Secularization need not have the last word: Anglicanism in Britain and Europe
By David Goodhew
New data on ANGLICANISM in London and Europe offer hope, but the dire figures in parts of Britain also need to be faced. The Church in Wales has more than halved since 1990. The data for Scotland and significant parts of England are little better.
British Anglicanism has changed significantly in the last 30 years. In 1990 the adult membership of the Church in Wales was 98,900, but in 2016 it had dropped to 45,800. At the same time, in the Church of England’s Diocese of London adult membership rose from 45,100 to 73,900.
Decline is so profound in some places that if it is not faced, the end really is nigh for substantial areas of the church. Equally, there are heartening areas of vitality and new life.
Good News in London
For almost 30 years, it has been clear that something different is happening in the Diocese of London (which covers half of the city), compared to the rest of the church. As the table shows, London has experienced sizable and sustained growth since around 1990. This is very different from the past. London was a byword for secularization for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, being markedly less devout than other places, and in the 1970s and ’80s the diocese declined sharply.
London’s vitality is best symbolized by plans to start 100 new congregations in the diocese between 2012 and 2020. By contrast, dioceses that were once substantially larger than London are now substantially smaller.
Is the diocese’s different trajectory due to the marked rise in London’s population and its ethnic diversity, drawing in those who are less secular? This is partly true, but it is inadequate as an overall explanation. The Diocese of Southwark covers the remainder of London, and its population has grown and diversified just as much as the area covered by the Diocese of London – even as the Diocese of Southwark has shrunk. The Diocese of Chelmsford also includes a large slice of highly diverse East London, where there has been marked growth in the overall number of churches – but almost all of them are outside the Church of England.
Bob Jackson and others have studied London, and their research suggests that these factors have fueled growth there:
• Bishops’ single-minded goal of growing and multiplying local churches, which has spread across the diocese;
• A financial framework that encourages growing churches instead of penalizing them;
• A readiness between traditions to live and let live;
• An ambitious strategy for starting new churches (see B. Jackson, “The Diocese of London and the Anglican Church in London, 1980 to the Present”).
In the late 1960s, the retiring Bishop of Woolwich told his successor that the church in inner-city London would be dead in ten years. But it has seen marked church growth in subsequent decades. So much for episcopal doom-mongering. This is one reason the data from the Diocese of London matter. These data not only offer a shaft of light in an often gloomy landscape, but also show that secularization is not all-powerful. If a city set on secularization can turn around, other areas can do the same.
The Surprising Diocese in Europe
A related surprising piece of good news is from the Diocese in Europe. Here is a diocese that stretches from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Urals. It began primarily as a chaplaincy for wealthy English people who moved across the Channel. But it has markedly diversified and expanded since 2000. It is now almost as large as the Episcopal Church in Scotland and is overtaking many English dioceses.
Europe’s Sunday attendance figures are less rosy, suggesting a small decline, but this is still markedly better than in most of the Church of England. One of the ironies of Brexit is that it is occurring at a point when English-speaking Anglicanism is gaining traction in mainland Europe. Its dynamism is concentrated in globalizing cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. Large European cities were once the epicenter of secularization. But they have also known vigorous church life in recent decades.
In a rapidly globalizing world, many inhabitants of European cities are looking for services in English. Beyond this, Anglicanism’s via media capacity to draw on Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal traditions is a significant virtue as people move to the city and seek Christian community in a setting where denominational identity is fluid.
England: The Not-So-Good News
In England, it is a rough rule of thumb that things grow worse the further away from London one travels. A handful of dioceses within a 70-mile radius of London, such as Canterbury, Oxford and Ely, have declined, but not by much. The same is true of a cluster of Midlands dioceses: Coventry, Leicester, Peterborough and Southwell & Nottingham. But all dioceses, apart from London, have shrunk to some degree in the last 30 years, and in some dioceses the numbers are grim. A sizable number of dioceses have declined by a third or more since 1990.
There are socioeconomic drivers here. Areas seeing greatest decline tend to have less population growth or ethnic diversity than London and its environs. But, and it is a huge “but,” pleading social change as causation can be a cop-out. Why has St. Albans shrunk so much, while nearby dioceses have not? Manchester has sharply declined, even though it is highly diverse ethnically and has a rapidly growing population.
Scotland & Wales: From Bad to Dire
In Scotland, the decline is bad. Church membership has dropped from 58,000 in 1990 to 32,000 in 2016. Figures from Brierley show that the church’s attendance was around 20,000 in 1994, but by 2016 this had nearly halved to 12,500, and this is without the effect of the church’s sexuality debates, which look likely to drive further declines.
Of the 303 Anglican congregations in Scotland, nearly 10 percent have a Sunday attendance of fewer than ten people. Some Scottish dioceses have only a few hundred people in church across the entire diocese on an average Sunday.
In Wales, the news is worse. The electoral roll in 1990 was 98,900, but in 2016 it was 45,800, a drop of more than 50 percent. Current plans entail further reorganization of parishes into larger and larger units led by fewer and fewer people. This strategy has been tried in many parts of the West and always has the same effect: further decline.
This raises broader questions. The Diocese in Europe will soon be larger than the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Why is it not a province when Scotland is? Conversely, the decline of Wales and Scotland raises the question of whether, when provinces shrink so much, they should continue to have the status of province, and the influence that comes with this, within the Anglican Communion.
Ireland: A Partial Exception
Irish Anglicanism has been more robust than Anglicanism in Wales and Scotland. What is crucial to note is its distinct ecclesial ecology, with the bulk of the church found in Northern Ireland, where denominational, social and political identities strongly overlap and where secularization has made less progress than in the rest of Britain. Irish Anglicanism shows more resilience than Anglicanism in most of the U.K. This has happened amid the substantial decline of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, which reflects wider secularization. Ireland is, however, still markedly more observant [as a Christian region] than the rest of Britain and much of Western Europe.
Europe & the Future of Anglicanism
What, then, is the prospect for the motherland of Anglicanism? Fifty years ago, London was markedly secular and Anglicanism in Europe was largely a chaplaincy for rich ex-pats. The vigour of these dioceses in recent years is both a surprise and an encouragement. Churches that decline can also revive.
Secularization need not have the last word. The growth of Anglican churches in some of the most modern areas of the West should nerve the arm of congregations. The signs also show the need for Anglicanism across Britain and Europe to have the humility to learn from others, notably the Diocese of London. There is what Australians call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when those who see vigour elsewhere tend to carp at it. This instinct needs to be resisted. Conversely, the supposed inevitability of secularization is strangely seductive. It allows clergy, congregations and entire dioceses to excuse their inaction by claiming that they can do nothing about decline.
Like it or not, British dioceses are in a missionary situation. The Christian gospel is good news. It deserves to be shared and the evidence shows that if congregations and denominations intend to grow, they tend to grow. The question for Anglicanism in Britain, Europe and the wider Global North is whether we really want this. TAP
This is a condensed version of David Goodhew’s article. Lambeth 2020 is a series of articles by Goodhew exploring vitality and decline across the Anglican Communion. Previous articles have looked at Anglican churches in Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Pacific Rim and Latin America. The series is available at the weblog, Covenant (bit.ly/CovLC2020).
