The Church of England has released its Cathedral Statistics 2023, along with a press release, which is copied below.
Cathedral statistics show continued recovery in 2023
05/09/2024
Coronation Celebrations, cultural initiatives, and sustainability efforts highlight year of positive change.
The Church of England’s latest cathedral attendance statistics reveal continued recovery in 2023, with a five per cent increase in weekly service attendance. Attendance at Christmas services was up 20% year on year and the rise was also reflected in easter services, where attendance was up by 10%.
Cathedrals also experienced a resurgence in visitor numbers, with 9.35 million people visiting in 2023, a 17 per cent increase from 2022. This marks a significant recovery, although overall numbers remain slightly below pre-pandemic levels.
The year was marked by celebrations of King Charles III’s coronation, with cathedrals hosting special services and community events. In addition to worship and national events, cathedrals made notable strides in cultural and sustainability efforts, with exhibitions, civic events and significant energy-saving initiatives and biodiversity projects across the country.
The report, released today, shows a weekly total of 30,300 individuals attended cathedral services each week, reflecting a continued return to in-person worship.
Special services in cathedrals, including those during Easter and Christmas, saw particularly strong attendance. Easter services in 2023 attracted 45,000 attendees, a 10 per cent increase from 2022. Christmas services were even more popular, with 124,500 attendees, marking a 20 per cent rise from the previous year.
Cathedrals continue to play a crucial role in public life, hosting 5,000 public and civic events in 2023, with an impressive total attendance of 1.59 million. This includes 430 graduation ceremonies and numerous other significant cultural and civic gatherings.
By most measures, attendance, participation, and engagement were higher in 2023 than in 2022, but marginally lower than they were in 2019.
While many areas showed growth, occasional offices such as baptisms and marriages experienced a decline in 2023, suggesting that the post-pandemic surge in ceremonies, which were postponed during lockdowns, has now stabilised. Baptisms decreased by three per cent, and marriages saw a 19 per cent decrease compared to 2022.
In 2023 English cathedrals played a significant role in marking the historic coronation of King Charles III, contributing to national celebrations and marking this important event in the life of the nation. Many cathedrals held special services of thanksgiving and prayer, offering communities a space to come together.
Westminster Abbey, where the coronation service took place, was at the heart of these celebrations, hosting the official event attended by global dignitaries and members of the public.
Many other cathedrals played their part by ringing bells, hosting commemorative exhibitions, and organising community events. In addition to continuing and developing the regular patterns of prayer and worship, cathedrals ran successful community engagement and cultural initiatives in 2023.
Coventry Cathedral continued its legacy of reconciliation and peacebuilding with the “Rising from the Ruins” exhibition, which featured powerful artworks and installations exploring themes of hope and recovery in the context of global conflicts. The cathedral also hosted several interfaith dialogues and peace-focused events.
Salisbury Cathedral continued its programme of events and exhibitions, including the annual ‘Sarum Lights’ event featuring large-scale projections, and an exhibition exploring the theme of freedom which drew in thousands of visitors throughout the year. Artists represented included Ai Weiwei, Yinka Shonibare, and Cornelia Parker.
York Minster made significant progress in the construction of its ground-breaking ‘Centre of Excellence for Heritage Craft Skills and Estate Management’ which will establish the York Minster Precinct as a world class campus facility for research, education and training in ancient craft skills. The Minster also received approval to install solar panels, which will be installed later in 2024.
Canterbury Cathedral improved its educational outreach, expanding its Schools Department to offer a wider range of programs for students of all ages. These programs included immersive history workshops, guided tours, and interactive sessions on topics such as medieval life and the role of the cathedral in English history.
The year also saw most cathedrals across England make strides in sustainability, supporting the Church of England’s wider Net Zero and biodiversity targets. Salisbury Cathedral installed LED lighting throughout the building while Liverpool completed the installation of energy-efficient heating systems. Durham Cathedral brought down overall energy usage by 53 per cent by utilising and improving the building management system within the Cathedral and its precincts.
Winchester and Lichfield Cathedrals were among those to promote wildflower meadows in parts of their grounds, assisting pollinators and promoting biodiversity.
Responding to the figures, the Dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, who chairs the College of Deans, said: “Over the past year, we have witnessed a revival in attendance and engagement, underscoring the resilience of our cathedrals and the enduring significance of their rich patterns of worship and prayer.
“These statistics not only highlight a return to regular and festival services but also emphasise our commitment to serving both our local communities and the nation with renewed vitality and purpose through bringing people together, promoting peace and fostering unity.
“I extend my sincere thanks to all who minister, work, and volunteer to support and enhance the life of our cherished cathedrals.”
More information
It’s good that figures have gone up. However one mustn’t ignore the fact that adult attendance at Sunday worship is still 17% lower than in 2019 (that’s one-sixth) and child attendance lower by 25% (or one quarter). We are often told that, because of excellence in music and liturgy, attendance at cathedral services is doing well in comparison with most “ordinary” churches – if so, these figures are disastrous!
This appears to be a genuine trend whereas general church attendance is in decline despite attempts to spin the data. Why are Cathedrals getting better attendance than churches? Higher quality of worship? Choral singing? Meeting in a wonderful building? You can attend without demands being made upon you? See the Cathedral for free?
