Updated Friday morning
Provisional attendance figures for 2007 were released today.
The press release starts:
Figures from the Church of England released today show further evidence that, while some trends in churchgoing continue to change, the overall number of people regularly attending church has altered little since the turn of the millennium. The 2007 figures confirm that attending a Church of England church (including cathedrals) is part of a typical week for some 1.2 million people.
The full figures are available as a pdf file.
Some early press reports
Martin Beckford in the Telegraph Christmas church attendance falls by 11% in a year
Jenna Lyle in Christian Today New Church figures show attendance ‘stable’
Update
Bill Bowder in the Church Times More go to church when Christmas falls at weekend
Delightful to see that weekly High Church attendance is so much stronger than average attendance. I always knew the spikes would dominate.
The Christmas drop is probably down to the fact that in 2007, the 23rd was a Sunday, so many regulars who might have gone on Christmas Eve probably decided not to go for 3 days in a row.
This thread says as much about the choices made by newspaper sub-editors as it does about church attendance. Do they choose to emphasise the positive or negative view?
However to me the interesting statistic was this
“However the number of baptisms of children increased, with a rise of 6 per cent among those aged between one and 12.”
Simon
Aaron, I missed the statements or data that you get your assertion about church styles from. Any chance of someone pointing it out? thanks!
It would be an interesting exercise to compare the Anglican church-going statistics with those of other Christian Churches in the U.K.
The news that there were more baptisms in the C.of E., in 2008, than in recent years does seem to give reason for some encouragement.
Joan – page three of the pdf, there’s a whole column of “Weekly High Church Attendance”. The number are double that for the rest of the spectrum, Low and Broad lumped together! Go Spikes!
(This would be a joke, of course, as the word “High” in that sentence has nothing to do with churchmanship but is rather about the week of the year that has the highest attendance…but it amused my spiky heart anyhow.)
OK Aaron, I get it now, thanks! Clearly blonde moment met sense of humour failure.