CHURCH closures can lead to a fall in overall church attendance, because worshippers are unwilling or unable to attend a different church, a new poll suggests.
The poll was commissioned by the National Churches Trust to draw attention to an increased rate of church closures in the UK. More than 3500 churches have closed in the past decade, the charity reports.
The results of its weighted survey of 2667 adults in the UK who described themselves as Christian were published on Wednesday. About 60 per cent of the respondents said that they attended church somewhere between every day (two per cent, 29 people) and once every few years (18 per cent, 480 people). More than one third (35 per cent, 924 people) said that they never attended church.
After a query from the Church Times, the sample of churchgoing respondents (i.e. removing those who did not attend) was weighted to a figure of 1745. Of these, 22 per cent said that, should their local church close, they would no longer attend church at all.
Seven per cent said that they would attend an online service instead. This means that just under one third (29 per cent) of the churchgoers would no longer worship in a church building should their preferred church close.
A further seven per cent said that, in the event of the closure of their church, they would attend in-person services less often.
Just three per cent of the churchgoers said that they would attend services in a “new form of church” such as in a café, a community centre, school, or mission hub (News, 16 August).
The survey also found, however, that the more frequently respondents attended church, the more likely they were to seek a new place to worship should their current church building close: 35 per cent of people who attended a church at least once a week, and 33 per cent of at-least-monthly churchgoers, said that they would find a new church to attend as often as they did currently. This was compared with just 12 per cent of those who attended less than monthly.
Older people were most likely to stop going to church at all: only 19 per cent of the 566 over-65s said that they would find a new church to attend as often, should their current church close. More than one quarter (28 per cent) said that they would stop attending in-person worship.
There were only 132 churchgoing Christians aged 18 to 24 in the survey. Of these, 28 per cent said that, in the event of the closure of their church, they would find a new one to attend as often.
Churchgoers in London were least likely to stop going to church at all (14 per cent of the 275 surveyed). Churchgoers in the north-west were most likely to stop attending (32 per cent of the 200 surveyed).
There were also variations in attitude between the denominations. Pentecostals (32 per cent of the 77 surveyed) and Presbyterians, including Church of Scotland (32 per cent of 97 surveyed), were most likely to say that they would find another church to attend as frequently.
About one quarter of the 721 churchgoing Anglicans (23 per cent) and one quarter of the 402 churchgoing Roman Catholics (25 per cent) said that they would no longer attend church.
The Rural Dean of South Holderness, in East Yorkshire, the Revd Alisdair Laird, who is the priest-in-charge of 20 parishes, has recently experienced a church closure: that of All Saints’, Burstwick, last year.
He said: “Once a church building is closed, especially in villages and county towns, in many ways the thing that represents the historic heart of that place has been abandoned, for everyone, not just those who share a Christian faith. . . When the pub, the shop, the school, and finally the church are all gone, what is actually left? . . .
“Traditionally people, not surprisingly, tend to be very focused on ‘their church’, especially in villages, and are reluctant to be involved beyond that. The good news is that we are finding that people here are making more effort to ‘go down the road’ to a neighbouring church, even more so where people provide lifts for those who don’t drive.
“Helping people to worship at a new church does of course mean that they need to feel welcomed by clergy and other worshippers, but it does represent an opportunity for community and growth.”
Regardless of faith and beliefs, people had a shared responsibility to their ancestors and descendants to recognise the “treasure” of churches as historic buildings, he argued, and to work to keep them open.
The National Churches Trust is campaigning for the new Government to guarantee the future of the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme, which allows churches to claim back the VAT on church repairs. Currently, it is guaranteed only until March 2025.
The Trust’s chief executive, Claire Walker, said: “Many church closures take place as the money cannot be found to carry out urgent repairs. Fixing a roof can cost over half a million pounds. The backlog of repairs for the Church of England’s churches alone is at least £1 billion, and the annual need is estimated to be £150 million a year.”
Extending the scheme, which was introduced by Gordon Brown in 2002, would, she said, “allow those running churches to plan for the future safe in the knowledge that they will be able to claim back 20 per cent of their costs”.
The research was conducted by Whitestone Insight between 12 and 20 June.
