WAYMARKS-CAN THE DYING CHURCHES BE SAVED? INTRODUCTION - THE PROBLEM

 
Nehemiah 2v17-18 “You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire.”
 
I became a Christian when I was seventeen years old. I was brought up in a non-Christian home, like many families in post-war Britain. I had heard a talk from Dr Cicely Saunders, a doctor who founded the hospice movement in the UK and founded St Christopher’s Hospice in London. I became an enthusiastic convert to Christianity. But some many decades later I’ve experienced the pain of watching the churches in the UK in decline. I was at a conference some years ago and an Anglican vicar spoke of the death of the churches in his parish in Surrey. He said he was ministering to the dying, in a dying church. The problem is that there has been no arresting of that decline. 
 
Churches litter the UK landscape like monuments from a bygone age. Most church buildings were built in the nineteenth or twentieth century. Most are in decline. This is not a twenty first century problem. It has roots in actions many centuries ago.  Since the Early Church, churches have had to adapt and change.  The Church/State alliance formed by the Roman Emperor Constantine established a power base which has, twenty centuries later, dissipated. The Sacred Canopy has gone.[1]
 
The Reformation sided with the literate classes at the expense of the illiterate. The universal sacred canopy of the Catholic church was replaced with Protestant churches based on literacy. helped by the printing press. Even in the eighteenth century, the poor were missing from congregations and the church was in decline, especially in industrial areas.[2] Large parts of the working classes in England were disengaged from organised Christianity by the nineteenth century, largely due to the earlier disruption of communities moving from an agrarian parochial life, to the towns and cities. Habits and communities were broken. Later pew rents and the need to purchase Sunday clothing and shoes, froze the poor out of churches. It is also well documented by missionaries from British churches that the home churches at this time were in a state of apathy and decline.
 
This disengagement of the poor and much of the working classes was joined by a disaffiliation of the rich and powerful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and a popular agnosticism. The debates around evolution between Darwin and church leaders turned away many serious thinkers from the churches. But the twentieth century gave rise additionally to the alienation of the middle-classes from the churches and the disengagement of many women. [3] The marginalisation of the churches has been in gestation since at least the eighteenth century, probably earlier. 
 
The impact of war both theologically and numerically, together with demographic movements and the changing map of Europe after 1945, further weakened commitment to churches. Some denominational graphs of attendance look like a falling stone.  Decades ago I spoke to a group of Welsh Presbyterians at their annual gathering in Birmingham. They were in deep decline even then and as I spoke of that decline and the need for spiritual shepherds, some of them , actual shepherds, nodded their heads solemnly. 
 
More recently, according to British Social Attitudes, people who identify as Christian have slightly increased in Britain, but these people don’t identify as being Anglican or Catholic. Most of this group say they are Christian but that they do not belong to any particular denomination. 40% of the population identify as Christian which is the same as in 2017. Attendance at Christian worship once a month has dropped to 14% from 2023 to 2025. Attendance at Church of England churches fell from 680,000 in 2019 to 549,000 in 2022. In 2023 attendance had risen to  693,000. But between 2009 and 2019 the church of England had already lost over 218,000 attenders, so there is still overall deep decline. [4]
 
People are not deserting mainstream churches for more evangelical or house churches and even amongst house churches there is evidence of decline. Attendance at church services nationally is very low. 
 
Younger generations are significantly less likely than older generations to have had a church upbringing or to regard the church as important in life. They are less likely to believe that the Christian faith is an important quality to develop in their children. As the older generations die, this general trend will continue and the churches shrink even more rapidly.  It may be that the removal of Christian worship from schools was a significant factor in this decline. (As someone from a non-Christian home my introduction to Christianity began at school).

Age, gender and class subtexts run through the description of the declining churches in the UK. The churches are predominantly the province of older people, especially women, who form the majority of the laity. It has become a trend to train older people for leadership in the churches as they are cheaper to pay! The churches are not attracting people. There are of course exceptions. The growth of Pentecostalism is noticeable, but Pentecostalism is a minority presence. 
 