Do I detect a note of cynicism? Many cathedrals are genuinely congregational – centres for family worship, celebrations and commitment
But … the numbers of worshippers, real ‘bums on seats’ are still way down on pre-Covid levels. Some may think on ‘lies, damned lies …’; it;s what the stats tell us that’s important- that is the question. What is the answer? Maybe it will be found in the cathedral? I’m with one Ken or another on this. Awake, my soul …
I lived in Chester for three and a half years recently, and was a member of the cathedral congregation. There would be a good turnout of locals on Sundays. I thought it was a nice touch when the Dean entertained me to lunch at the cathedral refectory before I left Chester. Three and a half years is not all that long, and quite a bit of that was lost to lockdown. I watched part of the consecration of the new Bishop of Burnley, and was pleased to see the Dean of Chester in the procession. He walked with the Dean… Read more »
Installing solar panels and growing wildflowers is all very well, but how many people were baptised or confirmed into the Christian faith?
If reducing carbon limits climate change then might it not be genuinely salvific? Think of the hundreds of millions of people who are going to be made homeless or die if we don’t effect a just climate transition. Surely a case of, “Whatever you do for the least of these you did for me.” cf Matthew 25:45 In the Cathedral where I worship, I think we offered more candidates for baptism and confirmation from among our own attendees last year than we have for many years. I suspect that renewed focus on bringing souls to Jesus would be materially more… Read more »
I agree that an irrelevant presentation/practice of Christian faith is a block to people embracing it. However, we measure what we value, and we value what we measure. Measuring progress to zero carbon is fine, but the unique and primary commission of the church is to baptise and nurture new disciples of Christ. If we don’t do that, then we will certainly make progress towards zero carbon, because we will cease to exist.
OTOH, if we don’t pursue zero carbon, the numbers of new Christian recruits will become irrelevant: The planet’s climate will become inhospitable for human beings and their food sources.
Unless you believe God will rescue us from our mistakes.
‘However, we measure what we value, and we value what we measure.’ Not so. How do we measure love, peace, kindness, gentleness, faith, spiritual maturity, obedience to God’s command to care for our neighbour and exercise stewardship of the earth? Well, I suppose zero carbon is one way of measuring the latter.
Of course we need to care for the planet as Christians but so much of the ecological discourse coming from the higher echelons of the Church of England is about joining a popular bandwagon. They know that they will be praised by secular society for these opinions. They’ve lost confidence in the Gospel and are desperately seeking other ways of remaining relevant.
Ir is not either or. Have you missed the many times when ++Justin has said that the best decision you can ever make is to become a follower of Jesus Christ?
I don’t doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sincerity in wanting people to follow Jesus Christ. However my impression is that Anglican bishops in general are more comfortable commenting publicly on what I would call ‘easy subjects’; things that would go down well at middle class dinner parties such as environmentalism, equality and diversity, left of centre politics; nothing too personally challenging.
The same could have been said 700 years ago of the stone masons who built our gothic cathedrals, or of the artists who painted them, or the musicians over the years who wrote anthems and hymns. They, and the communities which supported them, showed their faith and dedication by building a magnificent temple to God. In our age, we continue that process but our unique contribution to the evolution of centuries is to attempt to reduce the carbon footprint of those temples. Some might not see it, just as not everyone likes, say, the new Coventry cathedral, but it is… Read more »
Does Christianity always have to be a numbers game? What if the Christian Church (in the broadest sense) takes care of its members, truly works on its faults instead of papering them over with commissions and panels (see: religious leaders and child/sexual abuse), and lets people voluntarily find their way to Christianity if that is their desire. I seem to recall “By their fruits, you will know them.” Humanity’s two largest religions, Christianity and Islam, both have adherents and ministers or leaders who believe their mission isn’t complete until everyone on the planet is a member of that faith. Unless… Read more »
Thanks David. Baptism figures, 2013-2023, are in Figure 9 (p 14) and Table 9 (p 29) of the report.
I don’t have figures for cathedral confirmations, I’m afraid. It’s one of those questions that would get slightly messy since we’d want to distinguish between members of the cathedral community who were confirmed and people from other churches in the diocese who were confirmed in a service at the cathedral. Numbers of confirmations in each diocese are published in the Statistics for Mission report.
Thank you for sharing this, TA admin. I wrote the report and, as ever, am happy to receive comments or suggestions, either directly (contact details are in the report) or online. The inclusion of at least one table is the direct result of a suggestion here a few years ago, and I’m very open to people telling me what other things they’d find useful. I’m afraid there’s nothing very innovative in the analysis this time around – I prioritised speed instead, which is why the figures are out five months earlier than last year. Some hard work behind the scenes… Read more »
Thank you for this report. Do you have stats for individual cathedrals? Surely these will vary quite a bit, depending on whether they are in big cities or tourist hotspots.
Thanks James. Yes, the information comes from each cathedral. Table 2 (p 23) gives a sense of the variation between cathedrals. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to be told that there’s considerably more variation regarding some things (e.g. visitor numbers) – than others (e.g. usual Sunday attendance).
Look at the tables in the report and you clealrly see in most areas numbers are significantly down on what they were ten years ago.