(from Martyn Percy, The Exiled Church, SCM-Canterbury Press, 2025)
Many churches are already actively serving their communities in essential and practical ways, but how are they serving the spiritual needs of the wider community? To be germane to people’s daily lives, especially for those at the margins of faith or beyond, the churches must do much more than cater to different tastes in music. The language of sin and guilt is unfashionable and seen by many as damaging. It’s time for us to adapt, to find new ways to connect with our community, to be a beacon of hope and understanding in a world that often feels disconnected. In a culture that wants to dwell more on positives than negatives, the church is grasping for ways to connect.
Let’s face the facts. The maths and statistics of churchgoing in 21st-century Britain make for grim reading. There are 12,500 parishes in the Church of England. Even before the pandemic, only 33 of these recorded more than 100 under 16s attending church on a Sunday. That equates to a mere 0.26% of the parishes or less than one church per Anglican diocese (of which there are 42). These numbers should serve as a wake-up call for churches.
Most of those churches were evangelical or charismatic evangelical, yet statistics consistently show that these churches also struggle to retain their youth attendance. This is a pressing issue that we must address. Comparing adult numbers across Church of England churches reveals pockets of evangelical intensity (numerical) but not much growth in extensity. Churches must find new ways to engage and retain their youth, ensuring they continue their spiritual journey.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
In conversation with Aberdeen’s Roman Catholic Bishop, he noted that their main Sunday morning Mass has around 500-600 attending. The Sunday afternoon Mass for the Polish accounts for another 250+. The early 8 am Mass and Saturday evening Mass deliver another 300 attendees. Down the road, the Anglican Cathedral records around 120 attendees on a Sunday. Of that, 35+ children attend Sunday School. Around two-thirds of the congregation are Nigerian.
In the same city, the biggest evangelical church is Trinity Presbyterian, but it is not a part of the Church of Scotland. Sunday attendance is around 250 with. Around 100+ of that congregation returns in the evening for praise and prayer. Postgraduates and Faculty from the University Divinity School attend in numbers and testify to a good Sunday School for the children, good fellowship for adults, and lengthy, intelligent (but quite conservative) sermons. The postgraduates and faculty don’t necessarily subscribe to the theology offered (e.g., no women elders). Still, they opt to stick with the congregation because of the quality of fellowship and teaching. So, there is some dissonance.
The statistics for the Church of England tell a similar story about dissonance. Underneath the large numbers attending evangelical churches, there are real lives that don’t and won’t subscribe to what the pastor’s position might be. This parallels the research into university Christian Unions. Whatever the numbers claimed, many attendees choose to ignore or dissent from the positions taken on gender, sexuality and other faiths.
One Anglican bishop in southern England noted:
In this diocese, there are 6 large congregations with hundreds of worshippers, and that also average around over 100 children on a Sunday. Thereafter, we have 120 churches that average around 120 attendees each Sunday (adults and children combined), [another] 120 that have more than 50 per Sunday (total), and then 300+ village churches that will have an attendance of 15-25 on a Sunday, but over 50 at Christmas, Easter and the like.
The conservative evangelical and charismatic evangelical churches collectively give us a figure of 1500 adults and 750 children. The mid-range churches’ numbers (generally not evangelical) amount to 7500 adults and 3000 children. The villages, though small, can muster 2500 adults and perhaps around 100 children between them. Adding that up gives the large evangelical churches some 2250 attendees and the rest 13,100. However, overall, only 1.5% of adults attend our churches in [this] diocese, and 0.25% of children. Put together with the notable attrition rate in evangelical churches, no branch of the church can honestly claim it is performing well. (From private correspondence, anonymised and adapted.)
The bishop’s perspective reflects the national statistics. The 2022 statistics showed that Anglican attendance at Sunday and midweek services across the UK averaged 654,000, drawn from the population as a whole. The media took their usual potshot, with The Guardian noting that there were now more naturists in England than Anglican Easter communicants. The trend towards decline seems inexorable.
Furthermore, there is no sign that any current ‘popular flavour’ of Christianity is performing better with the wider public than others. Various ‘brands’ – conservative vs. liberal, traditional vs. progressive, etc – may compete for attendees between themselves. However, the statistics suggest that this is more like an internal business-to-business marketing rivalry than a serious sign of notable traction in the public sphere.
