to something I read recently). The thing is though, people might go to church to get their kids in but how long do they keep it up for & do they really become believers? I doubt it.

"CofE Could be extinct in 20 years"

Hmmm. By the end of the century all those historic buildings, some centuries old, will start to decay and fall into ruin - ripe pickings for the developers, methinks.

On the other hand, within twenty years is often code for probably won't happen

Nebogipfel wrote:On the other hand, within twenty years is often code for probably won't happen

Yep. But by the end of the century the C of E could be in a more parlous state (unless a miracle happens )

Clive Durdle wrote:Don't forget the CofE has the HTB plague - the current archbish has been infected with it, and all that evangelism via coffee and cake - what is it called? -(Alpha) is actually hardline wlc pentecostalism.

So very much this.

The CofE that even Dawkins remembers fondly is long dead, its numbers in free-fall. What's left is a Balkanized organization steered by evangelical Christians, who use the threat of closing the purse strings to whip everyone else into line. They've bullied the rest into giving, at the least, tacit consent to institutional homophobia. Even worse, the nice, "liberal," friendly Christians go along with it in the name of unity.

This organization, power- and money-obsessed, fearful for its own survival, and determined to move into education and welfare to shore-up its status, is a very different beast to the complacent, easy-going patrician club that it replaced. And really, when you think that those easy-going patricians refused to lift a finger to oppose the march of the zealots, were they ever that good?

C of E gone??

What does the "f" in the title stand for? I have my own guess.

C of E .... ??

RealityRules wrote:C of E .... ??

Which is how it's conventionally thought of here in the UK, yes.

For years, whenever a form has contained a question asking for a declaration of religious belief, the stock answer has been "Oh, just put down C of E", regardless of what your position actually consisted of. As a consequence, the number of genuine members of the Church of England has almost certainly been overestimated for the best part of a generation. Now that we have more and more people willing to put "no religion" as an answer, the truth is coming home rather hard. Needless to say, the number of people answering census questions with "no religion" is greatest in the under-30 demographic sector, the very sector that the C of E needs to find recruits from if that demographic time bomb isn't to blow up. If Byron's analysis above holds water, then a shift to hardcore ideological positions of the sort he cites in his post, will simply alienate even more of that demographic. Rejection of homophobia and crassly stupid positions on matters such as contraception is highest in that demographic, which means that adopting American-style fundamentalist positions on those subjects is likely to work only marginally less badly than "Come and join our church, and we'll infect you with rabies".

"Oh, just put down C of E"

I remember them days. I used to tell the clerk to cross out what they had written and put 'none'. The looks I used to get sometimes you would have thought I had two heads.

Calilasseia wrote:[...]If Byron's analysis above holds water, then a shift to hardcore ideological positions of the sort he cites in his post, will simply alienate even more of that demographic. Rejection of homophobia and crassly stupid positions on matters such as contraception is highest in that demographic, which means that adopting American-style fundamentalist positions on those subjects is likely to work only marginally less badly than "Come and join our church, and we'll infect you with rabies".

Its archbishop has recognized this in a speech August past, when he said that, "The vast majority of people under 35 think [opposing equal marriage] is not just incomprehensible but plain wrong and wicked, and they assimilate it to racism and other horrors."

Problem is, Welby's a prisoner of dogma. In the same speech, he said that he didn't regret voting against marriage equality, and that the Anglican church wasn't changing its teaching. He knows they're on the wrong side of history, but he won't alter course. When you see how evangelicals respond to the possibility of accepting gay relationships, it's unsurprising. "For the first time ever we will call that which is sin holy," is the edited version. It originally said "evil."

The church jumped on the homophobia bandwaggon in the 1980s. Far from boldly standing against culture, as the evangelicals claim, Christian homophobia sprung from society's prejudices. Society has, thankfully, moved past it, but the church is frozen in time. Story of its life.

They're now in the farcical and revolting position of holding a view they know is absurd, and trying to wriggle out of it by loophole abuse such as pretending that gay relationships are "friendships." Amoral unity is all. The Church of England commissions reports by aged, heterosexual bishops, reports that pretend bigots and gay people are two equal "sides" in an abstract "debate." Yeah, as the Civil Rights Movement and segregationists were "sides," and ending white supremacy was a "debate."

Sooner or later (I think sooner), the equivocation will run out of time, it'll blow up in their face, and the institution will be rendered still more of a repulsive joke in the public mind. That's where dogmatism gets you.

Fucking hell, Byron, why don't you have your own opinion column in The Guardian? Only this is the sort of post that deserves a much wider audience.