Catholic attendance at mass has declined from 701,902 in 2019 to 554,913 in 2023. This is a decline of 21%. [5] There is a desperate shortage of seminarians and Catholic priests. The seminaries are shockingly empty. The number of Catholic priests in the UK has declined from 3,600 in 1970 to about 2,500 in 2023, while the Catholic population has slowly declined, but still increasing the ratio of Catholics per priest. The drop in numbers of seminarians contributes to priest shortages and church closures.[6]
 
Interestingly the Orthodox Church has grown, partly due to migration. The Orthodox Church is the only mainline, historic church in Britain that is growing.[7]  But again it is a minority presence.  
 
Mike Riddell, a Kiwi theologian, nearly thirty years ago, described the churches using two images. [8]
 
"Firstly, they are like an old car that the owners are sentimental about, but it doesn’t do the job any more.  Secondly, they have been “white anted”. On the surface it’s ok but the ants have eaten out the middle and the edifice, the outward structure is about to crumble. The cost of maintaining the status quo, the crumbling edifice both in terms of bureaucracy and buildings, is a heavy burden on declining congregations.  It is energy sapping and creates apathy and inertia. Those caught up in the wave of church decline may opt for things as they are, rather than change because it is so difficult to reverse the trend. "
 
Riddell concluded that the Western (historic) churches must experience death and grieve for that passing, before they can experience resurrection. 
 
These statistics of decline are countered by a popular notion that the decline has “bottomed out”. There are small outbreaks of life which give false hope. There is a denial of the seriousness of the situation. A YouGov report by the Bible Society showing increase of young people attending Anglican churches in 2024, was found to be fraudulent! [9] The decline is probably worse than statistics show because churches send in their figures to denominational departments and may want to either improve or worsen the numbers due to funding. There is no external ratification.   
The institutional churches in the UK are in their death pangs. In their present form they appear to have outlived their usefulness as vehicles of the Christian faith.[10] They are in peril.
 
Questions for discussion: 
1.     In what ways is church decline most noticeable to you?
2.     Are there people in your family who no longer go to church? 
3.     Has anything else replaced church going?
 
 
 
 

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[1] Peter L. Berger The Sacred Canopy Double Day and Company, Garden City, New York, 1967
 
[2] Callum Brown The Death of Christian Britain 2001.  In some areas of Birmingham attendance as low as 22.9% was already recorded in 1892. Also for a discussion of the various stances on working class affiliation to the 19th century churches Moore, R.S Religion in Victorian Britain: Volume III Sources  Manchester Open University Press : 1998. 

[3] Brown: 2001. Brown argues that gender not class is the primary factor in decline from 1800-1960.
See Thorne, S. “Foreign Missions and Religion’s Decline in 19th and 20th century Britain”, unpublished paper from Missiology of Western Culture Project: History Group Colloquium III, The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe c1750-2000: Paris 9-12: April 1997. Thorne cites the thesis drawn from research on Congregationalists that it was the middle classes who chose to leave organised Christianity in the 19th century in contrast to the activity of foreign missions.
 
[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/369080/church-of-england-attendance-by-service-uk/
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/after-covid-the-deepening-decline-of-the-church-of-england/
 
[5] https://iobserve.org/2025/02/14/uk-mass-attendance-jumps-significantly-numbers-still-not-quite-pre-pandemic/
[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-66250150
 
[7]  https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/09/22/the-orthodox-church-is-thriving-in-britain-thanks-to-immigration
[8] Riddell, M. Threshold of the Future London: SPCK: 1998 
[9] https://www.research-live.com/article/news/yougov-church-attendance-report-withdrawn-due-to-fraudulent-responses/id/5148193
 
[10] Barrow, S. and Smith, G. eds. Christian Mission in Western Society CTBI: 2001

Image by Pat Nimmo