Whilst Aberdeen’s range of faith communities might provide a rich span of churches and faiths to draw on for this work, to what extent is it representative? Newer diaspora churches originating from Africa form a significant portion of Christian denominations alongside those of established, traditional, and historic heritage. There is a wide range of Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist congregations meeting. Aberdeen has Bahai and Jewish communities as well as Unitarian, Mormon, and Jehovah’s Witness congregations. In addition, Confucian, Theosophical, and other institutions that focus on spirituality are also represented. Yet, at the same time, the city also highlights the marked decline in fortunes for the Church of Scotland.
Less than half a century ago the Church of Scotland could claim that it enjoyed just under one million adherents out of a population of 5 million. A membership of 920,000 in 1982 had become 270,300 in 2022: a decline of some 70%. The average age of its congregants is now 62 and rising rapidly. It is estimated that only 60,000 Scots worship in person at a Church of Scotland parish on any given Sunday.
In 1982, the Scottish Roman Catholic Church conducted close to 5,000 marriages and could boast that it had 273 men training to be priests. In 2022 there were just 812 Catholic marriages, and 12 seminarians in training. In 2023, the Roman Catholic Church of Scotland attracted just two new seminarians, and it no longer trains priests in Scotland at all. It may surprise some readers that there ever was, until recently, a Scottish Pontifical College, in the heart of Rome (much like the English College). It has now been sold.
The figures for Scottish Episcopalians are not so very different. Whilst the decline is more gradual, it must be reckoned that there were fewer members to start with. In the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, there are 40 parishes (or ‘charges’), of which in 2023, one dozen stood vacant. Only one church claimed more than 200 ‘belonged’, though St Andrew’s Cathedral and one other could claim 175+. The Communicants’ Rolls (those formally registered as members) typically record figures that are 30% less than the actual number of attendees.
In 2023, the number of Episcopalians claiming affiliation to their denomination in the Diocese stood at 2419, equating to around 60 people per parish. Attendances, however, are another story. The Episcopal Church audits the Sunday Next Before Advent for its statistics. In 2023, that Sunday delivered a turnout of 792 persons.
At the time of writing, Scotland still awaits the full results of its 2022 census, so we cannot determine precisely what percentage of the population follows other faiths. However, it is already the case that nonreligious marriage ceremonies far exceed religious ones in Scotland. Of the 30,000 marriages recorded in Scotland in 2023, only 8,000 were religious. Over 9,000 were humanist, and the remainder were civil ceremonies. Callum Brown has argued that Scotland has gone through a profound socio-cultural shift from the last quarter of the 20th to the first quarter of the 21st century. It is now developing into a very secular country.
Downsizing
The data we have sketched so far suggest Scotland’s two largest Christian faiths – the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) and Roman Catholicism – are now in terminal decline. This presents another difficult maths test – pay and pensions for clergy and the upkeep of expensive buildings. Where does the money come from if the membership is declining, and attendance is in freefall? In 2022, the Church of Scotland tasked presbyteries with creating a five-year plan to ensure they were fit for the 21st century. The result of such a process is now felt in communities across the entire country.
Churches, including some iconic ancient buildings, are being sold, parishes are being made to merge, posts are being cut, and desirable manses are being put on the housing market as the church looks to cut costs and balance the books.
In Elgin, St Gerardine’s Church had already held its last service by the end of 2023 and is also to be “disposed of”. It is now proposed that all the Elgin congregations will combine into becoming one parish using one church: St Columba’s South, on Moss Street. To be fair, the central organisation of the Church of Scotland recognises that sacred buildings both possess and add meaning and value to their local communities. At the same time, it recognises that reducing the number of buildings the Church owns is now necessary, no matter how difficult this is.
Yet this rankles local communities. With changing population patterns, markedly different social attitudes, and outlooks, and falling church membership, far fewer people training for ministry and a reduction in financial contributions, churches cannot make the maths work. There appears to be no alternative to reducing the number of buildings the Church of Scotland owns.
The trend is undeniable. Scotland is witnessing the rapid depletion of organised religion, nationwide. The decline accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, fuelled by increasing opportunity and equality for women in the workplace, greater prosperity and more disposable income, and the rapid expansion of leisure activities. Put this together with major shifts in public attitudes to same-sex rights, abortion, contraception and the death penalty, and the social and religious reformation – some may say revolution – is hardly surprising.
This is affecting all denominations across Scotland. Congregations are dwindling, weekly financial contributions have plunged, and many clergy are reaching retirement age. The Church of Scotland’s property page currently advertises one of its most prominent churches in Inverness, the Old High Church, for offers over £150,000. Others on the market include churches in Ballachulish (near Glencoe), Orkney, Shetland, Edinburgh, and St Columba’s, which was Glasgow’s last Gaelic church.
