COMPARATIVE PATTERNS OF DECLINE

To assess URC decline rigorously we need to compare this decline both with the constituent churches prior to the union and with other churches in the same period.

The first is simply done. Between 1947 and 1972 the Presbyterian Church of England lost 29% of its membership, the Congregationalists 32% and the Churches of Christ 56% or an annual loss of 1.36%, 1.53% and 3.23 % respectively. This compares with an annual average decline of around 2.9% for the United Reformed Church (Church Yearbooks). Steve Bruce’s claim that, “The URC has shown a faster rate of decline than did any of its

components before the merger” (1996: p.86) is not true of the Churches of Christ but is applicable to both Congregationalists and Presbyterians. Rather than ecumenical commitment generating growth it has coincided with accelerating decline.

The second comparison is more difficult to make. Although the format of membership in the United Reformed Church is similar to that of the other nonconformist denominations there can be no direct comparison with either the Anglican or Catholic Churches where membership is not measured in the same way. It is certain however that church attendance was in general decline and it does not appear that the United Reformed Church did

exceptionally worse than the others.

A simple comparison is with the Methodist Church. 1987 2007 decline Methodist 436,810 267,257 38.12% URC 129, 149 73, 503 43.08%

(United Reformed Church Yearbooks, Methodist Conference Minutes). Looking at more recent figures:

2008 2010 decline

Methodist 252,000 238,000 5.55% URC 70,508 66,746 5.33%

123 Depending on what years one takes the relative position of the two churches will differ. Although over the longer period URC decline appears slightly greater, the certainty is that for both churches the decline is dramatic.

With the Church of England comparisons are more complicated since there is no equivalent category to membership. Since 1968, however, Sunday attendances have been collected centrally. As a percentage of the population these have almost halved in 3 decades declining from 3.5% in 1968 to 1.9% in 1999 (Gill 2003, p.247). MARC Europe Research suggests an even faster decline from 3.6% of the population in 1979 to 2.0% in 1998. Other statistics reveal much the same picture. Baptisms per thousand live births fell from 446 in 1970 to 275 in 1990. Between 1960 and 1982 Anglican confirmations fell from 191,000 to 84,500 - a fall of more than 50%. As Adrian Hastings observes, between 1860 and 1960 Anglican decline was “steady but seldom appeared calamitous” (Hastings, 1991, p.551). From then on things changed. “It is not exaggerated to conclude that between 1960 and 1982 the Church of England as a going concern was effectively reduced to not much more than half its previous size”

(ibid. p.603).

The Roman Catholic Church has a very distinct history of secularization. For most of the twentieth century it was the great exception to church decline. In 1851 total Catholic attendance in Britain represented just 3.8% of all church attendance; in 1989 it represented 35.2%. Catholic attendance peaked in the 1960s. From then all the relevant statistics declined rapidly. Mass attendances declined from 1,934,853 in 1970 to 1,461,074 in 1985 (Gill op.cit. p.156) an annual decline of 1.85%. From 1990 to 2002 attendance fell from 1,351,342 to 947,845 a fall of 29.85% or an annual decline of 2.91% (Brierley, 2003, 8.5). Between 1965 and 1985 adult converts halved and “the number of child baptisms,

confirmations and marriages declined by over two-fifths”(Hornsby-Smith, 1989, p.207). From 1990 to 2002 the number of priests in England declined from 5,712 to 5,120, a decline of 10.3% (Brierley, op.cit 8.5). Despite recent Catholic immigration this decline still

continues. The Catholic Directory in England shows that between the 2009 and 2010 counts there was a drop of 1.5% in Catholic attendance (Catholic Directory 2012). Again therefore this is a rate of decline not totally out of line with the URC.

It is true there are some churches that did not share in this calamitous decline. In the Baptist Union of Great Britain, for example, in the period 2002 to 2008 membership fell by 7 per cent from 149,685 to 139,244, that is an annual decline of just under 1%. (Baptist Times 19 February 2010). It is however at this point worth noting the caution introduced by John Briggs that “Baptist statistics may not be as favourable as they seem, being bolstered by some very large essentially ethnic churches” (Briggs, 2010, p. 40). The Congregational Federation, the largest grouping of the Congregational Churches which remained outside the United Reformed Church, also shows slower decline. In 1976 the Congregational Federation had 297 churches and 10,907 members. In 1994 there were 284 churches and 9,096 members, a membership decline of 16.60% or an annual decline of 0.59%(Congregational Yearbooks). This compares with a URC decline in the same period from 174,611 to 106,537, a decline of 38.98%, or an annual decline of 2.71%. Looking at more recent figures (it should be noted

124 these statistics now include churches joining both churches from the Congregationalists in Scotland):

2000 2006 decline Congregational Federation

Churches 310 292 5.8% Membership 11,185 9,635 13.8% United Reformed Church

Churches 1753 1630 6.95% Membership 92,787 76,013 18%

(Brierley, 2008, 9.5 and URC Yearbooks).

This again shows Congregational decline to be slower, though not enough to be hugely significant.

In some sections of the Church there was even numerical growth. From 1990 to 2002 attendance at independent church congregations (for example Vineyard and Cornerstone) in England grew from 74,838 to 154,900a rise of 93.6% (Brierley, op.cit. 9.9). The total membership of Pentecostal Churches in England rose from 142,806 in 1990 to 233,065 in 2002, an increase of 63.20% (ibid. 9.13). A major, though not the only factor in this was a strong increase due to immigration in the membership of African initiated churches. By 2005 one person in six going to church in England was non-white, half as much again as the estimated proportion of non-whites in the population in that year (Brierley, 2006, p.90-91). If we concentrate on the black population the increase is even more striking with an attendance three times their proportion in the population, and an increase in attendance of 23% between 1998 and 2005, compared with a decline of 19% among white worshipers (Brierley, op. cit. p.91). These have disproportionately strengthened Pentecostal Churches. Thus the number of black churchgoers in Pentecostal Churches rose from 69,500 in 1998 to 114,300 in 2005, an increase of 64%. In the same period the number of black attenders in United Reformed

Churches fell from 5,200 to 3,200, a decline of 38% (op.cit. p.95). One result of the changing ethnicity of English Christianity has been to increase conservative evangelical influence. So between 1998 and 2005 non-evangelical church attendance declined twice as fast as

evangelical church attendance (19% to 9%). This was almost entirely due to changes in ethnicity. White evangelical attendance declined almost as much as non-evangelical (-17% and -21%) while the non-white evangelical attendance rose 35% and non-white non- evangelical by only 3% (op.cit. p.98).

The other major change in the pattern of English religion in this period, again

significantly linked to immigration, was the rise of non-Christian religions, especially Islam. The United Kingdom had 23,000 Muslims in 1951, rising to 369,000 in 1971, topping a million by 1991 and reaching 1.6 million by 2007 (Jenkins, 2007, p.118). The Pew report on

125 inflow of Muslim immigrants in 2010 at 64,000, representing 28% of all immigrants to the UK in the year.

Looked at overall, while the United Reformed Church may be declining slightly faster than most other comparable churches, the comparative rate of decline is not sui generis and is less than the Congregational Church was experiencing in the earlier part of the twentieth century. The accelerated decline of the majority of churches in the second half of the

twentieth century is evidence of how difficult the culture was for any church. If the URC is in difficulty it is in good company. Two related conclusions might be drawn. Firstly, there is no statistical evidence that the United Reformed Church’s ecumenical commitment produced any positive impact on membership. Secondly while we cannot be certain what the precise rate of decline for Congregational and Presbyterian churches would have been without the union, there seems no reason to suppose it would have been substantially different from that of the United Reformed Church.