According to a new study, the Church of England is heading for the dustbin of history, while British Islam is on the upswing.
The Church of England has suffered a dramatic slump in its followers, shocking new figures show.
Between 2012 and 2014, the proportion of Britons identifying themselves as C of E or Anglican dropped from 21 per cent to 17 per cent – a fall of about 1.7 million people.
Over the same period, the number of Muslims in Britain grew by nearly one million, according to a survey by the respected NatCen Social Research Institute.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey warned last night that unless urgent action was taken, the Church was just ‘one generation away from extinction’.
The number of Anglicans in Britain has dropped from about 10.3 million to 8.6 million, and will raise fresh fears over the future of the Church of England, which has been in decline since the 1960s.
Of course, those numbers of Anglicans is boosted by imports from the old empire. Africans and Arabs are surely boosting those figures. How many natives attend services even occasionally is unknown to me. The overall weekly attendance rate of Christians in England is 12%. My bet it the number of self-identified Christians who bother attending services is less than 20%.
Alarmingly for Church leaders, the worst losses have come over the past decade, with about 4.5 million fewer people affiliating themselves to the C of E or Anglicanism between 2004 and 2014. In contrast, those who describe themselves as Muslim have jumped from 3.2 per cent of the population – equivalent to 1.5 million – in 2012 to 4.7 per cent or 2.4 million in 2014. The only Christian denomination that has remained relatively stable between the 1980s and today is Catholicism – numbers have dipped slightly from ten per cent to eight per cent.
Mr Brierley said the Roman Catholic Church had benefited from the influx of immigrants in recent years, particularly those from Eastern Europe. He added: ‘It is not just Poles. Many others are joining the Church when they come here, from Filipinos to Portuguese. There are seven different Catholic churches just for Croatians in London.’
A category called ‘Other Christian’ has also remained steady, boosted by the rise of largely black congregations attending Pentecostal ‘mega-churches’.
Naomi Jones, of NatCen, said one explanation for the Anglican decline is that fewer people see Christianity as being an important part of their British identity.
I have an old friend who is an Episcopal minister. The Episcopal Church is suffering from the same problems as the Anglican Church. Women, homosexuals and Progressives have worked hard to turn the church into an anti-Christian and anti-Western romper room. They had a Bishop a few years back who was a proud sodomite and all-around public nuisance.
Christianity only works when it calls the faithful to live in opposition to the fallen world. In Europe, nationalism was mixed into the faith so that each people could make their own claims to be God’s chosen. Even so, the faithful, including secular leaders, were required to live according to the tenets of the faith, which demanded the foregoing of earthly pleasures in order to spend eternity in heaven.
Mainstream Protestant faiths, like the C of E, have thrown in the towel on all that sacrifice and self-denial stuff. As a result, people stopped going to services, What would be the point? The Church was supposed to offer guidance and support in navigating around temptation. If the guy saying mass cannot control himself and preaches that you follow his lead, why not stay home and watch TV instead?
That’s all water under the bridge now as Christianity is dead on the Continent and nearly dead in the Anglosphere. The big news is that Islam is maybe a decade away from being the biggest religion in England. With about ten percent of the population being Muslim now, ongoing conversion and immigration suggest Muslims will be pushing 25% of the population in a generation.
It’s tempting to think that the rest of the country will rise up in opposition, but everyone thought something similar when Æthelberht converted to Christianity in the 6th century. As Osama bin Laden put it, people see a strong horse and a weak horse. They will choose the strong horse. Just as Christianity was the strong horse 1500 years ago, Islam is now the strong horse in Britain.
As-salamu alaykum Chaps!
It would come as quite a surprise to the media and London based elite if they could hear how most of us average Brits view islam, there is no tolerance at all and eventually the govt will not be able to keep a lid on it.
I think that most of the timescales for a potential Muslim takeover are too conservative. The tipping point isn’t when the Muslims reach population parity or are large enough a bloc to form an “Islamic Democrat” party. It’s when the the number of Muslim 18 year olds is greater than or equal to the number of native 18 year olds. 45 year olds don’t have very long half life in street battles. One could make the case that the 50% point is too conservative as well given how we and the rest of the West have pansified our young men. The high school band and debate club aren’t going to do too well in urban warfare either.
As I am an unhappy observer (though hopefully one who is wise enough to avoid the baleful glare of the Queen’s Loyal Authorities who think me not liking the incoming hordes is a mark of my disrespect for their allegedly superior ways) of Islam I am not sure your evaluation here is right.
Of course Islam is ‘on the rise.’ Many of them breed furiously (helpfully paid for by the state they hate) and once in it you can never leave. You have doubts, oh bearded one? Tough, you are born to the faith and must stay ‘faithful’ come what may. Anyway, your cousins will be arriving soon to swell the numbers.
Of course Christinity is on the decline; if you have freedom of choice you probably can think of better ways to spend a Sunday.
I went to a local (Christian) church service the other week. It was okay in its own way but the hymns were dire and the ‘message’ a little at odds with what I believe. I will go back one day — probably — but not any time soon. I suspect that puts me more in the ‘don’t know, don’t care’ category. In fact the appearance of my wife and I at the church may have helped lift the attendance figures but us not going on more Sundays will have brought the average down.
But figures have always been fabulous things to play around with and whether you get to the truth depends on how you add them up.
The Church of England, like the British monarchy, is a ceremonial institution, reflecting some lost past. And even in it’s distant past it was never inspirational. It represented and reflected the state, and still does even more so, which is why nobody goes.
Religion in England has always been a little weird compared to the Continent. Into the 8th century, monasteries were lascivious places. It was where the nobility stored their extra kids. Long before Henry the Head Chopper, there was great tension between the English Bishops and the English nobility. Then English have always been a bit indifferent to religion relative to other populations of Europe.
The issue facing England is the growing power of Islam in the coming decades. Once the Muslims reach a critical mass, they will organize politically into their own party. If you are not even allowed to mention any of this in public, how in the world are the English going to fend off their demands. Either England goes Muslim by the 2050’s or they evict their Muslims.
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Need to fix the sentence that says “They will choose the weak horse” to “strong horse”…………..
Ha! Thanks. Fixed.
It’s more than strong- vs weak-horse. The character of the people has changed. They are overly deferential to their rulers, eager to learn how to behave and what to think from movie stars and to be guided by politicians. They no longer wish to make their own decisions, and desire only that others supply peace of mind.
Islam means submission. In their hearts they have submitted. Christianity means salvation. They know longer know “from what.”
London is already mockingly called Londonistan across Europe, it’s pretty bad.
Although technically Islam could be banned for the same reason the Nazi Party is banned in Germany, as it also endangers the basic free order of society, and currently even more so!
I was just in a museum recently and they had walls, no, whole halls full of weapons taken from Ottoman invaders. We threw them back once, we can do it again! Or we can give those weapons from the museum directly back as a party-gift and bend over…