Too many buildings with little use are taxing on resources and energy. They need two types of TLC: Tender, Loving Care, yet also Time, Labour, and Cash. Churches in Scotland, much like the rest of the UK, find themselves pressured and pushed by their denominational executive management to consolidate, merge and rationalise. Much of the justification for this is accompanied by thin top-down-led apologetics on vision, repurposed mission, growth, effectiveness, and discipleship.
Local congregations are sceptical, much in the same way that a scattered and defeated retreating army might be if they were told that their withdrawal and depleting resources were merely a prelude to some great victory. I suppose it is possible, and local congregations live in constant states of hope. But they are increasingly tempered by realism.
As if the implosion within Scottish churches is not enough, the wider environment has become more resistant to religion. Up until recently, Scottish councils were required by law to provide up to three seats on their education committees to unelected religious representatives who would vote on policy and practice. But increasingly, councils are voting to remove them.
Is this an anti-religious trend? I doubt it, and suspect it is more driven more by concerns for the expertise and experience of representatives than their faith. Boards of education require high levels of knowledge about the school sector, law, governance, and policy from their representatives. Bluntly, most denominations would struggle to nominate representatives who would match their criteria and speak for the church at the same time, just as those denominations would struggle with hospital, adoption, fostering, and other boards.
What Counts?
However, as this is the Maths lesson, please bear in mind the following advice from Einstein before we move on to Geography. Allow me to paraphrase. Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts. The familiar phrase ‘the maths doesn’t lie’ is untrue. Everything depends on what you count, who does the counting, and what value is attached to a number. The answer will then acquire a meaning for ends. Sometimes it pays to be sceptical about statistics and surveys.
This is a complex field for statisticians, polling organisations and academics. But if you are part of a faith community and trying to take the temperature, so to speak, which numbers are to be trusted, and why? For starters, and historically, denominations and other faith groups have tended to collect their own data, such as the number of baptisms, funerals, weddings, and ordinations in any year. Yet these numbers tell us little about the rates of attrition. For example, how many people who have been ordained in the Church of England no longer practise their ministry within it, and why? There is no real research on these numbers, though they will be significant.
Equally, what numbers are not being counted? I recall a Church of England diocese claiming that it no longer collected or published figures for confirmations, as these were ‘the wrong numbers to be guided by’, preferring instead to talk about the number of new congregations, ‘fresh expressions’ and other enterprises it could promote. When asked how many of these new initiatives were net contributors to the diocesan budget after five years of their existence no actual number was forthcoming. (It was zero, by the way).
There are faith-based organisations that collect data too, but these tend to be in the service of bolstering a particular position or cause within their respective tradition. In other words, self-confirming, with the thesis directing the facts. So the surest way to get to grips with the maths of secularisation is to engage with the academic studies. Here are five brief reflections by way of summing up.
First, even churches that count ‘members’ lack precision in counting their numbers. If the state of the religious economy is such that many still believe in God, but belonging to a faith-based congregation is in decline, then we may be dealing with a slightly different shift. Namely, believers altering their terms of affiliation to their chosen faith.
Second, the fringes of congregations, even small ones, tend to be thick with people who are very occasional attendees, those who still relate and support, but no longer attend, or have other reasons to regard themselves as insiders, when statistics will count them as outsiders.
Third, the quality of religious literacy inside and outside the churches is plainly in steep decline. With the theological education of clergy also subject to fiscal salami-slicing, rationalisation, marginalisation, and other challenges, it is hard to see the road back from here.
Fourth, the churches and other faith groups have endured a collapse in their moral reputations. The public have lost confidence in denominations and faiths due to scandals of sexual abuse, positions taken on sexuality and gender, and increasingly on governance, accountability, and transparency. Religious organisations are notably reluctant to commit to external scrutiny or proper independent regulation. The result is an unstemmed haemorrhaging of trust, confidence, and support.
Fifth, the secular media, as a consequence of the above, are reluctant to carry yet more news of faiths in decline, mired in scandal, that are unrealistic, disingenuous and even dishonest about what is required. The media remains interested in religious news but is rightly averse to senior religious leaders trying to use press, radio and TV as a vehicle for its own ends.
Whilst it is true that some Evangelical charismatic, diaspora and Pentecostal churches have recorded growth, and their congregations tend to be larger, there are far fewer of them. These congregations represent consolidated forms of religious intensity, which explains their attraction and numerical size. However, despite their laudable outreach, such churches lack widespread extensity. Cities, market towns, urban and suburban environments will be havens for such congregations. Rural contexts, less so.